https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=B89qJXLG3dw
Vervey, yeah, John, Rick and all that, especially for Vicky, who’s a Neil Platonist by his own admission. Where are these dudes in this conversation about orthodontic? I think a lot of people listen to you want to know this. Like do they ever turn you in the microphones off and go, Jesus is nuts. Stop talking about Jesus. Like, you know, and Jordan Peterson is one of them too. Like you have an entree into a world where a lot of us are very fascinated by this conversion. Yeah. What is it like? What is actually happening out there on the side conversations? These cats think you’re crazy when it comes to that, or is it more like, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I really don’t think they think I’m crazy for sure. Not Paul Vanek, but I think he’s a legitimate Christian. He’s a Christian. Yeah. Yeah. John, I think is honestly trying to wrestle with his own story, right? Because John grew up in a kind of very fundamentalist Protestant sect that was very, very protective and very, you know, purity minded and shame, shame, shame minded and everything. And so he was very deeply wounded, I think, by his experience and felt like he discovered in cognitive science and in Buddhism a different way of seeing the world and the release from that type of relationship. And so I think this is my interpretation. John, if he ever watches this, he can contradict me. But I think that what’s happening for him now is that he is kind of surprised and happy to find aspects of Christianity, to find Christians that are showing him another vision of what Christianity is. You know, and he on himself, he’s reading Sam Maximus now. He’s reading some of the reading Euregina, some of the Western theologians and is changing even the way he’s talking about things. And so for me, like talking with John, I think it’s a process. And it’s like it’s a process that a lot of the people that are watching my videos are on themselves. And it’s the same with Jordan Peterson. It’s just that what happens is that this is my interpretation is that. Let’s say I’m talking with Jordan Peterson and Jordan is presenting his own existential objections or his own existential doubts. And and I’m trying to answer the way I can. And then they say, all right, well, yeah, but no. What happens is that there’s a thousand people watching that are saying, you know what? That was the right face. Right. You know what? Actually, I think I think, you know, I think I’m willing to take that extra step. And so that’s what I think that’s a lot of the things that are happening. Oh, and it’s beautiful. And I like the messiness of it. It it’s the proper space, I think, in a postmodern world to be able to venture into these. I always think of postmodernism as just a preparation for a return to something like, you know, fulfillment in God and in orthodoxy. It has to. That’s why I never understand people’s anger with, you know, of course, postmodernism produces nuts stuff. Don’t get me wrong. But it also is ripe. It’s I mean, 19 people forget the nineteen hundred eighteen ninety five is a terrible time to live. You’re a Christian. It’s a highly mechanistic time. It’s it’s the death of mystery, man. And now you have this weird birth of it. Now, don’t get me wrong. It creates a lot of problems, but it feels richer for people, maybe from the ancient orthodox east. Then I think so. But one of the things that one of the things that’s hard and I understand it’s like people listen to me or they watch me talk to someone like John Verbeke or to some occultist or to some like weird, some weird atheist or are are like I just recorded a discussion with Bret Weinstein. And and I can understand because they listen to me. And sometimes I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking, why doesn’t Jonathan say this? Like, what is it? Why doesn’t Jonathan like tell them the truth of Christ? Like, why doesn’t he like lay it out, you know, lay out orthodoxy for them? And I’m thinking like, that’s not how real conversations work. Like, it’s just not how I don’t think that’s how real conversations work. And to a certain extent, I don’t feel responsible. Like, I don’t feel responsible for the man in which that person will or will not like have a glimpse of the grace of God. Like, I don’t think that I don’t think that I actually have the role to do that. Like, I can only say the things that shine in front of me as I’m encountering them and trying to figure out what they think and trying to get them to see certain things a little differently. And so sometimes it can be frustrating for I know. And I’m sure people criticize me for that because they’re like, you know, why didn’t he why didn’t you say that? Like, why isn’t he talking about, you know, the divine energies or whatever it is that orthodoxy logists talk about? It’s like, I try to have conversations. But it’s the rationalist’s impulse because they think just one more rational expression of orthodoxy will get them over the edge because they’re working with a rationalist template. And I just never find Christians come to Christianity that way. At least the ones I they don’t it’s not like one more argument. Oh, just the right word. Oh, you did it. It doesn’t it never feels that way to me. Yeah. Well, some people definitely come to Christianity, I think, through to reason and to a certain extent because there is the rational. Was it there’s a there’s a limit, right? Because yeah, yeah, I guess I’m pretty radical. I always think my mother, memory eternal, she was so good at this, Jonathan, she would never leave a moment on the table without Jonathan Pagio. So many moments on the table. And I was always thinking, Mom, the moments you’re identifying are your moments in your mind at a certain time. They they’re not even heard by all these other people the same way. Probably. That’s why I like the probably the space there is a space of humility. I’m not going into your mind right now because I don’t even know. Maybe it’s not even the right thing to say. I like that humility rather than the sort of great commission, you know, Protestant moment of way to go. I just don’t like the way to go moment in the Christian conversation. But it also depends. Like so what I think one of the things that I hope that one of the things that I’m doing, the way that I’m doing it, what it affords me is multiple conversations. Like what affords me is the desire that for the person to talk to me again. But if I like if I was in a moment where I’d be like, I just and I just slap it on the table and be like, this is the this is the truth. This is the way it is and everything. Then I think most of the time the people I talk to won’t want to talk to me again. And I would understand why they wouldn’t. So I would make the Orthodox happy because they’d be like, yeah, Jonathan is saying the thing. He’s saying the right thing. And they would be right that I would be saying the right thing. But in the end, in the end, you know, I don’t know if I don’t know if the fruits of that in the long term would be would be would be good. I don’t know. I mean, and if some people are doing it that way, that’s totally fine. But for me, I can’t. I just and I’m also just not an arguer, a guy who argues a lot. I just don’t like you. Anyways, would you be called an empath in the world? Yeah, more empathic. I tried to kind of understand what the other person is. And then I I tried to show how what I’m trying when I’m saying connects to their world is the way that I tend to do that. Well, that’s what I always say. I always say I would rather be a teacher than, you know, a propositional provider. I don’t want to provide a proposition for you to have to force you into a corner. It’s uncomfortable for me. On the other hand, man, you know, I do hope I’m a martyr when the time comes, like if it comes, I do hope I say the proposition properly in English so people can hear what I’m trying to say. I believe I do. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, there’s a way in which I think that it’s not about I hope that what I what I’m doing is not about avoiding like avoiding in order to be accepted by others. Like, man, if I if I if I go down that direction, I hope a priest will smack me in the side of the head and say, OK, Jonathan, like, get back and get back into the into the truth. But, you know, yeah. So.