https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=9k_vQ112qcA
Once you recognize that this is part of the declaration that the world does embody these patterns, that it leads to this, it leads to the story of a man who embodied them absolutely and is bringing us in him to also embody them in a way that will transform us. The ultimate goal of Orthodox vision of Christianity is theosis. It’s to become God, to become God through transformation and participation in God. So that’s the final goal of everything, is to become participant in the divine. And how do you distinguish that from Catholicism? No, I mean in terms of that, I think that it’s a difference of emphasis. I think for sure the Orthodox emphasize theosis more than the Catholics. The Catholics are kind of iffy about theosis in terms of… It’s there in some of the thinkers, but I would say it’s probably not official Catholic doctrine. But I think without theosis, you’re missing the point of the whole thing. You’re missing the point of everything. Why do things exist? Why do things exist? And so I think that the idea that they exist to participate fully in their most perfect form, that’s what they’re called to do. And it ends up being a declaration of the ultimate possibility for goodness in the world. I think that that’s… Well, it seems to me, I’ve observed, let’s say that it’s possible to… It isn’t obvious to me that anyone wants to live a meaningless existence. I don’t think you can live a meaningless existence without becoming corrupted. Because the pain of existence will corrupt you without saving meaning. And it also seems to me that you can sell the story that meaning is to be found in responsibility. When I’ve tried to sell that story to myself, I seem to buy it. And when I’ve tried to communicate it with other people, it renders them silent. Large crowds of people silent. And that’s strange because I’m not sure why that is. It’s perhaps because the connection between responsibility and meaning had never been made for that explicitly somehow. Because meaning gets contaminated with happiness or something like that. But it’s to be found in responsibility. And then you could say, well, there isn’t any responsibility that’s more compelling than trying to aid things in the manifestation of their divine form. That should be an adventure that could be sold. And I don’t know why the church can’t do it. I don’t understand that. Because it seems to me that that’s something that I’ve done, at least in part. That accounts for the strange popularity of the biblical lectures in particular. But I do believe that. I do believe that. The right striving is to attempt with all your heart to encourage things to develop along that towards that divine goal. Like what else would you possibly do? Once you think that through, it’s like you’re always aiming at something that’s better, or you wouldn’t be aiming. You’re always moving towards something that’s better, or you wouldn’t be moving. So then why wouldn’t you move towards the greatest good? Yeah. Well, it’s because it’s terrifying, I suppose, in part. But then I’ve tried to put that into practice in my life and it’s tearing me into pieces. Yeah. I don’t know, though, if one of the reasons is because you’re also alone. And I, you know, because you’re, I mean, at least to my understanding, you’re not in a community. Let me ask you something personal then. I mean, you weren’t born an Orthodox Christian. This is something you came to. How? How? Well, I think that it has something to do with what you said before. It does have something to do with the sense that Christianity had fallen away from its original story and its original all-encompassing, let’s say, cosmic narrative. And so it was really, I would say, in searching for that and kind of discovering symbolic thinking on other fronts and feeling like I was confronted by this, like, okay, so I can see these patterns. I can see the world through this coherence. And it’s like, why is it then that Christianity doesn’t have this? And then after more looking and more searching, I realized that it did. That not only it did, but that some of the earliest, some of the most, you know, powerful early saints talked about the world exactly this way, you know? And so when I discovered that, then I looked around and I saw, for example, that iconography, that the relationship between icons and architecture and liturgy, and all of this was like this amazing giant pattern, which was reinforcing, manifesting, making you participate in the way the world actually existed. And so it was like this kind of self, you know, this positive feedback loop, I guess you could say it in a good way, where it’s like you recognize these patterns, you engage in them, you see them, you sing them, it’s like this whole thing where you’re engaged. And so I realized that it was really in the Orthodox Church that this was the most, that had been the most preserved and the most alive, and that I would hear, you know, contemporary Orthodox speakers or thinkers or philologians who talked about the world exactly in that way. And so I thought, okay, so this is the place. And also because they kept the idea of theosis as the ultimate goal. Because I think that that’s, you know, very, very early, Saint Irenaeus, which is, you know, like early third century said, the logos became man so that man would become God. That’s one of the, some of the earliest saints said that, you know, and so it’s like that’s really what Christianity is. And so that’s what ultimately led me to… Well, it is the greatest of all possible visions. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but I think that, you know, I think that it’s their latent even in, in other forms of Christianity. And one of the things that I’ve been trying to do is help people kind of wake up to that reality.