Sin Is a Sickness, Not a Crime | Fr. Evan Armatas

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Father Evan, thank you for joining me on Commitment to Reality.
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It's a pleasure, Dave. I think we've, over the years,
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conversed via email and phone, but never face-to-face, so this
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is nice.
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Before we begin, Father Evan, I talked to you a
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little bit beforehand about my appreciation for you and your
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emphasis on the practical expressions of our faith. But if
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you could, for anybody who doesn't know you, what's your story?
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Well, I grew up as an Orthodox Christian. My family...
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predominantly from Greece. It wasn't unusual for me to come
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home from school and there'd be 30 people in my
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kitchen and my friends would say, what's going on? I'd say, nothing.
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They're like, why is everybody here? I said, it's just
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the way they lived back at home in Greece. It's
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how they live still in America. But I kind of
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hid my faith from my friends. It was just something
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I didn't even know how I would explain. you know,
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who I was and where the deeper part of me existed,
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you know, in terms of my Orthodox faith. So, you know,
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as an immigrant kid, you kind of grew up with,
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you know, you're American and you sort of have this
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other part of yourself that's kind of hidden. And I
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think it was like, you know, through grade school, middle school,
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into high school, I just started to notice that, you know,
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the other kids I went to school with, the way
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that they would talk about their faith, it didn't make
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sense to me. I didn't understand it. You know, I
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just felt like I was different. And eventually, you know,
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in college, I had a particular experience with a professor
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who had asked a question about the Trinity. I was
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taking an elective on C.S. Lewis, actually. And he asked
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a question about the Trinity.
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Dr.
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Peter Kraft, he's pretty well known in Catholic circles. And
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it was a big lecture hall. He was a very
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popular professor at BC. And I answered with a very
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orthodox response about what the Trinity was. And he stopped
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the class and he said, he didn't say, who are you?
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He said, what are you? And I said, and I
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kind of just knew intuitively what he was saying. And
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I said, I'm an orthodox Christian. And he kind of
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nodded his head and he goes, there's truth in the East,
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something like that. So my story is that I just,
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from the time I was a child through college, I
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started to realize that I had this inheritance that was unique,
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that was special, that was beautiful, that was true, but
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that I lived in a world that didn't know it.
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And certainly I lived in a world that if I
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was to explain who I was, wouldn't comprehend So then eventually,
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in my young adult life, I ended up at seminary,
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and I think in large measure because I wanted to
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find a way to articulate to myself first, and then
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probably to others, what it is that Orthodox Christianity says
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and believes and practices, right? So if in the work
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that I've done, people find it to be practical and helpful,
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it's because I was trying to figure it out myself.
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And I was trying to figure out how I could
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take this incredibly nuanced and beautiful and ancient tradition that
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is the fullness of the faith, but make it real
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and accessible. And so I've really spent the last 25
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years honing that skill. And perhaps maybe the radio show
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that some people listen to is an example of that.
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People call in and they might ask about you know,
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something really difficult to kind of talk about, like, you know,
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the essence and energies in the theology of Gregory Paul Amas. And,
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you know, okay, wait a minute. How do you make
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that applicable? What does it really mean? Or they may
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just ask a question like, you know, I'm struggling in
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my marriage and I'm trying to figure out how to
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be gentle and merciful. How does Christianity impact that? And
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so that's a little bit about my story. You know,
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I am a parish priest. I've been one for over
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two decades. And the parish that I serve started as
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a mission with about 20 people. And it's, you know,
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grown to several hundred people and, you know, just exploded.
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I think that's happening in a lot of places, which
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is great. But I'm still seeking ways to explain and share. And,
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you know, first to myself and then having that transform
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me and change me. If I can, I know this
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is a little long-winded, but I'd say this, Dave. I
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think one of the things that really hit me when
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I met my fiance, then wife, you know, was that
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I didn't know how to love her. I recognized right
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away that I was broken in my ability to love.
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And then I had children and I found out that
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I'm still really broken. And then I became a parish
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priest and I'm still really broken. And I think This
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might be a topic we get into. I think every
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sin is an offense against love. Every sin is an
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inability to love. And Christ is love. God is love.
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And he came to show us how to love. So
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in some ways, the big question behind all of the
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things that I've mentioned so far is just really figuring
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out how to love rightly. Be disfigured when it comes
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to love. Amen. Amen.
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I told you before we started that I want to
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talk about sin and we will get there because everything
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you just said resonates with me. Because it's about being
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rightly oriented, right?
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Yeah, right.
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I think that we can get so caught up when
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it comes to sin and almost make it an identity.
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Yeah, I call it the shadow of sin.
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And it's... I think it can be so dangerous. But
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like you said, I mean, you're trying to understand the
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faith and all of its nuance. And embedded in that nuance,
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more often than not, is this tension or paradox. And
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the answers aren't clean. And that, I think, is especially
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offensive to the Western mind.
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Yeah, it can be.
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It can be. But I think, and I also told
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you before we began, and anybody who's listened to this
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podcast has heard me say this before, that orthodoxy, small o,
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no matter what your tradition is, only exists for orthopraxy.
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That this mental ascent to these ideas is not the
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point of the faith. It does not mean the ideas
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do not matter. And that's why studying and understanding it
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is important. but only insofar as it redirects you and
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reorients you towards Christ.
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Yeah, I think one of the scariest phrases in the
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gospel is when Jesus says, why do you call me
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Lord and not do the things I tell you? And so,
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you know, in a sense, it's like, yeah, we can
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come to the understanding that Jesus is Lord and we
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can have the correct theology. I mean, even the demons
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have correct theology, right?
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Well, theology without practice is the theology of demons.
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Yeah, exactly. So if we don't have the ability to
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make these things part of our lives. And here I
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think we have to quickly say it's not about being perfect. Right? St.
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John in his first epistle talks about practicing righteousness. And
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I like that because that's really how orthodoxy approaches life
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in Christ. It's about practicing it. And it doesn't have
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to be about perfecting it. that phrase from Matthew's gospel
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in the southern chapter, be perfect, it can really cause
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some damage because you can think about that in a
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wrong-headed way. The Greek there is a little more beautiful
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because it's talking about being complete, coming to a place
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and being whole. And so when we start to think
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about how we live as Christians, it's so much more
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important than having the right theological construct worked out doesn't
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mean that theology doesn't matter right and our theology leads
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how we practice but as you said orthodoxia is certainly
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what is intimately connected with orthodoxia right you can't have
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the one without the.
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Other but one only exists for the other absolutely it's
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and and somehow i mean i think there are all
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sorts of and and You could go find a podcast
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and a book and everything that explain the historical reasons
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behind why we've let our rational mind take the pole
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position in our lives. My goal is to point out that, hey,
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Father Evan, your whole life, your ministry is all about
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the practical realities. That guide us to the true reality.
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True reality is truth. Truth is Christ.
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I'm fond of saying to people, I can find a
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heretic in every seat. Right? And here I don't mean
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that these are people that cannot attain relationship with Christ
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and therefore are shut out of the kingdom. What I
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mean is that the goal isn't to have a perfect theology. Right?
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Our goal is to practice righteousness. And so as we
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repent and change, God never condemns us for sinning. You've
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got to let that sit for a second. God never
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condemns us for sinning. He condemns us for not repenting.
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There's a big difference. Yeah. Right? So if we're repenting,
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sin is part of what happens, but repenting is more important.
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And you said earlier about getting stuck in sin and
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having sin be your identity. And that's what happens if
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you don't repent. You sort of just wallow in that
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sin and sin in it. And that's why I called
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it the shadow of sin.
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And it's a paradox, in a sense, because we are sinners, right?
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And when we say that, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
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have mercy on me, a sinner. So we are sinners,
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but when we emphasize that and make it our identity
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as opposed to the cross and our salvation, I think
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that's where a lot of the danger comes in. And
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I told you, you have these great toolkits and a
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tool is a practice that trains and shapes us. And
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I want to talk about those. But this morning, I
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always think about the podcast that I'm going to do
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that day on my run. And I thought, you know,
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for some reason, Well, I think the reason is because
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it's just been in my mind nonstop over the past
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couple months, year. I want to talk to Father Evan
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about sin. Because I think that a misunderstanding of sin
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has such dramatic ramifications for not only our own lives,
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but for our society, the way that we live. And
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I think that we have greatly misunderstood sin. And that's,
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once again, that paradox, right? Does that make sense to you?
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Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when we think about sin, it
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impacts our anthropology. It impacts the way that we understand
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God's redemption. It impacts how we're going to navigate life
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and our shortfalls, our shortcomings, our mistakes. And orthodoxy has a,
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you know, not a different, but a unique, you know,
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it's not different by degree, it's unique. It's not what
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the West says about sin.
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You said that, Dr. Kraft said, you had a different
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version of the Trinity. And then, yeah, there's truth in
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the East. So when I say that there's a different
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conception of sin, could you explain exactly what that is?
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Well, I think we can approach that question for sure.
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I mean, most people, when they approach the question of sin,
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are going to think about it through the lens that's
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been sort of handed down in the last several hundred
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years of sort of this offense of one of God's
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rules or commandments. And so you're, you know, you broke
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a rule, you broke a commandment, and you're going to
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get punished for that. There's a punishment and a consequence.
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And so when we think about God in that way,
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it's sort of like he's a judge. You enter a
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courtroom and You're either declared guilty or innocent, right? And
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while those types of ideas are not necessarily outside of
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how we want to talk about sin, they're not primary,
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nor are they all that helpful, right? So if we
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say the framework is a courtroom, right, and sin is
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an offense, a breaking of, almost like a legal thing,
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We start to think about our lives. We start to
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think about God. We start to think about theology differently.
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But if we think about sin as sickness, it's just
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right away, just change that for a second. And, you know,
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when you have a sick child, how do you deal
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with a sick child versus a child that's been disobedient
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over a rule that you set? You just have a
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completely different approach. You know, when my daughters had a
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fever or they were sick, Their mother was usually the
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person that was caring for them, you know, but I
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would as well when I would get home from my
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work at the church. You know, and you'd go into
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their sick room and it was like, do you need
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another blanket? Can I get a heating pad for you?
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Do you want some hot tea? A proper pillow? You know,
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there's comfort in care. And you're nursing them back to health.
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And so if you think about Christ's work in that way,
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it just changes everything. Sin's like a virus. It's not
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native to us. The other side does start to think
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that over time that sin is native to the human condition.
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It's part and parcel to what it means to be human.
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And we might go so far as to say that
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we think that's heretical. To say that is to say
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something that is in opposition to God's truth.
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When you said it, it felt that way. I still
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have the conditioning. The framework. No matter how many. You
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have to recalibrate and it takes time. And some of
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those old habits die hard.
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Yeah. Right? Yeah. Whereas, you know, in the church, we
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don't talk about sin being native to the human condition.
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It's always parasitic. I like the idea of a virus,
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you know, it gets in and infects you. But it's
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not native to the human condition. It's not part of
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what it means to be human.
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Just going off of the idea of sickness, my wife
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had had, has, I never know how to talk about it.
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She was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago. She's
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now in remission.
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Thank God.
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And we went to this young survivors coalition. It just
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happened to be in Charlotte. And so they sent us
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the invite and it's for the weekend and it's all
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of these women and their spouses or whoever else to
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come together and kind of be together as people who
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had and survived, or I don't know, cancer. Whatever, it's
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a cancer. And so because it was in Charlotte, we said, oh,
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let's do a little staycation. We went and stayed at
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a hotel and we went to this event. And it
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was very well-intentioned. I hope that I don't come across
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as though I'm belittling it. But after a couple hours,
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we just kept looking at each other and we're like,
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this is like church for people who do not have
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a church. I mean, this is the community. I know
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that there's a value in being around people who have
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gone through the same thing that you have, that's valuable.
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And my wife actually still keeps in touch with a
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couple of the people that she met there. So it
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wasn't a complete waste of time. But I bring it
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up to say this. These people had made cancer their identity.
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Cancer is not something that they had or have.
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It's who they are.
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It's who they are. And I think the same thing
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has happened with sin.
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Yeah. Yeah. There's no doubt that we can take on
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the identity of sin. We may even say it, things like,
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you know, I am an addict. You know, we might say,
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or we might say that about someone else even. He
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is a liar. And the only person that can say
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that I am is Christ. We always should say I'm
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in the process of becoming.
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Yes.
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Right? And certainly sin is one of these things that
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as we practice it, it can overcome our will. I
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don't know if you ever thought about that, but that's
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what habitual sin is. It's when the will has been captive,
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made captive. And much of the Christian life, especially in
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its practical aspects, is about liberating the will so that
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the will operates correctly. And that we no longer identify
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with the sin that we have been participating in. And
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we start to separate ourselves from that sin.
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You said participating in. And earlier you said practicing righteousness.
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And this is what I've been thinking about. So yes,
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I've been thinking about sin a lot. But I've also
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been thinking about the alternative. Or the antidote, or whatever
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you want to call it. Which is trying. And I
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think that this is one of the reasons that I
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appreciate you and your work so much because it's, it's
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practicing your, when you practice these tools, it's to overcome sin.
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Yeah.
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It's to get closer to Christ. And I think that
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this conception, if we can paint with a broad brush
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and know that I'm doing that, you know, just to
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make a point in the West of sin as this identity,
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as sin is this thing that, Trying, and this also
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gets into the atonement, which I don't know if you
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have anything to say about that, but trying to practice righteousness,
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trying to practice virtue, trying to become better, is seen
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as trying to earn your salvation.
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Yeah, which doesn't make any sense.
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And I think that that theology leads people to stop trying.
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Yeah, you know, obviously... framework of how people think about
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workspace salvation. I had this beautiful conversation with a pastor
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yesterday who's interested in learning about orthodoxy. We had a
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really nice lunch yesterday, and he was trying to understand
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how orthodoxy looks at spiritual disciplines and what is also
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called auscices, or the spiritual tools, right? And how those
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are connected in the way that he's thinking about it,
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related to earning one's salvation, right? And I said to him,
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you know, you have to understand that this conversation works faith,
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works faith, you know, however, you know, and the back
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and forth. That's a conversation that didn't exist in the church.
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We never had the conversation. It was a conversation that
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arose for good reason in the West. between the reformers
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and the Catholic Church, and then they've had this conversation
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for a few hundred years now. So they define a
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bunch of terms and concepts and a construct. Well, when
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orthodoxy starts talking about spiritual disciplines, it's natural for a
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Protestant or a Catholic to put those ideas within the
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framework that they've established. And so it becomes for them
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as this you know, pastor was saying, he's like, well,
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when I hear you speak, I think about sort of
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works-based salvation. You know, and I'm like, that's not what
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we're talking about. Right. We're not talking about, you know,
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so if we just can, for a moment, pretend that
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that debate doesn't exist. Yes.
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Right.
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And we can just go back, you know, in a
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time machine to the 800s or something. And you were
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just to enter into the Christian life. right? It is
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considered the most natural thing to say, I'm going to
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practice righteousness. Yes. It's just natural. And so if we
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were to make an analogy, we would say, you know,
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if you want to play baseball, right? And you want
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to be in the major leagues, right? You don't just
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show up on opening day and try to grab a
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bat and go get on the field. But rather, you've
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probably for decades at this point, starting when you were
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four or five, had a bat in your hand and
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you just practiced a swing. And you were attempting to
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improve upon that swing so that at some point when
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you faced a major league curveball, you can make contact
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with it and run the bases. And that just seems
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like a very normal, natural thing that an athlete would do,
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somehow we disconnect those ideas when we get into this
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idea of spiritual disciplines. It's like, no, why wouldn't a
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Christian attempt to practice forgiveness? Yes. Why wouldn't we attempt
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to practice charity and generosity? Why wouldn't we attempt to
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practice mercy? And just like that child who's first learning
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to swing, we're not going to get it right the
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first thousand times, but maybe a thousand one, we'll start
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to make a little bit of contact with that. You know, I.
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Actually wrote about a very similar comparison earlier because when we,
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like I said, all of these are interconnected and it's nuanced,
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but Concerning salvation, well, what are you saved for? Well,
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you're saved for an eternity with Christ, an eternity with God. Okay.
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And so many people think about that, and they think, well,
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that sounds boring. Because they see it as this finish line.
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And it's just a continuation of what you've began here.
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and I think that that's also why it can be
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so dangerous, this misconception of sin and this misunderstanding of salvation,
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because it's seen as getting your lottery lottery. It's, it's
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your ticket.
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Yeah.
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And then what you do now is relatively immaterial. You're
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just waiting for the main event.
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Yeah.
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And as far as I understand it and the deeper
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I go into this, the more that I understand that
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I don't understand. And I'm just trying to grasp the,
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these paradoxes and these this tension that heaven and hell
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are here and now yeah that you can experience heaven
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and you experience hell as much and and this is
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where i think people might see it as dangerous oh
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well see there you go you're saying that you're going
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you're moving closer well i think that you are and
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that in eternity you continue from glory to glory yeah
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So you're always practicing. You're always trying. You're always in
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the process of doing so. You get closer to Christ.
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Yeah. If I could, I'll give you another layer. I
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think that may be beneficial to your listeners. You know,
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if we stop for a moment and say, what if
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salvation is just a relationship? It's not being justified. It's
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not declared innocent. Just drop all those theological things. concepts
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and terms and just say salvation's relationship and so who's
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it relationship with well it's pretty clear that it's relationship
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with god and relationship with our brothers and sisters i
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mean christ says it differently he just says the fulfillment
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of the law and the prophets is love god love
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your neighbor right So if, going back to what I
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was saying at the beginning of the podcast, every sin
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is an offense against love, right, is a broken form
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of love. Every righteous act is rightly ordered love. Yes.
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And the purpose of love is to enter into relationship, right?
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That's the basis of relationship. So then when we think
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about practicing righteousness, again, it's just learning to love. It's
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another way of saying it. So, you know, I'm married.
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and I'll be hitting 30 years next year. Glory to God. Yeah,
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it's been a good marriage.
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Yeah.
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Glory to God. I've been practicing love for 29 years.
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Yes.
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And I'm getting better at it.
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Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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And my wife notices that, and we become closer and
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more intimate.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, I always write in the cards that
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I give her, I love you more today than yesterday,
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but not as much as tomorrow. But that's one of
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the ways that we could think about Jesus. It's just
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to say, I love you more today than I did yesterday,
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but not as much as I will tomorrow. And what
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is that love? Well, it's the relationship that's born out
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in not just the thoughts I have about Jesus, you know,
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that I believe him to be my Lord and Savior.
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Like I said, and like you mentioned, the demons believe
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that too. They know he's the Lord, but it doesn't
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do anything for them because they don't live in that relationship.
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There's no love exchange. And so practicing righteousness. And again,
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in the epistle of St. John, he makes that clear,
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you know, in the midst of talking about practicing righteousness,
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he's talking about he who says he loves God, but
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hates his brother's a liar. Yeah. So when we think
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about prayer as a tool or fasting as a tool
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or almsgiving or or in the most recent book, Scripture
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Reading and Confession and Time, and I'm working on a
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third one.
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Oh, hey.
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Yeah, and each of those certainly cannot be extracted like, well,
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you just do this or you just do that, right?
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All of these tools interrelate and are interconnected, but all
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of them help us to move out of that disfigured
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way of loving and into a right-hearted way of loving. Thankfully,
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the church has preserved and maintained and continued to instruct
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us in how to love and has refused to reduce
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what it means to be a Christian down to something like,
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did you accept the death of Christ upon the cross
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and place your faith in him? Not that that's not
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a good thing. It's just not enough.
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It's not the full picture.
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No. It's not.
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It's do you, well, to go with your analogy, it's
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do you take this woman to be your bride?
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And then never bring her flowers.
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And as you were talking about that, as you were
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talking about love and rightly ordered and doing those practices,
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the word that came to my mind is glow. And
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people say that all the time, whether you're religious or not.
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You see a young couple or you see, I would
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like to believe that if my wife and I go
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into a room, they can see the glow because we
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love each other that much. I'm with you on that.
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I mean, we have been growing in love and she's
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the greatest gift that God has given me in concert
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with the other reason that people often say glow, which is, oh,
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you're a new mother, you're a new father, you've got
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that glow to you. Well, that glow is this experience
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of love.
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Absolutely.
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And I've seen it in the same way in the
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eyes of people, and this is something that's foreign and
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becoming less foreign to me, is monastics. Yeah. And you go,
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and the skeptic in me, let's say 10 years ago,
480
00:30:06.589 --> 00:30:10.190
my first interaction with monastics, who are these people? They're off,
481
00:30:10.730 --> 00:30:10.990
you know.
482
00:30:11.569 --> 00:30:12.930
Just funny, doing funny things.
483
00:30:12.950 --> 00:30:17.849
Just funny, you know. And you think that they're removing
484
00:30:17.890 --> 00:30:20.930
themselves from all of the joys of life and whatever.
485
00:30:22.829 --> 00:30:25.789
But the biggest argument is they don't really have to
486
00:30:25.910 --> 00:30:29.640
say much. The more time I spend with them, it's,
487
00:30:30.349 --> 00:30:33.609
you've got to glow. And I think that that glow
488
00:30:34.069 --> 00:30:37.630
is the love of Christ in them in that right relationship.
489
00:30:37.670 --> 00:30:44.589
And they're practicing righteousness and they're getting closer and closer
490
00:30:44.630 --> 00:30:48.920
to Christ. And so I think that in itself is
491
00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:52.180
an argument for the natural progression that takes place in
492
00:30:52.220 --> 00:30:52.700
this life.
493
00:30:53.799 --> 00:30:55.380
Right? Absolutely.
494
00:30:55.480 --> 00:30:59.259
It's the whole concept of salvation as a process versus
495
00:30:59.299 --> 00:30:59.619
a moment.
496
00:31:00.609 --> 00:31:05.420
Yeah. Well, or a transaction versus a transformation.
497
00:31:05.940 --> 00:31:06.380
Mm-hmm.
498
00:31:06.859 --> 00:31:11.799
Right? So you can, again, reduce. The other thing, you know,
499
00:31:11.819 --> 00:31:13.960
just to kind of say a little more about this
500
00:31:14.019 --> 00:31:16.220
idea of salvation, how I said, you know, it's really
501
00:31:16.240 --> 00:31:20.569
about a relationship. So when you think about your wife
502
00:31:20.769 --> 00:31:23.089
or your relationship with your kids or a dear friend,
503
00:31:23.829 --> 00:31:29.150
that relationship isn't, it's not one-faceted. It's multifaceted. Yeah. Like,
504
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:33.690
you know, so... My wife and I like travel. We
505
00:31:33.730 --> 00:31:36.490
also like when we have the opportunity to have slow
506
00:31:37.289 --> 00:31:41.970
dinner together. We like to play games together. We like
507
00:31:41.990 --> 00:31:44.269
to go on walks. We like to hold hands. There
508
00:31:44.289 --> 00:31:47.480
are shows that we like to watch together. We write
509
00:31:47.500 --> 00:31:50.940
to each other. We've done that since we were a
510
00:31:51.140 --> 00:31:56.220
new couple. So our love is multifaceted. So a lot
511
00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:58.720
of times when we think about salvation, it has consequences.
512
00:31:59.089 --> 00:32:02.799
been reduced down to the event of the cross. And
513
00:32:02.839 --> 00:32:08.079
the church never spoke about salvation as only the cross. Salvation,
514
00:32:08.099 --> 00:32:11.920
this relationship we have with our Lord, involves all of
515
00:32:12.059 --> 00:32:17.970
his ministry. You know, his nativity, his baptism, right? I'm
516
00:32:17.990 --> 00:32:22.549
just mentioning a few. Of course, his transfiguration, his crucifixion,
517
00:32:22.589 --> 00:32:26.849
his resurrection, his ascension, his gift of the Holy Spirit
518
00:32:26.890 --> 00:32:29.539
at Pentecost, right? Involves all of that. And so then
519
00:32:29.579 --> 00:32:33.180
we think about that when we're in a relationship, it's
520
00:32:33.240 --> 00:32:38.009
not single faceted, it's multifaceted. So the one way that
521
00:32:38.069 --> 00:32:41.009
I often give as an image is to say, well,
522
00:32:41.029 --> 00:32:44.589
this relationship of love I have with Christ has all
523
00:32:44.630 --> 00:32:46.309
these different facets to it. So if you imagine a
524
00:32:46.329 --> 00:32:50.119
large stone, a gem stone, and you hold it up
525
00:32:50.150 --> 00:32:52.460
to the light, and as you turn it, you get
526
00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:55.359
a different facet of the gem, but the same light's
527
00:32:55.420 --> 00:32:59.119
coming through, right? The relationship is the relationship, but it's
528
00:32:59.710 --> 00:33:03.380
it's appreciated and seen in a different way. And so
529
00:33:03.740 --> 00:33:06.339
in our relationship with Christ, when we think about, you know,
530
00:33:06.359 --> 00:33:09.579
these sort of theological terms, one facet of my relationship
531
00:33:09.619 --> 00:33:14.720
with him is prayer. Another facet of that is service
532
00:33:14.740 --> 00:33:20.450
to the poor. Another facet of that is the sacraments, right?
533
00:33:20.890 --> 00:33:23.789
It's all part of the same relationship. It's all part
534
00:33:23.829 --> 00:33:27.769
of love and it's all part of perfecting love in me, right?
535
00:33:28.380 --> 00:33:31.279
But I wanted to say that because so often when
536
00:33:31.319 --> 00:33:35.779
people think about salvation, they're not only thinking about it
537
00:33:35.900 --> 00:33:38.700
as a moment in time or a transaction, but they've
538
00:33:38.740 --> 00:33:42.160
reduced it down to this one thing, the cross, and
539
00:33:42.220 --> 00:33:45.589
accepting what happened on that. And the church just never
540
00:33:45.630 --> 00:33:49.589
did that. That's an innovation that we need to be
541
00:33:49.650 --> 00:33:50.130
wary of.
542
00:33:52.250 --> 00:33:55.910
Yeah, and when it comes to relationship, I mean, if
543
00:33:55.930 --> 00:33:59.519
you're just, Continuing on that and love and salvation is
544
00:34:00.299 --> 00:34:06.240
the restoration of a right relationship, right? It's reconciliation. And
545
00:34:06.579 --> 00:34:09.320
you really can take that metaphor and make it walk
546
00:34:09.400 --> 00:34:14.019
on all fours. Just in a loving relationship or a
547
00:34:14.059 --> 00:34:17.400
relationship with a child who has become estranged and then
548
00:34:17.420 --> 00:34:19.070
you bring them back. I mean, that's why the story
549
00:34:19.090 --> 00:34:20.530
of the prodigal son is so beautiful.
550
00:34:20.969 --> 00:34:21.150
Yeah.
551
00:34:21.170 --> 00:34:21.750
Because that's us.
552
00:34:22.630 --> 00:34:24.309
Yeah. And then going back to something you were talking
553
00:34:24.329 --> 00:34:29.900
about earlier. When you think about sin, but you contextualize
554
00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:35.400
it within this idea of relationship as opposed to an offense. Yes.
555
00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:39.710
It's totally different. You know, if I'm in relationship with
556
00:34:39.809 --> 00:34:45.909
you and you do something that breaks the relationship, what
557
00:34:45.949 --> 00:34:48.010
am I going to do? Am I going to punish
558
00:34:48.050 --> 00:34:53.739
you for that? Not if I'm myself rightly ordered. I'm
559
00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:56.760
going to seek restoration. So you go all the way
560
00:34:56.820 --> 00:35:01.960
back to the garden and humanity is walking intimately with God.
561
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:06.659
And then what does it do? It quote unquote disobeys
562
00:35:06.719 --> 00:35:08.909
a commandment of God, right? So people say, see, no,
563
00:35:08.929 --> 00:35:12.570
they disobeyed a commandment. Well, notice what God does. He
564
00:35:12.610 --> 00:35:15.050
shows up in the garden and he says what? Not
565
00:35:15.070 --> 00:35:17.909
you're in trouble. Like I'm going to punish you. What
566
00:35:17.929 --> 00:35:22.179
does he say? Where are you? Hmm. Now, that's not
567
00:35:22.219 --> 00:35:28.079
because God lost us. That's a relational question. You know, like,
568
00:35:28.199 --> 00:35:32.000
the garden's not that big. God can't find us. No,
569
00:35:32.860 --> 00:35:36.760
he's asking something much deeper. You know, where are you
570
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:37.980
in relationship to me?
571
00:35:39.079 --> 00:35:39.300
Right?
572
00:35:39.480 --> 00:35:44.380
And what did we do? We hid. You know, we
573
00:35:44.460 --> 00:35:48.860
moved away from the relationship and God came to find us. Right?
574
00:35:49.420 --> 00:35:51.039
And so, again, if we start to think about sin
575
00:35:51.079 --> 00:35:53.860
that way, we say, gosh, sin is about getting lost.
576
00:35:56.559 --> 00:35:59.889
And then God's reaction to that is to come find us. Yes.
577
00:36:00.829 --> 00:36:01.170
You know?
578
00:36:01.710 --> 00:36:07.150
And I, honestly, I don't know of a better way
579
00:36:07.449 --> 00:36:11.760
to understand God's love for us than having children.
580
00:36:12.360 --> 00:36:13.619
Yeah. It teaches you so much.
581
00:36:13.639 --> 00:36:14.880
Because then you get it.
582
00:36:15.059 --> 00:36:16.019
Yes. You get it. Totally.
583
00:36:16.039 --> 00:36:17.280
The light bulb goes off.
584
00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:18.159
Yeah. That.
585
00:36:18.840 --> 00:36:23.599
That is unconditional love. I mean, I always go back to,
586
00:36:24.019 --> 00:36:27.639
it's a fairly simple metaphor, but when it comes to sin,
587
00:36:28.360 --> 00:36:30.840
it's like, I think it was Frederica Matthews Green who
588
00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:34.570
wrote this or said this to me or something. But
589
00:36:35.570 --> 00:36:38.329
it's like watching a child learn how to walk. When
590
00:36:38.369 --> 00:36:40.230
they fall, you don't reprimand them.
591
00:36:40.250 --> 00:36:41.090
You don't yell at them.
592
00:36:42.329 --> 00:36:44.989
You help them up and encourage them and get them
593
00:36:45.010 --> 00:36:47.500
to come to me. Hey, here's how to do it.
594
00:36:48.110 --> 00:36:54.829
You're trying to teach them, right? And nothing, nothing has
595
00:36:54.869 --> 00:36:57.730
helped me understand that relationship more than kids.
596
00:36:57.889 --> 00:36:58.210
I would agree.
597
00:36:58.230 --> 00:37:02.369
And understand that conception of salvation and sin and offense.
598
00:37:03.650 --> 00:37:06.570
I love my kids more than anything. All I want
599
00:37:07.489 --> 00:37:10.869
is for them to be rightly ordered, to be whole,
600
00:37:11.849 --> 00:37:16.110
to be fully, truly human, and to love them and
601
00:37:16.159 --> 00:37:19.460
to continue. That relationship, that's all I want.
602
00:37:19.800 --> 00:37:24.139
Yeah. Yeah, to be in relationship with your kids. You know, yesterday, again,
603
00:37:24.159 --> 00:37:28.019
that conversation I mentioned earlier with the pastor, he mentioned
604
00:37:28.380 --> 00:37:33.949
sin as this obstacle between God and man. And I said, no,
605
00:37:34.010 --> 00:37:37.130
absolutely not. He said, what do you mean? I said,
606
00:37:38.010 --> 00:37:43.429
sin doesn't remove God's love from us, right? Sin's on
607
00:37:43.570 --> 00:37:48.960
our side of the equation, right? Sin keeps us from
608
00:37:49.099 --> 00:37:51.260
seeing and being in relationship with God, but it doesn't
609
00:37:51.300 --> 00:37:54.650
stop God from seeing us. You know, and I reminded
610
00:37:54.710 --> 00:37:57.269
him of that statement of Paul's at the end of
611
00:37:57.349 --> 00:37:59.869
Romans 8, that nothing separates us from the love of God.
612
00:38:01.110 --> 00:38:03.929
Like nothing. And you know that as a parent. It's
613
00:38:03.949 --> 00:38:06.309
like there's nothing your kid's going to do that you're
614
00:38:06.329 --> 00:38:08.389
going to go, well, that's it. I don't love you.
615
00:38:09.789 --> 00:38:12.610
So how preposterous is it to think that that's how
616
00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:17.630
God would operate? Right? And that somehow, he's so offended
617
00:38:17.670 --> 00:38:21.110
that he needs to be appeased or paid off. It
618
00:38:21.159 --> 00:38:23.860
doesn't make any sense. Rather, we would say, no, the
619
00:38:23.900 --> 00:38:31.300
love of God is constant. It's never wavering. It's unconditional.
620
00:38:32.019 --> 00:38:35.480
In the story of the prodigal you mentioned earlier, notice
621
00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:40.320
when does the father kiss the son? Before he says anything.
622
00:38:42.070 --> 00:38:45.900
He hasn't made his confession. He kisses him. right, falls
623
00:38:45.980 --> 00:38:48.679
on his neck, right? And then he makes a statement.
624
00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:52.960
But I want to say something about that, though. I
625
00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:55.199
want to say that that love of God, just as
626
00:38:55.239 --> 00:39:01.570
you've probably seen as a parent, is therapeutic. When you're
627
00:39:01.679 --> 00:39:08.070
loved like that, it heals you. You know, when you
628
00:39:08.170 --> 00:39:13.789
realize that you're loved by God unconditionally, that changes something
629
00:39:13.869 --> 00:39:17.340
in you. I'll put it in a story. When I
630
00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:23.690
was a kid, I had this saintly, pious grandmother, Theodora.
631
00:39:24.670 --> 00:39:26.909
And she really was an example in so many ways
632
00:39:26.929 --> 00:39:29.789
to me. Well, she had seven kids, six of them
633
00:39:29.809 --> 00:39:32.579
made it. to adult life and they all had kids
634
00:39:32.619 --> 00:39:35.440
save one. So there was a lot of cousins. And
635
00:39:35.480 --> 00:39:39.039
my cousin Kirk, his Greek name was Kiriakos. He said
636
00:39:39.059 --> 00:39:42.599
to my yaya, that's grandmother in Greek one day, I
637
00:39:42.639 --> 00:39:46.739
think you love Evan more than me. And she, you know,
638
00:39:46.780 --> 00:39:48.880
kids say that kind of thing. Like my kids have
639
00:39:48.900 --> 00:39:52.809
said that to us. Will you like so-and-so more? My
640
00:39:52.849 --> 00:39:56.670
grandmother was so wise. She turned to him and she said, Kirk, no,
641
00:39:57.659 --> 00:40:00.449
I don't love Evan more than you. But sometimes he
642
00:40:00.510 --> 00:40:05.800
needs more love. It's a great statement, right? And then
643
00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:10.380
she said, and sometimes you do. And so what we
644
00:40:10.840 --> 00:40:13.500
should be thinking about is that when we sin more,
645
00:40:14.300 --> 00:40:18.920
God's love is more present. You know that as a parent.
646
00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:22.360
When your kid is struggling, When they're doing well and
647
00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:25.199
things are going well, you love them, but you don't
648
00:40:25.219 --> 00:40:27.610
have to be right there. I had an adult child
649
00:40:27.639 --> 00:40:31.949
go through something really difficult this summer. She's an adult.
650
00:40:31.989 --> 00:40:34.730
She's working. She lives in a different town. We talk
651
00:40:34.750 --> 00:40:38.130
to her frequently. We're in great communication with her. But
652
00:40:38.170 --> 00:40:41.469
when she went through that very difficult thing, we were
653
00:40:42.050 --> 00:40:49.250
more present, more loving, more attentive. Not because we didn't
654
00:40:49.269 --> 00:40:52.679
love her before. sometimes we need more love, especially when
655
00:40:52.699 --> 00:40:55.760
we're sinning. So the idea that when we sin, God
656
00:40:55.820 --> 00:40:57.539
all of a sudden turns his back on us, doesn't
657
00:40:57.559 --> 00:41:00.489
want to be around us, it doesn't make any sense,
658
00:41:01.449 --> 00:41:05.610
theologically and relationally. Yeah.
659
00:41:07.030 --> 00:41:09.449
Yeah, and just the differences with kids.
660
00:41:09.610 --> 00:41:13.829
I mean, I don't know.
661
00:41:14.130 --> 00:41:15.489
I was going to go in a different direction, but
662
00:41:15.510 --> 00:41:19.599
I don't want to go there. Because I had a
663
00:41:19.619 --> 00:41:23.059
very similar experience a response in life. But the answer
664
00:41:23.099 --> 00:41:26.829
wasn't so-and-so needs more love. It was, yeah, maybe I
665
00:41:26.909 --> 00:41:28.710
do love them more because they don't give me a
666
00:41:28.750 --> 00:41:30.150
hard time like you do.
667
00:41:30.690 --> 00:41:33.150
Because you're broken in the way you love, right? Isn't
668
00:41:33.789 --> 00:41:34.909
that the case? Yeah.
669
00:41:35.269 --> 00:41:38.789
And it fractures the relationship. And that's where, I guess,
670
00:41:39.349 --> 00:41:45.349
that's where the metaphor does fall flat because, you know,
671
00:41:46.309 --> 00:41:49.460
when we're putting ourselves in the position of God in
672
00:41:49.480 --> 00:41:54.800
the sense of relationship to the child, we're presenting a
673
00:41:54.889 --> 00:41:59.239
perfect love. And we are imperfect and fracture the relationship
674
00:41:59.300 --> 00:42:01.840
in both directions. So that's where it can get complicated.
675
00:42:02.260 --> 00:42:05.739
It can. But we know intuitively what is the right
676
00:42:05.800 --> 00:42:08.159
move of love. And so I always tell people, I've
677
00:42:08.179 --> 00:42:10.280
got one piece of parenting advice, and that's when your
678
00:42:10.360 --> 00:42:13.349
child is broken and disfigured, move toward them, not away.
679
00:42:13.369 --> 00:42:17.909
That's what God does. And of course, like you said...
680
00:42:19.039 --> 00:42:20.980
We have a hard time doing that because we're not
681
00:42:21.019 --> 00:42:23.059
yet perfected in love. Yeah.
682
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:25.860
Well, we've been talking about sin for quite a while.
683
00:42:26.019 --> 00:42:26.260
Yeah.
684
00:42:26.500 --> 00:42:30.980
And the way that I had it in my notes
685
00:42:31.039 --> 00:42:33.900
to talk to you about is it's a story that
686
00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:37.079
you tell in one of your books. And when I
687
00:42:37.139 --> 00:42:42.000
read it, I couldn't stop laughing. Basically, sin is boring.
688
00:42:42.039 --> 00:42:47.159
Could you tell that story? Yeah. Because we're talking all,
689
00:42:47.440 --> 00:42:50.320
sin is this, sin is misconceived, sin is this. And
690
00:42:51.639 --> 00:42:53.679
you were told that sin is boring and your sin
691
00:42:53.719 --> 00:42:55.219
is boring. What does that mean?
692
00:42:56.400 --> 00:43:00.360
Well, the story is humorous. I was in my 20s
693
00:43:00.429 --> 00:43:04.829
and newly married. And I had, you know, although I
694
00:43:04.849 --> 00:43:07.809
grew up in the church, like anybody who encounters the church,
695
00:43:07.849 --> 00:43:11.869
you recognize that there's never going to be an end
696
00:43:12.349 --> 00:43:18.869
to your learning. right? And so anyway, I decided that
697
00:43:18.909 --> 00:43:21.550
I was going to give a life confession, which is
698
00:43:21.590 --> 00:43:25.800
not something I had done before. So I made this
699
00:43:26.099 --> 00:43:29.800
really long list. I made it with several pages on
700
00:43:29.860 --> 00:43:32.760
eight and a half by 11 college ruled paper. And
701
00:43:32.780 --> 00:43:34.980
I made an appointment with Father John, who was my
702
00:43:35.019 --> 00:43:38.699
spiritual father at the time, father confessor. And I went
703
00:43:38.719 --> 00:43:40.940
to go see him. And this was in Seattle and
704
00:43:40.980 --> 00:43:44.449
his church, like Most commercial buildings in Seattle at the time,
705
00:43:44.489 --> 00:43:47.619
I think it's changing now, didn't have air conditioning. And
706
00:43:47.639 --> 00:43:50.159
it happened to be a warm summer day. And so
707
00:43:50.199 --> 00:43:52.699
I went to meet him in the church. And, you know,
708
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:55.219
an Orthodox priest, when he's celebrating one of the sacraments,
709
00:43:55.260 --> 00:43:59.739
he's got an inner cassock, an outer, what's called a ksorosu,
710
00:43:59.780 --> 00:44:02.800
and then he has his stole, a pitahili. So we're
711
00:44:02.820 --> 00:44:05.639
in the church and he goes through the opening prayers
712
00:44:05.659 --> 00:44:08.280
and sits down. And so he's kind of got a
713
00:44:08.300 --> 00:44:10.139
lot of garments on and it's warm inside the church.
714
00:44:10.199 --> 00:44:12.909
And I start to drone on with my long list.
715
00:44:13.820 --> 00:44:17.059
And I don't know, I was maybe 15 minutes in
716
00:44:17.659 --> 00:44:23.440
and he fell asleep. He was out like a light.
717
00:44:24.360 --> 00:44:28.579
And I look over and he's asleep. And of course,
718
00:44:28.639 --> 00:44:32.960
I'm offended by this. How dare he fall asleep in
719
00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:35.860
the midst of my confession? This is so important. And
720
00:44:37.929 --> 00:44:39.710
I always kind of joke when I tell the story about,
721
00:44:39.769 --> 00:44:42.210
you know, if you're giving a confession and the priest
722
00:44:42.250 --> 00:44:45.130
falls asleep, what do you do? And I always joke, well,
723
00:44:45.170 --> 00:44:46.789
then go ahead and say all the sins you don't
724
00:44:46.809 --> 00:44:50.440
want him to hear. So what did I do? I
725
00:44:50.539 --> 00:44:53.039
kind of looked over at one point. He wasn't waking up.
726
00:44:53.460 --> 00:44:57.119
And so I reached over and I grabbed the edge
727
00:44:57.159 --> 00:44:58.630
of his robe and I kind of jerked on it.
728
00:44:59.440 --> 00:45:02.780
And he, you know, he startles and came back and
729
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:04.989
he looked over at me and he said, oh, did
730
00:45:05.010 --> 00:45:09.170
I fall asleep? And I was like, yeah, you fell asleep.
731
00:45:09.789 --> 00:45:13.510
And I'm really upset about it. And he goes, well, Evan,
732
00:45:13.550 --> 00:45:15.489
he goes, listen, he goes, you're going on and on.
733
00:45:15.510 --> 00:45:19.710
And he goes, and I can tell that, you know,
734
00:45:19.750 --> 00:45:26.010
your sin's really important to you, but it's boring. And
735
00:45:26.250 --> 00:45:29.639
I'm waiting for you to finish so we can talk
736
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:33.860
about what you're going to become. And that was a
737
00:45:33.880 --> 00:45:38.369
pivotal moment for me because, I really had thought about
738
00:45:38.590 --> 00:45:41.889
sin as this thing that sort of stopped you in
739
00:45:41.929 --> 00:45:43.969
your tracks and that you sort of ended up looking
740
00:45:43.989 --> 00:45:46.889
over your shoulder at all your life. And what he
741
00:45:46.909 --> 00:45:48.889
was showing to me is that, in a sense, no
742
00:45:48.989 --> 00:45:52.940
sin points out the future and the new direction you
743
00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:56.699
want to go in. And so one of my mentors
744
00:45:56.760 --> 00:45:59.300
always says, when you find your sin, smile a little bit.
745
00:46:00.800 --> 00:46:04.630
Because now you know your escape. When you don't know
746
00:46:04.650 --> 00:46:06.230
what your sin is, you don't know how to escape it.
747
00:46:06.619 --> 00:46:08.579
But when you know it, it's like, oh, that's good news.
748
00:46:08.780 --> 00:46:12.320
There's a way out. So now as a priest, how
749
00:46:12.360 --> 00:46:16.300
many confessions have I heard? Over 10,000. And none of
750
00:46:16.320 --> 00:46:20.969
them are different. You know, you think your sin's different.
751
00:46:21.349 --> 00:46:24.670
You know, you did it on Tuesday, three in the afternoon,
752
00:46:24.690 --> 00:46:27.630
you know, but the other person did it on Friday
753
00:46:28.110 --> 00:46:31.449
in the morning. It's all the same. Sin's the absence
754
00:46:31.489 --> 00:46:37.500
of life, you know? And so it's boring. It's devoid
755
00:46:37.639 --> 00:46:43.639
of light and life. It's just, you know, and righteousness
756
00:46:43.719 --> 00:46:51.030
is not. True life is exciting. It's not static. It's
757
00:46:51.110 --> 00:46:53.269
kind of nice sometimes to think about because we think about, oh,
758
00:46:53.289 --> 00:46:56.309
Vegas is so much fun and going out and carousing
759
00:46:56.329 --> 00:47:00.389
is so much fun. No, sin is boring. Yeah. And
760
00:47:00.409 --> 00:47:03.750
the more you sin, the more boring it gets. That's
761
00:47:03.769 --> 00:47:05.239
why you got to keep doing more of it to
762
00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:09.090
see if you can catch that thrill, but it's just, yeah.
763
00:47:10.050 --> 00:47:12.920
So that doesn't mean that someone's confession isn't important, but
764
00:47:12.940 --> 00:47:14.860
trust me when I'm sitting there listening to it, I'm
765
00:47:14.940 --> 00:47:15.960
not all that interested.
766
00:47:17.380 --> 00:47:17.599
Yeah.
767
00:47:18.559 --> 00:47:18.820
Yeah.
768
00:47:18.880 --> 00:47:22.269
No, it's, it's, and it is boring. I mean, I,
769
00:47:24.179 --> 00:47:28.570
I can say that I told you before we started that,
770
00:47:29.750 --> 00:47:32.170
you know, I never left the faith, but I didn't,
771
00:47:32.800 --> 00:47:35.079
live the faith. And then I caught myself, I said, well,
772
00:47:35.099 --> 00:47:37.599
then maybe I did leave the faith. If you're not
773
00:47:37.699 --> 00:47:38.849
living it, then what is it?
774
00:47:39.969 --> 00:47:40.250
And I.
775
00:47:41.750 --> 00:47:45.750
Always say that I can't quite point to a come
776
00:47:45.789 --> 00:47:48.889
to Jesus moment that I had, but there was a
777
00:47:48.929 --> 00:47:53.699
very specific leave the devil where I was on a
778
00:47:53.719 --> 00:47:56.900
subway in New York and who knows what had happened
779
00:47:57.960 --> 00:48:00.619
the day before, the night before. And I remember kind
780
00:48:00.989 --> 00:48:03.719
of standing there bouncing like you do in the subway,
781
00:48:04.239 --> 00:48:11.260
and just thinking, there's no limit to this. And maybe
782
00:48:11.300 --> 00:48:15.280
in a sense it was fun for a while, like
783
00:48:15.300 --> 00:48:19.739
you think, but the deeper you get into it, and
784
00:48:19.760 --> 00:48:24.539
I think that this does bear weight in terms of analogy,
785
00:48:24.599 --> 00:48:29.900
because if you're doing something that's destructive, let's say something
786
00:48:30.059 --> 00:48:38.590
physically destructive, Well, at first it's fun. Let's say you overeat.
787
00:48:39.710 --> 00:48:45.409
It's fun at the beginning because there's no ramifications. It
788
00:48:45.449 --> 00:48:48.650
hasn't caught up to you. But as you continue to
789
00:48:48.730 --> 00:48:51.329
do it and do it and do it and you
790
00:48:52.389 --> 00:48:57.030
start to get overweight, you start to develop disease, then
791
00:48:57.329 --> 00:49:02.030
it's not fun anymore. And that is the kind of
792
00:49:02.070 --> 00:49:04.199
the epiphany that I had when it comes to sin.
793
00:49:05.179 --> 00:49:09.000
This just isn't fun anymore. And a couple months ago,
794
00:49:09.019 --> 00:49:13.420
I had a conversation with Justin Marler about his book,
795
00:49:13.500 --> 00:49:15.369
Unseen Warfare, and it had to do with the virtues
796
00:49:15.409 --> 00:49:17.809
and the vices. And I was telling him, I said,
797
00:49:18.250 --> 00:49:23.650
you know, the vices and your explanation, and he does
798
00:49:23.690 --> 00:49:25.909
a great job. I cannot recommend that book more highly.
799
00:49:25.969 --> 00:49:29.420
I love Justin. I said, but you know, you're going
800
00:49:29.460 --> 00:49:32.179
through it, and okay, this is necessary. And I got
801
00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:36.500
so excited when it got to the section about the virtues.
802
00:49:37.059 --> 00:49:40.679
And the reason that I got excited was because, wait
803
00:49:40.699 --> 00:49:46.769
a minute, this is the antidote. Good and evil exist
804
00:49:46.809 --> 00:49:49.530
on a spectrum. And so when you look at the
805
00:49:49.610 --> 00:49:52.369
vice and then you see the antidote, you go, wait,
806
00:49:52.909 --> 00:49:56.670
to get away from this, I do this. And this
807
00:49:57.070 --> 00:50:00.289
plays right into everything that you're about, Father Evan, that
808
00:50:00.909 --> 00:50:04.409
in order to rightly order ourselves, in order to heal ourselves,
809
00:50:05.590 --> 00:50:10.150
we practice righteousness. We practice the virtues. We do both.
810
00:50:11.510 --> 00:50:14.510
They do not exist in a vacuum. Like we're doing
811
00:50:14.670 --> 00:50:18.119
one or doing the other. And so in that moment,
812
00:50:18.159 --> 00:50:21.480
I said, I'm tired of practicing vice. You know, it
813
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:23.800
doesn't mean that I never will again. And it doesn't
814
00:50:23.820 --> 00:50:30.090
mean that I don't fall. But man, practicing virtue, practicing
815
00:50:30.190 --> 00:50:32.889
righteousness is so much more fun.
816
00:50:32.909 --> 00:50:38.710
Yeah. Yeah. It's where you spend your time. That's another
817
00:50:38.730 --> 00:50:41.409
way of looking at it. It's like I have these
818
00:50:41.489 --> 00:50:46.030
parts of myself that are pretty disfigured. And I can
819
00:50:46.429 --> 00:50:50.369
really lean into that space and fall into that space
820
00:50:50.449 --> 00:50:53.250
and stay in that space. And one thing that, again,
821
00:50:53.269 --> 00:50:56.070
a good mentor of mine said, it's, well, it's not
822
00:50:56.110 --> 00:50:58.960
really about that. It's about figuring out where the good
823
00:50:59.059 --> 00:51:02.599
is and spending more time there. I had this bad
824
00:51:02.639 --> 00:51:05.300
habit when I was newly married with my wife and
825
00:51:05.340 --> 00:51:07.650
how I would talk to her. And one day she
826
00:51:07.690 --> 00:51:08.869
said to me, you know, when you talk to me
827
00:51:08.889 --> 00:51:11.750
like that, it's boring. It's kind of similar to what
828
00:51:11.829 --> 00:51:13.849
Father John said to me. Because the way I was
829
00:51:13.889 --> 00:51:16.969
talking to her wasn't life-giving. And she was like, you know,
830
00:51:16.989 --> 00:51:19.710
she didn't say, I don't like it. You're mean. Stop it.
831
00:51:19.769 --> 00:51:24.019
She just said, it's boring. And that pierced my soul.
832
00:51:24.059 --> 00:51:25.940
I don't know why that did so much, but it did.
833
00:51:26.500 --> 00:51:28.559
I wanted to say something, too. You know, when you
834
00:51:28.599 --> 00:51:32.980
talked about, you know, being on the subway. And, you know,
835
00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:35.440
I like, you know, I can picture you there kind
836
00:51:35.480 --> 00:51:38.090
of in the subway in the you're just going through
837
00:51:38.139 --> 00:51:41.159
that in your head and you're deciding, I don't, I don't,
838
00:51:41.440 --> 00:51:43.019
it's not so much that I, I want to continue
839
00:51:43.039 --> 00:51:46.860
to practice vice. It's like, I want to practice the virtues.
840
00:51:47.659 --> 00:51:50.559
I want to, right. So sometimes in the church, we
841
00:51:50.610 --> 00:51:54.489
talk about that path. And like, I have people come in,
842
00:51:54.550 --> 00:51:56.050
I'm sitting right now in my office. And so I'm
843
00:51:56.070 --> 00:51:58.570
looking over here to the chair that they sit in.
844
00:51:59.489 --> 00:52:01.469
And on the other side of my desk is my chair.
845
00:52:01.550 --> 00:52:08.099
And they're usually struggling with something that, has afflicted them
846
00:52:08.199 --> 00:52:10.679
for decades. You know, like there was a person that
847
00:52:10.719 --> 00:52:13.289
came in not too long ago who has had this
848
00:52:13.329 --> 00:52:19.449
like two decade long addiction to pornography and it's, it's
849
00:52:19.550 --> 00:52:24.289
ruined many aspects of their life, right? They're just caught
850
00:52:24.349 --> 00:52:27.929
in that snare. And so we were talking about the
851
00:52:28.670 --> 00:52:35.769
guilt and the shame and the, habitual pattern that they
852
00:52:35.809 --> 00:52:42.190
have and how they feel so despondent and defeated and stuck, right?
853
00:52:42.889 --> 00:52:46.909
And they just go over. It's like a loop. And
854
00:52:46.949 --> 00:52:48.739
I said, you know, one of the paths that we
855
00:52:48.780 --> 00:52:51.579
can take in the spiritual life is to be very
856
00:52:51.960 --> 00:52:57.179
meticulous in looking at all of our brokenness and attempting
857
00:52:57.219 --> 00:52:59.940
to root it out. And that's what they're really stuck in.
858
00:53:01.099 --> 00:53:02.280
And I said, now you're going to have to trust
859
00:53:02.300 --> 00:53:04.199
me on this. But I said, you know, another path
860
00:53:04.219 --> 00:53:07.090
we can take is to start to focus on what
861
00:53:07.119 --> 00:53:12.750
is beautiful and true. And that may be a better
862
00:53:12.809 --> 00:53:16.829
path for most people. And the way to think of
863
00:53:16.889 --> 00:53:19.880
that in an image is imagine you have a glass
864
00:53:19.909 --> 00:53:22.760
of water that is just filled with a bunch of debris.
865
00:53:23.539 --> 00:53:25.619
And someone hands you a tweezers and says, get all
866
00:53:25.639 --> 00:53:28.239
the debris out of there. So that's that first path
867
00:53:28.260 --> 00:53:30.239
I was talking about. You can try to Okay, I
868
00:53:30.280 --> 00:53:33.480
think I got that one. I got that one. The
869
00:53:33.539 --> 00:53:36.039
second path is they say, well, there's a tap of
870
00:53:36.119 --> 00:53:38.360
clean water. You can go put that cup underneath there
871
00:53:38.380 --> 00:53:41.079
and run the water. And as you run that clean water,
872
00:53:41.139 --> 00:53:47.070
it just flushes out. Right? So the spiritual practices you
873
00:53:47.090 --> 00:53:53.050
were mentioning, these practical aspects, that's what that is. As
874
00:53:53.090 --> 00:53:58.619
we practice those things, it naturally just cleanses the human person.
875
00:53:59.750 --> 00:54:02.010
and rightly orders them. And I want to connect this
876
00:54:02.070 --> 00:54:04.650
back to the cross for a moment. When we think
877
00:54:04.690 --> 00:54:09.010
about the cross, okay, and we think about its connection
878
00:54:09.050 --> 00:54:14.340
to the idea of the atonement, okay, here's something that's
879
00:54:14.440 --> 00:54:22.619
really interesting to consider. As you probably know, the practice
880
00:54:23.260 --> 00:54:30.610
of what occurred in Israel over the atonement involved two goats. Right?
881
00:54:32.590 --> 00:54:38.230
One goat was a scapegoat. And all the sins of
882
00:54:38.269 --> 00:54:41.070
the people were put on that goat and it was
883
00:54:41.570 --> 00:54:47.840
sent into the wilderness. It bore the sin of the people. Right? Now,
884
00:54:47.889 --> 00:54:50.860
we certainly think of Christ that way. And we should. Right?
885
00:54:51.059 --> 00:54:54.860
Christ bears the sin of the world and he removes
886
00:54:54.920 --> 00:54:59.179
that sin from humanity. He bears it. Right? What happened
887
00:54:59.199 --> 00:55:04.650
to the second one? It was sacrificed. And again, we
888
00:55:04.670 --> 00:55:08.449
can think of Christ. And that blood was then taken
889
00:55:08.909 --> 00:55:13.150
and used to purify the temple and the vessels in
890
00:55:13.170 --> 00:55:16.349
the temple. So the other way of thinking about practicing
891
00:55:16.389 --> 00:55:19.889
righteousness is that as we do it, you know, in Christ,
892
00:55:20.070 --> 00:55:23.699
it bears the sin and moves it away. And then
893
00:55:23.719 --> 00:55:28.579
it purifies the human person. Notice that nowhere in there
894
00:55:28.619 --> 00:55:35.449
is that penal substitutionary idea. So even if you're going
895
00:55:35.469 --> 00:55:37.150
to relate it to that, you have to relate it
896
00:55:37.190 --> 00:55:41.250
to the actual biblical concepts, which is not happening in
897
00:55:41.289 --> 00:55:47.840
the West, which is dangerous. The last thing that I
898
00:55:47.880 --> 00:55:53.159
want to say is as we practice righteousness, or as
899
00:55:53.199 --> 00:55:59.320
we practice sin, either one of those, sin may, as
900
00:55:59.360 --> 00:56:04.440
you said, have this temporary... impact where we, oh, that
901
00:56:04.480 --> 00:56:08.550
was enjoyable or I like that. Okay. When we think
902
00:56:08.570 --> 00:56:15.230
about Christ and his crucifixion, when he rises from the dead,
903
00:56:16.409 --> 00:56:19.300
we note clearly in the scriptures and in the experience
904
00:56:19.340 --> 00:56:21.599
of the church that he does so with the imprint
905
00:56:21.679 --> 00:56:24.860
of the nails, right? In his hands and his feet
906
00:56:25.460 --> 00:56:28.860
and the mark of the spear in his side. And
907
00:56:28.900 --> 00:56:32.889
Thomas has asked to touch those things. But notice when
908
00:56:32.929 --> 00:56:37.010
we depict that in the iconography of the church, those
909
00:56:37.070 --> 00:56:43.280
wounds are not oozing. You see them, but they're not
910
00:56:44.039 --> 00:56:50.300
open wounds. So we note that Christ goes into this
911
00:56:50.519 --> 00:56:53.139
new reality of the resurrection with the mark of the nails,
912
00:56:53.679 --> 00:56:57.900
but these are now marks of victory. So when we
913
00:56:57.960 --> 00:57:02.420
think about righteousness and even the cost of it, Because
914
00:57:02.460 --> 00:57:06.750
you bear a cost. Remember that that cost in the
915
00:57:06.789 --> 00:57:13.250
resurrection is no longer a wound that is oozing. It's
916
00:57:13.269 --> 00:57:18.309
a symbol of victory. Now, sin... Now, think about sin.
917
00:57:19.090 --> 00:57:21.969
We could say the opposite is true. Sin has this
918
00:57:22.050 --> 00:57:26.719
temporary aspect of enjoyment. Someone drinks a few beers and
919
00:57:27.019 --> 00:57:30.639
hooks up and like, wow, that was a great night. Well,
920
00:57:30.739 --> 00:57:37.900
in the resurrection... The kingdom works backwards and forwards. So
921
00:57:37.940 --> 00:57:42.619
it will go back into that time and steal that
922
00:57:43.019 --> 00:57:49.949
temporary enjoyment from your soul. Just as it will go
923
00:57:50.010 --> 00:57:52.409
back and steal away that suffering and make it a
924
00:57:52.469 --> 00:57:56.650
symbol of victory. So we should be careful because even
925
00:57:56.809 --> 00:57:59.690
in practicing a little bit of sin and we get
926
00:57:59.730 --> 00:58:02.250
some enjoyment out of it, be aware that in the kingdom,
927
00:58:02.309 --> 00:58:06.239
that little bit will be taken away. And the only
928
00:58:06.280 --> 00:58:09.070
thing left will be those things that were righteous and
929
00:58:09.110 --> 00:58:12.619
good and true and beautiful. The rest gets burned up.
930
00:58:13.900 --> 00:58:17.260
You don't need to keep it. You're not in hell going, yeah,
931
00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:19.059
but I had a good time that one night.
932
00:58:20.420 --> 00:58:25.010
Well, you know, I had a, you know, it's, I
933
00:58:25.070 --> 00:58:29.210
loved him. But the older that I get and the
934
00:58:29.269 --> 00:58:31.710
deeper into theology, I think the reason that I like
935
00:58:31.829 --> 00:58:40.960
this particular professor that I had is he whitewashed a
936
00:58:41.019 --> 00:58:44.380
lot of bad practices. And I don't think that he
937
00:58:44.500 --> 00:58:51.570
did so intentionally. I think his motives were pure, but
938
00:58:52.710 --> 00:58:54.860
they were wrong. And the older I get, I look
939
00:58:54.900 --> 00:58:59.300
back and I thought, wow, I was in my early
940
00:58:59.679 --> 00:59:01.699
20s and he was telling me what my early 20s
941
00:59:01.739 --> 00:59:05.769
brain wanted to hear, but it wasn't true. And it's
942
00:59:05.829 --> 00:59:09.659
that whole thing you know about how you know the
943
00:59:09.699 --> 00:59:11.780
band in hell you know they may be in hell
944
00:59:11.820 --> 00:59:14.400
but that band's gonna rock meaning that all the cool
945
00:59:14.440 --> 00:59:18.050
bands are in hell down there and and the old
946
00:59:18.090 --> 00:59:19.449
like i said the older i get the more i
947
00:59:19.449 --> 00:59:23.090
think that's less and less funny and actually right before
948
00:59:24.369 --> 00:59:27.230
we jumped on i was sitting there looking at my
949
00:59:27.269 --> 00:59:29.579
phone and i think it was billy corgan from the
950
00:59:29.619 --> 00:59:33.679
smashing pumpkins was saying that for most people in the
951
00:59:33.739 --> 00:59:37.860
music industry and especially in rock, God is the third rail.
952
00:59:38.579 --> 00:59:43.849
You just don't go there. But I think that when
953
00:59:43.889 --> 00:59:47.789
you do, and if you do it well, it reaches people.
954
00:59:48.309 --> 00:59:51.639
It's empowering, especially more now than ever. I've said this
955
00:59:51.659 --> 00:59:53.769
a million times on this podcast because I believe it.
956
00:59:54.599 --> 00:59:56.880
And I think that it's one of the reasons that
957
00:59:56.920 --> 01:00:00.409
your church is growing, that my church is growing, that
958
01:00:00.530 --> 01:00:04.670
people are coming to faith, is when anything goes, and
959
01:00:04.710 --> 01:00:07.349
this is what I was experiencing on the subway, because
960
01:00:07.389 --> 01:00:12.570
I was really, I had it down to a philosophy.
961
01:00:12.590 --> 01:00:15.400
I mean, I was living as a libertine, where, hey,
962
01:00:16.280 --> 01:00:21.179
nothing matters, anything goes. When anything goes, and this is
963
01:00:21.219 --> 01:00:23.900
what I started to see, well, there's no limit. It
964
01:00:23.940 --> 01:00:26.659
can only just keep getting stranger and stranger. It's like
965
01:00:26.860 --> 01:00:30.429
you're drifting off into orbit, And you just keep going.
966
01:00:30.949 --> 01:00:32.869
And unless you put a stop to it, it's just
967
01:00:32.909 --> 01:00:38.409
going to keep doing that. And so I thought I
968
01:00:38.449 --> 01:00:41.070
have to turn things around here. Sorry, when you typed,
969
01:00:41.110 --> 01:00:42.610
I lost my frame of thought.
970
01:00:43.590 --> 01:00:45.670
Well, I was typing down where you were going, this
971
01:00:45.750 --> 01:00:49.510
idea of being a libertine and where that leads. You know, St.
972
01:00:49.530 --> 01:00:52.230
Paul says something very similar, right, to what you're saying
973
01:00:52.289 --> 01:00:54.429
when he talks in Corinthians about he can do whatever
974
01:00:54.449 --> 01:00:57.739
he wants, but not all things are profitable, right? And
975
01:00:57.760 --> 01:01:00.920
the human condition, you know, as you've noticed as you've
976
01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:03.360
gotten older, when you purify your will, you notice that's
977
01:01:03.380 --> 01:01:06.329
so true. Prior to it, you know, when you're living
978
01:01:06.670 --> 01:01:10.210
from the outside in, in this newer book that I'm
979
01:01:10.230 --> 01:01:13.949
working on, the first chapter is going to be on humility. Hey.
980
01:01:14.769 --> 01:01:17.150
And be careful. As soon as you start talking about it,
981
01:01:17.150 --> 01:01:17.650
you lose it.
982
01:01:17.869 --> 01:01:21.280
I know. Well, I'm talking about it, not in me.
983
01:01:21.300 --> 01:01:22.340
No, no, no.
984
01:01:23.070 --> 01:01:26.449
But, you know, its opposite is often described as pride, right?
985
01:01:26.489 --> 01:01:29.530
And pride impacts us in many ways. But the three
986
01:01:29.570 --> 01:01:32.849
main ways is it convinces us that we're right and
987
01:01:32.869 --> 01:01:36.050
others are wrong. It makes us place ourselves first, you know,
988
01:01:36.090 --> 01:01:38.539
so we have to orient itself around us. And the
989
01:01:38.579 --> 01:01:41.679
third way, which is, you know, again, saints say this,
990
01:01:41.860 --> 01:01:44.940
and it might not be as intuitive to us, is pleasure.
991
01:01:46.760 --> 01:01:49.079
I want what I want whenever I want it. I
992
01:01:49.099 --> 01:01:50.960
want to get what I want to get whenever I
993
01:01:51.019 --> 01:01:55.789
can get it. And it's corrosive because it leads to
994
01:01:55.849 --> 01:01:59.179
us living from the outside in. And that's what you
995
01:01:59.199 --> 01:02:03.159
were doing as a libertine, right? You know, whatever was
996
01:02:03.579 --> 01:02:06.400
stimulating you from the outside, if it pleasured that part
997
01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:14.239
of your brain, it was good, right? Yeah. But you
998
01:02:14.260 --> 01:02:17.610
can't live outside in for very long without it completely
999
01:02:17.670 --> 01:02:20.869
corroding who you are, right?
1000
01:02:20.949 --> 01:02:21.110
Yeah.
1001
01:02:21.780 --> 01:02:23.659
So you either double down on it or you have
1002
01:02:23.699 --> 01:02:25.460
that moment where you're on the subway and you go,
1003
01:02:26.179 --> 01:02:28.489
I can't live like this anymore. No.
1004
01:02:28.949 --> 01:02:31.610
And thank God I don't. And that's not to say
1005
01:02:31.670 --> 01:02:37.510
that I live a perfect life. But when I look back, man,
1006
01:02:38.309 --> 01:02:40.679
it's very different. And I thank God, you know, my kids,
1007
01:02:40.840 --> 01:02:42.179
if they were here right now and I put them
1008
01:02:42.219 --> 01:02:44.119
on the mic, I say, what did I do today?
1009
01:02:44.139 --> 01:02:47.840
I said, you thank God. What for? For me. I mean,
1010
01:02:47.880 --> 01:02:50.000
I thank God for them and the path that he's
1011
01:02:50.059 --> 01:02:51.579
put me on and to be able to talk to
1012
01:02:51.619 --> 01:02:55.019
people like you about nothing that I wanted to, by
1013
01:02:55.059 --> 01:02:55.320
the way.
1014
01:02:56.119 --> 01:02:57.139
Yeah, back in the day.
1015
01:02:57.179 --> 01:02:59.900
I'm going to say it right now. I'm inviting you
1016
01:02:59.960 --> 01:03:02.739
back so I can actually get to what I wanted
1017
01:03:02.780 --> 01:03:03.380
to talk to you about.
1018
01:03:03.460 --> 01:03:04.300
Happy to come back.
1019
01:03:04.860 --> 01:03:08.820
But like I said, I mean, I do a lot
1020
01:03:08.840 --> 01:03:11.159
of prep for these conversations because I do think that
1021
01:03:11.179 --> 01:03:14.329
it's important. But I also think it's important to lean
1022
01:03:14.409 --> 01:03:17.750
in to what's going on and what, you know, To
1023
01:03:17.809 --> 01:03:20.849
listen and for some reason, well, I think the reason
1024
01:03:20.889 --> 01:03:22.750
is because I can't stop thinking about it and I
1025
01:03:22.789 --> 01:03:24.989
respect you so much and I respect you so much
1026
01:03:25.030 --> 01:03:33.960
because of the understanding of our faith being one of practice.
1027
01:03:34.840 --> 01:03:36.800
And so I couldn't get sin out of my mind.
1028
01:03:37.619 --> 01:03:39.559
And so I'll ask you a couple more questions real
1029
01:03:39.679 --> 01:03:43.119
quick because it pertains to what you were talking about earlier.
1030
01:03:43.139 --> 01:03:44.780
You're sitting in your office and you said you've heard
1031
01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:48.929
over 10,000 confessions. that is a foreign practice for so
1032
01:03:48.989 --> 01:03:51.559
many and i think it's even foreign for people who
1033
01:03:51.780 --> 01:03:56.420
are familiar with the word because they immediately go to
1034
01:03:57.119 --> 01:03:59.780
a movie that they've seen where you get into a
1035
01:03:59.840 --> 01:04:03.909
booth and that is the idea of confession that they
1036
01:04:04.349 --> 01:04:09.989
understand what is confession and why is it necessary you
1037
01:04:10.010 --> 01:04:11.829
know i mean talking about sin because you go to
1038
01:04:11.889 --> 01:04:13.130
confess your sins.
1039
01:04:13.070 --> 01:04:17.679
You know We should, as Christians, spend some time every
1040
01:04:17.719 --> 01:04:23.260
day confessing. I mean, there isn't a service really in
1041
01:04:23.300 --> 01:04:25.860
the church where we don't read that great psalm of
1042
01:04:25.929 --> 01:04:30.869
repentance by King David. It's in every service, you know,
1043
01:04:30.929 --> 01:04:35.230
except for a few. So that tells you, you know,
1044
01:04:35.269 --> 01:04:38.929
that the lived experience of Christians has been since the
1045
01:04:38.989 --> 01:04:42.309
time of the apostles to spend time every day confessing
1046
01:04:42.329 --> 01:04:46.349
our sins. And if you look at any prayer manual
1047
01:04:46.389 --> 01:04:49.309
of the church, you know, that sort of gives a
1048
01:04:49.389 --> 01:04:53.070
framework for how to spend our time in prayer, there's
1049
01:04:53.230 --> 01:04:58.369
always an aspect of repentance and confession, an examination of
1050
01:04:58.429 --> 01:05:01.179
my conscience, of my day, of my actions, of my
1051
01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:06.239
missed actions, of my words and deeds, and to speak
1052
01:05:06.300 --> 01:05:10.360
before God. about them to ask his mercy and forgiveness.
1053
01:05:10.639 --> 01:05:14.360
So I don't want anybody who hears the word confession
1054
01:05:14.420 --> 01:05:16.980
to limit it to, well, I go and I sit
1055
01:05:17.019 --> 01:05:20.500
with priests and I speak to him about my sins
1056
01:05:20.559 --> 01:05:25.480
before God. Every day you should be confessing and repenting.
1057
01:05:25.539 --> 01:05:30.510
That's a daily thing. But, you know, one of the
1058
01:05:30.550 --> 01:05:33.429
ways maybe to understand this is I'm sure you've injured
1059
01:05:33.469 --> 01:05:36.860
yourself in life and probably more so when you were younger.
1060
01:05:37.010 --> 01:05:38.579
You know, I played a lot of sports. I was
1061
01:05:38.619 --> 01:05:40.599
outside a lot and I did things that I should
1062
01:05:40.619 --> 01:05:44.000
have seen a doctor for and I didn't. Like I
1063
01:05:44.079 --> 01:05:48.519
broke my toe playing competitive volleyball in college, but I
1064
01:05:48.559 --> 01:05:52.030
didn't want to miss the tournament. So I didn't do
1065
01:05:52.050 --> 01:05:54.530
anything about it. And then it was end of the
1066
01:05:54.550 --> 01:05:56.550
school year and it was summer and there was beach
1067
01:05:56.570 --> 01:05:58.809
volleyball and I didn't want to stop playing. So I
1068
01:05:58.829 --> 01:06:02.429
just didn't. And now I'm 57 and that toe is
1069
01:06:02.489 --> 01:06:04.420
sore arthritic because I never done with it.
1070
01:06:06.469 --> 01:06:09.170
So sometimes I've got a surgery coming up in a
1071
01:06:09.210 --> 01:06:12.550
couple of months to fix an injury that happened 25
1072
01:06:12.550 --> 01:06:12.929
years ago.
1073
01:06:13.030 --> 01:06:17.360
Yeah, exactly. Right. So there are some things that disfigure
1074
01:06:17.440 --> 01:06:20.539
our souls that we can't attend to on our own.
1075
01:06:22.539 --> 01:06:25.780
You know, like you get a paper cut. Yeah, you
1076
01:06:25.820 --> 01:06:28.289
know how to deal with that. But you sever a
1077
01:06:29.010 --> 01:06:32.150
vein or an artery. You probably need to go to
1078
01:06:32.170 --> 01:06:35.409
the ER sometimes. So confession stands as one of those
1079
01:06:35.469 --> 01:06:40.670
places where we can go and there's greater skill than
1080
01:06:40.690 --> 01:06:45.170
we possess ourselves. And there's greater care than we can
1081
01:06:45.210 --> 01:06:48.130
muster on our own. And so that's in the form
1082
01:06:48.449 --> 01:06:52.829
of the church represented by the priest who sits alongside
1083
01:06:52.869 --> 01:06:54.869
of us. And, you know, all that imagery that you mentioned,
1084
01:06:54.889 --> 01:06:56.820
like in the movies and stuff that people are used to.
1085
01:06:56.840 --> 01:07:00.699
I tell a story in the book about how my neighbor,
1086
01:07:00.760 --> 01:07:05.349
who is obviously a very angry ex-Catholic, approached me while
1087
01:07:05.389 --> 01:07:07.710
my wife and I were watching a sunset and knowing
1088
01:07:07.750 --> 01:07:12.329
I was a priest just went, as my kids say,
1089
01:07:12.690 --> 01:07:16.800
he crashed out. And he was like, I think confessing
1090
01:07:16.840 --> 01:07:19.059
to a priest is the stupidest thing in the world.
1091
01:07:19.760 --> 01:07:22.199
Like there's no need for that. And I was like, yeah,
1092
01:07:22.239 --> 01:07:25.179
you can just confess your sins to God. You know,
1093
01:07:25.260 --> 01:07:27.559
I knew he wasn't in the mood for a conversation,
1094
01:07:27.579 --> 01:07:29.960
so I wasn't going to have one. But, you know,
1095
01:07:30.019 --> 01:07:32.280
I acknowledged the truth in his statement that, yeah, you
1096
01:07:32.500 --> 01:07:35.559
can just confess your sins to God. But sometimes you
1097
01:07:35.639 --> 01:07:40.400
need the help of another person. And that person should
1098
01:07:40.420 --> 01:07:44.510
be skilled and should have some grace given by virtue
1099
01:07:44.530 --> 01:07:47.510
of their ordination. And certainly we see within the scriptures
1100
01:07:47.610 --> 01:07:52.730
that Christ himself encouraged it and instituted it in the
1101
01:07:52.750 --> 01:07:55.969
Gospel of John when he says the apostles received the
1102
01:07:55.989 --> 01:07:58.320
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they
1103
01:07:58.360 --> 01:08:01.739
are forgiven. He gives them authority, which is then passed
1104
01:08:01.840 --> 01:08:04.900
on in the church. So confession, if we can move
1105
01:08:05.010 --> 01:08:08.409
past the stereotypes, we start to realize this is one
1106
01:08:08.429 --> 01:08:11.989
of the great tools of the church. And once you
1107
01:08:12.170 --> 01:08:14.510
know that, and once you participate in it, you're like,
1108
01:08:15.150 --> 01:08:20.270
I love this. This is one of the great resources
1109
01:08:20.369 --> 01:08:25.689
I have. And some important things to say about that are,
1110
01:08:25.989 --> 01:08:32.310
you know, The priest himself goes to confession. And the
1111
01:08:32.350 --> 01:08:36.090
priest himself does not, you know, the formulation of the
1112
01:08:36.210 --> 01:08:39.979
prayer within confession, and I'm paraphrasing, is a sinful soul,
1113
01:08:40.640 --> 01:08:44.619
an unworthy priest, have no right or ability or authority
1114
01:08:44.659 --> 01:08:48.359
to forgive your sins, but trusting in the words of Christ, right?
1115
01:08:48.760 --> 01:08:51.439
So it's Christ who forgives, but it's the priest who's
1116
01:08:51.479 --> 01:08:56.210
a vehicle, you know, for the representation of Christ. And
1117
01:08:56.710 --> 01:09:01.159
as they sit within that space with us, they often have,
1118
01:09:01.640 --> 01:09:05.539
and you've probably experienced this, the ability to diagnose and
1119
01:09:05.579 --> 01:09:10.109
then prescribe. So someone might say, well, this is the sin,
1120
01:09:10.149 --> 01:09:11.869
but they don't really know what it's about. And the
1121
01:09:11.909 --> 01:09:15.109
priest can say, well, actually, here's what's going on. And
1122
01:09:15.130 --> 01:09:20.810
they're like, you're totally right. And then Here's the remedy.
1123
01:09:21.390 --> 01:09:25.430
Here's the therapy. Here's the medicine to apply to that wound.
1124
01:09:26.149 --> 01:09:30.930
And again, you know, it's not because priests are sitting
1125
01:09:30.970 --> 01:09:32.680
around going, I can't wait for people to come in
1126
01:09:32.689 --> 01:09:37.119
and tell me all their dirty little secrets. That's the
1127
01:09:37.159 --> 01:09:39.859
first thing from the truth. What a priest is there
1128
01:09:39.880 --> 01:09:44.359
to do is help facilitate that relationship with Christ. And
1129
01:09:44.479 --> 01:09:47.979
so confession is this great tool. As an old priest
1130
01:09:48.060 --> 01:09:49.500
once told me, you know, you can do more in
1131
01:09:49.579 --> 01:09:51.739
one confession than you'll ever do in a hundred homilies.
1132
01:09:54.279 --> 01:09:58.300
And it's true. You can see someone's life completely pivot
1133
01:09:58.760 --> 01:10:02.800
in that 15 minute confession and nothing else touched the sin.
1134
01:10:03.619 --> 01:10:06.760
Nothing else got to them prior to that.
1135
01:10:08.020 --> 01:10:10.439
Well, and it's one of those things. I mean, my
1136
01:10:10.520 --> 01:10:15.039
wife loves it. And to the point where she's just,
1137
01:10:15.590 --> 01:10:18.310
Because she forgets. She just has it on a permanent,
1138
01:10:18.760 --> 01:10:23.100
you know, every X amount of days, weeks, months, she
1139
01:10:23.140 --> 01:10:26.119
goes in. And she has a standing. And if she
1140
01:10:26.159 --> 01:10:27.960
feels like she needs to go before that, she'll make
1141
01:10:28.020 --> 01:10:31.100
it before an appointment. But it's that thing where you're
1142
01:10:31.180 --> 01:10:35.640
so nervous going in. Because, you know, whatever. And you
1143
01:10:35.800 --> 01:10:41.430
always feel completely like you're walking on air when you leave.
1144
01:10:41.449 --> 01:10:42.210
That's so true.
1145
01:10:42.229 --> 01:10:45.130
There's a grace. Why was I afraid of that?
1146
01:10:45.550 --> 01:10:45.770
Yeah.
1147
01:10:46.989 --> 01:10:50.329
People think that you're just waiting, the priest who's waiting
1148
01:10:50.350 --> 01:10:54.149
to hear these confessions. Ah, you know, I'm going to
1149
01:10:54.189 --> 01:10:56.449
judge them for this or that. When you actually sit
1150
01:10:56.470 --> 01:10:57.970
there and you feel, wow.
1151
01:10:58.069 --> 01:10:58.449
Upset.
1152
01:10:58.869 --> 01:11:02.180
Think about how the guts it took to say that.
1153
01:11:02.319 --> 01:11:05.920
The courage, the humility, the vulnerability.
1154
01:11:05.939 --> 01:11:08.439
Yeah. The grace.
1155
01:11:09.100 --> 01:11:12.300
It's so beautiful and it's beautiful to experience that with
1156
01:11:12.340 --> 01:11:16.640
your spiritual father. And it gets to, I mean, all
1157
01:11:16.659 --> 01:11:18.119
of this that we've been talking about when it comes
1158
01:11:18.140 --> 01:11:22.310
to sin and salvation and the church and confession, it's
1159
01:11:22.329 --> 01:11:24.689
a conception of health. And it's a conception of the
1160
01:11:24.770 --> 01:11:28.149
church as a hospital where you get better, where you
1161
01:11:28.189 --> 01:11:33.239
restore that right relationship, where we become fully human. And
1162
01:11:33.300 --> 01:11:35.680
one of my favorite things that I've read, it's not
1163
01:11:35.779 --> 01:11:39.220
unique to you, but you wrote about it in another
1164
01:11:39.260 --> 01:11:43.090
book that you wrote called Recovering the Great Commission. Mm-hmm.
1165
01:11:44.100 --> 01:11:46.380
And I want you to tell me reclaiming.
1166
01:11:46.739 --> 01:11:46.939
Yeah.
1167
01:11:47.520 --> 01:11:51.029
I want you to tell the story so that whenever
1168
01:11:51.210 --> 01:11:53.850
I want to, I just find this clip and I say,
1169
01:11:53.890 --> 01:11:59.890
listen to this about the life saving station. Oh, because
1170
01:11:59.949 --> 01:12:02.930
it's so dangerous. Now, I've been blessed to be able
1171
01:12:02.949 --> 01:12:04.890
to be on the parish council. And so I'm inside
1172
01:12:05.310 --> 01:12:09.369
and I see we have to keep first things first things.
1173
01:12:09.390 --> 01:12:09.949
Mm hmm.
1174
01:12:11.199 --> 01:12:15.689
We have a fiduciary responsibility, blah, blah, blah. But at
1175
01:12:15.770 --> 01:12:19.550
the end of the day, this is a life-saving station.
1176
01:12:19.949 --> 01:12:21.189
If you could tell that story.
1177
01:12:21.869 --> 01:12:24.390
Well, you know, it's a parable that was written in
1178
01:12:24.409 --> 01:12:27.109
the 50s by a Protestant pastor that he used in
1179
01:12:27.180 --> 01:12:30.539
a homily. And it talks about, you know, there was
1180
01:12:30.579 --> 01:12:34.319
this little life-saving station on the coast where shipwrecks were
1181
01:12:34.399 --> 01:12:39.119
frequent and the people that manned the station were, you know,
1182
01:12:39.199 --> 01:12:43.409
diligent and kept watch over these turbulent shoals and seas.
1183
01:12:43.590 --> 01:12:45.789
And whenever there was a wreck, which was frequent, they
1184
01:12:45.829 --> 01:12:48.430
would risk life and limb to go out and rescue
1185
01:12:48.630 --> 01:12:51.609
those who had been shipwrecked. And they'd save them from
1186
01:12:51.840 --> 01:12:55.260
watery grave. They'd bring them into their little shack and
1187
01:12:55.279 --> 01:12:58.500
a little potbelly stove, and they'd have a little hot
1188
01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:02.359
tea and some warm broth for them to recover. And eventually,
1189
01:13:02.460 --> 01:13:05.539
people who kind of got rescued by these people thought,
1190
01:13:06.279 --> 01:13:08.020
you know, gosh, on Thanksgiving, I want to kind of
1191
01:13:08.060 --> 01:13:11.279
like fix up this shack a little bit. know, I mean,
1192
01:13:11.819 --> 01:13:16.000
these rickety walls and old furniture and all they've got
1193
01:13:16.060 --> 01:13:18.640
is kind of watery soup. Let's, let's do something a
1194
01:13:18.649 --> 01:13:21.409
little more ornate. And so they kind of fixed up
1195
01:13:21.470 --> 01:13:24.810
the station and pretty soon the station itself, like its
1196
01:13:25.029 --> 01:13:29.310
accoutrements and its fixtures became pretty important and they got
1197
01:13:29.369 --> 01:13:32.239
nicer and nicer stuff. And then pretty soon it was
1198
01:13:32.340 --> 01:13:36.000
really just like an homage. Like there was sort of like, yeah,
1199
01:13:36.020 --> 01:13:38.840
this used to be a lifesaving station. But we don't
1200
01:13:38.880 --> 01:13:41.140
really do that anymore because we don't want these wet,
1201
01:13:41.760 --> 01:13:44.720
bedraggled people coming in and ruining the furniture and the
1202
01:13:44.779 --> 01:13:48.619
nice carpets we've put in and the varnished floors. And
1203
01:13:49.199 --> 01:13:53.630
pretty soon they farmed out life-saving to another group. And
1204
01:13:53.649 --> 01:13:55.949
then that group kind of went down the coast and
1205
01:13:56.729 --> 01:14:00.869
they erected a small little shack. And they began to
1206
01:14:01.189 --> 01:14:05.260
try to save those poor souls that were in risk
1207
01:14:05.300 --> 01:14:08.829
of dying in the seas. And this continued. you know,
1208
01:14:08.850 --> 01:14:12.470
eventually that little life-saving station became sort of a country
1209
01:14:12.529 --> 01:14:14.869
club and on it goes. And if you go to
1210
01:14:14.890 --> 01:14:18.159
the seacoast today, you'll find a number of these beautiful clubs.
1211
01:14:18.180 --> 01:14:21.659
They've got like, you know, the old varnished life-saving raft
1212
01:14:21.760 --> 01:14:23.720
up on the wall, but nobody goes out to save
1213
01:14:23.779 --> 01:14:29.500
anybody and people are perishing. And, you know, he drafted
1214
01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:34.710
that parable to remind his own congregation of the sure
1215
01:14:34.770 --> 01:14:38.449
danger that exists that we eventually just have the trappings
1216
01:14:39.310 --> 01:14:42.090
of soul saving, but we don't actually do the work
1217
01:14:42.130 --> 01:14:44.829
of soul saving. And so I wanted to tell the
1218
01:14:44.850 --> 01:14:47.380
story in that book because, you know, one of the
1219
01:14:47.420 --> 01:14:50.279
principles that I had for the idea of reclaiming the
1220
01:14:50.319 --> 01:14:54.619
great commission was the, the sort of pillar of remember
1221
01:14:54.680 --> 01:15:00.779
your life saving mission, that what we're doing is saving lives,
1222
01:15:01.539 --> 01:15:06.729
saving souls, And everything we do, that's our first thing.
1223
01:15:06.789 --> 01:15:10.189
Like all the stuff we've talked about, you know, it's like, okay,
1224
01:15:10.210 --> 01:15:12.970
it's nice. Maybe some interesting things that, you know, you've
1225
01:15:12.989 --> 01:15:17.220
said and I said, whatever. Chuck that all out if
1226
01:15:17.340 --> 01:15:21.319
it doesn't lead towards the saving of the soul, right?
1227
01:15:21.460 --> 01:15:24.659
Which is more precious and more valuable than the entire world,
1228
01:15:25.119 --> 01:15:28.949
the Lord tells us, right? So that's our job, right?
1229
01:15:28.970 --> 01:15:32.229
To constantly be vigilant towards that role that we have.
1230
01:15:34.210 --> 01:15:36.529
You know, we don't need to, as you mentioned, you know,
1231
01:15:36.550 --> 01:15:38.989
you've been on the parish council and sometimes we lose
1232
01:15:39.050 --> 01:15:44.680
sight of the main thing, right? That happens in any organization, right?
1233
01:15:45.380 --> 01:15:48.000
Where you start to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic,
1234
01:15:49.340 --> 01:15:49.720
you know?
1235
01:15:50.159 --> 01:15:55.060
And you lose faith and you apply business principles, although
1236
01:15:55.079 --> 01:15:58.699
they're necessary evil, but this is a church. We must
1237
01:15:58.760 --> 01:16:00.100
have faith, you know?
1238
01:16:00.760 --> 01:16:03.300
Yeah, so, you know, I think that's why you mentioned
1239
01:16:03.319 --> 01:16:09.939
the glow of the monastics because they are bare-knuckled about salvation.
1240
01:16:11.939 --> 01:16:15.409
They do not lose sight of that. Right? They do
1241
01:16:15.449 --> 01:16:18.970
not compromise it. Right? That's why sometimes it can be
1242
01:16:19.010 --> 01:16:22.510
terrifying to be in a monastic setting because you're like,
1243
01:16:23.050 --> 01:16:28.289
these people are not, there's no niceties. Like, you know,
1244
01:16:28.510 --> 01:16:29.770
as one monk came up to me in the middle
1245
01:16:29.800 --> 01:16:32.020
of the night and said one day, Father Evan, do
1246
01:16:32.039 --> 01:16:34.539
you want to know why you make no progress, spiritually speaking?
1247
01:16:35.300 --> 01:16:38.100
I didn't ask him. I was just walking from the
1248
01:16:38.140 --> 01:16:40.600
cathedral to my little cell that I was staying at.
1249
01:16:41.380 --> 01:16:45.010
And so I thought, well, yeah, yeah. Why don't I
1250
01:16:45.050 --> 01:16:47.390
make any spiritual progress? He looked me right in the eye.
1251
01:16:47.430 --> 01:16:50.430
He says, you're neither humble nor obedient. And he walked away.
1252
01:16:51.810 --> 01:16:54.310
And I'm walking to my little room thinking, How dare you?
1253
01:16:54.439 --> 01:16:55.279
Does he know who I am?
1254
01:16:56.180 --> 01:16:56.619
I'm humble.
1255
01:16:56.680 --> 01:17:01.970
I'm obedient. But he saw it. And he knew real
1256
01:17:02.010 --> 01:17:07.270
love ensures that that man doesn't end up shipwrecked. Like St.
1257
01:17:07.289 --> 01:17:09.770
Paul talking to the church in Corinth, right? And so
1258
01:17:10.189 --> 01:17:12.310
he wasn't going to sugarcoat it. He knew I was
1259
01:17:12.369 --> 01:17:15.159
in risk of drowning. So you need to be humble
1260
01:17:15.199 --> 01:17:19.760
and obedient. Period. Right? So you're right. You know, that
1261
01:17:19.840 --> 01:17:22.920
parable of the life-saving station. And I recount the whole thing.
1262
01:17:24.649 --> 01:17:27.149
in the book, if people are looking for that story,
1263
01:17:27.470 --> 01:17:29.930
you can look it up on Google as the parable
1264
01:17:29.949 --> 01:17:33.470
of the life-saving station and you'll find it and you'll
1265
01:17:33.489 --> 01:17:36.470
get the whole text. But what an important thing to remember,
1266
01:17:36.770 --> 01:17:38.869
you know, as we're closing out, like this is about
1267
01:17:39.729 --> 01:17:42.090
the saving of souls. Amen.
1268
01:17:42.590 --> 01:17:46.100
And what that means, I mean, because you talk about
1269
01:17:46.109 --> 01:17:49.800
the life-saving station and I think that even the parable
1270
01:17:51.140 --> 01:17:54.260
can be multifaceted in the sense of When you fail
1271
01:17:54.300 --> 01:17:57.800
to remember that the church is a hospital for sick
1272
01:17:57.859 --> 01:18:02.199
people and not a courtroom, then you've stopped being a
1273
01:18:02.260 --> 01:18:03.520
life-saving station.
1274
01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:05.520
Yeah. You're adjudicating.
1275
01:18:06.300 --> 01:18:07.939
And I think that that is the answer to a
1276
01:18:08.000 --> 01:18:08.850
lot that ails us.
1277
01:18:09.399 --> 01:18:10.369
Yeah, for sure.
1278
01:18:10.970 --> 01:18:13.350
Father, I've got two more quick questions for you, if
1279
01:18:13.390 --> 01:18:15.350
you can bear with me, because this is Commitment to
1280
01:18:15.369 --> 01:18:16.869
Reality and I do have a shtick.
1281
01:18:17.470 --> 01:18:17.710
Okay.
1282
01:18:19.710 --> 01:18:22.409
Where are we most eager in our modern world to
1283
01:18:22.470 --> 01:18:23.250
ignore reality?
1284
01:18:25.619 --> 01:18:31.289
I think that's a great question. I think that we
1285
01:18:31.369 --> 01:18:37.270
are completely sold on pleasure. That's where I think that
1286
01:18:37.350 --> 01:18:39.470
third aspect of where pride hits us. I want what
1287
01:18:39.489 --> 01:18:42.850
I want whenever I want it. We are now arranging
1288
01:18:42.949 --> 01:18:47.390
our worlds around the idea of pleasure. And I talk
1289
01:18:47.430 --> 01:18:50.399
a little about this in my most recent book in
1290
01:18:50.420 --> 01:18:56.100
the section on time. Our sole occupation almost is distraction
1291
01:18:56.819 --> 01:19:01.239
and fragmentation. So you start thinking about it. Think about
1292
01:19:01.310 --> 01:19:05.850
some of the emerging practices and industries of our country. Pornography,
1293
01:19:07.189 --> 01:19:09.949
social media, online gambling.
1294
01:19:10.340 --> 01:19:12.619
Gambling, gambling, gambling is.
1295
01:19:13.199 --> 01:19:17.239
It's like, everything's about gambling. Gaming, like just, let's just
1296
01:19:17.279 --> 01:19:20.159
get on and play whatever game it is for eight hours.
1297
01:19:20.420 --> 01:19:23.140
Weed is another one, right? Let's just legalize all the
1298
01:19:23.180 --> 01:19:26.800
drugs so that all, you know, young men, young women
1299
01:19:26.819 --> 01:19:29.439
constantly in my office come in and they are, especially
1300
01:19:29.460 --> 01:19:31.199
when they're coming in from the world. And even those
1301
01:19:31.239 --> 01:19:34.020
that grew up in the church now, that's all they've
1302
01:19:34.060 --> 01:19:38.460
spent the last decade doing is pleasuring themselves. And the
1303
01:19:38.600 --> 01:19:40.770
limbic economy, I don't know if you've heard that phrase,
1304
01:19:42.289 --> 01:19:46.029
the limbic system, which is just a pleasure center. So
1305
01:19:46.569 --> 01:19:50.970
I think that's one of the major areas that we're
1306
01:19:50.989 --> 01:19:55.199
just not facing reality. We're turning ourselves loose to that
1307
01:19:55.319 --> 01:20:01.949
pleasure desire, and it is destroying us. It's destroying us.
1308
01:20:02.590 --> 01:20:05.289
Amen. I could not agree with you more. I spent
1309
01:20:05.329 --> 01:20:07.510
some time this morning writing about just that thing, especially
1310
01:20:07.550 --> 01:20:10.050
when it comes to gambling, because I love sports so much.
1311
01:20:10.090 --> 01:20:13.090
I use sports analogies all the time. And I thought,
1312
01:20:13.630 --> 01:20:19.130
you know what? We live in a capitalist country. Here's
1313
01:20:19.149 --> 01:20:22.090
what needs to happen. Somebody needs to see that there's
1314
01:20:22.149 --> 01:20:24.630
riches and niches and that a niche is people who
1315
01:20:24.689 --> 01:20:27.680
want just sports without gambling.
1316
01:20:27.689 --> 01:20:28.560
Yeah, with all of that.
1317
01:20:29.300 --> 01:20:33.789
Without constantly seeing the ads. my dad and I'm sitting
1318
01:20:33.810 --> 01:20:36.409
here watching sports with my son. He's seeing all of
1319
01:20:36.449 --> 01:20:39.449
the ads come up and you normalize it. And it
1320
01:20:39.529 --> 01:20:42.649
is the proverbial lobster in a pot where you think, ah,
1321
01:20:42.770 --> 01:20:45.220
it's just 50 bucks here. And that's how they get you.
1322
01:20:45.239 --> 01:20:46.500
The first hit is always free.
1323
01:20:46.920 --> 01:20:47.159
Right.
1324
01:20:47.899 --> 01:20:52.060
And then the claws are in. And then, I mean,
1325
01:20:52.079 --> 01:20:54.520
I was in Vegas a couple of years ago with
1326
01:20:54.560 --> 01:20:56.159
my wife for a conference. She was at, and we
1327
01:20:56.199 --> 01:21:00.590
went and it's very interesting what happened to Vegas. It
1328
01:21:00.689 --> 01:21:03.779
did not feel Well, this is a little bit different
1329
01:21:03.800 --> 01:21:06.399
than what I was going to say, but it still is.
1330
01:21:06.479 --> 01:21:10.479
It's seedy underbelly, but it felt more family friendly. It
1331
01:21:10.500 --> 01:21:13.939
felt like the focus was on entertainment and food. And
1332
01:21:14.079 --> 01:21:17.619
why is that? It's because the rest of the country
1333
01:21:17.659 --> 01:21:21.819
has become just like Vegas. So they have to diversify
1334
01:21:22.090 --> 01:21:24.210
their vice portfolio.
1335
01:21:24.229 --> 01:21:25.489
You can gamble anywhere.
1336
01:21:25.510 --> 01:21:27.869
You can gamble anywhere. So it felt like, wow, this
1337
01:21:27.909 --> 01:21:31.210
isn't as bad. But at the same time, I remember
1338
01:21:31.250 --> 01:21:34.489
we were eating. And somebody came up and just started
1339
01:21:34.529 --> 01:21:38.039
talking to us. And they were talking about how many
1340
01:21:38.180 --> 01:21:41.800
lives this city has destroyed. You see all the lights
1341
01:21:41.859 --> 01:21:43.479
and you see all the fun. You come in for
1342
01:21:43.520 --> 01:21:47.170
a weekend. But if you're there and you live it,
1343
01:21:47.399 --> 01:21:51.439
it will destroy you. That's a rant. In a world
1344
01:21:51.479 --> 01:21:55.189
that feels increasingly unreal, what feels most real to you?
1345
01:21:55.750 --> 01:21:56.069
To me?
1346
01:21:56.090 --> 01:21:58.229
Mm-hmm.
1347
01:21:59.270 --> 01:22:02.229
You know, when I... It's connected to the first thing
1348
01:22:02.289 --> 01:22:05.149
I said. You know, when you think about those things
1349
01:22:05.189 --> 01:22:12.510
that I just listed, they're non-relational. They disconnect you from relationship.
1350
01:22:13.909 --> 01:22:17.380
And so the most real thing is relationship. And, you know,
1351
01:22:17.420 --> 01:22:22.359
the solution for us is to reinvest in relationship, to
1352
01:22:22.479 --> 01:22:27.170
reconnect with God and others, right? All the good stuff
1353
01:22:27.210 --> 01:22:31.119
happens there. All the good stuff. All the things that
1354
01:22:31.159 --> 01:22:35.520
are beautiful and true and eternal happen in relationship. And
1355
01:22:35.539 --> 01:22:38.430
we're built for it. And so look how insidious the
1356
01:22:38.470 --> 01:22:42.470
devil and the demons are, right? To sort of move
1357
01:22:42.529 --> 01:22:46.449
our communities, to move our societies, to move our family
1358
01:22:46.529 --> 01:22:50.109
units into this idea of pleasure and disconnection and destruction.
1359
01:22:51.090 --> 01:22:54.289
And as a result, you know, you see these absurdities, like,
1360
01:22:54.329 --> 01:22:59.750
you know, people marrying their AI companion, right? And I
1361
01:22:59.770 --> 01:23:02.909
read this terrifying statistic. You know, back in the 60s,
1362
01:23:02.949 --> 01:23:04.850
we were worried that no one was going to have
1363
01:23:04.909 --> 01:23:08.470
sex inside of marriage anymore. Everybody was just having sex everywhere.
1364
01:23:09.069 --> 01:23:10.810
And now in Japan, they're worried if people are even
1365
01:23:10.829 --> 01:23:11.609
going to have sex.
1366
01:23:12.130 --> 01:23:12.390
Yeah.
1367
01:23:13.670 --> 01:23:17.810
Right? So think of the flip that's happened, right? And
1368
01:23:18.270 --> 01:23:21.979
so when you say, what's the most important thing? It's relationships.
1369
01:23:22.619 --> 01:23:24.939
I would say first and foremost with our Lord and Savior.
1370
01:23:25.880 --> 01:23:29.229
And then immediately thereafter in the same breath, with our
1371
01:23:29.239 --> 01:23:33.210
brothers and sisters. And I think if we can move
1372
01:23:33.270 --> 01:23:35.890
back into a way of living that is focused first
1373
01:23:35.949 --> 01:23:38.550
on relationship, you know, I remember when that COVID hit
1374
01:23:38.829 --> 01:23:41.090
and everybody was having to kind of rethink how they
1375
01:23:41.109 --> 01:23:44.789
were going to do, you know, ministry and worship and
1376
01:23:44.810 --> 01:23:47.449
all that stuff. And our bishop made a commitment. He said,
1377
01:23:47.489 --> 01:23:50.869
we're going to maintain in-person worship. We're just, we're going
1378
01:23:50.890 --> 01:23:52.149
to do that. We're going to figure out how we're
1379
01:23:52.170 --> 01:23:53.189
going to do that, but we're going to do that.
1380
01:23:54.340 --> 01:23:58.010
And From that moment on, our church was growing pretty rapidly,
1381
01:23:58.149 --> 01:24:02.819
and then it just did this. And when I look
1382
01:24:02.859 --> 01:24:06.760
back on that, so many people who finally saw the
1383
01:24:06.819 --> 01:24:13.770
absurdity of disconnection and distraction and screen living, and they
1384
01:24:13.810 --> 01:24:16.729
were desperate. I had a woman show up not long
1385
01:24:16.770 --> 01:24:19.750
after we reopened. She said, look, I'm an avowed pagan.
1386
01:24:20.689 --> 01:24:24.060
I am an absolute pagan. I will never be anything
1387
01:24:24.079 --> 01:24:26.399
but a pagan, but I got to ask you something.
1388
01:24:26.560 --> 01:24:28.579
I was like, what's that? She goes, could I come
1389
01:24:28.619 --> 01:24:34.170
to church at St. Spyridon's? And I said, absolutely, but
1390
01:24:34.229 --> 01:24:37.789
tell me why. And she said, because I don't have community.
1391
01:24:40.189 --> 01:24:43.039
And so she attended for two years and then she
1392
01:24:43.060 --> 01:24:48.170
got baptized. But the point being that she knew that
1393
01:24:48.329 --> 01:24:53.279
relationships were the very thing she was missing. And somehow
1394
01:24:53.340 --> 01:24:57.479
the church, despite all that's going on, hasn't forgotten that.
1395
01:24:58.420 --> 01:25:00.800
And we'll never forget it. Amen. As I said to
1396
01:25:00.840 --> 01:25:03.579
my pastor friend of mine, he says, so do you
1397
01:25:03.619 --> 01:25:05.340
have more and more people worshiping online? I said, look,
1398
01:25:05.359 --> 01:25:07.689
we have people worshiping online, but you can't receive the
1399
01:25:07.729 --> 01:25:12.220
sacraments online. Mm-hmm. So it's built into our fabric. You
1400
01:25:12.239 --> 01:25:13.619
got to show up. We got to see you. I
1401
01:25:13.649 --> 01:25:14.729
got to touch you. We got to know you.
1402
01:25:14.770 --> 01:25:18.189
Without going down the rabbit hole. I mean, that gets back.
1403
01:25:18.390 --> 01:25:23.069
I mean, we came full circle because worshiping online, it's
1404
01:25:23.189 --> 01:25:27.029
this conception that our faith is a data download.
1405
01:25:27.510 --> 01:25:27.689
No.
1406
01:25:27.949 --> 01:25:31.609
And it's an incarnate reality.
1407
01:25:31.909 --> 01:25:33.020
Yeah, absolutely.
1408
01:25:34.460 --> 01:25:38.140
Well, reality is relationship. And I'm glad to say that
1409
01:25:38.180 --> 01:25:41.409
we finally made to this stage of our relationship, Father.
1410
01:25:41.430 --> 01:25:44.470
And I'm already holding you to, you said you'd come
1411
01:25:44.510 --> 01:25:47.880
back because we didn't get to anything on my sheet.
1412
01:25:48.720 --> 01:25:51.079
Well, let's, we'll do it.
1413
01:25:51.600 --> 01:25:53.779
But I love you. I appreciate you. I thank God
1414
01:25:53.840 --> 01:25:55.840
for you. And I look forward to having you on again.
1415
01:25:56.359 --> 01:25:57.079
Thank you, Dave.
1416
01:25:57.720 --> 01:25:59.829
And thank you to everybody else who joined us on
1417
01:25:59.890 --> 01:26:02.630
Commitment to Reality. I look forward to having you guys
1418
01:26:02.750 --> 01:26:03.229
on for more.
1419
01:26:03.989 --> 01:26:04.329
Thank you.