August 2019 Q&A (kiVrsVkaaeg)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=kiVrsVkaaeg

Hey everybody. Some light is here. All right. Let me see what I can do. All right. Let’s see. This is better. This is not better. So it’s going to be have to be good enough for today. I told her I hope everybody is doing well. As you can see, I am not in the usual spot. For those who have followed me for a while, I’m actually at my parents’ house. Give you some little bit of flood news before I start. I hope you understand why I’m here. We had to move from the place where we were staying temporarily. My family and I, we found out about a month ago that we had to move because the house where we were staying was for sale and it was sold. So we had to go and we had a short time to get set up. And we took a while to find a place where we could go. So we moved. And because everything was done last minute, I couldn’t get the internet connected at my house. We moved on Saturday. So today is Monday. Is that right? Yeah, that’s right. So we moved two days ago and everything is a little insane right now. So trying to settle into this house, trying to get everything settled. One of my daughters, we were homeschooling until now and one of my daughters, my 12-year-old daughter, has decided that she is going to school. So that’s what we were also doing this week, trying to get her set up for school, all of that crazy stuff while we were moving. And on Friday, I am leaving for South Carolina to give an icon carving workshop. So I’m going to be leaving for almost a month. Usually I leave for three weeks plus travel. I go to Charleston to work with my friend and partner, Andrew Gould, who is an architect and a liturgical designer. So all that is happening at the same time. It’s a little bit mad. So that’s why I’m here and my parents doing the Q&A with you guys from here. So first off, as some of you know, we reached the channel. I reached 50,000 subscribers on, I think it was on Sunday while I was setting things up in my house. I saw on my phone that we reached 50,000 subscribers. The video symbolism and propaganda in the last month or so for some reason has started to garner attention again and was covered by different YouTube channels like Computing Forever. Also, some of the GamerGate people, Geeks and Gamers, featured it on his channel through a Bounding into Comics article. Anyway, so there’s been some interest around that video, and I think that’s probably why the subscribers just shot up. So to all you new subscribers, welcome to our channel. And we do this every month. Recently, we started doing it live again. Not again, we started doing it live. And I’ve got two moderators in the chat. I’ve got my buddy, Kristen Chad, who has the best name in the world. And I also have Jacob Russell, who is becoming a good friend of mine, and he’s also running the Facebook group where people talk about symbolism and about the videos that I’m doing. So here we go, guys. As you know, all the $10 patrons ask questions in advance, so I’ll go through those first, and then we’ll get to whatever Super Chat type things happen to come about in the chat. Thanks to all the new people that have been supporting me through Patreon as well, because as you know, as those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter, on social media, you’ve seen that I’m not posting a lot of carving pictures these days just because things have been so mad that it’s been really difficult to keep that up. And so the videos and the patrons and all this stuff has become my main source of revenue for now. It’s going to change, but it’s going to take a few months. So all right, you guys, here we go. So on, I’m going to start with the questions on my website, through thesymbolicworld.com. So Pat Shire asks, good evening, Jonathan, and he apologizes right away. Sorry for the lengthy submission. Last time I’ll try to get to the point better this time. So he says that he’s been listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks and have been wrestling with the symbolism of Lord Voldemort, his Death Eaters, and how Harry relates. So then he kind of tells the story of Voldemort and is asking me to help him understand how Voldemort relates to Harry Potter. So I have to be honest with you guys, I’m not a big fan of Harry Potter. I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. I’m not that impressed with the story. I know Jordan Peterson is really impressed with that story. I’m not particularly impressed with it. I feel like it has, I feel like Harry, at least in the movies, I saw the movies, I haven’t read the books. In the movies, Harry has a weird Mary Sue element to him. Everybody loves him and everybody wants to be him and everybody, you know, he’s kind of like this kind of young superstar all the time. But anyways, the idea that there’s a relationship between death and power and there’s a strangeness in that relationship is something that I’ve talked about. And you can kind of understand it, that there’s this link between death and power. So Harry, you could say something like that Voldemort and Harry, like Voldemort is, I mean Voldemort just means, what does it mean, like flight of death. I mean, that’s what it means. So Voldemort has to do with the symbolism of death. But all of Harry Potter is related to the problem of power. Power in a magical scientific sense. We often oppose magic and science, but that’s not, it’s not, at least in terms of symbolism, it’s not the right way to see it. The idea of power in the sense of the capacity to act on the world in that sense, both magic and technology are related. And so there’s a relationship between death. You know, I’ve talked about this idea of the garments of skin, the problem of the garments of skin and power. And so I think that that’s the relationship that is trying to be played out in the Harry Potter books. So Harry has a scar. So a scar is death. It’s like a, right, it’s a residue of death, right? It’s like a, it’s a residue of healing that is not completely healed and that has left a mark. And that’s the relationship that is trying to play out in the Harry Potter books is that there’s a mark and that mark is kind of like the source of his pain, but at the same time, maybe secretly the source of his power. So this relationship that this confrontation that Harry had with death as a baby has left him, you know, in pain, alone, an orphan, all these negative things, but it also seems to be the source of his power. And that’s what Harry kind of has to deal with. That’s what he has to kind of figure out how to deal with that. And so, you know, ultimately it leads to the, you know, the death of Voldemort, I guess. And so this idea that he vanquished death with death, that he used the power that death gave him, the power that Voldemort gave him to finally defeat Voldemort himself. And so you can get the idea that maybe also Voldemort is linked to Harry in the sense that in that moment when Harry and him had an exchange, Voldemort left something of himself in Harry. You could say something like that. And so he kind of gave something to Harry and Harry received this power that is related to death. And so now how do you deal with that? How do you use the exterior powers you have, you know, your power to act in the world, how do you make sure that you use that for positive things? Technology is an ambivalent thing. I’ve talked about this many times. You know, it’s not neither good nor bad, but it can go both ways. And the more, the more power you have, the more good you can do medicine, you know, all the things we get in technology, but also the worse, the more bad you can do. You can have nuclear weapons and you can have, you know, systematic murder of large populations. You can control your people. All of that is related to the power to act on the world. So I hope that answers that question. So David Flores asked, what is the significance of Adam being put to sleep during each creation? So this is an interesting thing. If you read some of the Church Fathers, you’ll see several Church Fathers will say something like, God foreknew the fall and it’s because God foreknew the fall that he separated male and female. The idea that the original Adam or the original man would have been androgynous being that you, that was fully had the masculine and feminine elements fully united within him. He had heaven and earth. You see, I’ve told you that story before about this ocean of, you know, God breathes his breath into this gathered dust. So Adam is an image of the union of heaven and earth. But then in the creation of Eve, it’s like you have a separation of heaven and earth once again. And that separation is remedied through marriage, through family, through the unity of the sexes in a sexual union or in a marriage. But there also is that reality of the separation. So a lot of the Church Fathers talk about this moment of the separation of Adam into male and female as like I said, something which is preparing Adam for the fall. It’s falling into opposites. So you can see it in that very imagery. The idea that Adam falls asleep is an image, a kind of foretelling of death. Sleep and death in symbolism is always extremely linked together. So you can see that in that image. Adam sleeps and in his sleep, that’s when Eve is created in this little death. But it’s not death really. I mean, we have to be careful. It’s not death, but it’s something akin to death. It’s something akin to death. It’s something akin to death. It’s something which kind of points towards the future and the fall. And that’s why, for example, we have these images of Christ at the crucifixion. There are these beautiful hymns in the church on Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, where it talks about how Christ on the tree as he’s being crucified, the soldier pierces his side and out of his side the church is born. And so there’s this relationship between the creation of Eve in Genesis and the church coming out of the death of Christ, where Christ kind of flips it all back and replays that moment in Genesis. But it’s like a new beginning. All right, so David Flores says, could you tell us about the fish painting behind you? Well, there’s no fish painting behind me anymore because you’ll never see me in that house again. But that fish painting is was… It’s just when we moved into the house where we were before in the other videos that you saw for the last few months, the person who was selling the house had left a lot of her stuff in there and that fish painting was a part of it. And so it was not chosen, but as you know, symbolism happens. And as we’re swimming out of a flood, the image of the fish is always a positive image in death. That is this idea of these nuggets, this shiny living thing which is hiding in death. So that’s pretty much always the symbolism of fish in terms of especially in terms of Christianity. So David Flores also asked me to do a symbolic interpretation of Game When in the Green Night. I could do a video on that, but I’m definitely not going to do that right now. And he said it would be interesting if I did a series on Gilgamesh. I would really be interested in doing that. I will probably be doing that like I told you guys. What I’m going to be doing from now on is every month I’m going to put out a video for patrons only and it’s mostly going to be interpretation of ancient stories. And so if I do go into, let’s say, Gilgamesh or Game When in the Green Night, it will probably be in those patron only videos. So look out for that. So Eddie T asks, The answer is it is extremely significant. But my goodness, that story, that moment is really difficult to understand. I will have to be honest with you. I’ve been thinking about Judas’ kiss for years and I honestly do not think that I fully grasp that moment. The best thing I can say for that is it is a supreme inversion, right? It’s the supreme inversion where you are betraying to the outsiders, because it’s the Romans that are coming to get him, you’re betraying to the outsider through a gesture of communion. So you could see it as the ultimate betrayal. But I honestly, I think that there’s something far deeper in that moment, something that is really, really critical. And maybe because it’s so critical, that’s the reason why I don’t fully see through that moment. But I’ll keep thinking about it, keep praying about it, keep meditating on it. Hopefully one day I will have a proper intuition on that moment in the Bible story. So Eddie T asks, Why does the worship of the soil often involve self-mutilation and human sacrifice? See, for example, Sibylis’ castration of Attis, the Wicker Man described by Caesar in Gaul, the child sacrifice performed by Israel’s wicked kings in the Bible, even Demeter is said to have eaten part of Penelope’s shoulder. Am I discerning a theme? For sure there’s a theme. For sure there’s a theme in the, I’m not sure the things that you’re mentioning are related to each other. For sure there’s the castration of Attis, there’s so many things in what you said, but let’s just, one of the things you could understand in terms of the earth, let’s say, the problem of, if you look at Demeter and the notion of the shoulder that was eaten, you can see that the shoulder that was eaten you can have this sense that there’s a relationship between the flip of, and that happens in the earth, that it’s related, I’m afraid to say this, but that it’s related to certain images of self-turning, that there’s a relationship between, let’s say, the flip that happens in the earth and something like cannibalism or something like, when I talk about this weird double inversion that happens, there’s something about that in the symbolism of how the edge turns, and that’s why the imagery has to do with self-contradictory things like the carnival, like the clowns, all that that we’re talking about, there’s something in that. But it’s hard to fully pinpoint, it’s hard to fully pinpoint, and also something really subversive about that, and so it’s dangerous to talk about it too much. That’s why you have things like Saturnalia at the end of cycles, you have these weird moments, weird kind of inversion moments at the end of cycles, but for sure Christianity kind of solves that problem. We’ve talked about this several times. Christianity solves the problem of the end with something like communion, which is both the, let’s say, the right hand and the left hand, which both has the bread and wine, but also this weird symbolism of the scandal of cannibalism kind of joined together, where it’s not fully one or fully the other, that they’re kind of joined together, that it kind of solves that problem. But yeah, so I’m afraid that I’m not going to be able to explain it, and I’m not going to be able to totally pierce that mystery for you there, Eddie. This is tough stuff to think about, especially all this imagery that has to do with human sacrifice and cannibalism. I’ve made a few videos that talk about cannibalism, that kind of look into that a little bit, but it’s stuff that’s really difficult to understand and to talk about. All right, so Jacob says, I’ve been to our articles at Orthodox Art Journal and have found Father Silouan’s, Father Silouan Justiniano’s articles as well as your recovery of the art series, very helpful in reintegrating visual art back into my life, especially icons. The notion of a hierarchy in iconography is especially intriguing. My problem is seeing good iconography versus whatever else there is. I have found myself not minding a Western touch like Archimandrite Zenon or Vladimir Grigorenko, but I’m also very drawn to the style of Lyuba Yatskiv. I don’t even know who that is, which is strangely troubling because she seems to make, oh yeah, I think I have seen her icon, to make a giant leap into modern styles. A part of me is saying it’s not right, but I can’t explain why, which leads me to wonder what is right or maybe a focus on what is not right should come first. Iconography is very difficult to talk about because I think that you’ve said it properly. There’s a hierarchy which sets itself up. I think that’s how we have to see it. There are no canons about style. There’s nothing in the Church Fathers would talk about style except for talking about the need for icons to not, let’s say, to not awaken the passions in icons. To not awaken the passions in a person. So icons do have to have a certain sobriety, a certain ascetic appearance because you don’t want them to bubble up your emotions in an extreme way. So that can account for a lot of the stylistic choices that icons came to make. Like I said, now there’s a hierarchy. The way that it should be is that you should have a basic desire to integrate your icons into a community. That’s one of the things that people often forget is that if I’m trying to communicate something to you, I need to take into account who I’m communicating to that I have to ask myself, why am I doing what I’m doing? I want to integrate it into a community. And so if you push the edge too far, then at some point you run the risk of… You run the risk of distracting the viewer from what it is you should be trying to do, which is bringing someone into communion with the saints. And so you have to be careful. Now there is, I can’t tell you what the strict law is as to where this goes awry, but there’s an organic process in the church where there has to be a kind of proportion. If the proportion isn’t right, then at some point things start to break apart. And we saw that in the destruction of iconography in the history of the icons. We saw that as the proportion started to fall apart and as the Western style, like I said, it’s like you say, I don’t mind a hint of Western art. Now you could say something like a spice of Western art, but there’s a difference between that and as a full on Baroque Rubens art where it’s all flesh, it’s all moving and it is exactly that thing that the fathers warned us about, the problem of eliciting the passions in people. So I’m afraid that I can’t give you a strict answer. And I would be very wary of people who think that they’re able to give you a strict answer. You have certain icon groups right now that say things like if it doesn’t have this style or this style or this style, then it’s not an icon. And that’s just the wrong way to address it. We have to see it like you said and like I’ve always said, in a hierarchy, which is we have to say that it can be an icon, but it can be an icon which is leading us into something which is a little bit on the edge. And we just have to be aware of that and be careful for the whole of iconography not to slip and kind of move into that direction. But there’s nothing wrong per se with innovation, but there’s nothing right with innovation either. There’s nothing desirable about innovation. Innovation tends to happen in moments of transition or just this organic change that happens. But I would say that most iconographers should have a desire to be traditional even though some of their art might not look totally traditional. I think most iconographers shouldn’t express that desire which is the desire to be traditional is the desire to engage and participate in the communion, participate in the community. And if you don’t have that, then you’re just trying to titillate people and to create innovation for innovation, jazz style or kind of rock and roll types. All right. And so Jesse Blaney asks, hi Jonathan. So here goes, I have three big interrelated questions on nostalgia. So I might not answer all of these, but let’s just see what we got. Question number one, memory and it’s connected to nostalgia. I know that in one sense nostalgia acts as a refusal to let go of a memory or an event in the past and that nostalgia also acts as a reminder of to return home. Has the term wanderlust become a glorified pursuit of escapism, living in a dream world? Does homesickness, the opposite of wanderlust help us do better understand what heaven really is? My intuition is that this is what the story of the prodigal son symbolically tells us that this is what the story of the prodigal son symbolically trying to communicate. I think here it really does depend on words. I do think that there is a sense of nostalgia in the highest sense of that word, which could be a, like you said, a desire to return home. So we could say that we all have in us a nostalgia for our paradise, that all of us have a nostalgia for Eden, that that is something that is built into the human person in the fall. Now, the difficulty that I have is that a lot of nostalgia today is trite, it is a sentimentalism. And so it is this kind of weird sentimentalism, this attachment to the superficial forms of the past. And I think that that’s the dangerous, I think that’s a dangerous thing actually. I always kind of joke and say that what I do, let’s say my icon carving is tradition without nostalgia. That is that I’m not making the icons that I make the kind of sentimental desire to preserve the past, to preserve some forms that were there before. I have a, I want to take what has been handed to me and make it alive. Like I want it to be alive and participative and part of the world. Whereas there’s something about nostalgia, especially kind of a kind of modern nostalgia that we find in people, in grownups who, I mean, I have it too, like I was gonna say, grownups who still like the things they liked as kids, like grownups who still collect toys or whatever, all that stuff, there’s a, I think that that’s an empty, shallow thing. So question two, does Western society glorify nostalgia? If this is true, is it an undoing larger frameworks of the meta narrative? I don’t totally understand what you mean. I’ve also been thinking of nostalgia in big terms and how it relates to the biblical story of Lot’s wife. Yeah, that’s a really good image actually. The idea that Lot’s wife experienced a moment of nostalgia for something that she probably, that she shouldn’t be experiencing nostalgia for. And so as she had to leave, that she had to move away from that burning place, she looked back and remembered the wrong thing you could say. So my symbolic intuition is that when she turns around and looks back at the city, the past that’s being destroyed, she takes on that destructive form or image. Well, it’s not just that. The fact is that she is frozen in that sense, in that image, the fact that she looks back at the past with this nostalgic eye, it means that she becomes a pillar. She becomes a pillar of salt. She becomes frozen and she can’t move forward. I mean, it’s like someone who breaks up with his girlfriend and then he just keeps living in that weird nostalgia and then he can’t move forward. He can’t get into another relationship. You can’t move on with your life. The same thing would be with someone who, let’s say someone dies and then they don’t mourn, but rather they just kind of hold on and they don’t want to go through the process of mourning and then they’re stuck, they can’t move forward. And so I think that, I mean, I think like you said, I think there are some aspects of nostalgia which are, I mean, maybe the right way to say it would be you should be nostalgic for paradise. You should be nostalgic to return home, the real home, let’s say the true home, but that desiring capacity that we have is the same desiring capacity that can also make us nostalgic for all these trite things that we had in our past, all these things that just give us a good feeling when we engage with them or give us a kind of sadness, this melancholy sadness. All right, so question three for Jesse Blaney. He says, the third question is about storytelling and his strange connection to nostalgia. And so he talks about this idea of remaking films covering songs. And so I acknowledge all storytelling is a retelling a passing on a meaning, a connection to a memory or idea. If storytelling is done clumsily, is that with the effect of what nostalgia is? So nostalgia in this way becomes a cheap ploy, a magic trick akin to the game of Chinese whispers. I think that you have a point. One of the ways to maybe understand that is to understand that, you know, because in his comments, he talks about the fact that now people are just remaking movies, like just remaking, you know, all the stuff that we like, and say, as an adult, when I was a child, you know, Star Wars and Marvel Comics and all this stuff. Now, all they’re doing is kind of rehashing these same things over and over. It’s like Fuller House, my daughter watches that show. My goodness. Whew, like when I was a kid, I remember that. Like, how is it that this possible that this is going on? And I think a good way to understand it is to see it as because, like you said, the true stories, the real stories, they can be retold over and over because they’re identity forming, you know, the fact of retelling the story of Christ every year and going through the liturgical cycle, the fact of telling the fairy tales of all these stories that we tell over and over, they’re these, it’s an identity forming act. And it’s liturgical in the sense that it’s something that we kind of go back over and over and it creates a pattern for our existence. And so I think what we’re seeing, and I mentioned this in some videos before, so I think that what we’re seeing is a desire for liturgy, a desire for a permanent or a stable pattern. And it’s being done in a very superficial way, which is Star Wars, like people who live in Star Wars or people who are totally obsessed with mangas or Marvel comics or who talk about old video games and have this nostalgic feeling about old video games and all that stuff. I think that it’s a superficial version. It’s a superficial filling of the deep desire we have for a permanent or a very deep pattern in which we can be embedded and participated. All right, so I’m going to keep going here, Jesse. So Massasar asks, hello, is there a distinction between distraction and avoidance? Is the sin of despondency related to these? The parable of the talents come to mind desiring to be profitable servant with what has been given but bearing it more often than not. I think there is a distinction between distraction and avoidance. I mean, there’s probably a relationship between the two. You know, avoidance is when you know what you have to do and you don’t do it. Distraction is when you let yourself be taken away from the things you need to do. Distraction is almost like a form of forgetting. Avoidance is maybe, avoidance is different because usually when you avoid something, it burns you. It’s like procrastinating. You have this burning thing you need to do and then you feel it until you avoid doing it. You kind of skirt around it, but then it’s like this coal on your head where it’s constantly digging into you. Whereas distraction or this kind of letting go or drinking or watching a lot of movies or whatever you want to do to kind of not have to think about the thing you should be doing or the direction you should be going. Could be a way to, maybe distraction is a way to deal with avoidance, a way to kind of ease the suffering of avoidance for a little while. All right. All right, so Keenan Cronin asks, Oh my word, Jonathan, I feel so bad about you having to answer these long questions. There should definitely be a word limit. Yeah, I’m thinking about that. I’m not going to lose my, and he says before you lose your temper at us. No, I do think though that guys, if you’re going to write a question, you try to have to condense it because people aren’t, I think people will get tired of reading the long things. Like try to condense your questions a little bit just so that we can kind of move through the questions. And it doesn’t feel like I’m reading, I’m reading your statements on the Q&A and that becomes what the Q&A is about. All right. So Keenan asks, What do you think is the right way for Christians to evangelize in the modern world? I personally have an instinct to try and explain the difficult parts of the Bible to friends and family in an attempt to help them see what I see in the stories similar to what JBP seems to do, but something tells me that this is the wrong approach. Seeing as Jesus commands us to, any thoughts on how we might approach evangelization effectively? I think that the best way to evangelize is to become a saint. That’s for sure. The best way to evangelize is for people to see joy and love and meaning in your own life. That’s the thing that attracts people the most, even more than any argument you could do. People are attracted to those who have purpose and meaning and who have a stable foundation, those who love their neighbors, all of that I think is the best way to evangelize. But I also do think that there is room for a more, let’s say, engaged approach. One of the things that has happened in the past hundred years or whatever is that Christians have fallen back and back and back and back in their, because most Christians have taken on the scientific point of view as truth incarnate. I remember being a Baptist and hearing people say something like, modern science is just the mind of God. It’s like, wow, that’s crazy. But if you’ve taken that point, then they keep kind of falling back, falling back, falling back, losing ground in the discussion. And I do think that right now there’s a moment with the type of discussion that I see someone like Jordan Peterson doing, but just this whole discussion about consciousness, about the return of the phenomenological point of view, the problem of consciousness. All of these are opportunities to now help people see what the Bible has always been about and what Christianity is really about. The transformative aspect of Christianity. And so I think that right now there’s an opportunity to do that. And hopefully that’s what I’m trying to do as well. But for sure, it’s not the first way to evangelize, but I do think that it’s having an effect. I’ve seen it. I’m meeting more and more people. People are writing me. And so I’m seeing that there is talking about scripture and about Christianity in that way, and that kind of trying to understand it as a description of reality, trying to understand it as a description of the person in the world and this experience of the world and how it lays itself out to us I think is a good way to do it right now. So Kenan says, and right after having a go at other people for asking long questions, let me be a hypocrite and ask another one. So Kenan asks, what Bible translation do you recommend for your reading list? I don’t know. I don’t, I just, I just, what I tend to do is I use like a King James version. But right now, there’s so much available resources online. I forget what the name of the website is, but there’s a website you can go on and what it does, it has all the different versions of each verse and it also has a website you can have a transliterated version and so you can read the Bible in a translation that you find appealing. I mean, I like the King James because the English is so powerful in the King James and then if you want to dig in and get a sense of what’s going on, then you can go online and you can look at the different translations and look at the transliterated, the transliterated text and get a sense of what, what is going on. So I think that’s a good way to get a sense of what’s going on. That’s my approach anyways. A lot of people have told me that the Orthodox Study Bible is very good. I don’t have one. I don’t own a copy of it right now. And so, all right. So I will move on to subscribe. Sorry, guys. Here we go. All right. Yes. Congrats on 50,000 subscribers. It should honestly be 10 times as much. Well, thank you so much, XRD. I appreciate it. I have to say that I’m kind of, I’m actually kind of happy that the subscribers on my channel are moving slowly because one of the things that I notice is I don’t have a lot of hate watchers and I think the fact that I, that it’s not like an explosion, you know, these huge massive channels that have, you know, millions of views, and if we’re talking about touchy subjects that have to do with human relationships, a little bit of, talked about politics, religion, all these difficult subjects, you know, if your channel gets too big, too fast, then you end up having a lot of hate watchers. And so, I would say there’s crap in my comment section for sure, like all YouTube channels, but I would say that a lot of it is pretty good and a lot of the discussion that happens in the comment section is, it’s pretty interesting. I attribute that to the fact that it’s like a slow organic growth. Alright, so John Bellinger asks, my evangelical wife believes pagan corruptions were introduced by Constantine into the church and Josie will not attend the Orthodox parish with me. Now, I don’t mean to make you play marriage counselor but I sense we’re dealing with a fundamental difference in world views. The kind described in your brother’s book. I was wondering if you might have any advice that could help me navigate the situation and help bridge the gap. Once again, sorry about the weighty topic. I hope to consult the priest about this soon. I would say to be careful because I believe marriage is a sacred binding and I think that that is not only, there’s some people who play tricks and I really dislike that. You see that in Catholicism, you see that in the Orthodox too where they have this idea that if you’re not married in the church and you can get divorced and it doesn’t count and then you get married in the church, I think that’s nonsense. I think that is avoiding reality and treating religion as a kind of, as these magic tricks that you can do. I think that your relationship with your wife is one of the closest things that you will ever have to what true joining of heaven and earth can be. All the difficulties that come with that, all the good things that come with that. I would say to be very careful. I would say that if you… I would say to be careful not to let, especially because you’re already married. If you weren’t married, I would say marry someone who believes the same things as you. But if you’re already married and you’re changing the way that you’re believing and you’re kind of seeing things differently, I would say to be very careful not to destroy your relationship for religious purposes and to trust God and to pray and to put that in God’s hands and to say, you know what, this is, you know, it’s like God is leading you down this path and if he’s leading you towards orthodoxy, you should never doubt the transformative effect of prayer and you should never… you should never doubt the fact that at some point it might happen that you and your wife will not have the same religious ideas and that might be your cross to bear, you know, that might be your cross to bear and it might be for your salvation. You know, you don’t know that. So I would say to be very careful. Now, in terms of believing that Constantine introduced all these pagan corruptions into the Orthodox Church, you know, it’s like, my goodness, the solution to that is history. Like, the solution to that is history and it’s a coherent understanding of history and a coherent understanding of how you can’t on the one hand… and I’ve had this problem, I’ve had this weird debate with a Protestant pastor one time where on the one hand he was criticizing the Council of Nicaea or he was criticizing St. Athanasius for his discussion of theosis and how the purpose of creation was for us to be deified and at the same time he was upholding the decrees of the Church Council. It’s like, Constantine and the Nicene Council, our Christianity is Nicene. We believe in the full divinity of the Logos and we believe that Christ was fully divine. And if you also believe that Christ is fully human, if you look at the further councils that came later, then you have to realize that our very formulation, when you use words like Trinity, all these things are not in the Bible. They all came about through the history of the Church and the Council of Nicaea and Constantine is part of that. And one of the things too is I think it’s important to put yourself in… to help… for people need to put themselves in the position of Christians at the time. We somehow think we can abstract that and from here, imagine that you are a Christian or the Christian Church. You’ve been persecuted on and off for 300 years, sometimes more intensely, sometimes more subtly, and you’re praying and you’re praying and you’re praying to be freed and for God to deliver you from this suffering that the Church has been going through and then the Emperor of the Church converts to Christianity and all of a sudden everything flips and all of the Roman Empire within a century has become fully Christian. Now, how can you now standing thousands of… more than almost 2,000 years not less than that, but whatever, like 1,500 years later and look back at that and say this is when Christianity started to fall. It’s a sad… I think it’s a sad misunderstanding of history and a lot of the stuff if you look at a lot of the stuff that people will criticize Constantine for doing was there right at the beginning. It was right there. The perfect example is Theosis. It’s like this Protestant pastor again, he was criticizing Theosis and saying no, no, no, that’s not true Christianity and everything and it’s Constantine and Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea and I was like, you know, Irenaeus talks about Theosis. That’s before the Council. This preconsilier Christian talked about it and so there’s… Anyways, so I’m sorry you’re having to deal with that. I have more sympathy for you than you can imagine. Maybe I’ll tell you about that at some other point in some other video. All right, so Christian Chad, our moderator, our man with the name, says, Hi, Jonathan, do you think it’s possible for a society to push the negative aspects of modernity back into the margin? It’s hard to see since marginalization itself is under attack. How do we counter this excess of openness? Now, the thing about what your comment, it’s interesting, is that modernity is not an excess of openness. Modernity is not an excess of openness. Modernity is both extremes at the same time. And that’s something that is very important to understand is just because right now in North America we are on the openness swing of the pendulum. Does it mean that that’s what modernity is? Modernity is both extremes. And so modernity is both, you know, is both the extreme nationalism, the kind of Nazi type of desire to shut off an identity and to, you know, this idea of the absolute border between things. That’s a modern thing. Ancient worlds didn’t have clear borders. They had buffer zones. And so this idea of the perfect border around something, whether it’s a scientific category or whether it’s a race or whether it’s a nation, all of this is a modern thing. Now, the pendulum swing of that is in order to break that, then there is this excess of openness and this excess of mixture and this excess of a desire to level all differences. Now, both of those are problematic. Both of those are part of the modern problem. It’s very important to understand that because what you see now and you see, let’s say, extreme right-wingers who think that somehow they’re being traditional by falling into the opposite camp and you’re not being traditional. You’re just being modern. You’re just being the opposite of the type of modernity that is prevalent right now in a society. But so can we push? I don’t think so. To be totally honest with you, I don’t think we can do it politically and I don’t think we should do it politically. I think that… And so Christian’s second question has to do with that. And so he says, have you read anything concerning NRX or neural reaction? I’m very sympathetic to the criticism of the current system but unsure of their solutions. What do you think they get right and wrong? And I think that I agree with you. I think that if you look at the neural reaction areas, their criticism of the system is… A lot of it is right. A lot of it is right on. But… NRX especially, like if you look at Moldberg, there’s a kind of weird… A kind of weird snobbery like this weird aristocratic arrogance in his approach. And… You know, this idea… Okay, so let me phrase it this way. Now, the ultimate Christian image is that… There’s nothing wrong with an elite. There’s nothing wrong with an intellectual elite. There’s nothing wrong, I even think, with a social elite. But the Christian image of that is that the elite is supposed to love those that are lower on the hierarchy. Right? And so… It didn’t necessarily always play out that way. But the idea is that the aristocrat loves his serfs. He’s like a father to them. He takes care of them. He takes care of their needs. They need something, they go to their… Their leader or the person above them and they ask for what they need. And then that person loves them like a father loves children. And so that’s the normal relationship between the, let’s say, that’s a Christian image of the hierarchy. Right? The person above loves the person below and the person below is willing to serve the person above. But there’s a deal which is… That’s the proper deal. And so you can see it play itself out slowly in history as the Middle Ages went on whereas you had the type of chattel slavery that you had in the Roman Empire of these slaves that were worked to death in mines or worked to death on agricultural fields went away during the Middle Ages. You know, the serfs who were in some ways were slaves had rights. They were attached to the land. The aristocrats weren’t allowed to chase them away from the land. And so there was a deal that was there between the two where it’s like you have to take care of me and I will protect me, take care of me. And my, let’s say, answer to that is also to serve you and to provide for you materially in terms of work and all that. So that’s the proper relationship. Now, what I see in especially the kind of weird elitist right-wingers today is a kind of disdain, like a kind of disdain for those that are below them on their hierarchy no matter how they are. How they understand it or how they interpret it. And that, I think, is not Christian. So I don’t think that the solution is, at least now I don’t think the solution is political. I think the solution is religious. I think the solution is, you know, in terms of these, in terms of, let’s say, thinkers that have talked about this in the past. I’ve mentioned him before. I don’t agree with everything. I agree with everything he said. But I think I’m closest to someone like René Guénon. His solution to the problem was to create a true elite, but a true spiritual, intellectual elite. And that doesn’t mean just learning stuff. It doesn’t mean just becoming smart and savvy. But it also means becoming something. Becoming, you know, coming closer to God and also being full of love for your neighbor. All of that is part of this transformation of the person. That’s what we need. What we need are saints, not… I don’t think that, I don’t think that, like I said, the solution is political. It’s funny because I, with the NRX people and these types of neural reactionaries, I always dislike Ebola right from the beginning. I remember reading some of Ebola’s work and really finding that there was something off about it. Sometimes he had interesting information to provide in terms of traditional stories and stuff, but most of the time there’s something off about his tone, something off about the way he saw the world. And I feel like it’s gotten, it’s escalated into some of the stuff that I see in those movements. So that’s my perception of that situation. Tough questions, guys. All right. All right, so moving on to Patreon, guys. We’re at about, so we’re about an hour. Usually I try to go for about an hour and a half, so we should be fine to get into the super chats as well. All right, so Ryan Pinkham asks, what do you think about exorcisms? My mother-in-law’s priest has performed or been at several where crazy things have happened. Flings flying across the room, voices, contortions. Also, what’s your symbolic interpretation of them? I don’t have a problem with exorcisms. I think exorcisms are fine. Maybe if I can try to explain it a little bit for people to understand. I think that we underestimate the capacity, especially in terms of anything that has to do with, I mean, you don’t exercise someone because they broke their leg, right? You exercise someone because they are possessed by a principality, by a power, that they are possessed by something which is controlling them and it’s a spiritual disease, right? And so, you know, the modern psychologists that say when you go and you sit on a chair and you talk about your problems, there’s this idea that you can remove some of the possessions with speaking, with talking about it. And that’s the hint. If you believe that, if you can understand that speaking and intelligence is related to the problem of powers and that authority is related to the problem of powers, you can understand how an exorcism can work because an exorcism is exercising authority. So imagine there is a hierarchy of principalities, different principalities, different powers, different spirits of things that are affecting you, that are disturbing you. And if you’re possessed, it means that there’s one of them, there’s some element, some principality which has too much pull, that has too much power over you, that has taken you over. And you’ve kind of given, you’ve sold your soul to the devil. You sold your soul to this thing, to this demon. And so now you’re trapped, you’re trapped by the demon, right? You can understand it in terms of, I mean, you can understand, anybody can understand that every time you give into a passion, every time you give into a sin, it’s a little bit of that, right? Especially if you’re trying to stop doing something, if you’re trying to stop smoking, or you’re trying to stop eating too much, or whatever it is you’re trying to stop to do, and you give in, you feel that, you can feel that pull, you can feel that demon pulling at you. But there are cases where that becomes so strong, right? That a demon can truly almost take over a person, take over their personality, take over their mind, take over all of that. And so, it’s not weird to believe that authority could free you from that. That someone in authority, like a priest that already has spiritual authority, that’s higher up in the hierarchy in terms of where he is related to you, and who’s also invoking the highest power, who is invoking something which is above him, and those two things together can solve this problem. Now, to me, it’s just not a problem that that can happen. It’s no stranger to think that that can happen than being sitting in a car and driving as a father and having your kids in the back, and then your kids are starting to get rowdy and starting to push each other and to slap each other, and then you just turn and you say stop, and they stop. That’s… Take that times a hundred. Take that times a thousand. That’s exorcism, and it works. Like it stops. They stop. If you don’t have authority over your kid, they won’t, but if you do, then they’ll stop. So, to me, that’s the problem. To me, that’s trying to understand an exorcism. Hopefully, that helps to understand. All right. All right, let’s go. Aaron Monroe asked, what is the meaning of incorrupt saints? As one who grew up Protestant but is on a slow journey towards orthodoxy, this seems like a world of mystery and on the surface, the macabre. I assume there is some relation to the curse of death. Yes, defeat or said curse, deification and the resurrection, but it seems like a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. I understand. I totally understand why you find that disturbing, but I think you already have the answer to your question and your question. I think you have a glimpse of what it’s about. You know, it has to do with the, you could call it a glimpse of the resurrection. You know, a glimpse of the, what the resurrection would look like. And it’s not, it’s important to understand it not only in terms of the actual phenomena of an incorrupt saint, let’s say, and that their body doesn’t decay. It’s also important to understand it in terms of the effect that that has. And this has to do with relics. I’ve told you guys, I’ve talked a little bit about relics before in some of my Q&A’s. It’s important to understand this over my Q&A’s, which is that the relic, it’s not only that it is this piece of a saint and that it is a hint of the resurrection in the sense that in this is the, the body is part of their continued interaction with the world and a promise of that. But it’s also the fact that relics act as centers, you know, that an incorrupt saint will draw people to the faith, will draw people to the church, will draw people to believe it. And so that’s also part of the mystery of the resurrection because Christ in his resurrection had a body. The church became his body. And so something like a relic or an incorrupt saint or a saint or a person with miracles in a certain place that has to do with this promise of the resurrection because around that saint it’s like a little body not just the actual physical remains but the fact that there’s healing there’s people coming to visit the relics all this is like a fractal it’s a smaller version of the pattern that you’re seeing and it’s a, a man in which he can understand what ultimately the resurrection can be and what a resurrected saint how they act as the new principalities in the world how in christ we are we are called to rule with him you know that that that the saints are going to rule with christ and will be the principles of the total world i’d say and so to watch this happen in terms of a relic or the the incorrupt body of a saint is to get a glimpse of what that actually looks like and you know to see this community turning around this all right so ryan pinkham also asks how do you interpret the passages how do you interpret the passages that christ says he came to bring division set a man against his brother his father daughter and his mother etc seems like a tricky one um no i don’t i don’t there’s nothing tricky about that the thing about the logos is that the logos both unites and separates that’s what the logos does right at the beginning of the of the bible right at the beginning of the of the bible you know that for anything to exist it has to be separated from potentiality and it also has to then become one so the logos is always separating and joining uh you know like if you call out something if you say let there be this right you’re you’re pulling it out you’re cutting it you’re separating and you’re you’re making it one so those two things are always happening at the same time the logos is always doing those at the same time and so there are some times in the scripture where christ as he’s talking or his actions tend to uh emphasize one side or the other you know and so i mean christ talks about a good verse is when he talks about how he said he came for the rising and falling of many that is christ is both the capstone and the the tripping stone you know the the stumbling stone that that those are those are the two things that christ does like he he he can bring you up to the highest but he he will also make you stumble because he has both of those in him you know so so it’s not it’s not weird it’s difficult because we really want jesus to just be the nice guy that loves everybody but that christ is the divine logos the incarnate logos and so his love is both you know is it’s a consuming fire but he’s also a dividing fire it’s it’s both at the same time so you can do both hopefully it gives you a little bit of sense of that all right hope everything is fine in the chat guys because i am because my screen and this laptop is so small i’m struggling to be able to see questions in the chat at the same time so hopefully everything’s okay but i trust i trust jacob and christian chad all right so here we go so drew mcmahon asked hi jonathan did you get a chance to watch matt dilahunty jay dyer debate if so what were your thoughts how important should apologetics and should one be striving to coherently justify the belief in god or is that belief presupposed and ultimately rational justification a circular endeavor um i j j sent me the link to the debate and i started to watch it i think i watched maybe like the first 45 minutes but since since like i said since i moved and now i don’t even have the internet at home so i’m not watching any youtube videos so i have not finished the debate um i think that i think that i think that that there are different people have different roles and the role that i have or the role that i’m playing is is not the same that role that jay is playing and i and i think that you know i think we don’t we can’t reduce everything to one thing and so you know i appreciate that jay’s able to engage with atheists you know i have seen every event i go to now i’ll be totally honest with you guys every event i go to now i meet people who tell me that they they’re becoming orthodox that they’re coming to christianity that they’re that they’re moving in that direction and usually they’ll tell me that it’s a mix of my videos and jay dyer’s videos and so it’s like i can see that it’s working like i can see that he’s having an effect on people he’s shaking them up he’s surprising them and so and so i think that’s great uh you know but like i said i i don’t have the same approach that he does and i don’t i wouldn’t i would never do that like i would never have a debate on the existence of god uh because that’s not i i don’t argue with people you probably noticed this i never i don’t argue with people i just i’d rather try to show and show the you know show the pattern show the beauty show the surprise people with something they haven’t thought about in terms of not to convince them but to just kind of get that little spark to hit that spark you know when someone uh opens up their eyes but that’s not for everybody you know some people really are convinced by arguments and so i think i think i wish him all the best in what he’s doing all right so mark peters asks hello jonathan i’ve heard you mention husel how much has he shaped your understanding of biblical symbolism without being a husel scarler it seems that his being in the world is related to minds to the mind’s apprehension of meaning through experience and the way by which that same meaning is transfigured by and through the written word so when you and matthew say that the syphilis language in genesis is not merely derivative but is the presentation of the thing itself to us there still seems to be an intermediate step in how we understand mountain and garden the step appears to be a stripping away of what are otherwise symbolic attributions and when a street sign dictates our behavior or even that particular letter stands for specific sounds so there is a type of unique biblical symbolic language no i don’t think so there is not as a unique type of symbolic of biblical symbolic language we have to be careful that what you mean by what you mean by stripping away of what are otherwise symbolic attributions i think that maybe you you haven’t totally kind of gotten to what what we’re talking about when we’re talking about symbolism you could say something as radical is that symbolism is the very reason why you perceive unity in anything the fact that you see anything as one that you can say that you can say that’s a you know that’s a computer that’s a person that’s this that is the symbolic process the coming together of elements the the joining together of multiples into one that’s the symbol and so and so the idea is a lot of the rationalizations you know come later and i do think there is an ascetic there’s a maybe i get what you’re saying there is an ascetic practice which you can do which is to try to get to the basic elements you could say so you know let’s say you want to try to understand what clothing is you you try to to find the most basic elements that which really constitutes clothing not in terms of just their their um not just in terms of their physical existence but in terms of the why would that exist like why would clothing exist why would we consider that a category so it’s like human intention human existence is in there with the categorization the purpose of the the the thing and so that’s why that’s why say maximus in say maximus the confessor that’s why you see that he takes the idea of the the ideas he takes take the notion of the ideas in playdough but he also joins them with the notion of purpose and so the logos in say maximus is the essence of something but it’s also its purpose it’s also its origin right and it’s also its its purpose and also in the sense of like it’s it’s telos so it’s like all of that is bound up in say maximus’s notion of logos and so that’s i think is such a useful thing in order to understand how this experience of the world we have you know is full is glowing if you if you if you can really be attentive it’s full of meaning because you can’t like i said you can’t even perceive the world without without without meaning now in terms of his cell um i to be honest i’m i’ve read more uh heidegger than himself for some reason i’ve i find heidegger easier to to understand some people will say yeah whatever heidegger is is really hard to understand i don’t know why i don’t know why that when i read heidegger i have uh i just understand what he’s talking about more i find that when i read his cell that was a long time ago now it just it just wasn’t clicking for me it just i just wasn’t i could see what he was trying to get to but i i felt like no i don’t know i i do prefer heidegger all right guys okay so we are we are done with the question so i’m going to now i’m going to jump into the super chats let’s get them up here should have had them up there already sorry guys sorry guys in the meantime i can tell you guys that i am going i haven’t put it up yet in terms of the uh in terms of my on my website there’s a uh there’s a section where you can find all my coming events and so i am going to be in chicago at the end of october and so i’m also and so that is a is if you guys are near chicago it would be great for you to come i’m going to speak at a uh in a catholic church where there is a uh a sacred arts guild and so i will be there all right okay so here we go i’ve got the super chats in front of me let’s see all right i think this is doable aren’t that many aren’t that many all right let’s do this like i said i will not read if there are any obscenities and stupid stuff i will just not i’m not going to read it so don’t waste your money if you’re going to say if you’re just going to say stupid stuff all right so michelle outa asks for 2.99 she asked why was hell created and how ah yeah well i think we’ve been over this a few times but it depends what you mean by hell if by hell you mean death or if by hell you mean the river of fire if there’s a relationship kind of between two but they’re not the same the idea is that hell wasn’t created in the basic sense of the word hell in the basic sense it’s mostly that hell is uh let’s say death is a is a byproduct of existence what do i mean for something for things to exist for something besides the the infinite one of god to exist there has to be a relationship between multiplicity and unity and that’s even for god in christian terms we believe in the holy trinity we believe that unity and multiplicity that’s the pattern of everything and so death held is a byproduct of that because if you if you move towards if you split them apart then you get death right if you don’t have them together you don’t have unity and multiplicity together you get death right and so if you move if you move towards the oneness of something only then you and you you see it also as let’s say self-containing then that’s pride and then you fall and then what it gives you is death in the sense of breaking apart and so so it’s not that hell is created it’s that it’s it’s like it’s the it’s the risk it’s the risk of reality right it’s the risk of reality existing is the possibility of breakdown where we where we fall into idiosyncrasies and we lose the cohesion of what we are you know and that’s what death is the the in the bible now in terms of the the river of fire the lake of fire the most common at least orthodox understanding of it is is to understand that it it is the presence of god itself it’s the love of god which is what’s burning people in hell and i’ve explained it a few times i can explain it one last time maybe it you know if you close yourself off if you want to live in this idiosyncratic thing right if you have some passion let’s say you you you give in to to some anger and you you you you live in your anger like you know anger gives you this energy like it it it gives you a sense that you’re alive when you’re angry you feel alive and you throw yourself into that and that it becomes you and it and it and it uh you know because it makes you feel powerful and it gives you that sense right that a thrill and and so you you attach yourself to it and then when the infinite love of god you you come into contact with it that love wants to connect you to everything else wants to say no no that little thing that you’ve attached yourself to that’s not you that’s not totality you’re wrong about that you you’re you’re deluding yourself if you think that this is what gives you life right but if you refuse to let go then it’s going to burn you it’s going to burn you because it’s like you’re faced with reality you’re refusing reality you want to hold on to your illusion but you still have reality in your face that’s really that’s like permeating you but you refuse to let go and that’s what that’s the that’s the general orthodox understanding of of how hope that makes sense all right so steven anderson asked can you expand on the vinegar that was offered to christ on the cross to me it seems like an inversion of wine but just wondering what you made of it that’s also a really mysterious aspect that i’ve been thinking about for for years and i think that it has for sure it has to do with death sure it has to do with with uh drinking the vinegar has to do with dying because it’s not that it’s an inversion of wine it’s that wine is is is death is like it’s like a controlled death you could say in the sense that it’s it’s contained in a process um and then if it goes too far then it becomes vinegar and so i think that that’s what it has to do with it has to do with bitterness as well it has to do with drinking the ocean you could say something like uh this idea of of uh of the lower waters in scripture the idea of bitter waters you know of the salt waters so i think that christ drinking vinegar has to do with that image as well it’s like he’s drinking in he’s taking this chaotic potential this chaotic death into himself that’s the best i can do but i think there’s more to it than that but i haven’t i haven’t pierced that mystery completely um so the mad truth asked wait i’m in the wrong q a guys what is going on oh i’m so sorry and i’m not even looking at your not even looking at you probably have told me already 10 times in the comments that i’m reading the old questions i’m reading the the july QA i’m reading the the july QA questions see that’s how my goodness don’t trust me with with this stuff technology my goodness all right i’m good okay i am going back just make this conversation longer i’ll let it go a little longer all right so august QA sorry here we go the mad truth i noticed because i saw the mad truth that asked me a question in july QA and i’m like wait a minute this is something wrong with you so the mad truth asks the i hope that my my answer to the question was the same as the one i said before i think i’m going to go back and listen to my old old answer and see if i answered the same thing or if i changed it if i changed it hmm so the mad truth says do you believe that christianity more than other religions most completely reveals the structure and meaning of the universe and god the answer is yes and i think that a lot of people will be cynical about that because i am christian i was born christian and i can understand the cynicism that you would have regarding that but i’m going to make a video on this pretty soon and i’m going to i’m going to explain it more and i think i think that right now is a good time to understand that i think that one of the aspects there are many aspects which makes christianity the highest uh the most powerful image of reality one has to do with the fact that it contains its own destruction within itself its own destruction which leads to a resurrection so it’s like it’s almost as if christianity has anticipated the whole thing it’s like within its story it has a betrayal right so judas betrays christ and then christ dies and then he resurrects and then you have this image that this is that out of christianity will come anti-christ and that anti-christ will will devour will destroy or not completely succeed but you know come almost to the point of destroying christianity and then out of that will be another flip and it’s going to return and so i think that that’s one of the most that’s really a really really powerful image um and also because christ contains you know all the extremes in one person he has i’ve been telling you guys about this for for a few months now you know you know he’s both the king and the criminal and he has all these extremes kind of all join into one story and he goes to the highest into the holy of holies he descends into the the the bottom of the earth it’s like he fills up the whole world and so i don’t think there’s another story like that maybe someone can find one for me i can look at it but i don’t think there’s another story like that all right so the mad truth again asked is it necessary jesus be a historical person is not christ spirit in hearts minds enough is he not that for those who didn’t meet the historic person and i think that it is necessary for jesus to be a historic person because christ joins it person because christ joins it all together and so it’s it can’t just be an idea it has to have had a realization in the world for the whole thing to come together because that’s what christ is christ is the joining of all the realities together you could say and so because of that it also it also has to have happened if the story of christ let’s say the story we have in the gospels does not refer to events that happen in the world does not refer to a person that was born and lived and died and resurrected in the world then it’s not christ it’s not the fullness doesn’t have it all right it’s just it’s you could say it’s it’s it’s not it’s just heavenly it’s just disincarnated it’s just a pattern right but it doesn’t have the fullness in in the connection to the world it’s not that it’s not that point that joins heaven and earth together that fills that fills the earth with heaven and that brings the earth up into heaven as well right this crazy image that saint paul uses right it’s like everything is gathered gathered together brought in into god right that’s the theosis that christ accomplishes and so once you start to understand that it’s it’s it’s not as bothersome to it’s almost as if people believe that there’s something demeaning about the idea that christ is an actual person there’s something trite about that there’s nothing trite about it because that’s the whole point that’s the whole point of all things joining together right so i hope that that answers so so with the mad truth ask me what english translation i would recommend i think i answered that um all right let’s see so james david asks how do i share my experiences with others without disgracing the personal feminine experience by ex explicating it perhaps things that should remain implicit are things that are inherent good their own ends i think that i think that you you you really have a good question you really have a good question and there’s a there’s something tricky about that and which is you know christ talks about going into the secret place he talks about that praying in the secret place and that’s true prayer you know go into your room shut the door and and and pray in secret now now the problem is that so so i understand what you’re like you’re asking in the sense that if if you don’t talk about let’s say those experiences then you think they’re not they’re not going to have an effect in the world it’s the weird thing about about humility is the weird thing about and and i agree that it’s it’s it’s kind of hard to understand but that’s why you see that most saint stories are usually told by someone else that the only saint with an autobiography is augustine for what that what what that’s worth now i i don’t want to be trite about this like i like i like augustine i’m not not against augustine but you know it is interesting that augustine is the the the probably one of the only saints that has a published autobiography anyways uh usually you usually sometimes what they’ll do is that they’ll find some writings of the saint in after they’re dead they’ll find their they’ll find things that they’ve written down their journals or whatever um or or other people will have seen them heard them talk to them and will have gotten glimpses of their holiness and so there is this idea that you have to be careful not to not to boast of your spiritual experiences um but it’s it’s tricky i i agree with you it’s tricky i don’t have a i don’t have a i don’t have a set a set answer for you so jonathan ought asked magic seems in part to be an inversion of the traditional means of approaching god such as when saul seeks a witch to make samuel talk from beyond the grave what is magic your thoughts i think magic is too broad a category it’s in terms of understanding this like i think that magic you could say you could say that one of the problems we’ve had is the whole of modernity has really ruined our understanding of magic or magicians or all that stuff it’s like i think that magic traditionally at least was just the desire to use knowledge to affect the world like to to understand how language how ritual how uh certain interactions can affect reality um if you look at it in the middle ages you know the magicians were neither good nor bad in the middle ages they they were just there was good magic and there was bad magic and it was like if you practice good magic it was then a big deal you know you maybe you know it’s like maybe you should pray but yeah you know it’s like you could and if you practice bad magic then then you could be you could be brought to court but it was it was because of the effect that you were having and so i think it’s i think it’s it’s it’s like i said it’s tricky now there is something about magic that is negative especially the old testament um the very idea of affecting the world the old testament is extremely negative the idea that there’s something fishy about even building a city there’s something fishy about even building the you know this idea of the the altar of uncut stone is the ultimate altar the idea of of leaving things pristine and not modifying nature you know you see that in the whole tradition of enoch you have this idea that it’s the fallen angels that taught human beings skills by which to modify nature and skills related to magic and science what we call science today so in that sense you could understand it as an inversion because it’s it’s a desire to take control and to control our circumstances right to to control what’s going to happen to us to to to trust in the material world trust in our power trust in all that so there’s pride in that all that but it’s not just magic it’s also technology as well so we have to be careful not to think that magic because it’s old and because it’s we it doesn’t it doesn’t fit with the way we understand the world is somehow evil but that technology is fine it’s like there’s something tricky about affecting of our desire to want to control to affect to to stabilize the world right and to have absolute control over it now in terms of necromancy which is what your referring to that’s a whole other question you know this idea of making residues speak making capturing the residues of something and and using it to have power i think that that’s a whole other thing and it’s also probably the most dangerous type of magic you could say in the sense that you know you there is power and there’s power in death i’ve talked to you guys about this there’s power hidden in the residues of things how can i explain this in a way that you guys will understand and one thing i’m absolutely crazy but a good way to understand it is this has to do also with divinization right most divinization is creating a kind of chaotic thing right mixing a bowl or throwing some stones or throwing lots right so casting lots and then looking into the lots you know having a deck of cards the tarot cards and them coming out by chance and then now gathering that into a pattern okay and in a certain way you could almost say that project into the pattern so a good way to understand a good way to see how necromancy is having is is very powerful today is archaeology archaeology is a form of necromancy and so you you dig into the ground and you find these things that are disconnected from memory that are forgotten that have no forgotten that have no participative life anymore and then you use these things to interpret the world with and so if you a great example of one of the greatest examples was was like the egyptology madness that came about you know in the time of the enlightenment where you know people like newton and all these people were obsessed with egypt because they could read the language and so it was this dead thing completely dead there was no connection then the connection was severed between heaven and earth there was just these residues of a civilization and then they used that they dug into the ground they found these statues these hargless all these things and then they used that to destroy to a try to destroy christianity they they they used it to to try to they projected into it all their passions all their ideas all they wanted it to be and then they they they used it to try to have an effect on the world and so that’s a that’s a form of of necromancy and it’s very dangerous because what you’re capturing are these dead residues and so the pattern is something that you like i said you end up projecting into it it could be very powerful you know that’s why you know that’s why a lot of the the you know they find some random bit of text in the desert in egypt that’s like three lines and uh and then a scholar will declare that they have debunked all of the christian history because they found this random piece of of text in the desert you know and it’s still happening today it’s continually continually happening every easter every easter around the time of easter you know we have some discovery that some archaea archaeologists made that is going to disprove to us christianity you know it’s just necromancy so don’t get don’t be convinced by that stuff all right so gabriel r asked why do you struggle with taking a stand for or against darwinism it’s very odd as it’s not trivial matter for the orthodox well gabriel when you say it’s not a trivial matter for the orthodox i’m not sure who you’re talking about uh i’m sure it’s not a trivial matter for some orthodox and i’m sure it’s a trivial matter for for some orthodox for this orthodox i find it to be a trivial matter i don’t i don’t i don’t i don’t feel like it is a useful uh i don’t feel like it’s a useful place to fight you know i i just don’t i just don’t see i think the danger of uh of believing in scientism as being the first manner in which reality is understood is far more dangerous than darwin specifically and my tendency to let’s say ignore darwin has to do with my tendency to understand our experience in the world as being more primordial than a technical description of how how animals uh reproduce or how their genes you know so and i think that i think that i don’t even understand like take a stand against darwin i don’t understand it’s like a lot of the stuff that darwin described is is perfectly fine the sense of the sense of uh of how of how selection happens and how different mates select different mates and how it encourages it encourages different aspects of different animals like for my goodness sake like people have been doing it to dogs for 10 000 years that’s why we have all these different these different species of dogs because the process that he describes is was was was was pretty good in terms of in terms of understanding how this happens now whether or not darwin thinks that he can create a narrative out of that i mean i don’t i don’t attach myself to that narrative at all like that story is i find is not useful in terms of our existence i find that the story in the bible the way that they describe this this coming into consciousness and then you know this this this relationship between language word and how the world comes about through language and speaking the world into being how uh you know how a certain form of consciousness the opening of the eyes and the seeing of the two opposites of good and evil will lead to fragmentation into a fault like to me that is far more useful to living in the world than anything darwin could ever have said to me darwin is like a little footnote in reality and so i don’t feel like i need to take a stand against darwinism any more than to me it’s just not important um so i’m sorry i mean whatever like i you know anyways that’s all i can say guys like i just i just don’t find it i just don’t find it that important i don’t find that that’s where my my battle needs to be um and i find creationists silly like the the the the the the kind of sign the the type of creationist that has fully taken the scientism pill and is trying to to force feed that pill into the book of genesis i find i find that far more disgusting and far more unbearable than anything that darwin said because at least darwin wasn’t talking about the bible at least darwin wasn’t wasn’t trying to get us to think that those beautiful amazing stories that we have in genesis were limited to some technical you know uh some technical scientific description of the world sorry guys now you’re gonna get me into rant mode here guys all right so drew mcmahon asked to clarify my question about apologetics i was not necessarily asking if you personally would debate the way jay does but rather if one can have a fully rational justification for god or if it’s pre-spokes all right i understand drew um no i don’t think that i don’t think that we can have a fully rational justification for god i do believe that reason properly engaged has within itself the capacity to also show its limits and and so so i believe that through reason we can we can see the limits of reason and we can see how it points to something which transcends it or something which is beyond it you know like i think that your thoughts can point you towards the noose but they can never reach there it’s like there’s a there’s a there’s a cut off and then at some point there’s something beyond it and so i think that so i think that i don’t think that it’s useless to engage in reasonable discussion about god i think that’s silly to say that but i don’t think that we can i don’t think that in reason is where we encounter the fullness of of god and i and and uh and i would be surprised if if for example jay thinks that i don’t think probably jay doesn’t think that because if you read sangreviopalamus you read sangri uh you know maximus confessor they talk about god this encounter with god as a as a you know as a as an experience right as a as a participative act as a participative reality not as a as a as a reasonable or rational um argument um but like i said i don’t think it’s useless but so hopefully that answers the question guys all right all right guys so i hope that i hope that the uh the chat was not too crazy i have to get i’ll have to uh let me reload that let me just reload the the chat see if the new things came up reload the super chat so hopefully it was was too crazy i’ll try to get a sense from drew from uh from christian and from jacob how it went later i’ll probably go through some of your some of your comments when i log off and then next month i will hopefully have a bigger screen and i’ll be able to follow the uh be able to follow the chats also while they’re going on a little bit while i’m talking something i find hard to do i i really am impressed by the youtubers who are somehow able to coherently speak and at the same time like follow the super chat all right let me see it’s not loading for some reason come on guys come on all right for some reason the super chats won’t load up again sorry guys all right so let me see come on come on so if it doesn’t load what i’ll do is i’ll just i’ll either try to answer in the in the chat through text or next month i’ll try to get to those some reason it is not loading i don’t know why youtube doesn’t want to give me the get doesn’t want to give me the chats all right let me just scroll up this way now all right guys i think i think i think i think i got i got most of them sorry no all right so i’m seeing some stuff all right oh there i i think i met i missed some questions because oh i know which question i missed by the way let me get back to that you can see it’s not loading seconds all right so there was someone who sent me a question let’s see here we go oh man this is where you are seriously seeing my my problems with my problems with technology all right okay here we go oh man sorry guys i’m not ready for this all right so laura laura giles asked a question because she couldn’t for some reason she couldn’t for some reason get get okay here we go i can’t find her question that’s horrible all right laura if you’re watching this i am sorry i will get to your question next month and let’s see let me see in the chat right so christian says you might have missed a patreon question from robert smith robert smith all right okay i see here we go robert smith asks what are your favorite i see here we go robert smith asks what are the symbolic differences if any between waters from above rain waters at earth level and waters that come from below springs aquifers well waters all right so one of the important things to understand i think i’ve kind of answered that before a little bit i think that the most important thing to understand about water is that water always flows down and so no matter where it comes from like it tends to always come come down and so that’s why waters are seen as it as kind of the influence of heaven you could say that’s why you have the separation of waters above and below in in scripture so you have this this upper potentiality you could call it and this this lower potentiality so the upper potentiality is the spiritual influence that comes down from heaven and then the the the lower water the salt waters are this kind of chaotic potentiality that’s at the at the bottom of the world right and so what what’s important is understanding how those ultimately come from the same place you know that’s the non-duality of of christianity which which a lot of people struggle to understand but uh so when you talk about rain the water that comes from above is always fresh water it falls so all water that comes from above is always fresh whether it’s a river that comes down whether it’s water the rain that comes down it’s running it’s living water you know christ talks about living water so it’s this river that that comes down and then the water that’s below so the water above is is is is a masculine image right christ talks about that in his encounter with the uh samaritan woman uh samaritan woman where he he talks about living water that he’ll give her living water and she offers him well water water from below this stable water right and so that’s the kind of the way to understand it’s like the water that is coming down is water is masculine and the water that is below is feminine and in terms of the water below you have two types of waters you have uh bitter waters and you have fresh water or you know water that can be that you can drink and so the the the bitter waters are let’s say the two aspects of the lower waters we talk about this before it’s like one is chaos one is potential and they’re the they’re kind of they come from the same place but one is potentiality is how it’s related to heaven and how it can be joined with heaven and uh let’s say chaos is how it’s not joined with heaven something like that and so that’s that’s how you can understand the relationship between the uh the the waters above and uh and the water below all right hopefully that does it for that all right guys sorry this is so chaotic all right let me and i’m really annoyed that i can’t find this question she wrote me okay i think i’ve got it sorry guys this isn’t this isn’t doing well it’s not doing well all right all right so that’s not gonna happen so let’s see if let’s just let me see once again if there are questions in the chat that i missed all right thanks for you a lot of you guys are sending some of you guys are sending super chats not actually asking a question so that’s that’s very kind of you i appreciate it all right guys so i think i think we’ve come to the end of this sorry that you got a little bit crazy at the end a little bit of chaotic once again guys i appreciate you coming in on this we had we had more people than usual too i think we reached up to like 170 so that’s pretty cool and uh i will i’m gonna like i said i’m leaving in a week to the west i’m going to be in south carolina almost like for a month but probably i will actually so i’m saying that next time i’ll be fine i’ll probably be doing my next q a from the us and so i’ll still have this little this little laptop and uh and uh it might be i might have the same problem so sorry guys do what we can here so well thanks again guys once and once again and i will see you in a month so