Sin Isn’t Your Main Problem—Art of Unseen Warfare | Justin Marler

in life. You talked about how in your book you talked about how you would go into bookstores as a young adult and you were always searching. And I did the same thing, and I would feel this overwhelming sense of anxiety because there's so many books and there's so many different paths that these books can take you through. And glory to God, you have written a modern classic. I really believe that, and I think that God is going to use this book to help guide people through life. So thank you.

you kind of get into a little bit of your your backstory of you, for lack of a better word, a punk and then you became a monk and then you kind of merged the two worlds.

in that way, sort of rejecting the modern world. But when you reject something, you have to accept something too, and I didn't know that when I was younger. So, yeah, I went through this whole experience of you know, depression, suicidal ideology. Music got into music and was my dream was to be in a band and record music and

tour and all that kind of stuff. And I was able to realize that dream with some punk bands and some metal bands that I were in back in that back in those days, I mean, it was not solving the problem though. I was still extremely suicidal and depressed, and I didn't know why. I was raised with a kernel of sort of non denominational Protestantism, and that stayed with me, you know, throughout my life. That never has gone away since I was three years old. But I

didn't have a way to understand it. What I was raised with was actually kind of confusing, the idea of you say that you're saved, you accept Christ and that's that. That was freaky to me at the time. I thought, this can't be that simple. It's almost like a magical prayer or an incantation where you say this thing and you're fine, and then you can go off and do stuff and quote unquote repent for it. That seemed really

weird to me. So I stumbled through all sorts of sins, you know, like I mentioned in the book, I became proficient at all of them pretty much, you know, gluttony, lust, anger, despair, despondency, pride, van glory, avarice, not so much. I never really cared about things or money, but AMEN struggled through all these other and I didn't know what was going on with

my soul. So obviously encountering the monks, well, first through a nun and a dwarf, mind you, there was a nun and a dwarf in this Christian Orthodox bookstore, and obviously a young person. I was gravitated to that, like what is this? This woman in a black robe and there's this dwarf, you know, small person. What do we want to call it? Yeah? I encountered the faith, and

immediately I deduced that monks were the troop punks. They definitely reject the world, and they reject the status quo, but they accept the answers to all that which is the last true rebellion, you know, to fully reject the world and fully die to yourself as best we possibly can daily, so that we can live for Christ and not. I mean, when I saw these monks, they were sleeping on planks of wood, They had really shabby sleeping bags,

They didn't shower very often. They were absolutely not interested in the world old and the convention of conventions of the world. And I I thought that was amazing, and I clearly, you know, when I visited the monastery, I didn't leave, you know, I stayed for seven years because that was so inspiring to me. I had to go back to the world and settle up some affairs in

the world. I had an art exhibit that I had to wrap up, and that first album that I recorded with a band called Sleep that was just getting released, so I had to deal with that a little bit. But stayed about two about a month or two in the world and came back to the monastery. And I stayed there for a long time.

So initially you either suffer through all of your awfulness and you get through it and you get on the rhythm of the monastic life, which is a long process, or you leave. We had a lot of people that showed up and they were excited about the monastic life, and they would disappear after a week or a couple of days. Sometimes they would leave in the middle of the night. I guess out of shame or something, which is not necessary. But yeah, when you're when you first,

when you're first there, there's a romantic experience. You know, it's beautiful, it's amazing, and it's warm. It's filled with big ideas and lots of wisdom. And then after about a month you start questioning everything. You're standing in church for hours and you're thinking. Your thought processes go wild because of all this trash that we've exposed ourselves to

through our senses, through our childhood and whatnot. And you hit a point where you have to either push forward and God's grace helps you through it, or you run back to the world. You know, you run back to the plow or whatever. But it was the best formative seven years of my life, easily. It taught me what it means to be a male, a man in the modern world, which I didn't get that from anything else. I actually got that mostly from our bishop here in Dallas,

Bishop Garassum. He was in the monastery at the time there and I got to know him very well, and I still know him to this day. We have a lot of whenever we run into each other, we have a shared understanding, which is really beautiful. But he's the one who really showed me asceticism and to suffer quietly and to be a man really, And I got all that from the monastery.

in the monastery. So I dove into biology. I dove into books on life after death and death experiences, dove into science and looked into evolution a lot. Obviously. I read tons of theology, so it was a theological school. Every moment of every day was theology school. And I read my first book from cover to cover in the monastery. You know, I got through high school reading cliff notes for these books that I thought were horrible, you know, Animal Farm, terrible, terrible stuff.

against whatever. Yeah, I self educated in there, and also I learned some major, major important things that a modern young person doesn't necessarily learn deliberately in the world, and that is the love of beauty, the love of the classical music, the love of old movies, the love of art and old art. You know. I taught and went through art classes in high school, but nothing revealed to me the essence of beauty in that way. So I got a great lesson on the appreciation of beauty in

the monastery too. The abbot of the monastery, he's reposed now. He actually sent me to an opera in San Francisco as a monk, not showered dirty, and we went I think it was one other, maybe two other monks of myself. We went to San Francisco opera and me, being a punk rocker, I had record or did my metal record not very far from where that opera house is a year and a half prior. So I'm going to this opera and I'm newly appreciating classical music, and I finally

wrap my head around it. You know a little bit. And when we go there, we saw geepe verdez la Forta del Destino, the force of Destiny, and it has monasticism in it. It has this struggle of the passions in it, powerful, powerful and moving. All that I got from the monastery.

about joy, and monastics practice detachment, right, And so from my perspective, or from from most of the world's perspective, detachment is almost the opposite. It's kind of a despising of the world. That's the perception, right. So like, how do I mean, the monks are clear the experts at this, but how do us lay people who are living out in the modern world practice detachment while also maintaining a joy for the beauty of God's creation? I mean, our life is beautiful.

you can just not have it affect you. And I think that that's what I learned from the Church Fathers, is to not swing either way with it. And so in the book, I don't know if you got to this chapter or not, but in the detachment chapter, I have this great story.

cell so he could always keep it. This visitor steals it, takes it to the nearest village and asks the guy if he would be interested in buying it, and the guy said, I would be interested, but I need to talk to somebody else about the value. So he takes it to this monk, the same monk not knowing that this gospel belonged to him, and asks him is this a good price for this? And the monk doesn't reveal that it's actually his possession. He says, yeah, that's a

good value and sends him away. That is the essence of detachment right there, is you do love this thing and you value it, and it's the Gospels, you know. But at the same time, I'm not attached to anything in this world, and the detachment to things is liberating. That's the thing that the modern man, I think is missing greatly in how we view everything is with these attachments. We view them as something that's important, something that defines

our character. Even our attachments to our parents and grandparents, all these things we view them as essential, and that is totally not true. Detachment still contains love and still contains use. You're still using these things and they're in your life and love. You still have these relatives ands on. But when we're detached, when something dies, when a person dies, when a thing goes away, when your house burns down,

nothing affects you. So being detached in a huge way is I think the essence of some of Christ's teachings, and he also just exhibited that in his life. Is just these things of the world are not us. They're not us. They're they're not ours, you know, And Saint John in his epistles talks about this at great length. Love of the world. You know, we can't love God and love the world. And that's a really harsh statement, but it's an hundred percent true.

I mean, a lot of these young men coming into the church through you or through you know, through something that you're putting out there in the world, and then he was there to welcome them, and he just shepherded them. And it was unexpectedly expected. You know, he was having some health issues, but I saw that right as I was finishing your book and getting it through a chapter on death. I went to church that night and I

had the strangest experience. You know, I've experienced a lot of death over the past couple of weeks for whatever reason in God's timing, and I think death will always I hope we never get too comfortable with death, right,

it should always be an affront to our senses. But as I stood there, you know, all of his god children that were able to win up and they were praying the Trisagion, and I was watching and I just had this overwhelming peace that was not natural, and I think it was to some degree experiencing that detachment that this world is beautiful, but it's not everything, and he's home now, and while that's sad for us, it's beautiful

for him, and now he's praying for us. So yes, So you talk about the healthy detachment, there's also when you left the monastery, you said that you assimilated, but with a healthy discomfort.

the world, it really ties to the passions. The more that I get comfortable with any of these passions, the more that I get off track spiritually, And the more that I'm off track spiritually, the more that I'm dissatisfied. The more that I'm upset, restless, discontent, anxious, all those things start to bubble up. But the more I'm dissatisfied with the world and see it for what it is and remind myself of that continually, the more I keep it at Bay, It's almost like, you know, you set

up boundaries. You know, I'm setting up a boundary with the world all the time, you know. Yeah, And I do normal things. I go to shows, I'm gonna take my daughter to see a country singer, you know, go out and do things in the world and everything, but it's always with a critical eye. Last time I took her to a show, I saw the crowd and it reminded me of St. Sanya and her husband and him partying and him dying. And I'm looking at this crowd of people, and so I'm always kind of looking at

it through this lens of this is just death. It's all gonna pass, and it's not worth getting your heart wrapped up in it, you know.

of negativity, Like, oh, Justin's a negative guy. He doesn't you know, he's this uh, spiritual guy, but he has this negative edge. He thinks the world is bad. And how do we overcome that?

negative view of them. As soon as we don't have a negative view of them, they tear us apart. And if you can't see that in our own lives, then we're basically blindly letting ourselves fall into This is what leads to despair. And depression is once the world infects us in this way, and we should be negative about that. That is one hundred percent which we should be doing.

One of the things that some of the visitors would come to the monastery, and they were largely you know, I'm talking about people that were inquirers, that were coming from a sort of agnostic background. They would point out that same thing, why are you fleeing the world? What's so bad about the world? Why are you saying so many negative things about the world. I was actually walking on a beach in Alaska with a musician that's pretty well known. He was the singer of a band called

Minor Threat and a band called Fugazi. His name was Ian Mackay or he is Ian Mackay. And we were walking along the beach talking of all these topics. And he at the time and it probably still is maybe, but he was agnostic, atheist sort of, and he said that same thing, why are you guys, why do you guys hate the world so much? It's just people. I think we need to make the distinction here. We don't.

We're not despising the people. We're not despising like I said, nature, but we are despising these manifestations that people and our passions bring into the world. If you look at all of the nastiness in our world, all of it is a result of the passions, all of it. So you can't soften this thing. There is no soft place for it, to make a little safe spot for these things. They're just they have no place here and we need to destroy them. And that's what the church fathers taught us

or teach us, is to separate the two. And I think that that's the best approach. But when it comes to I just want to make a point about detachment really quick. Yeah. It goes back to this very topic. When we desire something, it causes us suffering. When we desire to have money because 'rapport that desire causes suffering. When we are unhealthy and we desire health and it's chronic and this desire for this health, which is not possible,

it causes us to suffer. The more that we say, may it be blessed, period, may it be blessed, whatever it is, that is the detachment prayer. That is the detachment phrase that actually done across the board. No matter what's happening in a person's life, whether it's tragic or awful, or whether you're being showered with blessings that are worldly blessings, it should be may it be blessed. And I don't care about it.

just it's all about perspective. Right. So you use a word, it's not it's not your word, but you are using a word the passions. Now they're not a complete equivalent

with sin. So if you could distinguish what the sin, what sin is, and what the passions are, and also, if you will, sin has a lot of baggage. We can only speak from our American perspective. I don't know what the universal perception conception of sin is, but in America, as soon as you use the S word, it's like you kind of let's just create a straw man here.

Let's imagine that it's a non religious person and they hear you use that word, that S word sin, they immediately see some in their mind, hateful, bigoted, you know, fire and brimstone preacher telling you that you're sinful. And so as a result, I think they almost protect sin itself, imaging themselves to a degree. I understand because there's a lot of baggage wrapped up in that word. And so when you use the word passions, I think it could

almost be more helpful. But if you could just define the two and what the difference is.

the Church. You know, sin, as I described in the book, and the church fathers talk about this sin comes from a word that they believe. It comes from a word that is used in archery, where you are shooting at a target and you miss the mark. Missing the mark is a sin in archery. Very very interesting idea. I love that idea because when you're in archery, you're doing something av you're trying, and you're hitting a target and you go up to the target afterwards and you see

where you land it. That's called self evaluation. And you're looking and you're seeing did I make it in the target or did I come out into the outer rings or not. You're trying, You're trying to get in the target. That's the whole point. So missing the mark is a much better way to understand sin. Yes, sin in the modern person's understanding is a tool for judgment, a tool for condemnation a tool for shame, and this is absolutely not helpful because like the archer, the archer is trying

to improve accusation and shame and judgment. It's just hurting somebody. It's not fair, not fair at all. So sin is when we miss the mark. And then the church fathers have amazing teachings on the passions. Passions. There's typically there's eight of them. There's some church fathers that have seven. There's some that identify eight, and they use words a little bit differently, but ultimately the list is this gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, despair,

despondency or sadness, vain, glory and pride. Those are the passions. These are the things that cause us to suffer. And the word pacio, which means to suffer, that's what we're talking about here, is suffering. So each of these passions, the church Fathers are clear to identify them as being. They have a natural place when they're ordered. So if you look at gluttony, for example, we are supposed to eat, we're supposed to drink, you know, we have to do

these things. But when it's disordered, it can kill us. Literally. The main thing that's the cause of death in the US is heart disease, which is tied to diet. So when this passion is in its rightful place, it's not a passion and it's a natural thing that the body does. And that would apply to lust as well. Ust when it's disordered, becomes out of control and it controls a person's life, and it can destroy marriages and so on.

But when it's controlled with self control and chastity, even in marriage, chastity can be a thing, it can produce life, Like to share in the ability of actually creating a human being with God is an insane thing, Like thinking about that is just mind blowing. So there's, on the one hand, the passion of lust, and on the controlled side there is the building of a family, which is like the most important thing in society. When all these

passions are ordered, they are actually beautiful. But when they're disordered, they become a passion, and that's when they just destroy us. They become an addiction, they become a bad habit that it gives come something that destroys our life and the lives of those around us. And that would include also sadness. For instance, sadness has a place it's that moment when we're repentant for our mistakes or our sins, where we feel remorse. It doesn't mean it to be sustained over time.

Remembrance of wrongs and obsessing over something I did twenty years ago is not repentance, but that sadness in the moment is crucial for moving forward towards God. You know the other passions as well. Pride. It's okay to have some. You know, you accomplish something and you feel good about that. That's okay because it makes you want to move forward and get better. But when it becomes where you think yourself is better than everyone else and obviously just way

out of whack. So that's the difference from the church Father's teachings on sin versus the passions. Now the church Fathers, especially in the phil Callia, they emphasize the passions and working on them more because those are the root causes of what caused human dysfunction in the human condition. Are the passions instances of sin, Yes, they should be corrected or repented for, but these instances aren't the thing. The

thing is the passions. You know, when you break the fast land and you eat, what is it a beef burrito whatever, you know, but you're not accustomed to doing that. Okay, you've made a mistake, move on, you know. But when you're doing this repeatedly and you gain weight and you're sick, and your doctors saying you have diabetes and all this kind of stuff, it's out of hand, you know.

church doctors or as just spiritual doctors. And it's like, man, so much of this would the modern world suffers from soul sickness, but we don't even realize it because most people don't even think that they have a soul, right, I Mean, you start the book talking about the importance of worldview, and this is something that's really important to me because for many years I've held the belief that

most people I mean, everybody has a worldview. Like somebody the end of the day said that they're not religious. I said, everybody's religious. You're definitely religious. You might not think about it. That's true. So you could say, I don't think about religion, okay, but everybody has a religion. There's no such thing as neutrality, right, Everybody has a worldview.

The biggest problem is that nobody thinks that they do, or so many people in our modern world don't think that they hold a worldview, and their worldviews are discordant, I mean completely cognitively dissonant. And you know I think that well, I don't think, I know, look around. It leads to chaos. And so you start the book, I think, very appropriately talking about the most important thing that somebody can do is have a well formed worldview.

critically think anymore, which is really weird to me. But yeah, the formation of the worldview I think people are finding in the or. This is why the Orthodarchs Church is probably growing up blowing up like it is, is that people know they're sick, but they don't know how or why, and they encounter the Orthodox Faith or the Church of Christ that is Apostles and they see it's like a it's a it's a it's a massive well and you drop this bucket in here and the water is endless.

It really truly is endless, this worldview. Like I am surrounded right now with books. They're everywhere all you know, going all the way back to the de Decay and the early Apostolic documents, all the way up to Elder Paieesius sitting right here and St. Mectarius of Aguina. You know, this whole worldview. The crazy part about it is that over the course of two thousand years, it's remained completely unaltered. It hasn't veered, it hasn't been changed. It's consistent over time,

and it works. It works. And this is the difference, and I say this in my book, the difference in modern psychology and therapy versus the church. Modern psychology is trying to address these symptoms, you know, and it's helpful

in a crisis, and there are tools in there that could be useful. I'm not discrediting that, But the Church gives us the tools to truly heal the soul to the degree of making a saint out of a person. That's astonishing, and psychology and modern approaches will never ever come close to that. They will help you cope, they will help you get through something, and they will give you some tools. But the Church actually wants to shape you into a saint. It's a holy person, which is wild.

you know, not necessarily to be a saint. But the idea is self purifying, purifying ourselves to the grace of God, you know, which means uprooting and dealing with these passions so that we can be better closer to God, which is the term it's theosis, which I don't like using that too lightly because it's it's very important seeing but yes, we're called to be saints, and my daughters, they're called to be saints, which is why I wrote this book.

I want them to know that God is drawing them like a tractor beam to him because he wants to sanctify them, wants to sanctify you and me, which is crazy. Yeah.

history were monastics. But he said something along the lines I'm gonna mucky it up, but uh, something like he wants to make the word saint a little dirtier and and and and take the shine off of it a little bit, and in doing so, make it a little bit more approachable, that that's something that you can actually become, and that when you experience somebody in this world and they make your life better, or they do something that just brings you, that shines that you see the face

of Christ through them, right, that that's what the halo is, and and you walk away from them thinking was that a saint?

just I cling to it. When you said it, I was like you talked about trying. It's like like wearing something that looks ridiculous and you can't make fun of me because I know it's ridiculous ironic that everybody's everybody everybody is kind of intentionally ironic because trying isn't cool. Right, If I try and fail, then you can make fun of me, But if I'm ironically dressed, you can't make fun of me because the joke's on you, right, And I think that that kind of ironic approach to the world,

and also with the nihilistic view of the world. I mean, you want to talk about soul sickness, but the real key is just to try.

we're not supposed to cut off our hand. We sin with it, you know, but we're supposed to think in that fervent way, you know. And I think that the progress is what we need, you know, as long as we're moving forward towards Him. That's the ladder we're climbing. We're climbing, you know, as long as we're on that ladder. And my wife has a funny way of putting it.

She's like, I'm sometimes clinging to the bottom rung with one fingernail, you know, Yeah, And that's how we feel often is like, but we're still on it, you know, you're clinging no matter what. We're not going to give up. And there's Chris at the top of that ladder, and we're we're not taking our gaze off.

need that. I need you, you need me. I mean we're not saved alone, which is also a very dangerous paradigm to fall into, whether it's you know me and my Bible or Jesus is my buddy, or any of these kind of false counterfeit Christ. So sin can be dangerous when it's finger pointing, but it can be helpful when it's used as a tool to keep progressing, to keep trying, to keep trying to hit the mark.

spiritual life. We need failure, we need temptation. We need these things to shine a light on the areas that we need to work. Otherwise, why we get we soften up into complacency and apathy.

at falling or getting back up. Yeah, that's a great answer. You're like, okay, all right, I'll go back and keep doing it. Yeah.

book's incredible. You're like, oh, well, the rest of it sucks or something like that, something humble, but I just couldn't wait. But at the same time, I was like, this is gonna be a bit of a downer, right, It's gonna be about sin. I'm a very peaceful guy. I'm I'm a sensitive guy. I've never been very into fighting or you know, anything like that violence. I'm just I'm chill. And so the whole concept of fighting and sin, it feels like a downer, right, But your book could

not have been more uplifting. And the section on the virtues or to God, I mean, before we get into that, let's talk about the mindset of a fighter and why that's necessary. And even though that is jarring to me because I'm I don't want to fight, why is it necessary to have the mindset of a fighter?

a battle. We were all in a battle all the time, like saying Nikolai Vilamirevitch wisely says, my whole life is a battle between me and myself, me as I am and me as God wants me to be. We're all in that, and that includes my atheist friends. They're still fighting. They're still trying not to do something crazy or offend somebody, or say something mean, or go out and hurt somebody. They're still holding back, you know, and they're still trying

to control themselves. But the Church gives us a massive way of viewing all of that that's much broader than just kind of trying to function function, you know. The mindset of the fighter in the book I draw this from the book Unseen Warfare by you know, it was edited by Theofan the Recluse and Nico Demus of the of the Holy Mountain, but it was written by Lorenzo's Polly,

which was a Catholic monastic. In that book, he says the mindset of the fighter must be never rely on yourself, have a daring trust in God, and always pray those

are interesting, never rely on yourself. Like that's a really hard thing for a modern American to wrap their head around, because I personally was taught and raised to only trust yourself, but to relinquish that and to trust in God and also the Church and the sacramental life of the Church and your guide or spiritual father as opposed to yourself, is liberating way to let go of all of our preconceived notions that are causing us so much pain and suffering,

and to learn a new way, you know, to having daring trust in God is the other disposition of the fighter, to completely and fully trust whatever is happening, whether it's good or bad. We know that God is fully in control and either allowing things to happen or think things are happening at his discretion. And then obviously praying without ceasing is like a given, you know. The disposition of

the fighter must be one. That doesn't mean you're perfect in prayer, you've mastered prayer, or you're you know, some guy on you know doing Jesus prayer all the time. But you're trying again, You're trying, You're trying to keep reverting yourself back to prayer. That's why when we switch in the book from all this the devices and passions and sin, once you've switched the page over to the virtues,

you feel this sense of relief. Amen, mercy, I made it through this tough stuff which I had to go through. Now let's talk about how this stuff is supposed to flourish in my soul and make me joyful and content and happy with the grace of God moving through my life, you know, and that's where the virtues kick in.

It's for the modern the modern fighter.

Church Fathers are confrontational, like push us to the edge. Man, Well, we need to be pushed, oh, one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean it's self control is like you know, we talked about detachment. That's huge. Self control for the modern person is one of the things that I'm seeing a lot of people, especially men, young men, struggling with the idea of controlling yourself. Like in the Greek philosophy and with the Greek set of virtues, self control was huge.

Self control was what that's what defined a man. And our culture is the opposite. You want to get high and play video games and barely pull off your job and have a clunky relationship with some girl. I mean, self control is what a man should be. It's not fighting, it's not standing puffing up your chest. It is having that quiet self control and that virtue alone. When somebody starts really pushing on that one and trying to implement it in their life, they're seeing that they have to

they have to apply it all over the place. Self control. With my Let's say i have issues with my parents and how they raise me, and I'm angry about that. I'm going to exert self control in this zone and I'm not going to let the anger bother me. I'm gonna have I'm going to be detached from it, you know. Or the person in line, or the person that's you know, in the car driving by me and he's rushing past me, or whatever. I can be angry and upset, or I

can just have self control. And also with food and with all these other different things. Self control, the virtue of self control is huge. It's easy. It's easier to try to implement other ones, like kindness. You know, you know, most people try to be kind, even though in our parts were not neuosity and gratefulness is another one that's

really important for modern people. We get stuck in our we get justified in our moods and our views of things that are not grateful, and we feel like we're justified in these areas and we're it's just causing us discord. But the virtue of gratitude, once we realize I'm going to be grateful for everything, the good, the bad, the people in my life that are difficult, and the people that are not gratitude the virtue of gratitude, you know. Obviously,

love is a huge one. Love is a grossly misunderstood by the modern American and goes back to the Beatles. I'm not going to throw it all on the Beatles, but as an example, there was a shift in America where love became something that it is absolutely not. It's

this infatuation and that that is not it. You know, in the Greek there's several words for love, and aros is the one that we focus on and we kind of tend to forget that real love is the agape love where it's the husband taking care of the wife and she has a terminal illness, she has ms shows up every morning every day, takes care of her, deals with the harsh realities of that, and puts her to bed and prays for her and loves her through this suffering.

You know, that's not a Beatles song and it would never go well on the radio. Yeah.

keep trying. Like you had it in your book that the process of trying to work out the will of

God is how you know God. And even though it's frustrating, and even though you keep falling and getting that's the whole point that the obstacle is the path.

And like you said, the whole point of everything is that relationship with Him to grow and to build, like I mentioned in the book, and the understanding the will of God. That we have to practice virtue. If we want to understand God's holy will, we have to be striving at least for holiness. Doesn't mean we have to be a holy person in the moment, but we have

to be at least working towards it. The more that we activate the virtues in our life, the more that we can try to understand God's will, and the more that we're praying and rejecting our own will, like just shutting down our own will, the more his will becomes more parent. I use the analogy of the cell tower. The farther you are from the cell tower, the harder it is to hear to understand the words of the reception. Closer you are to the cell tower, the more you

can actually hear it. So how can I, as a teenage kid, expect to hear God's will when I'm living entrenched in sin and dysfunction. You know, how am I going to hear it?

whole point of his will is. And so if we choose to go to college, or if we choose this surgery or not or whatever, all that stuff's good and we have to make those choices. But at the end of the day, he's the door. He is the door, and the door dissolves, it dissolves away, and next thing you know, we're just in his arms. And that's really what the whole point is.

you know, finally describe God. And it's just it's that relationship and not in the watered down Western version of a relationship with God where he's kind of like your buddy. I mean, I really thank God. I've from a young age kind of felt very uncomfortable with the language that a lot of especially in the nineties, I felt like modern evangelicals were like throwing God on a T shirt and with like almost like beer slogans. I mean, the

this blood's for you. I don't know if you remember that, but it it it's terrible, and it's a watering down of the Almighty in a way that just and I think a lot of it becomes Hey, if he's your buddy, just like justin, you know he gets it. You know he's got to say. It's just we need to have that healthy fear, not fear like sinners in the hands

of an angry God. Fear, but fear respect all wonder the leaning on and you talk about the cell tower, I've used a similar analogy in my own mind, where you know, I was on Mount Athos this summer and I'm newly Orthodox, and so I'm still recalibrating. I mean, you talked about your upbringing and you still bring I'm sure you still have a lot of the stuff that you that you carried with you as a young person,

and it never really leaves you. You're constantly trying to retrain your senses in one way or another, and I always pray for discernment to help me understand it. I know this is where I need to be. I know this is the answer. But my bunny ears, you know, the old TV antenna bunny ears, they're not positioned quite right yet. So I'm getting a clear sick I can see I know that, like, let's say I'm trying to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Green Bay Packers. I see it's on the screen.

just have to work on myself. And like you said, the section of your book on the virtues, I was so excited as I was reading it. I was I didn't understand why. But and this is going to sound really silly, but something clicked to my mind that these are things we practice the virtues right, and it clicks. We could practice them like anything else. Like if you're a musician and I'm like, man, justin you're really good.

How'd you get so good my practice? Now, maybe you've got an innate tendency for it, like, but we all of us have that. Like I am much more outgoing. That's my innate tendency. I don't have to work at that. So the virtues that stem from that ability, Glory to God. They're a little bit easier for me, but we all have those virtues that don't come as easily. Like you said, self control. I wrote down virtues that I want to work on, and you unknowingly admonished me. I mean that

the umbrella of self control is much larger than we realize. Right, It's not just I've got to, you know, have a little bit less food on my plate. I mean, it's it's all encompassing. But that encourage Now that you talked about daring trust in God, well, adding the word daring, I mean, that's that's courage right in a way. But just this whole concept that the virtues are something that we can practice, it excited me.

a virtue? And that's my first hearing of it. And that's when I was like ten or twelve, like I was older. We are starving ourselves in our culture from these things that are so natural for this soul. It's really tragic. It's actually very tragic. They should be a major part of our culture, but they're all supplanted by all of this nonsense, all this chaos, all this media.

Media has zero in in these virtues. But I think it's fascinating to notice that when we practice the virtues deliberately and we're working on them, there, like I say in the book, they're like a tapestry. You're not working on one or the other necessarily. Sometimes we have to kind of focus on one. But they're kind of a thing that we try to integrate throughout our day, and we have thousands and thousands of moments every day where we have the opportunity to work, to practice theeds, to

work on them. They happen all the time, and they're happening a lot of the time in our thoughts. Virtues activated in our thinking all the time, and we don't realize that because we're so stuck in our thinking patterns that are not virtue oriented. They're more self oriented. And this is what I think. The church fathers, especially Saint Besol the Great, talks about prayer, unceasing prayer. He talks about it as being not a thing that you do, which is it's important that we should show up and

read the prayer or say the prayer whatever. But his whole point is that prayer should be a way of life, yes, state, And I think the virtues are the answer to that. When we are practicing the virtues, we are practicing a form of prayer in a certain sense. It doesn't have to have words attached to it. But when we show kindness to a stranger in a drive through, when we're getting food and we say, you know what, you have a beautiful smile, we change somebody's day in a second.

And that brought virtue and prayer into the world in a way that we don't really think about. I think that that's the key why virtues are so exciting, is that they are natural to the soul, and the soul is starved from them, and when we implement them, the soul is joyful for that.

we were created to experience the virtues because as we practice them and get better at them and see it, and we're not alone. Right when I see virtue in you, as long as it's not as long as I don't stumble into the the passion of envy. It's beautiful and I think that that's the march mark of wisdom and maturity is when you embrace the virtue of others and I and you love to see it. I mean, you talked about kindness like almost everybody loves kindness like it.

But I mean, as I've gotten into this podcast world, you start realizing. I mean, we all kind of intuitively know it, but how much more than negativity travels and my story. I grew up in the world of apologetics. My dad had a large radio program. It was all about questions and answers and apologetics and I hated it.

and there's so much nastiness. I see that, and it's something that really really it hurts my soul when I see it, right, I mean, you talk about I could see it in your face, and I can see the love for Christ in your face, especially when you talk about things like the virtues and you get so excited

because you want to share it. That's an apologetic. That's Hey, I want you to have what I have because it's beautiful and I love you and I want you to know this and so much and even I mean you're well familiar with the concept of orthobros or internet orthodoxy or just but it's not isolated to orthodoxy. I mean it's all over the Internet under the umbrella of apologetics.

There's such a nastiness that comes out. How do we I'm serious when I say it's something that really weighs heavy on my soul because it's it's as though, we love Christ right and we want him to be well represented, and when he's not, it hurts. How do we deal with that?

realm is not very healthy spiritually. I get exposed to it through a lot of my God children and through friends and through people that I contact, and what I learned from them is the gross toxicity that's in there, especially within the Orthodox people or world or you know people you know judge very very judgy. It sounds like out there and very self righteous. The world's longest journey

is the twelve inches from the mind to the heart. Now, when we're talking about apologetics, we're talking about mental fighting. We're talking about mental fighting. And yes, Christ exhibited that a little bit with the Pharisees, and it was really amazing to it. He was like, well, he's God, so he's perfect in his thinking. But he was like a lawyer the way he would counteract them with their their self righteousness, and he would completely undercut them. And it

was amazing. But I think that we you know, I don't know about these apologists online and what theirs, you know, how their what their journey is with God or whatever. But I really I avoid all that stuff at all costs because the key to what we're doing here is not in their mind, it's in the heart. And the church fathers are very explicit in that you can. You cannot stink your way into heaven. You cannot argue or debate your way into heaven. You have to sink into

the heart, and that means loving, caring. Kind of all these virtues, all these virtues when they're activated, and now an apologist, you know, I think that they all these virtues, you know, I encourage them to activate all these virtues while they're talking to people. But man, this this endless talking is really a distraction from the one thing needful. It's a massive distraction. I think that's the hurt that you feel when you see this this world. I call

it the underbelly of Christianity. You know, it's this thing that it has, this it's justified and that it's trying to defend the faith, but it's also gross, and I think that it's actually more gratifying for the soul to just show somebody kindness and love, you know. Like even listening. I don't argue with anybody ever, I just don't like it. It's not my thing. I like listening. I really enjoy listening to people, whether I agree with them or not.

And listening, I believe is a form of caring for somebody else, you know, and that's kind of not what apologetics or debating is. You know. Yes, people need an intellectual answer to some of these questions. Theological absolutely, So it's fine to try to research and understand things. But the endgame is that door. It's that door, It's that Christ and the encounter you could. It's just it's not

found in words and debates. You know. Church fathers aren't eat all this stuff, and they perfectly did it, so we don't need to do it anymore. Let's just if you if you have a problem, read the church fathers. Otherwise go pray.

so much because we talk too much. Yeah, and and and even embarking on the process of podcasting, I thought, man, I feel very conflicted about it because on one hand, it is helpful for people, and and and I grabbed one of the young men in our church who just he is just I'm so I use the word proud, notically, I'm just proud of him, like I'm proud of my son when he does well. I look at him and I say, man, I see the light of Christ shining

through you. And he came to the church through some of this negative online you know, discourse, and I asked him about it, and he said, when I was watching those videos, it's what I needed in the moment, I didn't have the love of Christ in my heart, and glory to God had led me here. But I don't watch those videos anymore.

breaking point in my opinion. Yes, ninety nine percent of people that I encounter find Orthodoxy or the Church through this cyber realm. They do, and the Gospel has spread there and the angels working there somehow. The demon's working there too, no doubt. But I'm waiting for the desert to show itself. It reminds me a lot of when Christianity became legalized, like America is legalizing Orthodoxy. It's letting

it become, it's letting it flourish. And whenever something becomes normal or flourishes, it gets comfortable, and that's when we run to the desert. And I think that that's the next step, is that there's people that will flee the Internet and flee to their parishes in the sacramental life of the church and shut the thing down and unplug. I really think that's the next desert for us, is to just simply unplug. And I say that while I'm plugged.

I want to I want more and more of it, and I want and I want to see it overflow, like a fire hydrant that's gotten the thing knocked off, like I just because there's so much there and I want everybody to have it. And I just, I mean,

I'm an optimist by nature. And well, I guess that's a question that I wanted to ask you. I mean, you talk about that the world isn't positive or negative, that it's a third thing. Well you called it a third rail mystical.

and this is my opinion. You know, this is not from a church father's actually, but there is a way to acknowledge both at the same time, which is the mystical path, which a lot of that well, a lot of the church father especially the recent ones, are able to kind of demonstrate that. So that that's kind of what I believe, you.

we've completely forgotten to it for got. I mean, most people don't even believe that it exists, or they do in a very discordant way, like I think it was Nathan Jacobs, and I forgive me if I'm wrong, And is uh becoming truly human? Where you know, some overwhelming percentage of these people that didn't have the nuns, that didn't have a belief still believed in angels, And so how do you square that circle?

comes from from cultural experience over time, you know. But what we've done in the modern times is that we've distracted ourselves so thoroughly and numbed ourselves so thoroughly that we don't really care and I think apathy. I write about that in Youth the Apocalypse, a different book. I

wrote that apathy is this disease. It's modern disease of just simply not caring. And I think that what happens, and this is the beauty of suffering, is that God uses suffering to wake us up to this reality, allows suffering to do that for us, and it's a gift. I want to give an example of my grandfather, who was agnostic. He was married to my grandmother who was Seventh day Adventist, but quiet throughout their entire marriage, but

she was devout in her heart. And when he got cancer, the first thing he did is turn to her and say, teach me. I need to know everything I read to me the Bible, show me prayer, show me all this stuff because I have to get my life figured out. You know, the suffering of cancer was actually the greatest blessing that ever happened to him. If you look at it from an eternal projectory, the suffering of cancer was

the best thing ever for him because it purified him. Yeah, you know, our goal in life is not to just stay alive. If that was the case, then everything that we're doing is completely futile.

was diagnosed with cancer. She's in remission now, glory to God. And so many of the older people at church came up to us, huh, cancer, this would be good, brings you closer to Christ and to our modern sensibilities. I mean, I've told that story to people who are members of our church and they they almost get offended, like I can't believe they said that to you. But and and you know, only my wife could answer this for herself. But I saw her change through cancer for the positive.

I mean, she wasn't waking up early to pray, she wasn't leaning on God as much before cancer. And what I always told her, and this is my prayer and belief hope that she's going to die an old lady.

And I told her as she was going through this, said, look, God's going to lead you through this valley, and you're going to for whatever time he gives you, use it to help others, and they and I think even just watching her, I mean, so many people didn't know that she had cancer because she had this silent strength that she walked with it through that me. I mean, I've got a little bit of a man cold right now and I'm miserable, and I always think, I don't think

she tells me. She goes, I hope I die before you because I won't be able to handle you with any sort of affliction. So it's he grabs us with suffering. I can't remember what you said, but I mean, suffering is a blessing. I think you said the.

this comes specifically from Byzantine sort of worldview. Oh, God's visiting you, And I was like, what, like that was so an inversion of how I was taught to avoid suffering. Suffering is evil And He's like, no, God's visiting you, just like what you said was your wife. That is, that is the answer to the philosophical question of suffering, which Christ fulfilled on the cross. And you know, I put this in the book, the quote from I Forget His Name. He said that God didn't come to solve

or eliminate human suffering. He came to fill it with his residence.

prayer warrior and she's one of my best friends. I love her. Growing up, everything was spiritual warfare. If something and am I you know, I think we're all kind of materialist to a certain degree, even if we're brought up. I mean, the Western mindset seeps in by osmosis. And she would explain something bad going on. I'd be like, oh, so and so is just in a bad mood. She's, Oh, no, it's spiritual warfare, and she would just My mom's very emotive and spiritual warfare. I'm telling you, I know it.

the devil. I don't focus much on the devil because he is canceled when we activate all these virtues in the spiritual life. But spiritual warfare is this battle that's taking place. The battlefield is us and us walking through the world, and that would be you know, at school, we're being bombarded by thoughts and ideas and people and

interactions and relationships. And the marketplace, all these places like supermarket is like a massive war zone where you have all this food and all this garbage that's trying to kill you, and then you have the pharmaceutical section on the other end to try to heal you enough to keep you alive. This war is everywhere all the time. But the father especially in the Philip Colia, they mentioned this frequently. It's largely taking place. It all starts with

the thoughts. Our thoughts determine our lives in huge ways. And we don't have any classes in our culture, in our upbringing, in our education, systems to help people see this or talk about it or learn about it. But this fight, this unseen war, is happening in the way we think and feel about absolutely everything all the time. And that's where the passions flourish or the virtues flourish,

is in this unseen war. And yes, this unseen war is influenced by demonic forces or demonic activity, but it's also influenced by our own proclivities, in our own bodies, you know. And all this stuff is taking place unseen. It's very interesting that the entire book can't be checked by science at all. But if you read it, you're like, huh, that's true. You know, all of this stuff is totally true, but it's completely not verifiable by any scientific method. But

everyone acknowledges that they love. Yeah, I hate, you know, and that's not something that can be challenged or tested, you know, But it's unseen. So is our hate dominating us or is our love dominating us? This is the war. That's the one. I go back to that Saint nikolay Villa Miravich quote. You know, it's a battle between me and me. Saint John Cassian says the same thing. Our enemy is not outside. It's shut up with it. Mm hmmm mmm. Yeah.

uh you know, pebble in my shoe. She just we don't talk enough about guardian angels. You've got to talk about you've got it. You've got to have somebody. She I mean, she wants who knows what she wants? God bless her. But she's right, we don't. And I think part of the reason is, at least for me personally,

I don't understand it. I mean, that's that's a frontier that I would like to really get to know a little bit better, because, like you said, I mean, most people on the street, even if they don't have a well formed worldview, they still, oh, mom's looking down on me, she's an angel now or something like that. Like they we talk about angels as though it's intuitively understood, and yet when you really myself included, press on what is

an angel? What are guardian angels? I don't have a good answer.

the other world. There's an overlap, and that's what a miracle is is you kind of see a glimpse into this other thing, you know, this other dimension of what we want to call it. But we my wife and I were getting up in the morning one day recently and our icon corner light went on by itself at prayer time, and you know, I'm pretty sure it was one of our guardian angels, you know. I mean, you can say God did it, and God ultimately does everything in a certain sense, but I really believe that was

our guardian angel saying prayer time. And then it happened again at evening prayers. You know, I think these little things that if we're tuned to the spiritual realm, we realize there's far more things happening than we understand or knowledge, and that includes the intervention of saints. Just in the last few months, I've had interventions of saints in our life that were profoundly unexplainable. I mean, they were just too far field to make sense out of them with

the rational mind. And it's clearly one of them involves Saint nik Tarisavigina. I haven't thought for and prayed to him or had him on my mind for quite a while, and he showed up out of the blue in a way that was miraculous. And that same thing happened with Nester of Sabchuk, a priest who was martyred in Russia. Murdered in Russia not too long ago in the nineties, he surfaced here in Woodway, Texas. His relics showed up

in my house. Right when I'm writing his story for updating it for Youth the Apocalypse, I get a piece of blood soak carpet from Russia. Like they're these Saints are are active, They're not not real. And this is the part that is, you know, Protestants struggle with to understand the cloud of witnesses. There's so much reluctance to let this family be a part of your family and

your life. And it's strange to me because it's so like you'll have Spider Man and you'll you know, you know, quote Spider Man as having wisdom, but when it comes to the Saints, you'll have posters of these you know, superheroes that are from comic books. Yes, but the Staints

who are active, they're actually alive. My godmother has a great story where she's in Greece and her this she's talking with this woman on a curb and her little four year four year old boy strolls into the street and gets run over by a delivery truck and the mom turns around and sees the truck hit her kid and yells out Saint Nicholas's name, and the truck pulls over.

The kid gets up and dusts himself off and goes over to his mom, and the mom's freaking out, and he explains that, oh, a guy named Saint Nicholas jumped on me in the monastery. We had this all the time, you know, Angels. There was a man in a shop working on our vehicle, and the car was running and it fell off the blocks and it drove into the man against a brick wall, and the man was perfectly fine. And he said a man ran out of nowhere and lifted the car off like this, stiffs all the time.

But we're so wrapped up in the earth and the world and our lives and our affairs and our distractions and our phones and our all this entertainment and binge watching and food and alcohol, all this stuff. We are so numbed out to it that we don't see it anymore.

that's ridiculous justin that. I was really tracking with you until and I and I could hear I mean, the skeptic in me and the skeptics that are that am visible to me, I can hear them saying, man, I was really tracking with that justin guy. I mean, but when he started talking about he saw saints and guardian angels, that's a little too fantastic for me. It's like we've lost connection to that. And I mean, some people say, oh, it's it's this Eastern Orthodoxy thing. This is where I

can't get down with it. But it's thoroughly biblical. It's all over the Bible.

to dead people? And he just so matter of factly, there are no dead Christmas.

that they could not wrap their heads around. Therefore they wanted to be busy, you know, doing something because it was so overwhelming. But in the icons, I have it right behind you. Here you see this Mendalora thing, this shape and this world dark and light behind them with blue behind Christ. And the icon is great at illustrating what we're talking about. There is absolutely a lot going on right now. And I think that the more that we are attuned to God through prayer and through virtue,

virtuous life, the more that it becomes normal. It doesn't have to be explained, it doesn't have to be you know, Western rationalism has kind of killed a lot of really cool stuff, including what we're talking about. And again, the world's longest journey man, it's got to go from the mind into the heart. And the more that we're there,

the more that all of this stuff makes sense. The more that God's providence, his economia, the way we were to meet, household management, the way he's managing all of this stuff, it all is grace filled and makes sense. The more that we're living in sin, it doesn't make sense. And so that's fine, you know.

and your friends show up. They showed up for you, and and and you start understanding I guess maybe not understanding, that's probably not the right word, but you start seeing miracles for what they are.

talked a lot about the baggage that certain words in our Western American Christian world have, especially amongst evangelicals, and I think especially post Reformation, the whole idea, because we're talking about practicing the virtues right well, I can hear somebody saying you're trying to earn your salvation justin when you're talking about how in order to to do this, in order to see God, you have to do these things to earn it. Practicing virtue, that's just code for

earning your salvation. And I think accompanying the baggage of sin is that false dichotomy that exists with you know, earning your salvation in this whether it's free or earned what versus working it out with fear and trembling. And I just I wanted to ask you how you feel about that concept and how you can turn it on its head.

I working out my relationship with you? Seriously? You know, obviously the right thing to do is to hug you. And whether you think that that's an action that I am choosing to do to save myself or not, it doesn't really matter. I think that if you put Christ at his example and his teachings to this test, everything he was doing was that everything he was doing. I don't understand the argument. I don't get it. I have to do I have to get up every day and I have to do my prayers, and I have to

be kind in order to follow Christ. Like that's just it has to be.

earlier when you said it never really made any sense to you that you say this prayer and it's done. It's this concept of heaven and hell as though it's a punctilier moment in your salvation, you prayed your prayer justin you're good hopefully you do a all right with the rest of your life. But no matter what happens, whenever I hear it, it's so jarring to my sensibilities when someone says, well, I'm just waiting for the rapture, then I'll go to heaven. And I've really started to

whether it's correct or not, I don't know. I'm not a theologian, but I've really started to try and wrap my hands around or my head around the idea of you know, we're saved, we're being saved, and we will be saved. Yeah, and I think saved to what. Well, when you talk about heaven and Hell, it's really just union with Christ or separation from Christ. And so in that process, as we're living out our lives and trying to strive for deeper and deeper union with Christ, forget

about whether you're going to heaven or hell. It's where you are. Heaven or Hell is where you've been. Once again, I'm not a theologian, So somebody could come in and heaven or Hell is where you've been, where you are and where you're going. It's not this thing that that happens often in the distance, and and and you know they got into my head recently because there was this online spar with you know, like I said, with people and they're, oh, you're going to go to Hell and

whatever the language. And I thought to myself, Well, if you're experiencing this degree of a lack of kindness, I'm not saying that you're going to hell for all eternity, but you're experiencing in that moment when we fall prey to the passions, I feel like we are in Hell, and when we experience the love of Christ and the virtues, we're in heaven. Is there anything that I said that's a heretical there?

and I made a huge mistake. I said no. And I really should not have done that, because I opened up a giant can of worms, and I knew that I was opening a can of worms, and it was this can of worms. You know, I firmly believe that that is one of the most destructive theological ideas that ever entered Christianity, is you call upon the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. And I know there's a Bible verse for that. There's also a Bible verse for there are many that called upon me and said Lord Lord,

and I did not know them. There's an implicit contradiction right there. And as you're saying, people should never, ever, ever, in my estimation, say somebody is going here or going there ever ever, it's none of their business. In fact, it's an egregious thing to do to put your feet in God's economia. That's that's a crazy assumption, to put your shoes in God's judgment seat and say things like this again, like you you alluded to what you were saying,

is that where am I right in this moment? It's not there in the past, it's not in the future. It's right now. Am I with Christ or not? Period? That's all that matters, And honestly, that's all that exists is right now. Yeah.

They all go back to that, and we miss the point when we do this. The panacea is Christ and is the sacramental life of the Church. And that's the reality that we most fear. That's why we fear confession. That's why we avoid it. That's why we try not to receive communion too much, because we're afraid of it. That's why we try not to say things that are personal to our friends too much, because we want to project what we are, not people to think something else

of us. We're afraid of ourselves. That's the reality that we are terrified the most of, in my opinion.

are suffering, tears for my children, tears of joy for Christ. Tears.