https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=juOOoxMUi5g
Good evening and happy Sunday everybody. Tonight I want to talk about low key the best class that I had in seminary. Now at the second seminar I went to we had these two professors who were really popular and they had earned their popularity. They were both brilliant. They were both manifestly faithful men of God who were striving for holiness and they were as the kids might say today based. And so I went to their classes. I took electives with them. That was very enjoyable. There was kind of a professor there who I think was maybe underappreciated by the boys though. Dr. John Frohba. And he one semester was given the opportunity to lecture on sections of the Summa of St. Thomas. For those of you who are not aware of the structure of St. Thomas it’s in three parts which is actually four parts. The first part treats of God and creation. The second part treats of human beings and the third part treats of Christ. So you’ve got like we’re talking about God first then human beings and now that we understand God and man we can understand the God man who is Christ. And the second part of the Summa is broken up into two parts. You have the first part of the second part and then you’ve got the second part of the second part. And so Dr. Frohba was tasked with teaching the second part of the second part of the elective that you know you get through these electives in two years. And there were only three of us signed up for the class. Now we went and we participated in it. There was a very popular elective taught by another professor and I have to say that this the second part of the second part of the Summa class that I took was absolutely excellent. It’s just a brilliant class. The second part of the second part of the Summa opens up with questions about the theological virtues. Faith, hope and love the theological virtues. And really you know they were not treated in any kind of depth anywhere else in my theological studies. And so this was the only time in an elective course that I got to look at them closely. I want to talk a little bit about these theological virtues. Some of the stuff that I picked up from that elective class many years ago. St. Thomas Aquinas when he’s talking about faith he says okay what is the object of faith? What is it that we are interfacing with? What is it that we are oriented towards when we’re talking about faith? And he says that is first truth. He’s got this concept of the first truth. And when I did my reading I open it up and I’m like I don’t know what that means. What is first truth? And so I you know for these it’s really part of the class I didn’t get what was talking up until the professor explained it. The idea behind first truth. Well what is the first possible truth? What is the sort of thing that can be known before anything else can be known? And who is the one that knows it? Well the first possible truth is God’s knowledge of himself. What God knows and understands of himself. God’s own self understanding is first truth. And so faith then the object of faith what our soul is oriented towards and participating in is God’s own self understanding. So the way I like to think about it is like this. I could tell you a story about being in sixth grade and doing something stupid with one of my friends. But I tell you a story like that. You now see that story at least in some way from my eyes. You’re getting my perspective on things. You’re getting my understanding of things. And so you are participating in my own self knowledge when you hear a story about how I behaved in sixth grade let’s say. That’s what we get from God. We don’t understand him as just like an object in the universe. We understand the Lord through faith the way that he understands himself. And moreover this knowledge isn’t merely scientific because of the way that we come to faith in God through Jesus Christ. Because of the way that we are drawn in by the Holy Spirit working inside out through us that means that it’s not merely scientific mathematical propositional procedural knowledge that we gain of God through faith. It’s actually Thomas Aquinas has a fundamentally participatory notion of faith that we participate in God’s self understanding through our faith. He kind of concludes his reflections as saying this is the soul’s first direct contact with God when we come to faith in him understanding God the way that he understands himself. Now these three theological virtues which we receive from the first letter to the Corinthians They’re not arbitrary and they’re not given to us in an arbitrary order. And so faith leads quite naturally rather supernaturally into hope and hope is hope is pretty simple. God reveals himself to us. He reveals himself as a father somebody who cares for his creation cares for his children and has given us magnificent promises. We have magnificent promises from the Lord about how he treats those who seek after him. And you begin to realize that those promises aren’t just for people over there that you don’t interact with those promises are for you that you could participate in that that That comes from faith believing this and now you move on into hope. This isn’t something that just exists outside of me. This is something that I can inherit. And that leads you to your final thing. Now that you have some knowledge of God some participation in the Lord’s own understanding and now that you realize that the good things of God can pass on to you. The third thing that can happen is that will happen is that you begin to love God. You begin to love him for his own goodness for his own sake you realize this is actually best possible the highest the greatest something that matters even more than I myself matter that I can give myself entirely to this father in heaven who loves us who sent his son for us. I can give myself over and good things will come from that. Begin to have the possibility of actually loving this more than yourself that it is me sacrificing everything to this to this great God that lives in heaven. So this is a natural supernatural progression of the theological virtues that come to us. And this is right there in the in the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. So it’s good to remember that this always comes to us as a grace as a gift as something that we receive from the Holy Spirit. It’s not something that we whip up in ourselves but it is given to us as a gift. And ultimately you know what is love right. What is love. It’s when we speak about it in terms of God it is something that actually unifies us to him that we actually have the ability of not only thinking about him but being joined to having having our souls united with him. And so this all leads right up into the mystery of divinization or theosis if you want to use the Greek terminology whereby we become full partakers in the divine nature that we become adopted children of the father and we become true heirs to the kingdom. All of this all of this just from that little course that I took with Dr. Frola and two other seminarians which really they felt like that at that point theology kind of opened up for me. So that’s what I’ve got for tonight. The the links in the chat we can go ahead and talk about theological virtues or I can sit here and talk to myself. You guys do that. William Brance is showing up he’s saying Sabbath peace. Yes the Lord is risen indeed. Nathan’s a cowboy now. Hey Josh. Good to see you. And hello Father Eric. God bless. Thanks. Thanks Andre. Good to have you here. You’re gonna get this awful something drink here. See conclusion of my rant. Well thank you William Branch. I really like I said I found that class that I took very useful and we’ve got Andrew B. Hello Andrew B. Good to have you around. Who would have imagined you would have tuned on here. Well I wouldn’t miss it for the world. That was good. That was interesting. I like I like the topic. It’s a well chosen topic. One of the things is you know I don’t know how much St. Paul you’ve read probably about zero but sometimes he feels really rambly and like he just starts listing things off and you wonder if he’s just not like in a hurry and like just kind of writing things down quickly. But then when you you stop you let you listen to somebody wiser. It actually really can cohere well together. So so yeah I had trouble with St. Paul for the longest time and then St. Thomas Aquinas helped me out. So all right we got Josh here too. All right we got the big guns now. Excellent. Now we can really get somewhere. Hopefully he unfreezes at some point. There we go. How you guys doing? Doing all right. Good. Just another just another Sunday in paradise. It got it’s going to get above freezing this week. Nice. Tally said it was above freezing where she was. Well that happens more often more often in her part of the country that doesn’t mind. Really. Oh yeah. Oh North Red River Valley in North Dakota is like it has something to do with the jet stream and the Rocky Mountains but like cold Canadian air just comes and slams us constantly whereas she’s farther south and west. You know it gets cold there. I’m not going to say it doesn’t but it doesn’t get like the real cold. That’s what we get to deal with is the real cold. She got real cold last week. Well yeah we get that more often. We had 17 degrees. I was like what is going on? Ice skating on your pond? No no there was ice on the pond. The pond was almost completely iced over. I was not happy. I looked at that and I’m like well I know I’m not leaving the house today at all for any reason. I just think that every day that’s my normal thing. Hey Father. It’s funny. Yeah probably. Anyways it was kind of cool. I was thinking about Faith earlier today and it was something I was like oh hey maybe I’ll get to talk about that or at least somebody. So hey there we go right. So I have a brain that tends to argue against me quite a bit and it’s been interesting as I’ve gone through catechism and started moving more and more into Catholicism as I’ve became officially Catholic. There’s a lot of growing and everything like that. When I was going through my process that started probably 2019 or 2020 somewhere around there. I had a like I said I have a brain that argues against me and it often argues in the voice of like a skeptic. And so a while back I came up with the notion that and this isn’t to say it to say it in a negative way. The word delusion has a negative connotation to it because it’s not it means that you’re not attached to the same reality as those around you. But at least that’s the way I interpret it. But with faith and hope are they make believe can they accurately be equated with a make with with make believe and with a possible delusion of the reason I say that is that with hope you have hope because often we seek we have hope in the in the face of things that all evidence is to the contrary. We have faith in the in the face of when all evidence is to the contrary. We’re supposed to have you know that they were asked to have faith that he would return and all evidence is to the contrary. He’s on the cross. He’s dead. You know that I mean that you know everything is lost. We’re all scattered all faith is every bit of evidence is to the contrary that this will turn out the way that you said it would. I’ve heard it explained a lot in my Protestant growing up in the Protestant church. I heard it explained a lot like oh you have faith that that chair is going to hold you up that’s why you sit down with in it without having you know without testing the legs and that and that’s more like trust. It’s not really a it’s more like habitual trust or something or you know like you know it was like we just do that out of habit. You know if it was to break it’d be like what the heck. With faith I came up with a while back. I climbed trees and in climbing trees you’re I often have to climb past rock spots. I have to climb past fractures in the tree. I have to climb past split tree dead trees trees where I can’t. There’s a lot of things and you can go to a lot of seminars and they can tell you about how to properly inspect root bases and look for trunk rot and everything. But at the end of the day I don’t really get paid unless the tree gets dismantled. I still got to climb the tree even though I know it’s there. Which makes it even worse because it’s like hey that’s exactly what I’m supposed to look for for a compromise in the structure of a tree. And yet I still have to figure out how to do this. Sometimes I’ve had to literally just been like God I pray that this is this is I’ve placed enough things in my favor. I’ve done everything I can. I protect me because I’ve done everything I can do. You know as far as like or sometimes I haven’t even done that because I don’t have the time. But you know or yeah anyways. And so I started realizing that if somebody is really living by faith are they making and the reason I use the word make believe is because I kind of using it as a break word breaking in half. I’m making I’m going to make myself believe I’m going to. Even though all because bottom line is is like there was a book A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel where he tried to lay out like he was a detective or something like that in his earlier life. He tries to lay out this case for Christ like if I was a detective could I place enough evidence in the in the column of like yes he was a real man who really existed and in all evidence points to the fact that he actually came back three days later. Well you were dead. I can’t we can’t even say without a doubt in a courtroom what took place a week ago with like three witnesses because we know that memory human memory is very, very fallible. And we think you know it’s heavily biased. It interprets the reality as as it as it perceives it. It isn’t it’s just bias. So me trying to say yes I can believe these gospels because they were seen by real people who really saw Christ. I don’t trust people around me all the time that I don’t know that I can really that I don’t really know that I can say that but I don’t really know if I can get me in her brain to like latch on to that. Now if you tell me that somehow it’s easier to swallow or it’s easier it’s not easier to swallow but somehow if you if you just tell me no there is that like there you’re you’re always going to be able to critically think your way out of the gospel. You’re always going to say that you know because bottom line is Mary lied. That’s it. You know what I mean. It’s like or if I mean there’s and I say and I don’t mean that as a blasphemous statement as I’m now Catholic. But it it just is from from a from a skeptic point of view. I feel like that you’re never going to be able to get around that. And so I’m wondering if with faith are we talking about making ourselves believe and with hope is a hope a type of. Very use I don’t want to say very useful delusion. That’s all I’m trying to say. But it is it a mode of thinking that is the. Right way to. Yeah I don’t know how many works this out because like I said I thought this thing a while I thought these two things a while back is faith is faith you know make believe. And if it is OK if it is I’m actually OK with that because like I said with the tree thing I’ve had to make myself believe certain things to get through the next hour or two. You know and but and with hope I’ve had to hope like I said. I’ve literally I mean I’m sure there were other forces at play but I can I can almost swear I prayed a lemon a branch from hitting a house that was falling through the air. I was like you know like I could and certain gusts of wind and brought it brought up a tree just the way it was supposed to and it didn’t pull bold and that you know what I mean it was like I I could have made that shot again if I ever tried. You know when we’re getting these realms of what is you know what we can actually what when we’re trying to say you know that I have faith and I and I believe in that what is the actual process that’s going on inside of our brain and if there is if there isn’t one and you’re just literally stepping over a gap you know I’m OK with that but is that what’s happening. So I wasn’t going to plan on covering everything in my little opening rant but we’ll bring in a little mother another detail from St. Thomas and see what you think of that. He says you know picking up a lot of this is from St. Augustine to that it’s basically the authority of God himself revealing that gives us the ability to ascend to it. Right. It’s like OK the Lord has revealed this to us and he can neither deceive nor be deceived. And so there it is. That’s like all the authority that you could possibly you can’t find a higher authority to end up believing in these things. And that’s also why I was mentioned that it is also a grace given to you. And so we can actually say Thomas comes up with a slightly wordy but very precise definition from faith which he says is a as it is expansion from the definition of faith from the letter to the Hebrews he says faith is the act of the intellect ascending to divinely revealed truths by the command of the will as moved by God’s grace. And it says it says will stuff that gets really interesting. Right. There are certain things that you can deduce. You can use your deductive capacities. You can do geometry like that. You can do a certain number of rather precise sciences via production. And I don’t know if you were any good at geometry. I was OK at it in high school. And when I was able to work out a theorem you know like once I saw the intrinsic connection between these these principles that I already had and what I had included you know my mind was commanded to believe in that you know I couldn’t I couldn’t not believe in it anymore. And so we can call that Thomas Aquinas would call that science right there. Any any discipline that moves from known first principles deductively to solid conclusions. You’ve got the realm of opinion. The realm of opinion is where we don’t have like perfect first principles and we don’t move to those our conclusions by deduction. It’s a lot more inductive reasoning. I don’t I don’t really know what inductive reasoning means. I’ll just I’ll be perfectly honest there. Maybe Mark can explain it. You got intuition. You got all sorts of things moving on in the realm of opinion there. In the realm of opinion what finally gets your you know so in the realm of science what gets your mind to stop running over things is getting to the conclusion and you see OK that’s how it works. No need to think about this anymore. And the realm of opinion you know you can always add more contemplation. Right. It’s St. Thomas Aquinas knew about combinatorial combinatorial explosiveness too. It’s like that isn’t a modern problem. So it’s the will that ends up just saying OK that’s good enough. We’re going to roll with that. Now St. Thomas says that the faith ends up occupying the middle ground in between science and opinion because on the one hand look it’s God revealing revealing himself to you. It’s true. This is certain knowledge. But you don’t feel that way because you don’t see things the way God sees them. You’re you’re at the bottom looking up not from the top looking down like we are with geometry. And so your experience of faith is that cloudy hazy you know like I feel pretty pretty good about this. But I’m never going to know it the same way I know that if I know two sides of a triangle in an angle I can deduce the other angles at the side which is what we can get from from geometry. And so that’s where God’s grace comes in and closes the gap right there just gives you and a lot of times you know it comes to us via an experience of his presence. You know that’s why that’s why these these these mega churches work and I think the Lord does make use of them where like you get into a position where he can he can talk to you and he has mercy on us has mercy on his Protestant children. So yeah he’ll make use of that just about anything. Yeah so that’s a tomystic account of faith. Does that help your questioning. So when you say make believe it’s like like I kind of I’m not going to reject that but you’re not the one who’s making the belief it’s God who’s doing that for you. OK OK I guess and that’s what I mean is OK so I feel like you know when you come up to a child and they’re playing house and you participate in it you’re not the one you this isn’t your stimulus. Yeah you isn’t your stimulation but you’re going to participate in it. Yeah. Yeah. So using that like God made this this this reality this is this is him this is the fabric you know and so I’m going to participate in that. And I’m going to act in accordance with the way that he says to act in this reality and I’m going to do now my motivation for doing that is I’m going to believe on faith that what he says is is true. Like does that make sense is that but in but going back to like can I really prove that that this is the that this is the right the most successful way to operate in this reality or anything like that. I don’t know that you can. I don’t know. I guess. Yeah. Josh let me let me try let me try something. So your description of faith and hope I think was actually backwards. So OK. Hope is imagining something despite the evidence. Right. So like if you have cancer right and like Tammy Peterson right. Is this cancer. It’s super aggressive. No they know nothing about it because no one’s ever lived long enough for them to get data about it. And so you hope she survives and she does which is like weird right. Jose Maria Escriva pray for us. Whatever that was sure. Jose Maria. Faith is not tied up in against the evidence. It’s tied up in lack of evidence. Right. And then when you think of it that way it’s like all right well I don’t have any evidence of heaven because maybe you haven’t had in your death experience or whatever. There might be a lot of reasons you don’t have any evidence of heaven. There might be reasons why you have evidence of heaven. So I’m not not ruling that out. I’m just saying maybe you haven’t had an experience where you think you have any evidence of heaven. But there is no evidence. Right. Nobody can bring you back to your courtroom thing. Nobody can really bring you anything. Right. You could you could listen to and I have I’ve listened to a bunch of I listen to one reason it’s very interesting. Right. One of those bright light open door blah blah. You know got to got the truth got to this woman got the choice. And she’s like I saw a nurse in a corner saying oh I told that poor woman that we were going to save her and we didn’t. And she said I couldn’t do that to her and she came back and I was like well that’s a pretty powerful story. Right. But but there’s no evidence. Like I mean she’s just telling me a story on the Internet worse like on the Internet. I don’t know this woman. Yeah. Never met her. I didn’t even read her book. You know. But but I don’t have any evidence. So to do to apply belief to that is fake. Right. And in the same way like the direct evidence you have for whatever conception you have of the creator is limited by you. Like you’re just a super limited creature and you know difference of us different humans hear different sound ranges and see different color ranges. And like I mean it goes all the way like people people always talk about well you know humans are pretty much alike. It’s like man if you measured that mathematically no we’re not. We there’s a huge amount of variance in human being. It’s unbelievable actually if you ever look into it it’s like what like colorblind people like my father’s colorblind. And I I can’t I can’t understand. In fact I have no evidence that he’s colorblind except he makes a lot of stupid mistakes with color. And I’m like what is wrong with your brain. And it is like well yeah good question right. So I don’t have any evidence of that right. But but yeah I mean I believe him when he says I can’t tell these colors apart. I don’t like it certainly looks like you can’t. But I don’t have any direct evidence that. But but that’s OK. Right. Because I understand that I’m a limited creature. And if you have a lack there there may not be any evidence of your lack. Like how do you have evidence like scientifically you can’t write scientifically. There’s the whole absence of evidence is evidence of absence thing right. Like think oh and so those things are are all about you know basically. And having the humility to to you know to be open to the possibility of something for which you cannot be provided evidence at all. That to me is is closer to faith. And I want to say that is faith. I want to say that’s close to the faith whereas hope is more like well all the evidence says we’re screwed. But you know like you hope you’re going to win the lottery. All the evidence says you’re not going to win the damn lottery. Though and I think it’s also useful to separate you know between natural faith and hope. Right. So what you were talking about with the chair is is natural faith. Right. And that’s mostly just a function of applied prudence. Usually you sit down in chairs and they don’t collapse. Yeah that’s right. Like I do I do think that is like habitual trust. Like because I think that the I mean I have a sorry I use it. Trust your brain. You’ve never done. Oh yeah. Because yeah I don’t know the guy who built it. I didn’t get out and inspect it before I drove over it. I mean some I have a wood but but you know we had to drive a truck over the sketchy bridge. What I was like we looked at it we’re like I don’t know. But but no I guess what I’m saying is I was very interested in apologetics earlier in my life because I wanted to see if there’s a I guess because I always had a critical thinking brain a skeptic brain. And so I was like if I can if I if I could prove to my skeptics out of my brain and I remember how to do that that would be of some utility when trying to witness or when trying to have dialogue with people because then I would have a path like a logical reasonable path of how I you know how I got to this point in my head you know to where I can accept something where there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of evidence like a guy dying and coming back three days later you know and in an atoning for all man’s sins by doing that and to explain that to an atheist or somebody simply just doesn’t has never even heard the story of Christ before. It’d be like this is an absurd story that you’re trying to teach me that makes it has no bearing on my you know. Anyway and so I that was but the deeper I went down that road I realized I was I was coming up shorter and shorter on figuring out on like being able to prove to myself that this was like I basically gave up. I was like there’s there’s just too many like I cannot. I mean some of the details in the gospel accounts like if those are being recalled from actual you know memory and things like that I mean bottom line is I mean that one details off and the whole story doesn’t work you know what I mean or you know like just recently Doug Wilson was talking about the the star or the the star that the shepherd that the magi followed. Yeah to go to Christ and so he was talking about how a star actually came down into atmosphere and hovered above you know the place and I was like it seems like a giant ball of fire coming into the atmosphere would have burned up. You know what I mean. All of a sudden there’s parts of my brain that just are. And so it’s easier for me to say no we’re reading a story and we’re going to have faith that this that this is this is true. And in all of its forms and that’s that. And I finally I was I just had to get to a point where like either I’m going to concede or not concede you know and just you know I can wrestle with this but if I’m really going to believe this there’s certain parts of my that I’m just going to have to accept and I’m OK with that but I don’t find enough Christians saying that out loud that they that they seem to think that there’s that they have a a reason like I guess I guess what I’m saying is I feel like I feel like often amongst other Christians like that I’m thinking things that I’m like I’m like we think the same like like we think the same things right. Like you know you you you go about your life and you know and things like that but when we really break it down to brass taxes like nobody’s got evidence for the stuff and I’m OK with that. Like I can but that is my type of faith then their type of thing. You know what I mean. And I mean are we experiencing the same thing. I don’t think I don’t think we can because we have different we have different experiences and we have different types of evidence. And so I don’t say what I also say on this is that so you say about like in courtrooms like we can’t entirely trust people’s memories. You take that to the idea of like people wrote down scripture in the Bible so they may be wrong in that. So you have to place your faith in like its life picture and you want to believe it. But the end of the day that is pointing towards the higher good. That’s pointing towards God. So you’re putting your faith in God at the end not in just the stories alone. Because do you want to believe in a story or do you want to believe in God. Because God is always like the highest good. Well the story leads me to God. And so like that’s you know I believe in the story because it leads it leads me to God Jesus. You know and that’s why that’s why it’s. If the story was slightly different like in a couple of ways do you not think it could still lead you to God. Like with that in the. I don’t know. I don’t know because it would be like you’re you’re you’re kind of like what I mean I would have to know what parts of it I would. The Gospels are for me like as far as I understand it and correct me Father if this is the wrong way to look at it. But if. That I accept that they are true. Yeah and I accept that I don’t I can’t I have to basically end a statement so like whatever if your versions of the story like you’re saying what if reality happened different. And it would be like yeah I I’ve already accepted this reality so I’m participating in this reality I can’t I cannot simultaneously participate in two realities does that make sense like that would. But yeah I’m like we could hypothesize but it would it almost doesn’t do any good because it’s like what if air you know like. What if we breathe methane instead and it was like well you’re there’s a lot of things about them like physiology would have to be different than the world was constructed it was it would it would like any. It was like you’re you’re you’re breaking reality I guess if you’re going to accept the gospel am I wrong. No you’re not you’re not breaking reality it would it would depend on your definition of reality but Josh I want to I want to I want to I want to explain for something very important that people don’t realize. We’re caught up in the age of gnosis where we want to know. And part of the age of gnosis is very much this deep skeptical cynicism and and and unfortunately. Unfortunately is born from one of my favorite thinkers in my opinion actually video on this navigating patterns of course I have a video on this right it’s born from soccer teams. And or maybe it’s born from a misunderstanding of soccer teams because boy I’ll I’ll try to redeem that all day long if I can right and and that’s part of the problem is that. We very much been told that we can question things and while there are things we can question that’s true we cannot question things that are not true. And while there are things we can question that’s true we cannot question things as such right we just not smart enough we just flat out there’s some number of things that we can question but first of all they’re not the same for every person. And second of all just because you can question it doesn’t mean that you’re right that that’s a useful. Use of your time and it and it doesn’t mean that it’s good for you like like you’re better off not questioning most things and, in fact. In the end analysis you don’t question most things like you’ve never even thought to question 99.9% of the things that you actually know and act out in the world. It just so happens nobody focuses on that they write we’re very focused on you can do anything you can be anything you can go which is all nonsense it’s all observably false garbage. And because of that we’ve gotten into this age of gnosis where a we want to know things whatever that means because that’s not I mean john brvick you showed that’s not clear with participatory knowledge good question nobody’s thought about that right and then. Why do you want to know things what’s the purpose right why is it why is this possession of knowledge so important to you what are you trying to get out with that and and and that’s the and that’s the problem. Well, in relation to like why would you try to question that is that everybody I would say that I’ll at least most Christians in my experience go through crisis as a faith. you’ll go through a moment when you’re when you’re and we talked and told you know said that this is a testing job job’s a good example, you know that he’s in you know he’s a story in the Bible got God. And if I at any point i’m saying things that are wrong father of course tell me no but gotten the devil basically make a bet and the devil says you bless this man and that’s why he calls you God. If you take away all of his blessings he will curse you and and so God says okay and so he gives job over like basically. control of jobs environment over to Satan to do what he will now he’s there’s some there’s rules that you can’t kill him. And so, so he’s like okay so first you take that as family, then he takes as well through a string of like cat cosmic events, you know, like the barn collapsing or the your son was having a banquet and everything I can’t remember all the details, but basically families taken. You know wealth is taken health is taken he basically ends up in a pile of like of ashes of his former wife was covered in boils. And you know friends come by his wife tells him curse God and die and he never does, even though it now there’s a conversation that that gets pretty you know pretty deep on the tail into this and basically. The answer is he get because he asked why and the answer is you get is are you are you me do you were you there at the foundations of the world, did you do you know, and so like it so it basically just go get thrown right back in his face and and I think acceptance was you know a lot of the takeaway for me. Was yeah acceptance of the reality that’s been thrust upon you and you know and so what what I was saying as far as the got you know the gospel stories. The reason I think it’s you know, as far as questioning is because I think if you are a Christian questioning at any point is is inevitable, it will it’s part of the journey it’s something you’re going to come across you’re going to feel like you’re drowning at certain points and you’re like. There might be people who never question. Okay okay yeah yeah that’s the majority but that I think really does happen yeah. Now very cool no yeah. I just I know for myself that I hit these points into you’re saying why why would you question or you know and that is I would question because it’s my life. And so like it you know, but is it real I mean it’s not my life anymore, you know good over Christ, but it’s you’re going to want to take your life back into your own control and and and so and that’s a very and I would say that most humans would even say that that is. That is the key to like like almost like stoicism like like says like you know, you must be in control of your of your of yourself and that but. I don’t know man it’s just that like what we’re getting to these points of like. Of faith and hope, I mean we’re getting to some stuff that you you’re not going to be able to prove it you can’t you know you’re not there is no guarantee on the other side of it and so. Like all humans do these things, but like you were saying with the lottery ticket, you know I would say most humans have bought a lottery ticket and so we’ve all experienced maybe the version of hope that you just described, but yeah it it’s just that I don’t. I guess with simple language from a skeptic in skeptical language. Are those equated to possible make believe impossible delusion and which is like like I said, I think that those those two have negative connotation on because they’re like well make believe it’s something that kids kids do as you get older, you have you cannot do that anymore and it’s like well. But do we. Yeah, yeah I I like this, this is a quote from Hebrews chapter 11 revised standard version Catholic edition and you know faith is the assurance of things hope for the conviction of things not seen and so Mark pointed this out. And did another one of those annoying things where he re events scripture. If you just read it mark i’ll just say it’s already that’s my point i’m exemplifying all of it. That’s my point i’m exemplifying all of this. But what’s interesting. This word conviction right here is yes it’s a it’s a legal term right that could also be translated as substance right so like the substance of a case right there of things not seen, which is why I really like St Thomas Aquinas is. thought about how you know the object of faith is the first truth, what is the first truth God’s self understanding. And so that when we you know moved by the Holy Spirit are drawn to the Lord we begin to participate, you know it’s like God’s inviting us it’s like you know this is the way that I see things. A little bit of my perspective, a percentage of my perspective that you could handle usefully I will grant unto you and you get to be you get to see. It is it’s a where was I going with this the substance substance of things not seen. It just gives a real it’s participatory knowledge, this is where Dr verveke is very helpful here is it’s like. yeah I like i’m not going to sit here and try and prove this as if it was a court case I don’t have access to that, but like I just know it on some level that is beyond my capacity to articulate and when I follow on that everything is better. So that’s that’s me trying my best. yeah. I just i’m always looking for ways to to connect. Christian lingo to a non believing world. Christian lingo to a non believing world. And that is so that’s why the the use of the word make believe in delusion is because we don’t like we use those are terms that I would say most unbelievers would understand, and if we explain it to them they’ll be like well that’s just. I think when you use that terminology it sounds fundamentally like a deception. A deception that we’re being deceived into believing this and the point is is that the God who’s revealing cannot deceive or be deceived. There’s no there’s no possibility of of of a deception being taken place if we we follow on on the on the trail of this faith here so so like it’s it’s good to try and. You know condescend to the non believer in the nice sense of the word of condescending where you’re trying to go to their level and communicate with them, I just I don’t think you’ve gotten there yet. No, it just says that like I often do this weird thing in debates or arguments world like self. Like that’s almost like a jujitsu move where you lay down like from your back where you know they’re they’re like okay Christians are delusional what do you mean by delusional and possibly. It was you know, because it’s like it at a certain level. Is like a what we say, like a positive mindset which you guys would say like a positive mindset have a positive most people would understand that like entrepreneurs say to have a positive mindset and that. that’s a delusion because you know you’re going to you’re going to wake up every morning be like i’m positive, even though the day is obviously going to suck. And so that’s why i’m saying that it was non believers or with people that would be. Writing Christians off as delusional modern day members of the oldest cult in the world, something like that you know. That I want to use words where they’re like to beat them to the punch and say like yes, like, but this is why it’s the right delusion, this is why it is the best. The best way to participate in in reality over chair you ever read the silver chair Chronicles of Nardia. You know, I have a hard time with Lewis and i’m getting i’m trying to get through. I was like I started this book before when I was like 13 and I never finished it but yeah no. And so, like I was mythical stuff I have a hard time with Lewis just I don’t know why it never was my thing but i’m trying to get into a sci fi series and it’s proving equally difficult. Yeah yeah yeah I was like I got Lewis when I was young, so maybe maybe the early exposure helps but there’s a scene spoiler alerts for CS Lewis everybody, so you know. it’s been out for a while it’s. It’s in the silver chair right and Eustis and. Jill Jill. yeah and and puddle glum the. are trapped by the lady underneath underground right and she sits there and she’s got the hot fire going you know they’re her prisoners but she’s really nice and she’s sitting there. playing her drum and three she throws some really heavy incense on the fire and she’s just thrumming and thrumming and from me not her drums and saying what a fanciful myth this is a myth. that sounds really interesting you know only the underground exists right and they just they’re getting hypnotized by her spell hypnotized by her spell and they’re just they’re just they’re just they’re just they’re just. Yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. you know what even if the surface world is fake it’s still better than everything that you have down here goes and stops the fire out with his bare feet and just the smell of his burning flesh like wakes them all up and then the prince goes and kills the witch with the sword and they escape and they happily ever after the end. He does not get a ruby you can eat. That’s correct. That’s correct. So there is something to like I think that that story that story from the silver chair really stuck with me and there’s something to like yeah if it’s an illusion delusion I prefer that to this flat gray materialist reality. Yeah. You have to deploy that carefully otherwise you don’t you don’t want it to you don’t want to leave yourself like oh you’re just trying to control my thought you know. Right. I have a question here. So like the like because I was an atheist at 30 and I never use the term delusion to like Christians. Has anyone directly had a like an atheist say to that you like your delusional for believing in God. I can’t. That’s that’s an example. But like what about like personally say to you or like average person in a real conversation. Just like this. Yeah. Just a random like you ran. Not not. And I know I don’t think that they have but it was more out of politeness and keeping cultural. But if I was to like put them up to a lie detector test I would say that you could probably pin them into that corner. Like I don’t think they would say that because they’re like no Christians are nice Christians are that you know it’s kind of like you know what that no no no no. Look I’m great. I’ve heard people do this. Definitely they’ve come in. They they they have to see a few times. They’ve definitely done it because of that because of that other exemplification. But Judge I want to say a couple of things. First thing is Lewis’s lie in the witch and wardrobe that I think is a very interesting example of what I think is a very interesting example. The lie in the witch and wardrobe that whole series the Narnia series way more accessible than his other works. I like yours. So I’ve actually I’ve read that twice. The other thing I wanted to say real quick was I understand your desire and I think the reason why you think the Christian language is you know more rich or whatever is because it is it’s more enchanted. But you have to consider why are these people using this flat language that because at the end of the day when you listen to them what you’ll kind of notice over time they don’t have the concepts that would require the language that you’re trying to use. And if that’s true I’m not saying that’s true I’m saying it sounds that way to me. If that’s true though maybe that’s because they can’t conceive of those things and merely supplying the language or even trying to re-enchant the world in that way for them using language maybe that’s not possible. Because I would I would argue you see that with Peterson. Like you can see that with when people talk to Peterson Joe in particular. Joseph OK the Well, listen, this isn’t that complicated. Okay, you say it’s not useful and it’s destructive. So ignore it. No, 100 percent. It’s just that I it’s also a part of my brain that I use for a lot of different things, meaning that like I second. I guess I guess that is like for your business as well. Yeah, like it’s like you should question yourself. But like it’s bad to be arrogant up in a tree. Like I tell that guy, it’s bad to be overly confident. And, you know, people say like, well, you can trust this. You can trust. I’m like, no, you can’t. I was like, gear fails, ropes fail. You know, I was like, things happen, you know, unforeseeable events will occur. You need to be able to adapt and keep on moving and not be shocked by the fact that this pillar that you put up in your reality just got kicked out and now you’re you’re shell shocked and like you can’t move. And so like that’s what that’s what I’m saying is, is like that self doubt, like self doubt is is something that I’ve adapted to. Like I said, I’m still working with it and I can ignore it. But it’s it’s become useful to me to see the other side of my of my confidence to see, you know, I mean, and if I can use that, because I have imaginary conversations with Richard Dawkins, I’ll have imaginary conversations with Joe Rogan. I’ll have imaginary conversations with Sam Harris. What if Sam Harris said this? Well, I would say this, you know, and these are maybe these aren’t good things to do. I don’t know. But like I said, I think all the times. OK, so I’m not a lot like basically when it comes to when Richard Dawkins accuses me of being delusional, he says, what do you mean by hope? What do you mean by faith? These you have no you have no evidence for these things. By definition, their faith is is is assurance, trust and things unseen. So you’re you’re you’re negating the scientific process. And that’s where I’ve come up to like, OK, so now where do I go with that when he accuses me of that? Well, you just did that. That’s the you you what you do is you say, but the scientific process can’t explain. And you need exactly one example. And then you walk away because then you’re done. Like, yeah, the scientific process doesn’t explain everything. So the fact that it’s useful doesn’t mean anything. Well, and that’s what I’m saying is, is that that’s where I’ve come, I think, to the understanding that if they’re going to call me delusional, I can use that same word. And you also you have you also have a useful solution. No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t use that. I wouldn’t use that word. I wouldn’t. I mean, I wouldn’t say that to somebody that they’re not that they’re not that they’re not making an interesting claim. I mean, so I think like Richard Dawkins or something like that, I just you can honestly think I consider him to be delusional. I wouldn’t say to his face because it’s not a useful thing. I mean, what I would say is like he’s he’s spiritually blind, and I don’t think that there’s any argument, logic, reason, answer or evidence that will convince him otherwise. And he and he acts on faith because the interview that he had the other day with Alex O’Connor, you know, he’s basically saying like, oh, well, there’s a there’s a problem of complexity. But Darwin solved that. And so we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Which is like Darwin didn’t really solve that. If you know, we’ve we’ve we’ve held up our our, you know, our faith in Darwin through several changes of like the how it supposedly works being like totally reconfigured. Like, it’s not Darwin’s thing. It’s like, you know, if you ask the the biologists today, like, how does evolution work? They’ve they’re they’re working on totally different mechanisms than what Darwin had in his day. So but people really liked Darwin’s idea and they latched onto it very quickly. And that’s the religion that Dawkins is part of. So he operates on faith just like everybody else. So. No, and I think that that’s the understanding that I’ve come to is that all people are have faith and hope. It’s just that we’re not we’re not sharing the same reality. You know, they’re just they’re colocating it in the wrong place. We are their faith. Yeah. They’re starting in a different area. Right. They’re starting from what they project science to be. Right. And that’s where their skepticism has failed them because they’ve created a small closed world. Because you have to with science tools, you can only place it. You can only create a small closed world for yourself. Right. And you can include other things in that world. But the minute the minute somebody raises from the dead, which, ironically, is Plato’s point and the end of the Republic blows my mind. Blows apart your worldview. And there’s so many things like science doesn’t know how bumblebees fly. I like there’s so many things that blow apart that worldview. And that’s part of the problem is that. They’re not able to see a world bigger than the one they’ve trapped themselves in with their with their science, however, sciencey it may be. And so the pattern of religion remains right. And part of the pattern of religion is you got to have faith and you got to have hope. All right. Like those things are inbuilt into humans. So from that springs partially and other things springs this pattern of behavior. Right. And that pattern of behavior looks like religion. Right. And wherever you hear somebody’s metaphysics replace religion, you’ll understand them better. And then all of a sudden it all makes sense. Oh, OK. So you’re saying the thing that you rely on in terms of creation, that’s your metaphysics. I would say that your religion, that your creation belief works like this. Fine. And then and then you can say, well, I don’t live in the same world because they they start from a different creation or a different point in creation after creation. If we don’t share the same origin story, then we’re not then then everything from there out is off. OK. OK. So that’s why Genesis obviously would be we have to all share that story or otherwise. And that’s the annoying part about Ken Ham is that he’s actually right about that. He’s wrong about his solution. His solution is stupid, but he’s actually right about that. Yeah, I get some of those those those guys make up is Ken Ham, the one that built the arc, the Lifesize version of their. OK. Yeah. And that. Well, no. OK. But what’s that then? OK. So like you’re saying crazy. He says that like now, why is he crazy? He’s can end the same banana guy like he said that the banana was there for that. That’s a great comfort there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Confuse. So here’s here’s my take on Ken Ham is he is trying to rebel against a flattened scientific materialism entirely within a system of flattened scientific materialism. Yes, that’s so he’s he’s trying to recover the biblical faith. But he’s starting in the wrong place by saying, yeah, actually, we grant all of these scientific explanations. And guess what? The Bible actually has superior scientific explanations. And so you should believe in that. So that’s where I think Ken Ham gets gets wrong there, even though he’s I think trying to. I mean, I always say like, yeah, he is like, like, I could not be that crazy about it to do it. But like what he’s accomplished because he’s so convinced of his particular, you know, what interpretation with whatever flaws it has is way more than any of us accomplished with our I’m not sure. So, no, well, and that’s the argument against and this argument, I guess, is in Corinthian somewhere. Father, I will come up with it. You told me about it, obviously. Right. This argument’s been made over and over again. The way to convince people is not through rational argumentation. We are not rational. Everybody tells you rather almost nobody is rational almost ever about almost anything. And occasionally we are. But very occasionally rationality is a fantastically expensive process. You couldn’t possibly do it very often. It’s not possible. Mark’s thinking of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 2, where Paul resolves to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified and had a much more successful mission in Athens than he did in Corinth, than he did in Athens, which like Corinth was kind of like, you know, drug dealers and hookers everywhere. And he somehow had more success there than he did on the Agropolis in Athens. Right. Doing this Christianity business is just odd, man. Well, it’s interesting because I have better, I would say I have more successful discussions with the guys at work that I’ve worked with, who a lot of them will say, yeah, I don’t know, man. I believe in something. Maybe I don’t know. Whatever. Most of them do a drug or drugs, you know, smoke weed, you know, and take whatever else and things like that. But they’re so open to having a conversation and just having a… And then, like I said, a lot of times, you know, when we end the conversation and have to get back to work or whatever, it’s like I feel… I mean, yeah, I genuinely feel like as if that was a productive conversation versus like I know a lot of people that can use some really big words and they’re really deep into philosophy. And I try to follow along with them and I try to, you know, and we go back and forth and then it’s like, you know, and some atheists that I know that are just, you know, that they’re just like, yeah, but that’s for you. It’s like, I guess, man, but there’s reasons. Like there’s reasons why it’s for me. I didn’t just pick this up and choose it because it looks, you know, you know what I mean? Like I followed a logical process here, you know, but it wasn’t that at a certain point, logic and reason broke down. And then it was like, you know, the last couple steps were entirely fate. Think you talk to people are too smart for their own good. Yes, boy, is that ever the case? Yeah, I mean, I don’t get me started on thinking talkie women, but Valerie’s here. Oh, I am thinking talkie person. I’m not a philosopher and academic. I just love learning. I just I’m addicted to learning new shiny things, but I. I, I usually have a more practical need for him, usually like pursuing a hope or a dream or dealing with health issues or like learning. How to get emergency prepared and using essential oils, so like. My knowledge has practical uses as well. It’s not just like fancy, dancy philosophy stuff. I can’t follow philosophy. I’m like, I, I know it’s important. I know this wisdom there. It’s important for philosophers because they, they need to keep on publishing books. Otherwise, they don’t have the function in society. I can, I can sympathize with wanting to publish books. Yeah. Thinking, you know, as an author and everything. Yeah. You know, Josh, I was thinking about what you said about, you know, the useful conversations that you have where they’re they’re kind of real. And, you know, I betting that the most useful part of that is your dedication to your work, the striving for excellence in that you’re trying to get your life straightened out and in order. All of that stuff that all leads to. Probably the most important part of real rhetoric, according to Aristotle is ethos. You got ethos, pathos and logos is the three parts of rhetoric. Logos is the argument that you’re making pathos. That’s the passion, the emotions you put into it to keep people engaged. But the ethos there is, is, is quite important. Like, and this guy actually believes what he’s saying and he’s worth following and trusting there. Well, yeah, a lot of it came, the conversation, the deep conversation started happening when I started having to train people how to climb. And basically, like most most people, when you get them up in the tree, they reach a certain height and they don’t they won’t move any farther. They’re just like, no, I’m good here. And I was like, I know you’re good, but I need you to go three feet higher. And they’re like, why? And I was like, because you want to stop here. And if I let you stop here, you’re going to think that’s the top of the tree. That’s not the top of the tree. The top of the tree is, you know, the next three steps. Not going to make you go all the way up there today, but you’re going to have to. And then if they wouldn’t, I would eventually climb up there with them and they get higher than them. And usually I was the heaviest guy. I’m often the heaviest climber. I don’t know why that is. But I was like, I weigh more than you, bro. Like I’m up here. Like you’re going to be fine. And then, you know, and then, you know, and coax them along and bring them along and that. And there and I was like, now I was like, you, I know how to trust gear. That’s why I gave you the gear that I did. You don’t know how to trust gear. I was like, I know how to inspect the tree. You don’t know how to inspect the tree. You’re entirely, you know, going off of this. And I was like, and there’s going to come a time when I’m not here. I was like, so do what I do. I was like, and this is the best way I could show you. I was like, you can go to all the seminars, but they’re not going to teach you how to be brave. Because bottom line is, is like, sometimes you’re just not going to know. And I was like, it’s like you’re, you’re like I said, all this confidence in your gear and your knowledge and everything like that. There’s going to be a day when it’s storm work and you’re going to show up and the trees on the house or, or leaning towards the house or whatever. And you’re just going to be like, Oh, how, how am I? This isn’t any of the books. This isn’t any of the diagrams, you know? And so I was like, and that’s where you’ve got to, there’s another mode of thinking that needs to take over. And that, and like I said, pushing got, I mean, it’s a weird thing to have to push somebody to, to essentially be brave. Like, I mean, that’s a weird thing because that’s like, we don’t really teach that. We teach like reliant. If you’re going to do something dangerous on the job, it needs to be, you know, you’ve got to be. Strapped in 400 times and you know, you have to test your, it’s like, dude, you can do that every day. You ain’t going to make no money, man. Not for you, not for the company. Cause it’s like, by the time you’ve gone through 3000 inspections every morning, you know, to make sure nothing, you know what I mean? To have this, this cognitive, like, you know, under, you know, trust or confidence. I was like, that’s not what you’re having confidence in for it. You’re going to. Those kinds of things are written by lawyers, not people who actually work. You know, exactly. And that’s what I try to get them to understand. And they’re like, and that’s what, and I don’t, and I, and I just let them know, like, like they’ll see me pray before I go up a tree or, you know, they’ll see me pray or, you know, I, you know, since I became Catholic, I now make the sense of the cross, you know, so it’s not, so it’s more visible. It’s not just, you know, quiet and that, or I’ve even, you know, carpet, you know, made a cross on the bottom of a tree before I climbed it, you know, and things like that. And, you know, and people will be like, no, they’ll kind of be like, like, this is the guy I’m supposed to learn from. And I’m like, do you see anybody else around doing this? Do you see anybody else today that’s going to be your teacher? Like, no, this is the guy you got. Like, I don’t know what to tell you. And so it was, it was at that point that I was like, I started really breaking down, like, what, what is this thing that, that I’m doing, that I’m participating in? And is it like, you know, because like I said, that, you know, at a certain point, you know, you, I have invisible conversations, like I said, and those are where those terms make believe and delusion came up. And, and like I said, I, I just realized that I’m okay, like, I’m okay with it. Like, I’m genuinely okay with that. It doesn’t bother me one bit, because I’ve seen evidence, I’ve seen evidence of the efficacy of the, of participating in this reality that, you know, of God’s reality. And that, and, and, and more, more than anything is like with Jordan, like when I started sacrificing things, like that’s when, that’s when it really started manifesting. And that, and it has since, like, as soon as I, you know, ask what needs to leave out of my life so that I can move forward, those, those things, you know, and if I do that consistently, I, I, yeah, I mean, he, he leads me and guides me. But, you know, it’s just, it does require participate participation, you know, in the, at least, I don’t know about that. That’s been my journey so far. I’ve got a couple of thoughts on the, um, Richard, Richard Dawkins atheist conversation. I think sometimes the, the impulse is to try to just go like head to head on fact to fact or whatever. But when I, when I’ve had conversations with atheists, for one, the most productive one was when the guy actually wanted to talk. Like, and I think that’s kind of been mentioned here on a certain level, but like, and then there was the other one where I just felt like this isn’t really going to go anywhere. So I don’t think they really want to talk. I think they can, we can say a few things that recognize where we stand, but it’s not like we really want it. And then there’s other people that are content to just be friends or be in a community, but they don’t want to have that conversation generally, or they would. And so, but in my experience with the, the, the one guy that I went like six hours with, and we’re still friends and he’s actually Christian now several years later. Atheism brought him out of, out of the Jehovah’s Witness, which was really powerful because it gave him courage. Like to, to do that. And, but I think, you know, he, then he was by himself because they have the Shunning Principle. But he was brilliant, brilliant person. And then the conversation really comes down to two things. You have personal experience that’s subjective, but it’s undeniable. And that’s just a reality that everyone has. And then the other piece of it is like trying to have the conversation that, okay, so the Christian story rests upon a resurrection and incarnation. And, you know, and a story about how we got here. But in reality, like, New atheism, the past hundred years, kind of rests on its own stories, which are, when Richard Dawkins said that Darwin, Darwin fixed, fixed the problem for the atheists, he was saying, oh, look at this elegant story that we have now of explanation. He’s actually, he’s not actually saying, look at the facts, look at, because we can’t, there are things we can do to measure. We can try to measure. Ken Ham can get a 6,000 year old measurement. They can get a 14 billion old measurement, whatever. But it’s a, it’s a story. And then, so you have this creation myth. You have a positive or a negative. There is no God. There is a God. And then you have secular humanism, which is some kind of quasi religion. And there you have, you have to have all these things. And so, and most people, if you’re, they’re really honest with themselves, like, okay, I feel satisfied. But, but they’re still taking all those things that on a really, really high face value of, oh, I’m trusting in the enterprise of science that it’s actually infallible. Oh, no, it’s not infallible. It’s self-correcting. Okay, fine. What’s different from that than making amends is as a Christian institution, you know, and, and this, this infallible scientific enterprise with the narrative of natural selection by random mutation, by blah, blah, blah. And we can look down into the cell. And then, so I, and I don’t want to have an authority over me. And now I have my own. And so those, that’s like a story that you live inside. That’s a, that, that is a story that they, that they are living inside. And then to say, now here’s the story that I live inside. And we’re actually putting a lot of trust and a lot of faith in a 2000, 4,000 year old institution or an institution that’s been around for 300, 400 years. And we have to kind of with the scientific revolution or whatever, we have to just be honest about that. And I think that’s, that’s where, if, if they’re going to be honest, you can go tit for tat on, and that’s what Ken Ham’s doing. But that’s not really, that’s everyone’s going to have their argument at the end of the day. But, but we have to be honest in saying, actually, I’m putting a lot of faith in this story and it’s the story I want. I want this is the, that was what you kind of mentioned earlier was like, what kind of life do you want to be in? I want to be in the Christian story. That’s, that’s, that’s the, that’s the reality that I do want to be in. Maybe it’s diluted, but maybe you want to be in the reality where there is no God. And so I’m just looking for a way to justify that there is no God. But that’s the reality that I want. You know, something that might be an interesting thing to have somebody examine too, if they’re, if they’re really convinced about this stuff. Because I used to teach science, sixth through eighth grade, and I was at a Christian school. But when I got there, they had non-Christian textbooks or whatever. And, you know, I noticed, like, when you go through the thing, you’re learning about all sorts of different stuff, you know, whatever, magnets and the weather and things like that. And there’s experiments you do. And then you get to this one part about evolution, where instead of photographs, you have drawings of all sorts of dinosaurs and things. And there is no experiments you can do, but you are invited to use your imagination. And so it’s really like they have snuck a mythology in to school kids. And so, you know, somebody may be really convinced about it now, but they are not thinking about the fact that when they were in sixth grade, this was. Presented to them as this mythological story, wedged in between other more legitimate and testable fields of science. So, I don’t know, might be might be valuable to just have. There’s no difference between the drawing of the Ascent of Man and a drawing of Noah’s Ark. Yeah, right. They operate on the same impulse right there. They’re both telling you a story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t care for the appeal to reality. I think reality is something that’s manifested right by your interaction with creation, right? For your attempt to bring heaven and heaven and hell together or something, heaven and earth together rather. Right. Yes. Heaven and earth. Sorry. You’re trying to, you know, you’re stitching those things together. Together. And that’s what reality is. And the problem is you can’t have it like a smooth reality, right? You can’t have a consistent reality because even if you have two Christians or two Catholics, they’re not going to do that exactly the same way. But it only has to be close enough. Right. But it’s also. The gist. The liturgy is pretty similar every week. Right. But it also has to be close enough. And maybe when it’s not close enough, that’s chaos. That’s bringing hell into the equation or something. Right. Yeah. That might be an easier way to think about reality. Because people use it as this objective fixed sort of thing. And it certainly cannot be that. Yeah. No, I think, you know, growing up as a Protestant and now being a Catholic too, I think there’s an uneasiness there too. Because my father is still a Protestant, my mother, my whole family, those who do attend church, you know, and that. And for them, the Bible is literally true. So it’s very. And it seems to me the degree to which you believe it’s literally true is the degree, the amount of faith that you have in God. See how deep that goes. I’m going to make a little confession here on the Internet. Right. When I was in eighth grade, I was a Young Earth Creationist for about six months. I had Ken Ham DVDs. I was all I was all. Yeah. Because because, you know, just as a as an unformed eighth grader. Right. You know, I thought that doing that was more pious, basically. And then Ken Ham was giving me the arguments for it. Right. What geared me was finding out that Benedict the 16th and Pope John Paul II both thought it was OK to believe in evolution. If as long as you don’t hold it that tightly, basically, you just hold on to it loosely and it’s fine. You know, when you try to get up in the middle and it’s when you get into trouble and I’m like, oh, OK, those guys are definitely smarter than me. So I’m just going to back off this Young Earth Creationism thing. Well, you have a problem with Ken Ham is he just doesn’t have enough angels and demons. So that’s my view. I like it because I think that’s the best story. Take that plus angels and demons. And then I’m happy. So and that’s why it’s not as boring as trying to imagine billions of years. Like, I just can’t. So well, that’s that’s where you’re starting. Right. Like the best argument, because there’s nothing there’s nothing in evolution that contradicts anything in religious thought. And that like it’s dumb, right? That has to be true. Like, did you read Darwin? He was a pretty big God guy. Like he was all in on the God thing. I don’t you know, I think the people who invoke Einstein, I sense that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. Like, I don’t I don’t know what universe you guys are living in or what text you’re reading. But all these guys you’re quoting were big God guys, like all the Enlightenment thinkers, that God’s all over their stuff. You know, Plato, the Republic, you know, not God, because, you know, they weren’t monotheists. But like the gods are all over the Republic, all over it. It’s everywhere in that book, everywhere. And so they’re playing a bit of a trick on you. Right. Because if you start at evolution, you just haven’t answered anything. Because in order for an evolutionary process to exist, it has to exist somewhere. And it has to be operating on something. And so you can do the John Vervecki trick and take the T-loss out of evolution. I don’t necessarily think you should, but you can. That’s actually not a problem. But now you have to explain what it’s finding in the thing that it’s operating on. Right. There’s a process going on. Fair. It’s using material. Where did that material come from? What is the place that process is operating on? And within that operation, there are different things happening. And there’s a differentiation between them. Where’s all that coming from? So you can take the T-loss out of evolution, but you can’t take the T-loss out of creation. And that’s why they’re creation deniers. Because they’re not going all the way back to creation. They’re assuming creation, inserting evolution as a process, and starting there. And that’s that middle out sort of thinking that I have a video on. A video on navigating patterns on middle out thinking, which is actually really useful. That’s a good one. You want feedback. That’s me giving you feedback. That’s one I actually remember. So. Oh, good. Oh, that’s good to know. Thank you. Yeah. Glad to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. You got to start at the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That’s where the beginning is. Don’t start at like. And suddenly in 1995, I came into consciousness. I was like, well, chronologically, that might be how it happened. But that’s not the right starting point. Yeah. So Emma, what were you going to say before I interrupted you? I’m sorry. You were going to talk about thinky talky stuff. And you were talking about me. And. Huh? I was just making a joke. Oh, OK. Cool. I didn’t know if you were something you were going to talk about. And I cut you off or something. OK. No. No. I did have something to follow up with Josh with regarding doubting the gear and trying to make sure you’re safe and doing the best you can and writing a balance between um. You know, being aware of stuff and knowing that no matter what you do, something might happen. In media production, we have production managers. And I was one of them for my dad with many of the different productions we worked on. And my job was basically to plan for things to go wrong and have backup plans. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And whenever I assumed everything was going to go OK, that’s when I had trouble. And then also the fun factoid that I thought you might enjoy that’s tangentially connected to what you were saying about being a dangerous occupation and everything. The stunt people do a lot of practice and safety things and they have insurance and all that kind of stuff. But the most insured person on a crew is the cameraman. Cameraman are weird and stupid people. They do anything for the shot. They won’t hang off of a cliff. They will like once one medieval car commercial thing that we had that was shot in film. It looked like a movie. The cameraman shouted at the night that was riding on the horse who to swing his sword at him. And my dad’s like, no, no, don’t do that. All he could imagine was the guy’s head goes flying. And the cameraman will say and do weird thing just to get that perfect shot. So they don’t have that survival thing quite there. They got a higher purpose in there. Like in there in that mode when they’re looking through that lens, that’s their purpose. Everything else is secondary. Yeah, that’s crazy. I didn’t know that about you. Literally the lens literally when you look through the lens, it literally like you can’t actually focus on anything else. Like you have to put all of your focus through that constraint lens. So we need to have a Valerie sitting there saying, why don’t we put a safety harness on you before you go dangling off that cliff? If the night’s going to take a swing at you, why don’t we have like a piece of plexiglass in between you and the night? So that when he takes a swing at this $5,000 camera, he does it, smash it to pieces. Yes, exactly. Because you’re literally focusing your attention like really, really tightly. That’s a useful skill, but like you got to use that carefully. That’s not something you need to do all the time. And the rider was actually riding on a slick snowy hill right towards the camera. And that’s when he was like swinging his sword and my dad’s yelling, no, don’t do that. So I thought you’d get a kick out of that. And yeah, so I’ve always… It’s funny, there is a lot of courage in many different aspects of life. In writing, it’s a weird balance in writing where you’re supposed to be very vulnerable. And some writers overshare TMI kind of stuff. And actually, the world and some publications reward you for that. And I read a lot of writing books and I’m like, this is the reason why most people don’t write this personal stuff for the public. But that’s what people want. That was like, what’s the balance there? It’s like sharing and not sharing and what stays private. And you think about your own boundaries and stuff. And not everything you share is going to be useful and helpful. Yeah, no, I think that’s where I’m kind of getting at was like what I said, the reason when I followed my own path to why I believe what I believe, maybe it’s not that… It probably wouldn’t be that useful to a lot of people and things like that. Because at the end of it, I’m going to say, yeah, I’m on faith. And that can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. But like Father mentioned the ascension a little bit ago, and I was talking to the pastor of the church I used to attend. He was formerly a pastor at a Nazarene church, and now they started their own church, a new covenant church. And they’re mostly going off a reformed theology, but not everybody is into that. But anyways, and so I told him I became Catholic and he was a little upset, but concerned about that. We got on the topic of the Bible, the Word of God, and I happened to mention something I heard from Jonathan Paju. And I said, what do you mean by the Word of God? And he said, well, scripture. And I said, well, the Word of God is Christ. And then he said, well, no, no. And I said, well, I forget exactly what course the conversation took, but when we got… And I asked him about that. I said that Jonathan Paju said the same thing about literalists. That he said, well, ask him what happened at the ascension. And I literally saw him freeze. And I said, so what happened at the ascension? Did Christ go through the five layers of the atmosphere? Three layers, whatever they are. But did he go past the moon, Mars? Where did he go? And that… He had to speak the speed of light. Yeah. So no, exactly. Because I was a literalist. I was raised to be that way. Like I was taught that the Word of God says that the Earth was created in seven literal days. And if you divert from that, you’re no longer a Christian. Now, maybe it wasn’t always said in that exact strictest terms, but that was very much the feeling that I got that if you doubted one part of scripture, that you’re not a Christian, that your faith is faltering in God. And that because they are sold the scripture, by scripture alone, that is their path to God. So like in doubting that is doubting your faith. And so it was… Yeah, I don’t know. Anyways, that was… And I’m also always trying to… I have a… Like I said, I was raised Protestant. So in my heart, I have a very much a desire for all my Protestant brethren to become Catholic. And that because it’s like, no, there’s one true church, it’s right over there. It’s down the street, actually. We can all go, let’s go today. And we shouldn’t all be taking communion like in the single serving. There’s a whole thing to it. We can all go experience it. It’s right over there. But like I said, and so in analyzing why I believe what I believe, I like I said, I have a lot of reasons, but at the end of the road, it really boils down to faith, which like I said, earlier in the stream is like, the skeptics out of my brain will be like, well, what do you mean by that? Like, what are you trusting in? You’re trusting in nothing. And it’s like, no, I’m gonna participate in something that I have… That is the best… That is, yeah, I guess the best story for reality that I have, that I’ve ever come across. And there’s not like, like I said, because you can get up to certain parts of the story and like, it trying to prove it to yourself on an intellectual level just isn’t going to work. And you’re not going to be able to like, you’re not going to be able to canham it. There’s a difference between the Bible being true and the Bible being literal. No, I understand that. I like that. And I think that that’s like, that’s the… When Richard Dawkins talks about the truth claims of scripture, he’s talking about things like the Ascension or pick your miracle or pick your prophet or who, you know, whatever. The unbelievable part. But there’s just a big difference between is this true and is it literal? And I think it’s the deepest truth of reality. I don’t know how to answer if every dot and tittle are true. I don’t know how to answer that. But I can’t tell you that there’s letters, there’s poetry, there’s history, there’s gospel, you know, accounts or whatever. And then there’s religious imagery, there’s dreams, there’s, you know, encouragements, there’s creation stories. I just think it’s true because the deepest truth of all the parts of scripture became true to me as a person that was very broken. And so that’s what I know as a person. I don’t… But I think there’s… I just think it’s a big difference than trying to say is this literal? And I think there are parts of scripture that are literal. I think that you look at a gospel account, it’s literally some guy, you know, who knew Jesus trying to tell a story. Oh, no. And Christian was taken from them. You’re right. Your sound’s not coming through. Christian, your sound’s not coming through. Yeah, I hear you, Christian. Yeah. No, no, no air pod. That’s what happens when you lose battery on your Bluetooth device. Yeah, but Josh, one way to think of it is to think like… Freedom. Sola Scriptura applies to the sciency people. It’s just Sola Science. And the key is not the literalism… The thing that you’re describing is not necessarily just the literalism. It’s the alone. Right? Well, alone. That’s why they can’t describe the ascension because that’s not described in the book. Right? And so, right, if that’s what you’re relying on alone, then you’ve got a gap. And look, I mean, gaps are gaps. And there’s gaps everywhere, so that’s not necessarily a problem. But when it’s alone, when you’ve closed it in, that’s where the problem comes in. Not only in the literalism, also in the literalism. But I think the literalism is inevitable when you squish things down like that already. So the squishing down, the flattening already happened as a result of, we’ll say, the Protestant project. Right? Which is born in grapefruits. I live in America. I get grapefruits. Grapefruits. The first place you’ve ever said about Protestantism. I know, right? This is… You really turned it over a new leaf here. Oh, no. It’s so nice. Well, I mean, I think… Makes for a big selling science or something. I looked at postmodernism again. It’s not that bad. Like, actually. Then I’ll know something’s wrong with Mark. I’m going to fly down to South Carolina and figure out what’s wrong. Now Mark’s in crisis. We need to go save him. Well, you know, it’s not really keeping with the… That’s one of those… Sola Scriptura is one of those things that’s often misunderstood. But if you’re putting a particular interpretation on a passage of Scripture, like saying that you have to believe the Ken Ham interpretation of Genesis, that’s actually not Sola Scriptura anymore because you’re having the Bible and one particular interpretation. Because what you really have to say is, I believe Genesis 1 through 11, or all of it, is literally true. It doesn’t mean I have any idea what it actually means or is actually described. Because it’s just, you know, the words… We have the words. We don’t, you know, and you get closer to Jesus and all that stuff. It’s a lot less ambiguous. But I even said, if people really take it seriously, once you get to the Tower of Babel, you know, all the languages change. So if you take that part, literally, it means all the first 10 chapters weren’t spoken in Hebrew. They were spoken in some other language that we don’t have anymore. And we’re reading the translation. Yeah, Seidegustin said that Hebrew was the language that Adam spoke. Yeah, but I don’t think the evidence bears it out. What evidence? So, but anyway. Yeah. I don’t even think… I don’t even know… Moses didn’t even speak Hebrew. Not like how it’s written now. It was different. That’s not… Yeah, that’s not entirely clear. But also the… Well, no, it’s not entirely clear. So that’s the point. Hebrew is such a simple language, it’s actually doubtful that there could have been a simpler form. Because there are languages like that. They don’t have a simpler form. So that might not be true at all. No, that’s why it’s American English, right? It’s the simplest form. No, American English is just the perfection of all possible language. Well, I’m going to go. So see you all later. It’s good to join, Michael. Take care, Michael. Good to see you. Father Eric, could I ask you something? If you insist. You know that Catholic cross thing you do? I don’t know the name of it. Like when you do the cross? Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Could you give my cat a blessing? Does it need a blessing? We usually do that on the feast of St. Francis. Okay, when is that? On October 4th. So remind me in October and I’ll give the cat a blessing. Okay, I’ll let it down. Cat’s got rules, man. I think Pope Francis got pretty upset at a lady that brought him a dog that was gussed up like a child. Did I hear that story? Every once in a while, Pope Francis is really old school and he doesn’t have any toleration. I know there are multiple quotes from him going off on people who have dogs instead of babies. Yeah, he doesn’t like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he doesn’t like that. It creeps me out. Like I get it. I get why people do that, but it does creep me out when I see my brother like that. I didn’t single my brother out, but just that culture in general, like we don’t have any kids, but like I’m a fur mama or like this is that and they dress their cat up and they’ll like, there’s a guy who wrote a lot in my industry. His name is Dr. Alex Shigeau. He basically wrote most of what we know about trees and the biology of them. And he said it’s important not to anthropomorphize trees. And the only reason I bring this up is because like that was my first interaction was like, oh, that’s a thing. Like I didn’t go to college or anything. I was like anthropomorphization. I had to look it up and I was like, oh, that’s where people try to, you know, put human emotions and characteristics and attributes on the natural world, try to overlay that on it. And I could see it happening so much in that. And I’m just like, that’s an animal. That is not a human being. Because they look at puppy dog eyes or they look at like, you know, animal eyes and they’ll be like, you’re like, no, he feels sad. I’m like, no, he doesn’t. I’m like, that goes back to Christian’s point about story. That’s how we understand. We understand the world through story. Like Jonathan Pichot is right. Definitely understand the world through story. And you keep swapping out story and find and fair, like whatever. But also you’re still in a story. You didn’t leave the story framework. And yeah, look, I mean, I understand people that, you know, dress up their paths or treat them as children, but I don’t think it’s a good thing. Oh, of course I understand it. I also understand schizophrenia, but that doesn’t mean it should be like lauded or even accepted in some, like I understand a lot of things I don’t accept. I’m like, yeah, I’m not putting up with that. I know exactly what it is. And that’s where the problem comes in. If you’re too accepting of things or you’re in denial about things, right? Like limitations, like limitations in scientific method or the limitations of logic, reason, rationality, right? Or the limitations of your own senses, right? If you’re not accepting of that, or too accepting of anything, you can run into problems, right? And the problems you run into are not recognizing evil when it’s right in front of you. Like when somebody tells you they’re a horrible person, believe them. Don’t make excuses for them. Don’t try to redeem their statement without, you know, just accept it. Okay, sounds like you got a problem and you might be evil. Fair enough. I’ll do some investigation. A lot of people just, you know, I understand why they’re dressing their dogs up as children or whatever. But also they’ve got a problem and that needs to be addressed. And they need to know that because a lot of times the problem with accepting everything is that people don’t tell you things. And the next thing you know, you’re like, I’ve been doing that my whole life and no one told me it was wrong ever. Because I meet people like that all the time. I may be one person like that too, but I meet people like that all the time when no one’s ever told them it’s wrong. And so they’ve always been doing it. And that’s a problem of too much acceptance or too much tolerance. I think there’s- Not good for them. There’s kind of two situations. I mean, one, it could be identified as disordered love, you know. But at the same time, there may be people, there obviously are people that aren’t able to maybe to have children. But at the same time, I mean, there’s other ways to have children. But it’s not the ideal. And encouraging people to the ideal is, I think, the- But I think just telling somebody they’re stupid is not right either. Because it’s not necessarily stupid. It could be birthed out of like very serious grief, you know, that somebody has- And they’re trying to like, you know, deal with that. And it may be relatively unhealthy. But, you know, the 25-year-old kid, the young person that, you know, is substituting that for children, maybe there could be some encouragement. Like, hey, have you thought about like what it would be like to give that kind of love to a human being? But, you know, that’s still not like an easy conversation though. We’re pressing them on to spiritual form of fatherhood. I’m a touch sensitive on that point. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know. It can kind of lead to being anti-people too. Like, a lot of people that I know that are way more into their dogs and their community or something like that, or put their equate their dogs on the same level as a person or something like that. I’ve literally seen a dog snipe at a person’s leg. The person kicked the dog and then that person that owned the dog flipped out on that person. And it was like, he was like, don’t ever treat Scooby like that or whatever. It was like, no, that’s a dog. And it just attacked a person and he was justified in kicking that dog. Like that was, you know, kicking it off of his own leg. And now if it was a little child that had grabbed a hold of somebody’s leg, no, you don’t kick the child. That’s wrong. But trying to explain that to somebody that equates human rights with dog rights or cat rights or whatever, give your animal, it gets interesting because then you really realize that you’re not sharing the same reality. Maybe it goes back to origin story. I don’t know. 100% it does because remember what it says in the book of Genesis. We were given dominion, not to be dominating and domineering necessarily, but to exercise exercise, uh, our ordering principle to bring things up to God as the high priests of all creation, as it were. Father, I’m sorry if I, if I said something that was hurtful. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was just bringing in something else out there. And, uh, I think especially, you know, I do deal with people who are unable to have children. It’s a little more common than you think it is. Um, and just quickly going to, well, just adopt them. It’s like, like adoption, I’m not going to say it’s a bad thing, but nobody ever chooses that first either giving up their children or adopting another one. It’s, it is it inherently fraught thing and not everybody’s cut out for that. Um, but I do think it’s important that all human beings understand that they are, are called to participate in fatherhood or motherhood in some capacity. And the kind of the normal course of that is marriage and having your own children. But there are ways of, uh, uh, of participating in that spiritually. Um, and, and the spiritual can manifest itself in a lot of different ways. You know, it’s institutionalized in what I do. But there, there are other ways of, of, of being a good father. And, um, I think that that’s responsibility. I think that that’s such a needed perspective on, like, when you talk about like literalism or the secularization of certain parts of Christianity. And typically I would say something like in the low church that I’ve been a part of most of my life, but like, is the infusion of the spiritual reality, like you’re talking about as a seeing and embodying yourself as a spiritual father or mother to somebody, to someone to like, is an office or a, or a gift that you could give somebody that there’s not really vocabulary space for. There’s kind of like feelings for, but like the fact that you say that it’s institutionalized in the Catholic church gives it more of a, of an, of an image or an idea in a more concrete way. And I think that that’s, there’s a lot of things lost, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It’s nice to hear that. I’d like to throw in my two cents on the animal thing. My family used to always have pets. Get on that. Good night, everyone. Good night. Good night, Kristen. My family used to have pets. They did a lot of care and we loved them and they were part of the family, but there was a distinction between they are an animal and we are people, even though we cared for them and did the best we could for them. I have a friend, I knew of two people, one through a testimony of healing and stuff, and one personal friend who’s very, very attached to their animals and it’s because they can’t function with people very well. And the animal just accepts them as they are and they have authority over the animal. So it kind of is an unbalanced relationship. But those two people that I’m thinking of, the one I don’t know and the one I do know, there’s not much options for them otherwise. So, you know, have companionship and someone needing, being needed and wanted. So I think, I think, I do think animals do have feelings. I think they’re smarter than we give them credit to, but I don’t think they’re smarter than a lot of people think they are. I think they’re precious and we should care for them and be good stewards for them. But then, you know, like I took a couple citizen academy police that I knew of, a couple citizen academy, police citizen academy classes back, oh wow, almost four, 10 years ago. And they had canine come in the class and they talked about the canines and stuff. And even though they’re partners and they care about the dogs and stuff, they always had to prioritize in their mind in case some volatile situation or the animal got hurt or killed, their life was not equal to a human’s life. And, you know, I’m like, yep, I get that. You know, you feel bad for the animal, but they try to do everything for the animal, make sure that even when the animal retires, the dog retires, usually they have back issues and stuff because of the work they have to do, that there’s medical care for them and they can retire in peace and all that kind of stuff. They do try to do the ethical thing. They’re not equal to a human life. Right. So those are my two cents on that whole topic. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it is a needed balance there. I think what people like me and some of the other folks on this stream react very poorly to is when you see somebody who would have a pet in lieu of a child, like they’re young, they’re healthy. 50 years ago, they wouldn’t have had any question that they were going to be starting a family. Now they’re in this cultural time, this cultural sense where it’s like, oh, I wouldn’t want to bring another child into this world because there’s too much suffering or it would harm the planet or something like that. And there’s kind of a deep nihilistic strain behind that, even though it’s often given really glitzy marketing. Let’s say you’re in a position where you could bring a child into the world and raise it responsibly. That means you’re married. Excuse me. Wow. And then you like, but we’re not going to do that. Like that is a nihilistic position there where you don’t have faith in God, certainly, but even that being is good and it’s good to increase it. And that’s a very different situation than somebody who, let’s say they’ve got trauma or they’ve got some manner of disability and they aren’t really able to function in the public sphere the way most people can. And then they’ve got the pets for their companionship. That’s a very different thing. So hopefully, we were not overly harsh with anybody. No, I didn’t take it that way. I just wanted to add my two cents, but I appreciate you clarifying. Yeah, I agree with you. That’s sort of the problem of hierarchy and relevance realization, as John Breveke would say, or hierarchy is how Peterson talks about it. He doesn’t really cast it as a problem, but actually, he also doesn’t resolve how that works. How do we know hierarchy? How do we know it’s important? How do we know our place in it? That’s all relevance realization questions. Yeah, and everything’s by degrees. Nobody likes that answer. Then it creates all kinds of problems, like discernment. But I think the only actual question that anybody has about anything is discernment. And everything else can be derived from that. Yeah. That’s one of my favorite proverbs. Understanding will guide you and discernment will protect you. I think it’s 211, I’m not sure. Proverbs 211? Yeah, I like that one. There’s a bunch of them I heard. It might be. You nailed it. I’m just trying to get the full chapter here. Okay, yeah. I think my favorite Bible books are probably Proverbs and James. No, listen, most of us don’t need to go much past Proverbs and James. I think the Bible books are probably Proverbs and James. No, listen, most of us don’t need to go much past Proverbs and James. This is good, this is bad. Try and live up to it. If you screw up, say you’re sorry. Yep, pretty much. I’ll give it a little bit of context. For the Lord gives wisdom from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield for those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and preserving the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path. For wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you. Understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil from the men of perverted speech. And so, if you’re looking for wisdom, if you’re looking for the ability to discern between what is good and what is bad, then trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. He will give you the wisdom you need to navigate this world and all of its many constantly changing patterns. And I have made a discernment. I have discerned that it is time for this stream to end. So, I thought this was a great conversation tonight. We stayed on faith for a really long time. And I’m just delighted that everybody who participated, except for that one guy, did participate. So, did you guys not notice that? Was I the only one? Yeah, I noticed that. Okay. I just get to deal with the YouTube editor and blur that out. That’s my favorite part. So, good night, everybody. God bless you all. God bless. Have a good week, everyone. Thank you.