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So it’s July 18th Tuesday, July 18th 2017 and I’ve been working for the last few days on the eighth lecture in my series the psychological significance of the biblical stories and I’m planning to talk about the Abrahamic stories that immediately follow the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel I’m not as familiar with the Abrahamic stories as I am with the stories the earlier stories in Genesis say from the beginning of the Bible through the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel and I’m not as familiar with the Abrahamic stories as I am with the stories of Moses that Begin with Exodus and continue in the succeeding chapters so I’ve had to do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and and Some conversing as well and as part of that process I spoke once again with Jonathan Pagio a carver of stone icons and an orthodox Christian and Student of religion and also this time who I did a video with a while back You might remember called the metaphysics of peppy where we discussed The psychology of the stranger and also some of the stories the Abrahamic stories Involving lot and Sodom and Gomorrah and I also had the opportunity to meet his brother Matthew Pagio Who’s been working on a book on the Bible for the last three and a half years? And so we spent 90 minutes talking about the Abrahamic stories and the conceptual background that’s necessary to understand them And that’s what I want to Show you today after this introduction, so I hope it’s useful So I’m going to introduce both of you So Jonathan is a carver of icons and I’ve spoken with Jonathan a number of times already and he now has his own YouTube channel as well where he discusses issues that are similar to the ones that we’re going to discuss today and Matthew is his Brother who I haven’t met before this day and Matthew has been working on a book for the last how long? Three and a half years three and a half years and do you want to tell everyone very briefly about the book? Well, it’s a book about symbolism, but it’s it’s basically I’m trying to Rediscover the worldview that was present in in the time of the Bible or at least Actually not that long ago because modern Modern interpretations of reality materialist interpretations of reality aren’t that old The worldview that was there when traditional societies were still there and so I’m trying to rediscover that worldview and basically There are basic patterns heaven and earth time and space Things of things like that. So it’s like a cosmology that’s been completely lost as far as I’m concerned some people Have glimpses of it. I think a lot of people do but it it’s very general patterns that we have to re Understand so we can understand the Bible for example and other other stories So why did you get interested in this? Like what is it that’s compelled you to do this? Oh I don’t know where to start. I mean my whole life has been about that. So I Mean you read the Bible you can take it literally you can take it figuratively or you can take it both ways And I’m trying to take it both ways. I’m trying to get rid of that dichotomy the dichotomy of symbolism and Factual description. I think there is no such dichotomy if you understand what the words mean if you have the right perspective There’s no more metaphors in the Bible. There are none Okay, but it takes a while to get there because you have to adopt a completely different perspective than than a materialistic one, obviously you can be a materialist and A Christian or you can’t be a religious and a materialist. That’s what I think Okay And one of the things we’re hoping is that you know We’ve been getting I’ve been getting a lot of questions and I know you probably Jordan me getting a lot of questions About this question of metaphor and a lot of people have been asking me. How do we reconcile? How do I reconcile metaphors with what’s in the Bible? How do I reconcile these metaphors with how I’m supposed to live in the world? And I think that what Matthew has been right is writing and what I’ve been I’ve been reading it I’m reading it right now is that he he’s really able to answer that question in a way that I think will be One of the most satisfying answers that we’ve seen in in a while So we’re pretty excited to see how we’re gonna get that out to people So let me start by telling you what I’ve been thinking about just briefly and then you guys can comment And I’d like you to do most of the talking if we can manage that although I’m so damn talkative it’s hard to imagine that’ll happen, but so I’ve been reading this book called the disappearance of God and I’ve been using it as a it’s a by a guy named Richard Friedman, and it was published. I think in 2005 I think that’s right It might have been earlier than that but he makes a couple of interesting points about the all the writing in the Old Testament and and they’re parallel points and so the first is that The closer you are to the beginning of the Bible the more God is present and and As you progress towards the end of the Old Testament God Sort of vanishes in stages until he only manifests himself if at all in prophetic visions and at the same time The parallel development is that the stories of the individual human beings become more and more well developed So it’s like as the idea of the individual personality emerges or the fact of the individual personality emerges the the presence of God as a as a detectable entity like an external entity even seems to decline proportionately and So I’m trying to puzzle that out in a variety of different ways partly neurologically because there’s some evidence that The domain of experience that you might associated with might associate with the divine is a consequence of suppressed lemmas left hemisphere function and augmented right hemisphere function and Then I’m trying to also consider that in relationship to the effect of chemicals like psilocybin Which obviously can produce powerful mystical experiences? So experiences of consciousness that are really of a different type than normal waking ego consciousness And I’ve also been reading Jung’s Mostly commentaries about Jung’s red book and his attempts to use active imagination as a as a means to Explore the contents of different forms of consciousness, which is something that modern people just really never do Although he did it for years and and the consequence of that was the red book also the black books which haven’t been published yet, but the red book which was a Which was I think published two or three years ago. It was a collection of visionary experiences and his his Continuing discussions with figures of his imagination Which he regarded as the most important work he did in his life so So what’s what is that all boiled down to? It’s it’s definitely possible for people to have non Can have to have experiences outside the domain of their normal consciousness that Produce the intimation of the divine that seems to be factually indisputable Those we’re not exactly sure how those experiences manifested themselves in the periods of time that are associated with the early biblical stories The bit the Bible talks about those sorts of experiences very forthrightly in the earliest Abrahamic stories and also in the story of Noah and Obviously in Adam and Eve and all of that God’s very present and then he disappears over time and one of the things that that The guy who wrote the disappearance of God Friedman one of the things he pointed out was that The fact of the disappearance of God in the Old Testament the fact that that’s a net that’s that’s a Continual like it has narrative continuity that fact And he really remarked on both those things because of course the books were written by different people and then they were Aggregated but out of that came two elements of narrative continuity and one was the gradual Disappearance of God and the other was the gradual rise of the increasingly well-defined and powerful individual so anyways Associated with that is the idea That as God withdraws he also starts to manifest himself more through the idea of a covenant And that the covenant is something that’s established with an individual It’s all obviously also with a nation in the case of Israel, but it’s mediated through individuals and so Well, that’s a brief wander through the sort of cloud of associations that make up my thinking about the topic at the moment, so Well what you described sounds a lot like what would you see in the Bible I’m not so sure about the God is more distant part and further on it goes From what I understand there are two kinds of consciousness in the Bible one of them is It’s called inhabiting the land that’s when Reality fits The fact that the theory okay, so the principle and the fact agreed So there are laws and people follow the laws, okay Or there’s an idea and reality fits with that idea So that’s called inhabiting the land So it’s familiar space. Okay, so when you live in that space Things make sense because your ideas match what’s happening, right? And then you can fall away from that That’s the covenant. Okay, a covenant is an agreement between Theory and practice that’s what a covenant is in the Bible So God gives laws and The people have to agree to follow laws basically. So the law is is is an identity It’s not just like you do this you do that. It’s it expresses God’s identity in practice so when the facts match that identity, that’s like a soul and a body that are That agree So when you fall away from that you fall into exile, that’s the other mode. Yeah, and it looks like That’s what you were talking about before. I’m not so sure until you talked about a covenant, but that’s when The meaning and the facts do not match. Okay, so so let me let me ask you a couple of questions about that yeah, so you know, I’ve been describing the cosmology in the Bible as Mappable onto the domains of order and chaos and I actually think the best way to define order is order is the place you are when What you’re doing matches what’s happening? Yeah, it’s very very very similar to the idea that you just expressed and then that’s exactly it. Okay. Okay And yeah, that that’s a state. There’s a state of harmony between preconception and actuality and that’s also I think this the circumstance under which people’s emotions remain regulated and I thought about that Neurologically too. I think that what happens is that under those conditions your left hemisphere stays in charge and There’s some evidence for that kind of thing too, especially from the writings of this neurologist I Think he’s a neurologist. His name is Ramachandran. He’s quite a famous brain scientist and he’s another Another neuropsychologist named Alcon and Goldberg who’s also talked about hemispheric function in the same way And so when things are going according to plan, let’s say you’re in exactly and then the the individual ego consciousness That’s that’s focused and specific Stays in charge, but that also keeps negative emotions Regulated because there’s no need for them because everything is working properly and so then you can fall out of that and you called that You called that exile No When you fall away from it, yeah It’s also the flood. It’s also the flood. Yeah, fine. Okay, so the exile is like the wandering in the desert Yeah, it’s the the idea of exile is it’s exactly just what we said it’s about Serving strange things. So you’re not in charge anymore of the facts something else is but you’re in you’re in that You live in the world You’re not in charge or your identity is not in charge of the facts and They’re not they don’t fit with reality. So that means something else is in charge. And so you’re serving that So the idea of serving strangers in exile, it simply means oh, that’s really your identity doesn’t match reality That’s really never thought about that that idea of serving strangers in exile So, okay, so I’m gonna branch off that a couple of different ways so one idea there is that There’s a an idea from Jung which is paraphrased something like if you don’t if you don’t act out your own myth Then you serve a bit part in the myths of others Okay, so that would be in keeping with that idea So that’s the idea of serving strangers in exile If you don’t act out your own myth and you serve a bit part in the myths of others Okay, so that would be in keeping with that idea of serving the stranger in exile and then the next part would be When you’re in a chaotic state and your emotions are dysregulated your personality fractionates and the fractionated personality personalities sub personalities fight for control over over Behavioral output so you you you dissolve from a unity might have think about it as a pyramid a pyramid with with a unifying Conception at the top that disintegrates that would be like the Tower of Babel to some degree that disintegrates and then Sub-entities you could think about them as spirits or think about them as psychological entities Regulate your behavior and that would be equivalent I think to a movement from the left hemisphere to the right because I think the right is dominated by Subcortical structures rather. I think that’s how the animals exist is is it’s sequential domination by subcortical structures rather than some overarching conceptualization from the top down I Think that what you call the left and the right is exactly the opposite of the traditional left and right I’m not so sure yet, but when you say left hemisphere, what do you mean? Well, like what’s the left hemisphere governs the right hand? Okay, so the left hemisphere is the one that’s when it’s when it’s in charge and when everything works yes, okay It’s the right. Oh It’s exactly the opposite of the of the traditional imagery Usually the it’s the right that’s well. Yeah, because they’re using the hands. They’re not talking about the brains Exactly. So the right it the right would be mapped onto the left hemisphere Okay, so that’s fine that’s fine that and and the traditional imagery I think is associated with the hemispheric Specialization as well because the idea of right, you know now I want to ask you a question about that you said that the the the The living what was it you contrasted exile with what was the other conceptualization? inhabiting the homeland inhabit inhabiting the homeland sure absolutely Working on the homeland is another way to say okay now tell me again how you conceptualize the relationship between God and and His people let’s say in the homeland so Okay. Well God like I said the beginning there’s The idea of heaven and earth is is at the basis of everything in the Bible So heaven is meaning and earth is fact so in that relationship There’s God It’s always the name of God by the way if you look if you look in the way It’s described in the Bible. It’s it’s they’re talking about the name of God. So that that means the meaning of God So God is not just meaning but when they talk about in the Bible, it’s always about the name of God So the name of God is is an identity it’s like a principle an axiom or something like that and It has to embody itself in Physical reality flesh or in matter so the the role of the nation of Israel is to embody that identity and It’s also to embody it in reality not just in themselves. So basically they’re a mediator between heaven and earth Right, they’re trying to make God’s identity Practical or concrete or That’s why it’s all about laws because you take an app. It’s like mathematics. You take an app an abstract principle That’s really extremely simple It doesn’t seem like it contains much information, right if you take an axiom in mathematics But then you have to derive all the implications Right, so that’s making it practical that’s making it concrete that’s bringing heaven into the earth So that’s their job Yeah, it’s like a cosmic mediator. Okay between okay follow you so far, so alright, so the the It looks like there’s two ways maybe in the biblical Narrative that that will is instantiated in in reality and one would be as a consequence of individuals aligning themselves with the Word of God and the other is The instantiation of the Word of God into the state of Israel Okay, seem seem reasonable. Okay, and that seems to begin that that has its origin in the in the first Abrahamic story so Abraham talks to God and Or God talks to Abraham and tells him that he’s going to be the father of a nation essentially and then He’s going to inherit the land to that’s important. It’s the same thing actually Those two things are the same. He’s going to inherit the land and he’s going to become the principle of a great many people So that’s like he’s Fleshing out an identity Right and it gives him the ability to do that Identity Right and it gives a nation instead of just an individual right and he’s going to become the identity of a nation okay, and so how do you understand the description of that in the in the biblical narrative because one of the very one of the things I find very strange about the Abrahamic stories is that immediate presence of God and God shows up to Abraham and tells them this and then Abraham makes an altar if I remember correctly once he gets to the land where he’s supposed to be he makes an altar and then And Then God appears to him again. Yeah, not again not again He appears to him the first time he doesn’t appear. I think I’m pretty sure the first time God speaks to him Okay, see that’s that’s important. Okay, the second time that distinction important Well because he’s just word he’s just He’s not physical. He’s not Interpractical reality yet. It’s invisible. So God speaks. He’s not manifest It’s just an idea of principle a word Okay, an unmanifest word or it’s like the minimum of manifestation. It’s like just language just word and then so what he says is go to this place go to this land and You’ll inherit the land and then he goes there and then he says God appeared to him. I see so, okay So there’s a there’s a progression progressive in There’s a perfect progressive appearance of God and it’s partly a consequence of Abraham’s original obedience to the initial idea Yeah, which was very abstract mean go here You can’t be more simple than that go there so it’s it’s like It doesn’t mean anything, but it means everything it’s a very Everything we do is a go there Go there and do something. So it’s like the principle of all things Appeared to Abraham saying just go there and you’ll inherit that doesn’t really mean anything Yeah, it contains everything humans do. Yeah, okay that that’s an interesting observation because you know I I think of human beings as well. They’re very directional. They’re always going from point a to point B They’re always aiming they’re like archers, right and it’s definitely the case like I had someone write to me No, I was doing a patreon interview with one of the people who’s who’ve been supporting me a young guy and we were talking about the idea of Christ as Redeemer and judge and He was this young man was unredeemed. Let’s say for a long period of time because he didn’t have any direction And to have direction you have to know what’s good and what isn’t because to have direction you have to go towards what’s good And so the judge is what helps you figure out what’s good. And if you don’t know what’s good, then you can’t be redeemed Because to be redeemed is to be is to be moving towards the good in a way from let’s say evil and so the judge and the Redeemer have to be the same thing and That fits in with what you’re saying because the judge is the thing that makes qualitative distinctions Let’s say and you need to make a qualitative distinction before you can move ahead. Okay, and so your point is that the the principle that Abraham encounters to begin with is the the principle of directionality itself qualitative directionality. It’s something like that. Is that correct? Yeah, it’s well, it’s it’s the positive Identity of anything like it’s it’s like a seed. It’s like the seed of a tree. That’s that’s the traditional way to understand it It’s just a seed. Yeah, it contains everything in it. But in itself, it’s just something like go there something go there Okay, so one of the things that’s been interesting I think for me to learn personally as I’ve moved through my life was that if I ever actually did anything it was worthwhile Yeah, you know what I mean is that something would come of it. It wouldn’t necessarily be what I expected to come of it But the act of going and doing Did bear fruit Yeah, and that’s pretty much the story of Abraham in a nutshell actually what you just said Because God says go here. You only hear the land Abraham doesn’t inherit the land I mean, he could have been right away. He could have gone there and it’s yours Right. No, there’s there’s that’s why it says as soon as he gets there. It says there’s already people there There’s the land is already owned by other people right? So the famine Yeah, exactly. And and that means it means like what I was saying before the facts Support the theory. Okay, and here he’s going to the land. That’s the theory. He’ll inherit. That’s the theory and the facts don’t support it That’s a family. Okay, the earth doesn’t support you. The earth doesn’t give you sustenance to make it reality It doesn’t give you matter. Yeah, it gives you matter that’s up in Egypt. And I mean his wife is Separated from him essentially because he lies about her But then it’s so strange because so he tells the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh’s men that his wife is actually a sister that’s Sarah Yes, sir. I is that how you say that? Yeah. Yeah, sir. Right. She changes an idiot. Yes is actually his sister and That’s to protect him. And so the Pharaoh takes Sarai and then okay go on it. Can I explain something you bet? There’s a meaning to all those things there’s a meaning to it Okay, so the idea is that when fact facts support the theory Okay, when when the flesh supports the identity or the matters heaven earth supports heaven things are square Okay, that’s just a traditional way of understanding it that basically means that What you see is what you get. Okay, it’s it’s truth Things are true. That’s the definition of Meaning matches fact. Yes true. Okay fine when pragmatic definition Yeah, when when the other side happens Then things are round. They’re cyclical. Okay, and it’s it’s it’s essentially it’s time. It’s space and time That’s what it is. Okay, one of them you’re falling into time Things are not square. That means things do not the meaning doesn’t match the fact. That’s why it’s all about lives Okay, when they go into exile, it’s all about lies It’s all about dreaming. Okay Because they’re in that domain they’re in a domain where meaning in fact doesn’t match so everything happens through lies and deception and even the whole idea of Saying my wife is my sister But that represents a cyclical Paradox, okay. Why that’s supposed to happen Well, why cyclical? you’re a parent has a son and a daughter and They get married It’s like a regression, okay, it’s like you’re producing different things and Then you’re joining them back together And that’s supposed to join them back together because when you join them back together, it’s like you’re going you’re regressing When you when you build something you start from principle and you develop it Okay, you make specializations of that principle when you start to mix them up again It’s like a regression. You’re going back to something more primitive than before Okay, that’s how do you see that in relationship to Abraham’s insistence that Sarai is his is his Sister sister, yeah Because you’re not supposed to marry your sister And I’m not saying that as a moralistic thing even though it becomes one But the reason you shouldn’t marry your sister is because you’re undoing the work the Specializations is that your your your father or your mother have created It’s like going back. It’s like regressing So like if you marry your your father or your mother or depending You’re going back. It’s a cycle. You’re not supposed to do that because it’s like you’re Annihilating something that was specified Okay, I’ll give you an example like an imagery of that That’s that’s pretty important in in in the story of the flood there are traditions that the Giants created hybrids Okay, yeah, one of the things that Giants like to do is create hybrids there they are hybrids themselves But they created hybrids. They took the species and they Confused them back Into who knows what okay, and that’s very significant because it actually means that you are regressing in a confused manner, okay that There’s a connection between the flood and what I just said making hybrids and causing the flood It’s actually considered one in the same thing Does that make sense make some sense yeah, it’s about returning to confusion Yeah, look look I’ll say it this way Adam names the animals Adam Adam names the animals Okay, God asked Adam to names animals his first job in the universe, so he’s asking him to Specify different things Okay, that are all all have the same source right the same as you differentiate That’s the idea of incarnating a principle into practice. Yeah, things get differentiated Okay. Now if you reverse that process You’re going back to a more primitive level You’re going back to the flood because the flood is the most primitive thing in in that cosmology, right? It starts with a flooded world that means everything’s in confusion So what you have to do is specify things out, but if you go back Does it make sense okay? So so let me let me reformulate that and tell you what popped into mind all right, so God gives Abraham the word and then Abraham follows it and God manifests himself more completely to Abraham And then what happens to Abraham is twofold he ends up in a barren land So nature rebels and he also ends up in a tyranny Right because he it’s not only not only does the land not produce, so it’s in a famine, but Egypt eventually Egypt is Generally speaking a symbol for for tyranny throughout the initial parts of the Old Testament I mean you see that with the Pharaoh for example and and the symbolism in in the mosaic story of The of Egypt always being associated with stone instead of water and so you could say that God gives Abraham the command to move forward But he has to contend with the intransigency of nature Which rejects him because there’s a famine and then he becomes subject a sub he becomes subject to both tyranny and to deceit And so okay deceit Well, they see it in tyranny are look okay, I’ll say it this way It’s it’s more about deceit than tyranny okay, but the thing is when you’re not in charge I mean there’s your tyranny. That’s it when you’re you or whoever you identify with is not in charge You’re you’re a slave to some other principle right you’re embodying some other will that’s not you I Mean that’s tyranny right I mean so right in that sense it’s really directly related the idea of tyranny you’re serving strangers Right it says it all well that also motivates That also motivates Abraham’s deception right because he’s terrified that the strangers that he’s serving will kill him Yeah for his wife for his wife, and that’s why he lies. He’s afraid that he’s going to be treated very badly Yeah, because he doesn’t want strangers to have his wife Okay, his wife is like the earth his wife is how he will incarnate himself or Express himself yeah in the world. He’s like the seed and the wife is like the earth Something like that, so she’s the she is like his earth It’s like a miniature version of heaven and earth the male is is the heaven and the female is the earth in that case That’s the whole idea. He’s not in charge of facts anymore that includes his wife that includes So he doesn’t want other men other principles to control his wife Right does that make sense yes, well it also it also seems to me that because he’s the land isn’t Fruitful for him and because he’s serving strangers in a strange land He’s also correct to be afraid for the loss his wife Yeah, and how does he get out of it by being deceitful because yes, he’s in the cycle. He’s in that I Mean are you supposed to be truthful with your adversary usually no? Especially when your adversary is hostile. I mean if you’re an enemy territory Your morality changes because all of a sudden It’s not about being truthful. It’s about surviving. It’s about it’s like the most Primitive existence there is right the more primitive States of existence are more about deceit than about truth. Yeah, it’s an advanced It’s an advanced state to talk about truth It’s when we all agree you know we all agree on at least something But before that it’s every man or woman from him or herself, and it’s all about deceit. It’s all about survival Okay, okay, so now the next thing that happens essentially is that the pharaoh gets plagued and He’s wondering why? so because so the story indicates that the pharaoh has broken some natural law let’s say or some divine law and Things go very badly for him, and then he discovers. I don’t remember how he discovers that He’s taken sarai sarai. I think it doesn’t say how yeah I think it’s right and and he discovers that he’s taken sarai, but that sarai is Abraham’s wife and so then the pharaoh gives Abraham all sorts of goods and Yeah, sends him on his way okay, so that’s also quite confusing so Abraham is rewarded for his deceit essential ill-gotten goods yeah, right Goods yeah, it’s part of the story You also see I think in that account some of the complexity that’s embedded in The Old Testament accounts is that it’s not a simple morality tale it by any stretch of the imagination you especially see that in the Abrahamic accounts because It’s Jacob Who who’s so deceitful with Esau I mean Esau comes off I mean he’s kind of he’s kind of unconscious Esau yeah He gives things up too easily. He’s too easily deceived, and he’s a bit prim I guess he’s a bit too primitive and a bit too naive something like that, but Jacob Plays and Rachel play some really nasty tricks on him and yet they come out ahead Yeah, and so that’s also a very difficult thing to contend with Well there’s there’s this idea at least in in in traditional interpretation. There’s this idea that in Esau is actually supposed to be that the king He should be the only reason he isn’t is because there’s something wrong That’s pretty much described the whole Bible in its entirety They there’s there’s the theory in the fact the fact is supposed to be king okay. Do you know what I mean by that like? A matter is king if that’s what it’s supposed to be But it’s not and the whole all the stories are about redeeming Redeeming that problem Taking care of that problem like the facts don’t match the theory we have to redeem the facts That’s that’s pretty much all the stories in the Bible are about that and And That’s pretty much what lot represents in the story of Abraham as well, okay, he represents Material reality he represents facts But there’s something wrong with it. Let’s go into the lot story now, so okay, so Abraham leaves and I believe he leaves with lot Yeah, and and lot also Becomes quite wealthy and they go back to where Abraham had built the altar initially, but lot Lots men and Abraham’s men start to fight so they decide they’re going to separate and They basically do that somewhat arbitrarily it could could have gone either way, but lot ends up going to Sodom Well actually There’s something you should be aware of Well, that’s that’s the thing a lot of the stories in the Bible are based on a really ancient way of thinking that we don’t really Follow anymore, but I mean in in the Bible. There is a reason why The directions of the travels that they’re not just random like Egypt represents the earth and What’s the name of the city what’s the name of the place above? Haran, I think the place where he goes to meet Laban It’s in the north. Okay. I’m not sure I remember the name of the city. I think it’s Haran That represents heaven. Okay, and there’s a reason it’s not just arbitrary. It’s because Egypt is south and south is Going down right we still say that when you say that someone’s gone south We say that means that they’ve gone to cedar they’ve gone down Yeah, so so in the Bible and especially in Genesis, especially in Genesis The south represents the earth and the north represents the heavens. Okay, and like I said, it’s not arbitrary It corresponds to the geography of the region One of them goes uphill the other one goes downhill and the north there’s mountains like snowy mountains and in the south There’s Egypt which is like the low a low place and right so north literally is up Yeah, it’s not a metaphor. Yeah, it literally is close going getting closer to heaven and the other one going into the earth So when they go in exile into Egypt there, it’s actually means they’re going into the earth It’s like a descent into the earth So it’s like death. It’s death, right and and they say it a few times in the book Genesis they talk about Your it’s like dying going it going to Egypt is like a death Okay, so then now so then we move to the story of The strangers right Wait Matthew you were gonna say why the separation of the land with Lot and and Abraham Oh, yes, right. The idea is that Lot takes the the the south right and then Abraham Yeah, that was a whole point of that. Yeah lot. There’s a reason why he takes the south. It’s the lowest place on earth Sodom and Gomorrah that place It’s the lowest place Okay, so The lowest place on earth, right? I’m not sure no, I don’t know I Think that region actually is the lowest place on earth But in the story that that’s how that’s what it means. It means it’s the lowest place you can go So it’s the place that’s farthest away from heaven Yeah, it’s the it’s the bottom of your like the idea that Milton develops with regards to Satan when he’s thrown from heaven because The hell that Satan inhabits is the furthest possible away from heaven That’s how it’s defined essentially. Yeah Yeah, it’s like a journey into the earth It’s it’s the same as It means the same thing as falling asleep Exile and sleep are the same in the Bible Sleep is a form of exile. Okay, so so the next thing that happens is that We get the first warning about Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah That’s just a very brief sentence it’s like a foreshadowing and Then the next thing that happens is that there’s an episode where there is a war among kings and the the kings if I remember correctly, it’s the king of Sodom takes lot and Abraham has to go rescue him and He does actually I think it’s the other way around. I think it’s Kings from the north that come down and take Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot is part of that and so is the king the king of Sodom and Gomorrah. They have to flee That’s what I remember, okay, do they flee with do they flee with lot? No law is taken by these kings from the north and The king of Sodom, I think hides or something like that flees The king the king of Sodom at the end gives gifts to Abraham to thank him that he Yes, that’s right. So what happens is that yeah, it says in and it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar Etc that these made war with Barah king of Sodom and with Bersha king of Gomorrah, etc And these were all joined together in the veil of Sidum, which is in the salt sea, which is the salt sea So I presume that the king of Sodom So I presume that would be the Dead Sea and that would be the dead sea the low point that you’re describing Exactly. It is the Dead Sea. Yeah, that’s pretty interesting. Yeah, and The veil of Sidum was full of slime pits and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell there and They took away all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their victuals and they took lot Abrams brother’s son who dealt in you dwelt in Sodom and his goods and departed so You can really see this whole geography that Matthew’s talking about when they say that Sodom and Gomorrah they had to flee and fall into Slime pits It’s almost like they’re laying it out for us that they had to almost kind of go even further down into the earth to hide from these these these invaders of the north that are coming to take their their land so, okay, so Abram goes and rescues lot and he does that successfully and And the and also there’s there’s Kings that he That he frees as far as I can tell yeah and probably then the Kings want to reward him and Abram says to the king of Sodom That he doesn’t want any reward and the reason he doesn’t want any reward except for what his men have eaten he doesn’t want any reward because I Will not take anything that is thine lest thou should say I have made Abram rich Save only that which the young men have eaten and the portion of the men which went with me And it looks see God has already promised Abraham everything in some sense and it looks like he doesn’t want to take anything and Abraham doesn’t want to take anything from anyone else because What would it what to do would it interfere with the purity of his accomplishments something like that Yeah, well, I I don’t know for certain because that’s just a line I guess but in the in the story I mean, it’s it’s not that much of a big part of the story, but the way I see it is I Think he says I don’t want to take even this shoe lash. That’s you latch for me Okay, so there’s a reason why he says that because the shoe is the lowest part is The lowest part is the lowest Clothing right it’s on the feet. So it’s all related to the idea that the earth Needs to be redeemed needs to be rectified and it in that situation. It’s not It’s like he’s not allowed to accept it. It’s the same thing as not eating the forbidden fruit There are things in the world that are poisonous to humans. We can’t eat them because they don’t agree with our Our patterns our our mind so if you eat poison You go into that Place where things don’t agree your mind and your body don’t agree I mean if you if you if you take if you drink alcohol That takes you into the realm where your mind and your body don’t agree The theory doesn’t match the fact and then you go into that whole confusion Estos could it be that when when he doesn’t want he doesn’t want to take from Sodom because Sodom is already what we know Sodom to be I mean it already represents kind of the land that can’t hold and will be Burned off. Yeah, it’s something he can’t he can’t integrate right something It’s like that’s why I said the forbidden fruit it you don’t want to eat you don’t want to accept Matter that you can’t handle that you can’t integrate So there’s something in that place That he doesn’t know how to deal with what to do with it And he doesn’t want his riches to come from that place. He did it right. He doesn’t want his riches to come from that place Yeah, it would compromise him because he doesn’t know how to deal with it yet. Maybe someday he will That’s great. I think that’s the whole idea and actually here’s an interpretation lot represents that Place that will one day be redeemed Okay, the reason why they talk about lot so much in the story of Abraham is because he represents King David like he is the ancestor of the nation that will give rise to King David Okay, it’s like a secondary story within the story But it’s like a it’s meant to be interpreted in terms of a future redemption of that place That he can’t handle that Abraham couldn’t handle at that time and that place will be redeemed I’m giving you a lot of tradition here, but this is what I would I would I’ve learned It’s King David. Okay, it’s the future King Okay, so the whole story of law is about King David one and of course lot is Abraham’s Descendant as well because he’s his nephew. Yeah, and so it’s Abraham’s nephew descends into the lowest place essentially Yeah, well look the story starts out pretty clear it starts out. There’s three sons to Tara one of them is Haran the other ones not horror and the other ones Abraham, okay Haran dies. That’s how the story starts. Okay. That’s like the beginning of the story is Haran dies and he has a son called lot See, that’s what I was The idea is it’s the same idea the son of this haran He represents death he represents the thing we can’t handle he represents the material Facts that we can’t explain with it with our theories or with our identity Is the thing we is the matter we can’t handle? Okay, and that’s why in story starts with he dies the father of lot dies it means Lot represents some fact that we cannot correctly integrate into our universe this could be interpreted in so many different levels, but That’s basically whatever it is. I don’t know if that makes sense, but The idea I mean the idea is that is that I think we need to see it The idea is that an orphan or a widow? That’s what they always represent they represent something that have lost their their principle that unifies them They’re there. They’re kind of disconnected from the hierarchy of the family So so so lot losing is the fact that losing his father died means that he loses the thing that gives him identity And so he’s like this he’s like a piece of earth that has lost Attachment or has lost meaning or that that reminds me of what happens to know his son who Sees him naked Yeah, right Yeah, and and lady because because To see it seems to me. I want to talk about this a little bit tonight That to see Noah gets drunk and then which which son is it? Pam Pam yeah Really first sees him, but doesn’t respond properly the other sons when they see Noah naked They cover him up, and they don’t look and so it’s like they’re not exposing their father’s weakness his mortality his his his Insufficiency right they retain respect, but but ham doesn’t do that But there’s also more what Matthew was talking about before There in that story There’s two things that are implied of what Matthew was talking about before this idea of wine that brings you into this cycle where causality ceases to be Direct and then what ham talks the fashion yeah, yeah, and the fact that ham sees his father naked he discovers his nakedness is also a kind of suggestion of incest as well the same type the same type of inappropriate causality that you see in the story of the two of Abraham’s sister marrying his right right yeah and of luck with his two daughters Right so it’s transgression against some fun transgression against some fundamental boundary Yeah against the the hierarchical relationship and of a family right Yeah, you’re not supposed to make loops It’s a tree. You’re not supposed to make loops in a tree so you can say like that. It’s really simple You’re not supposed to regress. You’re not supposed to you produce things. You’re not supposed to turn back on yourself, okay? You’re not supposed to go back. I’m turning yourself. Okay, so so maybe that’s why lots wife has turned into a pillar of salt Because she looks back right yeah exactly yeah, it has to do with looking back to her and and and and Pines for something that that was terrible that shouldn’t have been and So and she’s commanded not to look back once she once you escape from that catastrophe You don’t get to be nostalgic for it the same thing happens in the story of Moses because what happens to the Israelites when they’re out in the desert is they start to become Nostalgic for Egypt for the tyranny yeah Right, and that’s also I think when God starts to send poisonous snakes among them because right do don’t they they start to pine for Egypt and complain about Moses and Then they start to worship other idols So that’s part of that confusion that you were talking about and then God gets irritated and throws a bunch poisonous snakes in there To give them a good chomping The snakes come as a result of them wanting to go back yeah Yeah, well right that makes perfect sense So and you see that nostalgia for tyranny, you know you see that in the Soviet Union or in Russia right now regards to Stalin and So the question the question is I think this is one of the things that the guy who wrote the disappearance of God Mentioned is do you want to be well fed as a slave or hungry and freedom? Something like that and the choice well fed as a slave is not a good choice Yeah So okay now so when Jonathan you and I had talked a fair bit about the story of Abraham and the strangers before so So God decides to reward Abraham and he tells him That just like he told him before but he repeats it that he’s going to be the the founder of a nation and he and he tells him that Sarah is going to bear a child and Sarah of course is not doesn’t believe that Let’s see let me let me just find this here. Yeah Yes, okay, so that’s what happens is the is that God’s God God’s Word comes into Abraham in a vision. So it’s the Word again saying that his reward will be great and that he’s going to Be the father of nations, but he doesn’t have any children. And so isn’t that when he takes? He takes Sarah’s servant Hagar, yeah, and and that gives rise to Ishmael And it isn’t until later that Sarah is informed that she’s going Sorry He wants to answer your question she wants to answer your question I’d be curious to know what she has found Strange intermission there. So okay So Abraham has to take a kind of a detour in order to have a child and he lays with Hagar and Hagar we don’t know much about her, but she gets haughty right away and starts to despise Sarah and Sarah actually beats her as far as I can tell it says Sarah dealt hardly with her and then Hagar flees and she ends up by a well where an angel appears to her and The angel tells her that Her son her child is going to be the father of a nation as well So So the first question might be Why is it that Abraham at this point in the story? Why is it necessary for the story that Abraham takes a detour and has a child with Hagar What do you think I think the fires it’s it’s it’s always the same problem in the Bible it’s always It starts with confusion and it has to develop towards something that is Clear so you’re saying it yourself when you say detour. Yeah, it’s a detour exactly. That’s exactly what it is It’s a detour Okay, that’s not necessary but it happens Is that me say well, okay Isn’t there something detours teach detours are detours are things that are not necessary but happen There’s something also in that detour the fact that that he gives birth to Ishmael which has to do with this this turning because God kind of promises that Ishmael is gonna come back and he’s going to be a big problem for you And he’s going to be a big problem for you He’s gonna be a father of a great nation But he’s gonna be a big problem for you later like it’s gonna be they’re gonna be fighting between between your sons basically Yeah, there’s that idea. Yeah, of course I don’t know if it’s in that story, but yeah, well, it also seems to be Associated with an idea that you might think about as successive approximation to an ideal you know, so One of the things that that I’ve conceptualized sort of visually is and this is associated with the idea of Geppetto wishing on a star, you know so what Geppetto does when he wants to facilitate the transformation of Pinocchio is lift his eyes up to the highest thing that he can conceive of and Orients himself with that but the thing is is that as you move through life Let’s say you’re oriented by the highest thing you can conceive of but as you move towards it you transform and then and Your conceptualization of what’s the highest shifts as you transform? So you’re aiming at the highest thing but but your perhaps your ability to conceptualize what’s the highest thing develops as you move towards it and so but what that means in practice is that you do take detours because you aim at something but your aim is off and You move towards it and then you get to a point where you can correct your aim And so it’s not like you’ve made a mistake exactly It’s you’re farther ahead than you were and you’ve corrected your aim But your aim wasn’t you weren’t aiming at exactly the right thing to begin with and so I think Well, maybe that’s what’s happening to Abraham is that you know, you could almost say I don’t know that ish mails a practice run Something like that. Well So Alright so then you were gonna you Matthew you were gonna say something about that. Oh, yeah, I was going to say that Exile in the Bible There’s always a Reason for it, but it’s not necessarily a logical reason It’s it’s it’s just like what you described you think you know something you you think you know what you’re aiming at You think you know what you want. You think you know what you’re doing Something happens that you didn’t plan and that doesn’t look like it’s part of what you were aiming It makes you take a detour. Well, this this side is all about detours. It’s all about turning around You don’t know where you’re going. You’re lost So but in the end it it brings about something that maybe you weren’t even aiming at in the in the first place Yeah, but might be better than what you were aiming at in the first place. So it’s not all bad so I think that’s the idea the idea of The whole idea of exile is that there It renews your plans, right if you don’t die yeah if you don’t die Yeah, even if you do die it renews your plans Okay, so now okay, so now the next thing that happens is that The strangers come to visit Abraham and he treats them hospitably And so now we might say that that’s an indication of his increasing alignment with the good maybe that’s one way of thinking about it because he does right by the stranger and One of the consequences of that is that the angels I guess we find out that their angels tell him that Sarah is going to give birth to someone and Abraham finds that very difficult to believe it Sarah finds it so difficult to believe that she actually laughs about it She overhears it she laughs about it But but he he has the strangers he feeds them and he has them wash their feet if I remember correctly and Anyways, he treats them hospitably it well And there’s a blessing as a consequence of that and that’s something we talked about a fair bit Jonathan when we were talking about The thing that doesn’t fit in categories. Yeah, the stranger Yeah, which is that invitation to chaos as well that you were talking about Matthew because the stranger is Well the thing that you can be subjugated to but also something that will bring something new and Potentially disruptive but also potentially beneficial and so then the idea there is whether or not The stranger is disruptive or beneficial depends to a large degree on how you treat the stranger And that’s that strikes me as very very possible I mean, that’s the one thing that that’s one of the things that has really entered my imagination as a clinician know If you’re approached by someone who’s very in chaos The consequence that is very dependent on how you interact with them because it can go any way and They’re not really in control because they’re so chaotic And so if you’re careful and awake You can keep things moving in the proper direction and maybe even benefit from it and that’s kind of like the idea of Noah Walking with God because one of the reasons that Noah gets through the flood is because he’s oriented properly. He’s walking with God and so you could say that Exile can it’s something like exile can expand you if you stay properly oriented while you’re in exile It can fix your mistakes That’s part of it. It cleans you it renews you Because you make mistakes and they become part of you and if you’re you’re stuck with your mistakes You’re rigid about your own mistakes You need something outer to something that you don’t know something that you don’t understand to clean your mistakes away Yeah, well, that’s like the gold the dragon hordes with a virgin that the dragon hordes, right? It’s it’s if the dragon represents that chaotic Exile state the drag the gold and the and the virgin both represent that which can be Assimilated as a consequence of being in that situation. The funny thing is is in the hero myths Going into exile on purpose works way better than going into exile accidentally So that’s an interesting thing. So, okay. Okay. So Now well, can I say something about the part you were describing the whole story of Abraham if you look at the big picture It’s really about progressive Progressively knowing Something so it start with just the voice Okay of God go here doesn’t mean much goes there then he becomes a little more precise I will give you this land so now he’s more specific and then as the further he goes the more it becomes Explicit what’s gonna happen? So I’ll give you a son when I don’t know someday It doesn’t say later on it becomes more and more explicit. Okay, and he says like in the part we were talking about he says Three men come these are angels as it becomes clear later. So this is God right God sending his message in a clear manner and it’s more Great Specific than before he says this time next year you will have a son Okay, so okay, so a couple of things about that. So yeah. Well one of the things that see One of the ways that I’ve conceptualized the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament and I this is kind of a classic Christian conceptualization, I think and it’s also It’s also analogous to what happens to Moses because Moses doesn’t get to the promised land. So there’s this idea Christian idea that the reason that Moses can’t get to the promised land is because he only represents the law Now but then I thought about that. I thought well one of the I’ve got to say about four stories at the same time here to get the parallelism, right? So the first is it’s not so easy to speak the truth, but it’s fairly easy to stop lying and so as you stop lying you get better you get to Approximate speaking the truth but the way you start isn’t by speaking the truth The way you start is by stopping lying and then a lot of the rules in the Old Testament are prohibitions Here’s a bunch of things you shouldn’t do that You might be inclined to do and so the idea there would be if you stop doing all the things You know, you shouldn’t do then you can your head clears up enough so you can start to see the things that you should do And so then in the Abrahamic story, maybe it’s something like this. You said you implied Matthew that Abraham originally follows something like a vague and ill-defined whim, but he has enough faith to move forward Despite the fact that it’s vague and ill-defined and then as a consequence of moving forward it becomes more and more concretized and and differentiated and clear Okay, that’s right man, because that’s you know, it’s funny because the future authoring program We’ve developed is sort of predicated on that idea The first thing you do is wander around in a kind of confused days trying to find a direction of orientation and then you clarify that and Partly you do that by continuing to think about it, but you also clarify it by acting on it Okay. Yeah, and the idea these three men that Come visit him There’s a reason why there’s three Okay, it’s because it’s it’s trying to express the idea that it’s more expressed it’s more explicit It’s not just a seed anymore. It’s a it’s like a branch. Okay, you got a kid got something that looks like a branch It’s branching out into a more Concrete thing and at first it’s just a voice then it’s a vision then it’s actual People okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So here’s another idea, so Let’s say if you’re beginning to develop Morality you you behave so that the people who share your morality can get along with you That means you follow the rules But if you’re dealing with strangers, it’s a different issue because they aren’t part of your morality And so the question then is how do you act properly when you’re not in the domain of your morality? And I always thought about that as a metamoral domain and it seems to me that it’s the domain that Christ occupies because he’s he’s like the mediator between Moralities he’s in no man’s land and is the mediator between moralities and and if you’re If you’re if you’ve oriented yourself properly Then you even know how to act when there aren’t any rules and that’s why Abraham can act properly in relationship to the strangers He’s awake enough so that when the stranger show up shows up He can pay attention to the way they’re acting and can act spontaneously as a consequence of paying attention and things go well and So the strangers aren’t hostile. They don’t kill him. They don’t take his wife They don’t do any of the terrible things that strangers could do and he gets a blessing as a consequence of it Does that seem reasonable? It is but we have to understand that these strangers are Come from heaven in the sense that they’re bringing a message. They’re not just random strangers They’re sent but maybe he would have acted the same way with a stranger that wasn’t sent and that’s the whole point He doesn’t know that’s right. So he acts in a way that allows for that now Yeah, for the one that sent okay be received Okay, so that’s very interesting too because one of the things that I think you see happening As a consequence of the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament Is that Part of Christ’s message is to act in exactly that way Is to act in a manner that allows for the possibility of the emergence of the good that’s something like That’s something like what would you describe it as a description of the necessity of faith and you know Like let’s say you stretch out your hand to someone in trust You shouldn’t be naive but it’s a precondition for good things happening I give you’re distrustful and you have every reason to be because people are full of snakes if you’re distrustful You’ve you foreclosed the opportunity for Cooperative progress instantly you might protect yourself against being bitten now and then so so there is a dramatic relationship between the manner in which you open yourself up to the world and the way the world treats you and One of the things that seems to be really emphasized it’s more implicit in the Old Testament more explicit in the New Testament is that The more you open yourself up to the possibility that good things will happen And that’s partly by accepting your vulnerability as far as I can tell the higher the probability is that good things will in fact happen Yeah, I mean I would definitely say that in the story of Abraham the like we were kind of flirting around that idea before is that the reason why He was able to to receive them as these angels that they were able to manifest themselves as these angels was because He was willing to host them properly he he like it’s as if his family just like Sarah like Sarah is is is He was the right ground for that manifestation at that time right well You know we’d say that they wouldn’t have been angels if he wouldn’t have treated them properly Well, they might have been yeah, but they might have done. They might have done what they did in Sodom and Gomorrah exactly That’s the whole point I want to switch I want to flip ahead a little bit This is really what I this is I think of all the things I wanted to discuss with you guys I think this is the one that’s most crucial Because Okay, so now We’re in let’s say we’re in Sodom with the with the angels and we’re we’re in the part of the story where The townspeople of Sodom gather around the house and they tell Lot and unless he throws out the strangers so that they can be raped Well the townspeople demand that and then Lot offers them his daughters which seems like a hell of a thing to do. It’s like the sacrifice of Isaac to some degree That’s what it looks like to me because he’s willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the strangers Now okay, so that’s a morally. Let’s call that a morally ambiguous element of the story, but then the townspeople Reject that and they tell they basically tell him that he has no Right or power to bargain and that not only are they going to take his daughters, but they’re also going to take the strangers So it doesn’t work But you know to a to modern sensibility the offering of his daughters is a reprehensible thing But it seems to be that in the context of the story It’s an indication of how hard Lot is trying to treat the strangers properly in a place where that’s essentially impossible Yeah, that’s the whole point of that story That place is impossible. That’s the whole point. I think what you just said okay There’s no way out of it Right Leonard Cohen said something about that. He said there’s he had a line that I remembered quite well He said there’s no decent place to stand in a massacre and What that seems to mean is that something it’s something like you can get into a place where That’s made of such a compound of errors and deceit and catastrophe that no matter which way you turn there is no good Yeah, I’ve seen people like that my clinical practice. There’s there’s no good. There’s no good alternative Everything is sin. That’s that’s a good way of no matter which way you shoot You’re you’re not going to hit the mark because you’re not somewhere where the mark can be hit okay now I’ve been trying to think about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in relationship to modern sexual confusion So this is what I see happening on the social justice front Let’s say on the one hand since the 1960s and probably has a consequence of the birth control pill But other factors as well there’s been tremendous stress placed on sexual liberation And so there’s this idea that I think is associated in large part right now with the radical left of total sexual freedom But at the same time there’s increasing emphasis from exactly the same sources on restricting sexual Interaction so you see this in the campuses for example where? Increasingly particularly heterosexual contact is regulated by a doctrine that says you have to get spoken permission for every move in the mating process and so you see and I know I’m not expressing myself very well, but there seems to be in our current culture there seems to be massive sexual confusion it’s it’s some weird combination of extreme libertinism and extreme authoritarian attitudes towards sexuality and And obviously in the story of Sodom part of what’s happening happening and is that? Sex Impulse of sexual gratification trumps everything it’s something like that I mean, I know there’s more to what’s going on in Sodom than that, but there’s certainly that and so Well, I’m trying to figure out what to say about that tonight because there’s a there’s a lesson in there the lesson is something like Don’t let sexuality don’t let impulsive sexuality get the upper hand It’s something like that or all hell will break loose which I actually happen to agree with So one of the things that we haven’t been able to talk about in our culture I think is let’s take the idea the phenomena of AIDS like AIDS Mutated to take advantage of promiscuous sexuality, and that’s just nothing you never hear that Publicized you know people had associated AIDS with homosexuality And there was a reason for that because it’s much more easily transmitted as a consequence of homosexual sex than heterosexual sex Because the anus is a much more delicate Physiological structure, it’s not as robust and it can be much more easily damaged and and and with with disease resulting as a consequence, but It isn’t only the manner of sexual action. That’s the issue. It’s also the fact that promiscuity provided the evolutionary platform for the AIDS virus to mutate into a very into the form that it finally took and It was only through the skin by the skin of our teeth that we escaped a totalizing plague You know had that emerged a hundred years ago God only knows how many people would have died his age was unbelievably fatal So I Know that’s a mishmash of ideas, and I’m not exactly sure how to see my way clear through it But there is a clear warning in that story about about something about some with with sexual iniquity And in the Bible that sexuality has two two poles that define it and It’s pretty clear One one side is reproduction and the other side is we could let’s say recreation Okay, so those are the two poles of sexuality in a normal world So it’s not just for reproduction and it’s not just for recreation It’s both like that was the idea I mean it’s a natural idea now if you if there’s a balance there Yeah, that should be had if you lose this balance and it becomes just about Reproduction that’s a problem. If it becomes just about recreation. That’s another problem. Yeah It’s not that complicated really, but it’s so politically incorrect to talk about these things even though they’re obvious Well that nobody dares to talk about the thing is is that the most difficult things to talk about are the things that are Obvious because when they’re obvious you don’t have to talk about them And so then when people start to question the obvious you don’t know what to say It’s like so for example we would I I’m thinking about the slut walks you know and so women go out and they dress very provocatively and and they go out and Manifest their right to be as provocative as they possibly can be without being interfered with and I have some sympathy for that perspective because it seems to me appropriate for women to be the final arbiters in sexual contact, but on the other hand it also it’s that whole exercise is blind to the fact that clothing for example has communicative intent and that People broadcast their invitation to sexual Congress in a million ways subtle and not so subtle and you can’t just say I Have the right to broadcast myself in any manner possible and be completely Can can be what completely immune from the consequences there’s something wrong with that and With regards to basic sexual morality you know I’ve read things about like slut shaming is that The the more radical feminist types for example claim that Women shouldn’t be held responsible for their sexual behavior in some sense It shouldn’t be held against them how many men they’ve slept with etc, but then I think Well you’d never recommend to someone that they lay down naked on the end on the side of the street with their legs spread and invite Anybody who walks by to partake of the opportunity? Everyone would regard that as inappropriate I think without question and so what that indicates is that some degree of sexual propriety is Both normative and ethical and then of course you can start asking yourself about What that degree of social sexual propriety should be and it does have something to do with getting the balance between reproduction and recreation, right Okay, well the thing even in the Bible there’s There’s the two aspects some stories are about just this aspect and there are the most strange stories in the Bible for example the story of Tamar Is one of those so I don’t know if you’re familiar with that story, but it’s It’s in that it’s it’s intercut with the story of Joseph Okay in Egypt, and it’s essentially It says that Judah Had children with some woman and I think it’s a stranger it doesn’t necessarily say so but it seems like that’s what it is and then the sons die off and then there’s this woman called Tamar and she disguises herself as a prostitute right and she Has a kid with Judah himself. So all the symbols are in that story Elements of his clothing. Yeah demonstrate as a bribe. Yeah essentially She wants to indicate later that he’s the one who slept with her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so so that story is about The Nyssa the need for the recreative part of sexuality It’s all about that symbolism. It’s all about deceit. It’s all about incest. It’s all about death and it’s the idea is It’s to raise the dead, okay, it’s not clear in the story, but if you understand if you understand the imagery, that’s what it’s about it’s about regressing back to an Error that was made okay and raising the dead so I don’t want to get into it but it’s just the idea that in the Bible there’s both to there’s reproduction and there’s recreation and the recreation is Renewal there’s the renewal sexuality is about renewal too, but that aspect of the symbolism is is pretty I Don’t want to say obscure because it’s actually right there if you can see it, but it’s It’s strange. I’ll say it like that. It’s a strange Okay, okay. So now another element of this might be the fact that in modern identity politics Sexual choice is a canonical Identifier and that also seems to me to be something wrong about that like one of the things I’ve seen happening in Toronto I’m sure it’s the same in Montreal is that And I’m gonna do this awkwardly. I’m gonna put this awkwardly because I haven’t been able to sort through it properly pride Week pride day has turned into pride week and that’s turned into pride month And I think that seems to me to be pushing against some kind of limit because the first Question that I have is like I was reading this book the other day by a friend of mine from Ottawa Who’s a gay conservative and he said he had a lot harder time coming out as a conservative than he had as coming out as gay and He talked about the degree to which homosexuals were persecuted in Canada Before say the 1980s and it’s quite it makes quite Harsh reading let’s say and so And so fair enough to the to the Civil rights movement, let’s say it that that has brought Homosexuality into the norm or that into the mainstream. Maybe that’s one way of thinking about it, but that conversation Still has a tremendous amount of development that’s necessary because I don’t understand exactly It isn’t obvious to me what integration into the mainstream precisely means because a lot there’s been a lot of talk so far about Respecting the rights of gay people But very little talk about what the accompanying responsibilities might be That actually seems to me to be a problem And I mean I just had a letter from from guy gay guy who Is being wrestling with this because he’s not sure how to be gay and to be ethical at the same time you know because he sees part of Normative behavior is taking wife and having children and not and can see the value in that but that’s certainly not the direction of his proclivity and so he wrote wrote to me asking me what he should do and You know, I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know what the answer to that is But I know that it might be something that would be worth talking about and then it’s part of this current confusion about sexual identity and sexual pleasure and and Well even gender identity for that matter so Alright, so your idea was well the balance between Recreation and reproduction had gone Was completely absent and sawed him it was all recreation. It was all instant gratification and impulse Yeah, and that’s why it’s put in contrast with the Abraham bid Because it’s the same angels, but in that case he says you’ll have a son this time next year So it’s the reproduction part is there But when he gets to the bottom It’s not there anymore. It’s only the recreation part. Okay. Yeah, so They’re meant to be contrasted those two stories actually in the story of Abraham it’s pretty clear he goes I don’t know if this will make sense because it When the angels come it says He washes their feet and then he feeds them Okay, that’s actually the recreation and reproduction part that not in terms of sexuality but it’s in terms of meaning the Renewal the washing of the feet is the recreation part the renewal the restarting and The feeding is the reproduction part not not in a sexual way But when you feed something food and he eats it and integrates it integrates it correctly That’s like a reproduction of your identity your you’re staying yourself. You’re reproducing yourself So when you eat food, that’s what you’re doing Not like I said not in a sexual way But it has exactly the same meaning if you eat something that you can integrate correctly you’re like reproducing your pattern It’s like the correct version of yourself And then the other side the washing is that like is that little flood? Yeah, it’s a mini flood right it also it’s an acceptable right? It’s a controlled one. You’re washing the dust off your the roads dust off your feet Means that you’re you’re passing from one mode of being into another because you’re you’re Cleaning off the debris of the past. It’s something like that and then it’s about renewal next Yeah, okay, so you have to see that when Matthew’s talking about the idea of recreation You have to understand that recreation and rest are basically the same thing right that you basically have the same meaning it’s sleeping Resting recreation are all that bring you into renewal Okay, I’m dying even dying that’s what dying is it’s it’s passing into Another state letting something else have a chance. That’s what dying is it’s I mean