https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=hOtf0yBtnLg
So this is what I would say, this is what I would suggest is to first start with the intellectual tradition that you come from and to explore that, to explore it, to read the church fathers and to read the saints, to read the mystics especially, I would say, and to get a sense of what these things mean. Once you get a sense of what these things mean, one of the things that we need to understand, and I think that that’s been difficult for people to understand, is that the church, let’s say, is for everybody. The church is not for the… It is actually… No, I shouldn’t say that. The church is for everybody. It’s for the peasant, the illiterate peasant, as much as it is for the doctor of philosophy or the doctor of theology. And so because of that, what you encounter, you have to be able to… You’re the one who has to be able to take what you hear and bring it to the level that you can understand it. You can’t… And one of the things that helps for me at least is liturgy. And so liturgy doesn’t depend on your stupid priest. It doesn’t depend on your brilliant priest. It depends on an entire process of thousands of years of refining and bringing together all these elements. And so when you… Let’s say, if you go to… I would say if you go to a Catholic church, I would say, or if you come from a Catholic background, I would say look for those Catholic churches that have liturgy, and you will find a treasure trove in there. You have no idea how amazing what you can find there. I would say, ultimately, I would say become Orthodox, but that’s kind of… That might be too facile a thing to say. But it’s there. It’s really… What’s in the liturgy, and when you hear the songs being read or when you participate in that process, it is as deep as anything you’ll ever encounter. And then what happens is that you can become a part of that community coming to something else because the church is us. It’s nothing else. It’s like if the intellectual class, if we abandon the body, let’s say, if we abandon the community, what’s going to happen? It’s going to get worse and worse and worse. But if we dive in and we say, okay, I’m surrounded by really campy or silly or superstitious ideas and it’s like whatever, that’s fine. I know the core of this. I’ve been touched by the core of this thing. And then we can be agents of transformation. That’s what I think. Also, you’d be surprised. You’d be really surprised that you meet some literalist, some person who has the craziest ideas of what these stories mean or has really, really silly ideas. But if you look at their life and if you look at how they raise their family and if you look at how honorable they are and how they’re the pillars of their community, then you kind of, you realize that your intellectual capacity has to take a bit of a humility beating a little bit. It’s true. And you just kind of say, okay, these are some awesome people here. They might not understand abstract things, but their lives are just amazing. And they haven’t lost themselves to entertainment or to pornography or to their upstanding and they’re holding the world together. And they’re not swinging back and forth between those poles of chaos and order that we were talking about. Exactly. Like that silent uncle who’s just there and doesn’t necessarily go off one way or the other, those people, they’re the ones holding the world together. We just kind of have this common sense. It’s not even thought out sometimes. It’s just this intuitive common sense which just comes from bathing in a somewhat traditional world. They’re the ones who are stopping. They’re the secret bulwark of the world. Yeah. I mean, I think you might be right. When I hear that immediately, I want to go like, no, no, that can’t be true because I have so much wrapped up in that not being true. You know, I like spend so much money on my college education. I’ve traveled like I was raised to be a one of these to be a modern secular citizen, you know. And when I hear you say something like that, I it it it I’m triggered, Jonathan. Yeah, totally. I need a space here. Here’s a here’s a path like this is the path that I can trace. And and I think like I would want I wanted to make a video about this, but I can lay it out for you here is, you know, you’re you grow up, you you you you’re you you’re 13 years old and you have this really simplistic kind of naive way of seeing the world and understanding religion, understanding the Bible, understanding all these things. Then you become a teenager and you go to college and you’re you know, you’re especially you go to liberal arts college, you know, your philosophy teachers demolish you. They just demolish everything. And then you question everything. Then hopefully, like what you’re going through, you realize, oh, wait a minute, maybe there’s more there than what I thought. Then you look at the idea, let’s say you look at God and you’re saying, oh, wait a minute, no one that had intellectual maybe my my you know, my my aunt who dropped out of school, you know, she thinks God is a is like a basically an invisible man on a cloud, maybe. But that’s not what Christianity has ever been in its highest form. So then you you you get that and you understand this idea of a hierarchy of being and the idea of the infinite and the idea of this process of logos, all of that. It’s like you you start to see it and you start to live it and you start to understand it. Then the last to me, the last step in that is then to come back and say, you know, our father who is in heaven and not have a single shred of problem with saying that. And then facing that smug, like New York liberal. And then they look at you with this sneer when you say, our God, who is in heaven. And it’s like, you know exactly what you went through and everything you had, the punishment you gave yourself to get to that. And all you can do in your deep, deep, deep, deep down self is to smile and just go, that’s fine, man. That’s totally fine. Because I know I know exactly why I’m here. I know exactly why I say my father who is our father who is in heaven. I have no issue with it. And so it’s like it’s I mean, I like it anyways for me, it’s actually become a joy to like to to to just sit there and then see that contempt in someone’s eyes and just just be like, you know what? I’m OK with it. I know where I am. Like, I know I’m not sure you know where you are. I know exactly where I am. Wow. It’s wow. I think you should definitely make a video about that. I mean, it’s really I mean, I appreciate you walking me through that. It’s really a beautiful it’s a beautiful description. And it’s also and I feel less triggered now. So thanks. 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