The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 133. Finding God ｜ Jonathan Pageau

00:00:00.000 For example, in the more mystical way of understanding Christianity, it's like, it's not about doing good things to go to heaven. It was never about that. And it was never about not being able to do enough good things in order to go to heaven. It's about becoming something, that you become heaven, you could say.

00:00:19.560 you're transformed into something that's free and that's going up the mountain or moving up

00:00:27.500 towards something higher so it's more about so so the idea that let's say you shouldn't lie

00:00:32.200 isn't about like well if i lie so many times and i'll have so many years in purgatory or whatever

00:00:37.680 it's about if you lie you are destroying yourself and you're destroying the world around you

00:00:44.180 Welcome to episode 133 of the Michaela Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. This is a very

00:00:54.100 special episode because Jonathan Pajot, a very cool individual, was kind enough to come on

00:00:59.280 and I got to talk about some topics that I've been incredibly interested in for a while. For

00:01:04.920 those of you who don't know, Jonathan is an artist, symbolic thinker, YouTuber, the editor

00:01:09.680 of the Orthodox Arts Journal and an expert icon carver of Eastern Orthodox icons. You might have

00:01:16.700 heard him on dad's podcast, talk about similar topics. We spoke about my experience finding God

00:01:23.080 this summer or God revealing himself to me, however you want to put that the three different

00:01:28.500 branches of Christianity, compassion and suffering, the meaning in narrative and how

00:01:34.980 narrative might be how reality works something i only recently started to believe something dad's

00:01:41.180 been talking about forever it's difficult to understand but i think i'm getting it a bit

00:01:46.080 we spoke about protestantism and the reformation hell purgatory and more i asked jonathan a whole

00:01:53.060 bunch of more religious questions because i'm still learning it was really interesting i got

00:01:58.860 kind of personal although i do do that from time to time if you enjoy this conversation please

00:02:04.260 subscribe, your support is greatly appreciated. Before we get started, this episode is brought

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00:03:23.220 i'm so excited about this talk my dad has been talking about you but he's he's here in nashville

00:03:32.360 with me right now we're shooting some courses every meeting we go to he tells somebody about

00:03:37.640 you that's that's seriously it's a little humbling i have to say but i i'm happy i i i think that you

00:03:45.040 know when i heard your dad on the radio in 2015 i just felt like there was such a connection between

00:03:52.740 the way we thought you know and and i think he felt the same even you know when we met the first

00:03:57.360 time and so yeah so it's like i'm i'm excited to support what he's doing you know the way that i

00:04:03.020 can so okay he said yesterday we're we went to a daily wire party and he was talking to ben shapiro

00:04:10.580 told ben shapiro about you said you guys should connect but um afterwards i said ben shapiro is

00:04:16.240 probably the smartest person i've met it's great like him in person his verbal fluency it's insane

00:04:22.440 and dad said uh yeah he's up there among you know the top three or four people i've met

00:04:28.540 but he said you were up there as well anyway so i'm supposed to call ben shapiro because i because

00:04:34.780 he sent me his number so we'll see how that goes it'll be interesting that should be really

00:04:38.760 interesting okay so i guess before we get started can you give a brief background about who you are

00:04:45.980 and what you do? And so I, so my name is Jonathan, I guess. I live near Montreal. I am an artist.

00:04:54.220 Let's say it's the easiest way to understand what I'm doing is that I guess I'm an artist. I make

00:04:59.120 art for churches, liturgical art. And so your dad likes to call me like an icon carver is

00:05:05.040 even a baser way to describe me. But I would say that in that practice, I also, with my brother

00:05:12.940 Mathieu, who we developed an expertise on symbolism or maybe a way of viewing the world,

00:05:19.200 a symbolic way of viewing the world, a way to recapture how the ancients perceived reality

00:05:25.660 and try to bridge that with the modern world in a modern scientific understanding, modern,

00:05:31.560 even evolutionary thinking and everything. So I think that at this moment now, I'm probably more

00:05:37.460 involved and more known for the second part, which is talking about symbolism, helping people

00:05:42.900 understand these old stories in a better way, how they connect to their lives and even how we can

00:05:48.260 understand politics or understand the craziness of our world today through these old stories and

00:05:54.000 through the symbolic thinking. Okay. So how did you get started down that road?

00:06:01.040 It's one of those things that's hard to describe. You know, in my twenties, I had a kind of

00:06:04.760 intellectual, spiritual, personal crisis, you could say. And I started to search and to read

00:06:11.060 and to learn and it happened in coordination with my brother who who also is really he wrote a book

00:06:16.780 on symbolism called the language of creation and uh we just rediscovered that i'd rediscovered the

00:06:23.200 church fathers my brother was reading kind of rabbinical commentary and then we started reading

00:06:28.680 uh i started looking at images and icons and connecting them to the bible stories and it just

00:06:33.540 developed on its own and then all of a sudden you realize that you found a pattern which you can

00:06:40.740 almost guess what's there. At some point, you can look through, let's say, a text for, let's say,

00:06:47.440 a religious service that you've never seen and not be at all surprised what you find because it just

00:06:51.720 basically reveals the same powerful pattern that you find in scripture, that you find in

00:06:57.940 architecture and everything. Okay. We should delve into that, what that pattern is. Yeah,

00:07:04.320 actually, let's just start there. I don't know if you're going to be able to describe that,

00:07:08.520 but what's the pattern that you found? Um, and so the best way to, maybe the best way to

00:07:15.120 understand it is that, um, is the way that Jordan explains it. I think Jordan has a great way of

00:07:21.480 explaining, which is similar to mine. And it's very easy to understand it that way, which is that

00:07:26.380 the world presents itself to you as too much, but the world is, is, is full of stuff and there's

00:07:32.480 too much stuff and everything that you perceive has an indefinite amount of detail. And that

00:07:37.160 detail has, you know, it's like it's infinite detail all the way down. Right. And so despite

00:07:42.600 that, for some reason, we're able to perceive unities in our experience. Right. I'm able to

00:07:48.660 say that's an apple, but an apple is not one thing. Right. An apple is a million things. An apple is

00:07:53.680 millions and millions of things, but I'm somehow able to perceive it as one thing. And so but I'm

00:07:59.020 also able to perceive parts of things and the unity of things at the same time. We kind of move

00:08:04.200 between the two, right? I can look at a car and I could say, that's a car, but I could also realize,

00:08:08.980 well, that's the wheel of a car. That's this part, you know, that's the paint that's this.

00:08:12.500 So I can see parts and holes at the same time. So the question is, first of all, how is that

00:08:17.760 possible? And what does that mean? And so we have something, we have a capacity to compress

00:08:24.440 reality into unities. So that happens in space. It happens with objects, but it also happens in time,

00:08:32.040 right because time also presents itself to us as an infinite amount like think about all the

00:08:37.540 things that are happening around you right now at this moment right there are millions of things

00:08:42.280 happening but you somehow are able to focus your attention and then you're also capable of stringing

00:08:49.320 together elements to create a story to create a connection between different aspects of what's

00:08:57.780 going on. And so that's not arbitrary. That has a pattern. So there's a way in which we are able

00:09:04.680 to recognize that certain events go together, and we can recount them as going together. And like I

00:09:13.160 said, it's not arbitrary. So once you start to see it, you realize that, for example, in the Bible,

00:09:19.000 in Genesis, what it's describing, as it's describing the creation of the world, is something

00:09:24.040 like that. It's something which is helping you experience and delve into the way in which

00:09:30.720 identities exist. And that takes, it takes all kinds of forms in different spheres. But let's

00:09:38.840 say in a story, it's usually just like a story has a basic pattern, usually, which is something

00:09:44.280 like you have a beginning point, you have a problem, and then you have a resolution. That's

00:09:50.300 basically every single story is something like that. And then you can play with that, right?

00:09:54.460 You could fail to have a resolution or you could, you could kind of play with it, but that's the

00:09:58.220 basic pattern. And so you can realize that that's what even, even like when you're telling that your

00:10:03.560 date to your spouse or to your friend, that's what you're doing. You're saying, here's the start of

00:10:08.280 the day. Here's a bunch of stuff that happened. And then I came back home the end, right? Or you

00:10:14.160 can make it smaller, but that's usually the way that pretty much every single story we tell has

00:10:19.040 that pattern okay so let me see so what does that mean like yeah why does that matter what is it

00:10:27.720 like why does it matter all right so the reason why it matters is that you realize that the way

00:10:31.620 in which we interact with each other is also like that so the way that i interact the way that we

00:10:36.420 interact like if i interact with you that there is a pattern to that it's not arbitrary i can't

00:10:42.800 just say anything and i can't just do anything there are certain things which bind our interactions

00:10:48.620 and that's true of a conversation it's true let's say let's say of a family meal right a family meal

00:10:55.980 has a pattern it doesn't it can't go anyway if you if you do something crazy at the the dinner

00:11:02.040 table you'll ruin dinner right if you throw your fork on the floor you ruin dinner there's a million

00:11:06.500 things you can do to ruin dinner but we don't we're able to to participate almost like a dance

00:11:11.740 in this pattern and that scales up so you can imagine like you have these patterns your

00:11:19.520 interactions with people have these patterns your family dinner your community but that goes all the

00:11:25.740 way up to something that which would look like religious rituals it is that religious rituals

00:11:30.940 once you see that the world works that way the idea of religion doesn't become it's not silly

00:11:36.900 anymore not only is it not silly it's inevitable you realize that the world actually lays itself

00:11:42.940 out through rituals and patterns and symbols and stories and there's no way out of it and that

00:11:48.800 scales up to something which would look like let's say for christians would look like the mass or the

00:11:53.840 liturgy where we have a pattern of interaction where we all sing together we all look towards

00:12:00.000 something which is beyond us to unite us together there's all this movement these movements that we

00:12:04.560 do that are not in any way superstitious or arbitrary, but they're completely coherent.

00:12:11.120 And they are the highest image of you putting on your socks in the morning, right?

00:12:17.060 Anything you do is pattern.

00:12:19.620 Everything you do is a play between a pattern and let's say the potential, the moment in

00:12:25.760 which you're playing.

00:12:26.700 Like if you're brushing your hair, you don't brush your hair in any way.

00:12:30.220 You have to brush your hair in a certain way.

00:12:31.940 And there's variability, but you can't, if you, if you brush your hair with a, with a knife, it's not going to work. You're going to break the pattern. So you have to, so you realize that the world is ritualized and patterned. And then what it helps us, at least I think it helps us reconnect to a bunch of stuff that people have tossed out and have told us is meaningless and stupid and superstitious.

00:12:55.260 and it can help us, it can help us reconnect to those things in a, I think in a, maybe a little

00:13:00.880 more, more conscious way, but a way that can help solve the problem of meaninglessness and

00:13:07.580 disenchantment and nihilism that is around us. Okay. So I'm going to come back to that. I'm

00:13:17.880 going to have to sit on that for a bit. I think I've, I had a weird experience. I had a crazy

00:13:21.820 experience this summer where that's what i hear yeah yeah and so that's why we're talking is i

00:13:29.560 got criticized because i said i found god and apparently you're not supposed to say that

00:13:33.380 but who said you're not supposed to say i don't know people on the internet yeah don't pay

00:13:38.620 attention to the youtube comments uh but i think so you're talking about so i think what did it for

00:13:47.880 me was there were too many I'm very I'd like to think of myself as like logical very logical so

00:13:54.280 I've tried to put the world into I've tried to understand the world through science and facts and

00:14:01.520 kind of devoid of intuition and I think I learned that from my dad and it took me a while to build

00:14:08.440 back the intuition side and to actually take that seriously because I thought well if you can't

00:14:13.220 figure it out in your head, then it's not real, which is completely overestimating your ability

00:14:19.260 to figure things out. Uh, but I think this, I think part of what did it for me this summer was

00:14:24.600 that things that was this pattern that you're talking about. Right. And I kind of tuned into

00:14:33.180 it. Like there, well, you know, what's been going on with my family. It's been completely absurd,

00:14:37.840 but there've been things that have happened that are just too weird to explain any other way.

00:14:42.600 like when my mom when mom was sick she it was like being in a movie like my entire life has

00:14:49.400 been being like being in a movie which i you could say is like being in a story but when my mom got

00:14:54.220 sick she knew the day she was going to get better and it was like well that's not yeah you can

00:15:00.980 literally can't explain that nobody could explain it none of the doctors could explain it and it was

00:15:05.580 mom and dad's anniversary and so everybody in my family was just kind of like huh well put that in

00:15:12.540 pile of things we just cannot understand at all so that that occurrence has just been like i've

00:15:19.500 just been thinking about that just being like how do i understand that in a logical way and then

00:15:24.420 when my dad got sick so he he was reacting to the medications he was put on terribly

00:15:30.180 in that was january i thought this is going to be awful i had this weird feeling like this is

00:15:37.560 going to be absolutely awful absolutely awful for two years right and i was like i can run away

00:15:45.480 because i was considering moving i was like i could just this is really difficult we didn't

00:15:50.320 know what to do this is really bad i was like i could just run away or it's going to take two

00:15:55.140 years and it's just going to be like crippling and i was like okay i can do that it's just two

00:16:00.320 years right out of a lifetime we can do two years and then it was like spot on where things were

00:16:06.940 really awful. And then everything just fixed themselves. And so those two things happened.

00:16:12.680 And then there was just too many things like that that happened that felt like I've been,

00:16:16.960 I don't know, living in a story. And so I don't know if that like aligns with anything you said,

00:16:25.160 because I'm having a difficult time exactly understanding what you mean, but does that

00:16:30.760 make sense at all? No, it makes sense. I think that I think that most people have these moments

00:16:36.620 and it's true that it often happens you can understand that that this pattern of reality

00:16:42.920 it's it's it's it's actually reasonable but it always points towards something which is a little

00:16:48.000 bit beyond itself like beyond reason you could say so often we have these crazy experiences we

00:16:53.420 could call the miracles or we could call them yeah that reveal to us something which is a little

00:16:58.460 which is beyond what's going on in everyday life like it's it seems to kind of connect everything

00:17:04.400 together in a way that is very difficult to fully account for uh at the lower level uh and i think

00:17:12.720 i really believe that this is just this is just how the world works like this is not a this is

00:17:18.120 really how reality works like reality is made with meaning like you could say that a good way to

00:17:23.180 understand is that god really does fill up the world and there are moments where we can have

00:17:28.020 these, these things just completely come together. And you, you, you have a sense that not only a

00:17:34.720 sense, but it's like a, your whole being is carried up, let's say for a moment. And it doesn't always

00:17:39.580 last very long. You know, some people last longer, you know, thank goodness for them. But for most

00:17:44.580 of us, it's like a moment where you feel carried up and you're like, okay, I can't deny that. Like

00:17:49.500 I can't deny what's happened. Um, and so what is it that, what was your experience of saying that

00:17:55.280 you found God? Like what, like, how did it, how did it like, so you, you talked about your mom

00:18:01.860 and everything, but in your life, like, what did that mean? Like, what did that mean in terms of

00:18:04.940 experience? Well, so that happened with my mom and then, um, she started practicing Catholicism.

00:18:11.620 Right. And I thought that was very strange because she got really into it really quickly,

00:18:17.900 right. From not being into it at all. Kind of, you know, she's always had a little bit,

00:18:22.300 she wanted us to go to church a bit, but it was never really part of our family life.

00:18:25.700 It was like, okay, mom's part of a cult. And it looked like that from the outside. It did.

00:18:32.040 Even dad was little, it wasn't just Catholicism. It was some people she was around and we were

00:18:37.340 like, this looks like a cult, but, but, but she also started become, she became a lot more

00:18:44.900 empathetic and a lot more patient and it was noticeable. And so I was talking to her about it

00:18:52.000 just like how did you get there he's like oh well i you know god like okay i don't understand that

00:18:58.300 what that means uh and so it's been about about a year of me being open to the idea but not

00:19:06.900 understanding what that meant or what that felt like uh and then in august dad was dad was really

00:19:15.320 sick in august and it was really scary and too many bad things were happening at the same time

00:19:20.420 it was like if things could go wrong they were going wrong in every area you know it's like this

00:19:27.740 is way too much this is like this doesn't make sense it's there's too much bad luck happening

00:19:36.160 at the same time yeah so um there was that i was navigating a divorce which was bad but it was

00:19:45.660 everything else was so much worse that that was not even the bad part of my life so that so it's

00:19:52.320 just been brutal for a couple of years and and um i went away for like a week um when dad was a bit

00:20:01.000 he was a bit stable um but i needed to just have a bit of time and i went away and i met somebody who

00:20:08.660 was like how are you doing and i was because i had talked a bit about what i was going through

00:20:15.340 about my parents being sick and like my job and the media and dad and divorce and everything.

00:20:22.420 And he was like, how are you holding up? And I was like, oh, I'm not holding up. Like I'm not

00:20:27.640 holding up. I'm not depressed, but I'm not holding up. Things are awful, right? Like I'm crying every

00:20:33.340 day, but it's not depression. It's just, things are really bad. And he was like, well, you need

00:20:39.660 God. And I was like, okay, that's great. That sounds fantastic. What do I do? And he said,

00:20:45.820 just, so this, I don't even know how, why this happened exactly, but he just said,

00:20:50.420 um, ask him to reveal himself to you. And I was like, okay, yeah, I'll do that. So I went home

00:20:58.100 and was like begged because I was in rough shape. I got to the point this summer where things were

00:21:03.040 so bad and I couldn't do anything to, to solve them. And I was like, what do I do now? If I've

00:21:08.420 tried every route, like every way possible to solve some of these problems. And there's nothing

00:21:14.360 else I can do. What do I do? And that's when I started praying. So I had to get to that point

00:21:19.760 and it took a while. Um, but anyway, so I went home and so I was praying and the next day,

00:21:26.260 like a bunch of the, all of the major issues that I had switched directions. So they didn't just go

00:21:33.820 away but things that I wanted to happen and I could see happening but weren't happening just

00:21:39.480 all happened the same day and I was that was like that was it I was like okay

00:21:45.060 so that was wild and then well I've been reading the bible and just trying to learn what I can

00:21:52.980 um I had some other I had some other strange experiences but that's part of the reason I

00:21:59.400 had I'm having you on because this is pretty new even though dad is my dad like he comes through

00:22:03.560 this from a psychological perspective and a meaning perspective and whatever i'm experiencing

00:22:10.720 now isn't exactly what he's taught me growing up i think yeah um but it's it's related in a way

00:22:19.300 like it's related in the sense that you know i mean jordan talks about the idea of going down

00:22:27.080 into the the whale like pinocchio going down or the father kind of going down the father but you

00:22:32.860 don't necessarily have to understand it exactly in the sense of the death of the father but you

00:22:37.040 can understand it as a world that is an old world that's crumbling let's say there's something that

00:22:42.900 all these things that are kind of crumbling and then there's a sense in which when that in the

00:22:48.820 idea you you you hear this about let's say alcoholic right it's like you hit rock bottom

00:22:52.840 right you've heard that that expression but that doesn't necessarily it's not something that

00:22:57.040 happens just with addiction something that can happen in many ways but is it when we descend

00:23:02.240 and things start to break down it's very painful but then what happens at the bottom is you get

00:23:08.880 you get something like an inkling of a new world or something like a light that appears in the in

00:23:16.200 the cavern and you know and sometimes it can this is people are gonna especially scientifically

00:23:23.700 minded people will find this weird but sometimes the way that you describe it is exactly right

00:23:29.040 Which is that, you know, things, everything is going wrong.

00:23:31.900 And then all of a sudden they realign.

00:23:33.860 Yeah.

00:23:34.700 Realign, right.

00:23:35.400 The idea of finding meaning, but it's not finding meaning.

00:23:37.720 Isn't just a subjective thing that is meaning reveals itself to you.

00:23:41.260 Like things snap and then it gives you a direction.

00:23:45.400 Now, I mean, obviously this is within August.

00:23:48.680 So obviously it's important to understand that that won't necessarily last like that experience.

00:23:54.660 You know, it's there to show you what's possible in your life.

00:23:58.480 And then later on, you're going to have a lot of problems and it's going to, it's going to happen again. Like it's, even if you found God and you, let's say you kind of enter on that path where you pray and you kind of try to transform your life. I mean, it doesn't mean that it's all going to be aligned that way all the time. It's more like a, it's almost like an inkling of what's possible is shown to you.

00:24:18.420 So you can, like a, like a glimmer to say like, oh, okay, this is it.

00:24:23.120 Like I need to move in this direction.

00:24:25.240 But then there's a lot more pain, you know, along the way.

00:24:28.480 Nonetheless.

00:24:29.860 I actually, when I, so I'm on this like meat diet, right.

00:24:34.240 When I, in 2015, when I went off of my medication and put myself into remission and got better,

00:24:43.480 that was the first time I didn't associate it with God,

00:24:46.160 but that was the first time when i could feel like i i felt for my entire life that

00:24:51.000 i just was the embodiment of bad luck somehow i was like why is it that everything i do

00:24:57.520 i have to do four times in order for it to kind of succeed it was ridiculous and even my parents

00:25:04.500 commented on it they're just like things work out for julian but everything you do whatever could

00:25:10.300 go wrong goes wrong and so i just lived my life like that it was just like it was awful it

00:25:16.080 kind of got used to it. You never get used to that. It's still frustrating. Um, and then I,

00:25:20.300 I got better and I had that shift where it was just like my world flipped upside down and I

00:25:25.740 associated with health. I was just like, is this what it feels like to be healthy? But it was a

00:25:30.220 really physical feeling of going in the wrong direction and then having things switch and

00:25:36.580 things were just working out. I was on time all the time. Like if I missed an assignment,

00:25:41.740 there'd be a delay and when it was due it was things that didn't make sense right and so that

00:25:47.000 was the first time i experienced that and then i went off of my antidepressants those were the

00:25:53.300 last things i stopped taking and i lost that and then everything was awful again for a number of

00:25:59.540 years and i just had these like so i it's been confusing because i've been able to like logic

00:26:04.500 i've been able to think about it in a logical way where i've been like well this is what happened

00:26:09.140 and that's why i had those feelings so like i went off of the ssris and i had ssri withdrawal and

00:26:14.940 so i was depressed and not being depressed is when i'm in this like alignment but then it's

00:26:21.840 just gotten too weird and i haven't been depressed for so long but i've still had these feelings of

00:26:26.100 being in alignment or whatever that means or going in the wrong direction and so now now i'm a

00:26:32.360 christian so are you are you involved in a community of some kind like are you going to

00:26:37.740 we're starting to so we've been to a couple of churches uh i haven't found one that

00:26:44.860 clicked like the the thing that clicked so dad came to visit he's still here he's in nashville

00:26:51.700 and last sunday we went to it was actually it was a gospel kind of group of people so they were

00:26:58.580 singing in one of the bars on broadway so that's what we did sunday but that made me cry like they

00:27:06.520 They'd sing a song and then they'd talk a little bit.

00:27:09.540 Then they'd sing a song and talk a little bit.

00:27:11.340 So there was something there, like something there that really spoke to me.

00:27:16.680 So we're just hopping around trying to find a place.

00:27:20.400 Mostly what I've been doing is praying and reading the Bible.

00:27:24.780 Yeah.

00:27:26.060 Wow.

00:27:26.660 I mean, I think I can see in your eyes just how kind of confused and wide-eyed you are,

00:27:33.500 which is, which is actually pretty wonderful to, to, to, to see that, uh, you know, I think that

00:27:39.200 you'd, how can I say this? Like, there is also a sense in which the, how can I say this? It's

00:27:47.260 like, at least what you're describing, you seem to have these extremes, you know? And I think,

00:27:53.020 yeah, Jordan has, has a little bit of that too. It's like the, and so you have to be a little,

00:28:00.480 So, I mean, you definitely have to be a little careful because it's almost like, imagine someone who's manic depressive, like someone who has a bipolar, you know, someone who's bipolar.

00:28:11.460 But it's not necessarily, there's other types of bipolarity that aren't just psychological.

00:28:16.020 That is, there are people whose lives are bipolar, you could say.

00:28:19.700 You can see, and so if you're attentive to that, you can maybe also try to moderate it a bit and also try not to ride the, when you're up and you're aligned,

00:28:29.760 try to be careful not to write it too high because that's not that's also that's all it's also not

00:28:36.120 necessarily the best way to go if if that makes sense to you because because that leads to another

00:28:43.720 down i don't know if you i i don't know how else to explain it to you that's going to be harder to

00:28:49.780 for me to explain which is does it have to lead to another down no it doesn't feel like it's going

00:28:55.060 to have to another down i think i think the best thing to do is to i mean the best thing is to try

00:28:59.500 to moderate the experience like moderate your direction you could say um but i don't like it's

00:29:06.580 it's hard to explain because it's very existential um but it's like if you if you if you get that

00:29:12.300 alignment and you start to write it and you become and everything's perfect and you become

00:29:17.240 you can imagine it this way like everything's perfect and everything's going well and it's like

00:29:20.480 yeah a good way a good christian way to explain it would be that then you forget to pray like

00:29:27.040 that would be a good way to a christian way to to explain it is that you you get that alignment and

00:29:32.760 then you start going up the hill and it's like everything's good and everything fine and

00:29:36.660 everything's working and it feels like you're on top of the world um and then you forget to pray

00:29:41.540 because you pray when you're at the bottom because because you're suffering because that's why you

00:29:47.580 pray when you're down there and so it's like when you're going up then you stop praying because

00:29:51.600 you're going up uh and that's the danger so the idea so you could say something like moderating

00:29:57.860 the experience with with prayer and worship is is part of it where you're you give up you you're

00:30:06.420 giving up your success at what you're doing up to something above you so that it doesn't so that

00:30:13.200 it doesn't carry you too high okay i think and i don't want to like be boastful or anything but i

00:30:21.200 I'm hoping that I've been walloped enough times that when things are when things are good, I don't get used to that.

00:30:30.380 It's shocking. Like this is completely different than anything I've experienced.

00:30:35.000 And there's no way that this was me. Right.

00:30:39.380 So I think I'm hoping I can stay like humble during those experiences because because and I think maybe well,

00:30:48.160 I think that's also partly what brought me to where I am now,

00:30:52.360 because the good experiences were also totally unbelievable. Yeah.

00:30:56.400 Whereas like things can be so bad. It doesn't make sense,

00:30:58.660 but they're also so good that it didn't make sense too. So that's not me.

00:31:03.360 Well, I think it actually is you. It seems that that's actually you,

00:31:06.820 like you seem to at least the way you're describing to me,

00:31:09.400 you seem to attract extremes. And so it's, it's bound to, if you extract the,

00:31:14.820 if you attract the extreme in one direction there's a there's a high chance that you'll

00:31:19.940 attract it in the other direction too you know um and so that's why i guess that's why i said just

00:31:25.680 to be careful but i think it's i think it's wonderful i mean i think it's great that that

00:31:31.040 you that you had that experience and that you're also acting on it right uh because you could have

00:31:37.320 just left it and said oh okay here's this experience and then move on with your life

00:31:42.400 no yeah no it was like to do that there's no way yeah okay so are you able to talk about it with

00:31:50.500 with your family yeah i mean i talked about it like i said when the first time when i i thought

00:31:57.260 felt things aligned i associated it with a switch in health and that is part of why i was feeling

00:32:02.700 better but it it was like on another level uh and i talked to my family about it and then when i

00:32:08.320 there's some other weird things that have happened when i went but that i've also been able to say

00:32:14.640 well maybe it was because of this so when i um went off of ssris i had ssri withdrawal and i

00:32:21.240 got sensitive to light and sound and like touch and um and carbs so like sugars and chemicals it

00:32:31.040 was awful and it lasted for about two and a half years really intensely but the first time i had a

00:32:37.240 severe reaction. I talked about this on Rogan. I was like, I had a whole bunch of soy and my body

00:32:42.180 was really unhappy with it. And I got itchy. My digestion was upset and I got arthritis. I got

00:32:48.140 mouth ulcers. Like my whole body was very, very angry. My skin broke out. And two and a half days

00:32:54.360 later, I hallucinated a demon on my brother. And I was like, okay, you know, that happened. I was

00:33:03.600 like, okay, that, that looked real. It was like one and a half seconds long. So it wasn't just

00:33:07.960 a flash. It was like, I looked, it looked at me and then looked away. And I tried not to have a

00:33:14.720 panic attack and was like, okay, I've gone off of my medications and now I'm crazy. Like, great.

00:33:21.460 That's, that's the most logical explanation here. But I was like, no, it seems to coincide with this

00:33:26.460 soy reintroduction. It's some sort of inflammatory response, like whatever. But I had similar

00:33:32.600 experiences with like faces really terrifying like teeth faces off and on for about a year

00:33:40.000 every time i tried to reintroduce a food that my body didn't like i'd have a like full-blown

00:33:44.660 autoimmune response and i'd start seeing these like demon faces but i just thought okay that's

00:33:50.980 the representation of what people are most scared of like a predator and so when i'm having these

00:33:56.420 depressive reactions which are an autoimmune response and my body starts panicking then it's

00:34:02.140 putting something there that's scary to kind of justify how i'm feeling yeah so that that's what

00:34:08.700 i thought but then after you know that happens 10 times and then a whole bunch of other weird

00:34:13.220 things happen at some point you're like well are they demons maybe like i don't know what's going

00:34:20.300 on so i mean okay so i don't know jonathan i don't know what's real anymore let me mess with

00:34:27.160 you a little more if you don't mind with your mind a little bit so the the mechanical cause

00:34:33.100 cause of these things that is like you say i took this food i i you know i had this thing

00:34:40.260 somebody could be like i i didn't sleep enough or yeah whatever like the mechanical causes doesn't

00:34:46.660 doesn't uh take away from the meaning of the experience right and so you saw like you said

00:34:56.180 you saw a demon and so there is a maybe a mechanical cause for the reason why you see a

00:35:01.880 demon but the demon you see you recognize it as a demon but you didn't see a flower you didn't see

00:35:09.900 a watermelon you saw a demon and so that's a real thing right the type of image that we associate

00:35:17.640 with demons are real they they're objective you they're not uh they're not arbitrary and they have

00:35:24.820 to do, like you said, with monstrosity, they have to do with evil intention, they have to do with

00:35:31.220 all these things. Now, what I would say to you is, of course, you have to be careful not to let

00:35:39.160 yourself get sucked into that. Because even if you read saints, or if you read ascetics, or if

00:35:46.040 you read kind of holy people, right, they'll tell you not to be seduced, let's say, by these kind

00:35:51.600 demonic apparitions but it doesn't mean that they're that they're just yeah when anybody tells

00:35:57.120 you like it's just a hallucination yeah that these are those are meaningless words because the the

00:36:03.720 just what is this just you see something and it has meaning and so you have to be able to engage

00:36:10.480 it that way and then deal with it that way you know and so um and it's the same with all the

00:36:16.720 other things you happen happen to you like let's say you start to see positive things happen to you

00:36:21.020 And so you say, well, I can explain the causality of all the positive things happening to me. But you're still able to see and experience and participate in these positive things that are happening to you. And that's objectively taking you out of your rut, let's say.

00:36:35.680 And so the idea that, let's say, the idea that these meaningful things happen to you, that something comes from heaven is a good way to say it.

00:36:44.700 Like there's something coming down to you from heaven doesn't at all contradict the, it has nothing to do with the mechanical causalities.

00:36:55.220 I don't know if, it's hard to explain it this way.

00:36:57.380 It's like, so let's say you see these demons, right?

00:37:04.980 so you see these demons what what could seeing these demons do to you

00:37:10.260 well it could make it scare you stop you're terrified terrifying it was terrifying and it

00:37:18.840 stopped me from you i don't even i don't even know what the purpose of that was like

00:37:25.960 i have no idea scaring you scaring you is is is enough how can i say that scaring you is enough

00:37:34.640 because you you see what's you see what's possible let's say that is that is you could

00:37:42.200 become that and you probably know that that that or the people the world around you could become

00:37:49.360 that what you're seeing in that hallucination the world could become that it's a it's you know it's

00:37:56.700 an imagistic version of something which is which exists like you said this this this evil that's

00:38:02.640 in you that's in others that's around us you perceive it it's it's a real thing and so the

00:38:08.540 idea that it would scare you is enough scary enough to say i don't want that i this this

00:38:17.960 sounds like the dumbest thing that someone could say but it's it's it's if you if you take just a

00:38:23.480 moment to understand it you'll see that it's actually quite uh it's it's actually quite

00:38:27.960 meaningful to say i don't want that and and and to start to to make little movements little

00:38:34.640 gestures towards prayer you could say so that you so that you can be realigned

00:38:42.060 i don't know if that makes sense it's hard to talk about stuff in a way especially for like

00:38:47.540 more scientifically minded people to understand but i try no this is good this is good i can see

00:38:54.040 you and my dad are talking because he's more scientifically minded,

00:38:57.300 but you're not as far over to whatever the other side is as some people are.

00:39:04.920 Well, I tried to bridge, I tried to bridge the story world and,

00:39:08.660 and a more something which is compatible with psychology,

00:39:11.580 compatible with a lot of the way people think today. But like when someone,

00:39:16.500 like if someone tells you like a very kind of literalist,

00:39:20.760 uneducated person tells you like don't do that you'll go to hell they're they're usually telling

00:39:27.040 the truth right it's usually true that if you engage in certain it depends sometimes they can

00:39:33.720 get they can get it wrong in the detail but there are things you can do and there are ways you can

00:39:38.500 be and there are ways you can engage with others that will tend you towards hell you could say

00:39:45.760 where you will have worse experiences um and then there are ways to be and ways to engage with

00:39:52.560 others which will bring you up um and so not everybody is a not everybody has those experiences

00:39:59.740 more immediately the way that you had which is like seeing demons and then seeing miracles like

00:40:07.060 a lot of people don't have those experiences you know but they're possible they're definitely

00:40:10.640 possible and they feed the imagistic world they feed right the stuff the thing you saw when you

00:40:17.660 saw someone like when you saw a demon appear let's say that's i mean that's what horror movies are

00:40:23.160 made of they're made of those experiences people have those experiences they're real they're and

00:40:27.960 then they make stories out of them but yeah so i wouldn't be too freaked out about it because

00:40:34.200 there are some people that are more sensitive to these kinds of experiences

00:40:37.820 um but it usually means that you might be more sensitive to the higher experiences too like you

00:40:44.380 might have more let's say elated experiences uh ahead of you possibly that seems that seems to

00:40:53.920 be true hopefully more than the demon experiences those are unpleasant so why if there are ways you

00:41:00.880 can act in order to align yourself properly i guess we could speak like that something like that

00:41:06.540 why would those kind of bad experiences like in a more hellish version of life exist for children

00:41:14.040 if they're like what what's with that yeah what i'm going to say is going to be uh

00:41:21.640 it's hard because i don't want to diminish suffering uh but

00:41:26.820 so let's take you because i'm talking to you that i could say i could tell you

00:41:36.820 that without that you wouldn't have had that it's that experience

00:41:42.860 so it just takes time it's just that suffering is

00:41:50.340 suffering is can become uh for some if you're able to align it like if you're able to embody

00:42:01.520 it properly suffering can become an opportunity for transformation and an opportunity for something

00:42:08.180 which is uh higher you could say and so that's why that's actually one of the differences between

00:42:15.680 the way christians tend to see disability or or suffering uh compared to some other traditions

00:42:24.420 which is that we there's a story you know where christ heals a blind person and um people ask him

00:42:32.620 like why is he blind is it because his parents sinned is it because he sinned like yeah what

00:42:36.880 evil happened so that this person be blind and christ heals him but his answer is even more

00:42:42.620 important he says no this person is blind to show the glory of god that is that there's something

00:42:52.500 about suffering that it can be transformed into into something greater um you know and i think

00:43:00.680 like i remember uh i remember jordan having an intuition of that once when we were in montreal

00:43:08.100 all and we were going to see the uh the totem pole uh that was uh put up by his his uh his brother

00:43:15.400 you know and uh and he he said that that he had suffered quite a bit and that that suffering had

00:43:23.040 been refined into gold and that's what his art was basically and so i was like jordan was charles

00:43:29.660 said that jordan said that about charles wow yeah he said he said his suffering he suffered a lot

00:43:37.280 like you've really suffered but that that suffering has been kind of transformed into

00:43:42.820 beauty transformed into something that is higher and so not everybody's an artist but you can you

00:43:50.420 can see um wait if you met people that have suffered a lot and i'm someone who actually

00:43:58.940 hasn't suffered much but like if you meet people that have suffered a lot and they have um suffered

00:44:06.320 well i don't know how else to say it or suffered in a way that is like a yes i don't know how like

00:44:14.480 a they tend to have a specific magic about them which is hard to describe right they tend to have

00:44:21.680 a kind of glory a kind of a kind of uh something about them which is hard to which which transcends

00:44:31.640 the normal world. And so I think that that's, you know, it's not that God causes suffering,

00:44:39.420 is that suffering, you know, the Christian way to describe it, that suffering is part and parcel

00:44:47.100 of the world of the fall, right? And that in the world of the fall, suffering is the thing we need

00:44:54.600 to deal with but that god is able to transform suffering into something else and that's what

00:45:02.240 that's what the cross is like that's what jesus on the cross means that that it's god transforming

00:45:07.740 suffering into something which is more um so but it's hard to talk about because it's like i don't

00:45:14.720 i don't want people to think that i'm trying to to delegitimize suffering or i'm trying to diminish

00:45:20.620 this type of suffering that people live but i think that i at least in my experience when i

00:45:25.260 met people that have suffered and have endured or transcended they are way more um than people that

00:45:37.200 haven't i would say also if like i've suffered quite a bit and i think the only way this was

00:45:46.780 before any type of christianity how i kind of figured it out and i thought the only way that

00:45:53.680 that could be worth it whatever worth it means um would be if other people don't have to experience

00:45:59.700 it right if if i just quantified it and i could help other people not experience that then it

00:46:06.120 would even out it'd be like whatever that meant and so that that's how i kind of figured it out

00:46:11.660 yeah that's that's a great way to understand it and you can see it like at many many levels where

00:46:18.020 you know like who's the person helping out alcoholics the most it's always an ex-alcoholic

00:46:25.160 right who's the person helping uh you know abuse victims who's the person helping people who

00:46:30.680 suffer it's usually someone who has suffered and so there's a way you can see that like it really

00:46:36.540 is this image of, of transforming suffering into blessing, transforming suffering into something

00:46:41.700 else, uh, which is actually manifesting the, the compassion, uh, God's compassion in the world

00:46:48.120 through, through us. Right. Uh, we always think that we always ask ourselves, like, why is God

00:46:53.500 doing this? Or why is God not doing this? And the answer is we are the body. Like we are the body

00:46:59.000 of the of the the divine in the world we are the hands and feet and the of god and so it's through

00:47:06.740 us that those things happen so that's that's i think that that's that's the best way to see it

00:47:12.880 why do you think these and i don't know if anybody can actually answer these questions

00:47:18.800 but why is it that some people can i guess like come to god so easily compared to other people

00:47:27.160 like I feel like I had to see some crazy things before I was like okay that makes sense

00:47:33.780 but some people are just like no I've believed it since I was a kid and I know you can grow up in

00:47:39.060 families that believe but not everybody in a family that believes grows up and believes

00:47:43.800 but why do you think it some people are just like yep no it makes sense and other people are like

00:47:49.720 there's you just don't get it at all I don't know I don't know how to I didn't totally answer that

00:47:56.540 question you know uh like i i think i mean i think there are probably a whole host of reasons like a

00:48:03.300 whole host of uh and so especially it's it's i think that it's mostly true that what you're

00:48:13.040 saying is mostly true now like it's you know it's not i don't think it would have been so true in a

00:48:17.540 world where most people were christian this is it's kind of weirdly true in a world that's very

00:48:22.940 atheistic and kind of very secular where people uh somehow think that they're living outside of

00:48:31.660 this pattern that we described and but they're wrong right and they think that they're living

00:48:36.020 outside of it uh in a more normal world people would always know that they're kind of inside this

00:48:41.120 giant let's say pattern that's moving up towards the infinite but but for us we tend to be think

00:48:47.180 that we can live outside it and so so i think that it all it is also like a a manifest it's it's

00:48:54.980 has something to do with the modern world it has something to do with our kind of secular world

00:48:58.500 where but i think that world is ending really yeah by the way i think so too yeah yeah like

00:49:07.500 we're on a cusp of uh of like major transformations in terms of how the religious is pouring back into

00:49:14.220 reality. And, uh, yeah. And it's, it's, it's, I, it's something that it's something that I

00:49:21.340 intuited a while ago. And, and, and to be honest, like I, I intuited that your dad was going to

00:49:28.320 participate in that. And so despite himself, despite not being a particularly religious

00:49:33.400 person himself, like it's pretty much playing itself out. Uh, but it's also playing itself

00:49:38.840 out for ill. Like it's not only for good. There's a lot of the religious things, uh,

00:49:43.380 seeping back in that are pretty dark um and so you can see like in the in a lot of the covid stuff

00:49:49.340 there's a lot of religious religiosity in the way that people deal with with covid in the way that

00:49:56.300 people deal with woke culture it's becoming more and more religious in its instantiations and so

00:50:02.600 uh so it's so i i would say like re-enchantment is kind of happening for the for the dark and the

00:50:08.980 and the light part of it um hopefully we can participate in the light part of it

00:50:13.420 yeah wow that's wild i think you're right though i mean if you intuited that like around you

00:50:22.440 notice that all of a sudden people all these people are suddenly people who never could have

00:50:27.640 even thought about god or religion or prayer and all of a sudden it's like it's all of a sudden

00:50:34.740 it's possible. Like the things that I'm telling you 10 years ago, no one would have even understood

00:50:41.040 what I was talking about. A lot of the stuff that we're now able to talk about, it just would have

00:50:47.420 been complete gibberish to the Dawkins type 10 years ago. And so now all of a sudden this whole

00:50:54.120 world is opened up. And then you, you, you realize you see all these people, you know, just

00:50:58.980 all of a sudden it just becomes obvious that they need to have some kind of religious uh

00:51:05.140 practice they need to be connected to community they need to be connected to something higher

00:51:09.700 than themselves so yeah that's wild okay i have i had a list of questions we didn't get to any of

00:51:16.520 them but one of the things i've been so i've been reading the bible and praying and being and

00:51:23.500 also kind of trying to research because i don't really know any background on christianity

00:51:28.920 or what the difference between Catholics and Protestants are.

00:51:34.020 I was just like, I know, you know, Catholics have the Pope.

00:51:36.600 Like I'm really starting from a base level, pretty much base level.

00:51:41.140 Yeah.

00:51:41.320 As a Googling, what's the difference between all the different denominations and, and all

00:51:45.220 that.

00:51:45.980 So dad told me, uh, that you grew up in a Catholic family, but switched to Orthodox.

00:51:54.200 I grew up in a, in a Protestant, like in a Baptist evangelical family.

00:51:58.520 okay and then i became orthodox yeah okay so what what's the difference between those two

00:52:03.560 what does orthodox mean what does orthodox mean so i don't i want to be careful not i want to try

00:52:10.100 not to offend too many people because obviously this becomes prickly when you start trying to

00:52:14.320 describe what other people believe and so yeah um so orthodoxy is more uh ritualized you could say

00:52:23.800 And so it's more like a Catholic church. If you would go into an Orthodox church, for example, it's singing the whole time. And, you know, the priests have vestments that are symbolic. There are paintings on the walls that are symbolic. Everything they do is almost like a dance, a worshipful dance, you could say.

00:52:45.960 and uh so that's in terms of experience that's what you would probably see the difference when

00:52:51.340 you walked into an orthodox church there'll be icons there'll be uh there'd be censored there'd

00:52:56.500 be like smoke rising up with like with like uh smells and the candles so it's like it has this

00:53:03.440 kind of ritual embodied aspect and evangelicals and protestants are more informal they tend to

00:53:10.700 emphasize the informal more right like uh god you know i can talk to god anytime i want i can

00:53:18.520 you know it's like god jesus is my friend that type of way of of seeing it where you know it's

00:53:24.200 and it's more testimonies and so so it's in the experience that's usually for someone who doesn't

00:53:30.320 know anything about let's say the differences that's how you would probably experience the

00:53:34.460 difference. Um, so let's say, uh, evangelicals and kind of Protestants tend to emphasize, uh,

00:53:42.780 personal experience, personal testimony, um, store, you know, uh, the idea of, uh, sin also,

00:53:50.160 right. Like God saved me from my sins. Uh, whereas in the Orthodox, in the Orthodox tradition,

00:53:56.200 um, it's more about, it's more about this kind of coming together in worship and participating

00:54:02.400 in something that is beyond you and becoming let's say the body of christ in that way uh so

00:54:09.320 that's that's the experience but then in terms of a bunch of stuff like i'm sure you don't you

00:54:14.040 don't necessarily want to get into that to that right away but you i mean at some point it's i

00:54:18.800 think you just need to move slowly and at some point you'll start to to kind of see and understand

00:54:22.660 the the differences let's say i don't like moving slowly in regards to anything well then you can

00:54:29.880 read books like it's probably better to read books than to go online too much because man

00:54:34.240 the online world is a it's a mess okay do you have book suggestions then and i also after this

00:54:42.280 i want to ask you what the difference between catholicism is and why is it that protestants

00:54:47.620 don't believe some of the catholic books i have so many questions but first hey there sorry to

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00:56:05.460 episode. What, what books should I read? Uh, well, it depends for what, like, what do you,

00:56:11.520 what would you want to, to, to, to understand? Like, let's say, what are you looking for?

00:56:19.620 I think I'd probably be interested in understanding how people connect with God,

00:56:27.040 how people think they connect with God. Cause you just said there's differences between say

00:56:30.980 orthodoxy and and protestants and i think what i'm more familiar with is protestantism i think

00:56:37.280 that's what i'm that's what you mostly know and so let's say the orthodox tradition the catholic

00:56:42.760 church orthodox even more so is more it's more mystical it it doesn't tend to talk about

00:56:49.740 our interaction with god in a manner that is um that's like a conversation it's like i'm talking

00:56:58.060 to god and then you have these answers in your life uh your orthodoxy tends to have this notion

00:57:04.640 that you need to be transformed and you you kind of uh you become god by participation you you know

00:57:13.420 through prayer through certain types of of uh to asceticism through trying to kind of remove

00:57:18.700 yourself from your passions then you actually are transformed into something more than yourself

00:57:25.260 And so that's a little bit of a difference in terms of, let's say, the way that people connect with God.

00:57:30.020 And it's going to look differently.

00:57:31.420 It's going to look differently.

00:57:32.380 So that's why there'll be less in the kind of, especially the modern evangelical services, you know, let's say the songs, they sound like pop songs.

00:57:41.880 They sound like love songs, basically.

00:57:43.700 But they talk about God like they would in a pop song.

00:57:47.280 uh and that's something that you wouldn't find that say in a in the catholic church or the

00:57:51.660 orthodox church where there's more this reverence and this sense of you know that god is really uh

00:57:57.420 is is is beyond us and is above us and is bringing us up into him you know something like that um i

00:58:03.860 know people in the youtube comments are gonna get super annoyed with the way i'm describing this

00:58:07.260 because you know everybody it's like it's that's why i said it's hard to talk about other people's

00:58:10.960 uh other people's saying but i can send you like there's a book called uh called the it's in terms

00:58:16.160 of orthodoxy there's a little book called the orthodox way which is a a not very long uh and

00:58:22.700 it's a book that kind of explains um this kind of mystical approach to to to the faith you know and

00:58:29.460 how it connects to to us today um so so yeah you can look that up i can send you a link if you want

00:58:34.760 okay that would be good i've just i've been talking to some i've been talking to like very

00:58:39.980 lots of people about this and i'll come across people and they'll be you know different denominations

00:58:44.320 or catholic or you know something and they'll be like oh no this is the way this is the way because

00:58:50.600 of you know x yeah some there's an overlap but yeah i'm trying to not go into theology too much

00:58:58.500 with you just because it's like i think i really dislike i dislike arguing about religion i would

00:59:06.500 rather try to help you i'd rather give you ways to kind of see the the beauty of the christian

00:59:12.360 tradition and the beauty that's there um but uh there are other people who definitely try to

00:59:17.000 convince you so yeah there's got to be some good like uh some i mean what even the differences you

00:59:23.400 just described couldn't and couldn't it be some couldn't it be both yes yeah definitely but it

00:59:32.280 tends it i'm just giving you kind of basic uh let's say basic directions you could say and so

00:59:38.020 So let's say that the Protestant church is really a fruit of the modern world.

00:59:45.820 Like it's very modern in everything about it, the way that it understands God,

00:59:52.700 the way that it understands the world, the way that it does worship.

00:59:57.600 All of this is very modern.

00:59:59.820 Whereas let's say the Catholic church and the Orthodox church,

01:00:02.440 they are more they're kind of like a stream which comes down from millennia and the sense of

01:00:09.880 connection between all these different generations and that we kind of receive what is uh before us

01:00:18.560 and this kind of participation in the stream so that will definitely affect uh everything about

01:00:24.680 it so right so the catholic and the orthodox especially like they'll talk about the fourth

01:00:30.020 century as if they're still there they'll talk about the 10th century as if they're still there

01:00:34.300 for them all of this is part of their experience like all of these all of these great uh christians

01:00:41.780 that have really showed us god and have manifested love and and and god in the world we see them as

01:00:49.020 kind of our ancestors that we that we that we continue their their their story um and so that

01:00:55.280 will definitely whereas the the evangelical protestant will say how can we adapt christianity

01:01:01.100 how can we reach out to people right like we want to do it in a way that people will understand and

01:01:07.380 so they'll tend to adapt christianity to popular forms that's why it sounds like a that's why it's

01:01:13.340 a concert that's why it's it's it's jazzy or it's you know it's like it looks like something you

01:01:19.560 would see at a show because they're more focused on how can we adapt this to to people and to the

01:01:26.680 modern world so it's just different it really definitely different approaches

01:01:30.780 interesting okay i'm gonna what you should probably do is you should probably

01:01:38.360 go physically let's say to a catholic church and then go physically to find an orthodox church in

01:01:45.280 english and go and then go to an evangelical church like take give yourself a few months

01:01:49.900 uh to to see because it's because it's uh we can talk about it but it's not the same as going and

01:01:57.780 having the experience of the of the space and the people and the the type of worship and the type of

01:02:03.280 that's got to be super dependent on the church though right i know i've i've been to i remember

01:02:09.060 this was before i i don't even know what you call it what do you call it tuned in like yeah

01:02:14.680 this is before i tuned in i went to a couple of um church services with my mom and i was little

01:02:24.220 so maybe i was just too little to be like be able to pay attention but i remember just

01:02:28.080 like i was that was not for me at all it was like this is like one of them i think was catholic and

01:02:33.500 it was just like there's just i'm just there's nothing of that speaks to me at all there's

01:02:38.860 somebody talking i don't understand there's no emotion right so i think wouldn't that be very

01:02:46.100 dependent on where you'd go like there there must be better oh for sure i mean for sure there are

01:02:51.760 better versions of every single type of church that's that's for certain uh but in general you

01:02:57.420 will still have a basic uh experience of the difference so for example like if you for sure

01:03:03.600 if you go to a liturgical church, like a church that has a more ritualized form, then there'll be

01:03:08.880 less extreme emotion. That's for sure, like 100%. It'll be more contemplative. It'll be more kind

01:03:16.500 of this standing in silence, you know, and kind of contemplating the mystery, you know, kind of

01:03:21.440 approaching slowly, and also being attentive to your thoughts, trying to kind of move in, you know,

01:03:27.200 and not be distracted. All of that is the type of experience you'll have. If you go to a more,

01:03:32.180 uh like it's a more modern evangelical type church then it'll be way more emotional because

01:03:39.440 then you'll have a pop singer a guy with a guitar it'll be a rock concert it'll be it'll be uh you

01:03:46.140 know a really um a really dynamic speaker that's going to be super uh involved and so

01:03:53.380 yeah it really does uh it there is a difference for sure but then for or you said orthodoxy

01:04:02.160 was more spiritual right i think so i think that it's more spirit it's more mystical for sure it

01:04:07.660 has this mystical it has it it's it has this idea that you're to be transformed through attention

01:04:13.060 through uh discipline through um through prayer through uh you know and and i mean of course also

01:04:20.920 the love of others like all of this kind of is this symphony but if you go to an orthodox church

01:04:26.040 and you're expecting to be entertained it's not going to happen like it's not you're not going to 0.57

01:04:29.880 be entertained it's not meant to be entertaining it's meant to make it's meant to ask you to make

01:04:35.720 us some some a little bit of an effort in order to be attentive and a little bit of an effort in

01:04:41.100 order to participate you know um and so for example like in a lot of orthodox churches there

01:04:46.140 are no benches you can't sit you're not supposed to relax you're supposed to be there and try to

01:04:53.760 be attentive and to kind of be present rather than sit back and enjoy you know those are different

01:05:00.500 stances um and then for okay so um protestants do probably but protestants are so big like

01:05:10.460 presence are so the thing is i want to be careful because like i'm now when i say the way i'm talking

01:05:15.100 about protestants is really like modern evangelical churches that you'll probably find mostly in

01:05:19.400 where you are in tennessee but there are some protestant churches that are not like that that

01:05:23.580 are more formal that are more uh ritualized that have more structure so it really depends yeah

01:05:29.560 Protestant church is like once once the the reformation happened it's like scattered into

01:05:35.120 thousands and thousands of little denominations it was like a it's like a thing falling on the

01:05:40.900 ground and just exploding into like thousands of denominations so so it's hard to talk about

01:05:46.400 protestantism as one thing it's like thousands of things okay uh so it's been an hour and i could

01:05:55.720 talk for a very long time because i have a whole bunch more questions but it's up to you i'm i

01:06:01.420 don't are you for a little bit longer yes i am free so yeah we could go keep going okay cool

01:06:06.380 let's talk a little bit longer then okay reformation start with that what exactly

01:06:14.260 happened there and i've looked this up before but yeah can you describe what no this is like

01:06:18.740 you're no but i'm starting like very much i'll mostly try not to be polemical because it's hard

01:06:23.900 okay because i have my perspective on the reformation and so the the reformation is

01:06:30.020 so the church let's say the the christian church is is an institution right it's a

01:06:37.620 it's a human institution supposed to serve god but sometimes often it doesn't and so

01:06:42.980 it tends to, it tends to towards the, it tends down, let's say. So, so things get bad, people

01:06:51.020 get corrupt, people start doing weird stuff. And then usually there's a wake up, a reformation,

01:06:57.360 a little, a little reformation, and then it, it, it gets re realigned, you could say. And so in the

01:07:04.280 history of the Catholic church, the West, there are many of these reforms before the reformation,

01:07:10.320 right there's the gregorian reform there's a there's a there's a cluniac the kind of cluniac

01:07:16.580 reform there's these different like different reforms that happen where people are trying to

01:07:21.760 like bring people back to the to the good stuff instead of the corruption and the chaos and so

01:07:26.840 during during a certain time there was a lot of corruption and a lot of bad stuff happening

01:07:33.180 And then a monk protested against that corruption.

01:07:39.240 And this time it was different because this time when,

01:07:45.560 because the church will, will tend to censor those people.

01:07:48.420 Like if someone tries to rock the boat, they'll be like, you know,

01:07:52.220 stop rocking the boat. And so Luther was censored by the church said, no,

01:07:56.860 you're wrong. And they started arguing with him.

01:07:58.960 And usually what will happen is the arguments and arguments.

01:08:01.040 and then at some point the church will say you can't stop stop saying what you're saying you

01:08:06.280 know and then there might be consequences if they don't um but luther aligned himself with

01:08:11.820 princes in germany and then was able to separate himself from the catholic church

01:08:18.500 so that's the difference you said printers no uh but princes with like oh princes yeah princes

01:08:26.120 So different state actors in Germany were, and so he was able to separate himself from the church. And then what happened is that started to accelerate.

01:08:40.100 and so they they they started to different reformers started to say their own thing and

01:08:48.260 they were fighting amongst the reformers as well and a lot of it had to do with the idea of a

01:08:53.660 salvation by grace alone which is the idea that you're not saved by works so it's not what you do

01:09:03.120 that saves you it's it's a it's something it's a gift from god you get you get the god gives you

01:09:10.000 salvation basically and then then the then the reformers started to argue amongst themselves

01:09:15.040 and they also was also like a real bible emphasis so sola scriptura right sola fide sola gratia so

01:09:23.100 it was like you're saved by faith alone you're saved by grace alone that is that it's god that

01:09:29.500 saves you and it happens through the means of trust in god and faith and then uh the testimony

01:09:38.300 of that is in the bible the bible is the highest okay let's say the highest revelation of god in

01:09:44.460 the world or the revelation of god in the world it's like the ultimate authority so you can't go

01:09:49.260 against the bible the bible is the ultimate authority in the world and so that let's say

01:09:53.620 that's the basis of the reformation you could say but then the reformers start to argue and then

01:09:58.640 there starts to be state churches and that's that's and that's the play out of the reformation

01:10:04.300 is that some princes also use the reformation as a political tool to uh separate themselves and

01:10:12.040 control the church then you have the church of england who the that that or for for who the head

01:10:17.720 of the church is the king and then you have the different churches different national churches

01:10:22.960 that have become state churches where the priests are actually state employees basically

01:10:28.400 right and then out of that yet people say no no no that wasn't the point of the reformation you

01:10:33.400 can't have state churches like you that's not that wasn't the point of what we're doing and

01:10:38.480 so they become more radical and they're like no we need to separate we need to separate from that

01:10:43.120 and then you have puritans and anabaptists and people who are like no we don't want these state

01:10:48.640 churches we just want to be the body of god and to be these churches and so then they start to 0.74

01:10:53.640 separate and then it's then they fight amongst each other then they separate and they fight

01:10:57.100 amongst each other and they separate and then at some point you have 10 000 denominations of

01:11:02.160 christians right and so so the reformate that's basically you could say the story of the reformation

01:11:08.200 okay is there so where you are you'll meet mostly people that are children of the reformation

01:11:16.340 yeah okay where was i going with this next

01:11:23.420 it's a lot to think about so i tried to be very objective i do not agree with the reformation

01:11:31.840 like i think the reformation stick i'm sure you could discern it but i tried to be for all the

01:11:36.700 protestants watching this i tried to be as objective as i could be without without

01:11:42.360 pretending that i agree with it i don't think the reformation was good

01:11:45.200 okay why don't you think the reformation was good um

01:11:52.360 there are a few things like that one is the one is the mess that was already kind of there

01:11:59.520 right and so the idea that salvation is something that you can either win through works

01:12:05.880 or that you could get freely through grace is already a problem like that's already a problem

01:12:13.200 so when you start to argue that way it's like how many good things can i do to be saved

01:12:17.720 or then oh no i can't do enough good things to be saved so god has to save me because i can't do

01:12:24.420 enough good things to be saved right so it's like this it's like a moralistic system it's like a

01:12:28.400 moralistic system of where you it's like a where you do good to please god it's like you have this

01:12:33.240 daddy and this daddy wants you to do good thing but you can't and so he's like you can't do the

01:12:38.380 good things that you need to be in my in my my my world and so what i'll do is i'll give it to you

01:12:44.800 Like I'll bring, you know, it's an act of grace, right?

01:12:48.580 And so to me, that's the problem.

01:12:50.500 So the problem with the Reformation was a deeper problem,

01:12:53.760 was already a problem that was there in Europe at the time

01:12:57.360 where it was this legalistic kind of arbitrary idea

01:13:01.960 of doing good things to be good enough to go to heaven.

01:13:04.880 And so that's why, so I think the Reformation is a problem,

01:13:08.680 but it was not just the Reformation.

01:13:10.560 the church the catholic church itself was in a in a tough place because they had already set up

01:13:16.740 this weird legal system it's like weird legal system of like you know like the idea for example

01:13:22.040 that if you do so many bad things and you go to purgatory for so many years and then you have to

01:13:26.700 say you have to do so many things to like to to reduce the number of years in purgatory like that

01:13:33.100 where did that come from is that that's not in the bible somewhere right no it well it comes from the

01:13:38.400 idea that it comes from it comes it's a it's a um how can i say this it's a side effect of this

01:13:45.120 kind of legal way of thinking about salvation right it's a it's a side effect of the how do

01:13:50.880 you explain that if it's not in the bible in the first place well see this that's again one of the

01:13:58.380 problems that happens is that the idea that the bible is this is the is the only source of

01:14:05.060 of reality let's say or only source of truth that's something that the reformers oh so what's

01:14:11.460 what's on the other side that's what i've been hearing the reformers say like if it's not in

01:14:16.180 the bible it's not true and then and then it's like okay so but that's not that wasn't the

01:14:22.320 standard before now i don't want to defend the the way that the catholics uh had their notion

01:14:29.240 of purgatory i'm not catholic so i i don't feel like i have to defend that but the idea that if

01:14:33.280 it's not in the Bible, then it's not real. It's just... So where's all the other information then?

01:14:39.640 So the way, let's say the way that the more traditional churches understand it, and the way

01:14:43.200 that the Catholic and the Orthodox understand it, is that the church is a body of people,

01:14:48.520 but the church is in a book. God is in a book. The Bible isn't the word of God.

01:14:56.740 Jesus Christ is the word of God. It's the manifestation of the divine logos of God

01:15:01.920 in the world. That's the word of God. The Bible is super important. The Bible is a good means to

01:15:09.900 help to prevent yourself from going into chaos, let's say. But the reality is more linked to the

01:15:19.220 actual body of people. And let's say their connection to Christ through generations of

01:15:28.500 people that transmit not just a bunch of books, but a way of being and a way of praying and a way

01:15:35.320 of seeing God and a way of engaging with God. So that's the way the traditional churches

01:15:39.760 understand it, that there's a transmission, right? More like, like your father can write you a letter

01:15:46.740 and that's good, but he won't contain his being in the letter. It'll be in his example.

01:15:55.000 the example that you get like you you let's say you you model your life on his example and so if

01:16:02.820 you write a letter to say you should do this you should do that it's like that's great i'll keep it

01:16:06.340 it's great advice but the higher thing is the model and so that's the way that the traditional

01:16:12.200 church understood it so it's like they have traditions which flow down from the apostles

01:16:16.740 into the into the church okay so it's a different way of of of seeing it but the biggest important

01:16:24.100 thing is that for example in the in the more mystical way of understanding christianity

01:16:28.580 it's like it's not about doing good things to go to heaven it's never it was never about that

01:16:33.360 and it was never about not being able to do enough good things in order to go to heaven

01:16:37.680 it's about becoming something that you become heaven you could say

01:16:44.200 you're transformed into something that's free and that's going up the mountain or moving up

01:16:52.120 towards something higher. So it's more about, so, so the idea that let's say you shouldn't lie

01:16:56.840 isn't about like, well, if I lie so many times and I'll have so many years in purgatory or whatever,

01:17:02.300 it's about, if you lie, you are destroying yourself and you're destroying the world around

01:17:08.540 you. If you tell the truth, then you're building yourself and you're building the world around you.

01:17:13.860 And that will transform you into something more than what you were before. And so the Christian 0.91

01:17:20.280 life now doesn't become a bunch of stuff you have to do it becomes a bunch of ways you have to be

01:17:26.100 in order to be transformed transformed into something more so that's that's more the mystical

01:17:32.060 and i think it's the more the original way of understanding christianity so by the time you

01:17:37.240 come to the argument of like can i do enough things to please god or not please god it's like

01:17:40.980 it's all arbitrary it's like that's not the idea the idea is that you're becoming in the image of

01:17:46.360 Christ, by embodying these patterns, by embodying this way of being, by putting your attention

01:17:52.840 towards God above you, by putting your energy and your attention towards the thing that

01:17:58.140 transcend you, you're being transformed into the thing that you're focusing on.

01:18:03.600 You're slowly becoming in the image of Christ.

01:18:07.780 Okay.

01:18:08.060 So that sounds a lot like what my dad teaches.

01:18:11.040 That's why everybody jokes about Jordan and says that he's like a pre-Orthodox.

01:18:16.100 Like he, he, that's why there's so many Orthodox have connected to what he says is that, you know, although there's a lot of things that he said that they don't agree with, but in terms of just the basic trope of, of transformation and of understanding the way the world kind of, we participate in the world, it's much closer to Orthodox, let's say, way of, of being.

01:18:35.600 okay so then my my one question and then we should wrap it up my one my last question i think would

01:18:42.060 be so if protestants are you know the bible is the most important thing word of god they've got that

01:18:50.880 and you're saying that it's this tradition how do people who are joining

01:18:58.300 know that the tradition they're seeing in orthodoxy is real

01:19:01.940 well usually i mean it's the testimony of the of the saints that is it's the it's the glowing

01:19:09.700 examples of people who shine right and so we have we have all these testimonies all these

01:19:17.600 these stories of people that are bright that are amazing that are just beyond the normal human

01:19:25.940 um way of seeing and so they they kind of are fruits of this body they're the fruits of this

01:19:33.220 of this of this process um and i think that's the most existential way but they're all you could

01:19:42.460 also do it we could also argue in terms of theology and metaphysics and all that and some

01:19:47.180 people love doing that you'll find them uh all around i don't tend to think that way i do also

01:19:52.300 think that there is, we could argue about it in terms of, even in terms of biblical interpretation

01:19:57.180 on that, we could argue. But I think that ultimately that's closer to what I think is

01:20:05.700 the living, the life of the church, is that it's, you have these fruits that appear that are these

01:20:13.420 bright, bright, bright lights, and they kind of help you see what's possible. And you kind of see

01:20:18.700 in the saints that oh wow there's something some people can be more than what i am you know and

01:20:25.820 that that that gives you hope and it gives you models to uh to kind of move okay that that part

01:20:33.320 makes sense to me i think the part that i'd be concerned with is joining a church that has gone

01:20:38.680 sideways that like isn't what it appears under the guise of orthodoxy or under the guise of cath

01:20:44.540 catholicism or something i don't know if that's me being paranoid but i like how do you is there

01:20:49.860 a way to feel it out to make sure that the direction you're going is in alignment

01:20:53.480 yeah i mean i can't i can't i can't uh i can't be like i can't be in your experience that's why

01:21:00.460 i i said a good idea would be maybe to kind of have have those experiences you know and there's

01:21:06.060 also a difference between the local experience of something also let's or the local instantiation

01:21:15.400 of something and then the bigger frame in which it exists so so for example the the let's say the

01:21:21.100 catholic tradition or the orthodox tradition they have bad priests and you'll have find bad priests

01:21:26.840 and bad parishes and people that are corrupt they're everywhere in in the world uh but but

01:21:34.180 nonetheless there is something which is let's say there's something unified and something real that

01:21:41.300 happens and the same thing if you go to prostitute it's like you can go to prostitute that is

01:21:44.920 completely pathological like that can happen you know uh so i mean i think you're i i i think you're

01:21:53.300 you have a like you're you're low low enough on agreeableness that you're not the kind of person

01:21:59.180 that's in danger of falling into a cult at least that's my impression i might be i might be wrong

01:22:04.700 but no i don't i'd hope not anyway i'd be more likely to start a cult i'm just kidding i'm not

01:22:12.260 gonna do that that sounds about that's not right so i would say don't don't do that don't start

01:22:16.540 it's don't start like go to an actual church and don't start having like just bible meetings in

01:22:22.920 your house that's probably better for you not to do that it's actually try to like connect with

01:22:27.380 other other people because you have that like people do that all the time like like they don't

01:22:33.600 like all the churches they find so they're like i'm gonna start my own church and then they

01:22:37.020 become pastor so-and-so self self-declared pastor so-and-so and that's not great ah okay okay well

01:22:46.720 that was really fun we should do that again that didn't even scratch the surface of of questions

01:22:52.420 but maybe send me that book i'll read that book yeah anytime like i would i'd be very happy to

01:22:56.940 talk to anytime. Cool. Okay. I'm going to take you up on that offer. It was nice meeting you.

01:23:02.140 All right. It's good to meet you.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - January 13, 2022

133. Finding God ｜ Jonathan Pageau

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