https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=fyFhzZDKyoM
Hi, this is Paul and today I’m having a conversation with Jonathan Peugeot. He probably needs no introduction to anyone who’s subscribed to my channel. And I, a couple of weeks ago, I sent Jonathan an email. I said with, with all the Sam Harris talk, I thought it might be fun if, if we do a conversation. Both Jonathan and I have been recently doing a lot of videos that have kind of been downstream from this talk. So, Jonathan, I really appreciate your willingness to have a conversation today. Yeah, it’s great to, it’s great to talk to you again. We’re doing this once in a while. It’s nice. And, and yeah, I’ve really been appreciating your kind of constant, taking it on so intensely, this whole discussion and talking with everybody and looking at everything. So, so I, you know, although I don’t watch every video, because I think it was like a video out every single day, which is pretty intense. But once in a while I’ll drop in and then I, you know, I’ll try to kind of follow where you are. So it’s been fun to do that. Well, I appreciate it. And I’ve watched your last two existence and Santa Claus videos. And that’s, you know, it’s, it’s been interesting to me how we’re both kind of chewing on this stuff. And, you know, I was thinking this morning, thinking about this, how, you know, myself as a pastor, my vocation is to try to communicate God who, who cannot be contained by our language in verbal form. And of course, in Christian theology, the Bible is the word of God. And this is, this is special revelation. And I was thinking about your vocation, not just as in Protestant talk, you know, a Christian artist, but an icon carver. And I thought that might be an interesting place to begin because, you know, I’ve heard both of us trying to communicate to an audience within our cultural context that says, well, if God isn’t an object, then God isn’t. And so I guess I kind of wanted to ask you a question as, as an icon carver, how does this work for you? And I saw you, I thought really, I thought I saw you communicating about principalities and powers and using that as an avenue to talk about how God exists, the ontology of God, how God is real. And so I wanted to, you know, pick your brain on this a little bit more. So how as an icon carver does this, does this connect with you? Well I think, first of all, I think that one of the things that I have, maybe not as an icon, maybe as an icon carver, someone who views things in terms of images, is I tend to view, I tend to understand analogy pretty well, I think. I tend to see the world with analogies. And so because of that, I can understand, I think, the manner in which God both transcends all representation, but then also fills the entire world with his presence. And so that’s been really the double move that I’ve been trying to get people to see. We see that in the work of Dionysus, the Areopagite, and also in pretty much all of mystical Christianity, this notion that God is beyond all being, all representation, all word, all language, everything. There’s no manner in which we can fully encompass God, but that also, and at the same time, and almost in a certain manner, because of that, God fills the entirety of all creation, fills everything, and makes everything coherent and hold together. And so those two realities have to kind of always be held up at the same time, because you get an apophatic move, which is this move of saying you can’t represent God, and you see that now. In the modern world, you see it all the time. People who say things like we can’t represent reality, but their conclusion is that therefore, everything is arbitrary. Right? All our constructions are arbitrary. All the way that we organize society, all these things, your values, all of it, it’s all arbitrary because we can’t represent reality. And it brings up a certain type of nihilism. I think that, for example, existentialism has that problem, and a lot of postmodernism has that problem. But the right move is to do both, is to say yes, we can’t. There’s an apophatic move where the world, even the world itself, is beyond our capacity to fully encompass it. God definitely is beyond our capacity to encompass his being, or his over being, or his essence. But at the same time, we can see these sparks of God, the presence of God in everything. So in terms of art, the theology of the icon is very specific about this, that we cannot represent God. And that’s really important. That’s one of the things that people tend to not understand about icons, is that we don’t represent God. At least we’re not supposed to. There are aberrations, like all human activity, there are aberrations, which happen. But in the traditional icon, for example, up to, let’s say, about the 14th, 13th, 14th century, you actually don’t even see images of God the Father at all in Christian art. We only represent Christ. Even when we represent the creation of the world, even when we represent the Last Judgment, all these images, it’s always Christ that is represented, because the image of God appears through Christ, and then ultimately through man, as being the image of God. And so that is the way that we can do that double move, where we say, sometimes they’ll represent the divine as just these kind of empty circles at the top of an image, like very abstract image, or just a hand, or something which would just kind of suggest that there’s something beyond, and you can’t represent the actual face of God in his essence, or God the Father even. And so it’s that double move that is there, that I think preserves the mystery, but then also shows us how the world lays itself out of that mystery. You know, as I hear you talking, you mentioned how there is a tendency towards skepticism, there’s a deep skepticism in our current culture. And you know, I’ve both listened to a fair amount of Don Hoffman, and those conversations are very interesting in terms of Don Hoffman coming at this from a Darwinian perspective, and a scientific perspective that suggests that our limited capacity to just engage common reality, to just apprehend it. You know, I was so I have that my daughter took in this, this kitten, this feral kitten. And so, and I’ve got this old dog that’s almost blind. And so the dog is trying to chase this kitten, and the kitten just jumps up on a chair, and the dog keeps sniffing around and can’t find it. And I’m watching this, and I’m thinking about all the YouTubes I’m making, and I’m thinking, in many ways, this is a picture of us, that we have limited capacity. And so when I think about God, you know, in terms of C.S. Lewis, writing himself into the story, I think, you know, for example, the burning bush story, where there’s a physical representation, there’s it’s a miraculous physical representation, but then there’s also a verbal representation. And in fact, the name is given, I am what I am, or I will be what I will be. And, and, and so, you know, to think that this, these are the tools God uses with Moses to introduce himself to a people that has forgotten him. And I think about Jordan Peterson’s use of, of mythology. And I look at the number of people that are communicating with me and saying things like, you know, I now I don’t not quite sure what God is, but I want to believe in a God, and I want to go down that path of, of seeking. And I think so then I think, isn’t this interesting how so many modernistic, rationalistic apologists have been banging on a door a certain way, getting zero results. And this guy whose Christian confession is complicated at best, suddenly moves the ball. And then I look at and then, and then of course, you came into the picture, and I had seen a number of other people who were showing interest in Christian traditions that were far more symbolic than, let’s say, contemporary Protestant apologists, and watching that happen. And thinking this, this to me, obviously, as a believer, and as a pastor says to me, well, I think this is, I think this is a movement of God’s spirit. As a Calvinist, you know, it’s well, God’s, you know, God moves history. This is not we are not in control of history, God moves history. And this is, this is a means by which God is using to to do the work he’s always done, which is call, call the rebellious people to himself. And it’s interesting how have we reached the end of this descriptive phase of our language. And in a sense, now, perhaps, as we’ve exhausted this means, people don’t know it consciously, but intuitively begin to imagine, you know, and then suddenly Jordan Peterson appears, who had been talking about this stuff for a long time, suddenly, the man in the moment come together and bang, off it goes. Yeah, it definitely seems it definitely it’s hard not to see an almost, you know, to use the word providence in the sense that it seems like Jordan just fell into this place. And he’s, he’s kind of he’s taking he’s taking up a space of something that was all building up for to happen. And I think that we’re watching it unfurl as it as it happens. And it’s pretty, it’s pretty impressive to watch. But I think you’re right, when you talk about this notion of reaching the end of the purely descriptive, the problem, which happens, and I think postmodernism plays a role in that as well, to a certain extent, because one of the things that postmodernism was able to show is that the purely descriptive, rationalistic way of looking at the world, it ignores language, it ignores, it ignores language as if language is just doesn’t exist. But once you start to see how the structures of language and also how, when you try to apply language to itself, you know, and the same thing happens when you try to now apply the tools of rationality to consciousness, whoa, some weird things start to happen, because all of a sudden, you realize that consciousness, even most of the new atheists, Sam is the one who’s kind of standing apart, but I don’t think he totally fully understands the, let’s say, the ramifications of his move, is that they take consciousness for granted. They take the fact that here we are looking at the world for granted, and that that’s actually not part of the universe. So we’re just, this is blind, like there’s no, there’s no, almost as if there’s no looker, and there’s just this universe. But once you start to notice the looker, and then you try to pull out and see the looker looking at the universe, then that’s what I’ve been arguing, is that all of a sudden, the hierarchy sets itself up again. It’s inevitable because consciousness acts as this fulcrum, which creates a hierarchy of attention, a hierarchy of being, a hierarchy of virtue, a hierarchy of value, all these things happen as soon as consciousness re-enters into the picture. And so the science of consciousness and people like Don Hoffman are very fascinating to pay attention to, because even though they might be doing it unwittingly, they’re going, I think, to flip things in a certain direction in which we’re going to be surprised very soon that it will be possible, and I think it’s already possible, to say things like angels and demons without people freaking out and thinking that you’re talking about multi-dimensional beings or some kind of basically space aliens. I always think most modern people think that angels are space aliens, Marvel comics type Thor, that’s what they think. But if you start to understand this hierarchy of consciousness and how they stack up, then it doesn’t become that weird anymore to talk about these things. Well, we’ll talk more about that. So one of the things that I was pursuing was Sam Harris is talking about his daughter’s fascination with superheroes. And I found that extremely interesting because as both of you use Santa Claus, I use Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is real enough to continue to forestall copyright legislation in the United States. Because I mean, Mickey Mouse is- Has an effect in the world, yeah. That’s right. And so- He’s working to preserve his own identity, actually. Exactly. You don’t want the Chinese to get a hold of him. That’s right. And to do to Mickey what they’ve done for anyway. So because I think when I come to this ontology part of the conversation, what always stands out to me is it’s in a sense, Jordan Peterson talking to the queer folks at the protest and say, well, I kind of wonder about your motivations. Because at heart, what I think, people have an instinctive fear that we are not alone. And so you hear that both in terms of aliens, but the idea that there is a- if a tsunami comes and wipes out a village and everyone says, well, that’s just a force of nature, it’s impersonal, people seem to be able to accept that better than to say, well, there is a sentient conscious force being God in the universe that willed this to happen. Somehow when personality gets involved, all of our motivations get redirected. And so when you talk about angels and space aliens, say a little bit more about that in terms of how you think- how they work in our imaginary. Right. Well, yeah, sadly, I don’t think right now they work in the right manner. I think that it comes with the same problem of taking consciousness for granted. People are offended at the idea of speaking of God. I mean, like I said, God transcends personhood. That is definite. But personhood is part of God. That is, there is the notion that God is three persons is extremely important in terms of understanding what a person is. And also, like I said, because we take consciousness for granted, somehow we’re bothered by the fact that consciousness exists. It’s so funny. People aren’t offended by the idea that sometimes you hear people say, I believe that God is more, or if there is a God that is more like a force, like a kind of impersonal thing. And you think, so why? Why does it bother you? Why does consciousness bother you? Why do you think that intentionality doesn’t exist? That it’s a freak thing that exists only in human beings for some reason? It’s like there are patterns of being, and that’s what personalities are. Right. They’re patterns of being. They’re patterns that are coherent, and they’re coherent in a way that they manifest the purpose. And so that’s intentionality. And within us, we have several little smaller beings. We also have all these personalities inside us that have their own little coherences, not so much sometimes. I don’t know why that’s so weird to think because we’re not that obviously one coherent conscious being that we are, but constituted with all these little consciousnesses. Why is it so weird to think that that would scale up? I don’t understand why it’s weird. And so that’s why for me, it’s almost like a mystery when I listen to people. I always think it’s just because you don’t understand what is consciousness. You also don’t understand what constitutes a being. How a being is not obvious in terms of scientific analysis. That there really has to be something which pulls it together. And so to me, once we start to see that, then the idea of angels, they’re not a big deal anymore. And the idea of demons too. I mean, to me, demons are just principalities which are not united in this coherent hierarchy. And that’s how the Church Fathers present them anyways. So you have some, usually it’s aligned with a passion and makes sense because that’s what it happens in us. You have a pattern inside you and this pattern kind of runs and it has its own coherence. But what it does, it’s pulling you away from your central core. So it’s making you resent something. It’s making you hate your children. It’s making you, whatever pattern that is there and you’re fighting against it, you’re trying to bring it in. And sometimes you can’t and it kind of pulls you. To me, that’s just, it’s a demon. It’s a little demon that is pulling you. And if you read the mystics, they talk about demons that you’re full of demons or that their demons are constantly, either they say you’re full of demons or they’ll say things like, they’re demons riding on you. Like you have demons riding on your back, like all these demons that are riding on you. And I think it’s just an imagistic way of saying that you have these patterns which are pulling you into death that are ripping you apart, that are decomposing you. And so you need to bring it together. And so there are cosmic, I think there are cosmic demons. In a city, you could have, you have certain patterns of behavior, let’s say. Let’s say in a city, you’ll have a pattern of behavior, which is jaywalking, where everybody jaywalks. I remember there was a story about Giuliani, about how everybody in New York was jaywalking. And Giuliani understood that that pattern of behavior, it looked like it was a detail, but it was actually manifesting a much deeper reality, which is that there was no social cohesion in New York City. And so he said, I’m going to exercise this demon. And once it’s exercised, it’s actually going to help coagulate the city, bring it together so that it has more cohesion. And so he went after jaywalkers and just gave dick to dick. And at first people were going crazy, like, what is he doing? Why is he attacking jaywalkers? But he kind of understood that we need to exercise these little demons so that the being can now come together. And so that little pattern of behavior, it was that everybody was doing it. It wasn’t like people were talking to each other and say, oh, are you jaywalking? Oh, no, are you jaywalking? Yeah, I jaywalk. No, nobody does. It just was, it was like this implicit pattern of behavior in the city. I mean, it could be littering. It could be all kinds of things. Once you let it go too far, then it’s really hard to bring it back. Let’s say once a civic pattern starts to manifest itself in a city where it’s OK to break people’s windows, let’s say, all of a sudden it becomes OK to break people’s windows. It’s really hard to come back from that. And then things can degenerate into chaos. I mean, I lived in cities in Africa where the social fabric had been so destroyed by war and all kinds of crazy events that it was almost impossible to bring it back because everybody had these, all these little demons were kind of pulling the city into all these directions and it was nearly impossible to bring it back. I really like, so one of the things that I’ve done with trying to figure out Peterson and Harris was I talked about God Aspect One and God Aspect Two. And I think your Giuliani jaywalking example is a terrific example of, let’s say, God Aspect One. And that even Brett Weinstein could say, OK, that use of God I can get into, that use of demon I can live with. And I often, in terms of trying to communicate this concept in Pauline theology about principalities and powers, I often will talk about those types of things because I think highly secularized people can understand that, accept that. That doesn’t make them nervous. The representation of demon also has within it a personal agency thing. An example of this might be, let’s say, and I often use the example of a marriage. A marriage is not a physical thing. You might say, well, there’s a document that says we’re married. Well, that’s a representation. There’s a wedding ring. Well, that’s a representation. No one who is actually in a marriage will deny that marriage is illusory. No, marriage is very real. Marriage governs behavior. A marriage has a high degree of ontology that, in fact, governs generations of persons and deeply forms for good or for ill children. Marriage is an enormously powerful thing. Marriage can sometimes feel like it has agency. I think, but we wouldn’t say, most of us don’t name our marriages. It’s just the marriage. Angels and demons have names. Implicit in the fallen angel backstory of demons as characters in the Bible. These are centers of agency. When I think about the talk about angels and demons, and especially God, the God aspect number two that Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson is going through his axioms, and Sam Harris stops him and says, I want to know about the God who doesn’t want me to masturbate. A God who has a locus of agency, who also has power, unlike, let’s say, the power that your marriage has to shape your behavior. Because I think as we try to represent what a marriage is in our mind, it’s something similar to the culture of jaywalking that Giuliani breaks and the demon of jaywalking that Giuliani uses to exercise a certain degree of chaos from New York City. When I visited New York City in 2006, I hadn’t been there since the 80s or the 70s, where I grew up. I grew up just outside of it. And it was like, what is this place? Where’s all the dirt? Where’d all these young, beautiful white people come from? This isn’t New York City. And so you can see that in a city, and I thought you represented that well. But there’s this other aspect, number two, which is really the one that I think has the celebrity atheists and that community spooked and reactive to. Yeah. Well, okay. So I think that once again, the problem arises with, again, the difficulty of understanding being and understanding consciousness. Again, it’s the same problem. Let me give you an example within yourself. Do you think that those demons, let’s say, those little patterns, do you think they don’t have agency? Of course they have agency. They know what they want. They know exactly what they want. And you can, if you’re sensitive, if you’re a little bit attentive, you can see that you’re actually talking to them, that you can talk to your demons. And you make deals with your demons all the time. Imagine a smoker. So the smoker, what the demon wants is for that person to pretty much do what they want. Chain smoke all the time. That’s what the demon wants. Right? And so then you make a deal with the demon. You say, okay, I’m going to smoke, you know, like three cigarettes a day or like whatever amount that you decide that you’re going to smoke. And when you’re doing that, you’re negotiating with your demon. You know that if you just let it go, if you just let the demon pull you out, you would be smoking all the time. Or if it’s drinking or whatever, whatever desire, if it’s just eating, you could just eat all the time because that’s pulling you. But you make a deal. You’re like, okay, no, I’m going to negotiate with this. And so I think that it’s the same, it’s kind of the same thing going up. I think that agency is just a pattern of being. The problem with the matter in which we understand freedom is that we understand freedom as the capacity to do whatever you want. And I think that that’s really a misunderstanding of freedom. Freedom is the capacity to act from within your own self and not be fully, let’s say, determined by your outer circumference. And so that’s what agency is. So that’s what I think freedom and agency are. And so if that’s what freedom and agency are, then you can understand that a pattern has its own energy. Like it has its own will and its own thing. And so it has the capacity to act. And then also because patterns are made of smaller patterns, it also has the capacity to manage those smaller patterns and then to let themselves get pulled in one direction or the other. So that’s kind of what I think agency is. And so to me, the idea that you can pray to the angel of a city, that’s what you’re doing when you write a letter of complaint to the city council. Like who’s the city council or who’s the city? You write a letter of complaint to the city, like who are you writing it to? You’re not writing it to anybody. You’re writing it to the city. And so you’re actually engaging, you’re praying to the city, you’re asking the city to do something for you. And it can answer. Does it mean it’s going to answer? Might not answer, might answer in a way you don’t like it to answer, but it can answer. And so to me, that’s just kind of how it works. And so the idea that you pray to God or that you pray to other beings, that it would be to the pastor, you pray to the pastor, you ask the pastor to… I mean, people use the word prayer in such a special way. I know, I know. You know, it’s like the word pray just means to ask for something. That’s an English issue, I know, because in Spanish and in Greek and other languages, the words are commonality, but when you say it in English, I just know a lot of Protestants in my head are just going, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. No, you don’t, but you do all the time, right? You ask someone to help you change your tire. So you’re constantly praying and beings answer your prayer. And so to me, the idea that you can pray to higher beings, you can ask for things, to me is just not a big deal. And the fact that you can pray to God, to me, that you can pray, that you can address your prayer to the highest, let’s say, I think is not a problem. I do think this is where maybe you will totally disagree with me, but I do think that often, because the word God also is so wide, I think that often when someone prays to God, to ask God for some very petty thing, I think usually they’re not really praying to God. They’re actually, they’re praying to something that’s lower. They just don’t, they just don’t totally know, you know, it’s like, so that’s maybe the more, kind of the more, let’s say, idea of a Catholic person who would ask, you know, some saint to find a parking place for them or something like that. You know, that’s really a very kind of petty, you know, very kind of petty low thing. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not, it’s not also possible. It, we don’t understand the, people don’t understand, like again, it’s always taking consciousness for granted. It’s not understanding the manner in which consciousness, which language, which logos participates in how the world lays itself out. You know, it does participate in how the world lays itself out. Whether you know to what extent it does, what’s the limit of that, is not that easy to determine, I think. I might be pushing you a little bit too far there. No, no, no, no, no. I like it. Trust me, you don’t, people when they push me think I get upset, but I… No, no, I’ve never seen you get upset. And so there’s just so many interesting, there’s just, you know, there’s so many interesting things that popped in as you were answering. One of the things is obviously the connection between this experience of freedom that we have, this experience of choice, this experience. I mean, one of the things when, you know, going back earlier in the conversation, when we’re talking about God being beyond being, one of the, you know, one of the theological conversations that then crops up is that within, let’s say, a distinction between, say, a Christian conception of the world and let’s say a Hindu conception of the world is in the Christian conception there is God and not God. Yeah. I mean, it is the existence of not God that is basically the and that a Hinduistic conception to the degree that I understand it lacks. Yeah. Which… But… What’s happening? I was gonna say but, at least in the Orthodox tradition, we do have this notion of the divine energies, which is extremely important in grace in the Orthodox tradition. This notion of grace is seen as God himself, that grace is God. And so, the grace which underlies the world, which is at the root of all manifestation, is… are these divine energies? That is these… we use the word energies, obviously, is too bad that we still use that word because it’s so ruined. The wills or the wills of God are underlying all of phenomena and they can actually transfigure phenomena so that eschatologically, in the totality of all things, God actually fills all things. So, it’s not to say that… we usually make the distinction, at least in Orthodox theology, between essence, like the divine essence. We don’t share God’s divine essence but we participate in God through participation. We become God through participation. That’s a way to create that absolute separation, like you said, between, let’s say, the ultimate infinite and manifestation. But there’s also this eschatological reality, which is that all things are called ultimately to be transfigured and full of God and to enter into God and participate in God’s… God’s… I would say being. I use the word being here in the sense that the way that God outpours into everything, but not in his essence. That’s kind of the way that he’s presented. But I agree that it is different from the kind of emanationist theories that you see in in Gnosticism and you see also in Hinduism. And the problem with emanationist, like the emanationist theories, is that because they have this notion of emanation, they almost necessarily have to see it diminishing. So, they have to see as you move down, let’s say, the hierarchy of manifestation, you have to see it almost as if it becomes evil in itself. So, that’s why the Gnostics will see the material world as being evil. Because of this emanationism, then it’s like the things that are lower on the hierarchy actually have to be evil. Let’s say the great innovation or the great realization of Christianity is that this separation between God and creation is what makes everything good. It’s what makes everything good in its higher… In the manner in which it points to God. It makes it good. And so, even the humblest thing, like we do not have in Christianity the idea that someone who is poor is cursed by de facto, is somehow lesser, is somehow containing less of that oomph, that kind of ontological oomph. We don’t believe that. We believe that all things can participate in God and can be transfigured. No matter where they are on that kind of social hierarchy. That’s a big difference. I think it’s a huge difference. I think that’s right. I don’t know… Part of the poverty of living in the West has been not an insufficient education in… And I’m sure your orthodox theology is at least as diverse and broad as the Western tradition. How does hell then function in the system in orthodoxy? There are different… Obviously, there’s different theories. There’s different ways to look at it. I mean, sometimes hell is definitely represented as that kind of eternal punishment, that kind of manner in which it is. But the most popular, I would say, at least in my circles, at least in the circles of the people I read and the people that I engage with, the most popular manner in which we understand hell is that the fire of hell is the fire of Pentecost. Those two fires are the same. And so, hell is the fullness of the presence of God in all things. That’s what hell is. The difference is that for those who have opened themselves up, for those who have opened themselves up to the grace of God, then that grace becomes transfigured. Whereas for those who have closed themselves off, have attached themselves to their resentments, to their passions, to those things that decompose them, then that fire burns them. I always use the example of how if I do something horrible to you, I do something really, really despicable to you, and I do it with all the spite that I can do it with, and your answer to me is this pure love, just pure unadulterated love and forgiveness and openness. Now, when I encounter that, I can do two things. I can repent and enter into your love and be transformed by it, or I can just close myself off even more, and then that love that you’re showing to me becomes, it burns me. It’s fire. It’s burning coals. Coals on my head, like St. Paul says. That’s really the manner in which it’s usually talked about. If you look at the eschatological reality, like the total reality, it represents all that in us right now, even, all that in us right now that is resisting to be transformed by grace. It’s burned by the presence of God. That’s what burns us. Even our guilt, all that stuff inside us, it’s actually God, it’s actually the love of God that is burning us. And so that’s really the way that it’s presented. There is in your representation of it there, a fairly strong necessity of agency there, because there is a center, there is an agent with choice who is deciding, do I give up, CS Lewis, lay down your arms, do I give up my hostility and my bitterness and my resentment, or do I give that up and open myself up to this love, and therefore accepting and receiving the embrace of this other agent, of this other agent whose will and capacity and resources are far beyond mine. It’s even in a sense an expression of his mercy that allows my agency to exist apart from his own. It struck me, so of course, Peterson, with the David Fuller conversation, I wanted to know, I don’t know if he, we were discussing at our meetup last night if my characterization of some of what I hear from him as stoicism triggered him a little bit, but maybe I’ll have a chance to ask him that sometime. But then he, if I’d been listening, I’d know it’s the city of God on the hill, which really made me laugh. But his description of that, of maximal responsibility, when I heard that description, I thought much more of something in terms of what you just described. Because at this point, people will often say, well, what kind of a God would seeing him kill me? When people say that, I think, we could use the consciousness language, you don’t really understand what it’s like to be in the presence of a being that changes how you look at yourself. We have this in foundational relationships with, let’s say, parents or authority figures or people that we wish to emulate and we desire to be like. You turn that all the way up to infinite in the presence of God and the light and clarity of his being exposes all of our insufficiencies, which then puts us in a place where we now have an existential crisis in terms of our identity and our agency in every aspect of our being. And so when I thought of, okay, you drag that cross up the hill, and now you’re forced to be accountable for all of your use of agency in your life. When I heard that, I thought, well, you’re talking judgment day. You’re talking standing in the presence of God and all that that would mean. And I would think if a good number of people know that that’s what awaits them at the top of the hill, they’re going to stay in the basement and play video games. That’s hilarious. No, but I think, yeah, I think that when Jordan used the term city of God, I also was surprised because I never heard him use it before. But then when you sent me a text from Maps of Meaning, which talks about the city of God and his description of it. Well, then the description that he talks about, I have seen him talk about it, this notion of this city, which is, you know, that is the representation of order, but order in a manner which is also open, or let’s say, looking out towards chaos and not being completely secluded. But at the same time, that is together and looking towards truth and looking towards responsibility like you talked about. And so, yeah, I think that for sure, there is something, and it’s also there’s something, there is something kind of stoic about that in the manner that one of the things that seems to be missing is the glory, let’s say the participation in the glory. And that is something that at least if you look at the mystical tradition and you look at this transformative tradition of what it means to be Christian, that you’re meant to become, yes, to do that, exactly what he said, to take your cross, to bear responsibility. You know, there’s all this tradition also even in these all these orthodox stories about how people will take upon themselves, even the fault of others, you know, there’s all these wild traditions. I was looking at one pretty crazy tradition today about I forget, it’s horrible that I don’t remember name, it was some Russian aristocrat who hadn’t heard that one of the priests in her city was having an affair with a prostitute. And so she went straight to his house into his room, entered the room, took the prostitute, kicked her out of the room, and then got on her knees and says, I need to confess my sins. I was like, you know, it’s like that, that, that’s the city of God. It’s like, oh my goodness, you know, she knows exactly what’s true, and she goes to the end of it, and then she takes it back on herself and says, and supposedly then the priest totally converted and left. But you see that St. Francis does that too. There’s stories of St. Francis doing that too where someone asks him, what about this priest who’s living with a woman? And he kind of says, I don’t even deserve to kiss this man’s feet. And he gets on his knees and he kisses the priest’s feet. And the priest’s like, no, don’t do that, you know, you’re killing me by doing that. And so there’s this crazy transformation. And so I think that there’s something really powerful about that. But then I think what’s missing is also then this glory that you find in the lives of the saints, this also this this joy, right, this joy that comes, this surprise of joy that kind of comes in and fills the person and kind of indescribable joy or in a kind of the Orthodox, they often talk about joyful sadness, like this strange mix of joy, but also an awareness of all the suffering and all the difficulties of the world at the same time, those two things joined together. So yes, I think that that’s maybe what’s missing. Well, it’s, you know, even if you’re, let’s take the representation of dragging something up a hill. Someone in my meetup last night brought up Sisyphus, of course, because you bring it up the hill and then it goes back down. And that isn’t, there is, the reason, with all of Jordan’s stuff about mapping meaning and all this, I mean, the reason that dragging that thing that cross up the hill gives the experience of meaning is, is obviously because there’s meaning built into the world in which you are acting. And that when you get to the top of the hill, there is joy, there’s joy of accomplishment. And Peterson himself talks about, you know, the Nazis, you know, making people take sacks back and forth in order to completely destroy meaning. So it’s, yeah, I also thought, you know, not only was there judgment day at the top of the hill, and a number of people mentioned joy, but, you know, one of the things that I’m planning on, that then sent me to Plato and Augustine because, you know, person has a city. And that then brought me back to your principality, that in a sense, what Giuliani does by finding, by finding Jaywalkers is make it the city of Giuliani. But Giuliani, hate to wish what Giuliani has done with himself now. I know. Too bad, too bad we have to use him as an example. Yeah, had to bring up Giuliani. He had his moment. He had his moment. That’s right. A moment. So, so here’s a question for you. Now, myself as a minister, people listen to me and say, well, pastor, it’s your job to try to make people Christians. Why do you want people to believe in God? What do I want people to believe in God? It’s funny, I don’t, I don’t see it, I don’t see it that way. Like, I don’t, I think that the idea that people don’t believe or believe in God to me is so kind of irrelevant because I think that, not irrelevant, it’s kind of horrible that I’m saying that. People will be like, what is he talking about? It’s just that I don’t know what you mean. Like, I also don’t know what you mean when you say that I, that they believe in God. To me, it has to be more than just believing in God. Like, it has to be an entering onto a path, right? Entering onto a path of life. And that’s what matters, right? What is it that it says even in scripture that the devil believes, you know, Satan believes in God and he trembles. And so it’s not just about believing in God, but really entering on that path. And so I think that, I think that I do, I believe that that path of coming together, of turning together, of celebrating the right thing, of praising the right thing, of moving towards the right thing, I see it in the Bible, I see it as the solution to our personal problems, to our family problems, to the community’s problems. I see it basically as the way in which things will come together and have purpose and meaning and not be constantly decomposing. And so to me, that’s what my whole purpose is that, is to help people see the coherence and the beauty and the power of this path, which is the the Christian path. And so it’s more to me than just believing in God. That’s why I almost never, I mean sometimes I do, but I rarely talk about God because I don’t know, you know, it’s like, I’d rather kind of try to show you the transformational aspect of Christianity, try to show you how it transforms the world and hopefully then it’ll give you a glimpse of this divine mystery. But it’s very difficult for me to talk directly about God. I tend to not want to do that too much. In some of the Q&A’s people are always asking me questions about the Trinity. Then I’m answering, as I’m answering these questions, there’s a little voice in my head saying, shut up, Jonathan, shut up, don’t talk about the Trinity. Don’t talk about that stuff. Because it doesn’t, because a lot of, especially the Trinity, so many of those words have been so ruined, like they’re so ruined. You need, there’s a mile, you have to walk a mile before you even get a sense of what they’re talking about. There’s a lot of stuff in Trinitarian theology that I trust because I trust the Fathers and I trust the Church, but there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t understand. Like I don’t, okay, so the Son is, why am I talking about this again? The Spirit proceeds, but the Son is engendered and it’s like, I don’t know, I guess. I don’t totally, I don’t completely, I don’t understand it, at least rationally. I can’t talk about it. I can talk about a lot of other stuff, but that particular thing I’d rather, for now at least, I’d rather kind of stay in a, let people get there when they get there. The people that are watching my videos, I think most of the people are kind of coming wide-eyed and now trying to see this, what is going on. And so I’d rather talk about patterns and beauty and how Christ, I talk about Christ. That’s basically what I talk about most of the time is talk about how Christ brings everything together. And so yeah, that’s been, I don’t know, I can’t totally explain it, but I really struggled to, I think I totally understand when Jordan, that’s why I have so much sympathy for Jordan when people ask him, do you believe in God? And he’s like, I don’t want to answer your question. I don’t want to answer that question because that question is so loaded and it’s so perverse that if I answer it, you won’t understand it. Because if I just say yes, then you won’t know what I’m talking about. And so I’d rather not answer it. I’ll talk about all this other stuff. But then secretly, obviously, it’s like I keep telling you, it’s obvious that Jordan believes in God. He said it in so many ways. He just doesn’t want to say it that way because he knows that, especially the people asking to that, they have ulterior motives. They either want to know if you’re on our side, like are you on our side? Are you one of us? Or are you one of them? Are you one of those guys? And he’s like, I don’t want to play this game. I’m not interested. So I think I’m kind of also avoiding that. I’d rather just, yeah, anyways, sorry, enough about that. No, that was wonderful. That was fascinating. When I was watching your principalities, when you’re going through the principalities and powers, which I really appreciated how you lined that up, I was really struck where we’re talking about in Judah, in Reuben, in Issachar. And the dominant, the synoptics use kingdom of heaven, John uses eternal life, Paul uses in Christ. And you were setting that up with our internal demons. And I thought that, again, pastors, I push back on Jordan Peterson, we are liars, but we’re really more thieves because you were setting that thing up. I’m going to steal that from Jonathan. Yeah, go for it. But you didn’t, now mentioning you want them to see Christ, that’s interesting because I was listening to you go through that. Okay, he’s just setting himself, he’s just setting this up for in Christ and he didn’t go there. No. Why? Well, that’s the thing. I’m revealing my secrets here. That’s the thing is that the whole manner in which I speak and I think the whole way I wish I speak is I want most of the time, I want to kind of say some things, bring you and then because the problem with the and then let you make that next step because because sadly we’ve heard the name of, we’ve heard preachers go at us for too long, like not you, you’re good, but you know what I mean. All those other bad preachers. We’ve heard them, we’ve come at us for too much and to just want you to, if you believe in the name of Jesus and all that stuff and it’s come to a point where it doesn’t mean anything anymore, doesn’t mean anything. Believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved. I don’t know what you mean by believe, not sure what you mean by Jesus and saved for sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay, so all those things like I don’t know what you’re talking about and so I’d rather talk about, bring people into that kind of mystery and then let them see for themselves where it goes and so that’s why I’m always very careful in the way that I talk about this stuff because yeah because of that and I think it’s been a lot of it’s been ruined so let’s help people understand the words and slowly, you know I always tell people I hope that what I mean my hope and I’ve said this in my videos before that my hope is that one day most people will be able to say our father who is in heaven and they won’t have to explain it anymore. They won’t have to say but for now you need to understand why we say father, you need to understand why we say heaven, you need to understand all that stuff and at some point I mean I do it, I can say our father was in heaven and not flinch at all because I don’t, I feel like I’m enough in the story that it’s fine but that’s my hope you know and so that’s my hope for Jordan too is that he sets up this whole story about how you know this bottom-up structure of how the father you know that we’ve create, we’ve kind of all these images of different fathers have come together into this like essential image of the father and kind of doing this bottom-up thing until we realize that there is this image of the heavenly father and you know it’s part of our, it’s built in us you know this image and so now I don’t have to say that all that stuff you don’t have to say that anymore you can just say our father who is in heaven I’ll be your name. Do you see what I’m saying? That’s what I want, that’s what I want, that’s kind of my, that’s what I think I need to do is to talk about those things first and then we’ll get there slowly. I mean already like the stuff about angels and principalities you know I’ve been making these videos for like a year and I’ve been wanting to talk about this stuff for a year and I kept saying no it’s not, not yet, not yet, don’t talk about this. Then the Don Hoffman stuff started coming out and like okay this is the time it’s coming then Jordan and Sam had those discussions and Sam keeps talking about consciousness so at some point I thought okay now’s the time and I can talk about this stuff because I think people have enough at least people have been watching my videos they have enough foundation that they can hear me say these things without thinking that I’m talking about Marvel Comics superheroes you live in other dimensions when I talk about angels because you go to a church I even when I was growing up people would say stupid things like that they would say I think angels are beings in other dimensions I don’t what are you talking about other dimensions my goodness science fiction you know it’s like and because we have Scientology and Mormonism and and all these these these kind of really disturbing materialistic religions and a lot of Christians they have that too they just don’t they don’t sometimes they it’s not even conscious but that they think that demons are physical beings somehow that angels are physical beings that they’re not they’ve never been no one has ever thought they were if you read the fathers they either say that they’re immaterial or they say that they have subtle bodies it’s like okay what does that mean subtle bodies well I can tell you I can give you examples of subtle bodies you know it’s like a story is a subtle body you know they’re all forms of subtle bodies you know a city is a subtle body because it doesn’t you can’t totally contain it like it’s not it’s not completely so you have you have different levels of bodies anyways I’m I just because this is becoming a rant that’s not good this is fun this is fun if I were a journalist I’d I’d feel like I got a scoop you know you know Jonathan Peugeot and the subtle bodies you know it’s it’s interesting to me because you know from the our last conversation I know a bit about your story in terms of you know growing up evangelical and and listening to you listening to your description of you know your boy I gotta be careful with my words but I’ll just say your evangelist heart your pastoral heart you know that that’s what I hear you say you want people to say to be able to say our father who is in heaven and and when I hear that you know I hear homecoming I hear I hear being at home in a relationship because to say you know to say our father well that suddenly orients you with God and it orients you with your neighbor because it’s not my father it’s our father who is in heaven hallowed be your name thy kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us today I mean it off the off off we go into the prayer so I I that really helps me that that helps me on a whole bunch of levels because you know for a long time I pester people because I I obviously live within a Protestant tradition and in in a diverse context where I’ll have people coming from lots of different traditions often African American churches and they’ll they’ll just throw out words like saved and then if I’m in a Sunday school class I’ll usually stop them and I’ll ask well what do you mean by that and it becomes very clear they don’t have any idea what they’re meaning by that or it’s simply code talk for hell avoidance when when you die and and then as a pastor okay now I’m going to start to poke around at these things and and do a little because I to gently begin to have you you know that’s what pastors do so it’s very interesting for you’re not going to sit here and make all these videos you’re not going to sit here and make all these videos you know okay you’ve got Patreon and this is open new opportunities for you but you as well as I this isn’t going to make you either of us rich I think so and so what you are doing what you are what you are doing is coming out of your heart and it’s coming out of it’s coming out of the joy the joy that you found you know and this isn’t uniquely Christian I mean what Sam Harris is doing I was just listening to you talk I I listened to the first about a half hour of the first Vancouver talk where Peterson and and Harris are kind of getting a lay of the land I mean Sam Harris very much means well he he wants when you listen to him when you listen to his heart’s desire he wants in his own words well-being for people he doesn’t want to see people hampered by what he calls superstition and so he’s got a plan for how this can be and this is the this is the mission that he’s pursuing I have a mission you have a mission and it was it was helpful for me to hear I thought you were just very transparent now I’m sure you’re going to take some shots for a variety of things that you said from certain corners of the church and I expect that but you’re a big boy you can take it but it was helpful for me to hear your heart and to and to understand because you and you very much helped me see you and understand you know what’s going on with you and what’s going on with your videos and you know I might I might I think if if we could probably spend a long time talking about angels and demons because you know I think I’ve probably I’m not quite sure I haven’t quite fully digested what you know where you’re going with this and how I feel about it but it was it was very very interesting I think people will find it quite interesting so well yeah well I’m happy people find it interesting I think I think that that I think for me if you ultimately it’s to help for me it’s ultimately to help people see how beautiful you know our tradition is how just how coherent and beautiful it is not in a scientific sense but almost like this almost like this powerful beautiful artwork like this this this this this poem that has been that has laid itself out in the bible and then also then in the liturgy and in and in in art and architecture all these things it’s just how how how beautiful is and what it points to obviously but but uh but yeah my I know that my but I know that most of the people that listen to me it they’re not um they’re not uh Christian I’m not talking to most of the most of the people I’m talking to are not let’s say that that um that person that comes to church and maybe doesn’t have a lot of education that talks about uh heaven and talks about being saved and going to heaven in a very kind of naive and and misunderstood way um it’s funny because this is where Samaris would really be angry with me but but that person doesn’t bother me much he doesn’t really bother me because even though their understanding might be a bit off might be a bit might be a bit naive and a bit kind of simplistic and and uh and some kind of even offensive even sometimes uh they’re on the path and that structure is doing for them what it needs to do right it’s still doing even though they don’t have the most profound understanding of what these words mean the pattern that they’re on the path that they’re on is still doing the work that it’s doing you know and and and the grace of God is acting in that person’s life and so I’m not talking to those people so when I’m who I’m talking to are for people who are usually very intelligent who have gone through college who who have studied who have read who have studied and so they they look at these words and they they don’t understand they don’t they can’t see a more profound meaning to them they can’t understand how profound these structures are and how deep they are and so those are the people I’m talking to and and and I want to help them to see what’s what’s going on so that at their level of of intelligence of knowledge of of study they can perceive at least what this is about because they’re not going to go for the for the the the one I die I’m going to heaven bit they’re just not going to go for it because it’s it’s not it’s not enough you know it’s it’s too it’s too it’s it’s kind of naive and too simplistic and so they need more and and I and I think that I think that that’s why people are been so attracted to Jordan Peterson is because they feel like he’s giving them more that he’s giving them some some meat something that helps them to understand what what is going on in these stories and in in our in our tradition that we’ve laid aside um and so and also yeah to because and and then then what what that does is it it helps also these new atheist types to to understand that their vision their understanding of Christianity is at that level right it’s at my it’s like my aunt’s my aunt’s uh who who who dropped out of school in you know in the ninth grade or whatever that’s at the level that they’re that their understanding is and in a way I keep saying that that aunt is fine she’s totally fine but if you think that that’s where it stops then then you’re the problem it’s not her because she doesn’t have the capacity to understand anymore and that’s totally fine because human beings have different capacity and that person can be way more virtuous way more full of grace and full of trust you know in in in the infinite than you do even though they don’t totally understand these concepts but I can but I can understand that at your level you need to you need something that you can that you can hold on to and grip on to to understand what this is talking about so that’s I think that that’s really been that’s been what I’m doing that’s who I’m talking to and that’s why you know people invite me to do talks is that universities it’s it’s always in places where I’m talking to that crowd um so yeah hopefully it does hopefully it has a little effect I hope I know it’s having an effect because you know I hear that and people who write me and they appreciate what you have to say and I think of CS Lewis’s you know what it praises inner inner health made audible and I think you’re you’re doing art and and what you’ve just expressed you are there’s a joy in you and you want to share it what’s what’s more what’s better than that I mean that that’s the best way to spend a life there’s you’ve been you’ve been given gifts you’ve been given joy and whether you’re doing your carving or doing your videos you’re you’re sharing the joy that you have within within the frame of reference and and within what you’ve learned in order in order to share that and it’s it’s a track with a particular audience so I’ve been doing most of the interviewing I don’t know if uh yeah what happened I put you kind of on this what I like to do turn there turn there um but thanks thanks for that Paul I appreciate it I appreciate your your kind words well I know and I you know we this what we’re doing on this youtube is a new thing and Peterson says this often and I think he’s dead on right we have no idea what we’re doing with this thing we don’t know the ramifications we don’t know where this leads the the you know the opportunities that this has made for each of us are unique and there it is it is it is important to ask ourselves why because when I look in my heart well there’s some there’s some noble reasons to do this and there’s a bunch of really crappy ones too I’m sure yeah that’s for sure that’s certain and and these you know these this feeds some of the better angels of my nature and this feeds some of the darker demons of my nature and so it’s it’s so we watch each other and I watch you do this and and so part of me wants to know okay what makes Jonathan Dick why are you doing this you’re you’re an icon carver and you’re making videos and you’re you’re trying to explain do your best to explain why Santa Claus is real well this is an interesting thing and you’re hoping to do this for you’re hoping to do this so that others can share in the joy that you found and do I mean the journey that you’ve had in terms of your your church journey has been you know and I think you said it very clearly whenever you say I want I want them to be able to pray our father was in heaven and I think that for me you know that drew a picture of of a pilgrim who has come home of a of a son who has been restored to the father of a son who has been restored to the family I think about Luke 15 and you know how the parable of the prodigal son and so I I’ve always seen your work as that as that of an evangelist and I think ironically this is another debate we had last night at the meetup is is Peterson’s you know someone asked is Peterson an apologist and I thought no he’s not an apologist like I see a lot of Protestant apologetics being done but he is in many ways an evangelist he’s he’s in you know you call him Cyrus I’ve kind of been working the John the Baptist thing with him because there’s a resonance between John’s message and you know hey Roman soldiers picture you know sort out your relationship with the hierarchy but yeah so I don’t know I think it’s I think it’s cool and I love to hear I poke at you because I and I’m really happy I did because I heard your heart and it’s a beautiful thing so I appreciate that yeah but like like you said too I mean I think that we struggle I mean I struggle like you said we we do this and then and then like we get attention like I’m getting attention for these videos and I’m getting people writing me and everything and so you know to keeping that ego down has been has been oh my goodness that’s really tough I have a I have a definitely I have quite an arrogance I have a very I have a strong streak of arrogance I’m really trying to hold that back because it sometimes it comes out you know oh my goodness Jonathan take it down a notch so yeah so confession has been good for me in terms of that pride thing and and and the attention hopefully that God will kind of keep me you know on the level and won’t have to knock me down at some point if I get too cocky so try to keep it at a keep keep it at the the right level well anything else you want to go over today or you think we’ve no I think I think I mean I appreciate I ended up speaking most of the time so uh yeah well uh so so yeah thanks for I think we’ve actually also gone for like an hour and a half which is probably long enough but we should we should definitely do the next time then I’ll interview you we’ll just kind of we’ll trade off you interview me I’ll interview you like one one after the other uh and so and hopefully I’ll come to see you at some point I I hope yeah I’d like to I’d like to I’d like to do a conference at some point and fly you out here and um I think that would be I think that would be a lot of fun there’s some that’d be the the the impact of the the eastern church has been a late comer to the American conversation and America has been this um this melting pot and it’s become a neutral space in which different church traditions can communicate and so one of one of my friends and colleagues and a neighbor and a sister church up the road has a has a very deep relationship with uh with an orthodox priest and so he’s often bringing him into our circles and and I thought boy it’d be fun to have Jonathan out here and he hadn’t heard of you so don’t your head shouldn’t be that big but he hadn’t heard of me and the orthodox so one of the guys from my meetup is moving to Dallas and he says yeah I found a Jordan Peterson meetup there and it’s run by an orthodox father and uh and I thought well this will be an interesting meetup when you get there send me some reports because I want to know what those Jordan Peterson meetups look like so that’s funny but God God is doing you know God is doing a work that obviously again as a Calvinist you know what is God up to I don’t know but as in the words of Freddy Shuler God is large and in charge and um but for sure things are things are moving and so so that is that is for certain and I think that that people people people should pay attention for I think it’s great that that you’re around paying attention and also kind of helping others to to understand that we it’s best that we not ignore what’s happening because there’s definitely something going on and so we need to to be attentive and to speak into it as much as we as we can so so yeah so thanks for doing what you’re doing well thank you Jonathan and I’ll yeah I’ll just stop the recording now