https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=oNDJPAOSmek
So then after this, you have a wide range of stories, like we’re talking about with increasing locality, that nest the local and the specific within the universalizing and the cosmic. So our Universal History series, we’ve been mainly focused on these kinds of stories. This is what we’ve been mainly looking at, right? How did people groups, as they converted, nest their identity within the Christian and within the Roman story, even when they themselves maybe fell outside of the empire? And just to emphasize again, before we get into the next section, is that these identities, they stack or they nest. And if you don’t understand this, then you will make the mistake, which as I’m going to try to argue is basically the mistake of 19th and 20th century nationalism. Which is to create something that’s very top heavy, right? Where it’s more about, here’s the narrative that actually has to control and oppress everything beneath it rather than serve as a container for it. Yeah, that’s really important. And that’s when you can see, I mean, in general, that’s when you can see how, when any identity goes wrong, is when it doesn’t respect the normal nesting of identities that are below it, right? It’s like, as a, let’s say a family, a father, it’s like, okay, the father is the head of the family. But the father is the head of the family in the way that is there to make his children and his wife be fruitful and succeed and be themselves, right? And have their own lives ultimately. And so that’s the way that all identities should function. And that’s the way God functions. And that’s the way that all identity should function. That’s why people are, when we talk about nationalism, they become very tense because they always think that all that means is, like you said, you know, the way that the Third Reich presented their nationalism as this completely identity that takes over. But it’s not just the Third Reich, right? Napoleon and all of, a lot of modern national identity had that feature, but it was not a feature of ancient thinking. Yeah, I think a much overlooked vision in scripture is Nebuchadnezzar’s like first dream, right? The one, I think it’s his first one, but the one of the tree. Right? So he has the, everybody remembers like the vision of like the statue being destroyed by the, you know, the stone cut out of the mountain, you know? And, but the, but in his vision of the tree, right, it’s the idea of the tree. And of course, the tree is the king, right? The tree is this beautiful tree. It gives shade to the plants beneath it. And also the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. The wild beasts kind of gather around it. But that’s what the king is supposed to be. And so you could say that that’s what, whatever your story that gives identity, that’s what it is supposed to be, right? It’s supposed to be this tree that, you know, the birds of the air, these various principalities and the beasts of the field, which are, you know, the things that are lowered down, right? They can come and still, they can find shelter and shade and protection. And of course, in his dream, ultimately he’s because of his pride, the tree gets cut down. But the point, the point is that this is what, this is what the king or you could say like the grand story, like whatever it is. That’s how it’s supposed to function. And obviously this didn’t always like function perfectly. But there is, but it functions surprisingly well, let’s just say, right? Even when you have, even when you have somebody like the Pope saying, I think it’s maybe the fifth century saying, okay, nobody in the West is allowed to read the book of Enoch anymore. You know, but then there were still places on the, you know, the outer branches of the West, you know, in Scotland and Ireland and the British Isles, particularly where people kept all of these things, right? And they sort of kept them. They still remembered them. And it was still part of, again, not just like a book at a monastery, but, you know, teaching from Enoch, teaching from the apocryphal books was actually a major part of parish life in Anglo-Saxon England. Right. And so there’s, there’s a, there’s a, there was space, even when you, when you had somebody who tried to totalize things in some way, there was space for this stuff to kind of fit in. Yeah. And one of the reasons why, that’s why it’s hard for us to think that way is that because we live in a technocratic society, we, we confuse authority with power. We have the capacity now for authorities to have indefinite power. And so when, when the president or whatever, when the, the authority say something, they can implement it completely into the world. Whereas in an ancient world, that wasn’t the case. You know, the Pope can be in Rome saying whatever he’s saying, and it’s going to have influence, but it’s not, he doesn’t have the means to enforce it all through Christendom. And so there’s always this organic variability that, that installs itself just naturally by just normal human mechanisms.