https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=YA1JMKELkL4
Alright, Joseph Pohl asks, Hello Jonathan, first of all I would like to thank you for all you do. My wife and I were secular atheists with an appreciation of the Bible. Thanks to Jordan Peterson. And because of you we have regularly attended St. Nicholas Orthodox Church for almost a year now and plan on getting our family baptized during Pascha. Well glory to God for that. My question is, what has been your most effective approach to breaking down secular atheist hangups about going to church? I have a lot of people in my family who have post-Catholic issues with Christianity in general. Helping them at least not have misplaced bitterness to the faith would be a great help loving Christ, Joseph, Vanessa and our soon to be baptized baby boy and girl. So alright, so there are a few things. I mean I think for sure it’s important to have compassion for people and it’s important to understand that when the church is judged severely for the actions of its participants, you know like the priest abuse stories or corruption, you know or the different stories of excess that you find in the history of the church, when the church is, let’s say, is criticized very severely and is, you know, even more than in other aspects of reality, let’s say where there’s more criticism level at the church for its failures than at secular institutions, we have to understand that it is in some ways a testimony, a remaining testimony of what we think the church should be and what even the secular atheists who criticize the church think it should be. And so I think that though having compassion for people, it might be interesting to just gently hint at the very ideal that they hold about the church and where that ideal comes from and it comes from the Christian ideals themselves. And so I think that then at that point it might be important to understand that the church is never something outside us. It is those that participate in the church. And so the idea that the church is this monolithic thing outside of us that is acting on us is ridiculous. You know, those who are in the church are the church, those who participate in the church are the church. Now it’s true that of course authorities in the church have more power and maybe have more influence, but we have a role to play in that too. And so that’s the way I see it. I think Jordan Peterson mentioned it. He said, you know like how the church is? It’s like great, that’s something for you to go help fix, right? It’s like it’s something for you to go help make better. And so helping the church live to the ideal that we all recognize it should, even secular atheists, seems like something that is worthy of our attention and our time, you know, because that ideal, as that ideal erodes in society, we won’t be in a better place. If the Christian ideal completely erodes from our values and our virtues, then watch out for us. So hopefully that helps. And then, I mean, obviously some of the things that I talk about I think are aimed at that, helping people understand the inevitability of attention, ritual participation and how reality unfolds itself to you and helping them see that, you know, if they think that church is silly or ridiculous because it’s a bunch of things people do, you know, when singing and things like what are we doing, what’s the point of this, you know, helping them understand that their family dinners, that all their social rituals from a handshake, you know, to the more ridiculous rituals like buying a fancy car or wearing nice clothes to impress others are all rituals. And so it would be good to find those rituals that are worthy of our attention. And if we don’t, like I said, then don’t complain if Kim Kardashian is like everybody’s hero, right? Don’t complain if, like if you see, you know, things, if you see things kind of falling, going downhill and if your child is addicted to TikTok or addicted to video games or whatever it is, you know, it’s like what’s the good ritual, what’s the best ritual to be part of, you know?