Speaker 1: Father, Stephen Freeman, thank you for joining me on a
Speaker 1: commitment to reality.
Speaker 2: It's good to be here. Let's get real.
Speaker 1: Before we start. Can you just tell everybody who's listening
Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself. Who are you?
Speaker 2: I am a native born South Carolinian who actually, after
Speaker 2: being away for a lot of years, has returned home
Speaker 2: to Greenville, South Carolina, where I grew up. I was
Speaker 2: raised in a very nominal Baptist home, went to a
Speaker 2: little Southern Baptist church down the railroad tracks about a
Speaker 2: mile down from my house. My brother and I used
Speaker 2: to walk down the tracks to church. I think mom
Speaker 2: and dad were glad to get us out of the
Speaker 2: house for Sunday morning, but they didn't go much. Baptized
Speaker 2: when I was seven years old, I was kind of
Speaker 2: moved by him the old Gospel, him calling old sinner
Speaker 2: come home, and I just remember feeling homesick. I don't
Speaker 2: know what for, but I walked the aisle and the
Speaker 2: next week the feature came to the house, sat with
Speaker 2: me in the living room. And have no memory of
Speaker 2: this but talk with him other than sitting in there
Speaker 2: and being kind of awestruck. Afterwards, he says to my Mam,
Speaker 2: he's only seven years old, but he's saved, and so
Speaker 2: I got baptized the next Sunday evening. I was I
Speaker 2: was so short, I had to tread water, so I
Speaker 2: kind of say, I was sort of just bobbed instead
Speaker 2: of don't you know, just touch me and I would sing.
Speaker 2: Left the Baptist church at thirteen, became long story that,
Speaker 2: but became an episco payan at age fifteen through the
Speaker 2: influence of my older brother. It was actually an introduction
Speaker 2: to beauty from a very plain, kind of white painted
Speaker 2: Baptist church to a church full of color, wonder sacrament.
Speaker 2: This is pretty much the old Episcopal church with the
Speaker 2: old prayer book and stuff. When I joined, and it
Speaker 2: was wonderful, and if you had asked me, then I
Speaker 2: thought I was joining the ancient church. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of how I approached that. It's been a couple of years.
Speaker 2: Got involved in the Jesus movement for a couple of
Speaker 2: three years. Was involved in a charismatic, non denominational house church.
Speaker 2: Lived in Commune a couple of years between high school
Speaker 2: and college. Went to college at Furman University in Greenville.
Speaker 2: Met my wife, actually we met in that house church.
Speaker 2: We both. I returned to the Episcopal Church and took
Speaker 2: her with me. We were married while I was a
Speaker 2: junior in college. I went to seminary an Episcopal seminary
Speaker 2: in Chicago, and then served churches in South Carolina. Was
Speaker 2: in the doctoral program at Duke after seven or eight
Speaker 2: years in Parish to work on I did systematic theology
Speaker 2: under Jeffrey Wainwright and Stanley howerd wass howerd wass is
Speaker 2: still I think of as one of the most refreshing
Speaker 2: reads of an American theologians you can possibly pick up.
Speaker 2: Interesting guy. But my final Episcopal church, I was serving
Speaker 2: in East Tennessee outside of Knoxville, oak Ridge, and served
Speaker 2: there for nine years. Aut of this. During that whole time,
Speaker 2: starting in college, I started reading Orthodox writings, primarily Russian.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a lot in English at the time. It
Speaker 2: was in the seventies. I kind of bought everything theological
Speaker 2: that Saint Vladimir's published, and it wouldn't fill half a shelf,
Speaker 2: you know. And there wasn't YouTube, there wasn't Internet. It
Speaker 2: was sort of doing it in a vacuum. So there
Speaker 2: was a long journey, a lot of which I was Orthodox.
Speaker 2: He had become sort of a touchstone of what is true.
Speaker 2: And so you know, even when I was an Anglican,
Speaker 2: is like is that correct? Well, I'd want to know
Speaker 2: what the Orthodox thought about it, and you know, but
Speaker 2: eventually at Duke I did my thesis on the theology
Speaker 2: of icons, and so I was already beginning to be toast.
Speaker 2: The morning after my defense, I woke up, knelt by
Speaker 2: my bed in Durham and prayed, Oh God, make me Orthodox.
Speaker 2: And I meant two things by that. One I want
Speaker 2: to be Orthodox, and two you'll have to make me.
Speaker 2: And so there's there's sort of heal marts dragged me
Speaker 2: from there to seven years later when I was received
Speaker 2: into the Church. And the course of that seven years
Speaker 2: a lot of things happened. One of the most important
Speaker 2: things that happened for me was meeting Archbishop Dmitri of
Speaker 2: Dallas of Blessed Memory. It was a great missionary and
Speaker 2: through him getting to know the Orthodox Church in America,
Speaker 2: which was all English, I mean in terms of language
Speaker 2: and you know, sort of Russian flavor in its customs
Speaker 2: and its history, but decidedly rooted in America. All I
Speaker 2: had ever met prior to that was a very ethnic Orthodoxison.
Speaker 2: It was easy for me to use that as an
Speaker 2: excuse to not do that. So anyway, in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: five years old, actually forty four at the time, was
Speaker 2: received into the church and immediately immediately asked by the
Speaker 2: archbishop and appointed as a layman because I was having
Speaker 2: to do a retread before I could be ordained Orthodox
Speaker 2: to start a mission in the Knoxville area, which I did,
Speaker 2: and so I had a hand in starting five different
Speaker 2: Oca churches over the course of those years. Started writing.
Speaker 2: I waited eight years after I was Orthodoxed. I wrote
Speaker 2: a lot as an Anglican, but I waited eight years
Speaker 2: after I converted before I wrote again. And in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six I started a blog, Glory to God
Speaker 2: for All Things, and began writing there and picked up,
Speaker 2: you know, fairly good readership. Eventually, you know, published the
Speaker 2: Little Book Everywhere Present Christianity in a one story universe.
Speaker 2: It largely grew out of my finding ways to try
Speaker 2: to communicate and Orthodox understanding of God and the world,
Speaker 2: particularly the converts were coming. You know, that was my
Speaker 2: bread and butter, and these missions that we were doing.
Speaker 2: The Little Book is the one that probably people know
Speaker 2: the most and so I retire.
Speaker 1: People need to know it.
Speaker 2: I retired in twenty twenty, having reached an age, and finally,
Speaker 2: after a few years hanging around in Tennessee, we received
Speaker 2: an invitation to come down to Greenville and are down here.
Speaker 2: My parents became my nominal Baptist parents later became Episcopalians,
Speaker 2: but became Orthodox at age seventy nine, and they were
Speaker 2: members at the parish where I'm now attached as a
Speaker 2: retired priest. And so I really feel like I've been
Speaker 2: called home and that I'm slowly being gathered to my
Speaker 2: father's which is a little scary.
Speaker 1: Hope, slowly, slowly. We need you. That's so who I am.
Speaker 1: I write, I talk, you're write and you talk well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I joke that we did a podcast. Before
Speaker 1: the podcast we got the online and couldn't stop talking.
Speaker 1: I told you that I love you, and I mean
Speaker 1: thank you. And one thing that really I am intrigued.
Speaker 1: Enchantment is all the rage right now everywhere. This book
Speaker 1: is over ten years old. How did you get so
Speaker 1: far ahead of the curve?
Speaker 2: Interesting question? You know, I write a lot about the
Speaker 2: topic of modernity on my blog and secularism, which is
Speaker 2: you know, enchantment, it's just the latest buzzword to talk
Speaker 2: about those things. A concept of the world, that there
Speaker 2: can be such a thing as the world existing apart
Speaker 2: from God. That mean, secularism is the myth that God
Speaker 2: has his fear and we have ours. Alexander Schmemann, writing
Speaker 2: talks in the sixties that are encapsulated in his Little
Speaker 2: Book for the Life of the World, it says that
Speaker 2: secularism is the heresy of our time. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: always I'm saying nothing new in that. GK. Chesterton, you know,
Speaker 2: Anglican who became Catholic, writing in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: takes all of this to task. There are British writers
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth century, the eighteen hundreds who identified certain
Speaker 2: that had already come to the foe, and they're beginning
Speaker 2: to analyze it. So there's Lewis C. S. Lewis gets
Speaker 2: into this in various ways, like the abolition of man
Speaker 2: and other things, so that all of this is really
Speaker 2: just a thread that's been going on for a long time.
Speaker 2: You have people right now who actually think they discovered it,
Speaker 2: and they jolly will did nothing of the sort. They're
Speaker 2: standing on the shoulders of giants. And I love the
Speaker 2: recent book that Paul Kingsnorth has done on the machine,
Speaker 2: which is frankly just another word for the same problem,
Speaker 2: but viewed sort of through the lens of technology. But
Speaker 2: in his book he has so the most amazing. I mean,
Speaker 2: his footnotes are worth the entire book. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, how many lifetimes did you have to read
Speaker 2: all of this? You know, digest it, and you know
Speaker 2: and footnote it for the rest of us. So I mean,
Speaker 2: for me, the critique of modernity. Progress is an idea
Speaker 2: that belongs to modernity. But modernity itself is a set
Speaker 2: of ideas, the philosoph that occurs during these the last
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, But it
Speaker 2: is not the period of time in times just we
Speaker 2: just live. But modernity is a false philosophy, filled with
Speaker 2: all kinds of wrong ideas. And so I'm like when
Speaker 2: I was studying at Duke nder Harawas he said that
Speaker 2: preaching the Gospel disabusing people the notions of modernity is
Speaker 2: the great task of preaching the Gospel in our times,
Speaker 2: you know, So that was sort of news to me.
Speaker 2: Had I read him and understood him when I was
Speaker 2: studying as an Anglican in seminary. They would have thrown
Speaker 2: me out because my arguments against what they were saying
Speaker 2: would have been so formidable. They would not have been
Speaker 2: able to bear me. As it was. I was simply obnoxious.
Speaker 2: I knew there was a problem, I just didn't know
Speaker 2: what it was.
Speaker 1: Yet, you say about a one story universe, this is
Speaker 1: one of the great difficulties of our one story world.
Speaker 1: It's not that we live on the first floor and
Speaker 1: that that's all there is. It's that we live on
Speaker 1: the first floor and we don't know the half of it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by one story universe versus a
Speaker 1: two story universe?
Speaker 2: Well, it's just a playful set of images to use.
Speaker 2: When people talk about God and talk about spiritual things,
Speaker 2: a lot of them put it in a spooky place.
Speaker 2: And I mean, the most crash way of saying it
Speaker 2: is talking about God is the man upstairs, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to think of the guy's name. Did a study,
Speaker 2: wonderful study. Filmmaker teacher philosophy at Vanderbilt did a wonderful
Speaker 2: study on the nuns ees. Nathan Jacobs. Yeah, yeah, Nathan Jacobs.
Speaker 2: I know him. It's got a daughter goes to our
Speaker 2: peerish now. Nathan said that what he discovered was talking
Speaker 2: to these people who had jettisoned their Christian faith, that
Speaker 2: over ninety nine percent, He said, he couldn't say one
Speaker 2: hundred percent because he didn't ask all of them the
Speaker 2: question when he was doing his film. But ninety nine
Speaker 2: plus percent believe in ghosts. Isn't it weird? What is it?
Speaker 2: What is it? They don't believe in God, but they
Speaker 2: do believe in ghosts. What is that? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: like they it's not that they don't believe that there
Speaker 2: is something spiritual. They just and they don't know what
Speaker 2: it is. They just happen to believe in them. I
Speaker 2: joke and say that my book is really just me
Speaker 2: doing riffs on Alexander Schmidmen trying to talk about a
Speaker 2: sacramental world. That it is here, the Kingdom of God
Speaker 2: is now and here it is present. Jesus says, the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of God is among you. One way that I
Speaker 2: describe it, for instance, that Jesus is the Kingdom of
Speaker 2: God walking among us. He is the Kingdom of God.
Speaker 2: It's not just some by and by, you know, pie
Speaker 2: in the sky coming sometime like that he is the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of God. Wherever he is, Jesus says, if I,
Speaker 2: by the finger of God cast out devils, then the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of God has come upon you. You know it's
Speaker 2: right there. Another way, this is sort of helpful to
Speaker 2: open up people's eyes. The longest passage and theology of
Speaker 2: the Eucharist in the Gospels is in the sixth chapter
Speaker 2: of John, as Jesus is discussing with his disciples and
Speaker 2: the people the Feeding of the five Thousand. In the
Speaker 2: Feeding of the five Thousand story, it says Jesus takes
Speaker 2: the bread, blesses, breaks it, and gives it. Okay, those
Speaker 2: are four key words. It occurs again the familiar passage
Speaker 2: in the night in which he was betrayed. He took bread,
Speaker 2: and when he had given things, he blessed it and
Speaker 2: broke it and gave it to These four things have
Speaker 2: always been understood as the key verbs. These four action
Speaker 2: verbs to take, the bless to break, to give are
Speaker 2: eucharistic signals. I mean, the sixth chapter of John is
Speaker 2: a eucharistic gospel. It's just there. Now. The weird part
Speaker 2: about it is is it's long before the Last Supper,
Speaker 2: so it occurs out of order. And I've been rebuked
Speaker 2: in talking in some Protestant settings, and someone try to
Speaker 2: tell me that sixth chapter John is not about the Euchrist.
Speaker 2: Even though Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and
Speaker 2: drink my blood, you have no life in you. You
Speaker 2: can't read that as a Christian. You shouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to read that as a Christian and not think Euchrist.
Speaker 2: But I'll take it this way. Jesus is the Kingdom
Speaker 2: of God among us, and Jesus cannot take bread in
Speaker 2: his hands, bless it, break it, and give it, and
Speaker 2: it not be his body, because I love the way
Speaker 2: Schmelmn said this is that in the sacraments we do
Speaker 2: not take something and make it to be what it
Speaker 2: is not, we take something and show it to be
Speaker 2: what it truly is. In the hands of Christ, bread
Speaker 2: always becomes his body. The disciples have been everybody traveling
Speaker 2: that Jesus has been eating euchris with him for the
Speaker 2: whole journey. But on the night in which he's betrayed
Speaker 2: he makes it clear. And even then they probably don't
Speaker 2: get it until in the key is the endings of
Speaker 2: the Gospels and the Book of acts. Jesus keeps showing
Speaker 2: up on Sundays. He keeps showing up with the meal
Speaker 2: like you have later in the day on Pasca. On
Speaker 2: Easter Sunday, the two disciples on the road to Ammaeis,
Speaker 2: they're walking along, and then they are there and they
Speaker 2: get with him, and guess what takes Some read blesses
Speaker 2: brexiting gives it to them, and their eyes were open,
Speaker 2: and suddenly they see him and he was made known
Speaker 2: to them, you know, and the breaking of the bread.
Speaker 2: And people ask me, why do Christians keep Sunday instead
Speaker 2: of Saturday as the holy day. Well, actually, in the
Speaker 2: Orthodox Church, we believe Saturday is the Sabbath. It's clearly
Speaker 2: described that and holy we call the books will say
Speaker 2: great and holy Sabbath for Saturday. Sunday, I mean Saturday
Speaker 2: is Sabbath is Hebrew for seven. And so Saturday is
Speaker 2: still the seventh day. But we keep Sunday because it's
Speaker 2: the eighth day. Sunday is the seventh seventh day fulfilled
Speaker 2: the best way the Father's mystically is the eighth day.
Speaker 2: It has transcended the Sunday and the Sabbath is fulfilled.
Speaker 2: What is Christ doing on the Sabbath, he's in the tomb,
Speaker 2: or as we say, the priest will say in the liturgy.
Speaker 2: It's usually said quietly in the tomb, with the body
Speaker 2: in hades, with the soul on the throne, with the Father,
Speaker 2: and the Holy Spirit was that well boundless Christ, filling
Speaker 2: all things. And so but what's he doing on Saturday. Well,
Speaker 2: he's also in Haiti's trampling down death by death. It
Speaker 2: is also Pasca the whole. Originally Pasca was kept as
Speaker 2: a single day's feast. It gets expanded and stretched out,
Speaker 2: not to make such a big difference between Friday, Saturday
Speaker 2: and Sunday. But it's just so big it takes us
Speaker 2: three days to do it. But Jesus everywhere he goes,
Speaker 2: he is the Pascal Mystery everywhere, and in the Pascal Mystery,
Speaker 2: bread becomes his body, wine becomes his blood, and we
Speaker 2: have communion with him. And you know, to live rightly
Speaker 2: isn't to reduce the sacrament to these seven actions that
Speaker 2: the Church does. Rightly speaking, there are an infinite number
Speaker 2: of sacraments. The whole world is sacrament.
Speaker 1: Everything's the sacrament.
Speaker 2: Everything is sacrament.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that you get at a lot is reorientation,
Speaker 1: that we have a false view of reality. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's why I've gotten so enamored with the whole
Speaker 1: conception of reality exists, and it's something that we have
Speaker 1: to commit to because if we don't, we fall into
Speaker 1: all kinds of other issues.
Speaker 2: And I was through when I saw the name of
Speaker 2: your podcast because it actually really harmonized with something I've
Speaker 2: been thinking a lot about. That is that as Orthodox Christians,
Speaker 2: we proclaim reality. We don't proclaim something else. We proclaim reality,
Speaker 2: and so the world is it truly is, so we're
Speaker 2: becoming truly human. It's like you've got a lot of
Speaker 2: people talking about theosis, we also need to talk about anthroposis,
Speaker 2: that we need to become fully human if we're to
Speaker 2: become truly partakers of God. And what we see in
Speaker 2: Christ is what it is to be truly and fully human.
Speaker 2: So he's that as well. But the reality of the
Speaker 2: world is to receive reality is to have an attitude
Speaker 2: of how do you receive that which is given to you?
Speaker 2: I mean, to be an Orthodox Christian, which is simply
Speaker 2: just to be a faithful human being, is to understand
Speaker 2: that every everything around you as a gift. I mean
Speaker 2: the sacramentality. To say that it's sacrament is also that
Speaker 2: it's given to you. He takes it, he gives it
Speaker 2: to us. Reality is a gift to us. So how
Speaker 2: do I receive a gift? I give thanks, therefore glory
Speaker 2: to God for all things. The last words of Saint
Speaker 2: John Chris system or as Saint Paul will say in Thessalonians,
Speaker 2: to give God thanks always and for all things. That
Speaker 2: is the Eucharistic life. If Godristo means I give thanks,
Speaker 2: that is the Eucharistic life is to give thanks. And
Speaker 2: so that's a Until we learn to bless God and
Speaker 2: to bless creation for what it is, for the reality
Speaker 2: we've received, then we will always not see it for
Speaker 2: what it is. Well, I want to talk about the
Speaker 2: words secular. All too often secular is almost seen as
Speaker 2: synonymous with atheist.
Speaker 1: Yep, why is that not true?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, historically it's not. A Secular is an
Speaker 2: old Latin word. It's the word in secular seculorum, which
Speaker 2: means nto the ages of ages. Secular means the age
Speaker 2: and is sometimes used to translate world like worldliness would
Speaker 2: be secular whatever, and so it had a meaning. I mean,
Speaker 2: for instance, in old Catholic you said you would have
Speaker 2: two kinds of priests. You would have a priest who
Speaker 2: was religious, and that meant he was a monk and
Speaker 2: in holy orders like a Benedictine or something. If he
Speaker 2: was a secular priest, it meant he belonged to the
Speaker 2: bishop and in just his diocese, that he was not
Speaker 2: under a religious order. I mean, those were old uses,
Speaker 2: but the words get taken over. One of the things
Speaker 2: that happens in the Protestant Reformation is also the rise
Speaker 2: of the nation state, and so you have, for instance,
Speaker 2: in the Great Protestant Catholic Settlement that ended the religious
Speaker 2: wars in Europe, the proclamation was that the church of
Speaker 2: a country or state would be whatever the religion was
Speaker 2: of the prince. That if the prince was Lutheran, then
Speaker 2: it's Lutheran. If he was Calvinist, it's If it's Catholic,
Speaker 2: it's Catholic. But it was actually being determined by the prince,
Speaker 2: and that was the treaty that was done, and so
Speaker 2: you get the rise of the nation states on an
Speaker 2: equal or even greater footing than the Church in its
Speaker 2: radical form. In England, you know, the king just declares
Speaker 2: that he is the head of the church. Just nonsense
Speaker 2: and heresy. And it gradually over the centuries with the Enlightenment,
Speaker 2: it gets reinterpreted in which it just means not religious,
Speaker 2: like secular meaning it's not religious. And so it's easy
Speaker 2: to see how that would get confused with atheism. And
Speaker 2: though none of the founding fathers would have described themselves
Speaker 2: as atheists, they all believed at least in a Unitarian God.
Speaker 2: But you know, some of them were Christians of various sorts,
Speaker 2: and if they had a notion of something being not religious,
Speaker 2: they would simply have meant by that, not tied to
Speaker 2: a particular religious confession. It's not until some decades later
Speaker 2: that the states quit having state churches, and by a
Speaker 2: state church, yes they collected churches, was supported by taxes,
Speaker 2: you know. But gradually, with the rise of the radical Enlightenment,
Speaker 2: you get the notion that secular means having no religion.
Speaker 2: And then this is really the very swift move that
Speaker 2: it's okay for you to have religion so long as
Speaker 2: that's your private opinion.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's a compartmentalization that that's the big exactly.
Speaker 1: And you said no, religion. I will and constantly do
Speaker 1: push back in private conversation, and now public I don't
Speaker 1: think there's such a thing. I agree, And so this
Speaker 1: whole concept of neutrality in the public square. Tell me
Speaker 1: why that's not possible.
Speaker 2: Well, everybody has, even when they are really lousy and
Speaker 2: explaining it. Everybody has some kind of a matrix of
Speaker 2: meaning what they think life in the world is about.
Speaker 2: It may be very shallow, it may be many many things,
Speaker 2: but that matrix of meaning is religious. It functions as
Speaker 2: a religion. The word religio in Latin means to bind together.
Speaker 2: It is your worldview is that which holds your world together.
Speaker 2: If you have a worldview, you have a religion. My
Speaker 2: worldview is Orthodox Christianity, and I'm able to tolerate other
Speaker 2: worldviews and recognize them for what they are, and I'm
Speaker 2: able to have conversations, including with an atheist. I just
Speaker 2: want him to be honest about what he's doing and
Speaker 2: to have to admit what he's doing. It takes far
Speaker 2: more faith to be an atheist than to be a believer.
Speaker 1: Not just honest. This is my big thing that I've
Speaker 1: been kind of ranting about forever. I feel like the
Speaker 1: whole concept of you having your truth and me having
Speaker 1: my truth. Okay, maybe if you substitute truth for belief,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. But the idea that you can't
Speaker 1: press somebody on their beliefs, and I don't mean in
Speaker 1: a hostile or antagonistic way, I just can't believe that there.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're in a unique period of human
Speaker 1: history where people aren't forced to really reconcile the logicality
Speaker 1: of their beliefs. And you talked about like how worldview
Speaker 1: shapes everything. When you have these beliefs that are so
Speaker 1: cognitively dissonant, it's no wonder that we're living in times
Speaker 1: that are frenetic and chaotic.
Speaker 2: Yep. Well, the notion that we all have our own
Speaker 2: truth is really a rhetorical moves. It's not actually, I mean,
Speaker 2: logically it can't be. So truth is truth, and it
Speaker 2: may be that you and I neither one know the truth,
Speaker 2: but the truth is it has a substance. Something is
Speaker 2: true or it's not true. But it's a very cute
Speaker 2: rhetorical move to say you have your truth and I
Speaker 2: have mine, and therefore your mean and bad if you
Speaker 2: challenge my truth. That's what that's about and essentially one
Speaker 2: of the things was interesting when I was studying at Duke.
Speaker 2: The Marxists were in their early forms there. This was
Speaker 2: already happening in Anglican seminaries. Has now spread to all
Speaker 2: of the mainline, the old fashioned mainline denominations. You cannot
Speaker 2: write a paper and refer to God as He, you
Speaker 2: must say he slashed she. At least there were professors,
Speaker 2: I mean at Duke Divinity. I was not at Duke Divinity,
Speaker 2: but at Duke Divinity that was already the rules. And
Speaker 2: this was in the late nineteen eighties when I was there.
Speaker 2: But I told there was one professor I wanted to
Speaker 2: study under, but she required the he she language. And
Speaker 2: I thought, nobody can make write heresy. I won't do it. Sorry,
Speaker 2: just can't do it, not for you, not for anybody.
Speaker 2: No course is worth going to hell for so anyway,
Speaker 2: no matter how good it is. But it was a
Speaker 2: Marxist rhetorical movement. One of the things that was going
Speaker 2: on when we were there was actually studying rhetoric, how
Speaker 2: rhetoric is used, how arguments are formed and fashioned, and
Speaker 2: Marxist rhetoric not just the economic ideas, but Marxist rhetoric.
Speaker 2: How to deconstruct deconstruction is a Marxist ideology. How to
Speaker 2: deconstruct the ideas of your opponents, to take them apart
Speaker 2: so that your opponent has nowhere to stand. I think
Speaker 2: Jonathan Pajoe has something about deconstructing the deconstructionists, or how
Speaker 2: to turn postmodernity on its head, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: That was one of the things I was learning when
Speaker 2: I was there. I began realizing that actually Orthodoxy can
Speaker 2: do this because Orthodoxy is not born in modernity. It's
Speaker 2: very pre modern. And if you're immersed in the Fathers,
Speaker 2: they have a worldview that is not formed in shape
Speaker 2: by the Reformation or the counter Reformation, is formed in
Speaker 2: shape where none of those things were going on. And
Speaker 2: so it's good in some ways to learn to be
Speaker 2: more and more immerse in our Orthodox faith because it
Speaker 2: all help its way to detox from the modern world.
Speaker 2: Just use another notion to detox from the modern world,
Speaker 2: as in secutor. That's not our word. Secutarism is a heresy.
Speaker 2: Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. There is
Speaker 2: nothing that exists that does not belong to God. Nothing
Speaker 2: can exist that does it belong to God. We believe
Speaker 2: that everything that does exist is upheld in his existence
Speaker 2: by God. Even the devil is upheld in his existence
Speaker 2: by God. Nothing is self existence. In fact, just to
Speaker 2: scandalize your listeners, we believe not only is the devil
Speaker 2: maintained in his existence by God, but that the devil,
Speaker 2: by nature, is good. There are no evil natures. The
Speaker 2: nature of a thing is the thing. He has so
Speaker 2: warped his will that he acts contrary to his own nature.
Speaker 2: In fact, he hates his own existence. As the scripture says,
Speaker 2: he was a murderer from the beginning. Doesn't mean he
Speaker 2: was created a murderer. It means from the earliest times
Speaker 2: he perverted himself into a murderer. He hates our existence. God,
Speaker 2: we say, is the author of our being. He hates
Speaker 2: our being. He hates his own being. He's the enemy
Speaker 2: of God. He's the enemy of being. And if you will,
Speaker 2: one of his tortures is he can't make himself not exist,
Speaker 2: because existence is God's gift. You and I a person
Speaker 2: could attempt to kill themselves, but they can't make themselves
Speaker 2: not exist. You can change, you know, change your address
Speaker 2: from here to there, which you can't make yourself not exist.
Speaker 2: Existence is God's gift to us, and he does not
Speaker 2: take back what he has given. It is his own
Speaker 2: free gift to us. And so the secutive world, there's
Speaker 2: no such thing. There's God's world and what we have.
Speaker 2: And this is for instance, here's another heresy of America.
Speaker 2: America says that essentially that the right of the state
Speaker 2: comes from the consent of the governed, that's the authority,
Speaker 2: and the power of the state comes from the And
Speaker 2: so the notion that it gets its state its power
Speaker 2: from the people, that's not true. It cannot be true.
Speaker 2: You and I have no power to give to the state.
Speaker 2: All authority is from God. All authority is from God.
Speaker 2: We have a mechanism in which we rotate our authorities
Speaker 2: through a process we call democracy or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: That as badly as it works, but it's still just
Speaker 2: at that's all it is. And if you had a
Speaker 2: king and we were governed by a king, if you
Speaker 2: had an ayatola and you're governed by an ayahtola, authority
Speaker 2: is just a authority. And the problem is is that
Speaker 2: authority has a kind of divine character about it. And
Speaker 2: in America, I hear this all the time. People will
Speaker 2: say things like that they believe in America. I'll tell
Speaker 2: people you shouldn't believe in America. You believe in God,
Speaker 2: you don't believe in countries. Countries are not objects of faith.
Speaker 2: God is the object of faith. You know. We pray
Speaker 2: for this country, we submit to its laws, we elect
Speaker 2: its leaders, we participate in it, we debate in it,
Speaker 2: we do all of those things. But it is not God.
Speaker 2: And the problem is that the state has this authority,
Speaker 2: the sort of aura of God about it. And in
Speaker 2: a world that is described secularly, we can't talk about
Speaker 2: this thing very well. And you can't name it. You
Speaker 2: can't talk about it. And we've gotten rid of the
Speaker 2: names for these divine things, and I mean.
Speaker 1: More, we've relegated them to abstractions. Why is God as
Speaker 1: an idea no God at all? And why does it
Speaker 1: lead to practical atheism or what you call Christian atheism?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just because God is an idea. Is make
Speaker 2: believe whose idea is it? It's your idea, you made
Speaker 2: it up. Father Maximus Constant is one of the best
Speaker 2: authorities on sat Maximus's Confessor written a number of books
Speaker 2: and translated a lot of his stuff. But he said
Speaker 2: that we only know something by contradiction, as in, if
Speaker 2: it's just my idea is sort of just an extension
Speaker 2: of my thinking. It's only when my idea runs up
Speaker 2: into something that it didn't think, if you will that
Speaker 2: contradicts it, that I am perceiving something and I'm dealing
Speaker 2: with something. Otherwise I'm just in a dream world. That
Speaker 2: you need a god. I mean, if God is real
Speaker 2: and true, I know him by contradiction. Is the old uh, well,
Speaker 2: the old timers. An AA once said, the only thing
Speaker 2: you need to know about God is you're not him.
Speaker 2: That's a place to start. You're not him. I need
Speaker 2: a God who can contradict me. I need a God
Speaker 2: who can bring me up short. I need a god
Speaker 2: who I see his commandments and his commandments. I would say,
Speaker 2: his commandments revealed to me who I am. But that's
Speaker 2: because he sees me in a way that I don't.
Speaker 2: There's a need that's imaginary. My idea of me, and
Speaker 2: the idea of me also doesn't exist. It's not me,
Speaker 2: that's make believe. And I would go into my more
Speaker 2: recent book and say, and most of it's built out
Speaker 2: of images driven by shame. Uh. And it is in fact,
Speaker 2: but to know be you can't. We know Jesus face
Speaker 2: to face. So one of my corrections I would make
Speaker 2: of evangelicals it's not a personal relationship. We want. We
Speaker 2: want a face to face relationship to know the glory
Speaker 2: of God God. In the face of Jesus Christ, I
Speaker 2: see God face to face in Christ, and in seeing Christ,
Speaker 2: I see me. It's Christ who makes himself known, but
Speaker 2: it's also Christ who makes me known to me. So
Speaker 2: I would say, we only know ourselves as we know
Speaker 2: ourselves in Christ. And that's a slow revelation. I has
Speaker 2: not seen here, has not or has it entered into
Speaker 2: the mind of man the good things God has prepared
Speaker 2: for those who love Him, and those are being revealed
Speaker 2: to us face to face in the face of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Somehow another it seems better than personal When people say
Speaker 2: personal relationship with Jesus, I think oftentimes they've got a
Speaker 2: lot of imaginary stuff in it, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of like Jesus as my secret friend, you know,
Speaker 2: like a child's little secret friend, their imaginary friend. And instead,
Speaker 2: you know, as an Orthodox Christian, you come into church
Speaker 2: and you look at him. There he is face to face,
Speaker 2: he sees me. I see him. I look at him.
Speaker 2: I pray I see him, you know. And I would
Speaker 2: extend that the fathers of the Seventh Council said, the
Speaker 2: icons do with color what scripture does with words, And
Speaker 2: so I mean, who is it Jesus face to face
Speaker 2: that I see. I'd go back to the gospels. Who
Speaker 2: is this? Who is this? I volunteered for a while.
Speaker 2: I'll call on drug treatment program, working with people going
Speaker 2: through it, on the spirituality of recovery. And this was
Speaker 2: in These were people mostly there by the order of
Speaker 2: a judge. So these were poor people who couldn't afford
Speaker 2: fancy twenty eight day programs. And a lot of them
Speaker 2: this was East in the Sea, so a lot of
Speaker 2: them come out of, you know, kind of poor Protestant backgrounds,
Speaker 2: and they'd heard a lot of angry God stuff preached
Speaker 2: out them. I would take them to the eighth chapter
Speaker 2: of John and we would go through the story of
Speaker 2: the woman taken an adultery. We would look at the
Speaker 2: story as well of the prodigal son, and we go
Speaker 2: through these just trying to talk to them about who
Speaker 2: God is, you know, this imagery, this woman caught in
Speaker 2: the act of adultery, so I've always imagined you're sort
Speaker 2: of naked and sweaty. I they drug her out into
Speaker 2: the street and they're having a guys are having a
Speaker 2: great time with this one, you know, and dragging her
Speaker 2: out in front of Jesus and wanting to throw stones.
Speaker 2: They're just, you know, how awful. What does Jesus do?
Speaker 2: I mean, he covers her first off, from the accusations,
Speaker 2: the accusations, he has refuted them with his words, and
Speaker 2: they go away, and he says, woman, where are your accusers? Are?
Speaker 2: Where those who condemn you? Whatever? And he says, then,
Speaker 2: neither do I condemn you. And that's not Jesus saying
Speaker 2: adultery is okay, that's not even a question. It's not
Speaker 2: even a question. The question is does Jesus lover? Can
Speaker 2: she be reconciled to God? Is she a child of Abraham?
Speaker 2: Does she belong to the people of God? To that?
Speaker 2: And then he says to her, go and sin no more,
Speaker 2: you know, And he doesn't say, or I'll come back,
Speaker 2: you know, and how roast you? And YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is but anyway, I can remember teaching
Speaker 2: this with these groups to be people just tears running
Speaker 2: down their cheeks because somehow another they had never heard that,
Speaker 2: they had never heard the gospel of a good God
Speaker 2: who loves mankind. They had just never heard it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's powerful when you talk about a one
Speaker 1: story universe. I mean you're talking about God loving us,
Speaker 1: and salvation really does come down to God's love for us.
Speaker 1: How does life in a one story universe versus the
Speaker 1: conception of a two story universe convey the real reality
Speaker 1: of salvation?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, first off, Jesus is here. He's here. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people with there. Actually, it's got
Speaker 2: a three story universe. There's us down here living in
Speaker 2: their secutive world. There's God up there, and Jesus is
Speaker 2: coming back. And I've often described their version of the
Speaker 2: Second Coming as Jesus is coming back and boy is
Speaker 2: he angry. That's like he's going to come to judge
Speaker 2: the heavens and the earth. Instead of understanding that judge
Speaker 2: means he's going to set everything right. That's what a
Speaker 2: show fate a judge does. A judge makes things right.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Jesus is here. The third story I mean
Speaker 2: there's here and then they've got Hell. And there's a
Speaker 2: sense in which, for a lot of folks, the angry
Speaker 2: God is very tied into the doctrine of Hell. In fact,
Speaker 2: the angry God needs Hell because he's got it is
Speaker 2: somewhere for his anger to get taken out. And so
Speaker 2: there's a lot of accounts of God that I feel
Speaker 2: like start and this is sort of I mean, I
Speaker 2: was trained in systematic theology, but I do orthodoxy, which
Speaker 2: is better than systematic. It's organic thing fits, but it
Speaker 2: still systematic theology can be useful because it can help
Speaker 2: you kind of listen to something and think, you know,
Speaker 2: I think you have a problem here. One of the
Speaker 2: problems is for a lot of Christians, their account of
Speaker 2: God starts with Hell, and the problem is about people
Speaker 2: going to Hell and how to get them out. Salvation's
Speaker 2: about not going to Hell. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 2: Saint John Chris System's sermon that we read everywhere in
Speaker 2: the Orthodox world at Pasca at the Great Service of Pasco.
Speaker 2: That sermon is read everywhere in the world that night,
Speaker 2: the same sermon, the only sermon we do that with
Speaker 2: everywhere in the Orthodox world. This sermon is read and
Speaker 2: has been since who knows when, I don't know, a
Speaker 2: long time ago, many many centuries ago. You read that
Speaker 2: sermon and it's kind of you know, it has language
Speaker 2: in it like and you know these trampled down death
Speaker 2: by death and not one you know, is left in
Speaker 2: the graves. It's it borders on universalism, and that just
Speaker 2: troubles the daylights out of a lot of including a
Speaker 2: lot of Orthodox But because it proclaims the good news
Speaker 2: so boldly that it smacks of that, well, I would,
Speaker 2: I would say, and I tell people, I'm like Metropolitan
Speaker 2: callistos Ware who wrote a really well done article called
Speaker 2: do we dare Hope? Do we dare hope? That all
Speaker 2: may be saved? And I thought that he said it right,
Speaker 2: is that you might you may hope that we have
Speaker 2: no dogmatic proclamation that all will be saved. We don't
Speaker 2: have that. That is not the teaching of the dogma
Speaker 2: of the Orthodox Church. You can find a few saints
Speaker 2: who do hold that opinion, and you can find some
Speaker 2: readings of the Fifth Ecumenical Council and some other things
Speaker 2: liturgically that talk about hell and stuff that way.
Speaker 1: But I would say to I.
Speaker 2: Remember my first confessor in the Orthodox Church, a priest
Speaker 2: who had taught at Saint Vladimir's. And I to him
Speaker 2: about kind of my leanings like Chlystos where and he said, well,
Speaker 2: he said, you can't teach that as a priest. It's
Speaker 2: not the teaching of the Orthodox Church. He said, but
Speaker 2: if you don't want it to be true, there's something
Speaker 2: wrong with your heart. And this is the disciples who
Speaker 2: were with Jesus and as Syrian village rejects him and
Speaker 2: they want to call down fire? Shall we call down
Speaker 2: fire like Elijah did? To consume that? And Jesus rebukes
Speaker 2: them and says, you don't know what spirit you're of.
Speaker 2: Saint Siliwan rebuked a monk who was sort of preaching
Speaker 2: hell fire and damnation, and he said, don't do that.
Speaker 2: He said, selt him, don't don't do that. He said,
Speaker 2: love could not bear it. And it's you know, so
Speaker 2: I draw a line. I have a border that I
Speaker 2: stopped with. I stopped with my hope and I think
Speaker 2: it's just find it to stand there, and that's my hope.
Speaker 2: And I don't I just I don't cross the lone.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I don't cross the line is.
Speaker 2: I think the Orthodox have always avoided it, just like
Speaker 2: we don't talk about purgatory. You know, we feel that
Speaker 2: Rome said too much, and then the Protestants criticizing the Romans,
Speaker 2: they said too much? Why say more than the Father said?
Speaker 2: It was enough? But we should proclaim the good news
Speaker 2: in Jesus Christ that God loves all without measure and
Speaker 2: preach that everywhere, and that the Kingdom of God is
Speaker 2: at hand. It's here, He's here. S Paul said, the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of God is peace, love, and joy in the
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit. Last time I checked. You can have those.
Speaker 1: Now when you talk about salvation, you say that we
Speaker 1: don't have a legal problem, we have a communion problem.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? And what's the significance
Speaker 1: of the word communion and not communion in the eucharistic sense.
Speaker 2: Well, what's the significance of the word legal? I mean
Speaker 2: law is always outside me, isn't it. I mean if
Speaker 2: I was speeding and got pulled for a speeding ticket,
Speaker 2: that that meant I was a bad person. No, I
Speaker 2: meant I broke a rule. Okay, there was a time
Speaker 2: that you could only drive fifty five miles per hour
Speaker 2: on the interstates, and a lot of us thought that
Speaker 2: was a bad law, you know, and then they changed
Speaker 2: it back to seventy miles per hour. Did we become
Speaker 2: you know by driving? You know, legal is just it's
Speaker 2: not anything. We have a communion problem in that our existence.
Speaker 2: I mean, I say what it is for me to exist.
Speaker 2: I exist by virtue of being in communion with God,
Speaker 2: that He dwells in me, that I dwell in him.
Speaker 2: That communion is the very nature of being. God is being,
Speaker 2: and He's the fount of all being, as Paul quotes
Speaker 2: in Acts, in Him, we live and move and have
Speaker 2: our being. Saint Basil says in his eucharistic prayer, addresses
Speaker 2: God as the only truly existing one. He is he
Speaker 2: who is. And in the Old Testament and the Greek
Speaker 2: Old Testament, when he says to Moses, I am that
Speaker 2: I am is ago Amy, I am ego amy he
Speaker 2: who is? I am he who is? Or I am
Speaker 2: the only truly existing one. So that's what Basil is echoing.
Speaker 2: We address God. That's Yahweh. In the Greek, he is
Speaker 2: the one who is. So that's how we have existence.
Speaker 2: All things come of the O Lord and of Thine own.
Speaker 2: Have we given THEE thine own of thine own? We
Speaker 2: offer unto thee on behalf of all and for all.
Speaker 2: This is that's the very nature of being. Now, the
Speaker 2: problem is what is sin? Sin is a movement like
Speaker 2: you know that arrow thing. You know, it's a dynamic thing.
Speaker 2: It miss armadilla, missing the mark. It is moving away
Speaker 2: from the tive being and moving towards non being. That's
Speaker 2: the nature of evil is It is like the devil,
Speaker 2: he tries to not exist, and so to move towards
Speaker 2: God is moved towards the fullness of being. You know,
Speaker 2: I've come that they might have life, and that more abundantly,
Speaker 2: He's come to give us the truth and fullness of being.
Speaker 2: And so I mean and this is so this the
Speaker 2: communion problem is the problem of sin. Sin is not
Speaker 2: a legal problem. You know that I need to deal
Speaker 2: with guilt on it. It strikes at the very core
Speaker 2: of who I am and what I'm becoming. And I
Speaker 2: don't want to be. I want to repent because I
Speaker 2: want fullness of life. I don't want less than than life.
Speaker 2: I want true life. You in dealing with you know,
Speaker 2: working and volunteering in a recovery program. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of people there had sum to a very low point.
Speaker 2: They had been moving towards addiction as the center of
Speaker 2: their being, you know, and there's nothing there. If you
Speaker 2: ever read the book I. C. S. Lewis of the
Speaker 2: Great Divorce, No, but I've heard of it. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: put that. Put that on the top of your pile,
Speaker 2: move it, get it, put it on the bottom. Then
Speaker 2: put it on the top of your pile and read it.
Speaker 2: It's about a group of people describes heaven, and there's
Speaker 2: a group of people that get on a bus to
Speaker 2: go from hell to heaven, and they get there, they
Speaker 2: can stay there, and it's a wonderful set of images
Speaker 2: that he plays with and all of this, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of a way of thinking without there being a
Speaker 2: legal problem. There's an existence problem. They can stay, but
Speaker 2: to stay, they have to be real and true. When
Speaker 2: they get there, they're thin and ghostly, like, okay, they're
Speaker 2: not quite real, but because heaven is real. Things like
Speaker 2: walking on the grass is hard because it's spiky and
Speaker 2: you're thin and ghosty and you can't you know your weight,
Speaker 2: there's almost nothing to you. You can't press it down,
Speaker 2: and so it's very hard for you to even walk,
Speaker 2: you know, And so it's really fascinating. I mean, Lewis
Speaker 2: is the genius of his of his writing and his
Speaker 2: imagery in this. And they can stay. And there's a
Speaker 2: group of solid people, as he calls them, who are
Speaker 2: like saints, who've come to meet them to help them stay,
Speaker 2: to help them deeper in the journey. They stay on
Speaker 2: their journey and go in. They'll become more and more
Speaker 2: solid until they are at home. And so Lewis uses
Speaker 2: this as an opportunity for people to talk about with
Speaker 2: a different set of images, about letting your sin go.
Speaker 2: I read that thing in my late teen years and
Speaker 2: it totally changed. It gave me images to think about
Speaker 2: a communion issue, a life issue instead of illegal problem,
Speaker 2: and I've stayed with it ever since. It is it's
Speaker 2: a set of images. It's something he actually borrowed from
Speaker 2: a science fiction book he read. But the set of
Speaker 2: images is so good that it actually fits better what
Speaker 2: I would call orthodox teaching on life and sin even
Speaker 2: than most of the especially the moral accounts that are
Speaker 2: so legalistic. Moralism, well, I mean yeah, moralism. I mean,
Speaker 2: you pay your fine and it's done, but you're still
Speaker 2: the same guy.
Speaker 1: You were.
Speaker 2: Right. Nothing has changed. It was said that Luther described
Speaker 2: the Christian as a snow covered dunghill, But that also
Speaker 2: says that a Christian is a pile of dung. That's heresy.
Speaker 2: No human being is a pile of dung. People have
Speaker 2: taken the scriptures that talk about sin, like for all
Speaker 2: we have sinned and comes and fallen short of the
Speaker 2: glory of God, and they turned that whole thing into
Speaker 2: like a total depravity, or even the weird verse that
Speaker 2: the heart is exceedingly wicked and deceitful above all things.
Speaker 2: That's a translation of the Hebrew. But in the Greek,
Speaker 2: it's very interesting does it say that at all? And
Speaker 2: the Subtracon, which for the Orthodox is more authoritative than
Speaker 2: the Hebrew. But in the Greek it says the heart
Speaker 2: is deep, baffles, the heart is deep, and it is
Speaker 2: the man who can know it. That's what it says
Speaker 2: in the Greek. And if I've sat and pondered the
Speaker 2: I read both languages. I sat and pondered the Hebrew
Speaker 2: and looked at the Greek and wondered, were they looking
Speaker 2: at a different Hebrew text? Or is that how they
Speaker 2: read the Hebrew? Text, and I think they were not
Speaker 2: working from a different text. I think that's how they
Speaker 2: translated the Hebrew text. If you will, that is how
Speaker 2: a Jew in the third century BC or two hundreds BC,
Speaker 2: reading in Alexandria, reading his own Hebrew scripture rendered It's
Speaker 2: how he understood it. Now, that's interesting, and that verse
Speaker 2: has been so twisted in which we're depraved, we're a dunghill.
Speaker 2: I remember, as a teenager in the Jesus movement hearing
Speaker 2: that and being disgusted by it and praying and said, Jesus,
Speaker 2: I want to be a snow covered snow hill. If
Speaker 2: I'm dung, I want to become snow. And the first
Speaker 2: time I read the first Orthodox book I read in college,
Speaker 2: a friend gave it to me. One of my Jesus
Speaker 2: freaquentddies gave me this book by Vladimir Lawsky, the Mystical
Speaker 2: Theology the Eastern Church, which is so difficult. I didn't
Speaker 2: understand most of it. But what I did understand, I
Speaker 2: got very clear that I am not a dunghill, that
Speaker 2: we're not dunge we are created, and that we're created
Speaker 2: to be restored to the fullness of Communion. That God
Speaker 2: became man that man might become God. God became what
Speaker 2: we are, that we might become what he is. Jen.
Speaker 2: According to the early fathers Dionysius Eriapaguide very very clear,
Speaker 2: is a evil, is a parasite. It's it's not a thing,
Speaker 2: it's a I mean, it has no existence. It's a
Speaker 2: like a parasite. Jen. I've got an article on my
Speaker 2: blog somewhere that you are not your sin. Hmmm, it's
Speaker 2: not you are not your sin.
Speaker 1: I've always struggled to reconcile the snow covered dung with
Speaker 1: the amalgo day and how how the two can coexist?
Speaker 2: Right right? Well, there's it's just not there. In Orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: we are created good and the fall is a fall,
Speaker 2: a sort of a performative fall in which we fall
Speaker 2: from the goodness we are. But for instance, in Orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: we believe that children are inherently good. They are not
Speaker 2: inherent little sinners. They don't need spanking in order to
Speaker 2: become better people. They need adults not to abuse them.
Speaker 2: They need to be loved, they need to be nurtured.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things they need. But Jesus is
Speaker 2: very clear in warning people about the dangers of abusing children.
Speaker 2: He treats them as innocent. They're angels. Their angels continuously
Speaker 2: behold the face of God. This is I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a gosh, it's strong, strong language. I love seeing the
Speaker 2: little children at church, and we have so many of
Speaker 2: them these days at our perish. I look at them
Speaker 2: and they are like little angels. They're innocent, you know.
Speaker 2: So why do we baptize them. Well, you know that
Speaker 2: baptism will work against sin eventually, but we baptize them
Speaker 2: because what does it say that we do in baptism.
Speaker 2: It's Saint Paul says, we are baptized into his death
Speaker 2: and raised in the likeness of his resurrection. We become
Speaker 2: partakers of his death, not just our death, but his
Speaker 2: his death, his death, his holy death. We are through baptism,
Speaker 2: united to that. This is like, this is sacraments, and
Speaker 2: sacraments are always about union. We become one with what's happening.
Speaker 2: It becomes operative in us when united with the death
Speaker 2: of Christ. In baptism, united with the resurrection of Christ
Speaker 2: is we are raised in Him. So why do we
Speaker 2: do that with children? Because we want them to be
Speaker 2: united to the death of Christ and raised in his resurrection,
Speaker 2: And though the Catholics will baptize an infant, they won't
Speaker 2: give them communion, at least not the Roman Catholics and
Speaker 2: Eastern Catholics, who the Roman Catholics won't. What do we do.
Speaker 2: We Christ make them at the same time we baptism,
Speaker 2: which is what this postponed confirmation is in the Western Church.
Speaker 2: We Christ make them and give them communion on the
Speaker 2: day of their baptism because they are fully united with Christ.
Speaker 2: What do adults say? Do you unite yourself to Christ?
Speaker 2: I do unite myself to Christ. That's the translations in
Speaker 2: the baptism service in the Oca. Do you unite yourself
Speaker 2: to Christ? I do unite myself to Christ. That I
Speaker 2: tell people. That's Orthodox, for have you accepted Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: as your personal Lord and Savior? Well, it's better in
Speaker 2: older language. I do unite myself to Christ. I unite
Speaker 2: myself to him because He has united myself to me.
Speaker 2: I am accepting his union with me, and I am
Speaker 2: saved by that union. In fact, if you go back
Speaker 2: through and read the New Testament with the doctrine of
Speaker 2: union in your mind, it will reread the whole thing
Speaker 2: for you and you think, gosh, that's all it ever
Speaker 2: talks about. It's all it ever talks about. The passages
Speaker 2: on sin only ever really make sense if they're read
Speaker 2: that way. Grace is nothing other than the life, the
Speaker 2: very life of God, his divine energies. That is grace,
Speaker 2: the very life of God in me. As Saint Paul says,
Speaker 2: God is working in you, willing to do of his
Speaker 2: good pleasure. The word working is in the gaia. It's
Speaker 2: the energies God is energizing in me. That's grace, gracing
Speaker 2: in me that I might do the energies of God.
Speaker 2: So it's all union, union, union, there's nothing else.
Speaker 1: And and so God, you know, the more I think
Speaker 1: about it and preparing for this with you, really I
Speaker 1: put down union with reality is really just union with
Speaker 1: godly because Christ himself is reality. And so that's that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, once again getting back to everything reality like
Speaker 1: we flattened it. This is why I'm so consumed by
Speaker 1: your writing on a one story universe, because we live
Speaker 1: as you talk about Lewis wretched flat landers.
Speaker 2: Yep, we live and move and have our being in God.
Speaker 2: The trees, the trees, you know, they've grown and travail.
Speaker 2: I mean, all the creation groans and travails. Why it
Speaker 2: groans for the that it might become a partaker of
Speaker 2: it in the fullness of our freedom, that it might
Speaker 2: be partakers of the liberty of the sons of God.
Speaker 2: And it's in Roman's eight he when at the return
Speaker 2: of Christ, and that, if you will, the veil is
Speaker 2: taken away, and all things are revealed in the fullness
Speaker 2: of how they are. But see in Christ the veil
Speaker 2: is already taken away. So what do we see happening
Speaker 2: with Jesus. Well, Jesus walks on water. He doesn't change
Speaker 2: the nature of water, just fiells. Water is in right
Speaker 2: relationship with him, you know, and he walks on it.
Speaker 2: He's not afraid of it. I mean, if you will,
Speaker 2: Jesus in the back of the boat when there's the storm,
Speaker 2: I love this. What is Jesus doing in the back
Speaker 2: of the boat. He's sleeping. Storms don't bother Jesus. By
Speaker 2: the way, what was Jonah doing in the boat when
Speaker 2: the other guys woke him up to complain about the storm.
Speaker 2: Jonah was sleeping at the back of the boat. The
Speaker 2: same reason. Jonah knows God and he's sleeping on the
Speaker 2: back of the boat. You know, he's already I love.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm old and retired and I take walks.
Speaker 2: I try to walk a mile a day. I can't
Speaker 2: get it done every day because various health issues will
Speaker 2: prevent me. But on a good day, I've walked a mile,
Speaker 2: and you know. And I love knowing the trees. I
Speaker 2: love paying attention to them. I love knowing the seasons
Speaker 2: and listening to it, noticing it, praying in the middle
Speaker 2: of it, giving thanks for it. You know. I love Lewis.
Speaker 2: I also love Tolkien. This is my main complaint about
Speaker 2: the people talking about re enchanting, is that the world
Speaker 2: is enchanted and you don't have to re enchant anything.
Speaker 2: It just it just always is in him we live
Speaker 2: and move and her being. The other side of it
Speaker 2: is is that there is Secutarism does have an enchantment,
Speaker 2: and that enchantment is that's why we've been lulled to sleep.
Speaker 2: And if you will, don't even think Narnia exists. That's
Speaker 2: in the Silver Chair, by the way Lewis's Narnia chronicles.
Speaker 2: We think that Narnia isn't true, but it is. If
Speaker 2: you will one Catholic writer wrote very well about it,
Speaker 2: said that the enchantment, in fact, his book is called
Speaker 2: The Enchantment of Mammon, that the enchantment of our modern
Speaker 2: world is mattern. The ontology of the modern world is money.
Speaker 2: The modern world thinks that in money we live and
Speaker 2: move and have our being. That money is what makes
Speaker 2: the world go round, and we've fallen in love with it,
Speaker 2: and this is what constitutes our life. That's why monasticism
Speaker 2: is so terribly important in Orthodoxy, so central that we
Speaker 2: have people among us who have said no to money,
Speaker 2: have said no to money, and Jesus warns us that
Speaker 2: you cannot serve God in money, cannot serve God in Manma.
Speaker 2: And so our modern world is in love with Mammon,
Speaker 2: and we can't do that. So I tell people keep
Speaker 2: the commandments, you know, give your stuff away, I mean, like,
Speaker 2: share your stuff. Be sure. You know. My father in
Speaker 2: law was the greatest Baptist I've ever known. He practiced
Speaker 2: a tithe. He was very serious about the tithe. In fact,
Speaker 2: he thanked God for all things, and so much so
Speaker 2: he should have been Orthodox, but he he thanked God
Speaker 2: for all things, including He thought having insurance was a sin.
Speaker 2: It was like not trust in God. But then he
Speaker 2: thought people would think I'm being cheap. So he hadn't
Speaker 2: found out what his insurance would cost, and he gave
Speaker 2: that above his tithe and God took care of him.
Speaker 2: He died in his eighties with no bills.
Speaker 1: When I was reading your book, I started to think
Speaker 1: about money, yeah, And I started to think about right action,
Speaker 1: like what we ought to do. Yeah. And you talked
Speaker 1: about how the of God, including the temple, the church,
Speaker 1: icons that we should always approach them with right reverence. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and yet sometimes you know, especially being new in orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: I mean, I canot give you all of this. It's
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to still to this day, trying to
Speaker 1: get my bunny ears in the right configuration and really,
Speaker 1: you know, recalibrate my conception of reality rightly understood. And
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, sometimes I'll walk into the church
Speaker 1: and I'll see people do they'll make prostrations, they'll do things,
Speaker 1: and I won't do them because I feel embarrassed or something.
Speaker 1: But I thought, if somebody told me, when you walk
Speaker 1: into that church, I will give you, and my price
Speaker 1: is pretty low. I mean, I'll give you one hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: If you go in there and you bow your forehead
Speaker 1: to the I would probably do it. Now, what does
Speaker 1: that say about what motivates me? Is the fear of God?
Speaker 1: Not that, not the fear of fear like we were
Speaker 1: talking about, but the respect, the awe, the reverence is
Speaker 1: that in front of money, well right there, and then
Speaker 1: it shows that it isn't And that's you know.
Speaker 2: That's I will say, there's a drawback. You belong to
Speaker 2: a large, prosperous church in Charlotte. When I became Orthodox,
Speaker 2: we started in a living room and I didn't even
Speaker 2: know what I was doing. I just knew. I knew
Speaker 2: the doctrines, but I didn't know the rest of it.
Speaker 2: And starting the missions that I started, we started in warehouses, storefronts,
Speaker 2: living rooms, awful places. We had a couple of icons
Speaker 2: on music stands, I mean the little wire music stands
Speaker 2: like from band camp or something. I mean, not even
Speaker 2: the nice ones, just on music stands, and it was
Speaker 2: oh man, and we were mostly just converts with a
Speaker 2: couple of cradles. We became part of us, but it
Speaker 2: was hard and learning to do it. Yeah, and and Orthodox,
Speaker 2: he's trying to teach how to how to venerate you
Speaker 2: know what we venerate money in America. We admire it's
Speaker 2: we admire rich people. That's why I brought it up.
Speaker 2: I didn't bring it up, and I talked to my
Speaker 2: brother about it.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I phrased it the right way
Speaker 1: because especially when I when I brought it in the
Speaker 1: context of coming into Orthodoxy. But I think this applies
Speaker 1: to all Christians of any especially in the West and America.
Speaker 1: We really do put money, power, prestige, fame ahead.
Speaker 2: And it was Orthodox to do it too. Well. You know,
Speaker 2: some football players Orthodox and we want to have him
Speaker 2: come and talk, you know, or whatever. You know, president
Speaker 2: of Chick fil A, and we want to have him
Speaker 2: come and talk or something like that. And I know
Speaker 2: it is I got to admit I totally loved well.
Speaker 2: When I converted, I had to have a non church
Speaker 2: job for a couple of years because no way the
Speaker 2: missions could pay me and I had to support my fear.
Speaker 2: So I got a job working for hospice, and so
Speaker 2: I worked for two years as a home health hospice
Speaker 2: chaplain out in the mountains of East Tennessee. And so
Speaker 2: I was going from shack to shack on the sides
Speaker 2: of mountains, visiting dying people, black lung cancer, or whatever
Speaker 2: it was. Protestants had ever even seen a college educated preacher,
Speaker 2: much less a seminary educated preacher, and man, they lived
Speaker 2: a one story universe. No one ever taught them that.
Speaker 2: They just lived it. And there's a lot of things
Speaker 2: about the poor. I've learned over the years that if
Speaker 2: you need money, ask a poor man. If you need money,
Speaker 2: a poor man will share what he has with you.
Speaker 2: The wealthy might help you out, but there are always
Speaker 2: strings attached. They want to know that you'll use it correctly.
Speaker 2: You know. C. S. Lewis. A guy approached him on
Speaker 2: the street once and asked for, you know, money, and
Speaker 2: so Lewis gives him a pen and as the guy leaves,
Speaker 2: the guy that Lewis is with said, you know, he's
Speaker 2: only going to use it to buy a pint. And
Speaker 2: Louis said, well, that's what I'm just going to do
Speaker 2: with it. Father.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a story. So I studied abroad in
Speaker 1: West Africa and Ghana, and the first week or two
Speaker 1: there maybe sure first week, man, it was like I
Speaker 1: gradually extended my circumference that I was willing to go
Speaker 1: out like I was just scared of everything, you know,
Speaker 1: the next day I'd go one hundred yards further. Felt
Speaker 1: like such a foreign place. It was truly transformative in
Speaker 1: so many ways. But one thing when I came back,
Speaker 1: people would say, oh, wow, you were in Africa? Was
Speaker 1: it hard with all the poor people? And I thought,
Speaker 1: of all the things that I think about, that was
Speaker 1: not really on the list, And it was because exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying, I and I saw that we don't. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't say this that we have poor people in America,
Speaker 1: but the poor, the poorest of the poor. I mean
Speaker 1: I saw out there, and yet that is not what
Speaker 1: registered with me. It's that I would go out there
Speaker 1: with them, and I'd be in the middle of the bush,
Speaker 1: in living circumstances that no American would ever accept. And
Speaker 1: yet I saw happiness. I saw.
Speaker 2: People go into the third so called Third world Christians
Speaker 2: on their missions, they invariably come back describing the Christians
Speaker 2: there who are so joyful, far more joyful than we are.
Speaker 2: We write books on the anxious generation. I mean, we're
Speaker 2: we're dying. Secularism is death. Secutarism is death because God
Speaker 2: and Him we live and move and heaver being. And
Speaker 2: if you're not in communion with God. By actively living
Speaker 2: in community with God, then you're very likely you know,
Speaker 2: And strictly speaking, you can't exist out of communion with God.
Speaker 2: I mean he'll sustain you anyway. I mean, he sustains
Speaker 2: the devil, so he'll sustain you. But nonetheless you're not
Speaker 2: living into the fullness of that. And yet what you
Speaker 2: discover when you're there is they have a faith that
Speaker 2: will put yours to shame. They have you know, they
Speaker 2: keep the commandments as a way of life. If someone
Speaker 2: asks their coat, they give them their cloak calls. So
Speaker 2: they just do these things joyfully.
Speaker 1: Joyfully. I mean, if I needed a shirt, they would
Speaker 1: give me their last shirt, and the way that And
Speaker 1: I never want to get it twisted that like people,
Speaker 1: because people will push back and say, well, are they
Speaker 1: really happy? Of course they're not happy with their situation.
Speaker 1: If they could switch, they would gladly. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a very fine distinction between being happy with and happy
Speaker 1: in and I saw happiness in their situation and I
Speaker 1: brought back I mean I stopped thinking about poverty. I
Speaker 1: mean not, okay, you think about it you want to
Speaker 1: solve it, you want to get better. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: the big takeaway for me. The takeaway was that we
Speaker 1: live in poverty. America preaches America. The bulk of many missionaries,
Speaker 1: regardless of whatever versions of the Gospel they take with them,
Speaker 1: preach America. We preach democracy, we preach capitalism, we preach
Speaker 1: hard work, we preach success, we preach financial blessing, we
Speaker 1: preach all of these things that Americans take for granted.
Speaker 1: And we actually all believe that if they would practice
Speaker 1: these things rightly.
Speaker 2: They would succeed just like us. And we believe that,
Speaker 2: we really do believe that that the americanization of the
Speaker 2: world and its Christianization would be pretty much the same thing.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's a blatant lie. Europe had all of
Speaker 2: these things once upon a time, and they can barely
Speaker 2: sustain a church. I mean, the Anglican Church in England
Speaker 2: is less than five percent of the population and it's
Speaker 2: the state church for Heaven Sex. You know. I mean, but.
Speaker 1: You know, I think, because what you're talking about is
Speaker 1: we get into all these culture wars. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think should Christians be less concerned with culture wars and
Speaker 1: more concerned with recovering reality itself a right view of it.
Speaker 2: The problem is, I've been trying to find a way
Speaker 2: I want to write about this, probably just a blog article.
Speaker 2: But politics is the religion of the modern world. Yes,
Speaker 2: because I mean everybody in America thinks he's in management.
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody in modernity believes their management. And so
Speaker 2: we all became epidemiologists. During the pandemic. We knew how
Speaker 2: virus is spread and how to manage it. We are
Speaker 2: all financial managers, we're political managers. We know how to
Speaker 2: run the world. That's why we all have opinions and Facebook,
Speaker 2: I mean we all know how to run the world.
Speaker 2: And Christians have opinions. I mean priests now are they're
Speaker 2: receiving people coming to the church to inquire who You
Speaker 2: already have opinions about orthodoxy and I'm thinking you know,
Speaker 2: the word heresy in Greek basically means opinionism. If you
Speaker 2: have opinions, you need to get rid of them. But anyway,
Speaker 2: renounce having opinions you when I have faith, not opinions,
Speaker 2: but anyway, we want to run things. One of the
Speaker 2: things I learned from Stanley Hower was a duke and
Speaker 2: I'm eternally grateful for him. He said that in the
Speaker 2: death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, history has come to
Speaker 2: an end. That is the end of history, that is
Speaker 2: its fulfillment, the death and resurrection of Christ. History is fulfilled.
Speaker 2: And because in Christ, in Christ Paska, history is fulfilled.
Speaker 2: Christians have nothing better to do in this life than
Speaker 2: to have children and tell them about Jesus. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just radical, but it's also radically true. We have
Speaker 2: nothing better to do than to have children and tell
Speaker 2: them about Jesus, and then have children in turn tell
Speaker 2: us about Jesus because they learned so much from you.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 1: And to live in communion with them. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's I mean, you talk about theosis. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's the big difference. The main thing is union with
Speaker 1: God and it's not escapism. It's and and that's why
Speaker 1: salvation is such an important topic, because you can get
Speaker 1: it so wrong and it can drive you in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction that you get you think salvation is this
Speaker 1: punctiliar thing that happens in a moment, and then you're
Speaker 1: just waiting for the real thing to begin. The real
Speaker 1: thing is here and now, and salvation is a process
Speaker 1: that we are experiencing. Heaven is right now. I mean
Speaker 1: you talk about that heaven if God is everywhere present
Speaker 1: in all things. Heaven is here, is.
Speaker 2: Now when we when we are in the Divine liturgy,
Speaker 2: the priest actually refers to the Second Coming. In the
Speaker 2: past tense, we thank God, we listened with a bunch
Speaker 2: of other things that happened. In past tense. It's all present,
Speaker 2: it is present. I'm just reading this morning in Philippians
Speaker 2: where Paul's I'm at rejoice always or in the third chapter,
Speaker 2: and he says it was the translation I was reading.
Speaker 2: It says the Lord is at hand, and in Greek
Speaker 2: it's us it is the Lord is near or even present.
Speaker 2: It's like all of these things are true because God
Speaker 2: is here. And I think over the years, especially Protestant years,
Speaker 2: I read that as the Second Coming is soon, therefore
Speaker 2: do these things, and Paul means the Lord is present,
Speaker 2: therefore can rejoice, give thanks always for all things. But
Speaker 2: then there's people who if you're not worried about politics
Speaker 2: and you don't care about the world, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: that's not how you care about the world. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't even know anything about the world if you
Speaker 2: care about politics, because politics is a very narrow narrative,
Speaker 2: a narrow story told by people who lie for a living.
Speaker 2: They all tell lies, both parties, they all tell lies
Speaker 2: for a living, and they didn't even know that their
Speaker 2: narrative is a lie. It is not the truth. You
Speaker 2: will be in heaven and you'll say something about America
Speaker 2: and someone will go, huh. Saint Paul says, our citizenship,
Speaker 2: our poldia, our politics, our parodia is in the heavens.
Speaker 2: This is our life. Our life is hid with Christ
Speaker 2: in God. It does not yet appear what we shall be,
Speaker 2: but we know that when He appears, we shall be
Speaker 2: like him, for we shall see him like he is.
Speaker 2: Paul says, So this is you know, it is now,
Speaker 2: It is here and now, and you know, I just
Speaker 2: think that we refuse to be crazy enough that in
Speaker 2: my book on Shame, on one of my favorite chapters,
Speaker 2: I write in it as about the Holy Fools, which
Speaker 2: the Orthodox need to learn lots more about. There's some
Speaker 2: books out there on the Holy fools, and they should
Speaker 2: read them. I have described that as probably the primary
Speaker 2: and best image of what it is to be an
Speaker 2: Orthodox Christian is the image of the fool. Christ is
Speaker 2: the fool. To the Greeks, he's foolishness. The Cross seems
Speaker 2: to them to be foolishness. Paul says that we've become
Speaker 2: fools for Christ's sake, and so there's sense in which
Speaker 2: to live in the truth and the fullness of the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of God will look like foolishness to the world.
Speaker 2: You know, the poor man who is joyful and happy
Speaker 2: looks like a fool. Doesn't he know how poor he is?
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, no, he doesn't, because you don't know
Speaker 2: how rich he is, you know. But will preach the
Speaker 2: Gospel to them enough, and they hear enough of this
Speaker 2: stuff that have given the chance to immigrate to America,
Speaker 2: they will not realizing that they've n dangered their children's salvation.
Speaker 1: Well, once again, reaching into the pool of African content lessons,
Speaker 1: there's this I can't remember the name of the short film,
Speaker 1: but there's these two Africans and they're fishing, and one
Speaker 1: of them is telling the other one all about I
Speaker 1: think it all starts with his watch starts going off
Speaker 1: at a certain time. He says, oh, yeah, every day
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock. It goes off beppep and he starts
Speaker 1: telling about the Western world and the other guy's listening, thinking,
Speaker 1: and he has this idea. And the whole film you
Speaker 1: see him going through these stages of government and they're
Speaker 1: stamping his idea and you're wondering what is it. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the film you realize that his
Speaker 1: big idea, I think it's Binta's big idea. Maybe his
Speaker 1: big idea is to rescue, to adopt somebody from the
Speaker 1: quote unquote first world and save them because everything that
Speaker 1: he was hearing about it was Wow, that's such a
Speaker 1: terrible way to live. And it's so the reason it
Speaker 1: sticks with me, I mean, I think I saw it
Speaker 1: over twenty years ago, is it's radical because we always
Speaker 1: think we I mean, we have this savior complex because
Speaker 1: in our minds, if you're not able to prosper and
Speaker 1: you know, hard work and raising yourself up is not
Speaker 1: currently bad. It's the value that you place on it
Speaker 1: and what it may substitute. It may substitute.
Speaker 2: Community is not bad. Technology is not bad, but you
Speaker 2: have to be careful with it. I mean, I read
Speaker 2: something the other day. It was talking about you know,
Speaker 2: the use of herbicides on plants and stuff, and that
Speaker 2: it's gotten into our food system all at you know,
Speaker 2: the mon santo and all of that stuff. And I
Speaker 2: thought about it, and the guy was saying about this,
Speaker 2: and he said, but I guess this is necessary to
Speaker 2: industrial scale farming, and without it we wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to feed the world. And I thought, boys, he bought
Speaker 2: it hook line and sinker. Industrial farming is not something
Speaker 2: we have in order to feed the world. We actually
Speaker 2: have a surplus of food and have had a surplace
Speaker 2: of food for the longest time. We're not running out
Speaker 2: of food. We have to throw We throw food away,
Speaker 2: We produce too much food. We pay people not to
Speaker 2: grow food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, subsidized nothing.
Speaker 2: We have industrial farming because we down enforced trust laws,
Speaker 2: because big companies have bought up our farms and put
Speaker 2: farmers out of business. And nowadays, if you grow wheat
Speaker 2: and it's produced, you buy your wheat through you know,
Speaker 2: the company that provides the wheat, and the wheat's been
Speaker 2: genetically modified. It's genetically modified so that it will respond
Speaker 2: or be protected against the use of exlucifate. You know,
Speaker 2: Da Da da, All of this stuff. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: and then and then you can't use the seeds of
Speaker 2: your own wheat to plant the begin you have to
Speaker 2: buy them from the company every year. It's there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of you know, there's a monopoly in all of this.
Speaker 2: But and we're losing farmers and so America we disappear
Speaker 2: as farmers. And so basically we're we've created a structure
Speaker 2: in which it has to be industrial farming because we
Speaker 2: put farmers out of business and we did not protect them,
Speaker 2: and we destroyed a way of life. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: if somebody tells me that's progress, I think, no, that's
Speaker 2: just bad decision making. That's not progress. But people try
Speaker 2: to believe it's progress because they'll even believe that if
Speaker 2: we weren't doing this terrible thing, everybody would starve. And
Speaker 2: that's just no, that's a lie. That's just a lie.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of other lies throughout our modern world.
Speaker 2: Technology is useful and we should use it, but it's
Speaker 2: not what we say it is. What modernity says about
Speaker 2: it is not true. Modernity's progress is making us slaves
Speaker 2: of the machine.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm a one string banjo. At least on this
Speaker 1: podcast and everything comes back to reality. I mean, you
Speaker 1: talk about you know it exists, but you can stray
Speaker 1: from it. And like I said, progress can be a
Speaker 1: myth because it's a story you tell about your current
Speaker 1: moment in time.
Speaker 2: Yep. So you have human beings who grow up in
Speaker 2: our culture and don't know where food comes from. Literally
Speaker 2: don't know where food comes from. I know a group
Speaker 2: people they do their own farming and stuff, but they
Speaker 2: have classes for homeschooled kids. They bring them out and
Speaker 2: watch them butcher the chickens and stuff and process them
Speaker 2: so that they can learn where food comes from. Thank God.
Speaker 2: You know, my parents grew up poor on farms and
Speaker 2: they knew where it came from, and they weren't weird
Speaker 2: about food, and they had a deep regard for it
Speaker 2: and to care for it.
Speaker 1: It's funny you brought that up, because as soon as
Speaker 1: you said that, I thought. I used to work in
Speaker 1: other countries, and at one point I was working with
Speaker 1: young Americans who were in I think was Nicaragua, and
Speaker 1: I did the same thing. I said, Oh, if you
Speaker 1: want to eat meat, you should see how it's butchered.
Speaker 1: You here where I think it was a lamb. We
Speaker 1: took a lamb and slaughtered it and you know, and
Speaker 1: then ate it. And I thought that was revolutionary. But
Speaker 1: how often have we seen our food sources period outside
Speaker 1: of like I mean, going blueberry picking or something.
Speaker 2: Think of what you just said. You'd describe something that
Speaker 2: human beings have done since the gardener. However, you want
Speaker 2: to tell that story that we've always done and now
Speaker 2: it's revolutionary to do it. What's revel lutionary is to
Speaker 2: be human, so and that to be human is reality.
Speaker 2: To have reality, we should you know, we should hold
Speaker 2: teachers in high regard, and they should teach something that
Speaker 2: is worthy of high regard. We should hold farmers and
Speaker 2: high regard, and they should grow things that are worthy
Speaker 2: of high regard. And we should. My father was an
Speaker 2: auto mechanic. I thought, I thought he hung the world.
Speaker 2: I was amazed at his ability to fix things, and
Speaker 2: he could fix anything. And I love that I had
Speaker 2: of it. So people talk to me about technology, I think, oh,
Speaker 2: I get weepy. When I'm standing around a garage and
Speaker 2: I smell the fumes, I get weepy because it reminds
Speaker 2: me of my childhood and my grandfather and my dad
Speaker 2: and my uncle all these men who worked in their
Speaker 2: hands were dirty. I love it, you know, I work
Speaker 2: on things myself. That's it's one of my happy places.
Speaker 2: Same is true.
Speaker 1: It's part of being embodied.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is. And so have a body keep the commandments,
Speaker 2: do good things, do the next a good thing, do
Speaker 2: small things, and you know, and I would add to
Speaker 2: it your admonition, you know, get real.
Speaker 1: You know, well this is going to sound paradoxical, but
Speaker 1: how of both literalism and abstraction become enemies of a
Speaker 1: proper understanding of reality.
Speaker 2: Literalism is oftentimes just not is an ideology that's just
Speaker 2: refusing to be analyzed for what it is. I mean,
Speaker 2: like say, biblical literalism. I mean, yeah, there's some things
Speaker 2: in the Bible that are very literal accounts, and some
Speaker 2: things in the Bible that are very rich in imagery
Speaker 2: and various things that way, And for the Orthodox Christian
Speaker 2: we read the Bible the way the Church reads it.
Speaker 2: That's the right way to read it. And primarily that's
Speaker 2: to read it as the Liturgy teaches us to read it.
Speaker 2: That's how we read it. These are scriptures. Protestantism was
Speaker 2: a rebellion against the Church and they needed for them,
Speaker 2: that was the Catholic Church. But it wasn't really just
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. They rebelled against the Church, and there
Speaker 2: wasn't one Protestantism. There were many Protestantisms. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: single Protestant church. There were many from the beginning, and
Speaker 2: they weren't even in communion with each other. They didn't
Speaker 2: even recognize each other's ministers. That's from the beginning. So
Speaker 2: Protestantism was a real was interesting that way, but they
Speaker 2: had no doctor. The Creed declares, I believe in one
Speaker 2: holy Catholic habit select Church. They denied the Creed from
Speaker 2: the beginning, or it turned it into this imaginary, invisible church.
Speaker 2: Everybody that confesses Jesus's Lord is part of the invisible church,
Speaker 2: and that's so they don't have to deal with the
Speaker 2: problems of a visible church. It's kind of like having
Speaker 2: an invisible marriage. I want a visible wife, you know,
Speaker 2: I want a very visible wife. Literalism distorts you from
Speaker 2: the fullness of reality. It reduces reality to a kind
Speaker 2: of formulaic treatment of things. Sat anomalism, Yeah, piss trying
Speaker 2: to remember which one piesiusts or perfurious one of the
Speaker 2: other of them said, to be a Christian, one must
Speaker 2: first become a poet, or fieus or furious, Yes, become
Speaker 2: a poet. And there's so much there. Man, it's the heart.
Speaker 2: He's really talking about the heart, so that we see
Speaker 2: things with the heart, and.
Speaker 1: So primary organizvision is not the eyes. It's the heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, and the eye is the light
Speaker 2: of the body, if you will. The eyes they have
Speaker 2: this role, but they have to be governed by the
Speaker 2: heart in order to see rightly. If you look at
Speaker 2: an enemy, you don't see him rightly. It's your anger
Speaker 2: and your hatred that govern what you see. I guess
Speaker 2: one of the questions is how often do we look
Speaker 2: at the world and weep. We don't weep enough. We
Speaker 2: think so much we can't weep. And you know, and
Speaker 2: this is true particularly true in men and our culture,
Speaker 2: but it's probably increasingly true of women as well. But
Speaker 2: we need to weep. We need to learn to weep.
Speaker 2: I've been working lately. It's kind of weird that when
Speaker 2: something I feel something bringing tears to my eyes, like
Speaker 2: in the service, I've actually begun to lean into it.
Speaker 2: I mean two actually lean into it and sometimes I'm boohooing.
Speaker 2: I'm standing there just shaking as I cry because I'm
Speaker 2: trying to cry, and I don't know how Normally, you know,
Speaker 2: you choke back the tears. And I've done it so
Speaker 2: long I'm english, you know.
Speaker 1: I had Martin Shaw on this podcast and I thought,
Speaker 1: I said, you love a good cry, and I told
Speaker 1: them a story about how I find myself all the time.
Speaker 1: It's the strangest thing. And I joked, maybe it's the
Speaker 1: fluorescent lights or something, But in the grocery store, I'll
Speaker 1: just start not not crocodile tears, but I'll start crying.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's because the grocery store
Speaker 1: is such a mundane thing that, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's almost like akin to the shower where good ideas come.
Speaker 1: I'm in the shower, just doing this routine thing, and
Speaker 1: I start feeling the weight of existence. And I always
Speaker 1: think about my kids and and that I just get
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with emotion. And I someday, maybe hopefully, I'll center
Speaker 1: in on exactly what it is that's making me feel
Speaker 1: so emotional. But it's almost always in the grocery store
Speaker 1: and it's not the rising prices.
Speaker 2: My father wept a lot. I mean he would weep
Speaker 2: trying to bless the food at table. These are these
Speaker 2: later years, but it's funny. The priest at our church
Speaker 2: where my mom and dad joined, and both my parents
Speaker 2: were buried from the church, he said to me, said,
Speaker 2: feather Stephen, He said, your mother was a mystic and
Speaker 2: your father had the gift of tears. I told him
Speaker 2: that was the kindest thing I'd ever heard anybody say
Speaker 2: about my mother. I just thought she was crazy. He
Speaker 2: said she was a mystic, and I can see that
Speaker 2: she was, and that my dad had the gift of tears.
Speaker 2: He could just weep at the drop of the hat.
Speaker 2: He had an amazingly tender heart. That man was picking
Speaker 2: cotton starting at age four. I mean never had a
Speaker 2: four year.
Speaker 1: Old and I have a hard time met.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, my grandfather was a hard man too,
Speaker 2: But life was hard. It was the I'm talking about
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight when he was four years old. This
Speaker 2: is the depression had already begun with the cotton market,
Speaker 2: so you know, he grew up hard. Then there was
Speaker 2: World War Two, and it gets pretty real. It gets
Speaker 2: pretty real. Father wants us.
Speaker 1: I want you to do something, and anybody listening, I
Speaker 1: want to do this. Close your eyes and I want
Speaker 1: you to picture something. I want you to picture who
Speaker 1: you hate. And as you say, and this isn't unique
Speaker 1: to you, but it's important, your work starts there. When
Speaker 1: I read that, you said that you only know God
Speaker 1: to the extent that you love your enemies. That's convicting
Speaker 1: and powerful. And you said, I think it was you.
Speaker 1: You said your work starts there.
Speaker 2: Yeap, and it is. This is directly from Saint Siliwan.
Speaker 2: This sort of my paraphrase of his teaching that we
Speaker 2: only know God do extent that we love our enemy.
Speaker 2: You should love your neighbor as yourselves. And then we ask, oh,
Speaker 2: but who is my neighbor? Well, it includes your enemy.
Speaker 2: And this is very very hard. I will say that
Speaker 2: here's a word, this is from Saint Sophroni that one
Speaker 2: of the ways to pray for your enemies, which is
Speaker 2: a place we begin with. It can sometimes be very
Speaker 2: very hard to pray for them, kind of in the
Speaker 2: present tense. We have so much going on in us emotionally,
Speaker 2: including wanting to protect ourselves. We need healing, forgiveness, and
Speaker 2: so many things that are there. So how do I
Speaker 2: pray for them? One of the ways to pray is
Speaker 2: to start by saying, God, on the day of judgment,
Speaker 2: do not hold this against them.
Speaker 1: On my account.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a postponement, but's admitting that there's
Speaker 2: an end to this, that on the day of judgment,
Speaker 2: do not hold this against them on my account. Now
Speaker 2: I would add to that, as we stand before the
Speaker 2: dread judgment seat of Christ, we do well to note
Speaker 2: that in the teaching of the Church, the cross is
Speaker 2: the judgment seat of Christ. This becomes very clear is
Speaker 2: if you read through all the text of Holy Week,
Speaker 2: Christ on the Cross, this is the judgment seat. I
Speaker 2: tell people, go before an icon of Christ crucified and
Speaker 2: pray for your enemies there and talk to because Jesus
Speaker 2: at that very point is forgiving his enemies. Father forgive them.
Speaker 2: They don't know what they do. So at that point
Speaker 2: go talk to him. Look at the crucified Jesus, and
Speaker 2: I would say, by the way, you don't know Jesus
Speaker 2: unless you know him crucified. This is Saint Paul. We
Speaker 2: preach Christ crucified. So go stand before the icon of
Speaker 2: the crucified Jesus and talk to him about your enemies.
Speaker 2: You bring your enemy with you in your heart before
Speaker 2: the crucified Jesus and talk to Father Jesus on the
Speaker 2: day of judgment. Do not hold this against him on
Speaker 2: my account. Jesus on the cross says, do you forgive him? Yes, Lord,
Speaker 2: I forgive them. I mean, how else could I know you?
Speaker 2: I want to know you our enemies in some strange way.
Speaker 2: And there is a strange place in our heart where
Speaker 2: we have to go with. Jesus goes to Hell to
Speaker 2: get us out right. And that's the message. That's the
Speaker 2: message of Pasca. You know. He descended into Hell led captivity. Captive.
Speaker 2: You know, he tramples down death by death. So we
Speaker 2: have to go to Hell, which is with my enemy.
Speaker 2: That's where I am. I stand in Hell with my enemy.
Speaker 2: Anger and hatred are gates of Hell, you know. So
Speaker 2: I stand in Hell with my enemy, and to stand
Speaker 2: before the crucified Jesus, who's saying, let's get out of here.
Speaker 2: He takes Adam by their hand, by the hand. Well,
Speaker 2: actually he doesn't take him by the hand, if you
Speaker 2: look at the icon. He takes them by the wrists.
Speaker 2: But you know why he's clinging to them. This is
Speaker 2: not about there clinging to him. This is about him
Speaker 2: clinging to them. Jesus taking us by the wrist and
Speaker 2: dragging us out. I've been wanting to get a bumper
Speaker 2: sticker for my car. My wife won't let me, but
Speaker 2: I was going to get one that says, and I'm
Speaker 2: cleaning this up because this is a you know, but
Speaker 2: I wanted one that said Jesus dragged my sorry soul
Speaker 2: to paradise. She would not let me. Dare get his
Speaker 2: graphic as it would be, but I still think, drag
Speaker 2: my sorry soul to paradise. This is my salvation. It's
Speaker 2: how I entered Orthodoxy. Jesus, you know, make me orthodox,
Speaker 2: Drag me into the church. I want to be there.
Speaker 2: It scares me. It's hard.
Speaker 1: I talked to a local parish priest and he said
Speaker 1: something along the lines of we're called to love our enemies.
Speaker 1: They just make it so hard, to just make it
Speaker 1: so hard, or I don't even think said enemies. We're
Speaker 1: called to love one another. I don't think you use
Speaker 1: the word enemy.
Speaker 2: Well, I would even say, I would warn like say,
Speaker 2: in modern politics, modern politics, it's all about hating somebody,
Speaker 2: and if you'd like, if you have a party that
Speaker 2: you like, you hate the other party, And that just
Speaker 2: tells you this is not driven that. This has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the Holy Spirit. Nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit. This is not of God. Whatever it is,
Speaker 2: go vote, hold your nose and vote, do something whatever
Speaker 2: like that. But this other stuff, you are feeding it
Speaker 2: with demonic thoughts. Do not feed it with demonic thoughts.
Speaker 2: This is not we're commanded to do.
Speaker 1: It's really funny that you bring that up, because I've
Speaker 1: got a routine now. I go for a run every
Speaker 1: time before I do a podcast, and I started to
Speaker 1: think about some of the things I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about, and that test about who do you hate?
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to go through that with you,
Speaker 1: and I almost put the adjoiner. But this can't be
Speaker 1: a political rival. This has to be somebody in your
Speaker 1: real local life. But then I started to think, well,
Speaker 1: they exist too, They're part of reality. You might not
Speaker 1: have face to face conversations with them, but they may
Speaker 1: take up more real estate than your real face to
Speaker 1: face quote unquote enemies, and it's so much harder. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we could all imagine somebody politically that we can't stand,
Speaker 1: that we hate. We say, we say the work begins,
Speaker 1: we say so, and so is Hitler. As if that
Speaker 1: absolved us from loving them. Imago day exists in everybody,
Speaker 1: and that's what that's what's so hard about it. And
Speaker 1: I learned, you know, there was somebody who was really
Speaker 1: antagonistic to my family. And there was one point where
Speaker 1: I sat there and I thought, man, God, just kill him.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, how that's such a terrible thought
Speaker 1: I and I started to reconcile it in my mind. No,
Speaker 1: I want that problem to go away, and death is
Speaker 1: a solution in my mind. Just it would be better
Speaker 1: if he just wasn't here, because he's like an ankle binder.
Speaker 1: He won't stop attacking us. And I thought, no, don't
Speaker 1: kill him, make him have a soul to pull moment
Speaker 1: and then use him. And that's that's a reorientation. That's
Speaker 1: loving your enemies. But it's hard. It's hard, like you said,
Speaker 1: because we can have this whole. Oh, I'll go and
Speaker 1: I'll tell them that I love them and I want
Speaker 1: what's best for them, and they'll tell me to kick rocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then what they're making it. It's not my fault.
Speaker 1: I want to love them, they're the ones. It's the
Speaker 1: problem is them. No, it's just this constant reorientation.
Speaker 2: If it's not hard for you to love your enemies,
Speaker 2: then you're in you're somehow another out of touch with
Speaker 2: your heart. It's it's in that actual, really hard to
Speaker 2: do place. It's in that really in the really really
Speaker 2: hard to do place that you have to stand before
Speaker 2: the crucified Jesus. Go stand in that really awful place.
Speaker 2: It's so awful, is distracting, and you can even say, Jesus,
Speaker 2: I'm having a real hard time seeing you here because
Speaker 2: all I can see is this enemy. But go stand
Speaker 2: in that place. But basically, if you stand in that place,
Speaker 2: Jesus and come into that place and the three of
Speaker 2: you Jesus, you know you'll only work it out if
Speaker 2: you let Jesus into that place. So you got to
Speaker 2: just go there. Just go there. And it's interesting my
Speaker 2: older brother's first time in a liturgy, the priest turned
Speaker 2: to the congregation and out loud. It's a very small church,
Speaker 2: little store, little storefront, bowed to us and said, forgive
Speaker 2: me my brothers and sisters, my brothers started weeping like
Speaker 2: he was my dad or something as and he just said,
Speaker 2: I've never seen a priest do anything like that, And
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, they do it all the time here.
Speaker 2: It's part of the liturgy. But how important is it?
Speaker 2: Forgiveness is radical? Forgiveness?
Speaker 1: That's radical?
Speaker 2: Oh? It is union union with God through your enemy.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's what we're made for. What happens to a
Speaker 1: culture that can't name what it sees?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, things that are not real eventually fall apart,
Speaker 2: just as simple as that, because reality is reality, that
Speaker 2: which is not reality eventually dissipates. I mean, how did
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union fall? It wasn't the CIA, It wasn't
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan, it wasn't Poke John Paul the Second, It
Speaker 2: wasn't all of these things people. Actually, no one knows
Speaker 2: how it fell. I mean, it kind of just fell
Speaker 2: in some ways. It felt of it so its own
Speaker 2: unreal weight. I would even suggest that, as terrible as
Speaker 2: it is at the present time, the Western civilization is
Speaker 2: collapsing of its own weight and of its own delusions.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means. It can mean something
Speaker 2: really bad, and even worse, it can mean something that
Speaker 2: allows something better. I mean, if you just don't know,
Speaker 2: I tell people in our life in the church is
Speaker 2: to live the church, to be the church, and whatever happens,
Speaker 2: it's not the first time we've lived through. Every culture
Speaker 2: we have ever been in has collapsed, So this is
Speaker 2: We've always.
Speaker 1: Times like these. It's important to remember that there have
Speaker 1: always been times like these.
Speaker 2: And during the pandemic I read a couple of books.
Speaker 2: Was on the fourteenth century, which was a time of
Speaker 2: the Black Death and some other terrible things, and the
Speaker 2: other one was on the sixth century, which also was
Speaker 2: a black death century and terrible things. I read them
Speaker 2: just to kind of remind myself that as bad as
Speaker 2: this might be, it ain't nothing. It ain't nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, where are we most eager to look away
Speaker 1: from reality mirror?
Speaker 2: I you know, I would say, I mean, our fantasies
Speaker 2: can be some of those things, but probably it very
Speaker 2: much goes around the dynamic of shame, which is a
Speaker 2: huge subject worthy of another podcast if you want to
Speaker 2: do one sometime. Yeah, don't beget they have time today.
Speaker 2: But we according to the psychologist's shame is the unbearable
Speaker 2: emotion we morph shame when we first feel it, we
Speaker 2: morph it almost instantly, either into anger or to sadness,
Speaker 2: and so we can't bear it, and so it keeps
Speaker 2: us from seeing things as they are. Saint SOPHRONI taught
Speaker 2: his disciples to bear a little shame, which is actually
Speaker 2: the very heart of what humility is is the willingness
Speaker 2: to bear a little shame. But that's, as I say,
Speaker 2: a large, large topic.
Speaker 1: Hey, we'll get there right In a world that feels
Speaker 1: increasingly unreal, what feels most real to you.
Speaker 2: My death. I'm an old man. I wake up with
Speaker 2: it every morning. I mean part of being old. I'm
Speaker 2: seventy two, which is, you know, I hope to get
Speaker 2: another fifteen years maybe, But I'm also aware that I'm dying,
Speaker 2: and I'm not afraid of that. One of the the things
Speaker 2: I learned from my hospice years was that you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to die, and I have a goal of
Speaker 2: dying well. I'm going to die lack a Christian and
Speaker 2: you know that requires it you live well and to
Speaker 2: try to live rightly, and so I you know death.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm also married to a seventy two year
Speaker 2: old woman, and I you know, I'm aware of her death,
Speaker 2: and I don't want it unless it's after mine. So
Speaker 2: I do not want to be a bachelor in this
Speaker 2: life ever. And so but anyway I wouldn't be. I
Speaker 2: would still be a married man.
Speaker 1: Something you said made me think of there was a
Speaker 1: young man who unfortunately died tragically. He was a catechumen
Speaker 1: in our church, and I spoke with his family afterwards,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm just so thankful that my son
Speaker 1: never outlived his love for the Lord. And when you
Speaker 1: I mean that that's ending, well.
Speaker 2: It is, and you I mean it is. These things
Speaker 2: are in the handle, in the hands of God, you know.
Speaker 2: And I've already, you know, being seventy two, I've already
Speaker 2: I'm beyond warranty. I mean, seventy is all we're given. Yeah,
Speaker 2: three score years and ten and so I'm now in
Speaker 2: my post warranty years. And so these are these are
Speaker 2: the Thanksgiving years.
Speaker 1: They call that house cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm just fine and it'll be what it is.
Speaker 2: At one point I told my wife, I've already done
Speaker 2: more in my life than I had ever imagined. So
Speaker 2: I you know, but.
Speaker 1: Every moment is precious. It is. My grandfather was dying
Speaker 1: of fibrosis of the lung, and my dad something along
Speaker 1: the lines of don't you just wish that God would
Speaker 1: take you, that you just go home to be with him.
Speaker 1: And he paused, and he at my dad and he said, Hank,
Speaker 1: every moment is precious.
Speaker 2: Yes, Saint Paul says, I make up in my body
Speaker 2: that which is lacking the sufferings of Christ. Now there's
Speaker 2: a verse that Protestants won't even touch. It's in coloutions.
Speaker 2: So I would say in Saint Basil had this clear
Speaker 2: idea too, that even in the sufferings of death, in
Speaker 2: the death throws, there is a mystery taking place with it.
Speaker 2: My dad's dad, my grandfather, died of infasima lung cancer
Speaker 2: and was struggling for breath in his last days, and
Speaker 2: he would go in and out of consciousness, but every
Speaker 2: time he was conscious, he was just praying Lord of Mercy,
Speaker 2: primarily because he meant Lord have mercy. He was, you know,
Speaker 2: a culture Baptist, so he wasn't doing the Jesus prayer
Speaker 2: except the ones that the Holy Spirit gives you. He
Speaker 2: would be Lord of Mercy, and in and out of consciousness,
Speaker 2: Lord of Mercy. And I looked at him and he
Speaker 2: did that for the last couple of days or so.
Speaker 2: And I look back at it and think I wouldn't
Speaker 2: take those two days of prayer away from that man
Speaker 2: for nothing. I mean, he may very well have been
Speaker 2: saving his soul and uniting himself to Christ in a
Speaker 2: way he had been postponing. Why would I take that
Speaker 2: from him?
Speaker 1: Hmm?
Speaker 2: You know, it's only a couple of days of discomfort.
Speaker 2: The problem with the modern world is we're afraid of suffering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, magic happens.
Speaker 2: We kill people so they won't suffer. That's demonic, Yes
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Father. You know you and your book with a prayer
Speaker 1: that I pray dozens of times daily. And when I
Speaker 1: saw you end it that way, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: once again, more evidence that I love this man. Can
Speaker 1: you pray us out.
Speaker 2: Oh, with glory to God for all things glorious?
Speaker 1: I say, glory to you God and all things and
Speaker 1: all things.
Speaker 2: It's all things, and that is that is to stand
Speaker 2: and embrace reality is to give thanks to Him for
Speaker 2: it his gift. And also reality is to save us,
Speaker 2: and it is saving us for some thing beyond what
Speaker 2: we could possibly imagine. And in fact, if you can
Speaker 2: the more you learn to say glory to God for
Speaker 2: all things, the more you'll see reality for the Kingdom
Speaker 2: of God that it is.
Speaker 1: Man, I can't do better than that.
Speaker 2: God grant us to say glory to God.
Speaker 1: Father. Stephen Freeman, thank you for joining me on a
Speaker 1: commitment to reality. I could literally talk to you for hours,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to do this again to talk about
Speaker 1: Shane did.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you.