Let's Talk About: Evangelicals & Emotions

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Hey everyone, welcome to the new episode of Freestyle Theology.
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I'm realizing that I say that in the exact same way at the beginning of every single episode.
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So how would a person ever know that it was a different episode?
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I think I need to come up with I need a new catchphrase or something.
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If you have any suggestions for opening catchphrases for this podcast, send me a DM on Instagram with your suggestions and I'll try them out.
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So if you remember last episode, and Goffin and I spent our time um in pre-revolutionary France looking at the nobility and looking at what it meant to have grace in your body.
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And we talked about also the Protestant emphasis on grace and the interesting connections there and differences.
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And then if you if you listened, you might remember that in the middle of that conversation, it kind of dawned on me that the 1700s was also something else entirely.
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It was the century of the first evangelical revivals.
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So that's a really interesting connection.
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And we wanted Goffin and I wanted to talk about you know these two different 1700s.
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So that's what we're doing today.
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These are two different movements happening at the exact same time in the same century, and they look like total opposites.
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So at the top of society, especially French society, but elsewhere as well, you have the elite working to perfect the way that they hold their body, the way that they move through the world.
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They want to move with grace.
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Somewhere else in the Anglo world, especially in the American colonies, but in Britain as well, you have people falling down on the ground, weeping, barking even, having these intense, extreme experiences of spiritual conviction manifesting in manifesting in very bodily ways.
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So these two things appear very different and distinct, but through this conversation today, by the end of it, and GoFan and I come to a place where we don't really think they're opposites at all, that they are related to each other.
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So stick with it, you know, as we move through this the labyrinth of the 1700s, focused especially on the body and peppered in throughout the throughout the conversation are some of our own personal experiences, especially in the reformed Christian world.
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Uh, because interestingly both Ngofen and I spent our twenties deep, knee deep in the reformed Christian world, but neither of us were raised in it.
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And so it's this really interesting similarity that we both have, even though the worlds that we came from uh were radically different.
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So yeah, there's some some interesting history stuff here, some of our historical speculations, and then some personal anecdotes and reflections on being reformed in your twenties.
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So um check it out and here we go.
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What I'm interested in just exploring more um with you is you know, as we were talking last week, we're talking about everything leading up to the French Revolution, the civilizing project and civilizing body, and um sort of can constraining and containing the body's movements, especially at the the highest classes, yeah, um, to which sort of was supposed to be a a mark of their highborn blood, right?
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Yes, yep.
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And then you have the middling classes sort of pining to be like that too.
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Yep, yep.
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Um, but it just kind of struck me, because this happens a lot with history.
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It struck me as we're talking, I was like, oh yeah, the 1700s is also the revivals, the evangelical revivals at this same time.
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And what does that all mean?
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So that's kind of yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That's kind of where I am.
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I'm like, well, what what does that all mean?
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Um so I have some some like initial thoughts on you know what was kind of led to the revivals in the early 1700s, which was much more of a Anglo world phenomenon.
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Okay, as opposed to like the Latin world, like as opposed to like France and Italy and stuff.
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Exactly, as opposed to any like Catholic territories.
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This is more of a Protestant, but specifically Anglo experience um with things in England and Scotland, Wales, some Ireland, and of course uh colonial America, and which at that point included um places like colonies like Nova Scotia, like they were all.
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Oh, right, right, right, right, right.
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Yeah, that's right.
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I forgot.
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We forget about we we we as the Americans, we forget that you guys are part of the story too.
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Yeah, right.
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Yeah, Nova Scotia could easily have been seen as the 14th colony, but they just they really weren't interested in uh in joining.
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So that's its own story.
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But okay.
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So what I'm gonna I'm gonna just start with a instead of being like, here's the history, the bit the you know, the very basic history is you have the Reformation, which does all its stuff, and that leads to war as the European like Christian family is fractured apart.
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War eventually settles into kind of like the different Protestant confessions have their territory, and after 1648, at the um what's it called?
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Treaty of Westphalia.
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Yeah, Westphalia.
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Yeah, nice that's where world history collides.
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I'm like, I remember that.
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Yeah.
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All like the nation states kind of you know form and each has their own Christian confession that they've kind of officially connected to, but there's other Protestants too who don't fit that, so it's still a mess, but they officially go with like whatever your leader says your confession is, that's what you do.
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And then the Protestants, um, each of the different confessions kind of form their orthodoxies, they write their systematic theology, and it is it's experienced by a lot of Protestants as doctrinally solid and dead spiritually.
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That is sort of the vibe of Protestant orthodoxy.
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It's like got these tight arguments, everything like the catechisms that emerge.
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Okay, they describe the faith the way that we think they should, that's correct, but there's no life here.
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So, really, that's one of the main tensions that exists.
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It's like there's no life here.
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You have these kind of strange um German Christians, Protestants, who feel really strongly about this and believe very much that if you don't feel it, if you don't have a real authentic faith for yourself, that something's really wrong.
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And that sounds really familiar, right?
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That sounds like evangelicalism.
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It's not yet, that's called pietism.
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Um, it's a continental movement, and really the the the most influential pietists are the Moravians, which is my denominational ancestry by accident.
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Okay, okay.
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I told you about that in one of the weeks, right?
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Yeah.
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So I we just happened to move somewhere, and the pastor of a Moravian church was a neighbor.
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So I got pulled into this world that I never most people don't know about that I never would have seen.
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I randomly came across a reel today um that was saying the hook of the reel was Did you know black people in Texas speak Czech?
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Um and it it was about like how all these Czech people moved to Texas um and they were Moravians, and so the they were like sharecroppers who were working in the fields with black people, and there are these communities where black folks, including musicians, learned Moravian, which I guess is a ver a Czech dialect, maybe.
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Yeah, um Moravia, Bohemia, those are okay.
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Got it, got it, got it.
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Interesting.
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Anyways, back to Moravia, yes, the Moravians.
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Well, yeah.
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That that's actually exactly what that that's the perfect uh little anecdote because their their pietism, this belief that like faith has to be real and felt and authentic and voluntary and not just something the state tells you to do, which has become so normal, at least in at least in the rhetoric of American evangelicalism, that really starts with pietists who are responding to things like Lutheran Orthodoxy, and they're like, This is dead.
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Moravians are one of them.
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The Moravians are actually they're they're actually the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus.
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You remember I talked about that?
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Oh, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So the Hussites.
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I read the name because it's so rude.
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Uh because it's so weird.
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Jan Hus.
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It's an easy name to remember because of it stands out.
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And so he the his followers, the Hussites, um, basically go underground and continue to be practicing this.
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Remember, this is a hundred years before Luther that Huss is is burned at the stake.
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So they continue to be practicing this like kind of illicit Christianity, and they eventually become kind of a movement called the United Stratum, like the brothers, and kind of proto-evangelicals, and they're persecuted because in this Protestant Catholic Europe, whatever your prince prince decides is what you follow, right?
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So they experience persecution, eventually they are gifted.
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This guy named Count Zinzendorf, uh, in East in Prussia, East Germany is really inspired by these people and their faith and their radical commitments and stuff.
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And so he offers his land for them to come and live under his protection and safety.
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And they establish this city, all not city, a town called Hernhut, which is like the watchtower.
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Whoa.
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And yeah, Lord of the Rings.
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Yeah.
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It's also giving like Jehovah's Witness.
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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Uh-huh.
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Yeah.
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And you know, sometimes you're like, if we start looking back at these communities with the lens of like what's a cult, uh-huh.
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Uh, from today, you're like, oh, I think that might fit the bill, but uh that was a long time ago, so we don't call it a cult.
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Right, right, right.
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I've been there, I've been there because I went on this Moravian pilgrimage where we went to all the big sites.
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But why what I'm saying?
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This is they in 1727, the Moravians in Hernhout experienced what we would call a revival.
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You could even it even had like Pentecostal vibes where like the spirit falls, and all of that very bodily experience of faith happens.
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Um, extreme like outpouring of power and speaking in tongues and prophesying and all that stuff is going on in East Germany in 1727, and it inspires a the first Protestant missionary movement.
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There's so much excitement and zeal, and they just like go out across the world with almost like a Jesuit-like radical, let's just go to places that have no no like missionaries ever gone.
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So you have Moravians in East Africa, Moravians in the Caribbean, Moravians in in Greenland.
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Oh wow, okay, and each of those places actually still has Moravians there.
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Huh.
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And it's it's through the Moravians that the Anglo world, some of its most important kind of proto-revivalists, come into contact with this vibe, this different, this expectation again of authenticity.
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And because you know John Wesley.
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Uh, by name, Methodist, right?
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Yeah, he's the founder of Methodism.
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Uh-huh.
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So he's like uh a giant in church history.
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Oh, okay.
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Um, he's never been like my main focus, so I don't know that much about him.
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I just know that um he's sort of the one who really uh institutionalizes evangelicalism.
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Oh wow, and takes it from these like in like which we'll talk about these camp meetings of just intensity and emotion, and takes that the conversion experiences that happen there and channels it into his method.
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That's why they get called Methodists, because like Wesley's path was very methodical, like in and rigid in a way, of what of religious practice.
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You take that intense revival energy and channel it into a method of life.
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And um, it was on his travels to uh America, he was on the on a boat with Moravians, and there um you know, there was like big storms and they were so calm.
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Of course, of course.
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I can picture it, yeah.
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I can picture it.
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And then it's like, yes, the Lord saved us from the storm.
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This is the way to be now.
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Exactly.
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And you're again the modern us is like, did they dissociate a bit?
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I don't want to use the word, but yeah, yeah.
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Um but then he joined them for a meeting, and he he it's this very famous one-sentence line where he he says that when I was with the Moravians at this meeting, my heart was strangely warmed.
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And for Wesley, that moment is so critical, this warming of the heart.
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I sorry, really quick interruption.
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I know that it's like very beautiful and poetic, but there's also a part of me that's like, I had a feeling.
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You know, like I felt, I felt, yeah, I can't believe it.
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I felt something.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I had a feeling.
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What is this?
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What is this strange?
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Yeah.
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I actually think I think you're dead on.
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I mean, we are talking like the context is like civilized 1700s Europe.
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So I mean, it doesn't feel like crazy to be like, I have what what is this?
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Like, I felt warm.
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I need to make an entire religious movement.
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Yeah.
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Well, this is what happens when we when we meet at night.
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Yeah, maybe.
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Okay, so my heart was warmed.
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My heart's warm.
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So that's the Wesleyan thing.
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And so that's why like you have evangelicalism in in the British, in the British world as well, as the American.
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It's not just an American thing, it has like this parallel track that I'm not gonna go into all the main differences, but because I don't really want to go through all the history of evangelicalism.
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I just want to be like in the 1730s in New England, you start to have these where you have this like intense preaching, focusing on like on the Puritan stuff, on sin and on our inability to save ourselves, and just like Protestantism like ramped up, and then people experiencing this powerful, overwhelming, like emotional, spiritual, whatever you want to call it, like overload.
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And there's all kinds like the reports of it is there's all kinds of bodily things screaming, crying, tears, sweating, like it's the nervous system is like on high activation, and they're trying to sort like sort it out.
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Jonathan Edwards is one of the the preachers in that movement.
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Interestingly, Edwards is not is a it's not true, he's not like a super charismatic guy.
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That's interesting because like you have George Whitfield, you heard of him?
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Or I've heard his name.
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He's like the first evangelical celebrity.
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He is like a drama guy, he's an actor, he's a performer, he's from Britain.
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He does like uh he comes to the colonies and like does itinerant preaching, going from church to church, and he is what you expected.
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He I think it was Benjamin Franklin actually like wrote about him a little bit and uh said that he could be heard by 30,000 people if he in in his outdoor preaching.
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Very like flamboyant, very flamboyant guy.
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Edwards is the opposite of that.
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We we tend to think of him as like we might stereotype him as charismatic and intense because of his like terrifying sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
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Yeah, which I remember from middle school.
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I remember learning it in middle school in social studies or whatever class.
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Because it's so viscerally horrifying.
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Like it it's basically saying like God hates you and dangles you over the fire like a spider, and the only thing keeping him from dropping you into eternal torture is like his grace.
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And but Edwards would just like kind of in the Puritan fashion would like read his carefully constructed sermon, and just the language itself cause like convulsions in people.
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So what that's all to say is there's this interesting polarity flip where we have Augustine, and Augustine sort of looking at the body's involuntary things that it does as evidence of sin, of a broken nature, and then you have revivalism, and what it's doing is it's saying the bodily experience, the involuntary things that are happening out of service are evidence of the spirit, and that to me is just really fascinating.
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Question Who what what classes of people are getting pulled into revivalism?
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So you have you have the the first Great Awakening, which is in the 1730s and 40s, then you have the second great awakening in the 1820s and 30s, and they're kind of of a different caliber, differ the the second great awakening is is way bigger.
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There's way more people involved in it, um, you know, across classes.
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The first Great Awakening really does emerge, at least the American one, out of Puritanism.
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It's a New England thing, and so the the the people experiencing it are kind of the descendants of the Puritans.
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And so I'm not gonna call them like middle class, but they're New Englanders.
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Like New Englanders were famous for their like hyper-organized societies, um, very strong sense of mission, desire to expand the the errand in the wilderness, as they called it, like to expand New England and um basically create what they like a the a theocracy.
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Um the the society is the way God intended it.
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This is the like city on a hill.
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So yeah, the first the first Great Awakening is is it does reach into the south somewhat, but it's more um a New England thing.
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And while they did have enslaved people in the in New England, it wasn't as it wasn't by any stretch as much of like a slavery industrial complex.
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But it it is appealing across the board too.
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Um it's not just for the rich, because New England is kind of weird about the rich.
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They they actually were fairly like they would discipline members of the church if they took interest and stuff like that, or charged too much.
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Like they were pretty radical that way.
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Um and you do see some um indigenous people swept up into the revivals, and some some Africans, some freed Africans, uh, some enslaved people.
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So it is more of a democratizing movement, but the second Great Awakening is more is much more so that so that's one thing I want to talk to you about.
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Yeah, this polarity flip is weird.
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Yeah, I have thoughts when when we get there, yeah.
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Because it also doesn't mean that that does not mean that revivalist Protestants believed the bodies and its desires were good.
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They were still very Augustinian in the day after the revival.
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Still very suspicious uh as much as the Puritans were, but the revivalists are just acquire the fire.
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Yeah.
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That's absolutely there.
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And then they go back and they're like, okay, now we gotta calm down.
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Like that's what Methodism was so good at.
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Okay, okay, got messed up.
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Methodism is like, okay, you've had your acquire the fire fire moment, and now we you need to be channeled into something.
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And you know, yeah, that's a really interesting thing to think about because I I was that person.
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I and then and think about did you like go to acquire the fire?
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Oh, yeah, we went.
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I went I went I uh got our youth minister to go once because I saw it on like Christian TV and we took our we took our youth group to it, and then he was like, This is the only time we're doing this.
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.720
And was that like because the the church you were part of was more conservative?
00:21:32.960 --> 00:21:33.519
Yeah, it's funny.
00:21:33.599 --> 00:21:43.920
It was yeah, it was it's funny because the church I was part of was Southern Baptist, so it's not like it was like um you know buttoned up, but you know, Southern Baptists famously, for instance, don't dance.
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:48.000
So like Acquire the Fire was very kind of giving Pentecostal.
00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:48.960
Right.
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:55.039
Because the Baptists were very like Pentecostals, they were super they saw they see them as heretics or saw them as heretics.
00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:57.599
Okay, oh, okay, okay, okay, got it, got it, got it.
00:21:57.680 --> 00:21:58.000
Interesting.
00:21:58.079 --> 00:21:59.519
Yeah, it was very like, well.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:01.839
This is uh a little bit too much.
00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:02.559
Right.
00:22:02.799 --> 00:22:07.519
But see, that's that's the same conversations that were happening during the revivals.
00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:16.640
I remember hearing about because I went to uh I finished high school and then you know I didn't know what to do after high school.
00:22:16.799 --> 00:22:22.400
Um I knew I was gonna go to university for something because this was that was 2004.
00:22:23.039 --> 00:22:23.359
Okay.
00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:25.839
So we're the that's when you graduated high school?
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:26.319
Mm-hmm.
00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:27.359
Oh, we're the same year.
00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:27.759
Okay.
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:28.559
Okay, yeah.
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:29.519
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:22:29.759 --> 00:22:37.680
And so I knew I was gonna go to university for something, but um, I basically a friend was like, ooh, check out this Bible college.
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:42.799
Uh they have a one-year program, which is kind of one of their marketing tactics, right?
00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:46.640
And it was called Life Launch, and I was like, ooh, this is a good idea.
00:22:46.799 --> 00:22:47.839
It's one year.
00:22:48.559 --> 00:22:52.160
Um, meet some people, move out of the house, live on dorms.
00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:56.960
Uh, I was gonna move to it, it was in BC, Surrey, kind of near Vancouver.
00:22:57.920 --> 00:22:59.920
And it was Pentecostal.
00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.440
And my mom was like, it's a Pentecostal Bible college.
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:07.839
She didn't, they my parents didn't want me to go because this place had a really nice website, uh-huh.
00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.440
But when we went and visited it, we were like, This can't be it.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:13.839
It was yeah, it was a horrible moment.
00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:23.039
I'm seeing it, I'm seeing I'm seeing your parents being like, Yeah, my mom was like, It's gotta be further down the road, and I was like, Yeah, this can't be it, and it was it.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:25.200
But she said it's Pentecostal, is that okay?
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:26.160
And I was like, Okay, sure.
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:27.200
I don't, I don't know.
00:23:27.279 --> 00:23:28.480
That seems fine.
00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:30.160
Don't really know what that means.
00:23:30.400 --> 00:23:41.680
So we're there, and so now I'm in a Pentecostal space, and I'm like being exposed to their kind of conversations that have not been mine, the things that they get really worked up about and riled up about.
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:45.599
And one of the things that was people were talking about was the Toronto Blessing.
00:23:45.839 --> 00:23:46.480
You ever heard of that?
00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:49.920
No, it was this is was much bigger than just Canada.
00:23:50.079 --> 00:23:56.160
Okay, um, the Toronto Blessing was like a globally important Pentecostal movement, okay.
00:23:56.319 --> 00:24:04.000
Where it was like at this church called uh near the Toronto Airport, which is like the worst area in the world, like just the ugliest area on earth.
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:12.559
Um but there's like zero culture in the near the Toronto airport, it's just asphalt is like the main, yeah.
00:24:13.839 --> 00:24:17.359
And everyone was like, I remember their conversations are like, is was it of the spirit?
00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:26.000
They're like, Well, there was people there who were barking like dogs and like kind of losing their like control of themselves, and it's like that can't be from the spirit.
00:24:26.240 --> 00:24:28.640
So, what we've decided is like it was a mix.
00:24:28.799 --> 00:24:33.279
There was some demonic activity, some human activity, and some of the spirit.
00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:46.319
And I was like, that I feel like you could say that that covers every possible base, but it was those those conversations about that you've been talking about like enthusiasm, too enthusiastic.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:48.079
What where's the line here?
00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:50.480
What what is like what are we supposed to be aiming for?
00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:52.880
It's like it's either too much or not enough.
00:24:54.640 --> 00:25:02.400
So the conversations that they were having that Edwards himself wrote was writing about because he was a very methodical philosophical person.
00:25:03.119 --> 00:25:05.599
And so in his what's his book called?
00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.559
I think it's just something about like on the religious affections or something like that.
00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:31.440
He's basically having this that conversation, being like, what of this is a sign of the spirit and what of this is just enthusiasm that's being criticized by others, and he takes a very cautious position, very like kind of an uninteresting position of like ambiguity.
00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:33.759
Like it's both.
00:25:34.079 --> 00:25:40.400
And yeah, it's like he the book is like signs of revival, so you know what that that's what's happening.
00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:41.759
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:44.079
So it's just interesting, it's the same conversations.
00:25:44.400 --> 00:25:45.839
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:46.079
Yeah.
00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:46.720
I don't know.
00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:49.680
I'd like to hear what what any of that conjures for you.
00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:51.119
Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure.
00:25:51.200 --> 00:26:02.960
I mean, the first thing is the society, the greater society, European society that they're living in at this time period.
00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:10.960
Umce is still the cultural capital of the world.
00:26:13.039 --> 00:26:16.559
Um England obviously is massively important.
00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:33.920
Um France doesn't even have sort of the the span of its colonial possessions yet, but it's it has it has its sort of like Louis XIV legacy of like we um set culture.
00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:42.880
Um there's there's this quote actually that I was just reading, um, which is by this English lord, Lord Chesterfield, that I've mentioned before.
00:26:43.039 --> 00:26:51.680
Um, and he's he's around, I think he dies in like the 1760s or 70s, but he's around the whole, you know, the whole first chunk of the century.
00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:53.759
And he's a lord in the House of Lords.
00:26:53.839 --> 00:27:06.880
Um, and he's one of the people who he writes this big long, he writes all these letters to his um illegitimate son and then to his godson about how to behave with grace.
00:27:07.359 --> 00:27:24.640
Um, so Lord Chesterfield is writing, and he has these letters to his godson and to his his son and to his godson um that span sort of like 1720s all the way to the 1760s, and he's writing so this time that we're talking about um covers like before and after basically of that first great revival uh Great Awakening.
00:27:24.799 --> 00:27:38.079
Um and it's very clear, well, yeah, it's very clear from the letters, he's writing from England, he's in the House of Lords, and it's very clear that the center of the cultural world is France from his letters.
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:47.359
So I think the thing that jumps out to me is that the society, you know, it kind of reminds me a little bit of America in the 21st century.
00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:56.400
Is that like the society is the globe, like the Western society, European society is is anchored in France, France England.
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:05.759
But then you have what you're describing is sort of this, like it's sort of the like coastal elites versus middle America.
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:07.759
Yeah, it reminds me of that.
00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:25.279
Is like is like, yeah, because the the whole American project is always, you know, yes, there's the aristocracy that comes for sure, but the spirit, uh, but by America I mean the revolution on is like you know, is like we don't want to be like those Europeans.
00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:26.160
Yeah.
00:28:26.400 --> 00:28:32.720
And I feel like I what you're describing to me feels like the proto, it feels like it correlates with it.
00:28:32.960 --> 00:28:58.319
So you have these people who like when the rule is to be sophisticated, you need to read the New York Times and read the New Yorker and like read the Atlantic, i.e., have jeunesse qua and go to ballet and do all these things, then you have all these other people who are like sort of like not in the metropole being like, we want to feel we don't want to be like them, they're dead.
00:28:58.640 --> 00:28:59.279
Yeah.
00:28:59.680 --> 00:29:21.119
And I think the thing that the thing I notice is it it adds a complexity to me because it's like, oh, okay, it kind of seems like throughout the medieval period, and now in this early modern period, that's moving closer and closer to modern, you basically just always have this tension in Western society between the sort of like control and looseness.
00:29:21.599 --> 00:29:23.599
Freedom and order.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:35.440
Yeah, like in the medieval period, we had talked about it's like up on the top down, you know, Augustine down, it's like, but bottom up, it's a party, and those two things are existing together.
00:29:35.599 --> 00:29:45.119
And now in the 17 um, you know, 20s to you know, 40s, this whole range, the top is is civilizing mission, like very clearly.
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:47.039
Yeah, primary source.
00:29:47.279 --> 00:30:01.680
Um, but then it seems like these revivals seem particularly the the body experiences reflect a sort of like that medieval thing of like, oh, but we wanna we wanna feel.
00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:07.039
And then the interesting part though is what you're saying, where it's like after then the revival, then you kind of dial it back in.
00:30:07.359 --> 00:30:14.720
And I don't think that they would this was not revelry, uh uh uh like this was crisis.
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:17.519
What makes you say that?
00:30:17.839 --> 00:30:28.240
Like, I don't think they would have said, I just want to feel this was not like um worship, like putting your hands up and being like that.
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:40.559
This isn't that uh this is like I need to feel something to know that I'm converted, yeah.
00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:46.480
And then you can look back on your conversion and say, on this day, you were there, remember?
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:51.279
Yeah, I like fell to the ground and wept for an hour.
00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:54.319
That's when the spirit of God descended on me.
00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:55.920
That's when I was converted, right?
00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:11.759
Well, I think that's that's maybe that's maybe the the link for me is that you have to imagine the people who are reading the reports of what's happening in aristocratic America, but particularly in Europe, are from the civilized class.
00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:12.400
Yeah.
00:31:12.640 --> 00:31:38.079
And I I can only like if we just use the primary sources, if Lord Chesterfield tells his son and godson that you need to always sort of be striving essentially to have this sort of like order in your movement, it is Lord Chesterfield and his friends who are reading the reports of the first grade awakening, and they must think that it's like crazy.
00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:42.480
Yeah, some like backwater Puritan nonsense.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:46.960
Oh, right, because it's already the Puritans was like, oh, they left here anyways, and they were weird.
00:31:47.279 --> 00:31:48.079
Yeah, they were weird.
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:51.839
I think that that that word, wasn't that like during the election?
00:31:52.079 --> 00:31:54.480
Didn't the word weird gain some traction?
00:31:54.799 --> 00:31:56.079
Yeah, I had a moment, yeah.
00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:02.000
Yeah, but that's sort of like you said metropole, and that was the word I was thinking too, or cosmopolitan.
00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:05.759
Like the Puritans wanted nothing to do with that.
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:38.960
They would have A, it was so easy for them to write off French stuff because A, they're Catholic, so yeah, they're like just you know, damned and not yeah, so it's like writing it off all and and it's full of like Puritans became you know, there they there was a lot of value placed on plainness and modesty, and like i it's not the most enjoyable or fun, it's not the most fun society to be a part of.
00:32:39.359 --> 00:32:44.720
So if medieval society was had a lot of fun in it, Puritan society did not.
00:32:45.920 --> 00:32:48.559
So are the Puritans the ones that do the witch trials?
00:32:48.799 --> 00:32:49.440
Yes.
00:32:49.839 --> 00:32:51.759
Okay, just for context, okay.
00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:53.440
Yeah, same group, same people, yeah.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:33:01.759
And and basically their history in a little very short nutshell is like they don't believe that like the English Reformation did enough.
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:04.799
Oh yes, I remember this lecture.
00:33:05.119 --> 00:33:06.640
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:09.519
The Anglican church is too Catholic.
00:33:10.400 --> 00:33:11.359
We need to reform it.
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:15.279
And they're like, no, you guys are weird enough.
00:33:15.759 --> 00:33:31.359
But then they uh, you know, a group of them do leave, but a group of them leave so that they can create the theocratic society they believe it should be purely Protestant, no Catholicism, no none of that, none of those trappings.
00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:39.839
Now, then the Puritans in in England, after this group leaves, they do kind of take over the country for a time.
00:33:40.079 --> 00:33:41.759
Is this the Cromwell time?
00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:43.279
Yeah, that's exactly that.
00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:43.920
Okay, okay.
00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:46.480
Yeah, that's the Puritans Street.
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:47.519
Yeah.
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:50.160
They have, you know, they what do they do?
00:33:50.400 --> 00:33:54.400
Well, they uh they want to like expunge any Catholic elements.
00:33:54.640 --> 00:33:55.920
Christmas is gone.
00:33:56.160 --> 00:34:00.160
So in England for for decades there's no Christmas celebrated.
00:34:01.279 --> 00:34:01.839
So weird.
00:34:02.079 --> 00:34:02.400
I know.
00:34:02.559 --> 00:34:12.239
Oh, but it but I tell it it's funny because it it kind of you can see the you can see the sort of you know, a very common criticism uh is that Christmas is pagan of 21st century, right?
00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:13.920
Yeah, in in our enlightened state.
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:15.199
So you see it, yeah, it makes sense.
00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:17.440
They're like, uh-uh, we don't want that, we want Easter.
00:34:17.679 --> 00:34:21.519
And they would be like, it's Catholic, it's one of those Catholic festivals.
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:24.800
Uh probably rooted in paganism, but yeah.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:25.599
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:34:25.599 --> 00:34:26.000
I got it, right?
00:34:26.079 --> 00:34:27.039
Because Easter is pagan.
00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:27.440
But yeah.
00:34:27.760 --> 00:34:34.800
Pure there's a reason that the word puritanical becomes a popular like phrase, like like he's they're puritanical.
00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:39.199
It's like the tyrant mixed with Puritanism, because that's kind of what it seems to produce.
00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:40.000
Yeah.
00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:50.320
But the the guys in the Puritans that are in that come to Massachusetts, uh, which is like one of the settler foundations of America, right?
00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:52.159
There's a few, but that's one of them.
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.599
They are there like with a strong sense of mission.
00:34:55.760 --> 00:34:58.159
Like this is going to be a city on a hill.
00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:00.800
This is our, like I said, errand in the wilderness.
00:35:01.039 --> 00:35:05.599
And they come so they come with a lot of zeal and severity and seriousness.
00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:09.920
Now they don't have they're Calvinists, like strict the strictest Calvinists of all.
00:35:10.159 --> 00:35:14.239
They don't really have um like intense emotional experiences yet.
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:26.639
That's not a thing in Puritanism, except for the emotional experience of despair, because what they believed is that a person had to be individually converted, right?
00:35:26.800 --> 00:35:42.400
They had to experience conversion, and the only way to experience conversion was to first undergo what was called like the conviction, and that's when you became painfully, terrifyingly aware of your inability to save yourself.
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:56.559
I don't know when I became so um base, but like I can't help but be like, so the premise of their thing was that at some point you need to be depressed and have an anxiety attack.
00:35:56.800 --> 00:35:58.639
Yeah, you know, and like that's the moment.
00:35:58.719 --> 00:36:01.840
Because then it because then when you have when when you know, life, you're gonna life.
00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:02.800
Life is gonna life.
00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:04.960
This is the Englefen translation, the message.
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:10.239
Um, life is gonna life, and at some point in life, you're gonna have an anxiety attack and be depressed.
00:36:10.480 --> 00:36:12.320
That's the conviction we have a word for it.
00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:13.280
It's called the conviction.
00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:14.880
What you need to do, turn to Jesus.
00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:16.320
Okay, now you're a Christian.
00:36:16.559 --> 00:36:17.519
Yep, exactly.
00:36:17.679 --> 00:36:24.960
And then it's like take that anxiety, and it has to go somewhere, it gets channeled somewhere, right?
00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:38.960
So the the Puritan experience of conversion is somewhat emotional, it just isn't very it's not embodied, it's written down, it's experienced in here.
00:36:39.519 --> 00:36:48.800
Yeah, I um back in my days, three volume Puritan tomes um from like 17 something.
00:36:49.199 --> 00:36:54.559
This was like me's senior year of uh of college and the year right after college.
00:36:54.719 --> 00:36:56.480
This was like the the stuff I read.
00:36:56.719 --> 00:36:57.440
Yahoo.
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:00.480
Wow.
00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:08.400
I mean, I was also to be clear, like dancing to Lil John and stuff, so just to be clear.
00:37:08.719 --> 00:37:13.599
So yeah, they're the their conversion experience is internal and mental.
00:37:14.079 --> 00:37:21.119
And you could we know a lot about them because they wrote such intense, scrupulous diaries analyzing themselves.
00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:22.400
Totally, totally.
00:37:22.639 --> 00:37:32.559
Right, because that's uh it so I I you know I'm uh uh one of my legacies is PCA, and the the Puritan um, I forget what the thing was even called anymore.
00:37:32.639 --> 00:37:40.719
Um, we had a like collection, essentially a collection of Puritan prayers that were part of our weekly or part of the service.
00:37:41.119 --> 00:37:52.559
It was sort of one of the things that we would we would like say one of them next to like a confessional statement and read through one of these Puritan prayers, and they're always very like you know severe.
00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:58.880
Or even I would say, I would say, I would say deeply introspective.
00:37:59.199 --> 00:38:02.400
Yeah, that's that's and quite quite literary.
00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:12.559
Like very, very introspective and like very like emo, like very poetry, very, very rich imagery.
00:38:12.719 --> 00:38:24.159
Like it's very like um lo-fi chill beats, like snow patrol, like right, like really, really like emo is a good word, actually.
00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:27.760
Yeah, except it's not not letting it out.
00:38:28.079 --> 00:38:29.199
Right, right, right, right.
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:32.880
Like I would say, oh, there's there was called the um, oh here it is, the valley of vision.
00:38:33.039 --> 00:38:36.880
I actually I find them quite beautiful, recollection of Puritan prayers and devotions.
00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:38.800
So actually, let's just let's just pick one.
00:38:39.039 --> 00:38:45.199
Um okay, and there's because there's the Valley of Vision and they each had like a they each have like a topical title.
00:38:45.360 --> 00:38:52.320
There's an index or a you know table of contents where you just pick the topic, and then it's like these sort of Puritan prayers that have been condensed.
00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:53.519
But so like here's one.
00:38:53.599 --> 00:39:10.880
Um, the awakened sinner, oh my forgetful soul, awake from thy wandering dream, turn from chasing vanities, look inward, forward, upward, view thyself, reflect upon thyself, who and what thou art, why here, what thou must soon be?
00:39:11.039 --> 00:39:16.880
Thou art a creature of God, formed and furnished by him, lodged in a body like a shepherd in his tent.
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:19.199
Dost thou not desire to know God's ways?
00:39:19.519 --> 00:39:23.119
O God, thou injured, neglected, broke, provoked benefactor.
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:30.400
When I think upon thy greatness and thy goodness, I am ashamed at my insensibility, I blush to lift up my face, for I have foolishly erred.
00:39:30.559 --> 00:39:36.960
Shall I go on neglecting thee when every one of thy rational creatures should love thee, and take every care to please thee?
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:47.039
I confess that thou hast not been in all my thoughts, that the knowledge of thyself as the end of my being has been strangely overlooked, that I have never seriously considered my heart need.
00:39:47.280 --> 00:39:53.440
But although my mind is perplexed and divided, my nature perverse, yet my secret disposition still desire thee.
00:39:53.599 --> 00:40:02.880
Let me not delay to come to thee, break the fatal enchantment that binds my evil affections, and bring me to a happy mind that rests in thee, for thou hast made me and canst not forget me.
00:40:02.960 --> 00:40:08.639
Let thy spirit teach me the vital lessons of Christ, for I am slow to learn, and hear thou my broken cries.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:15.440
It's like very, very I feel like it's very poetry, very lit.
00:40:15.519 --> 00:40:24.079
Like when I I I yeah, I think it's like it's quite introspective and then set to like it's not verse, but it's very like imagery.
00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:24.880
Yeah.
00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:28.400
You know, like I feel like it would be a reduction to be like hellfire.
00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:29.360
That's not hellfire.
00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:31.519
That's like a really yeah, it is emo.
00:40:31.679 --> 00:40:37.119
It's like deeply like how do I articulate these feelings inside of me and this contemplation of this divine thing?
00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:44.559
And I think particularly for us, we would read these in the 21st century, they felt very, very um meditative.
00:40:45.920 --> 00:40:51.679
Because this is not our register of language in the 21st century, and yet it's very understandable.
00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:59.840
And so it like almost like a creed sends you, it's just literature, like it sends you to a like it's what poetry does.
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:15.039
It uh heightened language sort of sends your brain up, or as my poet friend says, Um, poetry forces you to pay attention to the language that you use, like that is being used.
00:41:15.199 --> 00:41:17.199
It sort of slows down thought.
00:41:17.440 --> 00:41:18.000
Slow motion.
00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:20.639
So, like, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
00:41:20.880 --> 00:41:34.079
So, like, yeah, I mean it's it's such an interesting, it's such an interesting mix of like there's the that brand, there's the you're a spider over hell brand, there's the we're barking like dogs.
00:41:34.480 --> 00:41:56.639
It's all very, you know, I I've often thought and said that at its best, Protestantism is a very uh literary type of Christianity, where you gather a bunch of ancient poems and you basically do literary analysis over and over and over.
00:41:57.119 --> 00:41:58.559
Over and over and over of text.
00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:09.039
You're just like analyzing ancient text and being like, ah, the meter and the oh, the imagery, and the like um at its best, I feel like to me, I feel like there's something really beautiful about that.
00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:14.559
Um, and then I mean, and then it's paired with everything else that comes with humanity, which is a fallenness.
00:42:15.119 --> 00:42:24.480
But even when I was gonna say, when you read that, I'm glad you read that, because it's like you hear from a real Puritan, not a stereotype or a caricature.
00:42:25.519 --> 00:42:28.880
Um because on the one hand, you're right, it's it's very literary.
00:42:29.199 --> 00:42:41.840
There's it makes you feel something, you get pulled into their world, and you're also like, wow, like this person didn't write that for me to perform it.
00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:45.760
This was their own private, like this is their own thing.
00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:47.760
Like that's real, that's authentic.
00:42:48.559 --> 00:43:00.400
Um, and yet you know, there's another part of me that's like what a narrow two-dimensional world that you're living in where it's like you you got it all figured out, don't you?
00:43:00.559 --> 00:43:04.000
Like you you know that you are like an ungrateful wretch.
00:43:04.239 --> 00:43:10.639
And it's like, imagine I came and said, Look, you're not like that's not who you are, you're something else.
00:43:10.960 --> 00:43:18.159
That would be like anathema, or like, you know, your sin isn't, you know, you said like it's not hellfire.
00:43:18.239 --> 00:43:22.400
That's true, it's not hellfire preaching, but it's that is in the background.
00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:23.920
That's lay that's back here.
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:32.880
That's what's that person's default, and that also sounds like a person who has not yet experienced what they would consider a legitimate conversion.
00:43:34.320 --> 00:43:45.920
That person is still in the conviction, because the the thing about the Puritans is you were so when you were converted, truly, you were sort of supposed to be no longer sinning.
00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:54.320
It's not a go back up and say sorry and or or go confess your sins and have it absolved.
00:43:54.400 --> 00:43:58.880
Like this isn't this has no medieval technology, like this is like a one and done kind of thing.
00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:03.039
That person obviously has not yet been converted.
00:44:03.119 --> 00:44:14.079
But in the with the Puritans, if you weren't converted, if you didn't have a s a testimony that fit or like went through the proper stages, you couldn't be a member.
00:44:15.440 --> 00:44:22.719
Many of the people in those congregationalist Puritan churches weren't members uh because they didn't have the experience.
00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:29.440
And this actually gets to the stage I was talking about, like what drives evangelicalism.
00:44:30.159 --> 00:44:47.199
Well, you have that first generation and second generation of really zealous Puritans who are writing the stuff that like that you were just reading, but then they have children and grandchildren, and uh people aren't having the same uh experiences.
00:44:48.079 --> 00:44:51.679
Their children aren't experiencing like their depths of despair.
00:44:52.239 --> 00:44:58.960
Uh this is a classic evangelical problem when they're like, But the kids, how do we teach this?
00:44:59.599 --> 00:45:06.639
We can teach the theology, the catechism stuff, but how do you teach legitimacy?
00:45:07.360 --> 00:45:08.079
You can't.
00:45:08.639 --> 00:45:14.400
And then uh many Christian parents live their life in fear that their kid won't believe one day.
00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:16.079
And then often they don't.
00:45:16.719 --> 00:45:18.000
Like often they don't believe.
00:45:18.400 --> 00:45:22.000
And if they do, they don't believe like you, and they don't have the same narrative.
00:45:22.719 --> 00:45:36.880
Um and so in I think it's in the 1680s, this is before the Salem witch trials, they come up with this thing called like the halfway covenant, which is like, okay, no one is being a member anymore because no one's having these conversion experiences.
00:45:37.360 --> 00:45:45.280
So we have to have a new way of of doing like membership in the covenant community that's like not the bar has to be lowered.
00:45:46.320 --> 00:46:01.679
And what that signifies is that that signifies like a community in crisis, like losing its already looking back to like oh back in 1620, back when things were like people were serious about the Lord.
00:46:02.239 --> 00:46:11.199
You know, I say that with that voice because like for some reason that that phrase really grates on me when I hear modern people say it because I don't believe them.
00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:13.760
And this is even people I really respect.
00:46:13.840 --> 00:46:16.639
For some reason, when they say the Lord, I'm like, the what?
00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:17.840
Like, what what do we do?
00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:18.559
Do you know what I mean?
00:46:18.639 --> 00:46:19.679
Oh, yeah, something in me.
00:46:20.239 --> 00:46:22.239
That's part of my that's part of my lexicon.
00:46:23.199 --> 00:46:24.239
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:46:24.400 --> 00:46:27.760
No, I don't, I I know what you're talking about.
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:32.960
I just certain words and phrases that yeah, I just like I don't I don't buy it.
00:46:33.840 --> 00:46:39.599
When someone tells me about Jesus and they talk about like the way of Jesus or the radical life of Jesus, I believe them.
00:46:39.679 --> 00:46:40.559
I'm more likely to.
00:46:40.639 --> 00:46:42.639
I'm like, okay, there's resonating.
00:46:42.719 --> 00:46:43.519
I I feel that.
00:46:43.679 --> 00:46:54.079
When someone starts talking about the Lord, I'm like, I don't know, I get completely disoriented, and I'm like, because I never say that because it's it always has felt a little bit phony coming out of my mouth.
00:46:54.320 --> 00:46:55.119
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:46:55.199 --> 00:46:56.480
I mean No offense if you use it.
00:46:56.719 --> 00:46:57.840
Oh no, no, no, I'm not offended.
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:00.239
I I I I think that it's I'm not offended at all.
00:47:00.400 --> 00:47:16.079
I think that I think that it's like I think that it's it's like particularly in like modern Christianity, there are I think there are just different words that different corners get acculturated to and sort of like attach affection around.
00:47:17.280 --> 00:47:33.360
You know, there's so many sort of like evangelical skits about like part of the part of the way I didn't I didn't learn this growing up, but I was acculturated to in college is the prayer where you're like, and father, just we just father, we just father, you know, father just you know, like you know.
00:47:33.519 --> 00:47:39.360
Um and it's like it's like I think I think the language me is like I'm like, oh I get it.
00:47:39.440 --> 00:47:40.480
It's fine, it's fine.
00:47:40.639 --> 00:47:42.880
Everyone has their words that they like, you know.
00:47:43.039 --> 00:47:53.519
I like I don't think there's anything like deep happening behind it, but I also understand the thing that you're saying, which is that like often too, it's like paired with an approach.
00:47:54.719 --> 00:48:02.000
You know, it's like the people who say the Lord also, you know, it can it can often be it's like you know what I mean.
00:48:02.239 --> 00:48:11.280
Um because I because I think because I think the same can be said for Way of Jesus, which is that like for me right now, that feels like language that is sort of refreshing.
00:48:11.679 --> 00:48:12.079
Right.
00:48:12.400 --> 00:48:21.360
But I can completely hear any number of people that I have lived with being like, oh Lord, the Way of Jesus people.
00:48:21.519 --> 00:48:28.400
Okay, next thing they're gonna be like Zoran Mam Dani, anti-capitalist, whatever, like, oh gosh, the way of Jesus people, watch out.
00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:29.119
You know what I mean?
00:48:29.360 --> 00:48:31.360
Next, yeah, exactly.
00:48:32.880 --> 00:48:47.119
That that way, you know, just the the humor too, and comparing the literary beauty of the Puritan diary with God, I just want to say, I just want to say Father God.
00:48:47.360 --> 00:48:48.320
I love that.
00:48:49.280 --> 00:48:50.639
I'm into both.
00:48:52.159 --> 00:48:52.719
Oh my god.
00:48:54.880 --> 00:48:55.840
I love it, I love it.
00:48:55.920 --> 00:48:58.079
It's so it's so it smells so familial.
00:48:58.400 --> 00:49:03.519
It's very it's like the it's like the two, but it's the boy.
00:49:03.599 --> 00:49:07.039
Yeah, but if you step back for a second, you're like, what are we doing?
00:49:07.199 --> 00:49:08.480
Like that's that's what happens.
00:49:08.639 --> 00:49:12.320
I step back for a second, I'm like, what the hell is happening here?
00:49:12.559 --> 00:49:14.239
Like that, that's the the thing.
00:49:14.559 --> 00:49:15.199
And you know what?
00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:22.800
It's it's interesting because here I am, and here we are talking about um I maybe you didn't say this, but I use the word performative.
00:49:24.079 --> 00:49:35.039
They when someone goes like, I really think the Lord wants me to, and I'm like, Okay, but that's uh I'm thinking it's they're being performative.
00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:52.880
They're saying something to have an effect that I'm like, oh, you're trying to affect the field here in some way, using I I I I maybe it's because I'm so not like I don't fit in that box at all.
00:49:53.199 --> 00:49:56.800
And then sometimes I wonder if it's a fishing for safety.
00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:02.239
If being like, if I talk about the Lord, is this guy gonna also be like, yeah, and talk about the Lord or not?
00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:06.079
And then I don't because people are always scanning, right?
00:50:06.159 --> 00:50:07.119
And Christians, especially.
00:50:07.280 --> 00:50:10.639
This is my whole my whole like class that I teach.
00:50:11.039 --> 00:50:22.480
The body of Christ keeps the score of what where did the Christian sort of sense of always scanning for danger come from and testing the people around if and language is one of those ways.
00:50:23.760 --> 00:50:35.360
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because I think you know, you're the Lord for me is not the Lord, for me, it's season the oh, when I hear like I'm just going through a season of I'm like immediately out.
00:50:35.599 --> 00:50:40.480
For me personally, I'm like when I hear people talking about seasons, I'm going through a season of I'm like out.
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:42.960
I am like, I don't want to any part of this at all.
00:50:43.199 --> 00:50:45.440
And they're like, No, I just I'm just saying I like fall.
00:50:45.840 --> 00:50:47.280
Like, I'm already gone.
00:50:47.679 --> 00:50:48.480
I'm gone, I'm gone.
00:50:48.719 --> 00:50:50.639
You mentioned before seasons.
00:50:51.199 --> 00:50:57.679
I'm out, but yeah, it's not autumn, autumn, winter, spring, or summer, and it's singleness or something else.
00:50:57.840 --> 00:50:58.320
I'm out.
00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:00.000
Oh a season of singleness.
00:51:00.559 --> 00:51:16.400
But I think I mean, I think my I don't know, I don't even know what it therapy lately is about we've decided, I've decided slash we've decided that um I have to actually talk about the religious stuff, which is like aggressively what I don't talk about in therapy.
00:51:16.800 --> 00:51:19.360
But it's sort of like the elephant in the room.
00:51:19.519 --> 00:51:20.960
So we're starting to go into it.
00:51:21.280 --> 00:51:33.199
You know, sort of how it was painted for me was more in college and in my 20s, where I I sort of moved into reformed worldview type stuff, right?
00:51:34.400 --> 00:51:38.000
And like, were you exposed to that kind of oh yeah.
00:51:38.159 --> 00:51:38.639
Oh, okay.
00:51:38.719 --> 00:51:40.639
Oh yeah, world worldview.
00:51:41.679 --> 00:51:44.000
And have we talked about worldview much?
00:51:44.239 --> 00:51:44.960
No, we haven't.
00:51:45.119 --> 00:51:45.440
We haven't.
00:51:45.599 --> 00:51:57.519
Okay, because that's interesting because we both kind of came into this world from very different previous stages of life into a reformed, intellectually respectable, reformed in our you know, college years.
00:51:57.599 --> 00:52:01.440
It's kind of interesting, totally, and then both got ulcered of colitis.
00:52:01.519 --> 00:52:06.960
Like our bodies were our bodies were like, we would like to feel something.
00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:09.760
I felt yeah.
00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:26.719
Um, but uh when with the worldview stuff in particular, it made me feel so powerful because it was the most effective mechanism of neutralizing other beliefs that I've ever seen.
00:52:26.960 --> 00:52:46.880
Because what it could do is it was it would like capture them and be like, this is what the Islamic worldview is like, and oh, this is what the liberal worldview is like, and it would capture them in these little capsules, and then you could look at it objectively and look all around it and look underneath it and be like, oh, I see why it's wrong.
00:52:47.119 --> 00:52:50.639
The Christian worldview was the correct one, that's the one that's real.
00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:53.119
That one explains everything properly.
00:52:53.360 --> 00:52:58.159
The other ones, you know, it's not a it had like there's other ones that have good in them.
00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:00.159
Always, always doctrinally, that's there.
00:53:00.239 --> 00:53:01.679
Well, there you go, common grace.
00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:05.920
Yeah, and as long as it that good means it's matches the things we know.
00:53:06.480 --> 00:53:13.679
It's just like, well, in Buddhism, there's good things, like they believe in like caring for other creatures, and if that's good, it's like okay, yeah, that's an easy one.
00:53:13.840 --> 00:53:27.360
But when I was really in it, I found it to be intoxicating because I could neutralize anything, including if I was having a doubt of some kind or being like, Well, what about this?
00:53:27.599 --> 00:53:33.199
I could be like, I could even do it in myself, be like, Oh, you're being persuaded by like the modernist worldview.
00:53:33.360 --> 00:53:42.400
You need to realize like they're all equally faith-oriented, and oh, I was so I identify that in myself and be like, Yeah, I'm just buying into like the socialist worldview.
00:53:42.559 --> 00:53:51.039
And so where I've ended up is I don't know, I don't have to adjudicate every belief anymore.
00:53:51.440 --> 00:53:56.880
I used to do that, I used to sit in an adjudicating position, and you're a lawyer, is that the right word?
00:53:57.119 --> 00:53:58.880
Yeah, it is, it sure is.
00:54:00.159 --> 00:54:01.920
I could do it so well too.
00:54:02.079 --> 00:54:09.599
I could see what components someone's worldview was composed of, and I could like click it all together and be like, now I understand them.
00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:13.920
I can see what kind of threat they are or what kind of threat they're not, and we can move on.
00:54:14.159 --> 00:54:21.679
But now I'm just like, I have I have no certainty anymore, and that is completely okay with me right now.
00:54:22.320 --> 00:54:24.320
Like it does bother me.
00:54:24.719 --> 00:54:47.840
I think I'm at have always been moved by this is like a Brene Brown thing, this is like a many people thing, but like by the idea, I think missionaries when not being monsters, I notice have this a lot, which is that like we are too busy like doing the stuff to be worrying about like how to categorize whatever.
00:54:48.000 --> 00:54:54.000
You know, it's like there is a bunch of hungry people here, you do your categorizing, I need to go feed them.
00:54:54.320 --> 00:55:03.840
I feel that I'm more in the like there's too much going on, and I'm like, I would rather occupy my time with like trying to figure out how to deal with stuff that's happening.
00:55:04.480 --> 00:55:10.159
And like or or like I'm just I I'm just like I'm not gonna fight about it.
00:55:10.239 --> 00:55:11.440
You you guys can fight about it.
00:55:11.519 --> 00:55:12.719
I have other things to do.
00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:13.760
I have other things to do.
00:55:13.840 --> 00:55:29.840
I'm just not um you know, and I think and I think um because the the the flaws, the the actual corruption or the um rotting in the world views were were forced to be in front of my face by my family history.
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:38.800
So it's like you have this Christian worldview, whatever, and then it's also like Reagan is supporting the dictator in Congo, so you're just like okay.
00:55:39.119 --> 00:55:55.760
It's why I the Republican, American Republican sort of um framing where you go, these are the things that God stands for, and so I need to vote for in this way politically, which is just always sort of like um just so we're clear, everyone's doing like a dirty deal.
00:55:55.920 --> 00:55:59.280
So if I'm gonna do a dirty deal, I would rather prioritize these things.
00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:04.159
You know, you're gonna prioritize those things, I'm gonna prioritize no kids in cages.
00:56:04.400 --> 00:56:06.000
You want to call that corrupt, fine.
00:56:06.079 --> 00:56:07.840
I pick my corrupt deal, you picked yours.
00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:11.760
By the way, yours includes like you're supporting people getting killed overseas.
00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:23.519
So, in a way, you're describing your experience with religious stuff, can't be separated from being a modern person in a world of like overwhelm, too.
00:56:23.760 --> 00:56:26.800
Yeah, yeah, like you you're you're it's it's true.
00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:31.840
Like, I I I just don't have time to care about this, and I so I just am not going to care.
00:56:32.159 --> 00:56:42.880
I think if anything landed in a concrete way, it's like sort of this how are we wrestling with what the fall means and what that means, like the implications of the fall.
00:56:43.199 --> 00:56:58.400
That's like okay, this is a frame that even still I'm like partial, I'm like, mm-hmm, this makes sense, but then there are parts where I'm like, I don't think that this is your doctrinal statement, is different than what you're actually saying in practice, and I don't agree with your doctrinal statement.
00:56:58.800 --> 00:57:02.880
Your doctrinal statement basically says everything is corrupt, all corrupt.
00:57:03.039 --> 00:57:06.320
And I'm like, no, I don't think that that's what corrupt means.
00:57:06.719 --> 00:57:12.559
Does the language of I'm just this is sort of uh just a thing I'm curious about?
00:57:12.719 --> 00:57:21.599
Yeah, does the language of brokenness still resonate with you, or did it used to resonate?
00:57:21.679 --> 00:57:23.039
Like I'm just curious about that.
00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:25.199
Definitely used to, without question.
00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:26.159
Without question.
00:57:26.320 --> 00:57:33.039
I remember my junior or my senior year of college, I took a semester course.
00:57:33.199 --> 00:57:41.760
We spent it called genocide, and we spent it on uh five months on two genocides, two and a half months on the Bosnian genocide, two and a half months on the Rwandan genocide.
00:57:41.920 --> 00:57:48.960
And because we have two and a half months on each one in a class, there's probably one of one of the most in-depth classes I've ever taken.
00:57:49.119 --> 00:57:51.840
Because it's a that's a lot of time to spend on one event.
00:57:52.000 --> 00:58:12.239
And you know, you're learning all the things and you're watching all the documentaries, and you're watching like the people, like the video of the people that are about to get hacked, and then like the Americans are flying out, and there's literally the camera shot of all the Africans that are about to get hacked up, and like just like the framework of like, oh, anybody, anyone can at some point take up a machete and kill their neighbor.
00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:14.000
I'm like, yes, the fall.
00:58:14.079 --> 00:58:14.880
That makes sense.
00:58:15.039 --> 00:58:32.880
That makes sense, and I think that that frame still works for me, but that it's less grovelly and like because in a way it's it is another way of saying imperfect.
00:58:33.440 --> 00:58:34.079
Yeah.
00:58:34.559 --> 00:58:37.199
Uh it's just less, it's just less grovelly for me.
00:58:37.280 --> 00:58:52.079
It's not, it's not, I don't I don't think to sort of like come to the conversations we've been having, I don't think that it is useful or true to have a framework that says that every part of us is rotten.
00:58:52.320 --> 00:59:04.320
It almost feels like that is the liter a literal reading of certain passages of scripture and not the way that Jesus exegeted scripture.
00:59:04.639 --> 00:59:24.400
So Jesus shows up, and I I talk about this in therapy, like it comes up all the time, where I'm like, Jesus shows up, and the Pharisees are like tithing dill and mint out of their little herb garden because they're like applying the rules correctly, and then they are like, Should we help someone who's fallen into a ditch on Sunday or on Saturday?
00:59:24.559 --> 00:59:25.920
And they're like, I don't know.
00:59:26.079 --> 00:59:29.840
And I just feel like I'm like, Jesus is like, what are you talking about?
00:59:30.079 --> 01:00:01.760
Yeah, and I think it's that exegesis where he's like, hello, the whole thing is you know, where I'm like, if we understand it to mean pure corruption, nothing good, I don't think that works, and you create pain, and you also create these like this false humility, and you create this inability to like, I don't know, you know, you have a bad day, and it every corner of Christendom has its way of saying it in like Black South.
01:00:01.840 --> 01:00:08.320
It's like you have a bad day, or how or someone's you ask someone how they're doing, and they're like, better than I deserve.
01:00:08.639 --> 01:00:12.880
And it's like, what if you just said I'm having a terrible day?
01:00:13.039 --> 01:00:15.360
Yeah, why do you have to silver lining it?
01:00:15.440 --> 01:00:17.679
Because God can't hold the terrible day you're having.
01:00:17.840 --> 01:00:36.159
And I think, I don't know, I think that this this image of as we dance, I keep coming back to the Augustine and being like, I just don't think that the the I don't think that if I'm gonna stick with a real like analysis of the scripture, I don't think it adds up to message everything rotten.
01:00:36.559 --> 01:00:40.000
Then you have to create all these frameworks and be like, okay, then well, what happens to babies?
01:00:40.079 --> 01:00:41.519
Oh, well, then they have the age of accountability.
01:00:41.679 --> 01:00:42.800
You have to create this whole thing.
01:00:43.920 --> 01:00:45.360
That's exactly what happened.
01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:54.880
Augustine, the most undigestible thing he talked about of all was an unbaptized baby goes to hell forever.
01:00:55.199 --> 01:00:55.920
Oh, really?
01:00:56.079 --> 01:00:56.639
Interesting.
01:00:56.960 --> 01:01:05.199
That was the most like the thing he said that followed his logic that people were like, look, in the Middle Ages, like they they just like that cannot stand.
01:01:05.360 --> 01:01:07.440
And it's not like they could be like, here's why he's wrong.
01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:11.679
They just were like, Okay, the weird the guy said the weird thing.
01:01:11.840 --> 01:01:13.599
Obviously, we're not gonna do that.
01:01:14.239 --> 01:01:23.920
And like the Middle Ages, the the theology there is like just building on top of Augustine, but often contradicting him in in many ways, contradicting him, uh, while still pointing to him.
01:01:24.000 --> 01:01:26.800
And then the reformers are like, we're going back to Augustine because he had it right.
01:01:27.119 --> 01:01:34.960
And then they have all their own issues, like you just the thing you just said, the age of accountability, like that's a Protestant attempt to manage the same problem.
01:01:35.280 --> 01:01:37.119
And we're like, Well, what happens if a kid dies?
01:01:37.199 --> 01:01:38.719
And before that, it's like, well, they'll be with God.
01:01:38.800 --> 01:01:41.039
And it's like, well, then why don't we just like kill kids, right?
01:01:41.199 --> 01:01:42.400
Like it gets to some.
01:01:45.440 --> 01:01:46.320
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:46.880 --> 01:01:50.719
You're like, what what what was just considered?
01:01:50.880 --> 01:01:52.800
Like, we know something's wrong.
01:01:53.119 --> 01:01:56.079
When we're like, that technically makes sense.
01:01:56.239 --> 01:02:02.400
It's the same story as like, you know, if the answer to like if a person's never heard the gospel, do they go to hell?
01:02:02.559 --> 01:02:05.199
No, because they never heard, and they're like, then why did you tell me?
01:02:05.360 --> 01:02:07.119
And you're like, good point.
01:02:12.159 --> 01:02:14.000
I'm like, we're going to hell, folks.
01:02:14.480 --> 01:02:20.559
I know, and it's like the best move we could do is just erase all knowledge of this, and then no one would go to hell.
01:02:20.960 --> 01:02:22.239
It's absurd.
01:02:22.880 --> 01:02:40.880
Yeah, the the language of brokenness to me used to be really it was really uh useful to me for a while, kind of emerging from evangelicalism that was like, hey, the world doesn't really matter and stuff, and then this stuff is the reform stuff is like really refreshing.
01:02:41.039 --> 01:02:41.280
Uh-huh.
01:02:41.599 --> 01:02:46.079
The way I describe it is it's like I got a larger program, an operating system.
01:02:46.320 --> 01:02:55.519
Yeah, that's a great uh and the same way that you were talking about Wesley being like, I had a feeling for me, it was like life matters, yeah.
01:02:55.920 --> 01:02:59.840
Like in the reformed tradition, I was like, Oh, life matters to God.
01:02:59.920 --> 01:03:01.039
Yeah, isn't that nice?
01:03:01.199 --> 01:03:04.960
And you're like, whoa, we are really working with like the basics here.
01:03:05.199 --> 01:03:05.760
Yeah, yeah.
01:03:05.920 --> 01:03:24.960
But the fact that that was like, oh, cool, like what I do, and then brokenness was a paradigm that allowed me to look at the world with love and see beauty in it, even if the beauty was like bricolage, like broken pieces put together and stuff.
01:03:25.360 --> 01:03:33.599
But uh so it was like for a while I was able to maintain my love for the world and things that are not just about Christianity.
01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:44.000
In some ways, the worldview stuff, what it really did for me was it allowed me something I've always been bent towards, which is I've actually always been bent towards an open mind my whole life.
01:03:44.320 --> 01:03:48.480
I have been bent, it was the way my parents were, it was the way our family was.
01:03:48.639 --> 01:03:53.440
I liked learning about other things and just being like, huh, and not judging them.
01:03:53.599 --> 01:03:55.519
That was the real like me as a kid.
01:03:55.679 --> 01:03:57.599
That was me when the internet came out.
01:03:57.760 --> 01:04:04.960
I would go on websites and look up like the history of Buddhism and on who knows what site, like geocities.
01:04:05.360 --> 01:04:12.559
You know, I'd be on there and I just like like knowing this stuff and knowing that people do these things.
01:04:12.719 --> 01:04:22.159
Yeah, but then I then it was through the kind of acquire the fire type culture that I was like, oh, I have to be like careful about other beliefs and other thoughts.
01:04:22.320 --> 01:04:38.880
Then worldviewism allowed me a way in like the back door because I could be like, okay, I can point out why like the Buddhist worldview has is wrong, but I can also appreciate all the good things in it, and it allowed me this way to rehabilitate that like open-mindedness.
01:04:39.599 --> 01:04:49.920
But as things have decomposed, now I'm just like I'm kind of back to I like appreciate certain things and I think other things are bad, and that's okay.
01:04:50.719 --> 01:05:07.360
Yeah, that's that's I respond a lot to that language because I think that that's there are just things, for instance, immigration, where I was never going to and will not entertain whatever the like policy.
01:05:07.440 --> 01:05:10.400
I just it was like it's not it's not gonna happen.
01:05:10.559 --> 01:05:15.199
You're not gonna it's not, it's like not the answer is no, you know what I mean?
01:05:15.599 --> 01:05:21.519
Like you entertaining the idea that like immigrants need to stay out and yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:05:21.599 --> 01:05:24.159
It's just like that's not going to happen.
01:05:24.480 --> 01:05:35.920
You are not going to somehow convince me to read scripture as meaning that all this stuff about the alien and the foreigner and the stranger somehow requires us to kick these people out or bar them from coming in.
01:05:36.079 --> 01:05:37.840
You can do the math for that.
01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:39.440
I am not going to participate it.
01:05:39.519 --> 01:05:48.000
And frankly, when you I see you doing all that math, it looks a lot like the math that people were doing in the 1800s to like justify the slavery.
01:05:48.159 --> 01:05:48.320
Yeah.
01:05:48.400 --> 01:05:52.320
And I'm like, I don't want to participate like I don't need okay.
01:05:52.400 --> 01:06:06.480
This really comes back to what we're saying is like I continue to talk up, think about these periods that we're in and keep being like, but how How are they doing these vile things to people and being Christians?
01:06:06.639 --> 01:06:08.960
And not in some theoretical sense.
01:06:09.039 --> 01:06:10.719
I'm like, no, but how are they?
01:06:11.039 --> 01:06:11.840
How are they?
01:06:12.000 --> 01:06:17.840
I don't, I don't know the Americas example so much, but I know it's things like they preach them, they don't convert, then you burn them, kind of a thing, or you kill them.
01:06:18.000 --> 01:06:28.639
And I'm like, but how does the soldier and the priest with him, more importantly, or both, how are they overriding the feelings of we can't kill humans?
01:06:29.199 --> 01:06:35.760
How are you succeeding in neutralizing that whole alarm system in your body that goes, this is wrong?
01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:51.199
And this is a completely, complete speculation, not peer-reviewed theory, but I just keep when we have these conversations, I'm like, I want to say, like, it gotta, it's gotta have something to do with this way that you're controlling your emotions.
01:06:52.159 --> 01:07:02.079
You are so extensively controlling the battlefield, which is now your body, that you can see horror and be like, it's fine.
01:07:02.320 --> 01:07:07.119
How do you live with enslaved people that you own and beat?
01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:10.639
Yeah, and go to church, and that's every day.
01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:25.199
And it's not it's not foreign because we have these same understandings with things like Gaza and any number of humanitarian crises around the world, where humans manage to live, see it and not feel.
01:07:25.360 --> 01:07:39.199
But I think that this is why I one of the weakest parts of my argument is this idea that dance movement emotion is fundamentally about feel like this motion thing, you know.
01:07:39.599 --> 01:07:59.679
But I think that it's like if you control your motion to this like bureaucratic administrative state level, I think you're causing some sort of like psychosomatic harm that you can't feel what is obviously wrong, yeah.
01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:11.280
And then you have all these other people in these movements, like we're talking about, who it seems like they're intuitively in some ways realizing this control state is too much.
01:08:12.320 --> 01:08:20.159
You basically have a panopticon situation of your body, that's the civilizing mission mission, and then you have people being like, the I'm barking.
01:08:20.319 --> 01:08:26.000
And I know they're not like I'm feeling my body, but it does feel like some sense of like that system cannot stand.
01:08:26.239 --> 01:08:34.319
It's just like it's just like I mean, when you describe the Great Awakening, I'm like, yeah, it's just a bunch of like white hippies who are like, I need to go to like Joshua Tree and smoke weed.
01:08:34.560 --> 01:08:38.800
Like, I met God, I'm like, Yeah, because they're too like confined by corporate America, right?
01:08:38.960 --> 01:08:39.600
You know what I mean?
01:08:39.680 --> 01:08:45.279
It's like that, but then but then it's like what do you do when you get home from Joshua Tree?
01:08:45.520 --> 01:08:51.359
You go back to your the corporate life, maybe with a bit, something a little thing spiced in there now.
01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:54.399
That's the same conversation as what do you do after acquire the fire?
01:08:54.479 --> 01:08:55.279
What do you know?
01:08:56.319 --> 01:09:01.920
But I just I have to say this because when you said the panopticon of how did you phrase it?
01:09:02.079 --> 01:09:12.319
The panopticon of of like the body, like your body and your moving, yeah, like you're in everyone's looking everywhere in your body, every member, you're checking everything and making sure it's all in order.
01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:26.880
Because the pure Puritanism is the panopticon of the soul, it is a constant obsessive introspection of every motivation, every inclination, every desire, every as you're on this path to conversion.
01:09:27.279 --> 01:09:34.239
And so it this is fitting because that is the same, this is that time, this is the same century.
01:09:35.039 --> 01:10:00.399
There is something, and maybe we'll have to talk about this next time, but there's something that has broken and shifted or changed from the way things were to the way things are now, and it involves the body and it involves the self, because like you have the production of the civilized self, and you have the Puritan examination of the sinful and then saved self.
01:10:01.279 --> 01:10:06.079
There's something there that we we can continue to get into because I think that's what it is.
01:10:06.640 --> 01:10:12.159
The really the question behind it, behind this whole conversation for me today was like, why did this stuff happen?
01:10:12.319 --> 01:10:14.640
Both of these things happened in the 1700s.
01:10:15.600 --> 01:10:17.920
It was the number that jumped out at me, the 1700s.
01:10:18.319 --> 01:10:21.119
Both these things happening, they seem so opposite, so different.
01:10:21.279 --> 01:10:25.680
One's like metropolitan, one is theocratic Gilead weirdos, right?
01:10:25.760 --> 01:10:35.359
And and yet there's something here about the scrupulous obsession with the self, whether it's the movement or the soul's affections.
01:10:35.600 --> 01:10:39.279
Didn't that guy say in that passage you read something about his evil affections?
01:10:39.520 --> 01:10:39.840
Mm-hmm.
01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:45.279
It's like, whoo, that's like that's tough, man, because that's like the word used for love.
01:10:46.479 --> 01:10:46.960
Mm-hmm.
01:10:47.199 --> 01:10:47.600
Mm-hmm.
01:10:47.920 --> 01:11:00.319
Well, I think I think it's important to insert here with you know, with that marker of 1789 on the way, they don't just wake up in 1789 and say we're tired of the aristocrats, kick them out.
01:11:00.479 --> 01:11:11.600
No, they spend basically the 1700s being like, We are starving, our kids are dying, there's not enough food, people are sick.
01:11:11.840 --> 01:11:13.760
You're running over us in the streets.
01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:15.680
This isn't just brokenness.
01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:18.800
I don't know, it's not even something there's no theory to it.
01:11:18.960 --> 01:11:21.760
This is just straight up bone-deep hunger.
01:11:21.920 --> 01:11:23.199
That's all we're talking about.
01:11:23.359 --> 01:11:28.640
It justifies it justifies like anything, any action to over to like end this.
01:11:28.720 --> 01:11:33.840
And I think what you were trying to say is this has been this is not this has been going on for decades.
01:11:34.159 --> 01:11:36.800
Like you said, it didn't just happen one day in 1789.
01:11:36.880 --> 01:11:38.800
Hey, the price of bread's a little high.
01:11:38.960 --> 01:11:43.199
Like this is what dehumanization looks like over well, this is the grinder.
01:11:43.439 --> 01:11:53.760
The rulers are obsessed with the body civilizing, including importantly, it's really important to include that the rulers, part of the rulers, is the church.
01:11:55.199 --> 01:11:57.199
They're on the civilizing mission.
01:11:57.439 --> 01:12:04.079
The people, as this century progresses that we're talking about, the 1700s, the people are starving and dying.
01:12:04.239 --> 01:12:10.720
And when the kid gets run over in the street, the guy's like, well, it's better that he died than he lived.
01:12:11.039 --> 01:12:16.960
So as the century is moving on, up here, civilizing mission, how's your arm?
01:12:17.039 --> 01:12:17.600
How's your leg?
01:12:17.680 --> 01:12:18.880
Is your foot turned out?
01:12:19.119 --> 01:12:25.840
Down here, starving, also like this evangelical revivalist outbreak, you know.
01:12:26.399 --> 01:12:32.159
Um, this sort of like highly self-introspective thing is happening.
01:12:32.399 --> 01:12:38.399
But like again, it's like up top is this sort of like keep the order.
01:12:39.119 --> 01:12:41.359
And it's like that system can't hold.
01:12:42.720 --> 01:12:52.000
16 15 feels like the century the polycrisis and the internet came out, internet being the printing press, and the polychrisis covers all the other things.
01:12:52.319 --> 01:12:55.600
15th century, 1400s, uh 1500s, 1500s.
01:12:55.760 --> 01:12:59.279
So 1400s is when the is the printing pressure.
01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:00.479
Oh, 14 is printing press.
01:13:00.560 --> 01:13:01.119
Okay, got it.
01:13:01.439 --> 01:13:03.119
Black death looks horrible, and yeah.
01:13:03.439 --> 01:13:04.000
Okay, got it.
01:13:04.079 --> 01:13:05.840
So 14 is the right, right, right.
01:13:06.000 --> 01:13:12.560
15 is like reformation, and like we gotta systematize the great like cleaning, you know.
01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:16.000
Yep, the great fracturing and cleanup.
01:13:16.159 --> 01:13:18.239
Yeah, the great fracturing and cleanup.
01:13:18.319 --> 01:13:18.800
15.
01:13:19.039 --> 01:13:19.439
16.
01:13:19.680 --> 01:13:21.680
This is just vibes that I'm I'm deducing.
01:13:21.760 --> 01:13:25.039
I'm not really saying like what I know to be true, but it's what I'm observing.
01:13:25.279 --> 01:13:33.119
1600s seems to be the century of like, okay, now we're putting it together, you know, with the emblem being Versailles.
01:13:34.000 --> 01:13:37.279
You know, um, Westphalia is 1600s.
01:13:37.439 --> 01:13:40.159
That's like, okay, all right, we're we're getting it together, you know.
01:13:40.239 --> 01:13:41.920
We've we've been fighting now.
01:13:42.000 --> 01:13:42.880
We have whatever.
01:13:43.039 --> 01:13:46.800
We have the rules and they're here, and we're being good in our bodies, whatever.
01:13:46.960 --> 01:13:58.479
17 seems like the century where the rules kind of reach their peak sophistication, but also the gap between that and the normal people is at its widest.
01:13:58.640 --> 01:13:59.119
Yeah.
01:13:59.359 --> 01:14:01.119
That seems to be like the evolution.
01:14:01.359 --> 01:14:05.279
Fracturing cleanup, 1500s, 1600s, okay.
01:14:05.520 --> 01:14:06.960
Okay, it's okay, we got it.
01:14:07.680 --> 01:14:08.479
It's working.
01:14:08.720 --> 01:14:11.359
17 is like, yeah, we're still doing it.
01:14:11.439 --> 01:14:14.319
And it's and the people on the bottom are like, this is not working anymore.
01:14:14.640 --> 01:14:20.399
Right, and they're like, We're 90% of the people, and what we need to wake up.
01:14:20.880 --> 01:14:22.960
And no, no, we are waking up.
01:14:24.720 --> 01:14:29.520
And there's going to be blood to there's going to be blood to pay.
01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:32.800
Because this is not changing.
01:14:33.119 --> 01:14:40.479
There's a lot, you know, to talk about, and I I kind of feel like uh, you know, in this in the with the image of the typewriter going back again.
01:14:41.600 --> 01:14:48.000
Something that I'd love to like talk through is you know, the 1600s we haven't talked much about.
01:14:48.960 --> 01:14:52.800
The 1600s is the century of science.
01:14:54.479 --> 01:15:01.840
Science, I I've talked about this before on in some of my videos, but I haven't grappled with it enough.
01:15:02.079 --> 01:15:07.840
But the scientific revolution happens at the same time as the 30 years' war.
01:15:08.560 --> 01:15:15.199
The 30 years' war is as the religious differences rips Europe apart, it tears its own throat apart.
01:15:16.800 --> 01:15:24.000
And it's left exhausted from war and religion in particular war over faith.
01:15:24.319 --> 01:15:27.359
The dissonance is just out of this world.
01:15:28.319 --> 01:15:37.680
The blood, it the 30 Years' War, which is from 1618 to 48, is in a way it's Europe's first world war, like first continental war.
01:15:38.800 --> 01:15:40.960
Like everyone's involved.
01:15:41.279 --> 01:15:45.359
And um yes, it's more than religion, but it starts with religion.
01:15:46.079 --> 01:15:48.960
The contradictions are just so uh blatant.
01:15:49.840 --> 01:16:06.159
And as these Protestant, Catholic Europeans are sitting in exhaustion, being like, We're never gonna figure this out, like the thought starts to happen maybe the church, Christianity isn't a good basis for society.
01:16:07.119 --> 01:16:08.560
Like we keep ending up here.
01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:12.720
This has been happening now for 150 years.
01:16:13.199 --> 01:16:14.720
We keep ending back here.
01:16:15.359 --> 01:16:24.479
And then you have someone say, I have, you know, what if we had a tolerant society where you believed different things and that was okay?
01:16:25.199 --> 01:16:26.479
Oh, that's revolutionary.
01:16:26.800 --> 01:16:28.319
We've never done that in Christendom.
01:16:28.640 --> 01:16:30.640
That's evil, that's bad, that's scary.
01:16:30.960 --> 01:16:31.920
We need that.
01:16:32.560 --> 01:16:41.600
You also at that same moment have science being like, Hey, we actually know because we've been testing it.
01:16:41.840 --> 01:16:43.439
We know what works and what doesn't.
01:16:44.239 --> 01:17:05.039
And that that the fact that science is blooming as religion is exhausting itself is so critical because it's like we can understand the world and create fail-safes so that like we really our knowledge really is founded on indisputable fact.
01:17:05.600 --> 01:17:07.520
Um, and I'm just I'm curious.
01:17:07.680 --> 01:17:11.920
I know it's it's too late now, but I'm curious to talk about that, the implications for that.
01:17:12.079 --> 01:17:17.520
Because man, it was that a breath of fresh air to people exhausted from religion.
01:17:17.600 --> 01:17:24.800
Like, and like you mean there there is a way we can trust even like our own eyes, our own ears, our own senses.
01:17:25.039 --> 01:17:29.920
I can you know, we can test something and no, no more faith.
01:17:30.399 --> 01:17:34.960
Because there the the the those who hold the keys keep screwing us over.
01:17:35.359 --> 01:17:47.439
Science is extremely empowering to an exhausted Europe, and so that's again, that's going back, but I wonder if we move if we looked at that.
01:17:47.840 --> 01:17:59.039
Yeah, yes, I I would love to overlap that like we did with this 1700s, overlay that with that's you know, that is Louis the Sun King Versailles century, yeah.
01:17:59.199 --> 01:18:01.520
Right, like before the revolution, yeah.
01:18:01.920 --> 01:18:06.640
That is the the codification officially of ballet.
01:18:07.600 --> 01:18:14.319
Um that's the like the academies get started in France, like the academy, like the Academie Française, right?
01:18:14.560 --> 01:18:19.920
Like the sort of like, all right, now we have an official body that is in charge of the language and there's an official way to speak it.
01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:21.359
That's the 1600s.
01:18:21.600 --> 01:18:23.119
Um, very methodical.
01:18:23.279 --> 01:18:28.000
Oh, now we have a Beaux-Arts Academy, and we have a that academy, and we have a that academy.
01:18:28.479 --> 01:18:32.239
And knowledge is being ordered as well.
01:18:33.600 --> 01:18:37.119
Like this isn't just like chaotic, this is catalogued.
01:18:37.359 --> 01:18:37.760
Mm-hmm.
01:18:38.560 --> 01:18:40.479
Okay, so there's some there's something to talk about.
01:18:40.640 --> 01:18:42.399
We have something else to talk about.
01:18:44.079 --> 01:18:44.560
Correct.
01:18:47.039 --> 01:18:47.680
Cool.
01:18:48.880 --> 01:18:51.119
All right, thank you for listening again.
01:18:51.279 --> 01:19:03.760
Uh, like this typewriter image, we you know, you get to the end of the typewriter's, I don't know what that thing is called, the typewriter line, and then it has to swing back to the front again to do the next line.
01:19:03.840 --> 01:19:06.159
And that's kind of what we'll what next week is.
01:19:06.399 --> 01:19:15.359
We're swinging back to the 1600s to touch on some of the things we didn't really have time to get into over the last few weeks.
01:19:15.520 --> 01:19:23.760
Um, the century of the Thirty Years' War, the peace of Westphalia, the origins of secularism, and the century of science.
01:19:23.920 --> 01:19:31.039
And Gofen and I both think that there's something in that that we haven't really touched yet that's worth looking at.
01:19:31.279 --> 01:19:35.359
And I also have I have some exciting news coming soon about a community.
01:19:35.520 --> 01:19:40.720
I'm going to be launching, a space for people whose faith is changing shape.
01:19:40.880 --> 01:19:43.199
So there'll be more on that to come.
01:19:43.279 --> 01:19:45.279
And um, hopefully I'll see you next week.
01:19:45.439 --> 01:19:45.840
All right.
01:19:45.920 --> 01:19:47.199
Thanks everyone.