The Very Lutheran Project

3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8 The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. -Titus 3:3-8 How does one become a good person? For most people such a question is irrelevant. They assume that they are good already and do as they please... that is, until they inevitably sin and their conscience assails them. Then they harden their hearts, drug themselves, or find empty ways to reassert their claim to "good person" status. When you look at the state of the world today, consider that much of the nonsense we see is based on a stubborn refusal to repent. Eventually drugs, drinking and pleasure do not do enough to quiet the voice of the Law within our hearts. Eventually man feels the urge to do something, so the world is replete with sources of fake righteousness for people to draw from and thus assuage their guilt. It is fake precisely because none of it fulfills the Biblical conception of moral uprightness. -Activism tells people that if they fight "climate change" or "institutional racism" then they are Good People. The logic is simple: destroy the world and countless lives over things that do not affect you, and you will be a Good Person. -Slacktivism, the sort of pseudo-activity that made Joseph Kony infamous, tells the lazy that they are Good People if they forward something on social media. After all, a man might not have the time to go to a protest, so his token gestures are a sort of indulgence payment for the activists above him. -Asceticism tells the guilty that if they are hungry and in pain, then they are Good People because they "discipline" themselves. You know, because nothing says Good quite like hating the material world - including your own flesh. These methods of accruing fake righteousness operate on a distortion in our understanding. The world teaches men that in order to be good they must do good. To be a Good Person must be *earned* in the world's eyes, you see. Thus every nonbeliever goes out of his way to feel as though he did enough things to feel like he can claim this status, or at least assume it while going about doing his own thing. But this is entirely backwards my friends. St. Paul teaches us that a man does good works because he is made good in the first place. One must be born righteous to be righteous and do righteous things. It must be inherent to our nature before we can claim the label for ourselves. It cannot be earned, for all have sinned and all fall short (Romans 3:23). Therefore to become good, one must be *made* good by the transforming work of our Lord. The Holy Spirit renews our nature, we are born again in Baptism, and we are forgiven of our trespasses by the shed blood of Christ. THEN, when made anew, we can say that we are good people - not because we have earned it, but because God has made us so. From the point of conversion onward, our lives must be lived with good works so as to reflect that new nature - and *true* works from the Commandments of God, not fake-righteous deeds from the world.

She's ready for a new work week as well (lots of barking at leaves and making sure the kids don't relax too much)

Been enjoying a relaxing yet productive Sunday, hope y'all's has been just as blessed. But tomorrow we go back at it.

The latest Godcast is now out! Episode 394: The Libtard Captivity of the Church (Shepherds for Sale Pt.2) Oh Boy, it’s time to talk about Shepherds for Sale again. Let’s listen to Super recount some of the facts on the ground regarding the great pastoral betrayal of the past 25 years. Following that, a couple more audio chats from his Modern Theology series about why liberalism fails and why conservatives lost. We got a guest coming on next week, and will also catch up on emails then too. Find the SHOW NOTES here: https://amerikaner.org/the-godcast-episode-394-the-libtard-captivity-of-the-church-shepherds-for-sale-pt-2/ Direct Download: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thegodcast/GC_394.mp3 Support the show! https://verylutheran.gumroad.com/

SUNDAY RESOURCES NOW UP! For this week's homily, let's talk politics, namely the rebellion of kings against God. Audio: https://soundcloud.com/verylutheran/fear-joy-and-trembling Video: https://youtu.be/K2mT-kqaxSU And for the LEVITICUS BIBLE STUDY, let's chat about Leviticus as the starting point for the Church calendar. Audio: https://soundcloud.com/verylutheran/leviticus-pt-27-origin-of-the Video: https://youtu.be/xVHeFtOqNZ0 PDF manuscripts can be found here: https://verylutheran.biz/resources Support the VLP! We have BIG THINGS coming soon, and we need all the help we can get! https://verylutheran.gumroad.com/ https://verylutheran.biz/contact God bless your weekend everyone!

Sorry corey but I am NOT getting my wife to touch my feet with my son's foreskins or sitting with an old widow during a drought.

Hmmm, seems like this series has been paying off: https://soundcloud.com/verylutheran/sets/sex-marriage

✝️ 🇺🇸 🐣 Religious Couples Avoided the Sex Recession "No group of Americans seems to be having more sex—and more satisfying sex—than married men & women who regularly attend a place of worship. In fact, we find the only Americans who have avoided the country’s “sex recession” are husbands & wives who attend religious services at least twice a month." "In the popular imagination, religious faith and a thriving sex life don’t tend to go together. Movies, books, and TV shows depict religious couples as sexually inhibited or dysfunctional. But the data tell a different story." According to our new report, published today by the Institute for Family Studies, no group of Americans seems to be having more sex—and more satisfying sex—than married men and women who regularly attend a place of worship. (This group is made up mostly of Christians, but also includes Jews and Muslims.) In fact, we find that the only Americans who have avoided the country’s “sex recession”—in which fewer and fewer men and women are having regular sex—are husbands and wives who attend religious services at least twice a month. In the 1990s, 64 percent of married people aged 20–54, both churchgoing and secular, had sex at least once a week, according to the General Social Survey. Now only 48 percent of secular couples (who never or rarely attend church) have sex weekly compared with 62 percent of their religious peers. In America today, the faithful are having more sex. Religion frequently gets a bad rap in our public conversation about sex. One recent New York Times op-ed, for instance, argued that conservative Christian women are pushed to “submit to their husbands, sexually and otherwise” in churches marked by “misogyny and hypocrisy.” Of course, some religious women are in coercive or unsatisfying marriages. But blanket commentary like this leaves the public with the impression that religion is an obstacle to a happy marriage and a good sex life. Yet in an atomized, individualistic age, faith has turned out to be one of the few institutions still nurturing one of the most powerful expressions of human intimacy. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/religion-sex-recession-marriage/688774/ https://archive.ph/Qf7ED 📎 Brad Wilcox

1 Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, 2 to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. -Titus 3:1-2 The Christian is to be well behaved, orderly, helpful, magnanimous, peaceful, reasonable, and respectful. In a word, the Christian must be *nice.* It's a shame that believers have been taught to hate these ideals, but it was inevitable. Our virtues were weaponized against us by subversives who demanded that "loving Christians" show their love by surrendering on everything. "Christians are supposed to be nice, not fight back against abortion." Wicked men and women everywhere decided that the virtues presented here are weaknesses to exploit rather than the personal strengths they truly are. Making matters worse, heretics and cultists are typically the best at these. Everyone knows about mormon niceness. Mormons are also damnable hellbound evil people, but they are good at embodying the nice-guy qualities St. Paul exhorts us to have. And why is that? Because mormons know that they are strengths. They know that being nice doesn't prevent a people from constantly pushing to get their way and influence the world. Our virtues are weaponized against us by manipulative subversives, while these very same virtues are *employed* by many of the wicked to get their way. This tells you that they are not weaknesses, but the false versions of them are. For instance, the courteous and respectful man will not have a hard time keeping a job when he gets one, because his good attitude will make him a delight to his employer. But courteous and respectful as being a doormat, a mewling yes man or brown noser? Forget it, such a man will lose constantly by irritating his superiors. The answer is of course to foster the true virtues here without listening to the distortions the world impresses on us. We must seek to be nice in a powerful way. At the same time, we ought not try to redefine these words to the point of deception - "avoiding quarreling means looking for fights bro trust me." While we do not submit to the subversives in *their* misuse of the terms, we must still avoid the flesh's desire to misuse and redefine them on our own end. Yes, sometimes being the nice guy is hard and counterintuitive. Sometimes it means finishing last, but that is OK because nice guys win in the end.

Oh and we're calling the episode "The Libtard Captivity of the Church"

How fortuitous, this Sunday's Godcast is covering more of this book - with even more angerpoasting. Basham needs to do a follow-up book on the USAID debacle with the US Catholic bishops and LIRS.

I got Shepherds for Sale... for sale 😉 @calvinismmemes

For those who aren't aware, keller was a THEOLOGIAN saying this nonsense. Come to think of it though, that shouldn't surprise any of us, since only a theologian could twist himself in knots like that.

Did anyone let tim keller know that he comes off as a psychopath when he was alive? "Abortion should be legal because nonbelief is legal." Hell of a take right there.

SUNDAY RESOURCES NOW UP! For this week's homily, let's talk politics, namely the rebellion of kings against God. Audio: https://soundcloud.com/verylutheran/fear-joy-and-trembling Video: https://youtu.be/K2mT-kqaxSU And for the LEVITICUS BIBLE STUDY, let's chat about Leviticus as the starting point for the Church calendar. Audio: https://soundcloud.com/verylutheran/leviticus-pt-27-origin-of-the Video: https://youtu.be/xVHeFtOqNZ0 PDF manuscripts can be found here: https://verylutheran.biz/resources Support the VLP! We have BIG THINGS coming soon, and we need all the help we can get! https://verylutheran.gumroad.com/ https://verylutheran.biz/contact God bless your weekend everyone!

It never ceases to amuse me that these freaks won't respect God's pronouns.

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. 15 Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. -Titus 2:11-15 What does salvation do? This is to say, what happens to someone when God's Grace arrives and delivers him from the sentence of damnation? Well salvation *trains* you. St. Paul says here that if you are saved, then salvation leads you to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, treating our Lord with reverence and forsaking immoral behavior. Then he says it trains you to replace that old lawlessness with self control, moral uprightness, and piety. We do not earn our salvation by doing good works. Good works are something that comes from *being* saved, as a means of making them better members of the Kingdom. The same way an employer doesn't give on-the-job training to someone who hasn't been hired, the training of salvation doesn't apply to those who aren't saved. What good would that do them? Improving a pagan's character without saving him just makes him a nicer resident of hell in the end. What a waste! My friends, you must do good things and become better people. This is the reason our Lord saved us, so that not only would we belong to Him but also that we would be made *better.* He wants no thieves, whores, murderers or liars in His Kingdom; knowing just how many of us were engaged in these behaviors, He chooses correction over punishment for the saints. Heaven will be filled with *former* thieves, former whores, former murderers and former liars! People whose lives are guided away from such sins see themselves turned into powerhouses for charity, truth, fellowship, prayer, teaching, and compassion - not to bring them to salvation, but because salvation was brought to them first. A man who knows that he is bound for heaven ought to be zealous for good works. But how shall he know that he is saved? It is as simple as following what Jesus says in Mark 16:16, "Whoever believes and is Baptized will be saved." Show me a group of Baptized men who trust in Christ for their salvation, men who KNOW they are saved, and I will show you a group who is growing in their zeal for doing good. God grant that this become even more apparent in our societies.