Christian Atheism: God as an Idea Is No God at All | Fr. Stephen Freeman

house for Sunday morning, but they didn't go much. Baptized when I was seven years old, I was kind of moved by him the old Gospel, him calling old sinner come home, and I just remember feeling homesick. I don't know what for, but I walked the aisle and the next week the feature came to the house, sat with me in the living room. And have no memory of this but talk with him other than sitting in there

and being kind of awestruck. Afterwards, he says to my Mam, he's only seven years old, but he's saved, and so I got baptized the next Sunday evening. I was I was so short, I had to tread water, so I kind of say, I was sort of just bobbed instead of don't you know, just touch me and I would sing. Left the Baptist church at thirteen, became long story that, but became an episco payan at age fifteen through the

influence of my older brother. It was actually an introduction to beauty from a very plain, kind of white painted Baptist church to a church full of color, wonder sacrament. This is pretty much the old Episcopal church with the old prayer book and stuff. When I joined, and it was wonderful, and if you had asked me, then I thought I was joining the ancient church. So that's kind of how I approached that. It's been a couple of years. Got involved in the Jesus movement for a couple of

three years. Was involved in a charismatic, non denominational house church. Lived in Commune a couple of years between high school and college. Went to college at Furman University in Greenville. Met my wife, actually we met in that house church. We both. I returned to the Episcopal Church and took her with me. We were married while I was a junior in college. I went to seminary an Episcopal seminary

in Chicago, and then served churches in South Carolina. Was in the doctoral program at Duke after seven or eight years in Parish to work on I did systematic theology under Jeffrey Wainwright and Stanley howerd wass howerd wass is still I think of as one of the most refreshing reads of an American theologians you can possibly pick up. Interesting guy. But my final Episcopal church, I was serving in East Tennessee outside of Knoxville, oak Ridge, and served

there for nine years. Aut of this. During that whole time, starting in college, I started reading Orthodox writings, primarily Russian. There wasn't a lot in English at the time. It was in the seventies. I kind of bought everything theological that Saint Vladimir's published, and it wouldn't fill half a shelf, you know. And there wasn't YouTube, there wasn't Internet. It was sort of doing it in a vacuum. So there was a long journey, a lot of which I was Orthodox.

He had become sort of a touchstone of what is true. And so you know, even when I was an Anglican, is like is that correct? Well, I'd want to know what the Orthodox thought about it, and you know, but eventually at Duke I did my thesis on the theology of icons, and so I was already beginning to be toast. The morning after my defense, I woke up, knelt by my bed in Durham and prayed, Oh God, make me Orthodox. And I meant two things by that. One I want to be Orthodox, and two you'll have to make me.

And so there's there's sort of heal marts dragged me from there to seven years later when I was received into the Church. And the course of that seven years a lot of things happened. One of the most important things that happened for me was meeting Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas of Blessed Memory. It was a great missionary and through him getting to know the Orthodox Church in America, which was all English, I mean in terms of language and you know, sort of Russian flavor in its customs

and its history, but decidedly rooted in America. All I had ever met prior to that was a very ethnic Orthodoxison. It was easy for me to use that as an

excuse to not do that. So anyway, in nineteen ninety eight, five years old, actually forty four at the time, was received into the church and immediately immediately asked by the archbishop and appointed as a layman because I was having to do a retread before I could be ordained Orthodox to start a mission in the Knoxville area, which I did, and so I had a hand in starting five different Oca churches over the course of those years. Started writing.

I waited eight years after I was Orthodoxed. I wrote a lot as an Anglican, but I waited eight years after I converted before I wrote again. And in two thousand and six I started a blog, Glory to God for All Things, and began writing there and picked up, you know, fairly good readership. Eventually, you know, published the Little Book Everywhere Present Christianity in a one story universe.

It largely grew out of my finding ways to try to communicate and Orthodox understanding of God and the world, particularly the converts were coming. You know, that was my bread and butter, and these missions that we were doing. The Little Book is the one that probably people know the most and so I retire.

the podcast we got the online and couldn't stop talking. I told you that I love you, and I mean thank you. And one thing that really I am intrigued. Enchantment is all the rage right now everywhere. This book is over ten years old. How did you get so far ahead of the curve?

secularism is the heresy of our time. I mean, there's always I'm saying nothing new in that. GK. Chesterton, you know, Anglican who became Catholic, writing in the early nineteen hundreds, takes all of this to task. There are British writers in the eighteenth century, the eighteen hundreds who identified certain that had already come to the foe, and they're beginning

to analyze it. So there's Lewis C. S. Lewis gets into this in various ways, like the abolition of man and other things, so that all of this is really just a thread that's been going on for a long time. You have people right now who actually think they discovered it, and they jolly will did nothing of the sort. They're standing on the shoulders of giants. And I love the recent book that Paul Kingsnorth has done on the machine, which is frankly just another word for the same problem,

but viewed sort of through the lens of technology. But in his book he has so the most amazing. I mean, his footnotes are worth the entire book. And I think, you know, how many lifetimes did you have to read all of this? You know, digest it, and you know and footnote it for the rest of us. So I mean, for me, the critique of modernity. Progress is an idea

that belongs to modernity. But modernity itself is a set of ideas, the philosoph that occurs during these the last one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, But it is not the period of time in times just we just live. But modernity is a false philosophy, filled with

all kinds of wrong ideas. And so I'm like when I was studying at Duke nder Harawas he said that preaching the Gospel disabusing people the notions of modernity is the great task of preaching the Gospel in our times, you know, So that was sort of news to me. Had I read him and understood him when I was studying as an Anglican in seminary. They would have thrown me out because my arguments against what they were saying would have been so formidable. They would not have been

able to bear me. As it was. I was simply obnoxious. I knew there was a problem, I just didn't know what it was.

peerish now. Nathan said that what he discovered was talking to these people who had jettisoned their Christian faith, that over ninety nine percent, He said, he couldn't say one hundred percent because he didn't ask all of them the question when he was doing his film. But ninety nine plus percent believe in ghosts. Isn't it weird? What is it? What is it? They don't believe in God, but they do believe in ghosts. What is that? I mean, it's like they it's not that they don't believe that there

is something spiritual. They just and they don't know what it is. They just happen to believe in them. I joke and say that my book is really just me doing riffs on Alexander Schmidmen trying to talk about a sacramental world. That it is here, the Kingdom of God is now and here it is present. Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is among you. One way that I describe it, for instance, that Jesus is the Kingdom of God walking among us. He is the Kingdom of God.

It's not just some by and by, you know, pie in the sky coming sometime like that he is the Kingdom of God. Wherever he is, Jesus says, if I, by the finger of God cast out devils, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. You know it's right there. Another way, this is sort of helpful to open up people's eyes. The longest passage and theology of the Eucharist in the Gospels is in the sixth chapter of John, as Jesus is discussing with his disciples and

the people the Feeding of the five Thousand. In the Feeding of the five Thousand story, it says Jesus takes the bread, blesses, breaks it, and gives it. Okay, those are four key words. It occurs again the familiar passage in the night in which he was betrayed. He took bread, and when he had given things, he blessed it and broke it and gave it to These four things have always been understood as the key verbs. These four action verbs to take, the bless to break, to give are

eucharistic signals. I mean, the sixth chapter of John is a eucharistic gospel. It's just there. Now. The weird part about it is is it's long before the Last Supper, so it occurs out of order. And I've been rebuked in talking in some Protestant settings, and someone try to tell me that sixth chapter John is not about the Euchrist. Even though Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. You

can't read that as a Christian. You shouldn't be able to read that as a Christian and not think Euchrist. But I'll take it this way. Jesus is the Kingdom of God among us, and Jesus cannot take bread in his hands, bless it, break it, and give it, and it not be his body, because I love the way Schmelmn said this is that in the sacraments we do not take something and make it to be what it is not, we take something and show it to be what it truly is. In the hands of Christ, bread

always becomes his body. The disciples have been everybody traveling that Jesus has been eating euchris with him for the whole journey. But on the night in which he's betrayed he makes it clear. And even then they probably don't get it until in the key is the endings of the Gospels and the Book of acts. Jesus keeps showing up on Sundays. He keeps showing up with the meal

like you have later in the day on Pasca. On Easter Sunday, the two disciples on the road to Ammaeis, they're walking along, and then they are there and they get with him, and guess what takes Some read blesses brexiting gives it to them, and their eyes were open, and suddenly they see him and he was made known to them, you know, and the breaking of the bread. And people ask me, why do Christians keep Sunday instead of Saturday as the holy day. Well, actually, in the

Orthodox Church, we believe Saturday is the Sabbath. It's clearly described that and holy we call the books will say great and holy Sabbath for Saturday. Sunday, I mean Saturday is Sabbath is Hebrew for seven. And so Saturday is still the seventh day. But we keep Sunday because it's the eighth day. Sunday is the seventh seventh day fulfilled the best way the Father's mystically is the eighth day. It has transcended the Sunday and the Sabbath is fulfilled.

What is Christ doing on the Sabbath, he's in the tomb, or as we say, the priest will say in the liturgy. It's usually said quietly in the tomb, with the body in hades, with the soul on the throne, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit was that well boundless Christ, filling all things. And so but what's he doing on Saturday. Well, he's also in Haiti's trampling down death by death. It is also Pasca the whole. Originally Pasca was kept as

a single day's feast. It gets expanded and stretched out, not to make such a big difference between Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But it's just so big it takes us three days to do it. But Jesus everywhere he goes, he is the Pascal Mystery everywhere, and in the Pascal Mystery, bread becomes his body, wine becomes his blood, and we have communion with him. And you know, to live rightly isn't to reduce the sacrament to these seven actions that

the Church does. Rightly speaking, there are an infinite number of sacraments. The whole world is sacrament.

that we have a false view of reality. I mean, that's that's why I've gotten so enamored with the whole conception of reality exists, and it's something that we have to commit to because if we don't, we fall into all kinds of other issues.

become truly partakers of God. And what we see in Christ is what it is to be truly and fully human. So he's that as well. But the reality of the world is to receive reality is to have an attitude of how do you receive that which is given to you? I mean, to be an Orthodox Christian, which is simply just to be a faithful human being, is to understand that every everything around you as a gift. I mean the sacramentality. To say that it's sacrament is also that

it's given to you. He takes it, he gives it to us. Reality is a gift to us. So how do I receive a gift? I give thanks, therefore glory to God for all things. The last words of Saint John Chris system or as Saint Paul will say in Thessalonians, to give God thanks always and for all things. That is the Eucharistic life. If Godristo means I give thanks,

that is the Eucharistic life is to give thanks. And so that's a Until we learn to bless God and to bless creation for what it is, for the reality we've received, then we will always not see it for

what it is. Well, I want to talk about the words secular. All too often secular is almost seen as synonymous with atheist.

in holy orders like a Benedictine or something. If he was a secular priest, it meant he belonged to the bishop and in just his diocese, that he was not under a religious order. I mean, those were old uses,

but the words get taken over. One of the things that happens in the Protestant Reformation is also the rise of the nation state, and so you have, for instance, in the Great Protestant Catholic Settlement that ended the religious wars in Europe, the proclamation was that the church of a country or state would be whatever the religion was of the prince. That if the prince was Lutheran, then it's Lutheran. If he was Calvinist, it's If it's Catholic,

it's Catholic. But it was actually being determined by the prince, and that was the treaty that was done, and so you get the rise of the nation states on an equal or even greater footing than the Church in its radical form. In England, you know, the king just declares that he is the head of the church. Just nonsense and heresy. And it gradually over the centuries with the Enlightenment, it gets reinterpreted in which it just means not religious,

like secular meaning it's not religious. And so it's easy to see how that would get confused with atheism. And though none of the founding fathers would have described themselves as atheists, they all believed at least in a Unitarian God. But you know, some of them were Christians of various sorts, and if they had a notion of something being not religious, they would simply have meant by that, not tied to

a particular religious confession. It's not until some decades later that the states quit having state churches, and by a state church, yes they collected churches, was supported by taxes, you know. But gradually, with the rise of the radical Enlightenment, you get the notion that secular means having no religion. And then this is really the very swift move that

it's okay for you to have religion so long as that's your private opinion.

If you have a worldview, you have a religion. My worldview is Orthodox Christianity, and I'm able to tolerate other worldviews and recognize them for what they are, and I'm able to have conversations, including with an atheist. I just want him to be honest about what he's doing and to have to admit what he's doing. It takes far more faith to be an atheist than to be a believer.

of their beliefs. And you talked about like how worldview shapes everything. When you have these beliefs that are so cognitively dissonant, it's no wonder that we're living in times that are frenetic and chaotic.

challenge my truth. That's what that's about and essentially one of the things was interesting when I was studying at Duke. The Marxists were in their early forms there. This was already happening in Anglican seminaries. Has now spread to all of the mainline, the old fashioned mainline denominations. You cannot write a paper and refer to God as He, you must say he slashed she. At least there were professors, I mean at Duke Divinity. I was not at Duke Divinity,

but at Duke Divinity that was already the rules. And this was in the late nineteen eighties when I was there. But I told there was one professor I wanted to study under, but she required the he she language. And I thought, nobody can make write heresy. I won't do it. Sorry, just can't do it, not for you, not for anybody. No course is worth going to hell for so anyway, no matter how good it is. But it was a

Marxist rhetorical movement. One of the things that was going on when we were there was actually studying rhetoric, how rhetoric is used, how arguments are formed and fashioned, and Marxist rhetoric not just the economic ideas, but Marxist rhetoric. How to deconstruct deconstruction is a Marxist ideology. How to deconstruct the ideas of your opponents, to take them apart

so that your opponent has nowhere to stand. I think Jonathan Pajoe has something about deconstructing the deconstructionists, or how to turn postmodernity on its head, and that's a good thing. That was one of the things I was learning when I was there. I began realizing that actually Orthodoxy can do this because Orthodoxy is not born in modernity. It's

very pre modern. And if you're immersed in the Fathers, they have a worldview that is not formed in shape by the Reformation or the counter Reformation, is formed in shape where none of those things were going on. And so it's good in some ways to learn to be more and more immerse in our Orthodox faith because it all help its way to detox from the modern world. Just use another notion to detox from the modern world, as in secutor. That's not our word. Secutarism is a heresy.

Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. There is nothing that exists that does not belong to God. Nothing can exist that does it belong to God. We believe that everything that does exist is upheld in his existence by God. Even the devil is upheld in his existence by God. Nothing is self existence. In fact, just to scandalize your listeners, we believe not only is the devil maintained in his existence by God, but that the devil, by nature, is good. There are no evil natures. The

nature of a thing is the thing. He has so warped his will that he acts contrary to his own nature. In fact, he hates his own existence. As the scripture says, he was a murderer from the beginning. Doesn't mean he was created a murderer. It means from the earliest times he perverted himself into a murderer. He hates our existence. God, we say, is the author of our being. He hates our being. He hates his own being. He's the enemy

of God. He's the enemy of being. And if you will, one of his tortures is he can't make himself not exist, because existence is God's gift. You and I a person could attempt to kill themselves, but they can't make themselves not exist. You can change, you know, change your address from here to there, which you can't make yourself not exist. Existence is God's gift to us, and he does not take back what he has given. It is his own free gift to us. And so the secutive world, there's

no such thing. There's God's world and what we have. And this is for instance, here's another heresy of America. America says that essentially that the right of the state comes from the consent of the governed, that's the authority, and the power of the state comes from the And so the notion that it gets its state its power from the people, that's not true. It cannot be true. You and I have no power to give to the state. All authority is from God. All authority is from God.

We have a mechanism in which we rotate our authorities through a process we call democracy or whatever it is. That as badly as it works, but it's still just at that's all it is. And if you had a king and we were governed by a king, if you had an ayatola and you're governed by an ayahtola, authority is just a authority. And the problem is is that authority has a kind of divine character about it. And in America, I hear this all the time. People will

say things like that they believe in America. I'll tell people you shouldn't believe in America. You believe in God, you don't believe in countries. Countries are not objects of faith. God is the object of faith. You know. We pray for this country, we submit to its laws, we elect its leaders, we participate in it, we debate in it, we do all of those things. But it is not God. And the problem is that the state has this authority,

the sort of aura of God about it. And in a world that is described secularly, we can't talk about this thing very well. And you can't name it. You

can't talk about it. And we've gotten rid of the names for these divine things, and I mean.

of my thinking. It's only when my idea runs up into something that it didn't think, if you will that contradicts it, that I am perceiving something and I'm dealing with something. Otherwise I'm just in a dream world. That you need a god. I mean, if God is real and true, I know him by contradiction. Is the old uh, well, the old timers. An AA once said, the only thing you need to know about God is you're not him. That's a place to start. You're not him. I need

a God who can contradict me. I need a God who can bring me up short. I need a god who I see his commandments and his commandments. I would say, his commandments revealed to me who I am. But that's because he sees me in a way that I don't. There's a need that's imaginary. My idea of me, and the idea of me also doesn't exist. It's not me, that's make believe. And I would go into my more recent book and say, and most of it's built out of images driven by shame. Uh. And it is in fact,

but to know be you can't. We know Jesus face to face. So one of my corrections I would make of evangelicals it's not a personal relationship. We want. We want a face to face relationship to know the glory of God God. In the face of Jesus Christ, I see God face to face in Christ, and in seeing Christ, I see me. It's Christ who makes himself known, but it's also Christ who makes me known to me. So I would say, we only know ourselves as we know

ourselves in Christ. And that's a slow revelation. I has not seen here, has not or has it entered into the mind of man the good things God has prepared for those who love Him, and those are being revealed to us face to face in the face of Jesus Christ. Somehow another it seems better than personal When people say personal relationship with Jesus, I think oftentimes they've got a lot of imaginary stuff in it, you know, and it's kind of like Jesus as my secret friend, you know,

like a child's little secret friend, their imaginary friend. And instead, you know, as an Orthodox Christian, you come into church and you look at him. There he is face to face, he sees me. I see him. I look at him. I pray I see him, you know. And I would extend that the fathers of the Seventh Council said, the icons do with color what scripture does with words, And so I mean, who is it Jesus face to face that I see. I'd go back to the gospels. Who

is this? Who is this? I volunteered for a while. I'll call on drug treatment program, working with people going through it, on the spirituality of recovery. And this was in These were people mostly there by the order of a judge. So these were poor people who couldn't afford fancy twenty eight day programs. And a lot of them this was East in the Sea, so a lot of them come out of, you know, kind of poor Protestant backgrounds, and they'd heard a lot of angry God stuff preached

out them. I would take them to the eighth chapter of John and we would go through the story of the woman taken an adultery. We would look at the story as well of the prodigal son, and we go through these just trying to talk to them about who God is, you know, this imagery, this woman caught in the act of adultery, so I've always imagined you're sort

of naked and sweaty. I they drug her out into the street and they're having a guys are having a great time with this one, you know, and dragging her out in front of Jesus and wanting to throw stones. They're just, you know, how awful. What does Jesus do? I mean, he covers her first off, from the accusations, the accusations, he has refuted them with his words, and they go away, and he says, woman, where are your accusers? Are? Where those who condemn you? Whatever? And he says, then,

neither do I condemn you. And that's not Jesus saying adultery is okay, that's not even a question. It's not even a question. The question is does Jesus lover? Can she be reconciled to God? Is she a child of Abraham? Does she belong to the people of God? To that? And then he says to her, go and sin no more, you know, And he doesn't say, or I'll come back, you know, and how roast you? And YadA, YadA, YadA.

I mean, this is but anyway, I can remember teaching this with these groups to be people just tears running down their cheeks because somehow another they had never heard that, they had never heard the gospel of a good God who loves mankind. They had just never heard it.

story universe. I mean you're talking about God loving us, and salvation really does come down to God's love for us. How does life in a one story universe versus the conception of a two story universe convey the real reality of salvation?

show fate a judge does. A judge makes things right. But anyway, Jesus is here. The third story I mean there's here and then they've got Hell. And there's a sense in which, for a lot of folks, the angry God is very tied into the doctrine of Hell. In fact, the angry God needs Hell because he's got it is somewhere for his anger to get taken out. And so there's a lot of accounts of God that I feel like start and this is sort of I mean, I was trained in systematic theology, but I do orthodoxy, which

is better than systematic. It's organic thing fits, but it still systematic theology can be useful because it can help you kind of listen to something and think, you know, I think you have a problem here. One of the problems is for a lot of Christians, their account of God starts with Hell, and the problem is about people going to Hell and how to get them out. Salvation's

about not going to Hell. I mean, you know, it's Saint John Chris System's sermon that we read everywhere in the Orthodox world at Pasca at the Great Service of Pasco. That sermon is read everywhere in the world that night, the same sermon, the only sermon we do that with everywhere in the Orthodox world. This sermon is read and has been since who knows when, I don't know, a

long time ago, many many centuries ago. You read that sermon and it's kind of you know, it has language in it like and you know these trampled down death by death and not one you know, is left in

the graves. It's it borders on universalism, and that just troubles the daylights out of a lot of including a lot of Orthodox But because it proclaims the good news so boldly that it smacks of that, well, I would, I would say, and I tell people, I'm like Metropolitan callistos Ware who wrote a really well done article called do we dare Hope? Do we dare hope? That all may be saved? And I thought that he said it right, is that you might you may hope that we have

no dogmatic proclamation that all will be saved. We don't have that. That is not the teaching of the dogma of the Orthodox Church. You can find a few saints who do hold that opinion, and you can find some readings of the Fifth Ecumenical Council and some other things liturgically that talk about hell and stuff that way.

fire like Elijah did? To consume that? And Jesus rebukes them and says, you don't know what spirit you're of. Saint Siliwan rebuked a monk who was sort of preaching hell fire and damnation, and he said, don't do that. He said, selt him, don't don't do that. He said, love could not bear it. And it's you know, so I draw a line. I have a border that I stopped with. I stopped with my hope and I think it's just find it to stand there, and that's my hope. And I don't I just I don't cross the lone.

One of the reasons I don't cross the line is. I think the Orthodox have always avoided it, just like we don't talk about purgatory. You know, we feel that Rome said too much, and then the Protestants criticizing the Romans, they said too much? Why say more than the Father said? It was enough? But we should proclaim the good news in Jesus Christ that God loves all without measure and preach that everywhere, and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It's here, He's here. S Paul said, the

Kingdom of God is peace, love, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Last time I checked. You can have those.

not anything. We have a communion problem in that our existence. I mean, I say what it is for me to exist. I exist by virtue of being in communion with God, that He dwells in me, that I dwell in him. That communion is the very nature of being. God is being, and He's the fount of all being, as Paul quotes in Acts, in Him, we live and move and have our being. Saint Basil says in his eucharistic prayer, addresses God as the only truly existing one. He is he

who is. And in the Old Testament and the Greek Old Testament, when he says to Moses, I am that I am is ago Amy, I am ego amy he who is? I am he who is? Or I am the only truly existing one. So that's what Basil is echoing. We address God. That's Yahweh. In the Greek, he is the one who is. So that's how we have existence. All things come of the O Lord and of Thine own. Have we given THEE thine own of thine own? We offer unto thee on behalf of all and for all.

This is that's the very nature of being. Now, the problem is what is sin? Sin is a movement like you know that arrow thing. You know, it's a dynamic thing. It miss armadilla, missing the mark. It is moving away from the tive being and moving towards non being. That's the nature of evil is It is like the devil, he tries to not exist, and so to move towards

God is moved towards the fullness of being. You know, I've come that they might have life, and that more abundantly, He's come to give us the truth and fullness of being. And so I mean and this is so this the communion problem is the problem of sin. Sin is not a legal problem. You know that I need to deal with guilt on it. It strikes at the very core of who I am and what I'm becoming. And I don't want to be. I want to repent because I want fullness of life. I don't want less than than life.

I want true life. You in dealing with you know, working and volunteering in a recovery program. You know, a lot of people there had sum to a very low point. They had been moving towards addiction as the center of their being, you know, and there's nothing there. If you ever read the book I. C. S. Lewis of the Great Divorce, No, but I've heard of it. Yeah, I put that. Put that on the top of your pile, move it, get it, put it on the bottom. Then put it on the top of your pile and read it.

It's about a group of people describes heaven, and there's a group of people that get on a bus to go from hell to heaven, and they get there, they can stay there, and it's a wonderful set of images that he plays with and all of this, and it's sort of a way of thinking without there being a legal problem. There's an existence problem. They can stay, but to stay, they have to be real and true. When they get there, they're thin and ghostly, like, okay, they're

not quite real, but because heaven is real. Things like walking on the grass is hard because it's spiky and you're thin and ghosty and you can't you know your weight, there's almost nothing to you. You can't press it down, and so it's very hard for you to even walk, you know, And so it's really fascinating. I mean, Lewis is the genius of his of his writing and his

imagery in this. And they can stay. And there's a group of solid people, as he calls them, who are like saints, who've come to meet them to help them stay, to help them deeper in the journey. They stay on their journey and go in. They'll become more and more solid until they are at home. And so Lewis uses this as an opportunity for people to talk about with a different set of images, about letting your sin go. I read that thing in my late teen years and

it totally changed. It gave me images to think about a communion issue, a life issue instead of illegal problem, and I've stayed with it ever since. It is it's a set of images. It's something he actually borrowed from a science fiction book he read. But the set of images is so good that it actually fits better what I would call orthodox teaching on life and sin even than most of the especially the moral accounts that are

so legalistic. Moralism, well, I mean yeah, moralism. I mean, you pay your fine and it's done, but you're still the same guy.

That's a translation of the Hebrew. But in the Greek, it's very interesting does it say that at all? And the Subtracon, which for the Orthodox is more authoritative than the Hebrew. But in the Greek it says the heart is deep, baffles, the heart is deep, and it is the man who can know it. That's what it says in the Greek. And if I've sat and pondered the I read both languages. I sat and pondered the Hebrew and looked at the Greek and wondered, were they looking

at a different Hebrew text? Or is that how they read the Hebrew? Text, and I think they were not working from a different text. I think that's how they translated the Hebrew text. If you will, that is how a Jew in the third century BC or two hundreds BC, reading in Alexandria, reading his own Hebrew scripture rendered It's how he understood it. Now, that's interesting, and that verse has been so twisted in which we're depraved, we're a dunghill.

I remember, as a teenager in the Jesus movement hearing that and being disgusted by it and praying and said, Jesus, I want to be a snow covered snow hill. If I'm dung, I want to become snow. And the first time I read the first Orthodox book I read in college, a friend gave it to me. One of my Jesus freaquentddies gave me this book by Vladimir Lawsky, the Mystical Theology the Eastern Church, which is so difficult. I didn't

understand most of it. But what I did understand, I got very clear that I am not a dunghill, that we're not dunge we are created, and that we're created to be restored to the fullness of Communion. That God became man that man might become God. God became what we are, that we might become what he is. Jen. According to the early fathers Dionysius Eriapaguide very very clear, is a evil, is a parasite. It's it's not a thing, it's a I mean, it has no existence. It's a

like a parasite. Jen. I've got an article on my blog somewhere that you are not your sin. Hmmm, it's not you are not your sin.

There's a lot of things they need. But Jesus is very clear in warning people about the dangers of abusing children. He treats them as innocent. They're angels. Their angels continuously behold the face of God. This is I mean, it's a gosh, it's strong, strong language. I love seeing the little children at church, and we have so many of them these days at our perish. I look at them and they are like little angels. They're innocent, you know.

So why do we baptize them. Well, you know that baptism will work against sin eventually, but we baptize them because what does it say that we do in baptism. It's Saint Paul says, we are baptized into his death and raised in the likeness of his resurrection. We become partakers of his death, not just our death, but his his death, his death, his holy death. We are through baptism, united to that. This is like, this is sacraments, and

sacraments are always about union. We become one with what's happening. It becomes operative in us when united with the death of Christ. In baptism, united with the resurrection of Christ is we are raised in Him. So why do we do that with children? Because we want them to be united to the death of Christ and raised in his resurrection, And though the Catholics will baptize an infant, they won't give them communion, at least not the Roman Catholics and

Eastern Catholics, who the Roman Catholics won't. What do we do. We Christ make them at the same time we baptism, which is what this postponed confirmation is in the Western Church. We Christ make them and give them communion on the day of their baptism because they are fully united with Christ. What do adults say? Do you unite yourself to Christ? I do unite myself to Christ. That's the translations in the baptism service in the Oca. Do you unite yourself

to Christ? I do unite myself to Christ. That I tell people. That's Orthodox, for have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? Well, it's better in older language. I do unite myself to Christ. I unite myself to him because He has united myself to me. I am accepting his union with me, and I am

saved by that union. In fact, if you go back through and read the New Testament with the doctrine of union in your mind, it will reread the whole thing for you and you think, gosh, that's all it ever talks about. It's all it ever talks about. The passages on sin only ever really make sense if they're read that way. Grace is nothing other than the life, the very life of God, his divine energies. That is grace,

the very life of God in me. As Saint Paul says, God is working in you, willing to do of his good pleasure. The word working is in the gaia. It's the energies God is energizing in me. That's grace, gracing in me that I might do the energies of God. So it's all union, union, union, there's nothing else.

of how they are. But see in Christ the veil is already taken away. So what do we see happening with Jesus. Well, Jesus walks on water. He doesn't change the nature of water, just fiells. Water is in right relationship with him, you know, and he walks on it. He's not afraid of it. I mean, if you will, Jesus in the back of the boat when there's the storm, I love this. What is Jesus doing in the back

of the boat. He's sleeping. Storms don't bother Jesus. By the way, what was Jonah doing in the boat when the other guys woke him up to complain about the storm. Jonah was sleeping at the back of the boat. The same reason. Jonah knows God and he's sleeping on the back of the boat. You know, he's already I love. I mean, I'm old and retired and I take walks. I try to walk a mile a day. I can't get it done every day because various health issues will

prevent me. But on a good day, I've walked a mile, and you know. And I love knowing the trees. I love paying attention to them. I love knowing the seasons and listening to it, noticing it, praying in the middle of it, giving thanks for it. You know. I love Lewis. I also love Tolkien. This is my main complaint about the people talking about re enchanting, is that the world is enchanted and you don't have to re enchant anything. It just it just always is in him we live

and move and her being. The other side of it is is that there is Secutarism does have an enchantment, and that enchantment is that's why we've been lulled to sleep.

And if you will, don't even think Narnia exists. That's in the Silver Chair, by the way Lewis's Narnia chronicles. We think that Narnia isn't true, but it is. If you will one Catholic writer wrote very well about it, said that the enchantment, in fact, his book is called The Enchantment of Mammon, that the enchantment of our modern world is mattern. The ontology of the modern world is money. The modern world thinks that in money we live and

move and have our being. That money is what makes the world go round, and we've fallen in love with it, and this is what constitutes our life. That's why monasticism is so terribly important in Orthodoxy, so central that we have people among us who have said no to money, have said no to money, and Jesus warns us that you cannot serve God in money, cannot serve God in Manma. And so our modern world is in love with Mammon,

and we can't do that. So I tell people keep the commandments, you know, give your stuff away, I mean, like, share your stuff. Be sure. You know. My father in law was the greatest Baptist I've ever known. He practiced a tithe. He was very serious about the tithe. In fact, he thanked God for all things, and so much so he should have been Orthodox, but he he thanked God for all things, including He thought having insurance was a sin. It was like not trust in God. But then he

thought people would think I'm being cheap. So he hadn't found out what his insurance would cost, and he gave that above his tithe and God took care of him. He died in his eighties with no bills.

you know, recalibrate my conception of reality rightly understood. And I thought, you know, sometimes I'll walk into the church and I'll see people do they'll make prostrations, they'll do things, and I won't do them because I feel embarrassed or something. But I thought, if somebody told me, when you walk into that church, I will give you, and my price is pretty low. I mean, I'll give you one hundred bucks. If you go in there and you bow your forehead

to the I would probably do it. Now, what does that say about what motivates me? Is the fear of God? Not that, not the fear of fear like we were talking about, but the respect, the awe, the reverence is that in front of money, well right there, and then it shows that it isn't And that's you know.

like from band camp or something. I mean, not even the nice ones, just on music stands, and it was oh man, and we were mostly just converts with a couple of cradles. We became part of us, but it was hard and learning to do it. Yeah, and and Orthodox, he's trying to teach how to how to venerate you

know what we venerate money in America. We admire it's we admire rich people. That's why I brought it up. I didn't bring it up, and I talked to my brother about it.

So I got a job working for hospice, and so I worked for two years as a home health hospice chaplain out in the mountains of East Tennessee. And so I was going from shack to shack on the sides of mountains, visiting dying people, black lung cancer, or whatever it was. Protestants had ever even seen a college educated preacher, much less a seminary educated preacher, and man, they lived a one story universe. No one ever taught them that. They just lived it. And there's a lot of things

about the poor. I've learned over the years that if you need money, ask a poor man. If you need money, a poor man will share what he has with you. The wealthy might help you out, but there are always strings attached. They want to know that you'll use it correctly. You know. C. S. Lewis. A guy approached him on the street once and asked for, you know, money, and so Lewis gives him a pen and as the guy leaves, the guy that Lewis is with said, you know, he's

only going to use it to buy a pint. And Louis said, well, that's what I'm just going to do with it. Father.

it hard with all the poor people? And I thought, of all the things that I think about, that was not really on the list, And it was because exactly what you're saying, I and I saw that we don't. Okay, I don't say this that we have poor people in America, but the poor, the poorest of the poor. I mean I saw out there, and yet that is not what registered with me. It's that I would go out there with them, and I'd be in the middle of the bush,

in living circumstances that no American would ever accept. And yet I saw happiness. I saw.

if you're not in communion with God. By actively living in community with God, then you're very likely you know, And strictly speaking, you can't exist out of communion with God. I mean he'll sustain you anyway. I mean, he sustains the devil, so he'll sustain you. But nonetheless you're not living into the fullness of that. And yet what you discover when you're there is they have a faith that will put yours to shame. They have you know, they keep the commandments as a way of life. If someone

asks their coat, they give them their cloak calls. So they just do these things joyfully.

brought back I mean I stopped thinking about poverty. I mean not, okay, you think about it you want to solve it, you want to get better. But that wasn't the big takeaway for me. The takeaway was that we live in poverty. America preaches America. The bulk of many missionaries, regardless of whatever versions of the Gospel they take with them,

preach America. We preach democracy, we preach capitalism, we preach hard work, we preach success, we preach financial blessing, we preach all of these things that Americans take for granted. And we actually all believe that if they would practice these things rightly.

run the world. That's why we all have opinions and Facebook, I mean we all know how to run the world. And Christians have opinions. I mean priests now are they're receiving people coming to the church to inquire who You already have opinions about orthodoxy and I'm thinking you know, the word heresy in Greek basically means opinionism. If you have opinions, you need to get rid of them. But anyway, renounce having opinions you when I have faith, not opinions,

but anyway, we want to run things. One of the things I learned from Stanley Hower was a duke and I'm eternally grateful for him. He said that in the

death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, history has come to an end. That is the end of history, that is its fulfillment, the death and resurrection of Christ. History is fulfilled. And because in Christ, in Christ Paska, history is fulfilled. Christians have nothing better to do in this life than to have children and tell them about Jesus. I mean,

that's just radical, but it's also radically true. We have nothing better to do than to have children and tell them about Jesus, and then have children in turn tell us about Jesus because they learned so much from you. It's so funny.

just waiting for the real thing to begin. The real thing is here and now, and salvation is a process that we are experiencing. Heaven is right now. I mean you talk about that heaven if God is everywhere present in all things. Heaven is here, is.

It's like all of these things are true because God is here. And I think over the years, especially Protestant years, I read that as the Second Coming is soon, therefore do these things, and Paul means the Lord is present, therefore can rejoice, give thanks always for all things. But then there's people who if you're not worried about politics and you don't care about the world, and I'm thinking,

that's not how you care about the world. You know, you don't even know anything about the world if you care about politics, because politics is a very narrow narrative, a narrow story told by people who lie for a living. They all tell lies, both parties, they all tell lies for a living, and they didn't even know that their narrative is a lie. It is not the truth. You will be in heaven and you'll say something about America

and someone will go, huh. Saint Paul says, our citizenship, our poldia, our politics, our parodia is in the heavens. This is our life. Our life is hid with Christ in God. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him like he is. Paul says, So this is you know, it is now, It is here and now, and you know, I just think that we refuse to be crazy enough that in

my book on Shame, on one of my favorite chapters, I write in it as about the Holy Fools, which the Orthodox need to learn lots more about. There's some books out there on the Holy fools, and they should read them. I have described that as probably the primary and best image of what it is to be an Orthodox Christian is the image of the fool. Christ is the fool. To the Greeks, he's foolishness. The Cross seems

to them to be foolishness. Paul says that we've become fools for Christ's sake, and so there's sense in which to live in the truth and the fullness of the Kingdom of God will look like foolishness to the world. You know, the poor man who is joyful and happy looks like a fool. Doesn't he know how poor he is? And I'm thinking, no, he doesn't, because you don't know

how rich he is, you know. But will preach the Gospel to them enough, and they hear enough of this stuff that have given the chance to immigrate to America, they will not realizing that they've n dangered their children's salvation.

and he has this idea. And the whole film you see him going through these stages of government and they're stamping his idea and you're wondering what is it. And at the end of the film you realize that his big idea, I think it's Binta's big idea. Maybe his big idea is to rescue, to adopt somebody from the quote unquote first world and save them because everything that he was hearing about it was Wow, that's such a

terrible way to live. And it's so the reason it sticks with me, I mean, I think I saw it over twenty years ago, is it's radical because we always think we I mean, we have this savior complex because in our minds, if you're not able to prosper and you know, hard work and raising yourself up is not currently bad. It's the value that you place on it and what it may substitute. It may substitute.

to feed the world. And I thought, boys, he bought it hook line and sinker. Industrial farming is not something we have in order to feed the world. We actually have a surplus of food and have had a surplace of food for the longest time. We're not running out of food. We have to throw We throw food away, We produce too much food. We pay people not to grow food.

Da Da da, All of this stuff. I mean, it's and then and then you can't use the seeds of your own wheat to plant the begin you have to buy them from the company every year. It's there's all kinds of you know, there's a monopoly in all of this. But and we're losing farmers and so America we disappear as farmers. And so basically we're we've created a structure in which it has to be industrial farming because we put farmers out of business and we did not protect them,

and we destroyed a way of life. And that's you know, if somebody tells me that's progress, I think, no, that's just bad decision making. That's not progress. But people try to believe it's progress because they'll even believe that if we weren't doing this terrible thing, everybody would starve. And that's just no, that's a lie. That's just a lie. And there's a lot of other lies throughout our modern world. Technology is useful and we should use it, but it's

not what we say it is. What modernity says about it is not true. Modernity's progress is making us slaves of the machine.

You know, my parents grew up poor on farms and they knew where it came from, and they weren't weird about food, and they had a deep regard for it and to care for it.

then ate it. And I thought that was revolutionary. But how often have we seen our food sources period outside of like I mean, going blueberry picking or something.

of high regard. And we should. My father was an auto mechanic. I thought, I thought he hung the world. I was amazed at his ability to fix things, and he could fix anything. And I love that I had of it. So people talk to me about technology, I think, oh, I get weepy. When I'm standing around a garage and I smell the fumes, I get weepy because it reminds me of my childhood and my grandfather and my dad and my uncle all these men who worked in their hands were dirty. I love it, you know, I work

on things myself. That's it's one of my happy places. Same is true.

proper understanding of reality.

That's how we read it. These are scriptures. Protestantism was a rebellion against the Church and they needed for them, that was the Catholic Church. But it wasn't really just the Catholic Church. They rebelled against the Church, and there wasn't one Protestantism. There were many Protestantisms. There wasn't a single Protestant church. There were many from the beginning, and they weren't even in communion with each other. They didn't

even recognize each other's ministers. That's from the beginning. So Protestantism was a real was interesting that way, but they had no doctor. The Creed declares, I believe in one holy Catholic habit select Church. They denied the Creed from the beginning, or it turned it into this imaginary, invisible church. Everybody that confesses Jesus's Lord is part of the invisible church, and that's so they don't have to deal with the problems of a visible church. It's kind of like having

an invisible marriage. I want a visible wife, you know, I want a very visible wife. Literalism distorts you from the fullness of reality. It reduces reality to a kind of formulaic treatment of things. Sat anomalism, Yeah, piss trying to remember which one piesiusts or perfurious one of the other of them said, to be a Christian, one must first become a poet, or fieus or furious, Yes, become a poet. And there's so much there. Man, it's the heart.

He's really talking about the heart, so that we see things with the heart, and.

but it's probably increasingly true of women as well. But we need to weep. We need to learn to weep. I've been working lately. It's kind of weird that when something I feel something bringing tears to my eyes, like in the service, I've actually begun to lean into it. I mean two actually lean into it and sometimes I'm boohooing. I'm standing there just shaking as I cry because I'm trying to cry, and I don't know how Normally, you know,

you choke back the tears. And I've done it so long I'm english, you know.

so emotional. But it's almost always in the grocery store and it's not the rising prices.

about my mother. I just thought she was crazy. He said she was a mystic, and I can see that she was, and that my dad had the gift of tears. He could just weep at the drop of the hat. He had an amazingly tender heart. That man was picking cotton starting at age four. I mean never had a four year.

pretty real. Father wants us.

a place we begin with. It can sometimes be very very hard to pray for them, kind of in the present tense. We have so much going on in us emotionally, including wanting to protect ourselves. We need healing, forgiveness, and so many things that are there. So how do I pray for them? One of the ways to pray is to start by saying, God, on the day of judgment, do not hold this against them.

Christ on the Cross, this is the judgment seat. I tell people, go before an icon of Christ crucified and pray for your enemies there and talk to because Jesus at that very point is forgiving his enemies. Father forgive them. They don't know what they do. So at that point go talk to him. Look at the crucified Jesus, and I would say, by the way, you don't know Jesus unless you know him crucified. This is Saint Paul. We

preach Christ crucified. So go stand before the icon of the crucified Jesus and talk to him about your enemies. You bring your enemy with you in your heart before the crucified Jesus and talk to Father Jesus on the day of judgment. Do not hold this against him on my account. Jesus on the cross says, do you forgive him? Yes, Lord, I forgive them. I mean, how else could I know you? I want to know you our enemies in some strange way. And there is a strange place in our heart where

we have to go with. Jesus goes to Hell to get us out right. And that's the message. That's the message of Pasca. You know. He descended into Hell led captivity. Captive. You know, he tramples down death by death. So we have to go to Hell, which is with my enemy. That's where I am. I stand in Hell with my enemy. Anger and hatred are gates of Hell, you know. So I stand in Hell with my enemy, and to stand before the crucified Jesus, who's saying, let's get out of here.

He takes Adam by their hand, by the hand. Well, actually he doesn't take him by the hand, if you look at the icon. He takes them by the wrists. But you know why he's clinging to them. This is not about there clinging to him. This is about him clinging to them. Jesus taking us by the wrist and dragging us out. I've been wanting to get a bumper

sticker for my car. My wife won't let me, but I was going to get one that says, and I'm cleaning this up because this is a you know, but I wanted one that said Jesus dragged my sorry soul to paradise. She would not let me. Dare get his graphic as it would be, but I still think, drag my sorry soul to paradise. This is my salvation. It's how I entered Orthodoxy. Jesus, you know, make me orthodox, Drag me into the church. I want to be there. It scares me. It's hard.

with demonic thoughts. Do not feed it with demonic thoughts. This is not we're commanded to do.

they exist too, They're part of reality. You might not have face to face conversations with them, but they may take up more real estate than your real face to face quote unquote enemies, and it's so much harder. I'm sure we could all imagine somebody politically that we can't stand, that we hate. We say, we say the work begins, we say so, and so is Hitler. As if that absolved us from loving them. Imago day exists in everybody,

and that's what that's what's so hard about it. And I learned, you know, there was somebody who was really antagonistic to my family. And there was one point where I sat there and I thought, man, God, just kill him. And then I thought, how that's such a terrible thought I and I started to reconcile it in my mind. No, I want that problem to go away, and death is a solution in my mind. Just it would be better if he just wasn't here, because he's like an ankle binder.

He won't stop attacking us. And I thought, no, don't kill him, make him have a soul to pull moment and then use him. And that's that's a reorientation. That's loving your enemies. But it's hard. It's hard, like you said, because we can have this whole. Oh, I'll go and I'll tell them that I love them and I want what's best for them, and they'll tell me to kick rocks. Yeah, and then what they're making it. It's not my fault. I want to love them, they're the ones. It's the

problem is them. No, it's just this constant reorientation.

in that place. But basically, if you stand in that place, Jesus and come into that place and the three of you Jesus, you know you'll only work it out if you let Jesus into that place. So you got to just go there. Just go there. And it's interesting my older brother's first time in a liturgy, the priest turned

to the congregation and out loud. It's a very small church, little store, little storefront, bowed to us and said, forgive me my brothers and sisters, my brothers started weeping like he was my dad or something as and he just said, I've never seen a priest do anything like that, And I thought, yeah, they do it all the time here. It's part of the liturgy. But how important is it? Forgiveness is radical? Forgiveness?

unreal weight. I would even suggest that, as terrible as it is at the present time, the Western civilization is collapsing of its own weight and of its own delusions. I don't know what that means. It can mean something really bad, and even worse, it can mean something that allows something better. I mean, if you just don't know, I tell people in our life in the church is to live the church, to be the church, and whatever happens,

it's not the first time we've lived through. Every culture we have ever been in has collapsed, So this is We've always.

this might be, it ain't nothing. It ain't nothing.

us from seeing things as they are. Saint SOPHRONI taught his disciples to bear a little shame, which is actually the very heart of what humility is is the willingness to bear a little shame. But that's, as I say, a large, large topic.

You know, I'm also married to a seventy two year old woman, and I you know, I'm aware of her death, and I don't want it unless it's after mine. So I do not want to be a bachelor in this life ever. And so but anyway I wouldn't be. I would still be a married man.

My dad's dad, my grandfather, died of infasima lung cancer and was struggling for breath in his last days, and he would go in and out of consciousness, but every time he was conscious, he was just praying Lord of Mercy, primarily because he meant Lord have mercy. He was, you know, a culture Baptist, so he wasn't doing the Jesus prayer except the ones that the Holy Spirit gives you. He would be Lord of Mercy, and in and out of consciousness,

Lord of Mercy. And I looked at him and he did that for the last couple of days or so. And I look back at it and think I wouldn't take those two days of prayer away from that man for nothing. I mean, he may very well have been saving his soul and uniting himself to Christ in a way he had been postponing. Why would I take that from him?

it is.