https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Lysz7RvfTVc
It isn’t obvious to me and I think maybe I derived this criticism from Nietzsche but you know people have asked me whether or not I believe in God and I’ve answered in various ways no but I’m afraid he probably exists that’s that’s one answer. Yeah no but I’m terrified he might exist that that would be a truthful answer to some degree or that I act as if God exists which I think is I’d do my best to do that but then there’s a real stumbling block there because there’s no limit to what would happen if you acted like God existed. Yeah. You know what I mean because I believe that that acting that out fully I mean maybe it’s not reasonable to say to believers you aren’t sufficiently transformed for me to believe that you believe in God or that you believe the story that you’re telling me you’re not you’re not a sufficient you’re not the way you live is a sufficient testament to the truth and people would certainly say that let’s say about the Catholic Church or at least the way that it’s been portrayed is that with all the sexual corruption for example it’s like really really you believe that the Son of God that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and yet you act that way and I’m supposed to buy your belief and and it seems to me that the church is actually quite guilty on that account because the attempts to clean up the mess have been rather half-hearted in my estimation and so I don’t think people people don’t manifest Christians don’t manifest this and I’m including myself I suppose in that description perhaps um don’t manifest the transformation of attitude that would enable that enables the outside observer to easily conclude that they believe yeah now the way the way to deal with that or the way to to understand that is that it they do but they do in a hierarchy there’s a there’s a hierarchy of manifestation of the transformation that God offers the world and we kind of live in that hierarchy and those above us hold us together you would say and so in the church there’s a testimony of the saints there’s there are stories there are hundreds and hundreds of stories of people who live that out in their particular context to the limit of what it’s possible to live it and even today there are there are saints living saints who for example like in the Orthodox tradition we have this idea of they call it the gift of tears or the joyful sorrow of people who live in prayer with weeping constant weeping and it’s this kind of strange mix of joy and sadness which they which kind of overwhelm them and they live in that joy and sadness non-stop and they pray you know without end and so that exists but then we in this that’s one of the reasons why that’s kind of one of the reasons why when I talk about this idea of attention like it manifests itself in the in the church as well is that you often say and I understand it when you say something like you know I act as if God exists or you know I’m afraid to say that God exists and I think it’s because you you think or you tend to think that the moral weight like of that like of that is so strong that you would we would crumble under it that you would just be crushed under it and and I believe that and I think that that’s I think that I I understand that but the first thing that to act as if God exists let’s say it this way to act as if God exists the first thing that it asks of you is not a moral action the first thing that it asks asks asks of you is attention that’s why to act as if God exists is first of all to worship like that’s and it I know people are going to hear this well then I have then I have a terrible problem with that too at the moment because I’m in so much pain like one of the things that one of these theologians discussed the idea of and sorry I want you let you get back to your point but he discussed the idea of the yoke of christ being light and that there was joy in it and um and there’s a paradox there obviously because it’s it’s also a take up your cross and follow me sort of thing but um the fact that I’ve been living in constant pain makes the idea of joy seem um cruel I would say and so and I have no idea how to reconcile myself to that I mean I’ve reconciled myself to that by staying alive despite it you know um although by staying alive despite it but there’s very little worship and it doesn’t mean I’m not appreciative of what I have I’m I’m not only am I appreciative what I have I do everything I can to remind myself of it all the time and so does my wife I mean she’s changed quite a bit as a consequence of her struggle with cancer you know has become much more overtly religious I would say and you know we say grace before our meal in the evening and it’s very serious enterprise and it always centers around the fact that we’re not going to be able around gratitude you know for well for for the ridiculous volume of blessings that have been showered down upon us at a volume that’s really quite incomprehensible but despite that um well despite that I’m struggling with this because I don’t know how to reconcile myself to the to the fact of constant pain. Yeah. And I don’t, I feel that it’s unjust, which is halfway to being resentful, which is not a good outcome. No, I agree. And I can’t speak like I can’t, I don’t know how to speak to that because I don’t necessarily don’t have that experience. You know, I don’t, I don’t have that. I don’t live with constant pain. And so I don’t know what that would do to me. Probably one of the reasons why it might ruin me, you know, and so. It’s very difficult to answer that. I think that the answer, like the answer has been the cross, like that’s been the answer. It’s maybe easy for me to just say it that way. But that’s always been the answer of of Christianity, which is that. That God went to to the cross and that God went down into death and plunged down into death and there that there are mysteries hidden and there maybe they’re very well hidden, but there are mysteries hidden in that then that depth. But it’s not I don’t think it’s my job to to to moralize to you at this at this particular moment.