Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome back to the Q and A podcast. It's been a while, Pastor Packer.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: All right. How are you?
[00:00:06] Speaker A: How are you?
Great. Pastor Packer is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. I'm Pastor Brian Wolfmother of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Churches in Austin, Texas. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that you watched the LCMS convention on mute and you are making up what people are saying, like Mystery Science Theater 3000 the whole time.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I did not, but now I want to for the next one.
Now you've given me a great idea, and I will livestream it. I'll get. You'll probably be there with some important role like this. This time I'll be here without an important role. And so I'll find another pastor. And we will do that. We'll do the Mystery Science Theater 3000. We'll just live stream it and we will talk the entire time.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: I wonder what will be resolved in your Mystery Science 3 Mystery Science Theater.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: We'll save the Senate, save the world. That's what we'll do.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Resolved all pastures. Must have beards the same exact as their hair.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Maybe you got some questions.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: All right, this one's on baptism, and they'll see my small cap.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, first question.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: So you're gonna give me trauma from the conventions I've attended in the LCMS small catechism. There's a question about all baptisms being valid, and the answer is that no, they aren't. I'm assuming they're meaning the extra questions in the back of the catechism. Can you go into detail with this a little more as to how and why a baptism would not be valid? What would cause someone's baptism to not be valid?
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Great question.
So the chief thing that invalidates baptism is that it's not a trinitarian baptism.
So baptism. When the Lord Jesus instituted baptism, he said, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So that baptism is to be done in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now, that doesn't mean the formula like those words.
If those words are spoken, then it's a valid baptism. Because if you have someone, for example, who. Who denies the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but uses the words, then that would be an invalid baptism. That would be like a Jehovah's Witness or Mormons or even one as Pentecostals who have A modalistic idea that God shows up as Father and then his Son and then his Holy Spirit. So it's not Father and Son and Holy Spirit, but for them it's Father, then Son, then Holy Spirit.
So any denial of the Trinity invalidates baptism.
There's other things that put baptism into question.
Like, for example, if the words are not spoken or not spoken correctly, it puts a question in baptism. It doesn't automatically mean that it's not valid, but it puts a question there. And so we want to avoid that altogether.
So we would only baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and not it with any other formula that's there.
Water must be used. That's the part of baptism that makes it baptism. So if there's no water, then it's not a baptism. In fact, that's not an invalid baptism. That's just no baptism. Something happens and there's no water.
But the interesting thing, and this is important, is that the validity of baptism is not based on the faith of the person baptizing. That's the old Donatist controversy that said that if a pastor who was baptizing fell away later and showed themselves to be unfaithful, then all of the sacramental rites they had performed are also invalid. We say, no, no, absolutely not. It's the word that makes it valid. That also means it's not based on the faith of the person receiving baptism. You can be an unbeliever and be baptized, and it's a valid baptism. You just don't have the benefit of it. It's faith that receives the benefit of baptism, the forgiveness of sins.
So you, you still have baptism, but you don't have any of the benefit because you don't believe in it.
It's also not necessary for the person to have a right doctrine of baptism for it to be valid. This is actually one of the reasons why baptism and the Lord's Supper are different.
If a person believes, for example, that baptism is your first act of obedience, of course not. It's the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit.
But if they believe it's the first act of obedience, that does not make it invalid. We would say that a Baptist or a charismatic. Well, that's. Yeah, charismatic. If they're trinitarian or whatever sort of Protestant baptism is in fact a valid baptism, even though they have the wrong confession of baptism. As long as you're confessing the Holy Trinity and applying water in the name of the Father, Son, And Holy Spirit, that baptism is valid.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Do you.
I guess one of the things that comes up with this.
I think of one bell. I'll save it for later. I won't bring the hard question first.
One of the things that comes up with this then is in case of emergency, then how do we make sure it's an emergency situation? Perhaps looks like maybe someone's going to die, whether it be a child or baby, it's an adult who hasn't been baptized who can baptize them. And what has to be done for. For that, if it's like an emergency?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Great. Really good question. So anybody can baptize, and the baptism works by applying water and saying, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
So that's, that's the form for emergency baptism. It's just that. It's just that simple. And even if there's no water that's available, it's, you know, that's pretty extreme. You know, you're going to probably want to find water. But even that's a valid baptism.
And so it's good for every Christian to know that in case there's these emergency situations. There's been a couple of times that I've come upon car accidents.
And the first thing after finding the person was alive, I asked if they were baptized.
And in both, all three situations, the person wasn't. Then it gave the comfort of Jesus while, you know, we're also calling 911 and all this other stuff. But.
So that's, that's the kind of. That's good to be.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: What's the least amount of water you've used in a baptism since you brought that up?
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I dipped water one time on my finger and applied it to the forehead.
For a very small preborn child.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a baby in the hospital.
He was. Had stuff all over, you know, like, all kinds of things hooked up to him. And so they, they gave me a thing of sterile water and a syringe.
And so I dropped three drops from the syringe on the middle of his forehead.
Like, the only spot that didn't have, like, anything.
So that's, that's, that's just, the least.
Just similar thing. A baby. There's nothing else you could do, Right. Like, and they were very strict about, like, because of his condition, like, it had to be sterile water. I had to. I'm like, all right, that's fine. Just give me, give me whatever you want me to use. And I'll use it. And so that was probably the least by far water I've ever used because there's three tiny little drops, you know, but he is healthy running around now. And now his mom's pregnant with baby number two, so it's fantastic.
He's a big brother now, so it's pretty amazing. Now, what about.
Given all that you've said, because nothing that comes up, especially in our circles, maybe more among the pastors than the laity is.
What about if a woman pastor does the baptism?
That's been argued in our circles and there's been various answers on it.
What's your take on that? If you're in a church and they are trinitarian and so that. That's. That's met.
How do you. How do you deal with that one?
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it's a good idea at all to have one in pastors, but I do not think it invalidates baptism.
I don't. I just don't see how it. I don't see how it could get there. I mean, the same thing with. You could have.
I mean, I think that actually the same thing is true at the Lord's Supper also. It's just. It should not be happening.
But the should not does not mean that that's not what's happening. You know, just like, I mean, people can get pregnant and they're not married, they shouldn't do it, but it still happens. So I think baptism is a real thing, even when administered this way. Where it actually becomes a question is when feminist theology starts to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity and you have people baptizing, like, in the name of the mother and the daughter and wisdom and all this kind of nonsense, and that would be an invalid baptism or at best a questionable baptism.
So when you're feminist theology, which is that kind of first step, I think there's other ways to get around the prohibition for women pastors than feminism, but that's the main way a charismatic kind of pentecostalism doesn't end around also. So there's different ways that you end up with women pastors. Feminism is normally the way that you do it and that feminism eats away at the doctrine of the Trinity.
And so that's where that becomes really dangerous.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: All right, next one.
The marks of the church.
We confess the marks of the true church to be the word rightly preached. And the sacraments.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: We used to have two guys named Mark at church, and that's what I
[00:09:39] Speaker B: call them, marks of the church. The marks of the church well, okay, I'm gonna.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: The friends of the church fix their
[00:09:47] Speaker B: question a little bit. So the word purely preached and the sacraments rightly administered. Where does this language come from? And why do we call these the boundaries of the Church? The exact formulation isn't from the Bible. And it seems like the more historic marks are one holy, catholic and apostolic from the Creed.
Why did emphasis in how we speak about the church shift away from this?
When and why would it be okay for a newer formulation of various doctrine to supersede the older. So I guess two questions. Why? Why are those marks of the church? And then second, why do we say that as Lutherans instead of just what we confess in the creed?
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Well, we don't deny the one holy, catholic and apostolic church. But remember, even in the Creed we say I believe not. I see. So the question is, how do you see?
Because you can't see the one holy, Christian and apostolic church. So then, so where do I find the church? What do I look for?
This is the reason is because the church is the collection of the faithful, those who believe in Jesus with saving faith in Christ, those who hear the voice of the good shepherd and follow him.
But because we can't see faith in the heart, then we say, okay, well, where do we look? And the Lutheran answer is really brilliant. You look at those places where God has promised to create faith.
So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and that word connected to water and the supper as instituted by Jesus, who said, go and baptize and do this often in remembrance of me. In other words, baptism and the Lord's Supper are the rites that Jesus himself has instituted for forgiving sins and creating faith.
So because Jesus set up preaching baptism and the Lord's Supper as the way or the tools or the means that the Holy Spirit would create faith, then we know that faith is going to be found wherever those things are found. So if I want to look for the gathering of the faithful, I look for those external ways that the Lord has promised to create faith. And that's why the marks of the church are the gospel rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, because those are the instruments of the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: We did, I guess this is this last Lent we did Luther's marks of the Church for our midweek Lenten series, which I've done one other time was years ago.
But the interesting thing was people really seem to appreciate, seemed very helpful for them. And we even had some people that were new to our church so it was good for them to get, like, an overview of all the things that we think are the most important. So, yes, it's in there.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: You can download this guy for free. Luther's work on the councils in the church. Wolfmuller co I'm sure, is where to find it. And he has the seven marks of the church where he expands those two marks of the church. Gospel rightly preached, sacraments rightly administered. So he. He separates the sacraments. So you got baptism, the Lord's Supper, the absolution, the preaching of the gospel.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: What is pastoral office prayer.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: So the office of preaching. The cross. The cross, the last one, the holy, precious cross, in other words, where wherever the Lord puts his word, then suffering and affliction will follow. And so you can actually identify the church also when you see persecution and martyrdom.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that series I found to be really helpful for people. So if someone's looking to understand this even more in depth, one, you can read Luther's work there that you've got that you can download for free.
Pastors. You could also do that as a midweek Lenten series. It works out pretty well to break it down over the weeks of Lent and. And cover everything. So. And it's easy because, you know, some of them blend right in with. With other themes of Lent already. So it's a pretty easy one to. To work in.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: I'm just looking here at Luther, man. He's just. This is peak Luther.
It's great. Marriage. He's talking about marriage.
Ah, yeah.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: We're gonna have a video of just you, your reactions as you skim through Luther. I think it's just like one video.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that'll be great.
That'll be a highlight reel right there.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: All right, you ready for the next one?
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Do you think we got that one?
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Do you think we got that one down? Good. Clear answer. I think you nailed it.
All right, let's. This one's on.
This one's on suicide. A little bit different than other ones. We've answer on suicide, though.
I had a stepmother who refused dialysis. Is that a sort of suicide? So refusing medical care. When is refusing medical care suicide? When is it not?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Here's the rule, which is easy to articulate and sometimes hard to apply.
The rule is we are required by. Obligated by the fifth commandment to protect life and extend life.
We're not required by the fifth commandment to extend death.
And so the question when it comes to treatment is, am I extending life or am I extending death?
And I think the Key distinction there is in this. Like, is death happening? You know, so I've ministered to lots of people who, for example, like, the cancer comes back a third time, and they're like, you know, I'm not going to do the treatment. Or, I mean, in other words, these sort of extreme treatments which maybe even weren't available a few years ago, but are available now, but are very painful, very time consuming, and sort of delay death rather than preventing it.
There's no real healing that. I mean, maybe, but, you know, not anticipated.
We don't want to say that these are obligatory.
They can be a gift, but it's not a gift that must be received.
Dialysis is. I mean, it's just an interesting one. And in some ways, it depends on the circumstances. But if the person is like, look, I have a terminal disease.
I'm not permitted to end my life.
But I am also not required by the fifth commandment to die for as long as I can.
So if the Lord has handed me over to a sickness, and in some ways, I want to receive that even as a gift from his fatherly goodness.
And know that to pass from death to life is to see the face of Jesus and to be received into his kingdom. It's the answering of all my prayers. Deliver us from evil.
And so I don't have to extend death as long as I possibly can. I can. I can let it come.
I think that's the clearest answer now. It's. That's just hard to apply. You know, like, you can say, what, am I living or am I dying?
And in some ways, all of us are like, we're on the way to death, but is there a disease that's actively killing me? And how do I think about being
[00:16:57] Speaker B: part of that, too? Is I kind of have a rant about this. We'll see if you agree.
I feel bad for a lot of these families now because we live at a time where they have to ask questions about care that never existed. Like, you would have taken grandma home. She would have been in a rocking chair and she would have died peacefully from a lot of these things. And now the question is, hey, we're gonna do this thing that's gonna cause her immense pain and suffering. And we might.
We might get a few more months, maybe, we don't know. But we're gonna do this really painful thing to them because we have the technology to do it, or we have the technology to keep their body alive even though really, like, they're basically dead. And so do you want us to keep their body alive. Like, we put. People are put in these really tough positions now that really haven't existed until modern times.
And I feel bad for them because they want to. Like, we teach about the importance of life and. And all of these things, and so. And it's also hard for families to let go, right? Part of it is sometimes, like, selfishness on the part of the family. Sometimes it's just born out of love. Like, they want to do what's best for the family and they don't know. And they're giving all these technological and medical advancements, which in so many ways are amazing and fantastic and they help in so many things. But oftentimes I've seen it, like, especially at the end of someone's life, where we now have the technology that can keep you alive and make. Yeah, you're gonna be alive, but you're gonna be in the hospital for months on end.
You know what I mean? It's not gonna be life by anyone's definition, but we can keep you alive.
And I think that's what you're getting at. It's like, we're not. We're not aiming for death, but also we shouldn't needlessly cling to life to the point where we're just trying to hold on and squeeze out of them the last little bits of life that we possibly can.
And like you said, that's.
It's hard sometimes to know where those lines are. Which is why I always encourage people like you should. You know, we were taught this in seminary. I don't know when you were there, what they said about this. Like, we were. We were taught, like, don't have. What is it? The. The living will. Because none of those things are ever covered. Like, if you've ever dealt with someone, if you're listening to this, you've ever had a case where someone's dying and they have a living will, you know that nothing that they filled out is helpful for that situation, like, ever. It never matches up. And so having medical. Someone with medical power of attorney and having, like, good discussions with your pastor and the doctors is a much better route than a living will that doesn't cover whatever it is you're facing right now and is usually less. So much less than helpful because someone checked a box, and now you're trying to interpret what that checked box means in light of a situation that's very different than the yes or no box they checked. And those things just, I think, over complicated. So get someone a good. Have someone you trust with a medical power of attorney who's going to ask your pastor, like, good questions about what to do and how to approach it, and then we leave them in God's hands. But yeah, it gets tricky fast. It's a hard, it's a hard, awful thing. And technology in this case has not, has not helped us, I don't think. I think it's often made it more difficult. Yeah,
[00:20:05] Speaker A: we have to. This is a good reminder too, for all of us, is that we need to be ready to die. And we need to let our loved ones know that we're ready to die.
And the only way to be ready to die is by faith. You know, you gotta, you gotta know that your sins are forgiven by the Lord Jesus.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Paul in Romans 14, right. If we live, we live for the Lord. If we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or whether we die, we're the Lord's. Like, that's kind of, kind of be our motto for all things.
Alright, next question.
This is about music as catechesis.
How much of a role do hymns play in the development of a person's theology?
Obviously, there are dangers with consuming secular music to a certain extent, but would seem primarily baptisms instead of Lutheran hymns affect a person's beliefs, particularly a child's beliefs.
End of discussion.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: The music is amazing, actually. You know, I remember hearing the story about who is. There was a, a congresswoman who was shot.
Was this an Arizona congresswoman who was shot. And she was trying, and she couldn't. She lost her capacity to speak.
And they were trying to bring back that speech capacity. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And then one day the therapist started singing and she could just sing perfectly like she remembered the ABCs and the whatever, and the music was there even though the speech was not.
I tell the people at church all the time, hey, let's study Psalm 95. You have it memorized. And they're like, I'm pretty sure I never memorized them. And I start singing the venite from matins and they all can sing it.
The other day we were at a deathbed and I had to run in. I didn't have the hymnal. But we sang five, six hymns together because we just sang the liturgy, the canticles from the liturgy, and they're there. I mean, music has this marvelous way of attaching to our hearts and minds.
Luther says, next to theology, music is the highest art. Music drives away the devil. It's for spiritual warfare.
It's so great and it's such an important part of culture. Which gives shape to our conscience. So remember that of all the things that shape the conscience, our peers and the law of God and the law of man. But the culture is probably the biggest culture, the conscience shaping thing and the music that we engage in shapes the shapes our conscience. You can listen to even just the sound of the music can make you either peaceful or angry or whatever. There's a reason why people don't listen to like Yaesu, Joy of man's desiring while they're doing deadlifts. You know, it's like you got to put on some hard rock sort of thing. It's just, that's what you do, right? I know all about this.
So, so it's, it's incredibly important. And as we're trying to cultivate our conscience, be good stewards of our conscience, to pay attention to the music that we consume and especially the hymns, the doctrine that's there because that's catechizing. One of the reasons the Reformation worked is because the Lutherans wrote hymns and people could sing them and it spread in this way.
So it's not required that every song that you listen to be an orthodox confession of, of the Book of Concord or something like that. But it is something that we want to really pay attention to and especially in worship.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: There are.
Was it yesterday? No, two days ago was Bach's commemoration. Right. July 28th. And in Whedon's book Celebrating the Saints, he has a thing in there about that. They took Bach's music to space, right? Like the music they chose to take to space was Bach. Why? Because it's beautiful and it has this transformative power.
And was it, is it Japan where they've like fallen in love with Bach and some people have found, found Christianity through, through oftentimes listening to his music that has no, no lyrics. Right. But they've been. The beauty of it has drawn them to the source of that beauty, which of course for Bach was, was God. So we, we also shouldn't underestimate too like how like beautiful music.
What that it's good for the soul. Even just the music itself, apart from the lyrics, like it has like God's created music. Right. I do think, I think Tolkien, I think Lewis were both right or at least I definitely don't think they're wrong.
I think it's at least theologically true that God's saying the universe into existence.
And you can make that argument from the Bible.
Right. You have the morning stars shouting for joy at creation, singing for joy at creation. You have Zephaniah telling us that God sings over us, right? That he delights over us with singing. So I think there's a lot to be said that creation itself is grounded in the beauty of music that flows from God himself, and that beautiful music is a reflection of that. And even just the music can impact you and shape you and do all these things. Like, like you said, we know that, right? We don't listen to certain music for exercising because it's not having the impact we want. Like, we want something that's going to get, get us excited, energetic. We don't want something that's making us peaceful and calm while we're trying to. What was your last deadlift? £600 or something? Something like that. Right.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: I, well, look, I, I change. I don't know how much it changes.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: They're like £100 each at least. So 6, 650, whatever it was. But so like you said, you don't.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: Do you listen. So you do listen to Bach when you're dead?
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I do not.
But it is, you know, it is fascinating that we, that we, we recognize this in so many ways and, and then sometimes we want to pretend it doesn't exist when it comes to, to church, right? Like, like that the music there is not going to have the same kind of impact it does in every other sphere of our life.
It obviously does. Like we know it does. And so what we pick, not just lyrically, but I think musically matters. And it doesn't mean, like you said, even the hymns we pick in church, right? Not everyone's going to be like a full confession of the faith.
There's some hymns that are stronger than others, that are better than others. But as, as one of the. Sorry, church's main organist in Cantor says, Chris Lemker, he told me the other day, because it was a hymn, I'll be honest, it was a hymn and I didn't love the hymn. It was a closing hymn. I didn't love it and it wasn't my favorite.
And he said, well, you know, even hymns like that are, are good if you place them in the right place, the right service at the right time. They still have a function, right? They can still be used well to, to encourage us in the faith and strengthen us, even if it's not our favorite or whatever. So
[00:27:05] Speaker A: one of the things we have to think about when, with church music and this has to do especially with the liturgy, but also with the hymns, is that we're not just singing them to praise God and to rejoice in his teaching.
But we are also training ourselves for suffering and for death.
And one of the tragedies that, like, contemporary worship will result in is that you have a lot of people going to their deathbed without the church's song available to support them on the way. And that is just a pure lack of wisdom and good catechesis.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we've both, I'm sure, been at nursing homes or places where people don't remember anything. Don't maybe even remember you're their actual pastor. But you start the liturgy, and they know.
They know the words, they know the music. They can sing with you, they can confess with you, even if they don't remember. My favorite story about that. I don't know if I've ever told you this one.
I was on vicarage, so I was with my vicarage supervisor, Pastor Mark Hein. Great guy. He's retired now, but we were there. And this old lady doesn't remember much, but the moment he started the liturgy, she was there.
She was singing all this. It was really beautiful. And he tells me afterwards, one time, this ELCA lady pastor tried to give her communion, and she told her, go to hell. You're not my pastor.
So she didn't remember much, but she knew that that lady was not her pastor and that she was not to give her communion.
But she could sing. She could sing with the angels, and she could confess the faith even though she couldn't remember much else.
Wow. It's great.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: All right, are we already on the last one for this week? I think we are.
All right, this one's an interesting one.
Has to do with accusations made against public figures.
All right, I've known multiple Christian Christians that have now accused Donald Trump of doing horrific things. I won't use that word because I'm gonna get banned from, like, this. This episode. Get Shadow banned. He's done horrific things in other places. I've heard of him being controlled or blackmailed by various people.
And this person says it seems like most of their evidence is hearsay or assumptions being made.
They say it'd be different if there were credible evidence. This being the case, is this bearing false witness when you make accusations without credible proof?
And some have argued that it's different if it's a public figure. So if they're a public figure, you can say what you want about them, but their question is, does that really matter? Does that matter if it's a public figure or your friend?
How does the eighth commandment apply there? Can you just say stuff about someone because they are a public figure, or are you still held to the same standards as the Bible requires for others?
[00:30:07] Speaker A: So this is great. So the answer is we are Christians, are truth tellers.
And it doesn't matter if you're bringing an accusation against a person privately or publicly, it has to be true. You can't just first of all make stuff up.
That's also known as lying.
But to pass on rumors and unsubstantiated things, that's also forbidden by the scripture. I mean, this is a.
We love it though. I mean, we loved these accusations and innuendos and all this sort of stuff.
The rumor travels twice around the world before the truth is laced up the shoes. That's how the old saying goes, and seems like that's the case. And someone who's in public puts themselves in a place to be conspired against, to be talked against. Especially if someone is doing something, asserting something, saying something that you don't like or whatever. So it's going to happen. But the Christian ought to let the rumor die with them and not pass it on, because it doesn't serve anything. It doesn't serve the kingdom, it doesn't serve the neighbor, it doesn't glorify God, it doesn't comfort the sinner. Especially these kind of conspiratorial things where the proof is in the lack of evidence.
Part of the nature of a conspiracy theory is that the lack of evidence actually is proven the point. And that is a particularly dangerous way to let our imaginations go. So we want to avoid that. There is a difference between bringing an accusation against someone who's in public versus privately, especially when the thing that's done is public versus private.
So Matthew 18 requires us to, if someone sinned against us, to go to them and confront them one on one. And if that doesn't work, to take a few of the elders with you, and if that doesn't work, then to take it to the church.
That has to do with private sin or sin that's not known.
If someone sins in public by whatever false living, false teaching, whatever the thing is, then that requirement to go to them privately no longer holds.
So that if I say some false doctrine here on YouTube, you, the listener, do not need to call me up and accuse me of teaching false doctrine. First, you can make your own YouTube video where you clip out the false doctrine that I say and then respond publicly and say, this is dangerous, wrong, false doctrine. Pastor Wolffmuller was totally wrong about this and ought to repent. You can call me out publicly for doing that. I wouldn't mind if you called to let me know, because I want to be committed to the truth and we all need help with that. So I would appreciate it. But you're not required by the 8th Commandment to do that because I'm not teaching you privately. We're doing this sort of out in the open here. So the things that start out in the open keep going out in the open.
Now, out of love, you can come and correct someone, and maybe we ought to do that, but that's not required.
And if someone teaches falsely out in public or does some sinful thing out in public and then gets mad at you for bringing it out in public rather than going to you one on one, that's like adding sin to sin. I mean, if you don't want to be criticized in public, then don't talk in public.
I mean, that's the way it goes.
So Luther would talk about this in his Explanation of the 8th Commandment and the Large Catechism that you don't like. He doesn't have to go to the Pope first and confront him with his errors. He can publish and preach about it because the Pope is publishing and preaching his errors. That's true for all public teachers.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: I was thinking, as you were saying, that one of the dangers, especially with online stuff nowadays, is we're all tempted in all parts of our lives to confirmation bias, to hearing what we already believe about someone or something, and it makes it really easy to share that thing. If you already believe poorly about someone, whatever side of the political aisle they're on, or theological spectrum or whatever, it's really easy to be a. Oh, yeah, that's what I thought about that person. So when we share it, I think it's been disastrous, I think for Christians and for the church to often be at the forefront of sharing false information, fake news, etc. Because it does make us look bad. It makes Christians look bad. I think it brings shame on the name of Christ for us to be oftentimes at the forefront of that stuff.
It's a really wicked thing to do.
And we don't get to excuse it by saying, well, it's just online, or it's just, you know, they're a public figure. It's just so and so, whoever it may be that you don't like, so you can say whatever you want about them publicly. That's all super dangerous.
And we should probably read really carefully what God says about liars and slanderers and those kind of things. And Meditate on that before we post stuff online. In fact, if it confirms your biases so much that you're like, this is amazing. It's exactly what I thought. You should probably step back and be like, maybe that's why the algorithm gave it to me. Not because it's true, but because I've been clicking all these things and it's just feeding me the info I want to see. And now I've seen it. So therefore, rather than it must be true. Our first thought should be, oh, man. Wonder if I should step back and look at this from a different perspective.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Because
[00:35:34] Speaker B: it's bad out there.
The amount of things you see people say about situations or others without, you know, there's no way they can have full knowledge. Right. You know, there's no way they can know what they are claiming to know. But they trust some guy that has a YouTube channel or whatever, a substack
[00:35:52] Speaker A: or a blog, the most trustworthy of all people.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. Guys with YouTube, trust them with your life.
And then they, they pass it on as if it's like facts. And if you press them. Well, how do you know this? Well, because I, I heard it. I read it. Okay, but that doesn't mean you should share it even if you've heard it or read it, like maybe pass it by some people that maybe have a different perspective and see if this, is it, a credible source? Are there witnesses? Like, what do we know about this stuff? Before posting it and getting really excited about it, especially if you're excited to share it because it's bringing someone down, that's also probably a huge red flag warning sign in your life that you should probably not be sharing that thing. If you're that excited to like, pass this on to somebody and post it so everybody can see it about, about this person, it's gonna ruin their, their character and their name or just add on to ruining their name if it's already maybe a name that's not doing so hot, whatever. But yeah, we should be much more cautious and look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves hard questions before we share.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah, there's two, maybe two questions that are particularly helpful. The first is, does this information help me love God and serve my neighbor?
Because that's really the thing that we're looking for. And most of the time it doesn't. So then it shows itself to be useless.
The second thing, though, is to say, why has the Lord let this news or story or information come to me?
This lie or its truth And I don't know this accusation, why is the Lord let it come to me? And it's probably not so that we would rage, tweet it, and fall into despair. I mean, that's probably not what the Lord intends.
But he does intend for us to be discerning, to be thoughtful, to love, to pray.
That's, you know, so that we want. We want to.
If we can think about our information consumption as part of our stewardship, part of our sanctification, then we can think, I want this to further the kingdom of God, however that is. And it might be that I just ignore it, that might be the best way.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Who is it? Neil Postman, right? In amusing ourselves to death, talks about just the amount of news we get and how one of the problems it causes us is one. It can harden our hearts to, like, real suffering and real people, because we just hear so much we just can't handle anymore, right? But then also we're given so much information that we can't act on.
So, like, if I hear the neighbor down the street, house burns down, I can actually, I can physically go and help and do something. Whereas much of the news we hear, there's nothing you can do about it. And so I think for a lot of people, it does. It just fills them with anxiety or rage or whatever. And the way they have to act on it by posting about it like that, that feels like they're doing something. When really you're one, you're probably not actually doing anything beneficial to anyone and not even for yourself. You think you are maybe because you're getting it out there and you're. You're helping or whatever it is, but usually it's just not doing what you think it's doing.
And it's gonna be buried in two seconds by all the other posts about cats and memes and everything else. Like, you're not. You're never gonna. It's never gonna be probably seen by most people anyway, right? It's not. Most of our stuff is not seen by very many people. So that we post online that we think is gonna have an impact. In fact, the people that see it are probably people that already also. Confirmation bias, like, already kind of believe, like, us and will encourage us with it, which also doesn't help if we're wrong. You know, we need people that'll push back and say, hey, how do you know that's true?
And who are you? Who are you trying to help? As you said, is that helping? Is that serving your neighbor? Is it loving God? What what is it doing?
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Well, if you're watching this video, it's probably because you agreed with us already.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: It's all right in your algorithm.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: So thanks.
Thanks for that. Although if you subscribe and comment below and like the video, etc. That helps it send it out to other people. People say that's good. So thanks for doing. Thanks for Pastor Packer. Thanks for everyone for joining for the Q and A podcast. Send your questions to to us at Wolfmuller Co contact. You can sign up for the Wednesday whatnot while you're hanging around there.
That'll be great. Pastor Packer, good to see you. Be back in the saddle answering questions, and we'll see you soon. God's peace be with you.
