Speaker 1: Justin Marler, thank you for joining me on a commitment
Speaker 1: to reality.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm excited about
Speaker 2: this discussion.
Speaker 1: I love your book. You wrote a book called Unseen Warfare,
Speaker 1: Ancient Teachings for the Modern Fighter. And as I was
Speaker 1: rereading the introduction to the book this morning, you said
Speaker 1: it yourself that it's a field guide for life. It's
Speaker 1: what you wrote it for your daughters, and I want
Speaker 1: to give it to my boys as soon as they
Speaker 1: get older, but I want to give it to everybody.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to read this book because it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's what all of us are looking for
Speaker 1: in life. You talked about how in your book you
Speaker 1: talked about how you would go into bookstores as a
Speaker 1: young adult and you were always searching. And I did
Speaker 1: the same thing, and I would feel this overwhelming sense
Speaker 1: of anxiety because there's so many books and there's so
Speaker 1: many different paths that these books can take you through.
Speaker 1: And glory to God, you have written a modern classic.
Speaker 1: I really believe that, and I think that God is
Speaker 1: going to use this book to help guide people through life.
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Amen, I'm really lucky that I was able to
Speaker 2: get exposed to it all as a modern American kid.
Speaker 2: You know, just stumbling into Orthodoxy in the early nineties
Speaker 2: was really It's a very unusual thing to have happened then.
Speaker 2: So I'm just grateful that I encountered the church and
Speaker 2: its teachings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Providence works in that way. So before we start
Speaker 1: talking about your book, I kind of want you to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about yourself, if you will. You've
Speaker 1: lived You're in your early fifties, correct.
Speaker 2: Fifty four?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and already you've lived a couple lives. Could
Speaker 1: you kind of get into a little bit of your
Speaker 1: your backstory of you, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: a punk and then you became a monk and then
Speaker 1: you kind of merged the two worlds.
Speaker 2: Well, they go hand in hand in a certain way.
Speaker 2: But and I was talking with somebody just yesterday about this.
Speaker 2: I grew up normal American Mickey Mouse MTV, you know,
Speaker 2: saturated with you know, nonsense and garbage, and obviously I
Speaker 2: was starved. My soul was starved to death, and so
Speaker 2: you know, I gravitated to punk rock and that sort
Speaker 2: of mentality because it's pushing back against the modern status quo.
Speaker 2: The modern the way the world sees things. I didn't
Speaker 2: agree with it, and so punk helped me articulate things
Speaker 2: in that way, sort of rejecting the modern world. But
Speaker 2: when you reject something, you have to accept something too,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know that when I was younger. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I went through this whole experience of you know, depression,
Speaker 2: suicidal ideology. Music got into music and was my dream
Speaker 2: was to be in a band and record music and
Speaker 2: tour and all that kind of stuff. And I was
Speaker 2: able to realize that dream with some punk bands and
Speaker 2: some metal bands that I were in back in that
Speaker 2: back in those days, I mean, it was not solving
Speaker 2: the problem though. I was still extremely suicidal and depressed,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know why. I was raised with a
Speaker 2: kernel of sort of non denominational Protestantism, and that stayed
Speaker 2: with me, you know, throughout my life. That never has
Speaker 2: gone away since I was three years old. But I
Speaker 2: didn't have a way to understand it. What I was
Speaker 2: raised with was actually kind of confusing, the idea of
Speaker 2: you say that you're saved, you accept Christ and that's that.
Speaker 2: That was freaky to me at the time. I thought,
Speaker 2: this can't be that simple. It's almost like a magical
Speaker 2: prayer or an incantation where you say this thing and
Speaker 2: you're fine, and then you can go off and do
Speaker 2: stuff and quote unquote repent for it. That seemed really
Speaker 2: weird to me. So I stumbled through all sorts of sins,
Speaker 2: you know, like I mentioned in the book, I became
Speaker 2: proficient at all of them pretty much, you know, gluttony, lust, anger, despair, despondency, pride,
Speaker 2: van glory, avarice, not so much. I never really cared
Speaker 2: about things or money, but AMEN struggled through all these
Speaker 2: other and I didn't know what was going on with
Speaker 2: my soul. So obviously encountering the monks, well, first through
Speaker 2: a nun and a dwarf, mind you, there was a
Speaker 2: nun and a dwarf in this Christian Orthodox bookstore, and
Speaker 2: obviously a young person. I was gravitated to that, like
Speaker 2: what is this? This woman in a black robe and
Speaker 2: there's this dwarf, you know, small person. What do we
Speaker 2: want to call it? Yeah? I encountered the faith, and
Speaker 2: immediately I deduced that monks were the troop punks. They
Speaker 2: definitely reject the world, and they reject the status quo,
Speaker 2: but they accept the answers to all that which is
Speaker 2: the last true rebellion, you know, to fully reject the
Speaker 2: world and fully die to yourself as best we possibly
Speaker 2: can daily, so that we can live for Christ and not.
Speaker 2: I mean, when I saw these monks, they were sleeping
Speaker 2: on planks of wood, They had really shabby sleeping bags,
Speaker 2: They didn't shower very often. They were absolutely not interested
Speaker 2: in the world old and the convention of conventions of
Speaker 2: the world. And I I thought that was amazing, and
Speaker 2: I clearly, you know, when I visited the monastery, I
Speaker 2: didn't leave, you know, I stayed for seven years because
Speaker 2: that was so inspiring to me. I had to go
Speaker 2: back to the world and settle up some affairs in
Speaker 2: the world. I had an art exhibit that I had
Speaker 2: to wrap up, and that first album that I recorded
Speaker 2: with a band called Sleep that was just getting released,
Speaker 2: so I had to deal with that a little bit.
Speaker 2: But stayed about two about a month or two in
Speaker 2: the world and came back to the monastery. And I
Speaker 2: stayed there for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we could talk for
Speaker 1: hours about your experience in the monastery. How old were
Speaker 1: you when you got there?
Speaker 2: I was nineteen years old. I just completed my first record.
Speaker 2: I didn't go to school or anything, so.
Speaker 1: All the more I mean than me.
Speaker 2: You know, I was young and these things were brewing
Speaker 2: inside of me, and the monastery was you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: when you distill it down, the monastic life is the
Speaker 2: most conducive life for spiritual life and for a life
Speaker 2: in Christ. It is everything is geared towards Christ, towards
Speaker 2: I call you know, the Bible calls it the one
Speaker 2: thing needful. Everything in the monastery is geared toward that.
Speaker 2: So initially you either suffer through all of your awfulness
Speaker 2: and you get through it and you get on the
Speaker 2: rhythm of the monastic life, which is a long process,
Speaker 2: or you leave. We had a lot of people that
Speaker 2: showed up and they were excited about the monastic life,
Speaker 2: and they would disappear after a week or a couple
Speaker 2: of days. Sometimes they would leave in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night. I guess out of shame or something, which
Speaker 2: is not necessary. But yeah, when you're when you first,
Speaker 2: when you're first there, there's a romantic experience. You know,
Speaker 2: it's beautiful, it's amazing, and it's warm. It's filled with
Speaker 2: big ideas and lots of wisdom. And then after about
Speaker 2: a month you start questioning everything. You're standing in church
Speaker 2: for hours and you're thinking. Your thought processes go wild
Speaker 2: because of all this trash that we've exposed ourselves to
Speaker 2: through our senses, through our childhood and whatnot. And you
Speaker 2: hit a point where you have to either push forward
Speaker 2: and God's grace helps you through it, or you run
Speaker 2: back to the world. You know, you run back to
Speaker 2: the plow or whatever. But it was the best formative
Speaker 2: seven years of my life, easily. It taught me what
Speaker 2: it means to be a male, a man in the
Speaker 2: modern world, which I didn't get that from anything else.
Speaker 2: I actually got that mostly from our bishop here in Dallas,
Speaker 2: Bishop Garassum. He was in the monastery at the time
Speaker 2: there and I got to know him very well, and
Speaker 2: I still know him to this day. We have a
Speaker 2: lot of whenever we run into each other, we have
Speaker 2: a shared understanding, which is really beautiful. But he's the
Speaker 2: one who really showed me asceticism and to suffer quietly
Speaker 2: and to be a man really, And I got all
Speaker 2: that from the monastery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you said you didn't go to school,
Speaker 1: but seven years in the monastery, what is that, and.
Speaker 2: So that's an interesting idea. I can go to school.
Speaker 2: I hated academia. I hated high school. I thought it
Speaker 2: was a toxic social environment for young people. I thought
Speaker 2: it was actually something you would want to do to
Speaker 2: hurt somebody, you put them in high school. You know.
Speaker 2: So I despised education in a certain way. But when
Speaker 2: I gave when I was given a platform to self
Speaker 2: educate or to learn on my own terms, that was
Speaker 2: in the monastery. So I dove into biology. I dove
Speaker 2: into books on life after death and death experiences, dove
Speaker 2: into science and looked into evolution a lot. Obviously. I
Speaker 2: read tons of theology, so it was a theological school.
Speaker 2: Every moment of every day was theology school. And I
Speaker 2: read my first book from cover to cover in the monastery.
Speaker 2: You know, I got through high school reading cliff notes
Speaker 2: for these books that I thought were horrible, you know,
Speaker 2: Animal Farm, terrible, terrible stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: My first book that I read from cover to cover
Speaker 2: in the monastery was Dostavsky's Brother's Cameras Off Okay, which
Speaker 2: was a big undertaking, and I didn't understand most of it,
Speaker 2: half of it anyway, But I did understand Alyosha, and
Speaker 2: I understood his brother, these two brothers, you know, I
Speaker 2: got what they were fighting for, you know, or fighting
Speaker 2: against whatever. Yeah, I self educated in there, and also
Speaker 2: I learned some major, major important things that a modern
Speaker 2: young person doesn't necessarily learn deliberately in the world, and
Speaker 2: that is the love of beauty, the love of the
Speaker 2: classical music, the love of old movies, the love of
Speaker 2: art and old art. You know. I taught and went
Speaker 2: through art classes in high school, but nothing revealed to
Speaker 2: me the essence of beauty in that way. So I
Speaker 2: got a great lesson on the appreciation of beauty in
Speaker 2: the monastery too. The abbot of the monastery, he's reposed now.
Speaker 2: He actually sent me to an opera in San Francisco
Speaker 2: as a monk, not showered dirty, and we went I
Speaker 2: think it was one other, maybe two other monks of myself.
Speaker 2: We went to San Francisco opera and me, being a
Speaker 2: punk rocker, I had record or did my metal record
Speaker 2: not very far from where that opera house is a
Speaker 2: year and a half prior. So I'm going to this
Speaker 2: opera and I'm newly appreciating classical music, and I finally
Speaker 2: wrap my head around it. You know a little bit.
Speaker 2: And when we go there, we saw geepe verdez la
Speaker 2: Forta del Destino, the force of Destiny, and it has
Speaker 2: monasticism in it. It has this struggle of the passions
Speaker 2: in it, powerful, powerful and moving. All that I got
Speaker 2: from the monastery.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting because you're talking about beauty, you're talking
Speaker 1: about joy, and monastics practice detachment, right, And so from
Speaker 1: my perspective, or from from most of the world's perspective,
Speaker 1: detachment is almost the opposite. It's kind of a despising
Speaker 1: of the world. That's the perception, right. So like, how
Speaker 1: do I mean, the monks are clear the experts at this,
Speaker 1: but how do us lay people who are living out
Speaker 1: in the modern world practice detachment while also maintaining a
Speaker 1: joy for the beauty of God's creation? I mean, our
Speaker 1: life is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I have my approach to it, and obviously
Speaker 3: I you know, I've been saturating myself with the church
Speaker 3: fathers on this topic for a long time, and I
Speaker 3: tried to raise my.
Speaker 2: Daughters with some understanding of being detached, and they have
Speaker 2: it in them. I see it sometimes when they say something,
Speaker 2: I'm like, there it is that little kernel of I'm
Speaker 2: not going to fully care about these things of the world.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that when I started off with it,
Speaker 2: I learned to despise it, like you said, and then
Speaker 2: I learned that despising it isn't the answer. It's actually
Speaker 2: just not caring. You know. There's a middle road here.
Speaker 2: You can love it, or you can despise it, or
Speaker 2: you can just not have it affect you. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's what I learned from the Church Fathers,
Speaker 2: is to not swing either way with it. And so
Speaker 2: in the book, I don't know if you got to
Speaker 2: this chapter or not, but in the detachment chapter, I
Speaker 2: have this great story.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop you right there. Yeah, got to this
Speaker 1: part yet. I've almost read it twice. I've read your
Speaker 1: book cover to cover almost twice. I love it. So
Speaker 1: just to let you know, I'm very very well versed
Speaker 1: in the book, not that I have the kind of
Speaker 1: recall that you do of it, but I definitely paid
Speaker 1: attention to it.
Speaker 2: So this story that you've read, I'm assuming it really
Speaker 2: illustrates how detachment should play out. And I guess it's
Speaker 2: through a monk in the Egyptian desert. Okay, he's in
Speaker 2: the desert. He's living alone as a solitary, and he
Speaker 2: has a visitor, and the visitor stays with him and
Speaker 2: steals his one precious item, which is a beautiful gospel
Speaker 2: version of the Gospel that he had hidden in his
Speaker 2: cell so he could always keep it. This visitor steals it,
Speaker 2: takes it to the nearest village and asks the guy
Speaker 2: if he would be interested in buying it, and the
Speaker 2: guy said, I would be interested, but I need to
Speaker 2: talk to somebody else about the value. So he takes
Speaker 2: it to this monk, the same monk not knowing that
Speaker 2: this gospel belonged to him, and asks him is this
Speaker 2: a good price for this? And the monk doesn't reveal
Speaker 2: that it's actually his possession. He says, yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: good value and sends him away. That is the essence
Speaker 2: of detachment right there, is you do love this thing
Speaker 2: and you value it, and it's the Gospels, you know.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I'm not attached to anything
Speaker 2: in this world, and the detachment to things is liberating.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that the modern man, I think is
Speaker 2: missing greatly in how we view everything is with these attachments.
Speaker 2: We view them as something that's important, something that defines
Speaker 2: our character. Even our attachments to our parents and grandparents,
Speaker 2: all these things we view them as essential, and that
Speaker 2: is totally not true. Detachment still contains love and still
Speaker 2: contains use. You're still using these things and they're in
Speaker 2: your life and love. You still have these relatives ands on.
Speaker 2: But when we're detached, when something dies, when a person dies,
Speaker 2: when a thing goes away, when your house burns down,
Speaker 2: nothing affects you. So being detached in a huge way
Speaker 2: is I think the essence of some of Christ's teachings,
Speaker 2: and he also just exhibited that in his life. Is
Speaker 2: just these things of the world are not us. They're
Speaker 2: not us. They're they're not ours, you know, And Saint
Speaker 2: John in his epistles talks about this at great length.
Speaker 2: Love of the world. You know, we can't love God
Speaker 2: and love the world. And that's a really harsh statement,
Speaker 2: but it's an hundred percent true.
Speaker 1: Or you will hate your your mother and father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean without the proper context, they're jarring. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they said.
Speaker 2: They're really jarring. He was, he was. He brought into
Speaker 2: the world something profoundly earth shaking.
Speaker 1: You talk about detachment, I mean as I finished or
Speaker 1: or was finishing your book, a text ran across my
Speaker 1: screen that the sexton at our church had died. And
Speaker 1: he was such a special man. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: the caretaker of the church, and he was the godfather
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who you've impacted. So you
Speaker 1: guys have a connection without you ever having met him.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of these young men coming into
Speaker 1: the church through you or through you know, through something
Speaker 1: that you're putting out there in the world, and then
Speaker 1: he was there to welcome them, and he just shepherded them.
Speaker 1: And it was unexpectedly expected. You know, he was having
Speaker 1: some health issues, but I saw that right as I
Speaker 1: was finishing your book and getting it through a chapter
Speaker 1: on death. I went to church that night and I
Speaker 1: had the strangest experience. You know, I've experienced a lot
Speaker 1: of death over the past couple of weeks for whatever
Speaker 1: reason in God's timing, and I think death will always
Speaker 1: I hope we never get too comfortable with death, right,
Speaker 1: it should always be an affront to our senses. But
Speaker 1: as I stood there, you know, all of his god
Speaker 1: children that were able to win up and they were
Speaker 1: praying the Trisagion, and I was watching and I just
Speaker 1: had this overwhelming peace that was not natural, and I
Speaker 1: think it was to some degree experiencing that detachment that
Speaker 1: this world is beautiful, but it's not everything, and he's
Speaker 1: home now, and while that's sad for us, it's beautiful
Speaker 1: for him, and now he's praying for us. So yes,
Speaker 1: So you talk about the healthy detachment, there's also when
Speaker 1: you left the monastery, you said that you assimilated, but
Speaker 1: with a healthy discomfort.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that, Well, it goes back
Speaker 2: to my youth and punk and also the Monk chapters.
Speaker 2: I've never wanted to be comfortable with it, you know,
Speaker 2: So when I left the monastery and to this day,
Speaker 2: I still have a healthy discomfort with it because I
Speaker 2: know that this world is we're pilgrims here, and just
Speaker 2: you know the same thing about detachment. You know, this
Speaker 2: is not where we're We're not supposed to pitch our
Speaker 2: tent forever here. And I think that the discomfort in
Speaker 2: the world, it really ties to the passions. The more
Speaker 2: that I get comfortable with any of these passions, the
Speaker 2: more that I get off track spiritually, And the more
Speaker 2: that I'm off track spiritually, the more that I'm dissatisfied.
Speaker 2: The more that I'm upset, restless, discontent, anxious, all those
Speaker 2: things start to bubble up. But the more I'm dissatisfied
Speaker 2: with the world and see it for what it is
Speaker 2: and remind myself of that continually, the more I keep
Speaker 2: it at Bay, It's almost like, you know, you set
Speaker 2: up boundaries. You know, I'm setting up a boundary with
Speaker 2: the world all the time, you know. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: do normal things. I go to shows, I'm gonna take
Speaker 2: my daughter to see a country singer, you know, go
Speaker 2: out and do things in the world and everything, but
Speaker 2: it's always with a critical eye. Last time I took
Speaker 2: her to a show, I saw the crowd and it
Speaker 2: reminded me of St. Sanya and her husband and him
Speaker 2: partying and him dying. And I'm looking at this crowd
Speaker 2: of people, and so I'm always kind of looking at
Speaker 2: it through this lens of this is just death. It's
Speaker 2: all gonna pass, and it's not worth getting your heart
Speaker 2: wrapped up in it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I hate to keep forgive me if I'm
Speaker 1: beating a dead horse here, but it's I think it's
Speaker 1: something really important, and if if we can help people
Speaker 1: overcome people including myself, over this obstacle, that detachment and
Speaker 1: kind of this discomfort with the world and the critical
Speaker 1: eye that you're talking about. In that separation, there's a
Speaker 1: tendency to view that through a negative like a lens
Speaker 1: of negativity, Like, oh, Justin's a negative guy. He doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, he's this uh, spiritual guy, but he has
Speaker 1: this negative edge. He thinks the world is bad. And
Speaker 1: how do we overcome that?
Speaker 2: We have to separate the two ideas. Here there is
Speaker 2: the world, which is God's created world, which is beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's astonishing, it's filled with miracles, it's filled with majesty.
Speaker 2: The biological structures, the molecules, all that stuff is astonishingly amazing.
Speaker 2: The world is best defined by Saint Isaac Assyrian, which
Speaker 2: I've been, you know, beating this dead horse forever death
Speaker 2: to the world. You know, the world is the collective
Speaker 2: name that we call the passions. We must have a
Speaker 2: negative view of them. As soon as we don't have
Speaker 2: a negative view of them, they tear us apart. And
Speaker 2: if you can't see that in our own lives, then
Speaker 2: we're basically blindly letting ourselves fall into This is what
Speaker 2: leads to despair. And depression is once the world infects
Speaker 2: us in this way, and we should be negative about that.
Speaker 2: That is one hundred percent which we should be doing.
Speaker 2: One of the things that some of the visitors would
Speaker 2: come to the monastery, and they were largely you know,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about people that were inquirers, that were coming
Speaker 2: from a sort of agnostic background. They would point out
Speaker 2: that same thing, why are you fleeing the world? What's
Speaker 2: so bad about the world? Why are you saying so
Speaker 2: many negative things about the world. I was actually walking
Speaker 2: on a beach in Alaska with a musician that's pretty
Speaker 2: well known. He was the singer of a band called
Speaker 2: Minor Threat and a band called Fugazi. His name was
Speaker 2: Ian Mackay or he is Ian Mackay. And we were
Speaker 2: walking along the beach talking of all these topics. And
Speaker 2: he at the time and it probably still is maybe,
Speaker 2: but he was agnostic, atheist sort of, and he said
Speaker 2: that same thing, why are you guys, why do you
Speaker 2: guys hate the world so much? It's just people. I
Speaker 2: think we need to make the distinction here. We don't.
Speaker 2: We're not despising the people. We're not despising like I said, nature,
Speaker 2: but we are despising these manifestations that people and our
Speaker 2: passions bring into the world. If you look at all
Speaker 2: of the nastiness in our world, all of it is
Speaker 2: a result of the passions, all of it. So you
Speaker 2: can't soften this thing. There is no soft place for it,
Speaker 2: to make a little safe spot for these things. They're
Speaker 2: just they have no place here and we need to
Speaker 2: destroy them. And that's what the church fathers taught us
Speaker 2: or teach us, is to separate the two. And I
Speaker 2: think that that's the best approach. But when it comes
Speaker 2: to I just want to make a point about detachment
Speaker 2: really quick. Yeah. It goes back to this very topic.
Speaker 2: When we desire something, it causes us suffering. When we
Speaker 2: desire to have money because 'rapport that desire causes suffering.
Speaker 2: When we are unhealthy and we desire health and it's
Speaker 2: chronic and this desire for this health, which is not possible,
Speaker 2: it causes us to suffer. The more that we say,
Speaker 2: may it be blessed, period, may it be blessed, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, that is the detachment prayer. That is the
Speaker 2: detachment phrase that actually done across the board. No matter
Speaker 2: what's happening in a person's life, whether it's tragic or awful,
Speaker 2: or whether you're being showered with blessings that are worldly blessings,
Speaker 2: it should be may it be blessed. And I don't
Speaker 2: care about it.
Speaker 1: You know that will be done.
Speaker 2: That will be done. It applies to people that can't
Speaker 2: have children. If you can't have a child, but you're
Speaker 2: pining to have kids and you know you can't, that
Speaker 2: desire causes you to suffer. Let it go, Let it
Speaker 2: all go, and replace it all with prayer, all of it,
Speaker 2: all of it goes to May it be blessed.
Speaker 1: Amen, Amen, Glory to God in all things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And that's that's that's I mean, a prayer is a
Speaker 1: maxim uh. I mean that's that's the prayer. I prayer
Speaker 1: all day, every day throughout the day. I mean, if
Speaker 1: if something good happens, glory to you God in all things,
Speaker 1: take keep keep me, keep me humble. Right. If something
Speaker 1: bad is happening, glory to you God and all things.
Speaker 1: I mean, give me the perspective that I need. Teach
Speaker 1: me what I need to learn through this. I mean,
Speaker 1: just it's all about perspective. Right. So you use a word,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not your word, but you are using
Speaker 1: a word the passions. Now they're not a complete equivalent
Speaker 1: with sin. So if you could distinguish what the sin,
Speaker 1: what sin is, and what the passions are, and also,
Speaker 1: if you will, sin has a lot of baggage. We
Speaker 1: can only speak from our American perspective. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the universal perception conception of sin is, but in America,
Speaker 1: as soon as you use the S word, it's like
Speaker 1: you kind of let's just create a straw man here.
Speaker 1: Let's imagine that it's a non religious person and they
Speaker 1: hear you use that word, that S word sin, they
Speaker 1: immediately see some in their mind, hateful, bigoted, you know,
Speaker 1: fire and brimstone preacher telling you that you're sinful. And
Speaker 1: so as a result, I think they almost protect sin itself,
Speaker 1: imaging themselves to a degree. I understand because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of baggage wrapped up in that word. And so
Speaker 1: when you use the word passions, I think it could
Speaker 1: almost be more helpful. But if you could just define
Speaker 1: the two and what the difference is.
Speaker 2: I firmly believe that one of the great psychological tragedies
Speaker 2: in the West is a misunderstanding of sin. It is
Speaker 2: informing the worldview of everyone, Like you mentioned, religious and
Speaker 2: non religious view the world through the lens of this
Speaker 2: of sin as as they understand it, and the misunderstanding
Speaker 2: here is what causes a tremendous amount of theological discord
Speaker 2: or theological misunderstanding, which causes people to leave God and
Speaker 2: the Church. You know, sin, as I described in the book,
Speaker 2: and the church fathers talk about this sin comes from
Speaker 2: a word that they believe. It comes from a word
Speaker 2: that is used in archery, where you are shooting at
Speaker 2: a target and you miss the mark. Missing the mark
Speaker 2: is a sin in archery. Very very interesting idea. I
Speaker 2: love that idea because when you're in archery, you're doing
Speaker 2: something av you're trying, and you're hitting a target and
Speaker 2: you go up to the target afterwards and you see
Speaker 2: where you land it. That's called self evaluation. And you're
Speaker 2: looking and you're seeing did I make it in the
Speaker 2: target or did I come out into the outer rings
Speaker 2: or not. You're trying, You're trying to get in the target.
Speaker 2: That's the whole point. So missing the mark is a
Speaker 2: much better way to understand sin. Yes, sin in the
Speaker 2: modern person's understanding is a tool for judgment, a tool
Speaker 2: for condemnation a tool for shame, and this is absolutely
Speaker 2: not helpful because like the archer, the archer is trying
Speaker 2: to improve accusation and shame and judgment. It's just hurting somebody.
Speaker 2: It's not fair, not fair at all. So sin is
Speaker 2: when we miss the mark. And then the church fathers
Speaker 2: have amazing teachings on the passions. Passions. There's typically there's
Speaker 2: eight of them. There's some church fathers that have seven.
Speaker 2: There's some that identify eight, and they use words a
Speaker 2: little bit differently, but ultimately the list is this gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, despair,
Speaker 2: despondency or sadness, vain, glory and pride. Those are the passions.
Speaker 2: These are the things that cause us to suffer. And
Speaker 2: the word pacio, which means to suffer, that's what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, is suffering. So each of these passions,
Speaker 2: the church Fathers are clear to identify them as being.
Speaker 2: They have a natural place when they're ordered. So if
Speaker 2: you look at gluttony, for example, we are supposed to eat,
Speaker 2: we're supposed to drink, you know, we have to do
Speaker 2: these things. But when it's disordered, it can kill us. Literally.
Speaker 2: The main thing that's the cause of death in the
Speaker 2: US is heart disease, which is tied to diet. So
Speaker 2: when this passion is in its rightful place, it's not
Speaker 2: a passion and it's a natural thing that the body does.
Speaker 2: And that would apply to lust as well. Ust when
Speaker 2: it's disordered, becomes out of control and it controls a
Speaker 2: person's life, and it can destroy marriages and so on.
Speaker 2: But when it's controlled with self control and chastity, even
Speaker 2: in marriage, chastity can be a thing, it can produce life,
Speaker 2: Like to share in the ability of actually creating a
Speaker 2: human being with God is an insane thing, Like thinking
Speaker 2: about that is just mind blowing. So there's, on the
Speaker 2: one hand, the passion of lust, and on the controlled
Speaker 2: side there is the building of a family, which is
Speaker 2: like the most important thing in society. When all these
Speaker 2: passions are ordered, they are actually beautiful. But when they're disordered,
Speaker 2: they become a passion, and that's when they just destroy us.
Speaker 2: They become an addiction, they become a bad habit that
Speaker 2: it gives come something that destroys our life and the
Speaker 2: lives of those around us. And that would include also sadness.
Speaker 2: For instance, sadness has a place it's that moment when
Speaker 2: we're repentant for our mistakes or our sins, where we
Speaker 2: feel remorse. It doesn't mean it to be sustained over time.
Speaker 2: Remembrance of wrongs and obsessing over something I did twenty
Speaker 2: years ago is not repentance, but that sadness in the
Speaker 2: moment is crucial for moving forward towards God. You know
Speaker 2: the other passions as well. Pride. It's okay to have some.
Speaker 2: You know, you accomplish something and you feel good about that.
Speaker 2: That's okay because it makes you want to move forward
Speaker 2: and get better. But when it becomes where you think
Speaker 2: yourself is better than everyone else and obviously just way
Speaker 2: out of whack. So that's the difference from the church
Speaker 2: Father's teachings on sin versus the passions. Now the church Fathers,
Speaker 2: especially in the phil Callia, they emphasize the passions and
Speaker 2: working on them more because those are the root causes
Speaker 2: of what caused human dysfunction in the human condition. Are
Speaker 2: the passions instances of sin, Yes, they should be corrected
Speaker 2: or repented for, but these instances aren't the thing. The
Speaker 2: thing is the passions. You know, when you break the
Speaker 2: fast land and you eat, what is it a beef
Speaker 2: burrito whatever, you know, but you're not accustomed to doing that. Okay,
Speaker 2: you've made a mistake, move on, you know. But when
Speaker 2: you're doing this repeatedly and you gain weight and you're sick,
Speaker 2: and your doctors saying you have diabetes and all this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, it's out of hand, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Church Fathers are brilliant at focusing on the root causes,
Speaker 2: the root causes of sin, and when the root causes
Speaker 2: are addressed, then the other sins clear up. You know.
Speaker 2: It's kind of just the same things as you know,
Speaker 2: a doctor in the body, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean in the book, I don't think this
Speaker 1: is unique to you, but you brought it to me.
Speaker 1: So thank you that the Church Fathers were known as
Speaker 1: church doctors or as just spiritual doctors. And it's like, man,
Speaker 1: so much of this would the modern world suffers from
Speaker 1: soul sickness, but we don't even realize it because most
Speaker 1: people don't even think that they have a soul, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, you start the book talking about the importance
Speaker 1: of worldview, and this is something that's really important to
Speaker 1: me because for many years I've held the belief that
Speaker 1: most people I mean, everybody has a worldview. Like somebody
Speaker 1: the end of the day said that they're not religious.
Speaker 1: I said, everybody's religious. You're definitely religious. You might not
Speaker 1: think about it. That's true. So you could say, I
Speaker 1: don't think about religion, okay, but everybody has a religion.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as neutrality, right, Everybody has a worldview.
Speaker 1: The biggest problem is that nobody thinks that they do,
Speaker 1: or so many people in our modern world don't think
Speaker 1: that they hold a worldview, and their worldviews are discordant,
Speaker 1: I mean completely cognitively dissonant. And you know I think
Speaker 1: that well, I don't think, I know, look around. It
Speaker 1: leads to chaos. And so you start the book, I think,
Speaker 1: very appropriately talking about the most important thing that somebody
Speaker 1: can do is have a well formed worldview.
Speaker 2: How yeah, yeah, you pointed out something that's extremely important.
Speaker 2: And I think that this is only the sickness in
Speaker 2: our in our world. It's not even just American culture.
Speaker 2: It's actually PERVASI it's all pervasive now, it's everywhere for
Speaker 2: the most part, this illness because our souls are starved
Speaker 2: and we our world views are completely out of whack
Speaker 2: and in discord because we don't really know how to
Speaker 2: critically think anymore, which is really weird to me. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the formation of the worldview I think people are finding
Speaker 2: in the or. This is why the Orthodarchs Church is
Speaker 2: probably growing up blowing up like it is, is that
Speaker 2: people know they're sick, but they don't know how or why,
Speaker 2: and they encounter the Orthodox Faith or the Church of
Speaker 2: Christ that is Apostles and they see it's like a
Speaker 2: it's a it's a it's a massive well and you
Speaker 2: drop this bucket in here and the water is endless.
Speaker 2: It really truly is endless, this worldview. Like I am
Speaker 2: surrounded right now with books. They're everywhere all you know,
Speaker 2: going all the way back to the de Decay and
Speaker 2: the early Apostolic documents, all the way up to Elder
Speaker 2: Paieesius sitting right here and St. Mectarius of Aguina. You know,
Speaker 2: this whole worldview. The crazy part about it is that
Speaker 2: over the course of two thousand years, it's remained completely unaltered.
Speaker 2: It hasn't veered, it hasn't been changed. It's consistent over time,
Speaker 2: and it works. It works. And this is the difference,
Speaker 2: and I say this in my book, the difference in
Speaker 2: modern psychology and therapy versus the church. Modern psychology is
Speaker 2: trying to address these symptoms, you know, and it's helpful
Speaker 2: in a crisis, and there are tools in there that
Speaker 2: could be useful. I'm not discrediting that, But the Church
Speaker 2: gives us the tools to truly heal the soul to
Speaker 2: the degree of making a saint out of a person.
Speaker 2: That's astonishing, and psychology and modern approaches will never ever
Speaker 2: come close to that. They will help you cope, they
Speaker 2: will help you get through something, and they will give
Speaker 2: you some tools. But the Church actually wants to shape
Speaker 2: you into a saint. It's a holy person, which is wild.
Speaker 1: You say, you say, it's the purpose of life.
Speaker 2: It's the purpose and that The irony in all of that,
Speaker 2: which always has kind of bothered me a little bit,
Speaker 2: is that the Church is calling us to be a saint,
Speaker 2: and Saint Paul is calling his people's saints while in
Speaker 2: his epistles, but we're not supposed to even notice that
Speaker 2: it's happening at all, which is really funny. But we're
Speaker 2: supposed to supposed to still be working on this journey,
Speaker 2: you know, not necessarily to be a saint. But the
Speaker 2: idea is self purifying, purifying ourselves to the grace of God,
Speaker 2: you know, which means uprooting and dealing with these passions
Speaker 2: so that we can be better closer to God, which
Speaker 2: is the term it's theosis, which I don't like using
Speaker 2: that too lightly because it's it's very important seeing but yes,
Speaker 2: we're called to be saints, and my daughters, they're called
Speaker 2: to be saints, which is why I wrote this book.
Speaker 2: I want them to know that God is drawing them
Speaker 2: like a tractor beam to him because he wants to
Speaker 2: sanctify them, wants to sanctify you and me, which is crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I talked to uh to Martin Shaw on another
Speaker 1: podcast and reading his book. He talked about and I'd
Speaker 1: really like, I mean, you having spent time in monasteries,
Speaker 1: and many of our modern saints and just saints throughout
Speaker 1: history were monastics. But he said something along the lines
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mucky it up, but uh, something like he
Speaker 1: wants to make the word saint a little dirtier and
Speaker 1: and and and take the shine off of it a
Speaker 1: little bit, and in doing so, make it a little
Speaker 1: bit more approachable, that that's something that you can actually become,
Speaker 1: and that when you experience somebody in this world and
Speaker 1: they make your life better, or they do something that
Speaker 1: just brings you, that shines that you see the face
Speaker 1: of Christ through them, right, that that's what the halo is,
Speaker 1: and and you walk away from them thinking was that
Speaker 1: a saint?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean it's so beautiful. But even just the concept,
Speaker 1: like if you told me, yeah, I want to become
Speaker 1: a saint, I think that's really nice. Justin but aren't
Speaker 1: you supposed to be aren't you supposed to be a
Speaker 1: little bit of a saint? Would never say that, right?
Speaker 1: It almost feels like lacking in humility to strive for sainthood.
Speaker 1: But I mean you use the word try the other
Speaker 1: the other day earlier, and for some reason, that word
Speaker 1: just I cling to it. When you said it, I
Speaker 1: was like you talked about trying. It's like like wearing
Speaker 1: something that looks ridiculous and you can't make fun of
Speaker 1: me because I know it's ridiculous ironic that everybody's everybody
Speaker 1: everybody is kind of intentionally ironic because trying isn't cool. Right,
Speaker 1: If I try and fail, then you can make fun
Speaker 1: of me, But if I'm ironically dressed, you can't make
Speaker 1: fun of me because the joke's on you, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that that kind of ironic approach to the world,
Speaker 1: and also with the nihilistic view of the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about soul sickness, but the real
Speaker 1: key is just to try.
Speaker 2: One of the best, one of the great teachings that
Speaker 2: I learned. It's very simple and it makes sense. It's
Speaker 2: it's wonderful. God doesn't require perfection. He wants progress. And
Speaker 2: I really believe that, you know, we we kind of
Speaker 2: get hung up on this idea that God needs us
Speaker 2: to be perfect in the moment and it's never going
Speaker 2: to happen. I know that Christ says that, but I
Speaker 2: think that a lot of things that Christ said were
Speaker 2: extreme to kind of push us, you know, not you know,
Speaker 2: we're not supposed to cut off our hand. We sin
Speaker 2: with it, you know, but we're supposed to think in
Speaker 2: that fervent way, you know. And I think that the
Speaker 2: progress is what we need, you know, as long as
Speaker 2: we're moving forward towards Him. That's the ladder we're climbing.
Speaker 2: We're climbing, you know, as long as we're on that ladder.
Speaker 2: And my wife has a funny way of putting it.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'm sometimes clinging to the bottom rung with
Speaker 2: one fingernail, you know, Yeah, And that's how we feel
Speaker 2: often is like, but we're still on it, you know,
Speaker 2: you're clinging no matter what. We're not going to give up.
Speaker 2: And there's Chris at the top of that ladder, and
Speaker 2: we're we're not taking our gaze off.
Speaker 1: Of him exactly. I mean, you took the words out
Speaker 1: of my mouth. We're not taking the gaze off of him.
Speaker 1: Because when we talk about sin, which you talk about
Speaker 1: the meaning being missing the mark, I mean, just stick
Speaker 1: with the archery. I mean, you're trying missing the mark.
Speaker 1: Where sin goes wrong is when you stop trying to
Speaker 1: climb the ladder towards Christ and you start looking at justin.
Speaker 1: You missed the mark over there, I mean, unless it's
Speaker 1: out of love, a corrective out of love. Amen, we
Speaker 1: need that. I need you, you need me. I mean
Speaker 1: we're not saved alone, which is also a very dangerous
Speaker 1: paradigm to fall into, whether it's you know me and
Speaker 1: my Bible or Jesus is my buddy, or any of
Speaker 1: these kind of false counterfeit Christ. So sin can be
Speaker 1: dangerous when it's finger pointing, but it can be helpful
Speaker 1: when it's used as a tool to keep progressing, to
Speaker 1: keep trying, to keep trying to hit the mark.
Speaker 2: Saint Anthony, I put this in that in my book,
Speaker 2: Saint Anthony says, without temptation, no one can be saved.
Speaker 2: Amazing idea. When you hear that, you're like, that's not Christian,
Speaker 2: and you're like, that is Christian. It's almost like, you know,
Speaker 2: science is dedicated on failure and through multiple amounts, you know,
Speaker 2: times of failure, we come to an outcome that we
Speaker 2: find the truth. You know, the same applies to the
Speaker 2: spiritual life. We need failure, we need temptation. We need
Speaker 2: these things to shine a light on the areas that
Speaker 2: we need to work. Otherwise, why we get we soften
Speaker 2: up into complacency and apathy.
Speaker 1: We're not zombies, and you know we have free will.
Speaker 1: And in order to be tempted, you need the choice.
Speaker 1: And in order to truly love, you have to if
Speaker 1: you have no choice but to love me, I mean,
Speaker 1: is that really love at all?
Speaker 2: We need to fall. We need to fall too, and
Speaker 2: I know that that's not fun or anything. But there's
Speaker 2: a great quote in the Desert Fathers. I don't think
Speaker 2: I put this in the book, but there's a great
Speaker 2: story in The Desert Fathers where this monk, younger monk,
Speaker 2: is going to abba SISSOI is saying, dude, I keep
Speaker 2: falling and getting back up, like you keep saying falling,
Speaker 2: getting back up, falling, getting back up, Like how long
Speaker 2: do I do this? And he said until you're proficient
Speaker 2: at falling or getting back up. Yeah, that's a great answer.
Speaker 2: You're like, okay, all right, I'll go back and keep
Speaker 2: doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was only a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that somebody on a podcast said that, you know,
Speaker 1: evil does not exist on its own. Nothing evil exists
Speaker 1: in isolation. It is always the opposite of something good.
Speaker 1: It's a perversion of the good. And when you think
Speaker 1: about sin and the passions, they're not fun to think about.
Speaker 1: And to be honest with you, when I I was
Speaker 1: so excited to read your book and I I messaged
Speaker 1: you immediately after finishing the introduction, I was like, your
Speaker 1: book's incredible. You're like, oh, well, the rest of it
Speaker 1: sucks or something like that, something humble, but I just
Speaker 1: couldn't wait. But at the same time, I was like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a bit of a downer, right,
Speaker 1: It's gonna be about sin. I'm a very peaceful guy.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a sensitive guy. I've never been very into
Speaker 1: fighting or you know, anything like that violence. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm chill. And so the whole concept of fighting and sin,
Speaker 1: it feels like a downer, right, But your book could
Speaker 1: not have been more uplifting. And the section on the
Speaker 1: virtues or to God, I mean, before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the mindset of a fighter and why
Speaker 1: that's necessary. And even though that is jarring to me
Speaker 1: because I'm I don't want to fight, why is it
Speaker 1: necessary to have the mindset of a fighter?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, first of all, we everything is everything in
Speaker 2: the book is predicated on the idea that there is
Speaker 2: a God. And it's not a question a philosophical question
Speaker 2: about things or meaning of life or ay, you believe
Speaker 2: in God, you love God. You know. Next is you
Speaker 2: believe you have a soul. So once you have those
Speaker 2: two things, you have to believe your soul is worth
Speaker 2: fighting for. And everyone knows that their soul is in
Speaker 2: a battle. We were all in a battle all the time,
Speaker 2: like saying Nikolai Vilamirevitch wisely says, my whole life is
Speaker 2: a battle between me and myself, me as I am
Speaker 2: and me as God wants me to be. We're all
Speaker 2: in that, and that includes my atheist friends. They're still fighting.
Speaker 2: They're still trying not to do something crazy or offend somebody,
Speaker 2: or say something mean, or go out and hurt somebody.
Speaker 2: They're still holding back, you know, and they're still trying
Speaker 2: to control themselves. But the Church gives us a massive
Speaker 2: way of viewing all of that that's much broader than
Speaker 2: just kind of trying to function function, you know. The
Speaker 2: mindset of the fighter in the book I draw this
Speaker 2: from the book Unseen Warfare by you know, it was
Speaker 2: edited by Theofan the Recluse and Nico Demus of the
Speaker 2: of the Holy Mountain, but it was written by Lorenzo's Polly,
Speaker 2: which was a Catholic monastic. In that book, he says
Speaker 2: the mindset of the fighter must be never rely on yourself,
Speaker 2: have a daring trust in God, and always pray those
Speaker 2: are interesting, never rely on yourself. Like that's a really
Speaker 2: hard thing for a modern American to wrap their head around,
Speaker 2: because I personally was taught and raised to only trust yourself,
Speaker 2: but to relinquish that and to trust in God and
Speaker 2: also the Church and the sacramental life of the Church
Speaker 2: and your guide or spiritual father as opposed to yourself,
Speaker 2: is liberating way to let go of all of our
Speaker 2: preconceived notions that are causing us so much pain and suffering,
Speaker 2: and to learn a new way, you know, to having
Speaker 2: daring trust in God is the other disposition of the fighter,
Speaker 2: to completely and fully trust whatever is happening, whether it's
Speaker 2: good or bad. We know that God is fully in
Speaker 2: control and either allowing things to happen or think things
Speaker 2: are happening at his discretion. And then obviously praying without
Speaker 2: ceasing is like a given, you know. The disposition of
Speaker 2: the fighter must be one. That doesn't mean you're perfect
Speaker 2: in prayer, you've mastered prayer, or you're you know, some
Speaker 2: guy on you know doing Jesus prayer all the time.
Speaker 2: But you're trying again, You're trying, You're trying to keep
Speaker 2: reverting yourself back to prayer. That's why when we switch
Speaker 2: in the book from all this the devices and passions
Speaker 2: and sin, once you've switched the page over to the virtues,
Speaker 2: you feel this sense of relief. Amen, mercy, I made
Speaker 2: it through this tough stuff which I had to go through.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk about how this stuff is supposed to
Speaker 2: flourish in my soul and make me joyful and content
Speaker 2: and happy with the grace of God moving through my life,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's where the virtues kick in.
Speaker 1: Well, I told, well, I've told several people this since
Speaker 1: I finished your book. In trying to describe it, I thought,
Speaker 1: do you remember I think it was Bennett maybe back
Speaker 1: at Bennett the Book of Virtue.
Speaker 2: I love that book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you just wrote the modern version. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny you would say that that book is
Speaker 2: a major influence in my life. Actually, really absolutely, I
Speaker 2: love that book and the way it's presented. I love
Speaker 2: it absolutely, a man.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, when I finished your book, or maybe midway
Speaker 1: through whenever, I was like, this is like the Book
Speaker 1: of Virtues but for a modern reader, and kind of
Speaker 1: like like we all need those modern adaptations, right, because
Speaker 1: I haven't looked, honest to God, I haven't looked at
Speaker 1: the Book of Virtue since I was maybe ten eleven
Speaker 1: years old. But I still remember it and I remember,
Speaker 1: like you loving it, but it was kind of like
Speaker 1: old timey right, right, that's right, and yours is much more.
Speaker 1: It's for the modern the modern fighter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, he's good at gathering these stories and putting
Speaker 2: together that tell these narratives about virtue that are accessible.
Speaker 2: The Church Fathers are ruthless in how they present these things.
Speaker 2: They're ruthless and how they present the passions, and they're
Speaker 2: ruthless and how they present the virtues. They introduced the
Speaker 2: machinery behind it, the mechanics of how this stuff is
Speaker 2: supposed to be in our life, and they really confront
Speaker 2: us with this stuff. That book is inspiring, but the
Speaker 2: Church Fathers are confrontational, like push us to the edge. Man, Well,
Speaker 2: we need to be pushed, oh, one hundred percent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's self control is like you know, we
Speaker 2: talked about detachment. That's huge. Self control for the modern
Speaker 2: person is one of the things that I'm seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of people, especially men, young men, struggling with the
Speaker 2: idea of controlling yourself. Like in the Greek philosophy and
Speaker 2: with the Greek set of virtues, self control was huge.
Speaker 2: Self control was what that's what defined a man. And
Speaker 2: our culture is the opposite. You want to get high
Speaker 2: and play video games and barely pull off your job
Speaker 2: and have a clunky relationship with some girl. I mean,
Speaker 2: self control is what a man should be. It's not fighting,
Speaker 2: it's not standing puffing up your chest. It is having
Speaker 2: that quiet self control and that virtue alone. When somebody
Speaker 2: starts really pushing on that one and trying to implement
Speaker 2: it in their life, they're seeing that they have to
Speaker 2: they have to apply it all over the place. Self control.
Speaker 2: With my Let's say i have issues with my parents
Speaker 2: and how they raise me, and I'm angry about that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to exert self control in this zone and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to let the anger bother me. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have I'm going to be detached from it, you know.
Speaker 2: Or the person in line, or the person that's you know,
Speaker 2: in the car driving by me and he's rushing past me,
Speaker 2: or whatever. I can be angry and upset, or I
Speaker 2: can just have self control. And also with food and
Speaker 2: with all these other different things. Self control, the virtue
Speaker 2: of self control is huge. It's easy. It's easier to
Speaker 2: try to implement other ones, like kindness. You know, you know,
Speaker 2: most people try to be kind, even though in our
Speaker 2: parts were not neuosity and gratefulness is another one that's
Speaker 2: really important for modern people. We get stuck in our
Speaker 2: we get justified in our moods and our views of
Speaker 2: things that are not grateful, and we feel like we're
Speaker 2: justified in these areas and we're it's just causing us discord.
Speaker 2: But the virtue of gratitude, once we realize I'm going
Speaker 2: to be grateful for everything, the good, the bad, the
Speaker 2: people in my life that are difficult, and the people
Speaker 2: that are not gratitude the virtue of gratitude, you know. Obviously,
Speaker 2: love is a huge one. Love is a grossly misunderstood
Speaker 2: by the modern American and goes back to the Beatles.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to throw it all on the Beatles,
Speaker 2: but as an example, there was a shift in America
Speaker 2: where love became something that it is absolutely not. It's
Speaker 2: this infatuation and that that is not it. You know,
Speaker 2: in the Greek there's several words for love, and aros
Speaker 2: is the one that we focus on and we kind
Speaker 2: of tend to forget that real love is the agape
Speaker 2: love where it's the husband taking care of the wife
Speaker 2: and she has a terminal illness, she has ms shows
Speaker 2: up every morning every day, takes care of her, deals
Speaker 2: with the harsh realities of that, and puts her to
Speaker 2: bed and prays for her and loves her through this suffering.
Speaker 2: You know, that's not a Beatles song and it would
Speaker 2: never go well on the radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these words right, like one
Speaker 1: word that I wanted to ask you to kind of
Speaker 1: dive into, because like sin, like love, there are words
Speaker 1: that we use.
Speaker 2: But or grace.
Speaker 1: I mean I talked to Martin Shaw about that. I
Speaker 1: named my son Grace and I still don't understand it.
Speaker 1: And I said, it's like that fish that that just
Speaker 1: you're trying to hold it and it keeps slipping out
Speaker 1: of your hands. And his response was, may it ever
Speaker 1: slip out of your hands? That we can't just stretch
Speaker 1: grace out on a rack of exegesus like it's grace, right,
Speaker 1: Some of these words are if we fully understood that.
Speaker 1: I think it's the life, our life's mission to just
Speaker 1: keep trying. Like you had it in your book that
Speaker 1: the process of trying to work out the will of
Speaker 1: God is how you know God. And even though it's frustrating,
Speaker 1: and even though you keep falling and getting that's the
Speaker 1: whole point that the obstacle is the path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what you're pointing out is the will of understanding
Speaker 2: the will of God in our life. That's my conclusion.
Speaker 2: And you know, trying to live an Orthodox life, trying
Speaker 2: clunkily to live an orthodox life, a Christian life. When
Speaker 2: I was younger, I you know, I wanted God to
Speaker 2: tell me his will, tell me what to do, tell
Speaker 2: me what decisions to make, and make it clear, just
Speaker 2: tell me, you know, just like make it easy. And
Speaker 2: I've learned over time that that's not how it works.
Speaker 2: And like you said, the whole point of everything is
Speaker 2: that relationship with Him to grow and to build, like
Speaker 2: I mentioned in the book, and the understanding the will
Speaker 2: of God. That we have to practice virtue. If we
Speaker 2: want to understand God's holy will, we have to be
Speaker 2: striving at least for holiness. Doesn't mean we have to
Speaker 2: be a holy person in the moment, but we have
Speaker 2: to be at least working towards it. The more that
Speaker 2: we activate the virtues in our life, the more that
Speaker 2: we can try to understand God's will, and the more
Speaker 2: that we're praying and rejecting our own will, like just
Speaker 2: shutting down our own will, the more his will becomes
Speaker 2: more parent. I use the analogy of the cell tower.
Speaker 2: The farther you are from the cell tower, the harder
Speaker 2: it is to hear to understand the words of the reception.
Speaker 2: Closer you are to the cell tower, the more you
Speaker 2: can actually hear it. So how can I, as a
Speaker 2: teenage kid, expect to hear God's will when I'm living
Speaker 2: entrenched in sin and dysfunction. You know, how am I
Speaker 2: going to hear it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: The door, the door really impacts me a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: in the in the New Testament, he says I am
Speaker 2: the door. He says, knock on the door and it
Speaker 2: will be open to you. These are really interesting ideas,
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, I think that
Speaker 2: discerning his will is really like you said just now,
Speaker 2: It's not about the do this or do that. It's
Speaker 2: about the relationship building with God. That is what the
Speaker 2: whole point of his will is. And so if we
Speaker 2: choose to go to college, or if we choose this
Speaker 2: surgery or not or whatever, all that stuff's good and
Speaker 2: we have to make those choices. But at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, he's the door. He is the door,
Speaker 2: and the door dissolves, it dissolves away, and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, we're just in his arms. And that's really
Speaker 2: what the whole point is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody, somebody told me, you know, we had we
Speaker 1: had somebody visiting our church for the first time, and
Speaker 1: one of my friends said that, I think it's Saint
Speaker 1: John the theologian, that his icon. It's not him with
Speaker 1: a scroll, it's not him with a book. It's him
Speaker 1: with his head leaned on Christ. That's theology, right, And
Speaker 1: we've got it so twisted around that it's just this
Speaker 1: set of ideas that we can figure out, that we can,
Speaker 1: you know, finally describe God. And it's just it's that
Speaker 1: relationship and not in the watered down Western version of
Speaker 1: a relationship with God where he's kind of like your buddy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really thank God. I've from a young
Speaker 1: age kind of felt very uncomfortable with the language that
Speaker 1: a lot of especially in the nineties, I felt like
Speaker 1: modern evangelicals were like throwing God on a T shirt
Speaker 1: and with like almost like beer slogans. I mean, the
Speaker 1: this blood's for you. I don't know if you remember that,
Speaker 1: but it it it's terrible, and it's a watering down
Speaker 1: of the Almighty in a way that just and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it becomes Hey, if he's your buddy,
Speaker 1: just like justin, you know he gets it. You know
Speaker 1: he's got to say. It's just we need to have
Speaker 1: that healthy fear, not fear like sinners in the hands
Speaker 1: of an angry God. Fear, but fear respect all wonder
Speaker 1: the leaning on and you talk about the cell tower,
Speaker 1: I've used a similar analogy in my own mind, where
Speaker 1: you know, I was on Mount Athos this summer and
Speaker 1: I'm newly Orthodox, and so I'm still recalibrating. I mean,
Speaker 1: you talked about your upbringing and you still bring I'm
Speaker 1: sure you still have a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: you that you carried with you as a young person,
Speaker 1: and it never really leaves you. You're constantly trying to
Speaker 1: retrain your senses in one way or another, and I
Speaker 1: always pray for discernment to help me understand it. I
Speaker 1: know this is where I need to be. I know
Speaker 1: this is the answer. But my bunny ears, you know,
Speaker 1: the old TV antenna bunny ears, they're not positioned quite
Speaker 1: right yet. So I'm getting a clear sick I can
Speaker 1: see I know that, like, let's say I'm trying to
Speaker 1: watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Green Bay Packers. I
Speaker 1: see it's on the screen.
Speaker 2: I see score.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fuzzy. I just have to get it right,
Speaker 1: you know. I know that this is the path I
Speaker 1: just have to work on myself. And like you said,
Speaker 1: the section of your book on the virtues, I was
Speaker 1: so excited as I was reading it. I was I
Speaker 1: didn't understand why. But and this is going to sound
Speaker 1: really silly, but something clicked to my mind that these
Speaker 1: are things we practice the virtues right, and it clicks.
Speaker 1: We could practice them like anything else. Like if you're
Speaker 1: a musician and I'm like, man, justin you're really good.
Speaker 1: How'd you get so good my practice? Now, maybe you've
Speaker 1: got an innate tendency for it, like, but we all
Speaker 1: of us have that. Like I am much more outgoing.
Speaker 1: That's my innate tendency. I don't have to work at that.
Speaker 1: So the virtues that stem from that ability, Glory to God.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit easier for me, but we all
Speaker 1: have those virtues that don't come as easily. Like you said,
Speaker 1: self control. I wrote down virtues that I want to
Speaker 1: work on, and you unknowingly admonished me. I mean that
Speaker 1: the umbrella of self control is much larger than we realize. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not just I've got to, you know, have a
Speaker 1: little bit less food on my plate. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's all encompassing. But that encourage Now that you talked
Speaker 1: about daring trust in God, well, adding the word daring,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's courage right in a way. But
Speaker 1: just this whole concept that the virtues are something that
Speaker 1: we can practice, it excited me.
Speaker 2: There's a good reason why it excited you and why
Speaker 2: it excites me and other people. We don't talk about
Speaker 2: it in our culture at Oh, when I was growing up,
Speaker 2: you're probably too young for this maybe, But when I
Speaker 2: was growing up, the first time I heard the word
Speaker 2: virtue was an advertisement for milk. The advertisement was milk,
Speaker 2: It's a virtue. And somebody has a cup of milk
Speaker 2: and they drink from it and there's a milk mustache.
Speaker 2: Milk is a virtue. And I was like, what is
Speaker 2: a virtue? And that's my first hearing of it. And
Speaker 2: that's when I was like ten or twelve, like I
Speaker 2: was older. We are starving ourselves in our culture from
Speaker 2: these things that are so natural for this soul. It's
Speaker 2: really tragic. It's actually very tragic. They should be a
Speaker 2: major part of our culture, but they're all supplanted by
Speaker 2: all of this nonsense, all this chaos, all this media.
Speaker 2: Media has zero in in these virtues. But I think
Speaker 2: it's fascinating to notice that when we practice the virtues
Speaker 2: deliberately and we're working on them, there, like I say
Speaker 2: in the book, they're like a tapestry. You're not working
Speaker 2: on one or the other necessarily. Sometimes we have to
Speaker 2: kind of focus on one. But they're kind of a
Speaker 2: thing that we try to integrate throughout our day, and
Speaker 2: we have thousands and thousands of moments every day where
Speaker 2: we have the opportunity to work, to practice theeds, to
Speaker 2: work on them. They happen all the time, and they're
Speaker 2: happening a lot of the time in our thoughts. Virtues
Speaker 2: activated in our thinking all the time, and we don't
Speaker 2: realize that because we're so stuck in our thinking patterns
Speaker 2: that are not virtue oriented. They're more self oriented. And
Speaker 2: this is what I think. The church fathers, especially Saint
Speaker 2: Besol the Great, talks about prayer, unceasing prayer. He talks
Speaker 2: about it as being not a thing that you do,
Speaker 2: which is it's important that we should show up and
Speaker 2: read the prayer or say the prayer whatever. But his
Speaker 2: whole point is that prayer should be a way of life, yes, state,
Speaker 2: And I think the virtues are the answer to that.
Speaker 2: When we are practicing the virtues, we are practicing a
Speaker 2: form of prayer in a certain sense. It doesn't have
Speaker 2: to have words attached to it. But when we show
Speaker 2: kindness to a stranger in a drive through, when we're
Speaker 2: getting food and we say, you know what, you have
Speaker 2: a beautiful smile, we change somebody's day in a second.
Speaker 2: And that brought virtue and prayer into the world in
Speaker 2: a way that we don't really think about. I think
Speaker 2: that that's the key why virtues are so exciting, is
Speaker 2: that they are natural to the soul, and the soul
Speaker 2: is starved from them, and when we implement them, the
Speaker 2: soul is joyful for that.
Speaker 1: No, you wrote that we're born for this, I mean
Speaker 1: we were created to experience the virtues because as we
Speaker 1: practice them and get better at them and see it,
Speaker 1: and we're not alone. Right when I see virtue in you,
Speaker 1: as long as it's not as long as I don't
Speaker 1: stumble into the the passion of envy. It's beautiful and
Speaker 1: I think that that's the march mark of wisdom and
Speaker 1: maturity is when you embrace the virtue of others and
Speaker 1: I and you love to see it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: talked about kindness like almost everybody loves kindness like it.
Speaker 1: But I mean, as I've gotten into this podcast world,
Speaker 1: you start realizing. I mean, we all kind of intuitively
Speaker 1: know it, but how much more than negativity travels and
Speaker 1: my story. I grew up in the world of apologetics.
Speaker 1: My dad had a large radio program. It was all
Speaker 1: about questions and answers and apologetics and I hated it.
Speaker 2: I hated it.
Speaker 1: It drow apologetics a defense of the faith that it
Speaker 1: fenced the faith for me. Because now that I believe
Speaker 1: that apologetics as as an older man, I understand the
Speaker 1: purpose of apologetics when properly utilized. We should all be
Speaker 1: able to defend the faith that we have or explain it.
Speaker 1: But I think so much of the apologetic world has
Speaker 1: ceased defending and started offending. It's going out and attacking,
Speaker 1: and there's so much nastiness. I see that, and it's
Speaker 1: something that really really it hurts my soul when I
Speaker 1: see it, right, I mean, you talk about I could
Speaker 1: see it in your face, and I can see the
Speaker 1: love for Christ in your face, especially when you talk
Speaker 1: about things like the virtues and you get so excited
Speaker 1: because you want to share it. That's an apologetic. That's Hey,
Speaker 1: I want you to have what I have because it's
Speaker 1: beautiful and I love you and I want you to
Speaker 1: know this and so much and even I mean you're
Speaker 1: well familiar with the concept of orthobros or internet orthodoxy
Speaker 1: or just but it's not isolated to orthodoxy. I mean
Speaker 1: it's all over the Internet under the umbrella of apologetics.
Speaker 1: There's such a nastiness that comes out. How do we
Speaker 1: I'm serious when I say it's something that really weighs
Speaker 1: heavy on my soul because it's it's as though, we
Speaker 1: love Christ right and we want him to be well represented,
Speaker 1: and when he's not, it hurts. How do we deal
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: Well, there's two there's several questions you're asking you Yes,
Speaker 2: sorry one The first one is okay, So for the apologetics,
Speaker 2: I don't go online much because I think it's a
Speaker 2: very toxic, dangerous area world part you know, the cyber
Speaker 2: realm is not very healthy spiritually. I get exposed to
Speaker 2: it through a lot of my God children and through
Speaker 2: friends and through people that I contact, and what I
Speaker 2: learned from them is the gross toxicity that's in there,
Speaker 2: especially within the Orthodox people or world or you know
Speaker 2: people you know judge very very judgy. It sounds like
Speaker 2: out there and very self righteous. The world's longest journey
Speaker 2: is the twelve inches from the mind to the heart. Now,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about apologetics, we're talking about mental fighting.
Speaker 2: We're talking about mental fighting. And yes, Christ exhibited that
Speaker 2: a little bit with the Pharisees, and it was really
Speaker 2: amazing to it. He was like, well, he's God, so
Speaker 2: he's perfect in his thinking. But he was like a
Speaker 2: lawyer the way he would counteract them with their their
Speaker 2: self righteousness, and he would completely undercut them. And it
Speaker 2: was amazing. But I think that we you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know about these apologists online and what theirs, you know,
Speaker 2: how their what their journey is with God or whatever.
Speaker 2: But I really I avoid all that stuff at all
Speaker 2: costs because the key to what we're doing here is
Speaker 2: not in their mind, it's in the heart. And the
Speaker 2: church fathers are very explicit in that you can. You
Speaker 2: cannot stink your way into heaven. You cannot argue or
Speaker 2: debate your way into heaven. You have to sink into
Speaker 2: the heart, and that means loving, caring. Kind of all
Speaker 2: these virtues, all these virtues when they're activated, and now
Speaker 2: an apologist, you know, I think that they all these virtues,
Speaker 2: you know, I encourage them to activate all these virtues
Speaker 2: while they're talking to people. But man, this this endless
Speaker 2: talking is really a distraction from the one thing needful.
Speaker 2: It's a massive distraction. I think that's the hurt that
Speaker 2: you feel when you see this this world. I call
Speaker 2: it the underbelly of Christianity. You know, it's this thing
Speaker 2: that it has, this it's justified and that it's trying
Speaker 2: to defend the faith, but it's also gross, and I
Speaker 2: think that it's actually more gratifying for the soul to
Speaker 2: just show somebody kindness and love, you know. Like even listening.
Speaker 2: I don't argue with anybody ever, I just don't like it.
Speaker 2: It's not my thing. I like listening. I really enjoy
Speaker 2: listening to people, whether I agree with them or not.
Speaker 2: And listening, I believe is a form of caring for
Speaker 2: somebody else, you know, and that's kind of not what
Speaker 2: apologetics or debating is. You know. Yes, people need an
Speaker 2: intellectual answer to some of these questions. Theological absolutely, So
Speaker 2: it's fine to try to research and understand things. But
Speaker 2: the endgame is that door. It's that door, It's that
Speaker 2: Christ and the encounter you could. It's just it's not
Speaker 2: found in words and debates. You know. Church fathers aren't
Speaker 2: eat all this stuff, and they perfectly did it, so
Speaker 2: we don't need to do it anymore. Let's just if
Speaker 2: you if you have a problem, read the church fathers.
Speaker 2: Otherwise go pray.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a an artist and he has this mug
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a saint and he's holding a
Speaker 1: scroll and it says, just shut up. And I from
Speaker 1: the moment I saw it, I was, I love that
Speaker 1: so much because we talk too much. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and even embarking on the process of podcasting, I thought, man,
Speaker 1: I feel very conflicted about it because on one hand,
Speaker 1: it is helpful for people, and and and I grabbed
Speaker 1: one of the young men in our church who just
Speaker 1: he is just I'm so I use the word proud, notically,
Speaker 1: I'm just proud of him, like I'm proud of my
Speaker 1: son when he does well. I look at him and
Speaker 1: I say, man, I see the light of Christ shining
Speaker 1: through you. And he came to the church through some
Speaker 1: of this negative online you know, discourse, and I asked
Speaker 1: him about it, and he said, when I was watching
Speaker 1: those videos, it's what I needed in the moment, I
Speaker 1: didn't have the love of Christ in my heart, and
Speaker 1: glory to God had led me here. But I don't
Speaker 1: watch those videos anymore.
Speaker 2: And so we're at a dilemma here with this whole
Speaker 2: topic that you're talking about. We're at a very serious
Speaker 2: breaking point in my opinion. Yes, ninety nine percent of
Speaker 2: people that I encounter find Orthodoxy or the Church through
Speaker 2: this cyber realm. They do, and the Gospel has spread
Speaker 2: there and the angels working there somehow. The demon's working
Speaker 2: there too, no doubt. But I'm waiting for the desert
Speaker 2: to show itself. It reminds me a lot of when
Speaker 2: Christianity became legalized, like America is legalizing Orthodoxy. It's letting
Speaker 2: it become, it's letting it flourish. And whenever something becomes
Speaker 2: normal or flourishes, it gets comfortable, and that's when we
Speaker 2: run to the desert. And I think that that's the
Speaker 2: next step, is that there's people that will flee the
Speaker 2: Internet and flee to their parishes in the sacramental life
Speaker 2: of the church and shut the thing down and unplug.
Speaker 2: I really think that's the next desert for us, is
Speaker 2: to just simply unplug. And I say that while I'm plugged.
Speaker 1: In, it's the tension that we feel, right because the
Speaker 1: longer that I'm in the church, the more that all
Speaker 1: I want to do is be in the church. And
Speaker 1: I always joke that it's like when we're children and
Speaker 1: we were playing tag and you add that safe like
Speaker 1: that whatever it is like a fire hydrant, and when
Speaker 1: you touch that, you can't get me. And the church
Speaker 1: feels like that, and I just want to flee there.
Speaker 1: I want to I want more and more of it,
Speaker 1: and I want and I want to see it overflow,
Speaker 1: like a fire hydrant that's gotten the thing knocked off,
Speaker 1: like I just because there's so much there and I
Speaker 1: want everybody to have it. And I just, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm an optimist by nature. And well, I guess that's
Speaker 1: a question that I wanted to ask you. I mean,
Speaker 1: you talk about that the world isn't positive or negative,
Speaker 1: that it's a third thing. Well you called it a
Speaker 1: third rail mystical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you mean by that? The optimist and
Speaker 2: there's the pessimistic, but then there's the mystic, and the
Speaker 2: mystic acknowledges both, you know. You I think being a
Speaker 2: full on pessimist or a full on optimist is not
Speaker 2: the real path. I think it's in the middle. We
Speaker 2: and this is my opinion. You know, this is not
Speaker 2: from a church father's actually, but there is a way
Speaker 2: to acknowledge both at the same time, which is the
Speaker 2: mystical path, which a lot of that well, a lot
Speaker 2: of the church father especially the recent ones, are able
Speaker 2: to kind of demonstrate that. So that that's kind of
Speaker 2: what I believe, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, no, and it's it's it's that it's the
Speaker 1: understanding that the polarities exist, the passions and the virtues exist,
Speaker 1: So that that's optimism and pessimism right there, and in
Speaker 1: between is the mysticism where we just we do our
Speaker 1: best to live in that world. I mean, we're this
Speaker 1: far into the the podcast and I didn't even ask
Speaker 1: you about the unseen realm. I mean, that's something that
Speaker 1: we've completely forgotten to it for got. I mean, most
Speaker 1: people don't even believe that it exists, or they do
Speaker 1: in a very discordant way, like I think it was
Speaker 1: Nathan Jacobs, and I forgive me if I'm wrong, And
Speaker 1: is uh becoming truly human? Where you know, some overwhelming
Speaker 1: percentage of these people that didn't have the nuns, that
Speaker 1: didn't have a belief still believed in angels, And so
Speaker 1: how do you square that circle?
Speaker 2: Most people know that there's something going on. Even my
Speaker 2: atheist friends know there's something going on, and no one
Speaker 2: can if a few people can kind of put their
Speaker 2: finger on it. But cultures throughout history have known this
Speaker 2: very very like it's almost natural, like the worldview that
Speaker 2: most primitive cultures and even in more advanced cultures, they
Speaker 2: all had this understanding of an unseen world and they
Speaker 2: would see it and they would experience it. It all
Speaker 2: comes from from cultural experience over time, you know. But
Speaker 2: what we've done in the modern times is that we've
Speaker 2: distracted ourselves so thoroughly and numbed ourselves so thoroughly that
Speaker 2: we don't really care and I think apathy. I write
Speaker 2: about that in Youth the Apocalypse, a different book. I
Speaker 2: wrote that apathy is this disease. It's modern disease of
Speaker 2: just simply not caring. And I think that what happens,
Speaker 2: and this is the beauty of suffering, is that God
Speaker 2: uses suffering to wake us up to this reality, allows
Speaker 2: suffering to do that for us, and it's a gift.
Speaker 2: I want to give an example of my grandfather, who
Speaker 2: was agnostic. He was married to my grandmother who was
Speaker 2: Seventh day Adventist, but quiet throughout their entire marriage, but
Speaker 2: she was devout in her heart. And when he got cancer,
Speaker 2: the first thing he did is turn to her and say,
Speaker 2: teach me. I need to know everything I read to
Speaker 2: me the Bible, show me prayer, show me all this
Speaker 2: stuff because I have to get my life figured out.
Speaker 2: You know, the suffering of cancer was actually the greatest
Speaker 2: blessing that ever happened to him. If you look at
Speaker 2: it from an eternal projectory, the suffering of cancer was
Speaker 2: the best thing ever for him because it purified him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, our goal in life is not to just
Speaker 2: stay alive. If that was the case, then everything that
Speaker 2: we're doing is completely futile.
Speaker 1: God wants to heal all of us, right like, not
Speaker 1: just physically, but spiritually not but more importantly spiritually. And
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, I think I'll mess up the paraphrase,
Speaker 1: but Jean Claude Larchet said something along the lines that
Speaker 1: physical health can actually be evil if it leads you
Speaker 1: away from God because we fall into that state of
Speaker 1: self sufficiency that we don't I'm okay, it's when we're ill.
Speaker 1: And you know, a couple of years ago, my wife
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer. She's in remission now, glory to God.
Speaker 1: And so many of the older people at church came
Speaker 1: up to us, huh, cancer, this would be good, brings
Speaker 1: you closer to Christ and to our modern sensibilities. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've told that story to people who are members of
Speaker 1: our church and they they almost get offended, like I
Speaker 1: can't believe they said that to you. But and and
Speaker 1: you know, only my wife could answer this for herself.
Speaker 1: But I saw her change through cancer for the positive.
Speaker 1: I mean, she wasn't waking up early to pray, she
Speaker 1: wasn't leaning on God as much before cancer. And what
Speaker 1: I always told her, and this is my prayer and
Speaker 1: belief hope that she's going to die an old lady.
Speaker 1: And I told her as she was going through this, said, look,
Speaker 1: God's going to lead you through this valley, and you're
Speaker 1: going to for whatever time he gives you, use it
Speaker 1: to help others, and they and I think even just
Speaker 1: watching her, I mean, so many people didn't know that
Speaker 1: she had cancer because she had this silent strength that
Speaker 1: she walked with it through that me. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got a little bit of a man cold right now
Speaker 1: and I'm miserable, and I always think, I don't think
Speaker 1: she tells me. She goes, I hope I die before
Speaker 1: you because I won't be able to handle you with
Speaker 1: any sort of affliction. So it's he grabs us with suffering.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what you said, but I mean, suffering
Speaker 1: is a blessing. I think you said the.
Speaker 2: Earth, the earth shattering thing that I experienced when I
Speaker 2: was a punk. First at the monaster is, one of
Speaker 2: the monks said this very thing that you just said,
Speaker 2: which is really really interesting. You know, the philosophers have
Speaker 2: been fighting over what the meaning of suffering is forever
Speaker 2: and they still don't have an answer. The church has
Speaker 2: a total answer for that. It's amazing. He said that
Speaker 2: whenever somebody is suffering in the in the church, and
Speaker 2: this comes specifically from Byzantine sort of worldview. Oh, God's
Speaker 2: visiting you, And I was like, what, like that was
Speaker 2: so an inversion of how I was taught to avoid suffering.
Speaker 2: Suffering is evil And He's like, no, God's visiting you,
Speaker 2: just like what you said was your wife. That is,
Speaker 2: that is the answer to the philosophical question of suffering,
Speaker 2: which Christ fulfilled on the cross. And you know, I
Speaker 2: put this in the book, the quote from I Forget
Speaker 2: His Name. He said that God didn't come to solve
Speaker 2: or eliminate human suffering. He came to fill it with
Speaker 2: his residence.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, God is visiting you. I'm stealing that and
Speaker 1: I hope it's I hope it sticks with me for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life because you're right, that's it's
Speaker 1: paradigm shattering. I mean, that's the thing like you and
Speaker 1: I'm I can hear already. Maybe it's just my upbringing
Speaker 1: and the apologetics world wherever everyone has a counter like, well,
Speaker 1: but why does God need that?
Speaker 2: Right? I mean, what what.
Speaker 1: So we experienced him? God is visiting you, hey man,
Speaker 1: thank you for that. Thank you. Spiritual warfare, I mean
Speaker 1: you talk about the unseen realm. My mom she's a
Speaker 1: prayer warrior and she's one of my best friends. I
Speaker 1: love her. Growing up, everything was spiritual warfare. If something
Speaker 1: and am I you know, I think we're all kind
Speaker 1: of materialist to a certain degree, even if we're brought up.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Western mindset seeps in by osmosis. And
Speaker 1: she would explain something bad going on. I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: so and so is just in a bad mood. She's, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's spiritual warfare, and she would just My mom's very
Speaker 1: emotive and spiritual warfare. I'm telling you, I know it.
Speaker 2: I know spiritual warfare.
Speaker 1: When I see it, and as I've gotten older, I go,
Speaker 1: like most things, like mom was right, most of our
Speaker 1: lives are just a complete experience of spiritual warfare. So
Speaker 1: to the uninitiated, what is spiritual warfare and how do
Speaker 1: we encounter it? And more importantly, how do we counter it.
Speaker 2: Somebody who critiqued my book recently said they were surprised
Speaker 2: that there was nothing spectacular in there about fighting demons,
Speaker 2: and that is completely deliberate. There's no there's nothing spectacular
Speaker 2: about spiritual life and unseen warfare. Unseen warfare largely takes
Speaker 2: place I identify the three enemies as the Church fathers do,
Speaker 2: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world not
Speaker 2: being you know, nature, but being these passions. The flesh,
Speaker 2: our bodies can be our enemy for us, and obviously
Speaker 2: the devil. I don't focus much on the devil because
Speaker 2: he is canceled when we activate all these virtues in
Speaker 2: the spiritual life. But spiritual warfare is this battle that's
Speaker 2: taking place. The battlefield is us and us walking through
Speaker 2: the world, and that would be you know, at school,
Speaker 2: we're being bombarded by thoughts and ideas and people and
Speaker 2: interactions and relationships. And the marketplace, all these places like
Speaker 2: supermarket is like a massive war zone where you have
Speaker 2: all this food and all this garbage that's trying to
Speaker 2: kill you, and then you have the pharmaceutical section on
Speaker 2: the other end to try to heal you enough to
Speaker 2: keep you alive. This war is everywhere all the time.
Speaker 2: But the father especially in the Philip Colia, they mentioned
Speaker 2: this frequently. It's largely taking place. It all starts with
Speaker 2: the thoughts. Our thoughts determine our lives in huge ways.
Speaker 2: And we don't have any classes in our culture, in
Speaker 2: our upbringing, in our education, systems to help people see
Speaker 2: this or talk about it or learn about it. But
Speaker 2: this fight, this unseen war, is happening in the way
Speaker 2: we think and feel about absolutely everything all the time.
Speaker 2: And that's where the passions flourish or the virtues flourish,
Speaker 2: is in this unseen war. And yes, this unseen war
Speaker 2: is influenced by demonic forces or demonic activity, but it's
Speaker 2: also influenced by our own proclivities, in our own bodies,
Speaker 2: you know. And all this stuff is taking place unseen.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting that the entire book can't be checked
Speaker 2: by science at all. But if you read it, you're like, huh,
Speaker 2: that's true. You know, all of this stuff is totally true,
Speaker 2: but it's completely not verifiable by any scientific method. But
Speaker 2: everyone acknowledges that they love. Yeah, I hate, you know,
Speaker 2: and that's not something that can be challenged or tested,
Speaker 2: you know, But it's unseen. So is our hate dominating
Speaker 2: us or is our love dominating us? This is the war.
Speaker 2: That's the one. I go back to that Saint nikolay
Speaker 2: Villa Miravich quote. You know, it's a battle between me
Speaker 2: and me. Saint John Cassian says the same thing. Our
Speaker 2: enemy is not outside. It's shut up with it. Mm
Speaker 2: hmmm mmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hey, so speaking of unseen, this is something that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about a lot. Also, my mother planted this,
Speaker 1: uh you know, pebble in my shoe. She just we
Speaker 1: don't talk enough about guardian angels. You've got to talk
Speaker 1: about you've got it. You've got to have somebody. She
Speaker 1: I mean, she wants who knows what she wants? God
Speaker 1: bless her. But she's right, we don't. And I think
Speaker 1: part of the reason is, at least for me personally,
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. I mean, that's that's a frontier
Speaker 1: that I would like to really get to know a
Speaker 1: little bit better, because, like you said, I mean, most
Speaker 1: people on the street, even if they don't have a
Speaker 1: well formed worldview, they still, oh, mom's looking down on me,
Speaker 1: she's an angel now or something like that. Like they
Speaker 1: we talk about angels as though it's intuitively understood, and
Speaker 1: yet when you really myself included, press on what is
Speaker 1: an angel? What are guardian angels? I don't have a
Speaker 1: good answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my wife and I were talking about this just
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago. I think that it's gonna
Speaker 2: be very interesting once when we're Dad, and in that realm,
Speaker 2: our angels, our guardian angels, are gonna. They display a
Speaker 2: great amount of patience with us. We attribute a lot
Speaker 2: of things to miracles, included two different things God. Normally
Speaker 2: the angels are our guardian angels are involved insanely all
Speaker 2: the time, and they don't get enough respect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, justin I was thinking about that just this morning.
Speaker 1: I in trying to understand that. I thought, how often,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you do this with some degree of
Speaker 1: trepidation because it's and maybe this is why we don't
Speaker 1: talk about it, because it's slippery. How often have I
Speaker 1: attributed something to God that may have actually been my
Speaker 1: guardian angel?
Speaker 2: A percent. We see this in the lives of saints,
Speaker 2: especially in a life of Saint Andrew the Fool for
Speaker 2: Christ's sake, he describes this unseen realm a lot because
Speaker 2: that's what he saw all the time. He was seeing
Speaker 2: the physical world in the spiritual world all the time.
Speaker 2: But our guardian angels are intervening, or a miracle is
Speaker 2: what I describe it as, this world crossing over with
Speaker 2: the other world. There's an overlap, and that's what a
Speaker 2: miracle is is you kind of see a glimpse into
Speaker 2: this other thing, you know, this other dimension of what
Speaker 2: we want to call it. But we my wife and
Speaker 2: I were getting up in the morning one day recently
Speaker 2: and our icon corner light went on by itself at
Speaker 2: prayer time, and you know, I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 2: one of our guardian angels, you know. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can say God did it, and God ultimately does everything
Speaker 2: in a certain sense, but I really believe that was
Speaker 2: our guardian angel saying prayer time. And then it happened
Speaker 2: again at evening prayers. You know, I think these little
Speaker 2: things that if we're tuned to the spiritual realm, we
Speaker 2: realize there's far more things happening than we understand or knowledge,
Speaker 2: and that includes the intervention of saints. Just in the
Speaker 2: last few months, I've had interventions of saints in our
Speaker 2: life that were profoundly unexplainable. I mean, they were just
Speaker 2: too far field to make sense out of them with
Speaker 2: the rational mind. And it's clearly one of them involves
Speaker 2: Saint nik Tarisavigina. I haven't thought for and prayed to
Speaker 2: him or had him on my mind for quite a while,
Speaker 2: and he showed up out of the blue in a
Speaker 2: way that was miraculous. And that same thing happened with
Speaker 2: Nester of Sabchuk, a priest who was martyred in Russia.
Speaker 2: Murdered in Russia not too long ago in the nineties,
Speaker 2: he surfaced here in Woodway, Texas. His relics showed up
Speaker 2: in my house. Right when I'm writing his story for
Speaker 2: updating it for Youth the Apocalypse, I get a piece
Speaker 2: of blood soak carpet from Russia. Like they're these Saints
Speaker 2: are are active, They're not not real. And this is
Speaker 2: the part that is, you know, Protestants struggle with to
Speaker 2: understand the cloud of witnesses. There's so much reluctance to
Speaker 2: let this family be a part of your family and
Speaker 2: your life. And it's strange to me because it's so
Speaker 2: like you'll have Spider Man and you'll you know, you know,
Speaker 2: quote Spider Man as having wisdom, but when it comes
Speaker 2: to the Saints, you'll have posters of these you know,
Speaker 2: superheroes that are from comic books. Yes, but the Staints
Speaker 2: who are active, they're actually alive. My godmother has a
Speaker 2: great story where she's in Greece and her this she's
Speaker 2: talking with this woman on a curb and her little
Speaker 2: four year four year old boy strolls into the street
Speaker 2: and gets run over by a delivery truck and the
Speaker 2: mom turns around and sees the truck hit her kid
Speaker 2: and yells out Saint Nicholas's name, and the truck pulls over.
Speaker 2: The kid gets up and dusts himself off and goes
Speaker 2: over to his mom, and the mom's freaking out, and
Speaker 2: he explains that, oh, a guy named Saint Nicholas jumped
Speaker 2: on me in the monastery. We had this all the time,
Speaker 2: you know, Angels. There was a man in a shop
Speaker 2: working on our vehicle, and the car was running and
Speaker 2: it fell off the blocks and it drove into the
Speaker 2: man against a brick wall, and the man was perfectly fine.
Speaker 2: And he said a man ran out of nowhere and
Speaker 2: lifted the car off like this, stiffs all the time.
Speaker 2: But we're so wrapped up in the earth and the
Speaker 2: world and our lives and our affairs and our distractions
Speaker 2: and our phones and our all this entertainment and binge
Speaker 2: watching and food and alcohol, all this stuff. We are
Speaker 2: so numbed out to it that we don't see it anymore.
Speaker 1: Yes, we don't see it, we don't, I mean, And
Speaker 1: and the real irony is okay, if you're let's let's
Speaker 1: use a pagan or your secular okay, you don't see it,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. What really gets me and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: describing myself in large degree, like I said, I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to recalibrate my bunny heres and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get the signal clear because there's still some degree of doubt.
Speaker 1: You know. You hear that and you think, well that
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous justin that. I was really tracking with you
Speaker 1: until and I and I could hear I mean, the
Speaker 1: skeptic in me and the skeptics that are that am
Speaker 1: visible to me, I can hear them saying, man, I
Speaker 1: was really tracking with that justin guy. I mean, but
Speaker 1: when he started talking about he saw saints and guardian angels,
Speaker 1: that's a little too fantastic for me. It's like we've
Speaker 1: lost connection to that. And I mean, some people say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's this Eastern Orthodoxy thing. This is where I
Speaker 1: can't get down with it. But it's thoroughly biblical. It's
Speaker 1: all over the Bible.
Speaker 2: It's all over the Bible.
Speaker 1: And and it's all over the Bible, and it's thoroughly biblical,
Speaker 1: and yet we've somehow so many people I know who
Speaker 1: are Bible believing Christians. When you start talking like this,
Speaker 1: you lose them completely or they say that's heresy. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's very difficult, and it's something that,
Speaker 1: like I said the Saints when when we first started
Speaker 1: attending our church, my sister asked the priest, well, what
Speaker 1: do you say to people who say that you pray
Speaker 1: to dead people? And he just so matter of factly,
Speaker 1: there are no dead Christmas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses.
Speaker 1: I think that that's the piece that I felt when
Speaker 1: I was in the church after the sexton died. He's
Speaker 1: still here. Yeah, so gi ant family.
Speaker 2: And if you can't do it here, then how are
Speaker 2: you gonna do it forever? Really, I think that the
Speaker 2: best example of what y're and what we were talking
Speaker 2: about is found when Christ is on not Tabor with
Speaker 2: Moses and Elijah. I mean, he displayed it thoroughly. Hey,
Speaker 2: there's a lot going on here that you can't see,
Speaker 2: you know, And they were so freaked out the three apostles.
Speaker 2: Let us build an altered what are we gonna do,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of panicking because they were seeing something
Speaker 2: that they could not wrap their heads around. Therefore they
Speaker 2: wanted to be busy, you know, doing something because it
Speaker 2: was so overwhelming. But in the icons, I have it
Speaker 2: right behind you. Here you see this Mendalora thing, this
Speaker 2: shape and this world dark and light behind them with
Speaker 2: blue behind Christ. And the icon is great at illustrating
Speaker 2: what we're talking about. There is absolutely a lot going
Speaker 2: on right now. And I think that the more that
Speaker 2: we are attuned to God through prayer and through virtue,
Speaker 2: virtuous life, the more that it becomes normal. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be explained, it doesn't have to be you know,
Speaker 2: Western rationalism has kind of killed a lot of really
Speaker 2: cool stuff, including what we're talking about. And again, the
Speaker 2: world's longest journey man, it's got to go from the
Speaker 2: mind into the heart. And the more that we're there,
Speaker 2: the more that all of this stuff makes sense. The
Speaker 2: more that God's providence, his economia, the way we were
Speaker 2: to meet, household management, the way he's managing all of
Speaker 2: this stuff, it all is grace filled and makes sense.
Speaker 2: The more that we're living in sin, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: And so that's fine, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you hit the nail on the head. I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to understand this. If I'm struggling to understand this,
Speaker 1: the way to kind of you know, clean your your
Speaker 1: glasses off is practicing virtue. It gets right back to
Speaker 1: why that was so exciting to me. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you practice virtue, you see the face of Christ, and
Speaker 1: and and he reveals himself to you, and and and
Speaker 1: and your friends show up. They showed up for you,
Speaker 1: and and and you start understanding I guess maybe not understanding,
Speaker 1: that's probably not the right word, but you start seeing
Speaker 1: miracles for what they are.
Speaker 2: When when our our icon corner light went on, we
Speaker 2: were sitting in bed getting ready to get up to
Speaker 2: do prayers, and my wife's response was to just grab
Speaker 2: my arm and we were started reciting the prayers from heart.
Speaker 2: It was natural. It wasn't anything, but it's called prayer.
Speaker 2: You know. That's that's the sweet spot, if we can
Speaker 2: get to that spot in our life, as clunky as
Speaker 2: we are, as you know, sinners and human beings, but
Speaker 2: when these things are happening there, it's just natural. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you talked about your and I don't
Speaker 1: want this to feel like it comes out of left field,
Speaker 1: and I don't want it to be antagonistic, but we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the baggage that certain words in
Speaker 1: our Western American Christian world have, especially amongst evangelicals, and
Speaker 1: I think especially post Reformation, the whole idea, because we're
Speaker 1: talking about practicing the virtues right well, I can hear
Speaker 1: somebody saying you're trying to earn your salvation justin when
Speaker 1: you're talking about how in order to to do this,
Speaker 1: in order to see God, you have to do these
Speaker 1: things to earn it. Practicing virtue, that's just code for
Speaker 1: earning your salvation. And I think accompanying the baggage of
Speaker 1: sin is that false dichotomy that exists with you know,
Speaker 1: earning your salvation in this whether it's free or earned
Speaker 1: what versus working it out with fear and trembling. And
Speaker 1: I just I wanted to ask you how you feel
Speaker 1: about that concept and how you can turn it on
Speaker 1: its head.
Speaker 2: I don't know much about that. You know that these
Speaker 2: arguments are modern. The Christian Church has never had a
Speaker 2: problem with these ideas. You know that you have to
Speaker 2: work for your salvation, that God's grace is a part
Speaker 2: of it. It's never been a discussion or a problem.
Speaker 2: It's really for modern man where you have to like
Speaker 2: try to think your state, your way through this stuff.
Speaker 2: So if I'm standing in front of you and I
Speaker 2: have the choice to slap you or hug you, am
Speaker 2: I working out my relationship with you? Seriously? You know,
Speaker 2: obviously the right thing to do is to hug you.
Speaker 2: And whether you think that that's an action that I
Speaker 2: am choosing to do to save myself or not, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter. I think that if you put Christ
Speaker 2: at his example and his teachings to this test, everything
Speaker 2: he was doing was that everything he was doing. I
Speaker 2: don't understand the argument. I don't get it. I have
Speaker 2: to do I have to get up every day and
Speaker 2: I have to do my prayers, and I have to
Speaker 2: be kind in order to follow Christ. Like that's just
Speaker 2: it has to be.
Speaker 1: Well, it gets down to what you were talking about
Speaker 1: earlier when you said it never really made any sense
Speaker 1: to you that you say this prayer and it's done.
Speaker 1: It's this concept of heaven and hell as though it's
Speaker 1: a punctilier moment in your salvation, you prayed your prayer
Speaker 1: justin you're good hopefully you do a all right with
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. But no matter what happens,
Speaker 1: whenever I hear it, it's so jarring to my sensibilities
Speaker 1: when someone says, well, I'm just waiting for the rapture,
Speaker 1: then I'll go to heaven. And I've really started to
Speaker 1: whether it's correct or not, I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: a theologian, but I've really started to try and wrap
Speaker 1: my hands around or my head around the idea of
Speaker 1: you know, we're saved, we're being saved, and we will
Speaker 1: be saved. Yeah, and I think saved to what. Well,
Speaker 1: when you talk about heaven and Hell, it's really just
Speaker 1: union with Christ or separation from Christ. And so in
Speaker 1: that process, as we're living out our lives and trying
Speaker 1: to strive for deeper and deeper union with Christ, forget
Speaker 1: about whether you're going to heaven or hell. It's where
Speaker 1: you are. Heaven or Hell is where you've been. Once again,
Speaker 1: I'm not a theologian, So somebody could come in and
Speaker 1: heaven or Hell is where you've been, where you are
Speaker 1: and where you're going. It's not this thing that that
Speaker 1: happens often in the distance, and and and you know
Speaker 1: they got into my head recently because there was this
Speaker 1: online spar with you know, like I said, with people
Speaker 1: and they're, oh, you're going to go to Hell and
Speaker 1: whatever the language. And I thought to myself, Well, if
Speaker 1: you're experiencing this degree of a lack of kindness, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that you're going to hell for all eternity,
Speaker 1: but you're experiencing in that moment when we fall prey
Speaker 1: to the passions, I feel like we are in Hell,
Speaker 1: and when we experience the love of Christ and the virtues,
Speaker 1: we're in heaven. Is there anything that I said that's
Speaker 1: a heretical there?
Speaker 2: Not that I know. I'm not a theologian at all,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'll be honest with you. My area
Speaker 2: that I'm most interested in is aesthetical theology. Asthetic theology,
Speaker 2: which is practice practice.
Speaker 1: Yes, justin or orthodoxies small Oh only exists for praxis,
Speaker 1: it only exists for orthopraxy. So I'm right there with you, brother.
Speaker 2: I have a story though, that I can add to
Speaker 2: this real quickly. A few days ago, I was in
Speaker 2: a rush to get some of our book orders to
Speaker 2: the post office, and these two older gentlemen knocked on
Speaker 2: my door and they were holding a Bible and they said, hey,
Speaker 2: we want to talk to you, We want to ask you.
Speaker 2: Do you are you saved? And I looked at them
Speaker 2: and I made a huge mistake. I said no. And
Speaker 2: I really should not have done that, because I opened
Speaker 2: up a giant can of worms, and I knew that
Speaker 2: I was opening a can of worms, and it was
Speaker 2: this can of worms. You know, I firmly believe that
Speaker 2: that is one of the most destructive theological ideas that
Speaker 2: ever entered Christianity, is you call upon the Lord Jesus
Speaker 2: and you will be saved. And I know there's a
Speaker 2: Bible verse for that. There's also a Bible verse for
Speaker 2: there are many that called upon me and said Lord Lord,
Speaker 2: and I did not know them. There's an implicit contradiction
Speaker 2: right there. And as you're saying, people should never, ever, ever,
Speaker 2: in my estimation, say somebody is going here or going
Speaker 2: there ever ever, it's none of their business. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's an egregious thing to do to put your feet
Speaker 2: in God's economia. That's that's a crazy assumption, to put
Speaker 2: your shoes in God's judgment seat and say things like
Speaker 2: this again, like you you alluded to what you were saying,
Speaker 2: is that where am I right in this moment? It's
Speaker 2: not there in the past, it's not in the future.
Speaker 2: It's right now. Am I with Christ or not? Period?
Speaker 2: That's all that matters, And honestly, that's all that exists
Speaker 2: is right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Amen, Well, I've got two more questions for you. I'd
Speaker 1: be remiss about and ask you about reality on a
Speaker 1: commitment to reality. So where are we most eager to
Speaker 1: look away from reality?
Speaker 2: Most eager to look away from Oh my gosh, that's
Speaker 2: a tough question, but I think that obviously, the reality
Speaker 2: of who we are are our own condition. I think
Speaker 2: most of us are fearful of that reality of who
Speaker 2: we are and what's lurking inside of us. And this
Speaker 2: is why we have the passions, And this is all
Speaker 2: the passions are, And all these habits and addictions and
Speaker 2: all these problems that we have, they're all ways of
Speaker 2: trying to treat or medicate the harmful effects of the fall.
Speaker 2: They all go back to that, and we miss the
Speaker 2: point when we do this. The panacea is Christ and
Speaker 2: is the sacramental life of the Church. And that's the
Speaker 2: reality that we most fear. That's why we fear confession.
Speaker 2: That's why we avoid it. That's why we try not
Speaker 2: to receive communion too much, because we're afraid of it.
Speaker 2: That's why we try not to say things that are
Speaker 2: personal to our friends too much, because we want to
Speaker 2: project what we are, not people to think something else
Speaker 2: of us. We're afraid of ourselves. That's the reality that
Speaker 2: we are terrified the most of, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: And in a world that feels increasingly unreal, what feels
Speaker 1: most real to.
Speaker 2: You tears, tears, tears of prayer, tears for people that
Speaker 2: are suffering, tears for my children, tears of joy for Christ. Tears.
Speaker 1: Man, justin, We've said this multiple times already. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for joining me on a commitment to reality.
Speaker 1: And we just met today for the first time, well
Speaker 1: if we can call this meeting. But these Christians are funny.
Speaker 1: They love each other before they meet. And I love you, brother,
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Love you to you, brother,