https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=JNBJ9b86PjQ
Even the word orthodoxy, it means correct thought, right? Or correct way or correct glory, too. So there is a certainty in there. It could mean straight, too. It can mean straight, like orthodontist. Yeah. So it’s like a straight way, the straight way or the straight understanding or the straight… Yeah. But how does any system of belief stay healthy and not become… We don’t walk in lockstep, but we’re aimed at the right direction. There are certain things in orthodoxy which you kind of have to adhere to, right? And it’s basically the creed. That’s it. If you adhere to the creed, you’re orthodox, okay? And so the other things are what we call in orthodoxy, we call them theologumena, right? It’s a big complicated word which means talking about theological things. And those are in discussion, right? Now that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t kind of follow the tradition, but it also means that it’s not fixed in stone. At some point, we could discuss it through and things could come out in a way that is different, okay? And so there’s that, and plus there’s also the idea in orthodoxy of what’s called economia, which is the notion that there’s the rule, right? In terms of how ideally you should be, right? And the rule is really high. You should basically be praying 24 hours a day, and you should be mystically united with God, you should have no sins. But if you’re going to assess the rule, right, that’s it. And then we have reality, and that’s economia, which is the application of that standard in the life of a person in order to bring them up higher up to where they are. And so a priest in your interaction with a priest or a spiritual father, we call them, will look at where you are and will kind of give you guidance, might give you rules, might say, okay, you know, do this, and then trying to bring you further on that road. And so it really is one of the problems too with people who don’t understand orthodoxy in the sense that it’s not so much about morality in the way that we think about it. I once even told Jordan Peterson, I said, you know, like, the Bible really isn’t really about morality. And he just kind of looked at me like, what? Because in a way, he might think that it’s really only about morality. And not morality in the sense of this is good, this is bad, you should do this, you shouldn’t do that. I mean, what it’s meant to do is to kind of bring you into communion with God, bring you into, you know, make you more, like make you more of a human and then make you more than human, right? Bring you into states of consciousness, states of being, which are higher than where you are. And that it has socially positive effects as secondary to that? Right. Well, it should, obviously. Yeah. I mean, obviously, because you can’t become like God if you’re acting like a devil, basically. No, exactly. No. Right. And I mean, morality would be like a derivative of that. Out of that will come just action and actions that will, you know, cohere the world together. But if you read, like if you read, for example, I don’t know if you’ve read the Brothers Karamazov, probably. A long time ago, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a scene in there where there’s a star, it’s like a spiritual father, and he’s engaging with these different people who are coming to like confess their sins. And you see like one of the women is basically confessing that she participated in the death of her husband, like that she basically kind of killed or not helped her husband while he was dying. And you see the star, it’s like engage with her and kind of gauge her and kind of figure out where she is. And he gives her advice and he tells her what she should do. And it’s like he wants to bring her further. Like it’s like he’s not shocked. He’s not even shocked by that reality. He’s not shocked by the fact that someone could do that. He’s like, OK, this is where you are. Now, what’s the next step? I want to bring you further. No matter where you are, I want to bring you to that to that next step. And so usually that’s kind of how you should kind of understand, you know, traditional Christianity, I would say. That’s what it’s supposed to be, I think.