We ALL Have a Porn Problem | Andrew Williams

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Andrew Williams, thank you for joining me on commitment.
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To reality, pleasure to be here.
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Well, just to start, I'd like you to tell us
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a little bit about who you are? Who is Andrew Williams.
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That's a great question. Where does one start with it
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like that? Well, I suppose I would say that my
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faith is a very central part that divides who I am.
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And it's a really great question because I think it's
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something I struggled with all my life. Right, who am I?
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And what does it mean to be me? And or
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what does it mean, you know, to be a person?
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How does one define one's self? And I think I
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came to the conclusion over time, for a long time
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that it's not possible to define an individual apart from
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the world in which the person lives. So we're all
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a product of our environment, of our relationships. And obviously
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the sort of relationship is that of being made in
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the image of God and being invited into closer communion
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with Him. So I think, you know, that is that's
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why I start there, I guess, and I think a
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lot of a lot of who I am? You know,
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in the world, what are my interests? The people associate
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with the things that I do arise very much from
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that combination of my own a sort of personal early experience,
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and how that led me to faith, and how that
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led me to the interest in mental health and the
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roles that I've done. So I've worked in charity work
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principally in Russia for quite a long time, and I've
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been teacher, and I've been a psychotherapist, and I'm finally
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a chaplain in a mental health context. So I think
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all of those things really tied together around that experience
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of relationship and particularly of faith.
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Yeah a question, Yes, quite, Hey, it's an open question.
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I really the reason I ask it that way is
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I hate going through bio roles because you're so much
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more than just the things that you've done. Absolutely, and
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so I feel like it's slightly reductive. People could fight
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me on that, but to just list this is where
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you went to school, this is you know. But the
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main reason that I became aware of you and aware
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of your work is your book From Object to Icon. Now,
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I gave it a different subtitle for years. I kept
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saying that it was from Object to Icon, Living iconographically
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in a pornographic world, And then when I looked at
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the book. The other day, I said, that's not it
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at all. It's the struggle for spiritual vision in a
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pornographic world, which is so much better because your book
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is really well, it deals with pornography. It's not so
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much about the problem of sex or sexuality, but a
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problem of vision of right orientation in the world. So
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your subtitle is a lot better than mine.
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Well, I mean, thanks to the people of the Ancient
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Faith for the subtitle. I didn't.
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How did you get into this subject? And writing a
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book is not easy? What motivated you to write a
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book on pornography?
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Well, to be honest, was at it was external pressure.
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It was because I had done some of the study
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and I'd talked about it, and then I got a
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lot of people basically saying, can we hear more about this?
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Can you do more? Can you write a book? First
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of all the podcasts I did a series of podcasts
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on Ancient Faith, and then following that, can you write
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a book? So it was really you know, I didn't
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I definitely set out to write a book on this topic.
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In fact, I struggled quite a lot with the idea
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of writing a book on this topic. I mean, it
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all stemmed from actually a class when I was at
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Holy Cross and I read I was reading Father John
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Brett's book on I can't think what it's called now,
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was bioethics, basically Christian etha, and he just used this
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sort of he had a very brief paragraph on pornography,
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but he just used this phrase demonic iconography and it
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really stuck in my mind. And so when I had
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the opportunity, I decided I would look at the topic
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and I did. I remember interviewing three people, two priests
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and an iconographer about what that, you know, how they
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would see that this connection between the modern world's imagery
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and how we're encouraged to look upon the world and
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an iconography and that was so that was where it
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all sort of started. And then I and then I
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did a series of podcasts for Ancient Faith, and then
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that led that lead to the book. And you'll see,
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I mean, if you if people who've listened to the
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podcast will recognize some of the material in the book,
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but the book sort of builds on that announces that's
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a lot.
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Well. I think the right place to start is with definition,
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defining your terms, although I think it's going to be
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quite difficult. How what is pornography? Because I know that
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famous Supreme Court justice you know, said, uh, you know,
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I know it when I see it. Yeah, but I
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think that's a strict legal definition, and you you talk
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about the pornification of the world that we live in,
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and so I think that pornography is a lot more
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than we immediately begin to think about.
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Yeah. Absolutely, Well, I came to the conclusion in the
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end that that that pornography, I mean that it legal
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definitions aside, because I don't think a legal definition is
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going to be good enough. So what I've got is
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maybe less It makes it less easy to say this is,
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this isn't. But what I would say is that looking
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at the I thought etymology is the way. So looking
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at the Greek roots, you know, pornia is principally things
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to do with prostitution, But I mean, basically it's about
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sexual unfaithfulness, and I think it's that unfaithfulness in terms
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of relationship and union. And then obviously is to write
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or draw or make an image. So so what we're
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saying is that if it's an image that relates to unfaithfulness,
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then that's pornography in that sense. And I think that's
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actually quite good. The literal, absolutely, literal definition is quite
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a good definition. And so you know, obviously, image is
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a broad term and it can mean things you see,
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you know, in real life with your eyes. It can
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mean images on paper or on digital devices. It can
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mean video, it can mean a lot of things. And
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you know, it can mean even writing, because you can
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have bornographic literature, for example. So so it's anything that's
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created that that either intentionally or unintentionally has the has
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the effect of making us unfaithful to God, it ultimately,
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but to but in them, you know, also to human relationships.
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Mm hmm. And you say that we all, whether we
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struggle with pornography explicitly or not, that we all have
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a pornography problem. What do you mean by that?
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Yes, well, I think I mean obviously I've only lived
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in this time, in this culture, but so it's maybe
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it's all of human history. I don't know, but certainly
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I think there's something particularly at this time, where we're
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encouraged to objectify and to separate the personal reality from
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the image or how we see someone. How we think
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of someone doesn't necessarily relate to who they really are,
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but it's associated with the whole set of other things,
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and I think that's all the same part of the
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same issue basically. So so in that sense, you could
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say a broader definition of pornography is that looking at
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someone and not seeing them they really are, but for
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something else. Yeah.
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Yeah, it's that objectification versus veneration, which we'll get into later.
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But you know, as I was thinking about this, I
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started thinking about another parallel vice, which is that of gambling,
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which has really exploded. I'm not sure about where you live,
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but in America, gambling was legalized in many states, and
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you've seen it pop up all over that. And I
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had been to Vegas a couple decades ago when I
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was younger, and it really felt different. And I went
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to Vegas a couple of years ago. My wife had
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a work retreat there and so I met her at
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the end and we stayed for a couple of days.
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Thought why not? And what struck me was how I
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want to be careful when I say this, so, but
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how ordinary it felt. It didn't feel like this special place.
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Now you can find, you know, darkness wherever you look.
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And I think that what has happened is like the
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proverbial lobster in a pot. America has become a lot
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more like Vegas everywhere else. So when you go to
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Vegas it almost felt more family friendly. It's like, hey,
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gambling has left the station. That's no longer our only
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show in town. We have to find other ways to
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attract people.
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Now.
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I think that the new vice there is gluttony. I mean,
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some of the best food I've had in a long time,
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So they're really really high on the culinary scale together
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well in quality. It's that thing where it just becomes slowly.
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The reason I talk about the lobster, the pods. It's slow,
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and you make little concessions here, you make little concessions there.
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And I think that the same thing has happened with
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the pornography that we all I know that there's a
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more philosophical definition of it that we've kind of gotten into,
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but just blatant pornography as we all understand it to be,
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it has become much more common place to the to
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the degree to which I think that I watch pornography
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much more often than I even believe just watching television.
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No, absolutely, I mean I don't. I gave up watching
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telligence more or less. I mean, there were very few things.
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I'll watch quiz Strais occasionally with my children, But yeah,
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I think you're right. I think it's really really pervasive
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throughout the culture. And you can see sort of certainly
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from the nineteen fifties onwards, are just looking at all
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of this basic media outlets. There's a very clear path
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that you're describing, this sort of broadening on what's considered permissible,
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and it just keeps on expanding and expanding and expanding gently. Yeah,
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and so the sort of as you see it in
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the more explicit and extreme stuff as well, so they
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know the internet is is this really writ large so
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that the beginnings of the Internet, there were studies done
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about pornography and the impact of pornography, and they talked about,
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you know, hardcore pornography and extreme but what they were
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calling hardcore and extreme pornography is now absolutely run at
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the mill and there are far more extreme and hardcore
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things out there. So it's the same on every level.
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I think this has been working. It's really it's really
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fascinating to look at some of those early studies and
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see what they were absolutely shocked by finding, which you
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know now is considered relatively mild.
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Yeah, and it's pernicious. I mean, I remember I grew
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up in the well My first exposure of the Internet
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growing up was late nineties really, and I remember in
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counting pornography and it was often through pop ups where
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it would just pop up and you oh, and as
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a child, do you think, Oh, and then you start
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paying attention to it. Oh, that's that it's caught my interest.
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What is that like? Especially as a young teenager. Now
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it is so much more baked in, whether it's through algorithms,
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and you know, I have a little hack that I
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try my best to stay off social media, but when
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I'm on it, I kind of have some degree of
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awareness of how algorithms work. So when I see something
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that I consider to be holy or like a quote
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from a saint or from the Bible, I tap it.
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I spend a little bit of extra time so that
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I train the algorithm this is what I want to see,
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and it does work, and it turns a nasty habit,
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if you will. In terms of just I think that
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social media can be a waste of time, but it
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edifies it in some way.
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It really goes back to what I was saying earlier
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about becoming the people formed by the people we spend
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our time with in the place where we are. And
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I think, you know, that's so that algorithm is a
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sort of an artificial reflection of real life too, in
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that we do form ourselves and I think neurologically as well,
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we form our brains, you know, form around what we practice.
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So I think that's you know, that's important not only
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on social media in fact, but in every day as well.
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How do we look at people, what do we how
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do we think about people and ourselves and our relationships,
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and how do we operate in the world. Yeah, all
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of that trains us constantly into a certain direction. You know,
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there's a C. S. Lewis said in one place, I
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can't remember where, but he said that every encounter you
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have with a human person, you're either contributing to them
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becoming something so incredibly beautiful that if you saw it
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now you'd be tempted to own worship, but or something
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that's so awful that it's worse than the stuff of
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your worst nightmares. That's an incredible responsibility. But I think
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this is exactly the kind of thing that is that
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that we are in fact doing to each other. All
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the time. And that's why that's that's so important what
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you're saying that training yourself to look upon the beautiful.
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Some Paul says it as well, doesn't he. Yeah, pay
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your full focus, your attention on what's good and beautiful,
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not ugly. In there.
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There's one hundred dollars word for it, nepsis, just watchfulness.
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And I think that it's a I think asceticism in
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general is a lost art. How do you draw the
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line between anxiety and watchfulness? You know, anxious paranoia about
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am I doing the right thing? Am I? Am I
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treating Andrew with the proper respect right now? And and
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just what is a sober guarding of the soul?
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Yes? Well, I think I mean sober implies the opposite
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of anxiety in a way, and I think I think
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that's that's where the prayerful aspect comes in. So I
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think it's the operating in peace, you know, rather than anxiety.
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So we know we're going to fail, We're going to
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do what we can do, and we're still going to
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fail because as fallen human beings, we will fail. But
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we can get up and we can keep trying. And
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so if we operate in prayer and put the attentiveness
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through prayer as well. You know, the Jesus prayer, for example,
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is something it works really well as a hospital chaplain.
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I understand this. You see somebody, you move to somebody else,
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but you have a bit of time in between. You
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can do Jesus prayer while you're walking in the corridor
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or whatever, and sometimes even while you're with someone. So
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I think it's staying in the prayer will bring peace
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and that is the opposite of anxiety. So yeah, it
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is possible to get too tangled up in this sort
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of in the cognitive way and thinking about I think
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it's sort of overthinking. You know, am I doing the
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right thing? How do I know it's the right thing?
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How do I know exactly what impact what I'm going
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to say is going to have on this person? And
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the answer is what I can't know for sure. I
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can just pray, release it to the Lord and do
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my best of it in the moment.
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M We talked about the legal definition of pornography earlier,
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and I think legalism rules the day in much of
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our modern world, or we get even within Christianity where
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you get caught up in the act of sin as
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though was that a sin? Was it? Well, well, maybe
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not quite. It's on the borderline, I'm okay. And when
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you view sin in that way as a kind of
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a breaking of the rules of breaking of the law
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versus a deforming of the person, then even the gray
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area you can view differently in terms of is this
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building me up or breaking me down? Kind of in
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the same way that you were talking about Lewis towards
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somebody else.
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Mean absolutely, absolutely no, I think that's right, and I
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think sin is you know, it's if we think again,
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if we go back to the edge of thinking about
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the good rather than the bad and keeping our eyes
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on what's beautiful, then if we think about repentance, we
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know repentance is not just you know, a correction to
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a particular thing in a particular way. It's a whole,
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lifelong process. And so I think focusing on that rather
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than on the sin is actually quite quite helpful because
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it's then much more of a disposition of the person
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rather than a specific act. And we can talk about
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specific acts all the time. And you know, certainly we
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always have mixed motives. I mean I always have mixed motives. Okay,
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I can do something that from the outside might look
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completely beautiful and good, but I know that there's probably
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something else in there as well. You know, I also
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want the person to respond to me positively. You know,
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there are all kinds of motives in that, and if
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I start getting tangled up in that, I'm going to
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get nowhere at all. So I sort of put that
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aside and say, is what I'm doing, you know, broadly
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in line with the life of repentance, with moving towards
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being Christ Like? Is it something I'm doing in union
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with Christ? Or am I doing it off my own
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bat for my own edification or my own glorification? I
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think again, going back to doing things in prayer, putting
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the self aside and moving forward in love for you know, God,
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I don't know, but which I think is the same
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thing in action in practice.
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Yeah, I kept thinking, and I'm pretty sure it's in
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your book. But it's something that I think about all
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the time. The paraphrase Saint Porphyrios when he talks about
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let evil be turned towards Christ. I mean we can
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lament the darkness, and it is something that we should lament.
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I mean, evil is not something that we just brush aside.
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But the way that we conquer it is by poking
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that pinhole and letting the light flood in. Yeah, but
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it's a conscious act. I mean it becomes difficult because
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you have to talk about the darkness. You have to
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talk about evil in order to rightly orient yourself towards goodness.
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I mean, evil does not exist in isolation. It's always
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the opposite of something good, right, I mean, how is
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that true?
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And the twisting of the twisting of something Yes, because
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evil can't have its own its own existence because God
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only creates good. So evil is always something essentially good
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that's been twisted or broken in some way to make
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it evil. I think it comes to my mind. It
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comes to the question that I've often been asked as
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a chaplain, whether it be in in a cute hospital
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or in the mental health wards, which is you know
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the old how how can there be a God if
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all these horrible things happen? Why does God let you
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know my baby die or me have cancer, or me
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suffer these psychotic episodes? Or you know how how is
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how can there be a good God if this sort
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of thing happens? And you know, there areus lots of
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theological answers to this, but I don't find them very
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practical or useful in that sort of context, because I
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think people are asking not not for theological answer, but
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for an existential one. Really, it's you know, and and yes,
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this is a horrible thing, and and it's unfair because
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people suffer sometimes no apparently good reason, and sometimes suffer massively,
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you know, disaster upon disaster upon one awful thing on
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top of another. But what I always and they say,
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how can you believe in God? And so what I
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always say is well, to me, it makes sense that
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if the world is without God, then obviously all this
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stuff makes sense, you know, the disasters and the pain
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and the suffering and the evils and the tortures and
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everything else. But what you can't explain then is why
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is it that even in these darkest places and these
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most awful times, there are still these little glimmers of light?
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Where did they come from? Why is it that you
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can be in this place with people who've sometimes you know,
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committed terrible crimes and suffered horrible things, and yet they
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can still do altruistic acts just out of love for
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each other. How is that possible? Where does that come from,
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and so I think that again, it's it's looking looking
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for the good and the beautiful, because it's everywhere. You know,
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I've been in some pretty horrible places, and I've always
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found that there is good there. There's always there's always light.
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It's like you know, the pasca, when the light appears
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in the darkness.
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It's the pins Well, that's it's it's it's a very
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appropriate analogy because for those who aren't aware, I don't
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pretend to believe that everybody who watches or listens to
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this has ever been to a pasca service. But it's
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very beautiful. I mean, right at midnight, one single candle
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comes out and then within several minutes the entire church
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is lit up. I mean it's in total darkness, and
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from one candle everything is illuminated. And that's really I mean,
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it's illustrative of a lot of different things, but it's
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that pinhole. It starts with one small ray of light,
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and then it's our personal responsibility to be the light
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of the world. I mean, that's that's why it's it's
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so critical for Christians to not compartmentalize. And I was
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talking to somebody about this the other day we live
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in a secular world, which has caused many Christians to
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live almost schizophrenic lives where I'm a Christian here at
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home in church, but then when I go to the workplace,
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I kind of have to put on a different hat.
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And you really can't do that. I mean, I mean,
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it doesn't mean that you are, you know, Bible bashing
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people all the time, but it's it's the way that
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you live your life that that really becomes that that
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light of the world, that that transforms the world. Yeah,
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I don't I don't know if that helps somebody who's well.
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I think that really unfairly. The concept of the masks
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that I use in the book, it's this idea of
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having different hats and different roles I think is part
401
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of is part of masks and I and you know,
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obviously we have well we you know, we might have
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a profession. We're called upon to be professional in our role,
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which means behaving in a certain way, but it does
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mean being a different person or a different kind of person.
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If you're in a if you're in a job that
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forces you to behave in a non Christian way, then
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I suggests you get out of it because it's not
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any good for anybody. So I think I think the
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key is learning how to be the person we are
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in the situation we're in, and that means not wearing
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a mask, because we can't know each other or be
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known if we if we wear a mask. I remember
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I sort of I ham at this very hard, and
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the children were very small, this point about telling lies,
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because wearing a mask is basically telling lies. Rights about
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telling lies about who we are for the benefit of
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ourselves or the world or the relationship or whatever it is.
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And I always said said this to the children when
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they were very small, that if you tell them lie,
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then you the person you're really hurting is yourself because
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because I love you, but you won't know that if
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you've told me lies, you'll think I'm loving the lies
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that you've told rather than the real you that's behind them.
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If you tell me the truth, if you tell me
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the truth always, I will still always love you, and
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you'll know it's actually you and not the stories, because
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the stories won't be necessarily lovable, you know, in themselves,
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but you will be as a person. And I think
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that's that's the key with masks to me. Yeah, that's
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actually in order to in order to have that relationship
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be real. That's the only way you can know that
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you're actually loved or.
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Loving by others or yourself.
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Yeah.
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I mean, we don't just wear masks to fool others.
437
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Yeah, exactly, absolutely. Yeah.
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And you talked about in the context of confession in
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the book, I mean, what is the importance Once again,
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I can't pretend that everybody practices not everybody's Orthodox or Catholic,
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or you know, not everybody practices confession. Why is it
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so important? Why is the act of confession and being
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truly honest with yourself and others so important? I mean,
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it sounds self evident when I say it out loud,
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but it's not because I've even gone into confession and
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withheld and felt like I'm not ready to say that
447
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in front of somebody else. Yeah.
448
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Absolutely, yeah. And that's the thing. I think. It's because
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because delusion comes so easily to us, and so you know,
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we would like to think it's just as good to
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make my confession privately in front of Christ, you know,
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at home, as it is to go and actually say
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to the priest. But it isn't because actually I'm holding back.
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I don't know that I'm holding back. I may say words,
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but when you're faced with an actual physical presence right
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there that you can see and sense, it's different. It
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really is different. And and if you can then take
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that back, you know. And this is why another reason
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why I think icons are really helpful in prayer, because
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you can you can look, you know, Christ in the face,
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which is one of the miracles, isn't it about the incarnation?
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Compared to the Old Testament, when you can't see the
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face of God and live, you can look Christ in
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the face, and that's very difficult. And if you've really
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got that sense of you know, if I've got the
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sense of my own sin, then that's hard to do
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because I feel ashamed automatically and I want to look down.
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But I can raise my eyes and look up and
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know that I'm actually loved irrespective of the stuff that
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I've done, which is, you know, it's not very good.
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So you can bring that back into your own prayer
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life as well. But I think there's something about having
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to actually be there next to a physical person present
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and with sound and touch and smell and vision and
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all of the senses and actually let this stuff out
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is hard, and that's that's why it's good, because it's
477
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so easy. You know. I want to think that I'm
478
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a nice person and a good and I help people
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and unfriendly and I do good stuff. But actually that's
480
00:27:05.559 --> 00:27:07.359
only a bit of the story. I mean, I think
481
00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:09.000
I do all of those things some of the time,
482
00:27:10.599 --> 00:27:12.759
but there's a lot more to it, and it's important
483
00:27:12.759 --> 00:27:14.559
to be aware of that reality. And that's the problem
484
00:27:14.599 --> 00:27:19.000
with the mask is that it's fake. And I don't
485
00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:20.480
want to be fake. I want to be real. And
486
00:27:20.519 --> 00:27:23.000
the only way you know, I can ever I come
487
00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:24.880
into union with Christ is by being real.
488
00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:29.200
Amen. I mean, the name of this podcast is commitment
489
00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:32.400
to reality. For just that reason, I was looking around
490
00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:35.119
the world and I felt like we are living illusions
491
00:27:35.279 --> 00:27:38.240
left and right. I mean, and we're rubber stamping illusions
492
00:27:38.279 --> 00:27:43.960
left and right, and in order to kind of it's
493
00:27:43.960 --> 00:27:46.839
almost like a gravitational pool that we need to enact
494
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:49.880
on ourselves to stay grounded. I mean, I just I
495
00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:52.920
always imagine grabbing hold of something, because if you don't,
496
00:27:52.920 --> 00:27:55.880
you're going to float off into the ether if you
497
00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:02.880
don't make a conscious commitment to what is real reality. Uh. Now,
498
00:28:03.759 --> 00:28:08.160
icons are once again Uh, you know, I'm always very
499
00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:14.759
careful to try and frame things from a place where
500
00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:19.160
you know, I don't want to just say icons are important.
501
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:22.920
And if you don't think so, you're an idiot, Like
502
00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:26.480
you know, hey, get with the program. There's something wrong
503
00:28:26.519 --> 00:28:28.880
with you if you don't see this, or because I
504
00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:31.720
think that they can be easy to do, why are
505
00:28:32.119 --> 00:28:35.319
icons important? And really, if you could explain it to
506
00:28:35.319 --> 00:28:38.519
somebody who struggles with it, because I know people personally
507
00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:42.519
who will not step foot in my church because of
508
00:28:42.559 --> 00:28:47.279
the icons. Yes, and they are they are practicing, earnest
509
00:28:47.519 --> 00:28:51.640
Christians who just grew up with a tradition. I'll use
510
00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:57.759
that word that that either doesn't believe in icons or
511
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:01.880
even more so, I mean you said poornography is demonic iconography.
512
00:29:02.160 --> 00:29:05.279
I don't think the distinction is wrong.
513
00:29:05.319 --> 00:29:08.720
No, absolutely, yeah. And it's this fear of it's a
514
00:29:08.720 --> 00:29:12.880
fear of idolatry, right, this is in essence and and
515
00:29:13.079 --> 00:29:18.880
idolatry is a thing well worth fearing. And I think
516
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:21.480
idolatry comes into a lot of what we've been talking
517
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:26.079
about in terms of the sin, and it's that desire
518
00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:32.279
to to put our hope in humanity rather than in God.
519
00:29:32.559 --> 00:29:35.559
Or in something something physical, something that we can touch,
520
00:29:36.759 --> 00:29:39.039
and that is a temptation, and it is a real temptation.
521
00:29:39.079 --> 00:29:40.640
And it's not something that you know, belongs in the
522
00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:42.880
Old Testament times. That's still a real temptation and a
523
00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:45.119
real problem. So I think, I don't you know, I
524
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:47.880
think it's understandable why people have this. I think the
525
00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:53.640
key is to understand the nature of iconography, and that,
526
00:29:53.759 --> 00:29:56.200
as Synton Damascus says, you know, we do not worship
527
00:29:56.200 --> 00:29:59.799
the wood and the paint. If the image on the
528
00:29:59.799 --> 00:30:02.440
eye is so defaced that we can't see the saint,
529
00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:04.319
then we throw it away or we burn it in
530
00:30:04.359 --> 00:30:08.079
the fire. It's not it's not worth anything. So I
531
00:30:08.119 --> 00:30:09.960
think this is this is the key. The key point
532
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:12.880
is that we're not we're not worshiping the icon. We're
533
00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:16.039
not using the icon for our own purposes. Is actually
534
00:30:16.079 --> 00:30:20.079
quite the other way around, you know. There's there's that
535
00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:25.200
concept of the of the reverse perspective of the icon.
536
00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:28.880
So the idea is that we're not looking at the
537
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:32.000
icon and using the icon. Actually what we're doing is
538
00:30:32.039 --> 00:30:36.119
being looked upon when we look into an icon. So
539
00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:39.160
it's about this connection with the spiritual world, with the
540
00:30:39.799 --> 00:30:44.160
reality of the spiritual world, and the fact that it's
541
00:30:44.160 --> 00:30:46.880
a glorious thing that in the Church we don't just
542
00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:50.240
have the physically alive people on earth now are standing
543
00:30:50.279 --> 00:30:53.440
with us, but we also have all of these others
544
00:30:53.839 --> 00:30:56.480
who are still alive and still with us, and we
545
00:30:56.519 --> 00:30:57.279
can see them.
546
00:30:59.039 --> 00:31:01.839
Witnesses when we are surrounded by such a great cloud
547
00:31:01.880 --> 00:31:03.000
of witnesses.
548
00:31:02.559 --> 00:31:04.920
Exactly, and they're all there and we can see them,
549
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:08.079
and that's really important, and that's part of the incarnation,
550
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:11.680
the gift of the incarnation that we know that and
551
00:31:11.720 --> 00:31:14.839
we can see Christ's face because it's real, you know,
552
00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:18.839
Christ's face human. Christ's human face is real, So it
553
00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:21.599
is not it is not a blasphemy to paint it
554
00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:24.240
or look upon it, because it is real. It's not
555
00:31:24.279 --> 00:31:27.759
an imaginary face. It's a real face. And that's I
556
00:31:27.799 --> 00:31:30.839
think the essential difference and the fact and the fact
557
00:31:30.920 --> 00:31:33.759
is that we are connecting therefore with with Heaven. We're
558
00:31:33.759 --> 00:31:36.599
connected with Heaven in that way, and and that's why
559
00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:38.960
in the in the dimnetity, we can lay aside our
560
00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:43.119
earthly cares and we can just for a moment experience that,
561
00:31:43.599 --> 00:31:48.279
you know, being surrounded by the saints who've been perfected
562
00:31:48.279 --> 00:31:53.319
in this life. And that's a wonderful, a wonderful witness.
563
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:56.039
But it's more than a witness, it's a it's an actual,
564
00:31:56.160 --> 00:31:59.000
you know, fore taste of heaven.
565
00:31:59.160 --> 00:32:02.000
Yeah, they knew, not whether they were on heaven or
566
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:06.519
on earth. You know, when when we first joined the
567
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:09.519
church my family, my sister said to the priest, well,
568
00:32:09.519 --> 00:32:12.000
what do you tell people when they say that you
569
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:16.119
you pray to dead people or iconography? And he just saw,
570
00:32:16.319 --> 00:32:23.960
point blank, there are no dead Christians. That's right, go
571
00:32:24.079 --> 00:32:24.799
back to your Bible.
572
00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:28.720
No. I had, so my my family, a lot of
573
00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:33.119
my family Salvation Army. So it's very sort of ultra Protestant.
574
00:32:33.799 --> 00:32:37.240
And I remember when I was a teenager. I remember
575
00:32:37.839 --> 00:32:40.920
so my my my granddad used to visit so his
576
00:32:40.920 --> 00:32:44.880
his wife died. He lived, you know, another thirty years
577
00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:47.079
or so after she died, and he used to visit
578
00:32:47.119 --> 00:32:51.599
her grave quite often, but particularly on her birthday and
579
00:32:51.759 --> 00:32:55.640
on Christmas Eve. And and when I was old enough
580
00:32:55.680 --> 00:32:58.119
to drive, I drove him. I start, because he didn't.
581
00:32:58.119 --> 00:32:59.960
He stopped driving when he was older, and I started
582
00:33:00.519 --> 00:33:04.119
driving him to the cemetery to go to his wife's grave,
583
00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:09.680
and he talked to her and I thought, well, that's
584
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:16.240
not very that's not very in accordance with theology. What
585
00:33:16.359 --> 00:33:19.880
about the great gap that's between the dead and the lyric?
586
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:23.119
But if he talked to her because he loved her,
587
00:33:24.119 --> 00:33:29.359
you know, the bond of love is the key and
588
00:33:29.359 --> 00:33:31.279
and it will it will not be broken by death.
589
00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:36.079
Mm hmm, well, you know it's it's sometimes the most
590
00:33:36.079 --> 00:33:41.440
common example is common because it's obvious. I mean, whenever
591
00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:45.200
somebody tries to make a passion defense of iconography, it's
592
00:33:45.559 --> 00:33:48.319
is there anybody that you love? I mean, do you
593
00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:50.759
have a picture of your They don't even need to
594
00:33:50.799 --> 00:33:52.759
be dead. Do you have a picture of your wife
595
00:33:52.759 --> 00:33:56.359
and children? I mean. The only thing that has changed
596
00:33:57.319 --> 00:34:01.559
for me when it comes to a being oriented towards
597
00:34:01.759 --> 00:34:05.640
iconography now is that I'm much more likely to kiss
598
00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:09.599
a picture of my children than I would have been before,
599
00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:12.760
which I think is probably a change for the better.
600
00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:14.920
I mean, it's a beautiful thing to see it and
601
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:19.719
to feel it, and God forbid, if anything were to
602
00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:23.079
ever happen to them, it would only heighten the importance
603
00:34:23.079 --> 00:34:27.039
of that image because that they were real to me.
604
00:34:27.559 --> 00:34:30.920
I mean, they are real, and that becomes even more
605
00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:35.119
precious and as I've been Orthodox for a number of
606
00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:38.199
years now, but as somebody was visiting our church the
607
00:34:38.199 --> 00:34:40.079
other day and they said that they're studying hard, and
608
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:42.960
I said, don't study too hard. You've got a lifetime.
609
00:34:43.039 --> 00:34:46.360
And that's still not enough, and that there's a constant
610
00:34:46.400 --> 00:34:52.239
reorientation that's taking place, and that continues to exist for
611
00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:56.599
me with iconography. I would say, intellectually I get it,
612
00:34:57.559 --> 00:35:00.800
but practically speaking, I'm still trying to re orient. I mean,
613
00:35:01.159 --> 00:35:05.599
you talk about the importance of vision. I'm trying to
614
00:35:05.639 --> 00:35:08.599
reorient my vision so that I actually see what I'm
615
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:12.480
supposed to see and in your words, so that I
616
00:35:12.480 --> 00:35:16.280
can be seen that that that you know.
617
00:35:16.400 --> 00:35:17.159
I was.
618
00:35:18.840 --> 00:35:23.599
On Mount Athos over the summer, and I was in
619
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:28.840
a kind of a cafeteria surrounded by all of these
620
00:35:29.159 --> 00:35:33.880
icons of different saints, and and I don't know all
621
00:35:33.920 --> 00:35:36.000
of them. And I started to think about it, and
622
00:35:36.039 --> 00:35:40.559
I think it's it's appropriate start walking around and then
623
00:35:40.599 --> 00:35:42.679
I see what I know. And it reminds me of
624
00:35:42.679 --> 00:35:45.159
being at a party. When you're at a party and
625
00:35:45.199 --> 00:35:47.679
you don't know anybody, and then all of a sudden,
626
00:35:47.719 --> 00:35:51.400
you see that person that you know. I know that
627
00:35:51.519 --> 00:35:54.159
saint and I go over to it and I start
628
00:35:54.199 --> 00:35:56.199
looking at it and I feel this connection to it.
629
00:35:56.760 --> 00:35:59.679
And I took that as well. That doesn't mean that
630
00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:02.000
I only when you go to a party. Sometimes the
631
00:36:02.039 --> 00:36:05.199
best part is meeting somebody knew or learning something about
632
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:07.559
somebody that you didn't know where you you might have
633
00:36:07.639 --> 00:36:09.480
thought you knew them, and then you get to know
634
00:36:09.559 --> 00:36:11.519
that and then you love them even more and they
635
00:36:11.559 --> 00:36:15.440
become part of your family. Before we started, I said, Andrew,
636
00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:18.440
I think we have some friends in common. And I said, well,
637
00:36:18.440 --> 00:36:20.599
no matter what, we have friends in common because we're
638
00:36:20.639 --> 00:36:24.280
both Christians, and these Christians love each other before before
639
00:36:24.280 --> 00:36:28.480
they meet. You know, it's just that opportunity to, you know,
640
00:36:29.880 --> 00:36:31.960
get to know each other. And I think that what
641
00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:37.719
a what a blessing that iconography exists, because it's there
642
00:36:37.760 --> 00:36:39.639
is something different. And so I'll ask you. I mean,
643
00:36:39.639 --> 00:36:41.840
there was a lot of prelude to a question why
644
00:36:41.880 --> 00:36:44.760
can't Why isn't just thinking and praying to God enough?
645
00:36:45.079 --> 00:36:46.719
Why do you need iconography for that?
646
00:36:48.320 --> 00:36:54.760
Because we're physical beings as well as cognitive. Thinking is
647
00:36:54.920 --> 00:36:58.480
a suitable for cognitive, but when we're a physical being,
648
00:36:58.559 --> 00:37:04.440
we need physical as well. And I think you know,
649
00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:08.119
it's a very gnostic concept that the spiritual is more real.
650
00:37:08.519 --> 00:37:11.360
Actually the physical is real too, and we're a combination
651
00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:13.280
of the two. We're a blend. We're not you know,
652
00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:18.840
we're not a spirit trapped in a physical body. That's
653
00:37:18.880 --> 00:37:22.199
that's definitely not a consume way of thinking. So our
654
00:37:22.239 --> 00:37:25.599
physical bodies are part of who we are and they
655
00:37:25.639 --> 00:37:29.519
need to be taken seriously. And so that aspect of
656
00:37:29.559 --> 00:37:32.920
being able to see and to hear, and to smell
657
00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:36.559
and to touch and to taste are all part of
658
00:37:36.599 --> 00:37:41.039
worship because that's who we are and that's really essential.
659
00:37:41.119 --> 00:37:45.519
I think. So yes, they're thinking, yes there's praying, and
660
00:37:45.639 --> 00:37:47.519
yes there's all these other things as well.
661
00:37:48.519 --> 00:37:51.119
And then and then that's where the really important and
662
00:37:51.199 --> 00:37:55.000
necessary distinction comes in because I let this think, you know,
663
00:37:55.039 --> 00:37:58.880
why do we need any kind of of Christ to pray? Well,
664
00:37:59.199 --> 00:38:03.000
why do we need an icon of anybody else? Because
665
00:38:03.119 --> 00:38:07.079
you could say, okay, well, I'd still that's a tough
666
00:38:07.320 --> 00:38:09.719
pill for me to swallow, but I'll accept your icon
667
00:38:09.760 --> 00:38:11.719
of Christ. But why everybody else?
668
00:38:11.800 --> 00:38:14.440
Reason that you can't be a Christian on your own,
669
00:38:14.920 --> 00:38:16.519
You need to go to church and you need to
670
00:38:16.519 --> 00:38:19.719
associate with other Christians, and why would you not, Why
671
00:38:19.719 --> 00:38:23.000
would you deliberately cut yourself off from those who are
672
00:38:23.199 --> 00:38:27.039
strongest and most mature in the faith. Mm hmm that
673
00:38:27.079 --> 00:38:29.000
would be insane, right.
674
00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:33.199
And you use stronger language in the book. You said
675
00:38:33.239 --> 00:38:36.840
it's it's like cutting yourself off from the vine, which
676
00:38:36.880 --> 00:38:38.639
is a terrifying image.
677
00:38:39.039 --> 00:38:41.960
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes.
678
00:38:42.639 --> 00:38:47.159
So for you know, yeah, I'm constantly trying to build
679
00:38:47.159 --> 00:38:49.840
the bridge because otherwise it's just an echo chamber. You
680
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:52.079
like icons. I like icons. Let's talk about how much
681
00:38:52.119 --> 00:38:56.719
we like chicons. But you know, more than anything I've
682
00:38:56.800 --> 00:39:01.480
began in my later years. You know, I grew up evangelical,
683
00:39:01.880 --> 00:39:04.440
took a long walk in the wilderness, and now I'm
684
00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:07.880
a firmly devoted Orthodox Christian. I mean, it's it's all
685
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:10.280
I care about. It's all I want. You know, I
686
00:39:10.280 --> 00:39:13.119
didn't really understand evangelism growing up. Now it's like I
687
00:39:13.159 --> 00:39:15.840
get it. I want to grab Andrew come to church
688
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:18.800
with me because I believe in the reorientation that takes
689
00:39:18.840 --> 00:39:23.079
place there. I've seen it in my own life and
690
00:39:23.199 --> 00:39:26.840
in like manner, all right, I believe in iconography. I
691
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:30.239
want other people to see what I see or what
692
00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:34.320
I'm learning to see because you know, I forgive the
693
00:39:34.360 --> 00:39:36.920
tired cliche. And if anybody's listened to this, they've heard
694
00:39:36.920 --> 00:39:38.719
it or listened to this podcast more than once. They've
695
00:39:38.760 --> 00:39:41.159
heard it already. I always think about it the bunny
696
00:39:41.159 --> 00:39:45.639
ears on the old TVs where you know, I'm trying
697
00:39:45.679 --> 00:39:48.920
to get the right picture, or you know, right before
698
00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:51.199
we hopped on, I got something in my eye and
699
00:39:51.239 --> 00:39:53.519
I just kept blinking, and I was like, maybe this
700
00:39:53.639 --> 00:39:57.119
is God saying, really focus on vision and the importance
701
00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:00.320
of seeing rightly because I can't see right now, and
702
00:40:00.719 --> 00:40:03.159
you know, going to the eye doctor and having them
703
00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:06.239
flip the things, and then all of a sudden, you go, oh, whoa.
704
00:40:06.679 --> 00:40:10.159
I thought I could see, but now I can see
705
00:40:10.199 --> 00:40:13.199
what was I missing before? And so it's that inclusion,
706
00:40:13.239 --> 00:40:16.079
that reorientation, that like, hey, I want to invite you
707
00:40:16.119 --> 00:40:19.400
into this world where you can see even deeper and
708
00:40:19.599 --> 00:40:25.239
what's what okay? So once again I went different. I understand, Uh,
709
00:40:26.159 --> 00:40:29.679
an icon of Christ? Why do the other ones matter? Well,
710
00:40:29.800 --> 00:40:31.960
the reason I made the distinction is you said, that's
711
00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:37.480
how we worship. And it's a necessary distinction because someone
712
00:40:37.519 --> 00:40:41.320
will say, well, you're worshiping that icon and we use
713
00:40:41.400 --> 00:40:45.800
the V word, the veneration. What is veneration and why
714
00:40:45.960 --> 00:40:51.480
is veneration important and not just of icons? Well, okay,
715
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:54.920
that's the problem absolutely. I think you'll go there, so
716
00:40:54.960 --> 00:40:55.320
we'll see.
717
00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:58.679
I mean, veneration is respect and blood, I think combined.
718
00:40:59.559 --> 00:41:06.760
So you know, the appropriate it's just about being being appropriate.
719
00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:11.159
You know, if I see someone and when I see
720
00:41:11.360 --> 00:41:14.559
one of these great saints, I see somebody who I
721
00:41:14.639 --> 00:41:20.079
love and I admire and I massively respect, and so
722
00:41:20.639 --> 00:41:23.320
you know, it's a It's a culturally foreign thing, isn't it,
723
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:26.280
Because you know, there are there are many cultures throughout
724
00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:31.400
history where you would simply automatically approach the person, you know,
725
00:41:31.639 --> 00:41:34.679
bow or neil or kiss the hand or whatever it is.
726
00:41:35.320 --> 00:41:37.239
And those are the kinds of things we've inherited as
727
00:41:37.320 --> 00:41:41.360
Orthodox Christians, which are quite foreign to modern Western culture.
728
00:41:41.480 --> 00:41:45.079
I think. But I don't think that's a good thing.
729
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:50.519
I think that I think those gestures of respect and
730
00:41:50.639 --> 00:41:57.320
love are actually really important to human beings because actually,
731
00:41:57.760 --> 00:42:02.440
you know, I'm not as good as anyone else. I
732
00:42:02.480 --> 00:42:05.559
know lots of people who are better than me, and
733
00:42:05.559 --> 00:42:08.039
and so yes, as a legal fiction, it's really important
734
00:42:08.119 --> 00:42:10.440
that we assume a level playing field and give everybody
735
00:42:10.440 --> 00:42:14.800
the same rights and responsibilities. That's really important for organizing
736
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:19.039
a practically society. But it's not true, is it. We
737
00:42:19.079 --> 00:42:22.159
all know that's not true. We all know that some
738
00:42:22.159 --> 00:42:26.239
people are better than this. We can't pretend that's not
739
00:42:26.280 --> 00:42:29.679
the case. We can't we equally. We can't make lists
740
00:42:29.679 --> 00:42:31.559
and rankings and you know, sort of sort out where
741
00:42:31.559 --> 00:42:34.800
exactly everybody is because we don't have perfect knowledge. But
742
00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:36.360
I know that there are people who are better than me,
743
00:42:36.440 --> 00:42:38.199
and I think it's appropriate to give them a respect.
744
00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:43.079
Mm hm. So I think I think this is a
745
00:42:43.079 --> 00:42:45.559
big part of veneration. But I think more than more
746
00:42:45.559 --> 00:42:49.360
than anything, it's the love, you know, because and it's
747
00:42:49.400 --> 00:42:52.880
because it's a two way process. I think even that,
748
00:42:53.000 --> 00:42:55.880
even the veneration, I think of that marvelous scene in
749
00:42:55.920 --> 00:42:59.360
the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt when she encounters
750
00:42:59.519 --> 00:43:02.280
fathers us Us and he wants to prostrate to her,
751
00:43:02.320 --> 00:43:04.960
and she wants to prostrate to him, and uh and
752
00:43:05.239 --> 00:43:07.960
this sort of back and forth because he perceives her
753
00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:12.079
whole great holiness and she sees his his and that
754
00:43:12.119 --> 00:43:14.159
I just think that's absolutely beautiful. I love that part,
755
00:43:15.559 --> 00:43:19.679
and I think that's that's the thing. It's just the
756
00:43:19.840 --> 00:43:22.679
quality of the relationship, the depth of love and respect,
757
00:43:23.239 --> 00:43:25.079
and that's I think that's what veneration is.
758
00:43:25.639 --> 00:43:31.639
Yeah, so veneration. I think the opposite would be objectification.
759
00:43:32.320 --> 00:43:34.559
And that's kind of what you're getting at with the
760
00:43:34.599 --> 00:43:39.039
whole issue of pornography, and that it's a symptom of
761
00:43:39.079 --> 00:43:42.280
a deeper disease, which is narcissism, which.
762
00:43:42.559 --> 00:43:48.920
Well, the problem is that you know, you can't object objective.
763
00:43:49.159 --> 00:43:54.079
Objectification and love are incompatible, totally incompatible, because love requires
764
00:43:54.119 --> 00:43:57.199
you to learn to know the person, which is not
765
00:43:57.239 --> 00:44:01.199
knowing about the person, and it's certainly imagining. You know,
766
00:44:01.719 --> 00:44:05.599
your desired reality of the person is actually knowing the
767
00:44:05.639 --> 00:44:08.159
real person. And the only way you can love a
768
00:44:08.199 --> 00:44:13.960
person is to encounter them in their reality. And so
769
00:44:14.559 --> 00:44:17.199
it's it's a it's it's an attack on a person
770
00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:22.559
to objectify because you're denying them their true reality and
771
00:44:22.639 --> 00:44:24.679
that and that you know that happens on lots of
772
00:44:24.760 --> 00:44:28.960
levels and in lots of ways, but I think you know,
773
00:44:29.039 --> 00:44:32.639
pornography is the sort of exemplar of how awful that
774
00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:36.239
is when somebody looks on another human being and instead
775
00:44:36.239 --> 00:44:38.760
of seeing them in reality as the image of God,
776
00:44:39.079 --> 00:44:41.320
you know, an iton of Christ. They see them as
777
00:44:41.519 --> 00:44:44.679
a thing they can desire and use for their own gratification.
778
00:44:45.639 --> 00:44:48.599
And it's hard to imagine anything, I think worse very
779
00:44:48.679 --> 00:44:49.480
human being than that.
780
00:44:52.119 --> 00:44:56.960
Well, how is the desire to embrace an icon and
781
00:44:57.360 --> 00:45:01.119
pornography really based half of the same desire?
782
00:45:02.559 --> 00:45:07.800
Uh huh? Because so all desire I think I came
783
00:45:07.840 --> 00:45:09.480
to the conclusion when I thought about the question of
784
00:45:09.519 --> 00:45:12.960
desire that actually all desire in the end is desire
785
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:16.159
for union with God, because that's what desire is made for,
786
00:45:16.599 --> 00:45:21.199
right and the and the ultimate, you know, the eschatological
787
00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:23.519
end for the human being is to be in perfect
788
00:45:23.599 --> 00:45:26.559
union with each other and with Christ, because that's all
789
00:45:26.559 --> 00:45:30.760
the same, all one. So all of our desire for
790
00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:34.320
other humans is part of our desire for this greater union,
791
00:45:35.280 --> 00:45:37.920
and it's it's a desire to come out of ourselves
792
00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:45.280
and encounter a real other. And so even the most
793
00:45:45.320 --> 00:45:48.360
sort of debased and broken and twisted forms of desire
794
00:45:48.519 --> 00:45:51.599
still you can see a little bit of this in them.
795
00:45:51.760 --> 00:45:54.199
And I think that's what happens with the pornography. It's
796
00:45:54.760 --> 00:45:58.840
it's a fearful and broken desire when we know we
797
00:45:58.920 --> 00:46:02.800
still want the other person in some way, but we're
798
00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:06.159
fearful of showing ourselves. We're fearful of learning about them.
799
00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:09.880
In our reality, we want the easy way out, we
800
00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:15.079
want the quick gratification, and it just stops, it stops
801
00:46:15.199 --> 00:46:18.239
anything deeper from being possible. And that's that's you know,
802
00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:22.000
that's the evil in it, isn't it. But it's also
803
00:46:22.079 --> 00:46:25.440
I mean, you know, if Christ said any anyone, any
804
00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:29.199
man who looks on a woman was lust, it's the
805
00:46:29.199 --> 00:46:30.920
same as committing adultery.
806
00:46:31.079 --> 00:46:34.280
Mm hm with his heart right, think about that. A
807
00:46:34.280 --> 00:46:41.559
lot years ago, I was working in the Dominican and yeah,
808
00:46:41.599 --> 00:46:45.599
there was I was working with a family and you know,
809
00:46:45.679 --> 00:46:48.360
we were at the beach and the husband we were
810
00:46:48.360 --> 00:46:49.639
on the beach and he did kind of one of
811
00:46:49.679 --> 00:46:53.920
those elbows and like and I was like, hey, you're
812
00:46:54.840 --> 00:46:57.639
you're a happily married man. And he said, you can
813
00:46:57.719 --> 00:47:01.239
look at the menu. I just can't order. And that
814
00:47:01.280 --> 00:47:04.000
gets back to the legality of it all. Like it's
815
00:47:04.039 --> 00:47:09.400
funny and it's clever and and yeah, but yeah, it's like,
816
00:47:09.519 --> 00:47:12.840
well I didn't do anything, yeah, yeah, but.
817
00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:15.360
And that's the whole thing we were saying about sin
818
00:47:15.480 --> 00:47:19.000
being a disposition of the person more than a specific act.
819
00:47:19.079 --> 00:47:22.119
The act is just the outcome of the disposition. So
820
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:24.840
you can't make that. It's a very fake distinction again
821
00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:30.480
to make. Yeah, so there's and and it's and it's
822
00:47:30.519 --> 00:47:32.559
and I see why people get confused about it, because
823
00:47:32.599 --> 00:47:35.880
you know, temptation itself isn't sin. Okay, they say, so
824
00:47:37.199 --> 00:47:40.280
that you know, having the temptation, but that's already one
825
00:47:40.280 --> 00:47:44.719
step way beyond, one step beyond the temptation. You're definitely
826
00:47:44.760 --> 00:47:47.400
actively doing something when you when you make the look
827
00:47:47.480 --> 00:47:50.239
and you make the gesture and you make the comment. Right,
828
00:47:50.360 --> 00:47:53.199
So it's a definitely step further. So, And I think
829
00:47:53.239 --> 00:47:56.400
the contrast between that response and the response that I
830
00:47:56.440 --> 00:47:59.119
took about with syt Nonys in the example with synonyms
831
00:47:59.199 --> 00:48:03.000
in the book where he's a bishop in a synod
832
00:48:03.039 --> 00:48:07.199
of bishops meeting outside when this beautiful woman goes by.
833
00:48:07.519 --> 00:48:10.599
I can't remember a horse or in a strong carriage
834
00:48:10.679 --> 00:48:15.800
or something, and she's a sort of she's quite scantily dressed,
835
00:48:15.840 --> 00:48:19.280
but you know, in a very beautiful, beaut beautified up way,
836
00:48:20.400 --> 00:48:22.679
and all of the bishops avoid their eyes apart from
837
00:48:22.679 --> 00:48:25.559
synon Us, who watches her go by and into the distance.
838
00:48:25.639 --> 00:48:28.599
And then when one of them says, why, you know,
839
00:48:28.639 --> 00:48:30.840
why are you doing this? She says, how could I
840
00:48:30.920 --> 00:48:33.119
avert my eyes when such a glory of God's creation
841
00:48:33.239 --> 00:48:36.400
goes by? And so I think, you know, this is
842
00:48:36.440 --> 00:48:40.199
the difference. So it's not, it's not. The problem is
843
00:48:40.280 --> 00:48:43.239
in us and the way we look. Actually, and so
844
00:48:43.440 --> 00:48:46.800
if we can actually genuinely look upon any other person
845
00:48:47.320 --> 00:48:50.400
as a glory of God's creation and a beautiful image
846
00:48:50.440 --> 00:48:53.519
of God, then that's good. That's fine, We can do that,
847
00:48:54.280 --> 00:48:57.159
But it's it's when the temptation is not to do that,
848
00:48:57.159 --> 00:48:59.559
that's when we have to avert our eyes. And I
849
00:48:59.559 --> 00:49:03.400
think that's a really important distinction to make. It's not
850
00:49:03.480 --> 00:49:07.480
about how the person is portraying themselves so much. I mean,
851
00:49:07.480 --> 00:49:09.519
obviously that is an issue, but it's much more the
852
00:49:09.519 --> 00:49:12.119
issue that it's about us and how we're looking and
853
00:49:12.199 --> 00:49:15.599
what we're doing with that in our minds and our hearts.
854
00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:18.960
And if we can achieve the level of purity where
855
00:49:19.039 --> 00:49:22.119
we can look upon any other human person as the
856
00:49:22.159 --> 00:49:25.239
glory of God, then we might be ready to start
857
00:49:25.840 --> 00:49:27.039
doing something good in the world.
858
00:49:29.000 --> 00:49:32.400
Well, there's something quite scandalous in your book and I
859
00:49:32.440 --> 00:49:35.719
remember reading it and doing a double take and thinking,
860
00:49:36.440 --> 00:49:38.480
all right, I'm going to read that again. And I
861
00:49:38.519 --> 00:49:41.119
remember communicating it to people because I read this in
862
00:49:41.159 --> 00:49:44.159
that book, and they go, you might want to go
863
00:49:44.199 --> 00:49:46.400
back and read that again, and maybe you will tell
864
00:49:46.440 --> 00:49:50.039
me that's not what I meant, but I'm pretty sure
865
00:49:50.079 --> 00:49:54.039
that I've read it carefully. You say that you can
866
00:49:54.199 --> 00:50:01.440
even venerate pornography. Yeah, I'll find that because that's scandalous.
867
00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:04.719
But rightly I mean, I'm not talking about the improper
868
00:50:04.800 --> 00:50:09.159
veneration or the execrification, but rightly venerate pornography. Explain that
869
00:50:09.239 --> 00:50:10.719
because that is scandalous.
870
00:50:11.079 --> 00:50:15.280
Yes, yes, because there's a human person there. So if
871
00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:19.239
we look upon that human person with purity of heart
872
00:50:19.400 --> 00:50:22.119
and see the image of God, of course we can,
873
00:50:22.199 --> 00:50:24.679
because every human person is the image of God and
874
00:50:24.679 --> 00:50:28.440
therefore deserves veneration. And it doesn't matter, you know, if
875
00:50:28.440 --> 00:50:31.840
we have the eyes to see, we can always venerate.
876
00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:33.920
And I think that, you know, as a chaplain, I
877
00:50:33.920 --> 00:50:36.239
think that's that's my job actually, is to go around
878
00:50:36.360 --> 00:50:41.480
venerating people whatever situation they find themselves in, and however
879
00:50:41.920 --> 00:50:44.280
farther far they are from where they would like to be,
880
00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:47.199
or where anybody else would like them to be. Actually,
881
00:50:47.239 --> 00:50:49.119
every one of us is a human person, and every
882
00:50:49.119 --> 00:50:51.559
one of us can therefore be venerated because we do
883
00:50:51.960 --> 00:50:55.159
always to some degree show forth the glory of God
884
00:50:56.360 --> 00:50:59.079
being otherwise we wouldn't be here, we couldn't live.
885
00:51:01.880 --> 00:51:04.760
It's that whole thing where you know, Okay, if you have,
886
00:51:05.079 --> 00:51:09.239
if you have a hard time with the paint and
887
00:51:09.280 --> 00:51:16.480
the wood perspective on iconography, okay, yeah, you can't win
888
00:51:16.519 --> 00:51:18.559
every battle, I think it would be good for you.
889
00:51:19.599 --> 00:51:21.199
But at the end of the day, and you mentioned
890
00:51:21.239 --> 00:51:24.480
this several times, and I think it's worth drilling into
891
00:51:25.119 --> 00:51:30.599
what does the incarnation have to do with iconography? And furthermore,
892
00:51:32.079 --> 00:51:34.519
I mean, we are all icons what what is what
893
00:51:34.639 --> 00:51:37.679
is the incarnation? What does the incarnation change there?
894
00:51:39.119 --> 00:51:41.360
Because well, as I said earlier, you know, in the
895
00:51:41.400 --> 00:51:43.559
Old Testament you cannot look upon the face of God
896
00:51:43.599 --> 00:51:47.079
and live. But actually Christ Christ bore the face of
897
00:51:47.119 --> 00:51:51.440
God in a human face, and so we can in
898
00:51:51.480 --> 00:51:56.880
that sense now. And and because that is a physical
899
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:01.000
human face, it can be portrayed in an image without
900
00:52:01.039 --> 00:52:05.519
any issue. And because of that we can use our vision,
901
00:52:05.639 --> 00:52:09.480
our physical vision to become spiritual vision and that's what
902
00:52:09.519 --> 00:52:12.039
this that's what this takes. So you know, our physical
903
00:52:12.119 --> 00:52:16.920
vision alone we can't venerate. But our physical vision joined
904
00:52:16.960 --> 00:52:19.639
to our spiritual version vision is exactly what we do
905
00:52:19.639 --> 00:52:23.320
to venerate. And we can venerate every other human person
906
00:52:23.360 --> 00:52:27.199
because every other human person is also an image of
907
00:52:27.239 --> 00:52:30.159
God in that sense. In fact, even broader than that,
908
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:33.519
all of creation, all of creation reflects God's glory and
909
00:52:33.559 --> 00:52:38.480
God's presence, So we can venerate everything in creation. It
910
00:52:38.519 --> 00:52:41.719
doesn't mean we're worshiping it as God. It means we're
911
00:52:41.760 --> 00:52:44.719
seeing God through it, because God's presence is in it,
912
00:52:45.159 --> 00:52:48.199
in his creation. Every part of God's creation bears his mark.
913
00:52:48.400 --> 00:52:50.760
We cannot look at it if we have true vision,
914
00:52:50.760 --> 00:52:54.840
we cannot look at it and not see God's And
915
00:52:54.880 --> 00:52:57.440
that's again we'll only mean by surrounding ourselves with the beauty,
916
00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.800
because we learn to see the beauty.
917
00:53:01.880 --> 00:53:04.079
And you talked about spiritual vision. I mean, that's another
918
00:53:04.079 --> 00:53:06.599
one hundred dollars word that maybe shouldn't be help. We're
919
00:53:06.639 --> 00:53:09.639
just not as well acquainted with it, especially in our
920
00:53:09.719 --> 00:53:12.679
modern world. But what what is noose I mean? And
921
00:53:12.719 --> 00:53:15.320
why is that really that the hinge of your entire
922
00:53:15.480 --> 00:53:21.039
thesis in the book, I mean is developing the news.
923
00:53:20.840 --> 00:53:24.679
Right, because so it's it's it's a marvelous thing. This
924
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:32.679
translation is a really dodgy activity. But and it's not
925
00:53:32.719 --> 00:53:34.519
to say even that it's just you know, it's not
926
00:53:34.880 --> 00:53:36.960
even if we stick to Greek, it won't work because
927
00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:39.960
of course, the difference between the culture means that what
928
00:53:40.199 --> 00:53:43.400
was understood but in ancient Greek isn't understood necessarily in
929
00:53:43.440 --> 00:53:46.079
modern Greek. And I'm telling this discussion just the other
930
00:53:46.199 --> 00:53:50.159
day actually about about these some of these concepts, because
931
00:53:50.199 --> 00:53:52.400
the you know, modern modern Greece is part of the
932
00:53:52.440 --> 00:53:55.519
modern world and has modern concepts, and so the same
933
00:53:55.519 --> 00:53:58.599
words can be used in a different way. But I
934
00:53:58.679 --> 00:54:01.320
think the concepts are really important. And I think the
935
00:54:01.400 --> 00:54:03.760
key thing with the news is that it's it's about
936
00:54:03.800 --> 00:54:07.719
it's the point at which we connect with God. So
937
00:54:08.079 --> 00:54:11.719
it's our it's the source of our spiritual vision. And
938
00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:15.360
you could say in that sense because obviously on our own,
939
00:54:16.079 --> 00:54:19.239
if they're I mean, on our own is an imaginary thing, right,
940
00:54:19.320 --> 00:54:22.280
We don't exist without God. God is there, whether we
941
00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:25.559
like to think so or not, and that and if
942
00:54:25.639 --> 00:54:27.519
if there was, if God wasn't there, we wouldn't be
943
00:54:27.719 --> 00:54:31.559
so that's you know, it's it's entirely we're entirely dependent.
944
00:54:32.719 --> 00:54:35.599
And so the noose really is how we connect bring
945
00:54:35.719 --> 00:54:39.360
some of that into our awareness. We can connect and
946
00:54:39.400 --> 00:54:43.440
we can receive, we can receive that presence of God
947
00:54:43.480 --> 00:54:45.800
in a in a in a more aware way, if
948
00:54:45.800 --> 00:54:48.920
you like, in our spiritual and then we can convert
949
00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:52.480
our physical vision and our physical desires into spiritual vision
950
00:54:52.559 --> 00:54:56.280
and spiritual desire. And I think I think it's again
951
00:54:56.320 --> 00:54:59.079
going back to this union of of of of of
952
00:54:59.159 --> 00:55:03.159
the spirit and the and the body in humanity, which
953
00:55:03.199 --> 00:55:05.280
is an unusual and unique thing.
954
00:55:05.800 --> 00:55:08.119
Mm hmmm. Well, and two things came to mind when
955
00:55:08.119 --> 00:55:09.960
you were talking. I mean there are two eye words.
956
00:55:11.840 --> 00:55:14.840
One that the origin of the word idiot, which I
957
00:55:14.840 --> 00:55:17.599
thought was beautiful.
958
00:55:18.320 --> 00:55:22.320
Can you yes, Well, I mean idiotis is the individual.
959
00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:25.480
So an idiot is one who's cut off, completely cut off,
960
00:55:26.039 --> 00:55:28.480
and the the opposite of that is being connected and
961
00:55:28.519 --> 00:55:30.039
in relationship.
962
00:55:30.320 --> 00:55:34.880
And an individual I mean individualism rules the day. So
963
00:55:35.239 --> 00:55:37.519
when I read that, I thought, wow, I mean we
964
00:55:37.719 --> 00:55:44.320
idolize individuality, we idolize idiocy in a sense, here's just going.
965
00:55:44.880 --> 00:55:49.400
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And of course actually we're
966
00:55:49.400 --> 00:55:54.360
not individuals. We're persons primarily. I mean, we can be individuals,
967
00:55:54.440 --> 00:55:57.920
but it's not a desirable state because the person is
968
00:55:57.960 --> 00:56:00.719
the one who can see face to face. Individual is
969
00:56:00.760 --> 00:56:03.159
just a thing, you know, on the board that can
970
00:56:03.159 --> 00:56:05.639
be moved around, or a piece that can be assembled
971
00:56:05.800 --> 00:56:09.679
together with other pieces. But actually we're much more than that.
972
00:56:09.719 --> 00:56:13.159
We're persons, and that face element of the person, the
973
00:56:13.199 --> 00:56:15.559
persona or the pros upon in Greek is that is
974
00:56:15.599 --> 00:56:20.159
the key that we can encounter face to face. And
975
00:56:20.239 --> 00:56:22.199
that is why the masks are such a problem, because
976
00:56:22.199 --> 00:56:24.760
they get in the way. They prevent us from seeing
977
00:56:24.760 --> 00:56:25.960
each other's true faces.
978
00:56:26.800 --> 00:56:28.480
The mass whose elaborate on that way, I mean the
979
00:56:28.519 --> 00:56:31.599
difference between individual and person, because I think a lot
980
00:56:31.599 --> 00:56:33.480
of people would see that as synonymous.
981
00:56:34.000 --> 00:56:36.760
Yeah, yeah, I mean the difference is simply that the
982
00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:39.440
individual focuses on the difference and the person focuses on
983
00:56:39.480 --> 00:56:42.880
the connection. So what is our primary thing? Is our
984
00:56:42.880 --> 00:56:45.840
primary thing to cut ourselves off from all of humanity
985
00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:50.079
and God and make somehow our own state a world
986
00:56:50.119 --> 00:56:52.480
of its own? Or is our primary purpose to bring
987
00:56:52.519 --> 00:56:56.719
ourselves into union with all of humanity and Christ in
988
00:56:56.760 --> 00:56:59.119
a union of perfect love? I mean that's what we're told.
989
00:56:59.239 --> 00:57:01.000
It's the end of our lives.
990
00:57:02.199 --> 00:57:05.039
Yeah, Like, like you said earlier, I mean, no one
991
00:57:05.079 --> 00:57:07.719
has saved in isolation. We are saved in union and
992
00:57:07.719 --> 00:57:09.880
communion with each other and with God.
993
00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:12.320
And that is, in fact, our our ultimate destiny is
994
00:57:12.360 --> 00:57:15.920
to be an ever more perfect union. So why would
995
00:57:15.920 --> 00:57:19.679
we want to focus on cutting ourselves off and bringing
996
00:57:19.760 --> 00:57:22.559
something of our own when actually everything we have is
997
00:57:22.719 --> 00:57:24.920
already shared, and everything we have is already a gift
998
00:57:25.199 --> 00:57:25.920
from outside.
999
00:57:26.039 --> 00:57:29.880
You know, it's probably why we find ourselves in such
1000
00:57:29.920 --> 00:57:33.400
a disordered state, I mean, in our modern world. So
1001
00:57:33.480 --> 00:57:36.760
that was one I word, the individual slash idiot. The
1002
00:57:36.800 --> 00:57:38.159
other one that I kept thinking of when you were
1003
00:57:38.159 --> 00:57:41.840
talking about is imagination. And we think I would never
1004
00:57:41.880 --> 00:57:44.159
I mean, you just think of the Willy Walker song.
1005
00:57:44.239 --> 00:57:47.719
Pure imagination. It's a good thing, right, And you said
1006
00:57:47.760 --> 00:57:50.599
that more often than not, if not always, The Church
1007
00:57:50.639 --> 00:57:54.000
fathers speak of imagination as a negative thing, whereas in
1008
00:57:54.039 --> 00:57:57.960
our modern world we think of imagination as a positive thing. Yeah,
1009
00:57:58.000 --> 00:57:58.559
who's right.
1010
00:58:00.519 --> 00:58:05.039
I mean, the thing is, it's partly because of the
1011
00:58:05.039 --> 00:58:07.760
definition of the word, but I think because we all
1012
00:58:07.760 --> 00:58:10.119
know that imagination has two aspects to it, right, you've got,
1013
00:58:10.199 --> 00:58:12.599
you've got the kind of imagination that takes you out
1014
00:58:12.599 --> 00:58:18.159
of reality, and it can be really it leads. I mean,
1015
00:58:18.360 --> 00:58:21.400
where's where's the distinction between imagination in that sense and delusion?
1016
00:58:21.719 --> 00:58:24.800
I mean, in the end, it's it's creating a sort
1017
00:58:24.840 --> 00:58:28.920
of a parallel reality which is not God's reality but mine,
1018
00:58:29.079 --> 00:58:31.920
and that's a bad thing. But on the other hand,
1019
00:58:32.000 --> 00:58:35.639
creativity and being co creators with God, that's a positive.
1020
00:58:35.920 --> 00:58:38.559
And we often use imagination to indicate something like that.
1021
00:58:39.239 --> 00:58:41.440
So I think that's the key is what are we
1022
00:58:41.480 --> 00:58:43.480
doing and why are we doing it? And if it's
1023
00:58:43.599 --> 00:58:46.039
because because we want to be individuals and therefore we
1024
00:58:46.079 --> 00:58:48.320
want to be imaginative in a new way and create
1025
00:58:48.360 --> 00:58:51.639
something ourselves out of ourselves, then that maybe not so great.
1026
00:58:52.320 --> 00:58:54.480
But if we're if we're imaginative in the sense that
1027
00:58:54.519 --> 00:58:57.800
we're being very creative with with with what God has
1028
00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:01.440
given us for the purpose any of these purposes we've
1029
00:59:01.440 --> 00:59:03.599
been talking about, then that, you know, that's that's a
1030
00:59:03.599 --> 00:59:06.280
good use of imagination. So I think I think it
1031
00:59:06.320 --> 00:59:08.280
really very much depends on the context and what we
1032
00:59:08.360 --> 00:59:10.360
mean by it. But I think it's really important to
1033
00:59:10.360 --> 00:59:13.199
be aware of that distinction. And not just assume that
1034
00:59:13.639 --> 00:59:16.320
to be imaginative as a positive. It's interesting because I
1035
00:59:16.320 --> 00:59:17.800
think there's a there's a sort of a trend in
1036
00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:20.280
healthcare as well, that people talk about spirituality as if
1037
00:59:20.320 --> 00:59:24.360
it's always positive. Of course it's not always positive. They say,
1038
00:59:24.400 --> 00:59:25.920
you know, we want to get in touch with people,
1039
00:59:26.039 --> 00:59:28.239
allow people to get in touch with their spiritual side
1040
00:59:28.239 --> 00:59:31.000
and develop their spirituality. So well, that would be that
1041
00:59:31.000 --> 00:59:33.960
that you know, that's that's great, But not if it's
1042
00:59:34.119 --> 00:59:37.280
about connect communicating with demons, then maybe it's not saying good.
1043
00:59:37.599 --> 00:59:39.239
We don't want to talk about that in a positive way.
1044
00:59:39.599 --> 00:59:42.079
So I think there are lots of these things. I mean,
1045
00:59:42.119 --> 00:59:44.840
pretty much everything in this world is split, isn't it.
1046
00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:47.440
So there's always a danger, and there's always a temptation.
1047
00:59:47.519 --> 00:59:50.159
There's always a way of using something to separate yourself
1048
00:59:50.519 --> 00:59:53.760
from God, and there's a way of using it to
1049
00:59:53.880 --> 00:59:55.199
connect and join yourself.
1050
00:59:56.440 --> 01:00:00.440
Yeah. No, it's it's it's the one hundred our words,
1051
01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:02.239
the news and the neapsis. I mean, it's it's it's
1052
01:00:02.280 --> 01:00:04.719
it's transforming or getting in touch with the vision of
1053
01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:09.280
your heart and and guarding it, I mean, being watchful
1054
01:00:09.320 --> 01:00:12.440
being and like I said, not to the degree of paranoia,
1055
01:00:12.480 --> 01:00:15.840
but this constant I mean prayerfully considering everything that you're
1056
01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:19.880
going through and your desires, because I mean you talk
1057
01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:25.199
about desire and specifically in context of pornography, but it's
1058
01:00:25.239 --> 01:00:29.239
not just enough to kill your desires, because that's a
1059
01:00:29.320 --> 01:00:30.280
that's a road block.
1060
01:00:30.199 --> 01:00:33.199
Not helpful, because it's that's basically you know, the the
1061
01:00:34.599 --> 01:00:37.559
it's emptying, emptying the house of the demons, so that
1062
01:00:37.719 --> 01:00:40.119
if you do that, then just more demons will move in, right,
1063
01:00:40.159 --> 01:00:45.079
So that's yeah, that's the desire is desire is not
1064
01:00:45.119 --> 01:00:48.599
about being cut off, is about being transformed into desires
1065
01:00:48.639 --> 01:00:52.639
for the wholely for God, and it's for the good
1066
01:00:52.719 --> 01:00:55.440
of of you know, not only ourselves, but all the
1067
01:00:55.480 --> 01:00:56.719
people we come into contact with.
1068
01:00:57.880 --> 01:01:01.559
So it's ultimately all about transformation. I mean, it desire
1069
01:01:01.639 --> 01:01:03.599
in and of itself, like like we've been talking about
1070
01:01:03.679 --> 01:01:05.920
over and over. I mean, and I think it's it's
1071
01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:10.280
a positive thing that to reiterate because it's something that
1072
01:01:10.320 --> 01:01:12.719
I only learned a number of years ago. I Mean,
1073
01:01:12.719 --> 01:01:15.880
I'd never really thought about good and evil just being
1074
01:01:16.000 --> 01:01:19.599
parallels of the same stick and that nothing that evil
1075
01:01:19.639 --> 01:01:22.800
does not exist in isolation. That was news to me.
1076
01:01:23.239 --> 01:01:25.320
I mean I had kind of just had never really
1077
01:01:25.400 --> 01:01:28.000
drawn the distinction. And then when you really, I mean
1078
01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:31.199
sometimes it takes a lot of work, but you can
1079
01:01:31.280 --> 01:01:35.400
trace the line where you go, ah, that's how something
1080
01:01:35.480 --> 01:01:40.159
good got perverted into X. And it's the same way.
1081
01:01:40.199 --> 01:01:42.000
And I'm hopefully the hopeful side of this is that
1082
01:01:42.039 --> 01:01:45.159
it means that in every evil in this life, there
1083
01:01:45.199 --> 01:01:50.840
is always an element of good. Yes, you're never entirely separated,
1084
01:01:51.320 --> 01:01:55.880
because you can't. You know, everything depends on God. So
1085
01:01:56.920 --> 01:01:59.679
if you're still alive, there's still you know, where there's life.
1086
01:01:59.679 --> 01:02:02.039
There's how they say, And I think that's really really
1087
01:02:02.039 --> 01:02:05.159
true for this reason, because however perverse or evil, the
1088
01:02:05.199 --> 01:02:11.239
situation is, there's still well, it still is has a reality.
1089
01:02:11.360 --> 01:02:14.039
Then that means there's hope and there's there's good in
1090
01:02:14.079 --> 01:02:18.360
there that can be grasped and built on developed and
1091
01:02:18.440 --> 01:02:19.599
I think that's really important.
1092
01:02:20.760 --> 01:02:23.039
So, you know, this is just this has just been
1093
01:02:23.039 --> 01:02:29.639
a conversation about killing sacred cows. In our modern Western world.
1094
01:02:30.559 --> 01:02:33.320
You talk about you know, one, you say we all
1095
01:02:33.360 --> 01:02:36.639
have a pornography problem. Two you bring in the twelve
1096
01:02:36.719 --> 01:02:40.480
step program and you basically say we're all powerless which
1097
01:02:41.119 --> 01:02:43.960
is anathema in our modern world. Are are you kidding me?
1098
01:02:44.079 --> 01:02:47.960
Maybe you are, Andrew, But I I I've life hacked
1099
01:02:48.000 --> 01:02:50.440
myself to the degree to which I am in control.
1100
01:02:50.800 --> 01:02:52.960
Why is that an illusion? I mean powerless? We are
1101
01:02:53.000 --> 01:02:57.920
all powerless. And you know it's it's said we we
1102
01:02:58.000 --> 01:03:04.119
should not rely on ourselves. That that's that's completely contrary
1103
01:03:04.159 --> 01:03:06.480
to everything that we're told in our modern society.
1104
01:03:06.719 --> 01:03:08.480
I think it's pretty clear that none of us can
1105
01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:15.039
create the world. I think I think we reached the
1106
01:03:15.079 --> 01:03:17.119
realms of definite delusion if we're talking to somebody who
1107
01:03:17.159 --> 01:03:20.719
thinks they can create the world. And so there's you know, yes,
1108
01:03:20.760 --> 01:03:23.039
of course we can make a difference, and that's important,
1109
01:03:23.119 --> 01:03:26.239
and that's important to affirm that. And you know, we
1110
01:03:26.280 --> 01:03:28.360
do have the power to make things better or worse
1111
01:03:28.760 --> 01:03:32.280
for ourselves and for other people. But we don't have
1112
01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:35.519
the ultimate power. There's a very high degree of powerlessness.
1113
01:03:35.679 --> 01:03:38.079
I can't control, you know, whether I'm going to get
1114
01:03:38.079 --> 01:03:42.320
some terrible disease and die tomorrow. That's not within my power.
1115
01:03:42.480 --> 01:03:45.880
It's just not. And so I can do things that
1116
01:03:45.920 --> 01:03:48.280
make it more or less likely, of course, but I
1117
01:03:48.320 --> 01:03:51.840
can't ultimately control it. So in the sense, in that
1118
01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:54.440
sense we're all we are all powerless, and and and
1119
01:03:54.519 --> 01:03:56.440
the idea of you know, sort of self made man
1120
01:03:57.400 --> 01:04:01.000
that it's impossible because there are so many things that
1121
01:04:01.280 --> 01:04:06.159
the self made man is depending on his health, you know,
1122
01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:08.719
living in a country where somebody doesn't just turn up
1123
01:04:08.760 --> 01:04:12.320
and steal his house and his family and you know whatever.
1124
01:04:12.719 --> 01:04:14.320
You know, there are so many things that he is
1125
01:04:14.360 --> 01:04:19.519
not responsible for in his self health made life. Which
1126
01:04:19.559 --> 01:04:21.559
is not to say that hard work is you know,
1127
01:04:21.760 --> 01:04:24.239
is a waste of time and pointless at all. It's
1128
01:04:24.280 --> 01:04:26.519
just to say that there are limits and to acknowledge
1129
01:04:26.519 --> 01:04:29.159
those limits. I think there's there's so much black and
1130
01:04:29.159 --> 01:04:32.519
white thinking. And that's that's the thing, because actually real
1131
01:04:32.559 --> 01:04:36.039
life is full of degrees of things. You know, where
1132
01:04:36.119 --> 01:04:38.159
is the where It's not that there are good people
1133
01:04:38.199 --> 01:04:41.000
and bad people, and good is this thing over here,
1134
01:04:41.000 --> 01:04:44.159
and evil is that thing over there. It's just never
1135
01:04:44.199 --> 01:04:46.559
so simple. The evil always contains good, that good always
1136
01:04:46.559 --> 01:04:49.000
contains evil, That good people do bad things, that bad
1137
01:04:49.000 --> 01:04:52.199
people do good things. You know, it's all mixed. And
1138
01:04:52.559 --> 01:04:54.320
that's why it's so difficult, because we'd like it to
1139
01:04:54.360 --> 01:04:55.519
be really obvious and simple.
1140
01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:03.239
Nuance is a lost art. I mean, so true freedom,
1141
01:05:04.239 --> 01:05:06.920
what is it? Because I mean, if we're powerless, how
1142
01:05:06.960 --> 01:05:08.760
can we experience true freedom?
1143
01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:12.960
Yes, I mean again, it's one of those things, isn't it.
1144
01:05:13.039 --> 01:05:16.239
Freedom is like everything else on the continuum, and when
1145
01:05:16.920 --> 01:05:20.559
we never entirely without it, but it's also never complete
1146
01:05:21.119 --> 01:05:24.400
in this life, like everything in this life. So you know,
1147
01:05:24.599 --> 01:05:27.039
I think I sort of thought about this from reading
1148
01:05:27.119 --> 01:05:29.840
the accounts of the people who had been in concentration
1149
01:05:29.920 --> 01:05:33.880
camps and in the Soviet gulags. You know, their freedom
1150
01:05:33.960 --> 01:05:37.960
was enormously limited, and yet they used it but a
1151
01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:41.400
little tiny bit they had to enormous effect in some cases.
1152
01:05:41.760 --> 01:05:43.880
And we've got saints, you know, who came out of
1153
01:05:43.920 --> 01:05:48.360
these contexts because they used their human freedom in a
1154
01:05:48.360 --> 01:05:50.880
case where pretty much everything that we would call freedom
1155
01:05:50.880 --> 01:05:55.000
had been taken away to such effect that they became
1156
01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:57.360
they were able to use it to become saints. And
1157
01:05:57.400 --> 01:06:00.320
so I think, you know, freedom is a huge, huge,
1158
01:06:01.159 --> 01:06:03.280
And the other thing, I guess, the other thing that's
1159
01:06:03.320 --> 01:06:06.039
really important to me about that is that that love
1160
01:06:06.159 --> 01:06:11.039
depends on freedom, because love cannot be forced and still
1161
01:06:11.079 --> 01:06:14.320
be real, and so in that sense, I think freedom
1162
01:06:14.400 --> 01:06:17.760
is really at the center we have to be we
1163
01:06:17.880 --> 01:06:21.599
have to be able to give and receive love freely,
1164
01:06:22.960 --> 01:06:26.079
and that that's what God gives us, that opportunity to
1165
01:06:26.159 --> 01:06:30.480
do that. We're not forced ever into can't be forced
1166
01:06:30.480 --> 01:06:33.920
into loving God, right or anyone else. So the freedom
1167
01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:36.840
is really it is really important, and we all exercise
1168
01:06:36.920 --> 01:06:39.320
it all the time, all the time. But sometimes I
1169
01:06:39.360 --> 01:06:43.239
think we you know, maybe we use it. Obviously we
1170
01:06:43.320 --> 01:06:45.519
use it in negative ways, but I think sometimes we
1171
01:06:45.639 --> 01:06:51.039
underestimate actually how valuable it is. And perhaps that's perhaps
1172
01:06:51.079 --> 01:06:52.639
that's why, you know, the people who had most of
1173
01:06:52.639 --> 01:06:55.920
it taken away were able to value the part that remained.
1174
01:06:56.639 --> 01:06:58.840
But yes, there's a sort of a I think it's
1175
01:06:58.880 --> 01:07:01.599
also part of being a a physical and a spiritual
1176
01:07:01.639 --> 01:07:04.800
being that enables us to maintain that inner freedom even
1177
01:07:04.920 --> 01:07:07.760
when the outer freedom is mostly stripped away.
1178
01:07:09.440 --> 01:07:12.639
And how is this important the context of pornography? I mean,
1179
01:07:13.159 --> 01:07:17.320
you're kind of tagline. I guess if I would attribute
1180
01:07:17.360 --> 01:07:20.000
it to is finding the freedom to live And this
1181
01:07:20.119 --> 01:07:22.840
is all based in the context of free I guess
1182
01:07:22.880 --> 01:07:25.400
to some degree freedom from pornography. But pornography is just
1183
01:07:25.400 --> 01:07:27.639
the symptom of the greater disease, right.
1184
01:07:27.840 --> 01:07:32.360
Absolutely, Yeah, And there's so many things that limit our freedom,
1185
01:07:32.519 --> 01:07:35.559
and so many of them are I mean, I'm not
1186
01:07:35.599 --> 01:07:37.760
going to say self imposed, but so many of them,
1187
01:07:38.760 --> 01:07:41.400
things that we feel limit our freedom are actually not.
1188
01:07:42.679 --> 01:07:46.039
You know, they're internal as much as external that we
1189
01:07:46.119 --> 01:07:49.719
say in some cases, So I think, I mean, I
1190
01:07:49.719 --> 01:07:53.280
think my own case, I was always a very anxious person,
1191
01:07:53.320 --> 01:07:56.760
and the anxiety massively limited my freedom. But it was
1192
01:07:57.599 --> 01:08:01.199
and it existed because of a you know, external factors
1193
01:08:01.480 --> 01:08:04.440
in my life growing up. But I also had some
1194
01:08:04.559 --> 01:08:07.199
freedom in how I dealt with that and what I
1195
01:08:07.239 --> 01:08:12.519
did with it. And so I think there are lots
1196
01:08:12.519 --> 01:08:16.039
of things like that, I think, which are sort of spiritual,
1197
01:08:16.159 --> 01:08:18.680
if we like to say, spiritual limitations on our freedom
1198
01:08:18.840 --> 01:08:23.760
rather than physical ones. And so I think this living
1199
01:08:23.800 --> 01:08:27.840
the life of repentance actually helps to break through some
1200
01:08:27.920 --> 01:08:30.920
of those things and allow us to experience its freedom
1201
01:08:30.960 --> 01:08:34.880
and to use it. And I do think, I mean,
1202
01:08:34.920 --> 01:08:38.039
I know that I underestimated my own freedom, and I
1203
01:08:38.079 --> 01:08:41.640
suspect that's not a unique case, and that there's actually
1204
01:08:41.760 --> 01:08:44.439
so much we can do for good if we're willing
1205
01:08:44.479 --> 01:08:45.479
to grasp it.
1206
01:08:48.720 --> 01:08:53.159
Well, you talk about repentance, I mean, why what is
1207
01:08:53.239 --> 01:08:58.479
true repentance? And just to really hammer home that the
1208
01:08:58.479 --> 01:09:01.119
point that we've already discovered. But I think it's worth
1209
01:09:01.159 --> 01:09:07.560
it because you know, think about this a lot. Andrew that,
1210
01:09:08.319 --> 01:09:10.800
and and I did a podcast with a guy named
1211
01:09:10.880 --> 01:09:15.720
Justin Marler, who I love deeply, and I got a
1212
01:09:15.760 --> 01:09:19.079
lot of pushback on it. This guy doesn't take sin seriously.
1213
01:09:20.199 --> 01:09:23.760
Did you listen to our conversation? Did you read his book?
1214
01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:24.079
Really?
1215
01:09:24.159 --> 01:09:26.720
I mean, he is not saying that sin is not
1216
01:09:27.159 --> 01:09:29.079
a problem. It's just not the problem that you think
1217
01:09:29.119 --> 01:09:34.279
it is. That your focus is so heavy on the
1218
01:09:34.279 --> 01:09:36.640
infractional element, and I think it has a lot to
1219
01:09:36.640 --> 01:09:40.800
do with the maybe the Western conception of sin and
1220
01:09:40.840 --> 01:09:45.039
the Western conception of even being saved. And so I
1221
01:09:45.279 --> 01:09:47.359
don't know if that's something that you think about a lot,
1222
01:09:47.439 --> 01:09:49.880
or if you have anything to offer in this this realm,
1223
01:09:49.920 --> 01:09:52.720
but it's something that I really, really, I don't think
1224
01:09:52.720 --> 01:09:54.600
that we can talk about enough because I think that
1225
01:09:55.319 --> 01:09:59.039
you know, you're you're in the the realm of therapy.
1226
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:03.800
Think there's a lot of hurt people that are hurt
1227
01:10:03.800 --> 01:10:07.319
by a misconception of sin and that carrying it through
1228
01:10:07.600 --> 01:10:12.399
they're unable to truly face or to live a life
1229
01:10:12.439 --> 01:10:15.960
of repentance because they can't handle the concept of sin
1230
01:10:16.119 --> 01:10:18.560
as it's been presented to them. Does that make any sense?
1231
01:10:19.000 --> 01:10:21.720
Yeah, no, it definitely does. No. I mean you said,
1232
01:10:21.880 --> 01:10:24.119
you've said you know what is repentance? I was going
1233
01:10:24.159 --> 01:10:25.600
to say, well, when you when you find out, you
1234
01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:29.079
can tell tell me, because I think it's one of
1235
01:10:29.119 --> 01:10:31.560
those things that to grasp in all its fullness is
1236
01:10:32.119 --> 01:10:35.760
the work of more than a lifetime. But yes, I
1237
01:10:35.760 --> 01:10:38.119
think you're You're right. I mean, what we know, what
1238
01:10:38.119 --> 01:10:40.880
we know it isn't is this very limited conception of
1239
01:10:40.920 --> 01:10:42.880
a sin being a bad thing that we've done, and
1240
01:10:42.920 --> 01:10:46.640
the repentance being somehow overcoming that bad thing or turning
1241
01:10:46.640 --> 01:10:48.720
away from that bad thing. And I think that's a
1242
01:10:48.800 --> 01:10:52.439
very limited sort of concept of what it looks like
1243
01:10:54.239 --> 01:10:57.279
and repentance. You know, there's so much in the Father's
1244
01:10:57.279 --> 01:11:00.439
about this. The repentance is is a lifelong process, and
1245
01:11:00.520 --> 01:11:03.239
for me that the best image of it is the
1246
01:11:03.279 --> 01:11:06.920
story of the prodigal son. You know that his repentance
1247
01:11:07.079 --> 01:11:09.399
was finding himself in there with the pigs and the
1248
01:11:09.479 --> 01:11:12.600
husks and thinking, even the servants of my Father's have
1249
01:11:12.640 --> 01:11:15.119
something more than this. And then he said, lor why
1250
01:11:15.239 --> 01:11:18.640
not let's just go back. And it slept turning back
1251
01:11:18.760 --> 01:11:21.119
and then throwing himself on the mercy of the Father
1252
01:11:21.279 --> 01:11:24.239
and saying, you know, I did, I made a mess
1253
01:11:24.239 --> 01:11:27.000
of it basically, and the Father says, you're my son.
1254
01:11:29.920 --> 01:11:32.319
And so I think the repentance is just that in
1255
01:11:32.359 --> 01:11:34.439
a way, it's it's being able to let go of
1256
01:11:34.479 --> 01:11:37.560
all this stuff and go back and go back to
1257
01:11:37.600 --> 01:11:41.399
the Father. And it's nothing to do with you know,
1258
01:11:41.960 --> 01:11:45.600
doing stuff and overcoming issues issues, and all that is
1259
01:11:45.600 --> 01:11:47.159
is that, you know, it may happen, it may be
1260
01:11:47.199 --> 01:11:49.079
part of the process, but it's it's not the way.
1261
01:11:49.159 --> 01:11:51.000
It's not the way we move. The way we move
1262
01:11:51.119 --> 01:11:53.920
is to turn back to the Father and say your
1263
01:11:54.399 --> 01:11:56.840
your will is what we need, Your love is what
1264
01:11:56.880 --> 01:11:59.359
we need, and we need to live in that and
1265
01:11:59.399 --> 01:12:01.920
the rest will just follow from that. Hmm.
1266
01:12:02.720 --> 01:12:06.279
Yeah, once again turned towards the light. Yeah. I'm going
1267
01:12:06.319 --> 01:12:08.000
to ask a question that it probably should have led with,
1268
01:12:09.199 --> 01:12:11.239
why does the church care so much about sex?
1269
01:12:12.920 --> 01:12:18.479
Oh, here's that one, Because it's about life, right. I
1270
01:12:18.560 --> 01:12:20.920
think the obsession with sex actually doesn't so much come
1271
01:12:20.920 --> 01:12:24.119
from the churches, with people constantly asking the questions of
1272
01:12:24.239 --> 01:12:27.800
the church. Because I don't know about you, but I
1273
01:12:27.840 --> 01:12:30.159
don't actually hear very much when I go to church.
1274
01:12:30.159 --> 01:12:32.439
I don't very hear very much in my sex, and
1275
01:12:32.479 --> 01:12:38.039
it's almost never in the sermons. So I don't think
1276
01:12:38.079 --> 01:12:40.159
it's you know, I don't think the obsession is quite
1277
01:12:40.199 --> 01:12:43.840
the churches, but maybe societies. But the Church does care
1278
01:12:43.880 --> 01:12:46.680
about sex very deeply because it's at the heart of
1279
01:12:46.720 --> 01:12:52.680
who we are as people, and because marriage particularly is
1280
01:12:52.720 --> 01:12:58.119
at the heart of the image of heaven. And I
1281
01:12:58.119 --> 01:12:59.960
think it's because, as I was saying earlier, you know,
1282
01:13:00.159 --> 01:13:04.199
our vision of heaven is this true union of all
1283
01:13:04.239 --> 01:13:08.039
in all all in Christ. And marriage is given to
1284
01:13:08.119 --> 01:13:12.319
us as the sort of first earthly taste of this union,
1285
01:13:13.800 --> 01:13:16.399
which is then fulfilled, you know, in the wedding banquet
1286
01:13:16.399 --> 01:13:21.439
of the Lord. And part of the concept of marriage
1287
01:13:21.800 --> 01:13:25.439
is precisely this joining together of the male and female,
1288
01:13:26.159 --> 01:13:28.880
which were set you know, as Maximus, that confessor says,
1289
01:13:28.880 --> 01:13:32.520
set we're one of the separations of creation. And so
1290
01:13:32.560 --> 01:13:37.359
it's it's coming back together in a union of perfect love,
1291
01:13:37.439 --> 01:13:42.359
where we can appreciate the other and the difference and
1292
01:13:42.479 --> 01:13:45.720
come together in union and be one and yet still
1293
01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:50.039
be twos as God is, you know, one and three,
1294
01:13:50.159 --> 01:13:53.359
and Christ is perfectly divine and perfectly human, and it's
1295
01:13:53.399 --> 01:13:56.800
all of the joinings together in which all of this works,
1296
01:13:57.600 --> 01:14:00.760
the joining together of the things that are different. And
1297
01:14:00.800 --> 01:14:03.039
so I think that's that's why, because sex is about
1298
01:14:03.039 --> 01:14:06.199
the joining together of the things that are different, and
1299
01:14:06.239 --> 01:14:09.880
so it's absolutely at the heart of the message of
1300
01:14:09.880 --> 01:14:12.399
the Gospel. It's possible. You can do this. You can
1301
01:14:12.479 --> 01:14:14.600
join together what's different, and you can do it in
1302
01:14:14.600 --> 01:14:17.079
perfect love, and it can grow in union, and it
1303
01:14:17.079 --> 01:14:18.560
can grow in union for a eternity.
1304
01:14:20.479 --> 01:14:24.880
M beautiful brother, thank you for that. Thank you. It
1305
01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:29.439
was like, you know, it's just there's so many different
1306
01:14:29.439 --> 01:14:34.199
ways that that question could be answered and in just
1307
01:14:34.319 --> 01:14:37.239
like you do in your book, and just like we've
1308
01:14:37.279 --> 01:14:40.079
been talking, is the right way to try and do this?
1309
01:14:40.720 --> 01:14:45.279
Is sure you could have answered in a polemical fashion,
1310
01:14:46.199 --> 01:14:49.079
but but you chose to focus on the good and
1311
01:14:49.119 --> 01:14:51.159
what well, why do we talk about it? Because it's
1312
01:14:51.159 --> 01:14:55.079
beautiful if we don't just talk about why the ways
1313
01:14:55.119 --> 01:14:57.680
that you are are kind of screwing it up, the
1314
01:14:57.760 --> 01:15:00.399
ways that you're perverting the good. Well, let me tell
1315
01:15:00.439 --> 01:15:03.199
you how the vision of what's truly good and the
1316
01:15:03.239 --> 01:15:05.880
way that we're truly meant to live and it's it's
1317
01:15:05.920 --> 01:15:09.000
that that whole thing. Wow, when you paint that picture,
1318
01:15:09.159 --> 01:15:09.960
I want to live in it.
1319
01:15:10.560 --> 01:15:11.159
Yeah.
1320
01:15:11.199 --> 01:15:15.359
Absolutely, Yeah, it's a gift from God. I've got some
1321
01:15:15.439 --> 01:15:20.159
big picture questions for you really relating to reality. Where
1322
01:15:20.159 --> 01:15:22.359
are we most eager to ignore reality?
1323
01:15:25.399 --> 01:15:27.600
Well, I don't know. That's a that's an interesting one.
1324
01:15:27.840 --> 01:15:31.119
Where are we most ego to ignore reality? Well, probably
1325
01:15:31.119 --> 01:15:37.760
wherever it's the greatest challenge to our own autonomy. I think,
1326
01:15:39.359 --> 01:15:41.079
I think. I mean, it's something I actually I thought
1327
01:15:41.119 --> 01:15:43.680
earlier I should probably mention. Is the idea of escapism,
1328
01:15:43.840 --> 01:15:47.760
right that the part of the pornography temptation is the
1329
01:15:47.880 --> 01:15:52.119
escape from reality. In reality, I'm struggling to form a relationship.
1330
01:15:52.279 --> 01:15:54.399
I'm not meeting the people that I feel like I
1331
01:15:54.399 --> 01:15:57.800
can connect to. But in pornography, I can imagine. I
1332
01:15:57.840 --> 01:15:59.840
can imagine this. Yeah, I can take this image of
1333
01:15:59.840 --> 01:16:02.239
this person and make that person whoever I want them
1334
01:16:02.279 --> 01:16:05.319
to be and have that relationship however I want it
1335
01:16:05.359 --> 01:16:08.640
to be. And that's a huge temptation of a break
1336
01:16:08.680 --> 01:16:12.520
from reality. And you can understand exactly why that temptation exists.
1337
01:16:12.720 --> 01:16:15.279
It's very obvious and being lonely is a horrible thing,
1338
01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:18.560
and we've all experienced it at some degree. We know
1339
01:16:18.640 --> 01:16:21.720
we don't like it, and so we understand why there
1340
01:16:21.720 --> 01:16:27.920
are temptations to escape from it in an apparently easy way. Yeah.
1341
01:16:27.960 --> 01:16:32.199
So I think that's it's important to live in reality
1342
01:16:32.279 --> 01:16:34.199
because that's the only way of connecting with God in
1343
01:16:34.239 --> 01:16:39.119
the end, because God is ultimate reality, and because we
1344
01:16:39.159 --> 01:16:42.079
can't connect with anybody or anything. I mean, we can
1345
01:16:42.119 --> 01:16:44.239
connect ourselves with lots of unreal things, but they lead
1346
01:16:44.600 --> 01:16:48.199
to more unreal things, and we don't want that. We
1347
01:16:48.279 --> 01:16:51.479
actually want reality. We want to love really and be
1348
01:16:51.600 --> 01:16:54.279
really loved and be part of a real union. We
1349
01:16:54.439 --> 01:16:56.520
want to be able to create things that are real
1350
01:16:56.600 --> 01:17:00.920
and important and lasting and good. And we only we
1351
01:17:00.960 --> 01:17:04.039
only satisfy ourselves with the evil because we think we can't.
1352
01:17:04.840 --> 01:17:07.079
We can't it mm hmm.
1353
01:17:08.600 --> 01:17:12.479
And hard. It's hard work. It's sometimes very hard work,
1354
01:17:13.720 --> 01:17:14.159
trust me.
1355
01:17:14.399 --> 01:17:17.319
That's why each other well each other.
1356
01:17:17.359 --> 01:17:18.680
And we have the Church, and we have the and
1357
01:17:18.720 --> 01:17:22.319
we have the Saints, and we have Christ ultimately, and
1358
01:17:23.479 --> 01:17:25.680
we have to keep returning to that. And it's hard
1359
01:17:25.720 --> 01:17:27.880
sometimes to do that, and we want to escape, but
1360
01:17:27.960 --> 01:17:30.359
it's hard, but we have to keep going back because
1361
01:17:30.359 --> 01:17:32.439
it's the only path. It's the only path that makes sense,
1362
01:17:32.479 --> 01:17:34.319
if the only path that needs anyway good in the end.
1363
01:17:35.039 --> 01:17:37.560
Well, a friend that we have in common. The first
1364
01:17:37.560 --> 01:17:39.880
person that had on this podcast was Frederica Matthews Green,
1365
01:17:40.479 --> 01:17:42.640
and I asked her. I said, well, what went through
1366
01:17:42.640 --> 01:17:45.079
your mind when you saw the name of this podcast?
1367
01:17:45.119 --> 01:17:48.359
Commitment to reality? She she got to give her answer,
1368
01:17:48.359 --> 01:17:50.439
and I said, well, I think that the most important
1369
01:17:50.479 --> 01:17:55.880
word is commitment. Yeah, but for me, because I mean, yes,
1370
01:17:55.920 --> 01:17:59.000
reality exists whether you realize it, admit it or not.
1371
01:17:59.600 --> 01:18:03.039
But it's making that commitment. And it's hard. I mean,
1372
01:18:03.079 --> 01:18:06.199
we've talked about words in it's watchfulness, it's it's it's
1373
01:18:06.399 --> 01:18:11.960
it's ascetical disciplines and practices. But hard things are almost
1374
01:18:12.000 --> 01:18:16.000
always worth it, Like do the hard thing, like you know,
1375
01:18:17.039 --> 01:18:19.640
going for a run. I don't always want to do it,
1376
01:18:20.239 --> 01:18:23.359
but I can say with the high degree of certainty
1377
01:18:23.359 --> 01:18:26.000
that I'm almost always happy that I did, unless I
1378
01:18:26.079 --> 01:18:27.399
like pull the hamstring or something.
1379
01:18:27.399 --> 01:18:32.159
My best example of that confession, I never really liked
1380
01:18:32.199 --> 01:18:34.279
the idea of going, but I'm always really happy when
1381
01:18:34.279 --> 01:18:34.720
they come out.
1382
01:18:35.960 --> 01:18:38.720
It's a hard thing. No, you're right, I mean every
1383
01:18:38.720 --> 01:18:42.079
time you're like, oh man, going in and you just
1384
01:18:42.279 --> 01:18:46.079
there's and it's it's a really really good example. And
1385
01:18:46.119 --> 01:18:47.680
I'm glad that you brought it up because there's a
1386
01:18:47.680 --> 01:18:51.159
lot of people, especially well even Orthodox people might not
1387
01:18:51.479 --> 01:18:55.000
like to do it. But it's that concept of being
1388
01:18:55.119 --> 01:18:57.720
truly seen. And I say this to my kids just
1389
01:18:57.760 --> 01:18:59.359
the same way that you brought it up with yours.
1390
01:18:59.800 --> 01:19:05.000
I love you. Let me love you, not the mask,
1391
01:19:05.520 --> 01:19:10.560
I mean. And and you go in fearing the bad priest,
1392
01:19:11.560 --> 01:19:14.520
right or the judgmental priest, or the person who's gonna
1393
01:19:14.880 --> 01:19:19.119
tell you how bad you are. And and my experience,
1394
01:19:19.239 --> 01:19:23.000
I always walk away feeling loved and seen and and
1395
01:19:23.000 --> 01:19:26.119
and you know it's it's before the face of Christ.
1396
01:19:26.560 --> 01:19:30.760
And what can be more relieving, you know, is that
1397
01:19:31.720 --> 01:19:34.399
you see me and you love me.
1398
01:19:34.680 --> 01:19:38.560
Astonishing is you know, I did? I did. I somehow
1399
01:19:38.720 --> 01:19:41.680
still to this day sometimes seem to imagine that I
1400
01:19:41.720 --> 01:19:43.520
can hide things from from Christ.
1401
01:19:48.840 --> 01:19:54.319
We're deluded, yeah, but in a world that feels increasingly unreal,
1402
01:19:54.800 --> 01:19:58.159
you know. By One of the other motivations for this
1403
01:19:58.279 --> 01:20:02.880
podcast is our world is changing rapidly, I mean, with
1404
01:20:03.319 --> 01:20:08.600
the assent of Ai and just I mean, I use
1405
01:20:08.680 --> 01:20:11.399
the term future shock all the time. I think it's
1406
01:20:11.399 --> 01:20:14.760
so funny because, you know, I think it was Charlton
1407
01:20:14.800 --> 01:20:19.560
Aston in promoting future shock. He was doing a documentary
1408
01:20:19.560 --> 01:20:21.600
on it, I think, and he's in a library and
1409
01:20:21.600 --> 01:20:25.199
he's like, look at all of this information. Man has
1410
01:20:25.319 --> 01:20:28.720
never had access to information like this ever before. And
1411
01:20:28.760 --> 01:20:32.720
we're experiencing a state of a future shock of paralysis.
1412
01:20:32.840 --> 01:20:37.039
And I remember watching that on YouTube and thinking he
1413
01:20:37.119 --> 01:20:41.720
had no idea. You thought that was future shock? Like this,
1414
01:20:42.000 --> 01:20:44.399
we are in shock, and so you know, we live
1415
01:20:44.439 --> 01:20:48.800
in this world. It's increasingly feels unreal. What do you,
1416
01:20:49.039 --> 01:20:51.199
Andrew Williams feels most real?
1417
01:20:55.680 --> 01:20:58.359
I think it's and I think this is why I
1418
01:20:58.399 --> 01:21:03.560
really appreciate my job, because I go in and talk
1419
01:21:03.640 --> 01:21:11.960
to people who have incredibly difficult lives, and it's an
1420
01:21:12.079 --> 01:21:15.319
enormous blessing. It's an enormous blessing to be able to
1421
01:21:15.359 --> 01:21:20.239
share the reality of the situation and to be open
1422
01:21:21.039 --> 01:21:25.159
to to to being there, you know, and and and
1423
01:21:25.199 --> 01:21:28.560
to understand why people want to avoid it or escape
1424
01:21:28.600 --> 01:21:32.960
from it or reinterpret it, but to just be able
1425
01:21:33.000 --> 01:21:33.479
to be there.
1426
01:21:34.319 --> 01:21:35.239
Mm hm.
1427
01:21:35.239 --> 01:21:41.720
So I think I really value the ability to have
1428
01:21:41.760 --> 01:21:48.399
those really real relationships, even even when they're difficult or
1429
01:21:48.439 --> 01:21:55.760
sad and heartbreaking sometimes but they're but that's they're real
1430
01:21:55.960 --> 01:22:00.720
and and the people are real, and we're all in
1431
01:22:00.840 --> 01:22:08.039
this weird journey of live together. And yeah, I think
1432
01:22:08.079 --> 01:22:10.199
I sort of lost a bit of a taste for
1433
01:22:10.239 --> 01:22:18.520
the for the fake, and so I really appreciate those
1434
01:22:18.640 --> 01:22:22.560
those moments when people and you know, I've never met
1435
01:22:22.560 --> 01:22:25.960
more honest people than people in mental health wors and
1436
01:22:25.960 --> 01:22:30.479
and also people with such a genuine interest in the
1437
01:22:30.520 --> 01:22:34.520
reality of the spiritual life and what it means, often
1438
01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:37.079
masters of research and come up with some really quite
1439
01:22:37.199 --> 01:22:41.479
inventive answers, some tellius, but I mean the conversations are
1440
01:22:41.479 --> 01:22:44.159
always fascinating. What was that?
1441
01:22:44.199 --> 01:22:49.880
There was a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and I can't
1442
01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:53.039
remember what it was, but there was a character and
1443
01:22:53.119 --> 01:22:57.680
I think he won an Oscar for the for the performance.
1444
01:22:58.079 --> 01:23:01.560
But he was crazy. He was the only one who
1445
01:23:01.720 --> 01:23:04.199
saw things and said things as they truly were.
1446
01:23:04.279 --> 01:23:07.119
They were uncomfortable told tradition of the you know, the
1447
01:23:07.159 --> 01:23:12.800
holy fool, which I think is really important. And sometimes
1448
01:23:12.840 --> 01:23:16.399
it is the person who will actually just say what
1449
01:23:16.520 --> 01:23:20.439
they see and when the rest of us are sort
1450
01:23:20.439 --> 01:23:24.840
of conforming to various societal requirements and not able to
1451
01:23:24.880 --> 01:23:25.159
do that.
1452
01:23:26.279 --> 01:23:29.520
Revolution Road I think was the movie. Uh yeah, And
1453
01:23:29.680 --> 01:23:32.319
what you're talking about, what my mind just drifts there.
1454
01:23:32.600 --> 01:23:37.800
You know, you're talking about suffering, and what feels real
1455
01:23:37.880 --> 01:23:40.840
is is being in the presence of suffering with another
1456
01:23:41.000 --> 01:23:43.840
I mean, not exclusively, but that's that's where my mind
1457
01:23:43.880 --> 01:23:46.279
goes when you're when you're talking about it. Yeah, and
1458
01:23:46.319 --> 01:23:50.920
the aforementioned justin Marler when I had him on the podcast,
1459
01:23:50.920 --> 01:23:53.840
he said that a monk when he was in the monastery,
1460
01:23:53.920 --> 01:23:57.079
he was a monk for a while, he said something
1461
01:23:57.079 --> 01:23:59.880
that shattered his paradigm. And I said, I want to
1462
01:24:00.039 --> 01:24:01.960
feel that, and I'm keeping it with me for the
1463
01:24:02.000 --> 01:24:05.800
rest of my life. Said, we're taught in our modern
1464
01:24:05.800 --> 01:24:08.920
world to avoid suffering. Suffering is evil, Suffering is bad.
1465
01:24:09.640 --> 01:24:12.319
And the monk told him when you're suffering. Now once again,
1466
01:24:12.359 --> 01:24:15.680
this isn't in a masochistic way where you seek out suffering, said,
1467
01:24:15.720 --> 01:24:22.880
when you're suffering, God's visiting you. And I mean, maybe
1468
01:24:22.880 --> 01:24:24.640
I'm reading too much into it, but when you say,
1469
01:24:24.640 --> 01:24:29.439
I mean you if you're with people who are suffering,
1470
01:24:29.960 --> 01:24:32.479
what feels most real to you, is the presence of God.
1471
01:24:33.760 --> 01:24:36.479
Yes, No, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right.
1472
01:24:36.560 --> 01:24:39.520
But and I would also say that that in the
1473
01:24:39.520 --> 01:24:43.760
midst of suffering there is also joy and that's also
1474
01:24:43.800 --> 01:24:48.640
the presence of God. Not always obviously, that the joy
1475
01:24:48.680 --> 01:24:51.000
isn't always there, but there are moments, there are moments
1476
01:24:51.000 --> 01:24:51.520
of joy.
1477
01:24:52.199 --> 01:24:57.199
Mm hmm. How because I can hear somebody saying, not
1478
01:24:57.800 --> 01:25:00.159
my suffering, I've never felt joy and suffering.
1479
01:25:00.760 --> 01:25:03.640
Well, maybe, And I think maybe that's the individual thing
1480
01:25:03.720 --> 01:25:05.560
as well, because I think it's when we when we
1481
01:25:05.720 --> 01:25:08.279
when we when we join together there, when we sit
1482
01:25:08.359 --> 01:25:10.840
in the place of suffering together, that we can find
1483
01:25:11.760 --> 01:25:14.359
the moments of joy even lefter. You know, I've I've
1484
01:25:14.560 --> 01:25:18.479
experienced times of lefter with people who are dying, with
1485
01:25:18.560 --> 01:25:21.520
people who are in the bits of terrible suffering. And
1486
01:25:22.520 --> 01:25:28.840
the humanity is humanity, and that that hope is always there,
1487
01:25:28.960 --> 01:25:32.199
and there there are moments that come, sometimes quite surprisingly
1488
01:25:32.239 --> 01:25:37.760
out of the blue, moments of joy and beauty.
1489
01:25:37.600 --> 01:25:44.079
Particularly beautiful bright sadness. Yeah, absolutely, will you talk about hope?
1490
01:25:44.079 --> 01:25:46.560
And I'd like to end that way, you know, for
1491
01:25:46.600 --> 01:25:48.720
a podcast on pornography, I feel like we didn't talk
1492
01:25:48.720 --> 01:25:51.159
about pornography a whole lot, which is kind of the point.
1493
01:25:51.359 --> 01:25:54.960
That's it's kind of like that that that that I've
1494
01:25:55.000 --> 01:25:57.880
read it before, where you know, a priest is told
1495
01:25:58.520 --> 01:26:01.239
somebody confessing. You know, you think your sins are special,
1496
01:26:01.399 --> 01:26:05.079
they're actually kind of boring. They're all the same. You know,
1497
01:26:05.159 --> 01:26:06.880
it's beauty and that's unique.
1498
01:26:08.840 --> 01:26:12.079
Look at the same slaves.
1499
01:26:12.840 --> 01:26:16.520
But you know, hope, hope for anybody who you know,
1500
01:26:17.239 --> 01:26:19.279
Glory to God, thank God. It's not something that I
1501
01:26:19.319 --> 01:26:23.600
personally struggle with in the in the more acute version,
1502
01:26:23.720 --> 01:26:25.520
not the because you did say that we all have
1503
01:26:25.560 --> 01:26:29.640
a pornography problem. But for somebody who's really struggling with pornography,
1504
01:26:30.319 --> 01:26:34.399
give them hope, give them a way out.
1505
01:26:35.039 --> 01:26:39.640
Yeah, that's I mean, I think the way out in
1506
01:26:39.680 --> 01:26:43.520
all of these things is always real relationship. You have
1507
01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:46.960
to It's difficult because it requires being vulnerable, and being
1508
01:26:47.039 --> 01:26:50.319
vulnerable is a risk. Okay, whenever we take that step
1509
01:26:50.359 --> 01:26:53.159
to be vulnerable, we're taking a risk, and there are
1510
01:26:53.199 --> 01:26:55.079
people we can't trust and there are people who will
1511
01:26:55.079 --> 01:26:58.239
abuse that. So it's a difficult thing. But I do
1512
01:26:58.319 --> 01:27:02.319
think that the answer to to the problem is if
1513
01:27:02.359 --> 01:27:04.039
you have to find a place where you can make
1514
01:27:04.079 --> 01:27:06.720
yourself vulnerable. You have to find a person that you
1515
01:27:06.720 --> 01:27:10.680
can trust and make yourself vulnerable with. And when you start,
1516
01:27:10.760 --> 01:27:14.800
once you start to make that real connection, you understand
1517
01:27:14.920 --> 01:27:18.960
how much more that's worse than all of this fake stuff.
1518
01:27:20.680 --> 01:27:24.279
And I don't think there's anybody who choose this, this
1519
01:27:24.560 --> 01:27:27.880
imaginary reality for the real one once they've experienced the
1520
01:27:27.880 --> 01:27:30.279
real one. But I just think there's so many people
1521
01:27:30.359 --> 01:27:33.399
in this world that are lonely and that don't have
1522
01:27:33.640 --> 01:27:35.479
a person that they feel they can turn to and
1523
01:27:35.560 --> 01:27:40.439
actually willingly make themselves vulnerable. And so I think that's
1524
01:27:40.640 --> 01:27:42.319
that's the key, that's the key.
1525
01:27:43.840 --> 01:27:48.279
Vulnerability when properly harnessed, is a superpower, true vulnerability.
1526
01:27:48.399 --> 01:27:53.560
Not yeah, absolutely, but it's always a risk. It's always
1527
01:27:53.600 --> 01:27:53.920
a risk.
1528
01:27:55.680 --> 01:27:57.560
I don't know if it's directly core a litive, but
1529
01:27:57.600 --> 01:28:00.520
it's right below. And I think, hey, if there's an
1530
01:28:00.600 --> 01:28:03.000
opportunity to bake this end to the end of the podcast,
1531
01:28:03.079 --> 01:28:05.800
why not? Because I read it and I thought it's
1532
01:28:05.840 --> 01:28:09.680
too good. Stand on the edge of the abyss and
1533
01:28:09.720 --> 01:28:12.800
when you feel it's beyond your strength, break off and
1534
01:28:12.840 --> 01:28:13.760
have a cup of tea.
1535
01:28:14.479 --> 01:28:17.119
Do you know what I quoted that so often. Apparently
1536
01:28:17.319 --> 01:28:19.479
in one of the hospital justs that I worked in
1537
01:28:19.760 --> 01:28:22.800
that when I moved, when I left, as a as
1538
01:28:22.840 --> 01:28:25.239
a parting gift, they gave me a mug with that
1539
01:28:25.359 --> 01:28:27.479
quote on. So I have a mug and I drink
1540
01:28:27.520 --> 01:28:29.720
coffee out of it every morning with that quote right
1541
01:28:29.800 --> 01:28:32.960
on it. So I'll never never be able to escape it.
1542
01:28:33.039 --> 01:28:35.920
Now I don't want to because I think that's an
1543
01:28:35.920 --> 01:28:37.920
absolutely beautiful, beautiful quote.
1544
01:28:38.800 --> 01:28:41.600
It will unpack it and then we'll leave. I mean,
1545
01:28:41.640 --> 01:28:43.199
why do you love that quote so much? Because I
1546
01:28:43.239 --> 01:28:44.920
saw it and I go, I don't know how to
1547
01:28:44.960 --> 01:28:46.880
work that in. It feels like I might have to
1548
01:28:46.960 --> 01:28:49.399
force it. But it's so beautiful because it's what we,
1549
01:28:49.520 --> 01:28:52.079
I mean, we're called to do. It's the watchfulness, and
1550
01:28:52.159 --> 01:28:54.039
it's it can feel so heavy.
1551
01:28:55.319 --> 01:28:57.159
Yes, and I think it's just that it's just that
1552
01:28:57.239 --> 01:29:00.359
reality of it, isn't it that that? Yes? Okay, we
1553
01:29:00.359 --> 01:29:02.239
we want to be heroes, we want to do grand deats,
1554
01:29:02.560 --> 01:29:04.880
and sometimes we really struggle and we suffer and we
1555
01:29:04.960 --> 01:29:11.399
have to contemplate, you know, this existential gap, what's missing.
1556
01:29:12.520 --> 01:29:15.279
But but we have to also just be normal human
1557
01:29:15.319 --> 01:29:18.520
beings and say, actually, you know, I can I can
1558
01:29:18.560 --> 01:29:21.239
do this for so long, but I don't have all
1559
01:29:21.239 --> 01:29:25.000
that strength I need. I need a cap of perhaps
1560
01:29:25.039 --> 01:29:27.600
a couple of coffee if you.
1561
01:29:26.840 --> 01:29:30.720
Context coffee, or you know, depending on the time of day,
1562
01:29:30.760 --> 01:29:36.159
maybe a recent you go have a pint. But Andrew Williams,
1563
01:29:36.560 --> 01:29:39.319
thank you so much. When I when I was conceiving
1564
01:29:39.800 --> 01:29:41.640
of this podcast, you were one of the people that
1565
01:29:41.680 --> 01:29:45.000
I wanted to talk to first and foremost because I
1566
01:29:45.079 --> 01:29:49.279
just really really appreciated your book. And I think, like
1567
01:29:49.319 --> 01:29:49.880
I said.
1568
01:29:50.720 --> 01:29:53.119
I think because I wouldn't have done it without a
1569
01:29:53.119 --> 01:29:54.239
lot of pressure.
1570
01:29:56.880 --> 01:29:59.119
Well, it's just it's a it's a perfect example of
1571
01:29:59.159 --> 01:30:01.439
how you take a a subject that can be so
1572
01:30:01.640 --> 01:30:06.520
dark and the answer is light. Yeah. Yeah, So thank
1573
01:30:06.560 --> 01:30:08.600
you so much for joining me on commitment to reality.
1574
01:30:08.600 --> 01:30:11.520
I appreciate you, I love you, and I thank God
1575
01:30:11.560 --> 01:30:11.760
for you.
1576
01:30:13.760 --> 01:30:15.359
Twice. Thank you.