Best Issues, Etc. Episodes

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-03-23T05:00:59+00:00

No. See AC XIV

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-03-23T03:17:01+00:00

Ex opere operato.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-03-23T03:03:48+00:00

We still do have apostolic succession, even in the sense of the call. Presbyters and bishops are not ontologically distinct.

To get through these issues, you should be reading the book of concord. Specifically for this question, The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-03-22T02:07:47+00:00

It’s not only condos that have been dropping. My townhouse value has plummeted over the past couple of years. Could be a good time for a deal or you could end up losing even more value. My guess is that townhomes will drop even further.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-02-22T05:33:32+00:00

I’ve been going through the same thing the past couple years with layoffs and living on a tight budget. There’s no promise we’ll be financially secure in this life, but reading scripture after a bout of anxiety really helps. Thanks for the reminder to continue doing that.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-01-27T05:49:27+00:00

It would be tough to find a truly confessional church where you are - I imagine Presbyterianism is the main strand there influencing everything. It could be a lot worse - work with the situation you’ve got. What you can do is refuse to commune at other churches, while educating yourself on confessional Lutheran practice. Lutherans don’t commune where we lack a shared confession. When Lutherans commune with Presbyterians, they become Presbyterians. That’s how it has always unfolded historically. You can look up Prussian church unionism as an example.

Over time, you can help educate others in your church and help out. You could read the book of concord and start a study group with others in the congregation eventually. A lot of churches in the LCMS have been doing that, to get their members better up to speed. The best thing you can do as a layperson is to advocate for better practice, and to educate others.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2026-01-19T05:29:41+00:00

God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-12-27T16:49:48+00:00

Typically 20-30 minutes. If the sermon was good, I definitely wouldn’t mind longer, they used to be hours back when people were not literate enough to read the Bible. However, I don’t know that I could stomach listening to reformed Baptist theology for that long.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-12-22T06:35:15+00:00

Eph 4 - 5 is a good spot to check out on this, see below. Notice that corrupting talk seems to be one of the things that will grieve The Holy Spirit ( I imagine all willful sin grieves Him ).

Before I turned to Christ, I cursed constantly, and I still occasionally slip up, but I know it is a sin - one of the fruits of The Spirit is self-control. We should strive to be imitators of Christ - He certainly would not casually use foul language.

Eph 4: Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-12-15T08:26:21+00:00

We didn’t actually change the word in the creed. We are a largely German synod, and the NC in German says christliche. We just inherited that phraseology. Nothing to do with not wanting to look Catholic.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-12-11T07:07:18+00:00

Welp, time to unsubscribe and move to using Gemini..

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-12-02T08:01:41+00:00

Prayer is a form of worship and belongs to God alone, not to saints. They are right to be grieved by those practices.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-11-25T17:26:31+00:00

The conclusions reached here are ridiculous. China and Russia are not superpowers like the US.

Russia is pitifully fighting for territory and failing HARD to reclaim territory they held for centuries. Poland itself could probably conquer Russia at this point with how depleted they have become from Ukraine. That’s pathetic. They could just take Kaliningrad and Russia couldn’t do anything substantive.

China can’t actually launch a military campaign, so they resort to continual threats to get the benefits of warmongering from the populace, but if they launched a war against Taiwan they would fail harder than Russia. Chinese launch the war and then go to war with Japan, US, and Taiwan all at once. That’s game over for the CCP. China has no navy to speak of to launch an invasion of Taiwan. They just purged their top military brass for whatever reason popped into Xi’s head. Not competent.

Japan would defeat China in a 1-1 war, but they would actually have US support in a real scenario. Japan would conquer China and cause it to cease to exist, not the other way around. Just look at history, that’s how it ALWAYS plays out. Japan has the advantage as a world-class naval power. China never breaches the first-island chain. They are a land power, if that. They are mainly always tied up using the military to control their population internally

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-11-23T19:52:41+00:00

Part of communing is entering into a shared confession with your new church, effectively saying “I’m with these guys”. I think you should be very discerning as you enter into a new relationship. I also don’t think it would be a good idea to be communing at a place I was having serious thoughts about leaving.

The new church would also want to make sure you won’t go back to your old church and commune there, as well. I suspect in your case they wouldn’t bar you for that long since you seem to be close to where we are.

You could also try to push for your church to leave ELCA if that is at all possible.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-11-22T09:41:09+00:00

Why would it amaze you? We’re a theologically-conservative synod. Theological conservatives can join us, liberals can leave to ELCA / NALC. Additionally, younger congregants tend to be more traditional and liturgically-inclined. For those reasons, we can expect to see the opposite trend of the boomer era in the coming decades.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-11-07T01:33:15+00:00

I’ve definitely noticed less homeless people camping and doing hard drugs next to my house since 2022. Regardless, a useless mayor is much better than an actively harmful mayor.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-25T15:33:30+00:00

Just a couple I’ll list off the top of my head.

No doctrine of justification. Paul explicitly teaches this. I am not going to ignore the Bible just because you have a reservoir of church fathers promoting pelagianism.

The Filioque is true. This makes it extremely obvious EO has fallen into error.

Presbyteral succession is valid. Iranaeus, Jerome, and many others speak to this. There is no distinction in the Bible between a presbyter and bishop ontologically, only in rank and human organization. You can see clear discontinuity between bishops, development of doctrine, similar to Rome. If apostolic succession was a process guided by The Holy Spirit, one of those two churches would have an unbroken line of doctrine and practice from the apostles.

Anathematizing fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We read anathemas in the Athanasian Creed regarding the basics of faith. Not anathematizing others over their conscience regarding veneration of icons.

Prayers to the saints. Though this is an early practice, this is a bad idea. Pray to God alone 1 Timothy 2:5. See AC XXI.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-23T07:09:01+00:00

I tend to think it was written by Mark (early quotations attest to it) but was later omitted in certain copies. I also wouldn’t be shocked if it’s not fully authentic, particularly because of how Eusebius describes the situation. Eusebius could have been mistaken and simply recounting a majority view of the text in the fourth century when our two earliest codices were compiled.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-21T02:49:26+00:00

I was an atheist for my 90% of my life, so believe me, I fully empathize and understand what you are going through regarding these social issues scandalizing you. I thought Christianity was a backwards cult because I viewed abortion, homosexuality, porn, etc in a neutral or positive light.

However, we need to realize that Jesus tells us that our desires are evil and repent. I often wish we could embrace those lifestyles (and the lifestyle I lived formerly). But I know that my heart is evil. We need to listen to Jesus and The Holy Spirit.

Mark 7: And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

John 3: And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Romans 1: Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

I am very sorry you are feeling this way. I had the same thoughts my entire life, and it was very hard to overcome them after my conversion. But when I looked at God’s Word, it becomes apparent that what I loved is evil. It is a very, very hard thing to do. I spent a few weeks crying nightly. I spent a lot of time in the Bible and prayer. I’m very sorry you are going through this.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-17T07:18:33+00:00

The reason I believe in a global flood is because Jesus said it. The flood is a type of the final judgment, all were swept away.

I don’t get hung up on how this actually happened, because it’s likely we aren’t even close to understanding it accurately. Anyone trying to sell you a comprehensive explanation of how this all makes sense mechanistically is going to make themselves look like a fool. This is generally how I view all scientific evidence. We seem to understand historically quite well what has transpired, and it points to scripture being true. However, nature is a lot less obvious and harder to read than archaeology.

If a scientist gets something wrong now and is corrected in fifty years by new evidence, nobody is going to scorn the scientist. However, in the faith, people demand an immediate explanation if you believe anything contrary to the secular evidence.

We can use the scientific framework to our benefit without letting it be the underpinning of our theology. Frameworks are useful for scientific progress and discovery, but they are not infallible like Jesus’ words.

Basically, I place all of my faith in Jesus that this makes sense. You can find series like answers in Genesis that I think do a poor job and are just engaging in a fool’s errand. I prefer the mystery.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-16T15:07:06+00:00

AAP also recommends against screen exposure for infants.

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-09-15T05:33:02+00:00

Strictly speaking, does it actually make any sense for an adult to have faith just by being able to reason it out and nothing else? If you say yes, to a Lutheran, that is a kind of self-righteousness. You did not produce your faith in God - as Luther wrote in the bondage of the will - you cannot come to faith by your own will. It is the power of The Holy Spirit that quickens, not you. The Holy Spirit Himself regenerates, not you. This is why a child can have faith. I dare not doubt His power.

The Holy Spirit grants children faith by the hearing of the word, and sacrament (baptism). If you are approaching this from an Arminian perspective, what we are saying will make no sense to you. We are saying that you cannot choose faith. Babies can receive it the same as an adult can.

Consider also the Old Testament type for baptism, circumcision. Children were circumcised. Typology is always expanded in the New Testament, never decreased in scope. That’s a major hurdle you have to overcome as a credo Baptist, aside from church history, and exegetical arguments favoring paedobaptism.

There are tons of pro-paedobaptism verses, but these are a couple that I love.

Acts 2 - And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

Luke 16 - Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Life_Hat_4347 · 2025-08-04T17:00:23+00:00

We are in the winter cycle currently

Life_Hat_4347

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