Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Pastor Wolfmuth here, pastor of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas. Come and visit as always with Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I just heard a rumor about you. Your favorite part of our Q and A podcast here is the rumors about.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Oh, I love them so much.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Confirmed.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: So fun.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Everybody, when they see me somewhere, they're like, pastor Wolf, I heard a rumor about you. And they're like, I'm like, me.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, you're about the wrong guy.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: You got some questions for us?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
Was Luther's break from Romans? Hold on.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: I just want to introduce our sound effects that in the new review.
I have to. This is going to add such a layer of beauty to our show today.
I mean, it's gonna be great.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: It's already terrible.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Okay, so hold on for the first question. Drum roll, please.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Okay. For the five of you that made it and are still with us,
[00:01:14] Speaker A: let's continue.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Let's try this again. Is Luther's break.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Go walk off set. I'm going to pull a trump and drop my microphone and walk off set.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I've had enough of you.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: All right.
Is Luther's break from Rome a sin? Luther was excommunicated. Was his and others founding of the Lutheran Church a sin? If so, what do Lutherans do to repent of the sin and reunify God's church on earth?
[00:01:47] Speaker A: So Luther did not break from the church. Hopefully we recognize that he was excommunicated and also determined to be an outlaw. So we have the Papal bull which excommunicated Luther and declared all his teachings to be illegal. And then we have that also.
It's not just. So that came from Rome. And then we had the Diet of worms. That's 1521 from Charles V. And so we had the Imperial declaration that Luther's doctrines were not to be tolerated. That that comes out in the edict of Worms 15:21, which makes Luther illegal and his writings illegal and to be burned, etc. At the diet, Luther was confronted by the emperor and by the representatives of the Pope. And they said, hey, are you going to change your teaching here?
And he explained it.
And this is maybe the key thing for this question. He says, look, some of these things, some of this writing is just what you guys agree with. I can't recant of that because, you know, we agree some of these things I've written too harshly, and for that, I'm sorry. But the circumstances needed a clear thing, a clear declaration of the truth. And in some of these places, I've just written what's in the Scriptures.
And if it condemns your doctrine and your teaching, the problem is not mine, the problem is yours.
And this is the attitude that Luther had always when he was teaching is that we have to do our doctrine in preparation for the Judgment Day. Because it's not the Emperor who is the judge on the last day. It's not the Pope who is the judge on the last day, much to his own chagrin, it is the Lord Jesus who is the judge on the last day. And so we better teach and preach and confess and write in such a way that we, we are ready for his judgment.
So he says, unless I'm convinced by the clear word of God, by Scripture and plain reason that there's something wrong in here, I won't recant. It's not safe to go against conscience and Scripture, so that our conscience has to be bound to the word of God, not to the traditions of men.
Now, certainly Luther was a sinner, and certainly the Lutherans were sinners, and certainly there was sin in the Lutheran Reformation. So we don't want to claim a sinlessness. The Pope also was sinning, and the Cardinals and the Emperor, they were certainly sinning. There was sin top to bottom on every person. In other words, everybody involved in the Reformation was a sinner who needed desperately the blood of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins. But when we look at the cause of the break of the Church, the splintering that happened at the Reformation, we find at the root of it the same cause for the splintering of the church that happened 500 years earlier at the Great Schism, namely the Pope claiming to be the Vicar of Christ on earth and requiring everyone to submit not only to his teaching, but to his personal authority.
And that claim is just tyrannical and non Christian.
And it's especially deadly when the Pope then comes along and says that confident, just as an example from the Council of Trent, that being confident that your sins are forgiven means that your sins are not forgiven.
When the Pope says something that obnoxious, then it's not possible to submit to that authority. I mean, it's just you cannot do it and keep a good conscience. You cannot do it and keep a clean conscience.
So I do not think that the break between Luther, between Wittenberg and Rome was, I do think it was sinful, but I think the sin was on the Rome side of things, not on the Wittenberg side of things. And I think the Reformation was a call to Rome to repent and that call was not heeded. Can you imagine imagine Paul confronting Peter?
Remember when in Antioch he was pretending like a hypocrite and he was trying to claim righteousness by not eating forbidden foods by kosher laws. And Paul calls Peter to repentance. And imagine Peter doesn't repent, but in fact has the Council of Antioch in which he condemns Paul.
I mean, that's. The Reformation was calling Peter to repent. And, and Peter in the form of Rome, refused to repent. In fact, they doubled down on their sectarian doctrine in Trent and cut themselves off. I mean, I think the Gospel was more lively in the Roman Church before the Reformation than it was after because there were some evangelical preachers that were under Rome, like Staupitz, for example, you know, Luther's superior in the Augustinian order, who had this great Christian doctrine. But after Trent, that's forbidden now under Rome.
So Trent was a kind of a hardening of the Roman heart.
And I think that's what we're, in some ways, the Lutheran Church is still calling Rome to repent over these sins and to stop being antichrist, etc.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: I'm going to add to the question. So you mentioned the east and west split. So for like a thousand years we had essentially one church. Now we had some, obviously some groups that broke off from the church and were condemned by the church or whatever, but essentially one church. And then for about 500 years after that, we had essentially two churches. Right. And then from the time of formation on, then it's obviously splintered further.
What, what role or what should our desire be as Lutherans in terms of trying to, maybe even just on our side of things, let's take Roman, the Eastern Orthodox out of the picture for a second.
Even on like, let's say the Protestant side of things, what should our role or desire or efforts be to try to reunify the church?
Like, should that be a goal? Because, I mean, it seems like John 17, Ephesians 4, like Christ's desire is for us to be one.
So should we be working towards that?
And maybe do you have any thoughts on what that should look like, if we should be working towards something like that?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah, here's the problem. So absolutely, yes. And the church is one. All the, all believers in Christ are united in the mystical body of Christ.
So there is only one church. The problem is that there's all these different organizations. The visible churches are split and they are split for good reason because there really are differences in doctrine.
And one of the problems of the ecumenical movement we've had up for 150 years is it's tried to diminish those differences in doctrine and said that, well, the things that separate us are not that big.
And Christians, I think even Lutherans have sort of bought into that. Like, well, we're all Christians, and so the differences between us are not really that big differences.
I think it's on us.
Step one is because if that's true, if the differences between the different churches are not that big, then it would be sinful to stay different churches. Okay? So number one is to know the differences, to say, are there really? Like, is it really a big deal to be a Lutheran or a Baptist or a Methodist or Presbyterian or whatever. Or whatever. Is it a big deal?
And I think the answer is yes, it is a big deal. For example, does baptism save.
Like, that's a pretty simple thing. And all the Protestants say no, and the Lutherans say yes.
Or even to say this, does baptism forgive sins? All the Protestants say no. All the Catholics say no.
Their understanding of the way that baptism interacts with sin is not that way of. It's not a justification. It's a washing away of what's. It kind of takes away original guilt and takes away the fomes of sin, but it doesn't do anything after that. So that. So that just that idea. Baptism forgives sins. It just so happens that the Lutherans are the only people who believe that.
Or the absolution forgive sins, or the blood of Christ forgives sins. You look in the Catholic catechism and you see the blood of Christ in the supper. And like the way down at the bottom, it forgives little sins, but if you got big sins, you have to take care of it through penance first. In other words, the Protestants reject the blood and the Catholics reject the forgiveness. And the Orthodox, that aren't really too concerned because they got a big free will involved to start with, so they have a totally different idea of salvation. So, like, the differences are big deals.
So the first to know the differences, to understand the differences, and then to know that the unity of the church has to be a confessional unity. It can't be a bureaucratic or a political unity. It has to be about doctrine, what is confessed, and not only what's confessed with the mouth, but what's confessed in the life of the church as well.
So that while we're working for the unity of the church, we're working for the unity of doctrine, the unity of theology, and nobody else is. I mean, most churches are working kind of politically toward these things, trying to find bureaucratic answers to theological questions, which is, you know, it just can't be done. But the problem is that.
The problem is that most mainline Protestants and Rome and the Orthodox understand the question of the unity of the Church as a question of authority, and it's not.
Our doctrine of sola scriptura is only partially a question of authority.
It's chiefly a question of how does the Holy Spirit work.
If we have a disconnect between authority and the work of the Spirit in the content of the gospel, then we can't even get to the right kind of question. I don't know if that makes sense, but the answer is we should be working towards unity, but it has to be a unity of confession.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: All right, this one's fine.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Hold on, hold on. Let me. I got a transition sound effect here.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Okay, second question.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: I hate my job.
Thank you.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Oh, wait, sorry. Say that again.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: I hate my job.
It wasn't. It wasn't a joke. Okay.
All right, where do. So I hear a lot of theology bros discussing Calvinism versus Arminianism. Where do Lutheran beliefs slot into this debate?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Great.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Qu.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Oh, man. This is for you. You should. You should take the first swing at this one. This is your whole life right here.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true.
I grew up in Arminianism and then went to Calvinism and then became Lutheran.
I mean, the simple answer is, which I think we've done on a lot of videos now, because it's related to a lot of these issues.
Arminianism wants to exalt, like the free will, the free choice essentially, of the Christian in choosing Christ.
The Calvinist, on the other hand, is, as we said in last week's. One of last week's videos, talking about.
Wants to see everything through God's sovereignty. And so then Calvinism, in response to free will, comes up with things like double predestination and limited atonement and things like that.
And the Lutherans say, you're both wrong. Right. And this is where. This is why I think a lot of people don't know what to do with us. Because I remember very clearly when I was in high school, I was presented with that question, are you a Calvinist or are you Arminian? And I was given, like, you know, this. This pamphlet on it, and I read it, and I'm a high schooler, and I'm like, oh, well, this Armenianism doesn't sound right. Cause it's like putting all a.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Man.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: This Calvinism sounds better, but it was like, it was that false dilemma, right? Like, hey, you have to choose one or the other. It's like, no, they're both wrong. And I think that's why so many Christians don't get Lutherans, because everyone's debating this other. Having this other debate, and we're not involved in it. And we're kind of on the sidelines being like, well, neither.
Instead, we want to emphasize, well, yes, God is indeed in control of all things, but that doesn't mean double predestination is true. It doesn't mean that limited atonement's true. It also, just because we said that doesn't mean that now it's up to your free will. Like, we're constantly saying to both, hey, you're getting some really big things wrong. Like, we want to say, hey, it's not if you're saved, it is 100 God's will, but if you reject, that's on you. And we also want to say, hey, Christ died for everyone. And we want to be able to very clearly say, Christ is for you.
That's one of the things I wrestled with as a Calvinist, right? Not being able to tell someone, hey, Jesus died for you. I could say, Jesus died for, you know, the world. Or I could say, Jesus died for the elect. And I could be very, like, careful with my language. But I couldn't look someone in the eyes and be like, jesus died for you.
Which always, like, bothered me, you know, if I'd go out and evangelize or talk to people and be like, maybe Jesus died for you, but you would never say it that way. But that's kind of what you're thinking like, well, if Jesus didn't die for you and you're not one of the elect, then my conversation with you is a waste of time, honestly, because I was really consistent in those things. And so I thought about them very consistently and very logically and held them all together. And that's what made me wrestle with them, was like, man, I can't say that.
That seems to cut the knees out from under the gospel proclamation. If I can't look you in the eyes and say, hey, Jesus died for you. And if you believe in him, like, he's done all this for you, it's all yours.
I don't have to qualify with anything now. I can just say, jesus Christ is for you, a sinner. He loves you, he died for you, and he desires your salvation. I don't have to hedge anything. I don't have to qualify anything. I can just Proclaim that freely and boldly. And I think that's a beautiful thing.
So without getting to all the issues, because I think that would take too much time. But I think those are some of the big issues where they're arguing and having a different debate. And we're over on the outside of that saying, you're both getting a lot of things wrong. And not to mention, I mean, we haven't even touched like, I haven't even touched like sacraments, for example, like what's the role of baptism and Lord's Supper?
How do those things fit in? Like, we haven't even touched those.
But just looking at some of the big debates people see online with Calvinism versus Arminianism, those are just a few of the big areas where we'd say, hey, no to both of you.
Neither it's not A or B, it's none of the above.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Right.
So I think the big question, how it. And I remember those days too, are you Calvinism? I don't think actually that the free will theology of like the Evangelical Church or the Baptist Church or all of these Pentecostal churches that are all, they're all free will theologians. You have to make a decision for Christ. You can and must make a decision for Christ.
I think we overlay that question onto the Calvin, Arminian question because it certainly was a big like, are you free to choose Christ? And the Arminians said yes. The Calvinists said, no bondage of the will, total depravity, etc. So we take that free will question and we overlay it. The problem is that our evangelicals don't get their free will theology from Arminianism. They get it from revivalism.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: So kind of you have this great inconsistency. So there was a consistency to the tulip to Calvinism and there was a consistency to the Arminianism to the anti tulip. What was the anti tulip called?
The reaction to the canon of Dort or whatever.
We. You don't have that consistency in modern day evangelicalism. So in, in evangelicalism you have this free will theology. You have to make a decision for Christ. But then you also have once saved, always saved, which is totally Calvinistic, the perseverance of the saints. I mean, okay, there's a debate there, but you know, you get, you have this weird inconsistency.
So then, so it, it hasn't been worked out in the Armenian, in the, in the consistent Arminian way in evangelicalism. But I think we agree with the Calvinist. Well, we agree with The Calvinist instinct on the bondage of the will, but for different reasons. They have it because, well, probably it's a working out of the sovereignty of God, because God's will is primary, then our will has to be negated. We understand so.
And they kind of backend that into their doctrine of the fall. We understand it just from the doctrine of the fall that the bondage of the will, in fact we go further than the Reformed when it comes to the loss of the image of God in humanity, etc. I think it's really interesting, but I think here's my unified theory of denominations, which kind of comes up often.
I've told you this, right, that I used to think it was the Protestant was the kind of word side of things and the Catholic orthodox was the sacrament side of things. But I've changed my idea of it. And the Lutherans are in the middle word and sacrament. But I now think that the energy in Protestantism is not pro word but actually anti sacrament.
So you have the anti sacramental Christians, that's Calvinists and Arminians, they're all anti sacrament. And then you have the anti word Christians, ironically, the Pope, with everyone else who hangs out with them.
And the problem with being anti word is that you might have the sacraments in their ontology, but you lose the benefit. Like you might have the body and blood, but you don't have the forgiveness of sins. And over here, being anti sacrament, you might have the Word but it loses its power. It's information that you have to react to.
So here we have the.
You have these. It's like body and soul pulled apart.
Now the Lord is still working.
So both in the Protestant churches and in the Catholic and Orthodox churches, there are Christians because baptism is still doing its work, even if it's not confessed that way.
Because the Word is still doing its work, even though it's not confessed that way. These things are real and the Lord is working through them. But the theology on both sides are pulling people away from the beauty of the forgiveness of sins declared in the name of Jesus in the church that he instituted.
So I can't even remember what question we were answering, but oh, Calvin and Arminian. Yeah, that's right. So it's kind of a trick. Are you Calvinist or Arminian? And the answer is, well, look, I'm baptized for the forgiveness of sins.
In other words, I'm Lutheran.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: All right, next question.
Is the Romans Road compatible with Lutheran beliefs?
So they say I'm a Lutheran, but grew up Baptist. Growing up in The Baptist church. There's a lot of stress placed on personal evangelism and witnessing for Christ, which is an aside we should say is like a good thing, like that's not a bad thing.
One of the tools we were taught for explaining the gospel to the people is the Romans road to salvation. In case you're unfamiliar with it, it goes like this. The problem Everyone has sinned, right? Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Next, the consequence sin deserves death.
Romans 6:23. For the wages of sin is death. The hope Christ died for us. But God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.
Next, the gift in eternal life through Jesus. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The response, Believe and confess. If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. And the assurance God keeps his promise, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
So they say. At the end of the presentation, we were taught to ask the person we were witnessing to if they'd like to pray to receive salvation, and we would pray with them. My question is, is there anything equivalent to this in the Lutheran Church? If not, is this approach compatible with Lutheran theology? Is there a better alternative?
[00:22:23] Speaker A: So the only problem is that.
Let's say there's two.
So the first thing is this is 100% wonderful to go to the scriptures and get the diagnostic and get the solution.
Where the theology of the Romans road falls short, is that when it comes to the end of the road, the thing that is offered is the choice of man rather than the gift of God.
So what I would rather do, so the response I would put in there would be Romans 6.
If you're baptized into Christ Jesus, you're buried into his death.
So that every time, for example, in the Book of Acts, someone hears the gospel, they repent of their sins, they believe in Jesus. The answer is not that they say the sinner's prayer. The next thing is that they're baptized.
So what that does is it takes out the whole free will response business and it adds in the sacramental life.
So I think if you have that adjustment, it's absolutely beautiful and wonderful.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think overall, as I was reading through it, I didn't. It's kind of funny because until I'd seen this question, I hadn't thought about the Romans road in many, many years.
But I mean, it is. It's a very brief, simple explanation of the problem, the gift, all of that.
Yeah, it's just the ending. Because what can happen is. And I was really good at using this to get people to pray the sinner's prayer. Like, when I even was on, I was in high school, I could get people to, like, sit down with me, go through this and, you know, get them to pray the prayer and then think I had, like, done a great job because I got them to pray the prayer. But getting someone to pray the prayer is not the same thing as them actually believing. Right.
And it's not the same thing as them being baptized and coming into the life of the church through that and those kind of things. So while I think I was doing a good thing and sharing the gospel with these kids even in high school, I think, you know, it becomes almost a sales pitch when you're. When your goal is just to get them to pray with you. And some people may pray to just get rid of you. Whereas if you say, if you believe now, let's get baptized. Well, that's a much different thing than just saying, like, hey, just pray with me. Repeat these words after me. That they may.
They're not going to go with you to get rid of you to be baptized. They're just going to shut the door in your face at that point. Right. Like, it is a different. I even think the response of the people is going to be different when you're actually putting it that way, because you're also then putting it, like you said, into God's hands. Right. God giving his gifts through baptism versus them trying to do something through their own prayer. So I like that adjustment.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: I mean, the Romans road is there. I mean, you could do it any place. You could do a Galatians road. You could do an Acts 2 road. You could do a Philippians road.
It's all the doctrines are there. You want to talk about how God has created us, how we're fallen, how Christ is the redeemer, how that word comes to us in the gospel, and the Lord claims us as his own. It would be great to put Romans 10:17.
How can they hear unless they believe in faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of God. Like, faith is not what we're doing. It's a gift that's given to us. If you believe in Jesus, that's the Holy Spirit's work.
And now the Lord claims us to. To a life of love and suffering.
You can do a creed road, Apostles creed road. If you wanted, which is probably what the Apostles Creed is. The Creation and fall, redemption, sanctification. So this is great.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: All right. This one is going to make you, I'm sure, tons of friends on the Internet. Are you ready?
What is the.
If we see a. If we see viewership drop, we're gonna know why.
All right, everyone cut out in the first two minutes of every video. First 30 seconds.
What is the biblical Lutheran view on women's singleness, education, and dating?
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: So here's. Yeah, here's some context. Whoops. Hold on. Mess that up. All right.
Although I want to. I want to say.
I don't know if you've read this one yet, but I have not. They say you guys are like Sully and Mike from Monsters, Inc. It doesn't say which one's which, though. Which.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Who are those? Are those the two monsters from the.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Yeah, the big raw one and the short kind of round one. Okay.
Anyway, I'm not sure how to take that clarification on.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: I don't even know which one I want to be. I'm insulted by both.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Not sure how to go with that.
But anyways, we will.
We will.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Sully and Mike.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: We'll answer. Answer this anyways. Okay, first question about women in education.
A lot of conservative speakers, particularly in the states, are discouraging, even condemning, college education for women, condemning independence and encouraging them to marry young and stay home and have large families.
Well, I believe this is ideal in theory. I believe it's wise for young women to develop a means of providing for themselves so they have the confidence to choose the right sort of guy.
Character. Guy for marriage, rather than feeling an urgency to dive into marriage quickly, to learn relational and practical skills and develop emotional regulation and discipline that comes with working for someone that can fire you, that can use then in marriage, if tragedy strikes, have something to fall back on or to use.
So that's the first question.
Let's cover the first question. Because the second question is pretty. Pretty different. And there's even a third.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: There is this weird thing about. And you see it in confessional Lutherans, too, and it's this whole trad thing about how the only godly option for a lady is to be a wife and mother.
And that and to work inside the home. And I wonder what to do with the tenth commandment. You shall not covet your neighbor's maidservant. In other words, it seems like being a maidservant, working for somebody else in somebody else's home seems to be a possibility in this world. In Other words, not everyone is going to be the matron of a home. There's going to be people who are also working for other people. And I think that this kind of closing in on the vocational options for women is a little bit reactionary.
There is, what it's reacting to is also bad.
And that is that there's no distinction between men and women or that somehow women ought to chiefly find their value in their independence and in their role in economics and things like this. I mean, there's a big trick that, I mean the capitalists and the Marxists will both point it out is that when it was determined that, that a family needs to have two incomes to run, like when everyone bought into that and said, okay, well we all need to have two income houses, that's pretty convenient for everyone who's hiring people to work because now I don't have to pay you a living wage or whatever I give you, I can give you half of a living wage because I figured the other half of your family has to be also out of the house and working.
And the, and the despising of the work that's happening in the house in support of the family, like that's not real work, is also something that ought to be rejected and kind of thrown out. But the idea that there's no place
[00:30:26] Speaker B: for
[00:30:29] Speaker A: women to be working outside the house is just kind of a.
I don't know, I think it's an overreaction and it shows all the marks of this kind of the person who wants to really control things. And when you see that kind of person who really wants to control things, it is a lot of times an indication that everything's out of control.
So we have to watch out for that.
There is another layer though, which is very complicated and that is that, that the sort of bell curve, the distribution of talent and ability is flatter for men than it is for women.
And this is something like Dr. Jordan Peterson would talk about a lot of times. In other words, like this normal distribution, the bell curve distribution for like, just take intelligence that, that it's higher in the middle for, for women and it's flatter for men. In other words, there's a lot more.
This is not you, like you said, getting friends. There's a lot more average women than there are average men. In other words, on the genius side of things, you're going to have a higher proportion of men to women and on the real dumb side of things, you're going to have a higher proportion of men to women. This is like so that at the very elite places of whatever you have, you end up having more men than women. And on the very not elite places, you have more men than women. Like prison or whatever. This is also then becomes true in vocation, so that there's very few women trash collectors, for example.
And that is.
And that's fine. Like it's kind of good. What that means is that college, which is used to be sort of up here, it's kind of shifted here.
What happens now is that you have more women in college than men. These are the statistics. Because you got a lot of guys who are just going into the trades or doing whatever on however that is distributed.
And then it becomes a real problem for marriage because in general, a woman does not want to marry a man who has less of an education than he does.
So it becomes a big sort of demographic problem. Now we need godly women who are like, okay with having a master's degree and marrying a guy who's a carpenter.
That's going to be tricky. And you have to know that that's going to be tricky because no matter how much we try to think about equality, there are differences between, between men and women. And we have to acknowledge that to make it work in marriage.
So we're setting ourselves up for very complicated situations. But as long as we know that, then let's go. You know, let's try to be as educated as we can be. Let's try to be as productive as we can be. Let's try to be as equipped to serve our neighbor as we can be. And if that's through education or training or whatever, let's do that.
Because the Lord has called us to love our neighbor and he's given us certain capacities to do it. So let's go for it and pray that the Lord would bless us with the gifts he wants to give us.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Aaron Ren had an article, it's been years ago now, the Reformed, he wrote about the negative world. So a lot of people are familiar with that that he's done. But he's had a newsletter for years, and I can't remember how many years ago it was, but he had one on this idea that people have of like the conservative or like Christian home.
Kind of like it's like a 1950s kind of thing. And then really pre industrial Revolution, like everybody in the home worked. It wasn't like, does dad work or does mom work? Is that everybody works. But they're primarily both. Both mom and dad, both husband and wife are primarily working with a job that's connected to the home and even the kids, right? Like, the whole family is involved in having a productive household.
And so for most of human history, everybody was working, but it was largely tied to the home because you're trying to have a productive household to provide for everybody, right? And so then that shifts post Industrial Revolution, that brings a lot of changes. And then World War II brought even some more changes with that.
And so what often people are looking at is like, hey, this is how things have always been. Really was like the short time period post World War II. Whereas for most of history, it wasn't a question of does, does the dad or the mom work or does the husband or the wife work or whatever it was. We're all working, but it happened to be connected to our home primarily. Now, obviously it wasn't true of everyone, but for most people, it was connected to their home in some way or another. And so when that changed, that did create more questions, right? Because even at the end of Proverbs, right, Proverbs 31, you have a woman who's clearly, like, doing work that takes her outside the home, but it's connected with her home, right?
So he has a whole thing on this and breaks down the history and how some of these things change.
I found it very helpful because sometimes what gets idealized is something that's never really existed, right, for very much of human history.
And so there is an issue, I think people are recognizing an issue of things are different than they were when we all had, like, productive households and were primarily connected to our home.
And that's great if you're able to have that kind of productive household.
But I don't think that's a reality for most of us, right? I don't think most of us have that. So then what's it going to look like for us now in 2026?
How do we make that look? And I think it's gonna. Each family is gonna have to figure that out. And I think trying to make hard and fast rules or bind people's consciences on this stuff gets really dangerous really fast. And I've often found sometimes that some of those trying to bind consciences on this often are not exactly. That's not exactly how their house looks.
You know, they may be saying that on the one hand, but then on the other hand, maybe their wife's working outside the home, right? So I think every family has to figure this out and figure out what's best for.
For their family.
There's dangers, I think, with both approaches, you just have to be honest about it, like there's all kinds of issues that can come up. So we have to be realistic about both. But even the college thing, there's dangerous, right, Sending guys or girls off to college that we've talked about on here before. You've talked about that loss of protection that kids have when they go off.
So those are all things to think through and be careful about. But we shouldn't make binding something that's not clear or really it's just sometimes just someone's preference for what they would like things to look like versus godly wisdom.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: We can create this kind of ideal of things and it takes us away from being able to interact graciously with what's real.
And this can be tragic, especially for young men. It can, can be really tragic because you have this ideal way that life should go and you just can't find, for example, the ideal woman. And then the result is like, now I'm 50 or whatever. And for, for the women especially, this is a special thought that. So men also. But to realize that there is a biological clock that's there and there is a range of fertility that will diminish as you get older. And so the. One of the questions I think we need to ask, so young ladies need to have this in mind, like, you know, education normally in life is front loaded. You got to get ready before you enter into the workplace. But if you front load that too much, you're eating away those years of fertility. So this needs to be part of our math and thinking about things, but also to know that we, I mean, we, we can barely control our lives. We certainly can't control other people's lives, that we're all trying to do the best that we can.
So we want to be aware that we don't just buy into the world's lies, but we also need to be aware that we don't just make our truth the anti world rather than living in the reality that the Lord has created.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: There's all kinds of ways you can prioritize family and having a family doing all those things and still like I know a number of pastors, wives and others who do things like nursing, right, where they can work a couple days a week and make probably more, much more per hour than their husband's making and helps with supplemental income, you know, for the family and still be doing a ton of stuff to care for their families. So that's just one of like hundreds of examples that you could come up with, but doesn't mean they have to Be pitted against each other. Like, if you use godly wisdom and just, you know, some planning and other things like you just pointed out together. Second question.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Hold on. Transition.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: I guess we can make this a whole different question. Question.
If. If, as she wants to know, I'm trying to word this so I don't sound like I'm a woman. This is okay, because it's as if I, as a woman.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: You should just read it. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So there she is asking.
I just was about to start reading. I'm like, that doesn't.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: I gotta edit this. I'm have Casper edit this very carefully. Yeah.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Yes.
If I, as a woman was to start dating a Christian guy outside of my church, how do I encourage him towards becoming Lutheran without stepping into spiritual leadership in their relationship?
So they want to date a guy who's not Lutheran yet, but they want them to become Lutheran.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So a couple things. This is complicated. It's not impossible. It's good. I mean, my loose rule is date a Christian, marry a Lutheran.
But that's tough because if you're converting in the midst of your dating, there's all these weird forces at work. Right. Am I doing this just so we can agree, or is this really my conviction? And so forth. There's all these temptations. Number one rule is to know that there's going to be a lot of theological fights. And your goal is not to make your boyfriend Lutheran or for him to make you Baptist.
The goal is for you both to agree on what the Bible says.
So if you're Lutheran or Baptist or Catholic or whatever, who cares? The point. Point is, what does the Bible teach? Now, I can say that because I know that we teach what the Bible says. So you don't have to tell him that.
Say, look, I'm not trying to make you Lutheran and you're not trying to make me Baptist. We're just trying to agree with the prophets and the apostles. So we could both end up Methodist or something after this. Now, Lord forbid. But anyway, you get the point.
So that the deep conversations have to be drawing us closer to the Scriptures and to recognize that the Lord uses these conversations to really teach us.
So when the Lutheran has to say, why do we baptize babies? Or when the Baptists have to say, why do we have an altar call? It's causing us to dig into the theology and to the history of the church in a really good way. So that the goal is, even if it doesn't work out, you might not be engaged or you might not be married. You are going to be more theological after all of these things. And that's the goal, to work through all of the weird motivations there. Because there's. We have the. On the one hand, the motivation to believe what the Bible says. On the other hand, we have this motivation to be married to each other that adds a confusing element, but it's going to be an element that's going to be there for the rest of your life. In other words, there's going to be a lot of things that you don't want to do but you know you ought to do because you're married to that guy or married to that girl.
And in fact, that's good. So you have to be able to say. I have to be able to say, look, if being married to Carrie means that I do a lot of things that maybe I don't want to do, or I don't do a lot of things that I do want to do, I have to see that as a gift from God, right?
So that. So she introduces another motivation for me.
Oh, Andrew, if you could have met me before I met Kerry, you'd be like, this guy is an absolute bum. I mean, I was dropped out of college, drove this broken down mail truck, just a bum. Anyway, it's good that the person that I married actually makes me a better person.
And I can rejoice in that. So we're factoring all that sort of stuff in. My recommendation is immediately, if you start dating someone, that's of a different confession.
Well, not immediately, not on the first date, but if you're like, hey, we're gonna. This might work, is to go visit your pastor with him, go visit his pastor with you, to sit down and talk through all these things, to work through the kind of theological strategy. And maybe above all else, although this is last on the list, is that. And this is the case for everybody who's dating, is to recognize that dating is a conversation and any intimacy that enters into that relationship is going to throw off everything.
So that the Christian is absolutely committed to chastity in every relationship, but especially in dating and in engagement, absolutely committed to chastity. Because any sort of.
Again, any sort of intimacy is going to throw everything off. It's going to add a distortion field to the conscience, which messes up your thinking and your mind.
It's so dangerous. So to be committed to chastity, here we are as a theological conversation and working through this together so that when you break up, if it happens, then it's easy to let that go.
If Intimacy comes into the relationship, then you're preserving that relationship, even against the. The odds. Right. Because you're trying to adjust the guilt in your own conscience for the things that you should. Knew you shouldn't have done. And it just adds that distortion field that's. So even though it's last on the list, it's really important that there's a commitment to chastity at the very, very beginning.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: I don't mean to add to that. That's great. I do think. I guess we should probably make that a separate one, though, because there's a lot of good stuff there. So that'd be five. So I think we're done for the. That's it for the week. Although I do want to edit out the part where you said you don't do things you want to do because you're married to make that a. Make that a thing.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: That's a one statement that I have.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: That's what. We're gonna end it. We're gonna. We're gonna take that in, run with that all over the Internet.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: That's not true for Destiny.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Oh, no, I'm sure it's true, but I didn't say it.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: She doesn't rein you in.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: I didn't say that wasn't true. I just. I'm not the one who said it.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: This is. This is. What are we now? We're soy. Are we soy because, you know, because our wives matter to us?
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Because, yeah, we're something.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Thanks, everyone, for the questions. Thanks, Pastor Packer, for being. It was just so great. Wolfmuth co contact is how you can send your questions to us. So happy to have them. And look at them.
God be praised. Keep them coming. It's really great.
Especially the questions about the questions.
That's fun, too. So we're building a. Building a deep conversation here. And it's so helpful, Pastor Packer. I don't mention it often enough how thankful I am for you for curating all these questions and for asking them and answering them and especially your wisdom on this Calvin Armenian thing. That's just gold. So I appreciate you. Thanks, everyone, for being part of the fun. We'll see you next time. God's peace be with you.
