https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ikHlYKLr48E
Yeah, I was wondering how much of this is, you know, because I was thinking about like causes of things historically and I do wonder how much of it is certain branches of Protestantism. And this is coming coming from a reformed background myself I was part of a very kind of strict reform tradition where there was there was no imagery in a church service right that that was kind of a distraction. worship and contemplate God and almost the theology the ideas about God were the most important part of being in a service. So you know you take even take the Lord’s Supper together and you come to the church and the pastor gives a 10 minute theological explanation of the Lord’s Supper, which seems like that’s kind of the more important thing and actually taking it itself is the idea behind it. And this is one of the things that kind of drove me away from the reform tradition was was a contemplation of the sacred and just the notion that it’s, you know, there’s this divorce between you know the embodiment of the self in in the church service so it’s almost like you’re, you’re kind of a bunch of these disconnected minds all here in church to hear a theological message and think about it. And if anything, your body or your senses are a distraction, because you could be distracted by the, you know, the stained glass windows, so you want to cover those up, or you could be distracted if the pastor would wear a robe of any kind. So you don’t have that. And there’s even a kind of fear that the songs would be too pretty. So you don’t you don’t want that. And, and I do I do wonder how much of that just historically did lead to what you find with this, this notion of the art being separated or beauty being separated from just the things of ordinary life. Because it really is in the end. It really is in my estimation, a lack of incarnational thinking in general. And I think that there’s a there’s a kind of unconsciousness which I don’t think, like I said, I don’t think it’s on purpose. It’s interesting because for example, Calvin, in his reputation of, of, of icons and of sacred art, completely ignore St. John of Damascene’s our incarnational argument. And I think maybe he didn’t even know it, it’s possible that he didn’t have access to that argument. So he acts as if it doesn’t exist. And it’s interesting because that’s really the key to a lot of the modern problems in terms of the real difference between this this kind of disembodied mind that is just there in church to receive information and and and think about it, rather than this disembodied participation. So it ultimately what you’ll have is it’s inevitable. You know, I remember I grew up in a Baptist church, and I mean, the people there were wonderful, like wonderful Christians. But I remember I would ask them, like, why don’t we kneel in church? And they would say, well, because that’s just an exterior, like action. So, you know, but we could kneel, but we could also not kneel. And so we don’t, right? That’s what I, that’s what ends up happening. Yeah, yeah, of course. In the end, we don’t, because and so there’s the sentence, we don’t know what it is, which, instead of understanding, I think, in a proper Christian manner, even like, in a biblical way that, like, works are informed by your faith, that is works are the embodiment of your faith, even though if I told a Christian at that time that that’s, that’s the way that’s the right way of thinking, they said, of course that is, but then there’s something that happens because there’s such a opposition of faith and works that ultimately all works all exterior manifestations are almost seen as suspect. Well, possibly idolatrous, and possibly, let’s say, as a form of hypocrisy, any form of outward gestures to be hypocritical. Yeah, for sure, because there’s there’s a denial of anything bodily or external, and there’s this pitting of authenticity against anything that’s bodily that’s inauthentic right and I think that’s, you see that with, you know, Heidegger, for example. I think this has a, it goes prior to Heidegger as well with the Romantics but but it’s this notion essentially that’s to do things as expected ritually is is necessarily a negative thing it’s kind of a, it’s in opposition to the inner self, so you have this outer versus inner self, that any, you know, outer actions that you perform are there, they’re always at least a little bit suspect. Right. And I think that’s going back even further to, you know, the Great Awakening in the United States, and, you know, with the Great Awakening you have someone like George Whitefield, who makes the assumption. When he starts meeting pastors these pastors probably aren’t really saved. Because they probably haven’t had the real internal experience. And it’s very much part of the, of the American religious experience and American religious phenomenon. But it’s interesting because now we can destroy that. I mean, so let’s say one of my. One of the structures I use to help people destroy that is to show how ritualized your every gesture is that is, you know, I, and I tell people, okay, try it like when you speak to someone tried to break the ritual, like do something else lie down on the ground. And they start talking to the back of their head like do all these things that are not expected of you and see what happens like you will see communion break down you’ll see the whole of society, break down, and you realize that everything we do from opening doors to driving cars that are all these, these kind of ritualized liturgical behaviors. And there is a manner in which we can be hypocritical. And I think Christ is constantly attacking hypocrisy, because it’s there’s something about the human person, which can, let’s say disconnect the inner and the outer. Yes, and it’s part of the fall, but that’s the problem. The real, what we’re trying to aim for is to connect them together so that they that one reflect the other and we have a true kind of embodied Yeah, there is no real internal authentic self that’s divorced from our how we react externally to things around us. We just can’t live that way. It’s an impossibility. Yeah, I think, you know, I heard this all the time, you know, within evangelicalism, people always go to the prophets and the prophets who are often criticizing the hypocrisy just as you’re saying, you know, where God says things like he doesn’t he doesn’t desire their, their sacrifices, you know, and he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite. Exactly. Exactly. The goal is the alignment of the inner and outer self, not to say the external things are bad, and the internal things are good. That’s how we’ve that’s how we’ve, unfortunately, I think misunderstood things. Yeah, that’s how we’ve that’s how we’ve, unfortunately, I think misunderstood things. Yeah.