https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=JkpJTPZ9XGg
So Matthew O’Brandon asks, okay this confused me to no end. Matthew 12 43, when an unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none. When he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out. And when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept and garnished. Then goes he and takeeth with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Why would an unclean spirit seek dry places? If that is order in biblical cosmology, why worse than before? I mean, it feels like we should just be happy with the one imp and not risk seven. Ha ha ha! Yeah, that’s a good question. All right, so think about it this way. Think about it that, okay, so think about it like the world is made of attention, or the world is made of worship, is what I mentioned before. And so it’s never enough to get rid of bad habits. If you try to just get rid of bad habits, it’s gonna do this. And so what you need to do is you need to replace bad habits with good habits. But so asceticism on its own is not sufficient. So think about, so like for example, you read in the Church, in the Fathers, and if you’re Orthodox, you’ll hear every single priest say the same thing. They’ll say something like, during Lent, there’s no point in fasting if you don’t pray. If you don’t pray and you fast, you’re in danger. You’re in spiritual danger actually. Because you’re removing the things that usually kind of fill up your life. But you’re not replacing them with something, ordering things properly. You’re just trying to empty the space. But that’s not how it works. Like it’s gonna fill back up. And so that’s the idea in this parable. It’s like, so you chase the spirit out of you, but if you don’t fill the house with a family, if you don’t fill the house with love, if you don’t fill the house with things that are worthy, then not only is the spirit gonna come back, it’s gonna come back seven times more. So this is really like very simple. Like everybody has experienced some of this to some extent. Like think about a diet. Think about a diet. Somebody goes on a super strict diet, and then it’s super strict, and super strict, and then all of a sudden finds themselves eating a tub of ice cream at midnight or whatever. It’s like, that’s what it’s talking about. It’s talking about how you have to be careful when you try to get rid of the demons. If you don’t redirect your attention to something productive, then you’re gonna fall worse than before. And everybody knows someone like that, right? It’s like a drug addict who goes, or someone who’s an alcoholic who becomes clean, and then if they fall off that wagon, they’re gonna fall deep. It’s gonna be worse than before because, yeah. So how would that make sense? But in terms of the dry places, it’s just wilderness. So it goes out into the wilderness, into the desert, right? Just like the Israelites were out in the desert. And so the desert is something like, it has to do with the wild areas, the areas that don’t have names, the areas that aren’t a home, that aren’t a part of civilization. So that’s where the demons go, and then they circle, and then, oh. These are three doors to heaven. And so no mountain cannot overcome these because there is only one mother left. There is only one father left. And so, we need to have love myself and the mother for all the community and for all the belonging to me, for every single volume, way around the world. For all the children, the tensions,