Transcript: AAC — 13 Nov 2025 (Q&A)
All transcripts are:
- Machine generated.
- Not checked for errors.
- Probably not entirely accurate.
WEBVTT 00:00:00.360 --> 00:00:04.800Welcome to the third Q&A episode of the At Any Cost podcast. 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:08.180 This is the 13th of November, 2025. 00:00:08.180 --> 00:00:12.440 Hopefully all of the audio and other issues from last time have been resolved. 00:00:12.440 --> 00:00:14.680 Please let me know if not. 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:22.180 I know that the audio, the music during the countdown there was playing mono on X. 00:00:22.180 --> 00:00:23.920 I don't know exactly why it was doing that. 00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:24.840 I'll solve that next time. 00:00:24.840 --> 00:00:27.460 It seems to be fine on YouTube. 00:00:27.580 --> 00:00:36.280 So, if you experience an audio issue on X, I guess hop over to YouTube, where everything seems to be fine. 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:39.460 So, no one has mentioned there are any audio issues yet. 00:00:39.460 --> 00:00:41.980 So, I will assume that everything is broadcasting fine. 00:00:41.980 --> 00:00:44.620 Everything seems to be green on my end. 00:00:44.620 --> 00:00:48.380 So, I will do a little bit of housekeeping before I jump into the questions. 00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:50.640 I have a handful of questions already. 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:54.720 If some more pop up in the chat, I'll try to get to those before the end. 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:57.300 So, I'm hearing that it sounds better on YouTube. 00:00:57.360 --> 00:01:00.680 Yes, hopefully, I went through and read all of my settings in OBS. 00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:04.500 So, hopefully, that is much better this time. 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:08.140 It's about as good as I can get with my current hardware, so. 00:01:08.140 --> 00:01:22.080 But insofar as housekeeping goes, if you want to submit questions for future episodes, future Q&As, then I linked the topic in the forum where you can go and do that. 00:01:22.080 --> 00:01:26.100 It's actually the category submit, basically one question per topic. 00:01:26.540 --> 00:01:34.360 Other people can vote on it, so that way, if it winds up being a lot of questions, things can rise to the top, and I can get to those more quickly, at least in theory. 00:01:34.360 --> 00:01:39.600 But that is the best way to ensure that I will see your question, and that I will actually get to it. 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:47.000 I guess I can take my headphones off since I'm not actually listening to anything on my end, so don't need those. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:50.180 The camera can deal with my shiny forehead. 00:01:50.180 --> 00:01:59.280 But the best way to submit the questions, again, is on Omnifora in that category, because that is going to be the guaranteed way that I will see them. 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:02.700 If you submit them somewhere else, I will try to get them as well. 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:04.720 I will try to write them down and keep them for the future. 00:02:04.720 --> 00:02:09.100 I have a list of questions here that I pulled from other places for tonight. 00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:19.880 And so, without any other real housekeeping for this time, because I think that's pretty much it, I think I've covered it, I will jump right into the questions and start with sort of a serious one. 00:02:19.880 --> 00:02:24.400 I will begin with one that was actually submitted on the forum, because I want to encourage that. 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:43.960 It's easy for me, because the overall goal of this is essentially to create a catalog of questions and answers so that other people can direct people in the future to my answers, instead of having to answer the same question five, six, seven, a hundred times, whatever it happens to be. 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:45.620 The first question, then. 00:02:45.620 --> 00:02:48.300 This is a bit of a two-pronged question. 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:57.860 I'm in my mid-thirties and have no immediate marital prospects This is primarily due to a hereditary genetic disorder that I have that also affects my appearance. 00:02:57.860 --> 00:03:03.040 Given the severity of it, biological children are completely out of the question. 00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:07.560 I also have occasional stumblings and sexual purity about once every three months or so. 00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:10.500 How would you advise in this situation? 00:03:10.500 --> 00:03:14.240 So I guess we'll be starting off with a relatively serious question, then. 00:03:14.240 --> 00:03:17.080 And there are really a number of parts to this question. 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:23.800 I think I will address the last one, as it were, first, because it's sort of the easy one to address. 00:03:23.800 --> 00:03:33.100 Not easy in the sense of dealing with the problem on the end of those who have the problem, which is going to be most of those listening, because most of the listeners are going to be male. 00:03:33.100 --> 00:03:35.020 And men in general are just going to struggle with this. 00:03:35.020 --> 00:03:36.660 We all know what the question is. 00:03:36.660 --> 00:03:41.520 And so I don't necessarily need to spell it out and get myself banned from whatever platform. 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:49.800 But generally speaking, the best way to avoid that sort of temptation is simply to remove it as best you can. 00:03:49.800 --> 00:04:14.280 Because insofar as that temptation is concerned, and I've written an article about this, and I've commented on it a couple of times, I'll put a link to that in the show notes when I put this up as a podcast episode, which I will do with high quality audio, because I am recording much higher quality audio on my end, at least as high quality as I can do with the mic that disappears into my beard, instead the one that takes up the full screen. 00:04:15.320 --> 00:04:23.340 That will be a podcast episode released separately, so the high quality audio will always be available after this, now that I've resolved some tech issues. 00:04:23.340 --> 00:04:33.520 But to return to the question, the best way again to resolve that temptation, to deal with that temptation, is to avoid it as best you can. 00:04:33.520 --> 00:04:41.100 And so that may be if you are severely tempted by that, put your computer in a common area of your house. 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:46.220 If you live with someone else, if you don't live with someone else, that may make it a little more challenging for you. 00:04:46.220 --> 00:04:47.480 Have an accountability partner. 00:04:47.480 --> 00:04:52.720 I know that that phrase, that term, tends to make some people feel a little uneasy, but it's not a bad thing. 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:55.740 And I do not mean a woman. 00:04:55.740 --> 00:05:00.960 Absolutely, this is not something for your wife, your girlfriend, whomever. 00:05:00.960 --> 00:05:07.720 This is something you should be sharing with a male Christian friend to keep each other accountable. 00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:10.420 That is the sort of thing that Christian brothers are supposed to do. 00:05:10.420 --> 00:05:13.180 Again, do not share this with women in your life. 00:05:13.280 --> 00:05:18.320 That is going to cause you trouble, it's going to cause her trouble, it's going to make everything worse if you do that. 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:23.040 And women, if they're being honest with themselves, know that's the case. 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:28.020 So put your computer in a common area as best you can. 00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:31.440 Locking down your computer is actually not going to help. 00:05:31.440 --> 00:05:36.880 And the reason that's not going to help is essentially psychology. 00:05:36.880 --> 00:05:49.920 Because psychologically, if you have to surmount an obstacle in order to achieve some goal, in order to obtain some thing that you want, even if in this case you kind of don't want it, but you also do. 00:05:49.920 --> 00:05:50.840 You know, as St. 00:05:50.840 --> 00:05:54.540 Paul is saying, the very thing I don't want to do is the thing that I do. 00:05:54.540 --> 00:06:01.380 But if you have that obstacle, surmounting that is going to give you a greater psychological reward. 00:06:01.380 --> 00:06:10.020 And in giving yourself a greater psychological reward, a very easily obtained one, of course, because you know how to surmount the obstacles that you put in place. 00:06:10.900 --> 00:06:12.920 That's not going to stop you. 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:25.540 If you surmount that obstacle and get that psychological reward, it's going to reinforce that pathway and make it harder psychologically to overcome what is essentially an addiction, because it is. 00:06:25.540 --> 00:06:29.820 It's a dopamine addiction, a serotonin addiction, which is built into human physiology. 00:06:29.820 --> 00:06:35.940 I went over that in the article that I will, again, link in the notes for this and hopefully get through and link it on all the videos as well. 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:44.080 So, the various systems that make it harder to access that content aren't necessarily going to help you. 00:06:44.080 --> 00:06:53.420 Now, they can help you in not accidentally stumbling into it, which certainly happens easily these days on social media and elsewhere, and perhaps that can be useful. 00:06:53.460 --> 00:07:06.820 But by and large, just make it more difficult in terms of not having your computer in your private space, have it in a public space, or use it only during certain hours, cut yourself off after a certain time. 00:07:06.820 --> 00:07:09.720 It's going to require willpower, of course, but all of these things do. 00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:11.740 There's no way around that. 00:07:11.740 --> 00:07:24.600 And so, have that accountability partner, make it more difficult to access these things privately, maybe limit your usage of computer, tablet, whatever it happens to be during certain hours. 00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:42.300 And beyond that, fill your time with something productive, cardio, if you are capable of doing cardio anyway, I don't know what the health issues are in this case, but various things like that can eat up your time and help you not be distracted and not be tempted by these other things. 00:07:43.380 --> 00:07:50.500 And so, to get to the next part of the question, what do we do in cases where someone has a severe genetic disorder? 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:56.520 I don't know how severe this one is, but I'm sort of taking the abstracted case here instead of the concrete one presented. 00:07:56.520 --> 00:08:02.220 So what do you do when someone has a severe genetic disorder, but it does not preclude the libido? 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:05.840 It doesn't preclude that desire, which is a completely natural desire. 00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:11.100 And so, those who go off the rails and say that, you know, this is an evil thing, it's not part of creation. 00:08:11.100 --> 00:08:12.700 No, it's obviously part of creation. 00:08:12.700 --> 00:08:14.620 God created man and woman from the beginning. 00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:17.860 This is part of how men and women relate to one another. 00:08:17.860 --> 00:08:19.660 Granted, it's supposed to be only your spouse. 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:23.320 But we live in a fallen world. 00:08:23.320 --> 00:08:31.920 But to answer the immediate question, how do you deal with the issue of those who would produce children who would have a severe genetic disorder? 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:36.820 In this case, it's not as much of a problem, of course, because he's saying that children are simply out of the question. 00:08:36.820 --> 00:08:40.220 And I will assume that that's because of the genetic disorder. 00:08:40.220 --> 00:08:46.740 If it's not because of the genetic disorder, then perhaps my answer to the question, the abstracted one, is more relevant here. 00:08:47.460 --> 00:08:56.260 But, I don't believe there's anything wrong with avoiding having children if you know you're going to pass something horrible on to them. 00:08:56.260 --> 00:09:02.860 I don't think that you have any requirement from God to have children and pass that to them. 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:05.400 There's nowhere in scripture where that's commanded. 00:09:05.400 --> 00:09:12.100 Now, it says that children are a blessing from the Lord, of course, but there's also a matter of wisdom when dealing with these issues. 00:09:12.100 --> 00:09:18.940 And so, for instance, if you knew that you had, we'll take the extreme, because it's always kind of useful to start there. 00:09:18.940 --> 00:09:20.200 Take the extreme example. 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:29.660 Say there's a 100% chance that your child is going to suffer horribly and then die six months after being born. 00:09:29.660 --> 00:09:32.260 You probably don't want to bring that upon a child. 00:09:32.260 --> 00:09:36.760 And so, you would take measures to ensure that you do not have children. 00:09:36.760 --> 00:09:41.180 Does that necessarily mean that you can't have a wife? 00:09:41.180 --> 00:09:42.900 I think the answer is no. 00:09:42.900 --> 00:09:48.800 I think this is sort of the short version of the answer that everything else I've said is building up to. 00:09:48.800 --> 00:09:51.320 Find a woman who cannot have children. 00:09:51.320 --> 00:09:52.800 There are plenty of those. 00:09:52.800 --> 00:10:04.420 Just quite frankly, if you marry a woman who is, say, late 30s, odds are she won't get pregnant, even if genetically, biologically, that's a possibility for the both of you. 00:10:04.420 --> 00:10:11.040 Find a woman who cannot get pregnant, who cannot have children, and live your life with her as your wife. 00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:12.020 There's nothing wrong with that. 00:10:12.740 --> 00:10:22.380 There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting yourself into a position where you know you will not have children because you have some morally valid reason to avoid having them. 00:10:22.380 --> 00:10:23.980 And so I think that's the best case here. 00:10:23.980 --> 00:10:31.740 And as you said, in your case, the genetic disorder leads to some issues with regard to your physical appearance. 00:10:31.740 --> 00:10:34.400 There are plenty of women who have those issues as well. 00:10:34.400 --> 00:10:39.860 Now, it may be that what you hear and what some will hear is, I'm telling you to settle, and perhaps that's somewhat true. 00:10:40.740 --> 00:10:42.280 That is the reality of this life. 00:10:42.280 --> 00:10:47.380 Sometimes there's going to be a requirement that certain men settle. 00:10:47.380 --> 00:10:50.420 That is just the reality of living in a fallen world. 00:10:50.420 --> 00:10:52.380 These are issues for this life. 00:10:52.380 --> 00:10:55.960 The goal is to get through this life to the next one. 00:10:55.960 --> 00:11:00.240 This one still matters, and I will never minimize how much this one matters. 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:04.700 But these issues will not exist in paradise. 00:11:04.700 --> 00:11:16.480 And so find a woman with whom you can spend your life, whom you can love as your wife, and then make it to paradise with her, and you will both have restored and perfect bodies then. 00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:25.680 So I think that's the best answer for this, and I think that anyone who's in a similar situation, that's sort of abstract that out a level, and then that's the answer to the problem. 00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:36.880 Because if God has not given you the gift of celibacy, and basically no one has the gift of celibacy, there are probably zero people who will ever listen to this, who have been given the gift of celibacy. 00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:44.000 And if you don't have that gift, you are going to find it very difficult to attempt to remain chaste. 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:48.360 You're not going to remain celibate because you can't be celibate unless God gives you the gift. 00:11:48.360 --> 00:11:49.920 You can be chaste. 00:11:49.920 --> 00:11:56.840 That's going to be difficult to do over a course of many years for any normal human being. 00:11:56.840 --> 00:12:02.900 If you are a man in your late teens, twenties, early thirties, it gets a little easier as you get older, of course. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:15.400 But if you're in that prime territory with regard to biology, it's going to be very difficult to avoid these issues if you don't have the only cure God recommends in scripture, which is a wife. 00:12:15.400 --> 00:12:21.180 And so, yes, it's difficult to find good women these days, but they do exist. 00:12:21.180 --> 00:12:27.500 And don't think that you're going to have to find a woman who's perfect because you're not perfect. 00:12:27.500 --> 00:12:28.900 She won't be perfect. 00:12:28.900 --> 00:12:30.240 No one is perfect. 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:31.260 We live in a fallen world. 00:12:32.040 --> 00:12:35.800 Find a woman you can love and with whom you can spend your life. 00:12:35.800 --> 00:12:40.420 That is the cure for the temptation in this case. 00:12:40.420 --> 00:12:44.600 It is the only cure God recommends, and so it is the only cure we should seek. 00:12:48.980 --> 00:12:52.560 The next question is a little bit easier, a little more lighthearted. 00:12:52.560 --> 00:12:57.500 Someone just asked what my musical tastes are, and the answer is yes. 00:12:57.500 --> 00:12:58.200 You are correct. 00:12:58.200 --> 00:12:59.180 They are rather eclectic. 00:12:59.640 --> 00:13:02.100 I do like Wagner, I do like opera. 00:13:02.100 --> 00:13:15.900 I don't have an opera company here anymore where I can go and attend the opera, but thankfully there are many places online where you can watch very good recordings, and they are quite good quality, and these headphones are actually pretty good quality, so I can do that. 00:13:15.900 --> 00:13:21.200 It's not the same as going and seeing the opera, of course, but it is nice to have the option. 00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:25.580 And the other question, sort of sub-question was, do I like metal? 00:13:25.580 --> 00:13:33.400 I do listen to some, perhaps less than the beard would indicate, but I do listen to some metal, and like I said, my musical tastes are quite eclectic. 00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:46.020 As those who have listened to Stone Choir undoubtedly know, the intro and outro are electronica, and so yes, I've listened to some of that, I guess to be the German stereotype there, but yes, eclectic music tastes. 00:13:48.260 --> 00:13:55.540 The next question actually has three parts, really kind of three separate questions, one of which is very lighthearted again. 00:13:56.520 --> 00:14:01.260 Is there any hope for the LCMS is the basic question. 00:14:01.260 --> 00:14:06.080 And I think that the answer to that is it doesn't matter. 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:21.240 And the reason that it doesn't matter is because one of the advantages to being a Protestant, of any sort of flavor of Protestant, one of the major advantages is that we don't believe that the church is a corporate identity. 00:14:21.240 --> 00:14:31.300 We don't think that the church is this physical earthly body that has to be obeyed, has to be followed, you have to be part of this particular thing to be saved. 00:14:31.300 --> 00:14:33.620 Because that's not what the church is. 00:14:33.620 --> 00:14:45.060 The church is all believers from Adam, all the way to whatever man is last standing on the earth at the end of time, and is a Christian. 00:14:45.060 --> 00:14:50.600 All of those believers are the church, because they are the mystical body of Christ. 00:14:50.600 --> 00:14:51.640 That is what the church is. 00:14:52.380 --> 00:14:55.440 And so, does it matter what happens to a particular corporation? 00:14:55.440 --> 00:15:02.600 The answer is, of course it matters, because it's a terrible thing to see a church body go apostate and fall apart. 00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:07.720 Particularly one that used to be one of the most faithful ones on the face of the planet. 00:15:07.720 --> 00:15:12.740 Because people think that, oh, the LCMS, it was just the American Lutheranism was never a very big thing. 00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:17.400 And it had almost 3 million members at one point. 00:15:17.400 --> 00:15:19.580 I think it actually had more than that at one point. 00:15:19.580 --> 00:15:25.320 But it had about that many members, it was one of the fastest growing church bodies in the world. 00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:27.600 It was incredibly faithful. 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:31.440 And then the World War era happened, and we all know what happens there. 00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:34.560 Particularly when you have German speaking Lutherans. 00:15:34.560 --> 00:15:37.820 And so it's terrible what has happened to the LCMS. 00:15:37.820 --> 00:15:43.980 But it does not ultimately matter if we salvage the LCMS, or if we have to start up new church bodies. 00:15:43.980 --> 00:15:54.620 And I think in many cases, and I've said this to many men in DMs and elsewhere, in many cases, you are going to have to start up a house church, and then from there, over time, it will grow naturally. 00:15:54.620 --> 00:16:01.080 You'll acquire a building, build it, buy it, whatever it happens to be, and you will start another church. 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:08.400 And then those congregations will group together along doctrinal and confessional lines, and you have a new church body. 00:16:08.400 --> 00:16:10.020 There's nothing wrong with that. 00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:11.300 It is sometimes necessary. 00:16:11.300 --> 00:16:15.040 It's probably going to be necessary under current circumstances. 00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:25.560 Because the odds of running a conquest of, you know, retaking these major church bodies, fairly low odds. 00:16:25.560 --> 00:16:43.180 Because the men who are in positions of power are so entrenched and so contrary to the actual Word of God, so contrary to the Gospel and right doctrine, right teaching, it's probably not worth the effort, and you probably won't succeed even if you manage to expend the effort. 00:16:43.960 --> 00:17:04.700 Now, this comes with a really big caveat, because particularly for those who are from the Roman Catholic view, or some other more, not magisterial, but unitary church bodies, they're not going to see it in the same way that, say, Lutherans in the US would. 00:17:04.700 --> 00:17:05.760 This is, of course, not Elka. 00:17:05.760 --> 00:17:09.260 Elka is not even Christian, so they can go off in the corner with their pride flags. 00:17:10.140 --> 00:17:27.720 But we are congregationalist in terms of our polity, not in terms of our theology or doctrine, but in terms of our polity, which essentially just means that the congregation typically owns the land in the building, or at least rents it, leases it, whatever it happens to be. 00:17:27.720 --> 00:17:30.700 It's not synod, it's not the corporation that owns it. 00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:38.320 Now, make sure that your constitution for your congregation has not been changed so that synod has a whole bunch of power. 00:17:38.560 --> 00:17:39.480 Make sure that doesn't happen. 00:17:39.480 --> 00:17:44.200 But by and large, the congregation owns the building. 00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:48.520 What that means is the congregation could just leave synod. 00:17:48.520 --> 00:17:50.540 The congregation can be completely faithful. 00:17:50.540 --> 00:17:57.200 You can have a faithful pastor, faithful elders, and you can just no longer be part of the LCMS. 00:17:57.200 --> 00:18:00.080 Now that works, that is perfectly viable. 00:18:00.080 --> 00:18:13.780 Taking faithful congregations out of these apostate corporate bodies, and then having entire congregations join new faithful bodies, that is far preferable to having to spin up all new congregations and everything else. 00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:20.740 Much better to take the full congregation and save all of those sheep in there, because many of them have no idea what's going on. 00:18:20.740 --> 00:18:22.340 Do also bear that in mind. 00:18:22.340 --> 00:18:36.400 With regard to faithless congregations, many of the sheep may be faithful, they just have no idea what's going on, or maybe my grandparents attended this church, my parents attended this church, I was baptized in this church, I'm going to keep attending this church. 00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:42.700 So, yes, congregations can be saved, but the corporate body probably not and probably not worth it. 00:18:45.320 --> 00:18:53.540 And the second question before I get to the less serious one, although as a German, I can say very serious one, but you'll see why in a minute. 00:18:53.540 --> 00:19:04.500 What about worshipping with family members and friends and others who are not, in this case, Lutheran, but for whatever tradition to which you would hear that tradition? 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:08.760 Wells has some problems with that, and I think their doctrine is wrong on this point. 00:19:08.760 --> 00:19:11.380 They object to praying with others and things like that. 00:19:11.380 --> 00:19:31.900 But the restriction, this part, I do think is right, that the LCMS has traditionally held, was that you cannot participate in a public worship service as an ordained pastor, because that is showing your tacit approval of the doctrine that we consider to be false. 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:33.580 I think that's correct. 00:19:33.580 --> 00:19:40.620 I don't think that we should give a sign off in any case, in any sort of way, with regard to false doctrine. 00:19:40.620 --> 00:19:43.220 But, can you pray with a family member? 00:19:43.220 --> 00:19:43.740 Absolutely. 00:19:43.740 --> 00:19:45.800 I think Wells is ridiculous on that. 00:19:45.800 --> 00:19:51.680 Can you go to a worship service at a church that is not your denomination, not your tradition? 00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:52.740 I think the answer is yes. 00:19:52.740 --> 00:19:58.640 There are caveats there, of course, because we have to say, they still have to be Christian, obviously. 00:19:58.640 --> 00:20:04.740 And so, if you are a traditional Lutheran, should you attend a Roman Catholic Mass? 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:12.720 The answer is probably no, because we consider their conception of the sacrifice of the Mass to be abominable. 00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:15.740 So, you probably should not attend that. 00:20:15.740 --> 00:20:18.400 But, can you go to a Baptist service? 00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:19.720 Sure. 00:20:19.720 --> 00:20:26.540 You're going to severely object, of course, if they start talking about the real presence, because they don't believe in it. 00:20:26.540 --> 00:20:32.140 But, the only sort of limitation would be, do not participate in the Lord's Supper, if it is offered. 00:20:32.140 --> 00:20:34.620 At a Baptist church, it probably won't be. 00:20:34.620 --> 00:20:39.320 And even if it is, it's not the real thing, because they don't use wine, and they don't believe. 00:20:39.320 --> 00:20:51.060 So, do not participate in that, because you have to be in unity with your brothers, doctrinally, confessionally, if you are participating in the meal that is that show of unity. 00:20:51.060 --> 00:20:55.400 And so, don't partake of the sacrament of the church, with which you do not believe they're... 00:20:55.400 --> 00:20:57.560 disagree with their doctrine, don't do that. 00:20:57.560 --> 00:20:59.240 But, can you worship with them? 00:20:59.240 --> 00:20:59.800 Absolutely. 00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:00.600 Can you pray with them? 00:21:00.600 --> 00:21:02.420 You absolutely should. 00:21:02.420 --> 00:21:03.680 So, there's nothing wrong with that. 00:21:03.680 --> 00:21:11.500 And then, the third question, the less serious one, or extremely serious one, depending how you view things, is what is my favorite beer? 00:21:11.500 --> 00:21:17.460 And I would say that my favorite beers would be any of the dark ones from Weinstfahne. 00:21:17.460 --> 00:21:18.880 That's probably my favorite brewery. 00:21:18.920 --> 00:21:26.120 That used to be, when I lived in Berlin, it was basically only a handful of tram stops away from my apartment. 00:21:26.120 --> 00:21:43.420 Their Berlin location, obviously not the main one down in Bavaria, but I used to go and have lunch there and go to the museums, because the museum island, all museums are sort of grouped together in Berlin with some satellite ones, but I used to go there and then go to the island and wander around the museums, because it was a very short walk. 00:21:43.420 --> 00:21:44.120 It was very nice. 00:21:44.120 --> 00:21:45.760 So, that's my favorite beer. 00:21:45.860 --> 00:21:48.940 A little tidbit about my previous life, I guess it will be. 00:22:01.433 --> 00:22:05.933 Just a quick question here about whether or not I'm still practicing law. 00:22:05.933 --> 00:22:08.473 The answer to that is yes and no. 00:22:08.473 --> 00:22:10.253 Yes, I am still a licensed attorney. 00:22:10.253 --> 00:22:12.913 Surprisingly, the bar has not opened an investigation into me. 00:22:12.913 --> 00:22:14.433 I know they're going to eventually do that. 00:22:14.433 --> 00:22:22.553 They've sort of been building up to it to sort of excise, particularly in California, excise anyone with so-called far right views. 00:22:22.553 --> 00:22:24.013 I can see where the trajectory is going. 00:22:24.013 --> 00:22:25.813 I know exactly the tactic they're going to take. 00:22:26.233 --> 00:22:28.073 They're not very subtle. 00:22:28.073 --> 00:22:30.593 They're not very bright either, but we'll see how that goes. 00:22:30.733 --> 00:22:39.493 I probably won't be the first attorney in California who will be brought up on charges for being racist or whatever it happens to be, but they will... 00:22:39.493 --> 00:22:46.533 I know exactly what they'll do, and I may as well say what they're going to do, not how they'll build up to it, but the way that they will enforce it. 00:22:46.533 --> 00:22:48.693 And the way that they enforce it is this. 00:22:48.693 --> 00:22:55.213 They don't say that, oh, you are a racist, and so we're going to kick you out. 00:22:55.213 --> 00:23:14.833