The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Fairytales ｜ Jonathan Pageau EP 212

00:00:00.000 there's a kind of dumbing down in the stories it's like why are you doing that isn't your purpose to

00:00:04.480 accompany your child up the hill so if you just give them the most little satisfaction of the

00:00:09.040 moment you are not doing them a service fairy tales are really the closest thing besides the

00:00:16.560 bible right that we have that are like bible stories they are these very short stories that

00:00:21.360 compress a lot of information in them and then have almost infinite levels of understanding so

00:00:26.400 you're a kid you hear these stories that have all this insight in it but you don't have access to

00:00:31.120 the insight whether you know it or not it'll kind of tune you that's what fairy tales are about a

00:00:36.240 lot of the newer animated movies which is like this is terrible the old disney movies didn't

00:00:41.040 have that as much no the whole disney movies were made in a way again that would appeal both to the

00:00:46.000 children you know and to the adult you watch the lion king that's not even that old of a disney

00:00:50.640 movie right it's like the 90s you know as an adult you really see you know these deep patterns of

00:00:55.600 of mythology and religious storytelling, and if only we could re-awaken that type of storytelling.

00:01:05.360 Jonathan Pajot, welcome to my podcast. It's great to see you, Michaela. Nice to have you on again.

00:01:09.880 Yeah, and in person this time. Yeah, this is way better. Yeah, definitely. Much more comfortable.

00:01:15.600 So I invited you on because last time you came on, we talked about your fairy tale book that

00:01:21.920 you'd put out which is right here snow white and the widow queen and you've recently published a

00:01:27.040 new one jack and the fallen giants yeah so it's a version of jack and the beanstalk uh you know

00:01:33.780 trying to have a little bit of a twist on it but it's basically the jack and the beanstalk story

00:01:38.340 that we all know as kids um with some elements that say some allusions to kind of biblical

00:01:44.140 symbolism and then some a few things in it that are at least in my insight trying to help people

00:01:51.120 see what the story is about because it's such a weird story you know i i love that story when i

00:01:56.420 was a kid but it was so strange there's so many things about it that i didn't understand because

00:02:01.240 even as like a 10 year old boy i thought well isn't stealing wrong like why is jack going up

00:02:06.740 there and stealing from the giants then also why why does he steal like gold and then a chicken

00:02:14.680 that lays golden eggs and then ultimately he steals a heart it's like why does he steal a

00:02:20.160 heart it's so odd oh okay yeah so I've been kind of meditating on this story for obviously my whole

00:02:26.280 life just like I meditated on the on Snow White and the other fairy tales that I'm writing

00:02:30.120 and and I kind of think I figured it out uh you know at least one aspect of it and so trying to

00:02:36.940 kind of add some of that richness to the story itself you know so what does the chicken laying

00:02:43.240 the golden egg you know it's like what is going on so yeah if you think about it you know the

00:02:47.240 story of jack for those who don't know it jack is a poor boy his father is not there he's raised

00:02:52.440 only by his mother so she's a widow probably or abandoned a woman and so because of that she's

00:02:59.340 poor and their family's poor and that poverty plays itself out because their cow is running

00:03:07.480 out of milk you know and so you can add it's a really complex symbolism like some of it also

00:03:11.920 has to do with the fact that his mother is also doesn't have a man so that idea of like running

00:03:17.560 out of milk or like running out of fertility running out of world right that's kind of what

00:03:22.360 it seems to be alluding to but then also in some ways he's kind of in this feminine world because

00:03:27.160 he doesn't have a father and he has a mother and a cow and now he's about to discover what it is

00:03:35.100 it's a coming of age story he's about to kind of become a man and so that's all of the elements

00:03:40.860 have to do with that and so he his mother says you have to sell the cow because she doesn't

00:03:45.340 produce milk anymore he goes into town and then he trades it for a bunch of seeds which is already

00:03:53.440 pretty weird right it's like why is he trading it for seeds and there's a lot of stuff going on in

00:03:58.240 the story there are many levels one of them is that he's also becoming a man and so he's he's

00:04:05.700 discovering seed that's part of what's going on like it's his connection to masculinity right like

00:04:10.780 a 12 year old boy or something and but it's not just sexual it's we have to be careful not to

00:04:15.560 think that it's just about sex it's not it's about identity because that's what a seed is right a

00:04:20.080 seed is it's like a pattern an identity of the plant but the plant isn't there right inside the

00:04:25.960 seed is hidden this the whole pattern of how the plant's going to play out but it's not you don't

00:04:31.740 have the plant so it's the opposite of a cow in a way right cows just a bunch of meat like a bunch

00:04:36.360 of milk and now he has this little thing this little seed and and he trades one for the other

00:04:41.840 like potential yeah like like identity without body yet you know it's kind of like if you have

00:04:48.700 a vision for something like a plan but you haven't played it out yet right you you have to be a special

00:04:54.400 kind of person to understand that actually an idea or a plan is really valuable yes because

00:05:00.900 it's by that plan that you can make other things happen so that's kind of what he's discovering but

00:05:06.000 doesn't totally get it yet you know he's also a little boy he brings it home and he's all excited

00:05:10.160 he's got magic seeds he's got magic beans and shows his mom and his mom's like what did you

00:05:14.840 basically okay now we have nothing to eat so what do we what do we do but the seed is also a pattern

00:05:21.400 is the pattern of food it's not really much food yet it's just you can't live off a few beans but

00:05:28.020 if you understand the pattern of food then maybe you could live you could have food forever but

00:05:34.760 that takes while it takes time and he has to figure that out and so that's how it starts so

00:05:39.180 it's about it's about that it's about in some way just becoming a man and then also discovering what

00:05:44.280 meaning is and purpose is and pattern is but then not knowing quite how to play with that yet

00:05:49.840 so his mom throws a seed out then the morning wakes up with a giant beanstalk so yes there is

00:05:57.480 an aspect of that which is a little bit tongue-in-cheek like a little bit of a young boy

00:06:01.640 wakes up with a giant beanstalk it's part of the story like it's part of the story but it's not

00:06:06.220 just like again it's obviously not just about sex it's that symbolism is included into the whole

00:06:10.560 idea of discovering what meaning is you know and so he starts to climb up the beanstalk and then he

00:06:16.780 finds gold right so a good way to understand it is he finds value right something that's valuable

00:06:24.020 and you know gold is better than food in some ways obviously food is more immediate right you

00:06:31.180 need food to live but gold's better than food because i can buy food with gold you buy anything

00:06:36.520 not bad yeah so he gets that he understands it's like a hierarchy of patterns comes down with the

00:06:42.760 gold gives it to his mom but then what happens if you just have a bunch of money the money runs out

00:06:49.300 right it's not enough so does he go up and down multiple times yeah he goes up and down like

00:06:54.560 three times so he goes up gets the gold brings it to his mom but then the money runs out so he's

00:07:01.840 missing something so what's better than gold right it's like what's better than gold is how you get

00:07:08.760 gold yeah that's much better so that's why he goes up and now he finds a chicken that lays golden

00:07:15.020 eggs because he's not now getting money he's getting basically the way to get money that's

00:07:20.920 yeah it's like you know we say give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day but teach him how to fish

00:07:26.000 and he'll eat forever that's basically what jack is dealing with he's kind of figuring that out

00:07:30.260 comes back down again and then it's the weirdest part that's the part that took me years to

00:07:36.160 understand which is the third time he goes up he gets a golden heart a magical heart

00:07:44.000 and i'm thinking what the hell is the relationship between the gold the chicken that lays golden eggs

00:07:51.520 and the golden harp right uh and i and i'm pretty sure i think i figured it out which is

00:07:58.160 it has to do with what he discovered at the outset it has to do with pattern right because that's

00:08:05.000 what music is you know there's an ancient idea that there the cosmos makes music called the music

00:08:13.060 of the spheres a way to understand it is that there are patterns in the world that there are

00:08:18.780 patterns that are like meta patterns that aren't just the how you make money or money that can buy

00:08:25.400 food but it's something like the pattern of everything you know maybe that's a way to

00:08:30.520 understand it like the logos right and that's what he gets that's the final thing he gets is he kind

00:08:36.260 of gets the music that can now in some ways make it possible for him to do anything and you have

00:08:44.300 people like that if you i mean i'm talking now very practically like you'll meet people that

00:08:49.280 have figured something out about the world that means that they can then apply it to almost

00:08:54.920 anything like they're not specialists but they're not experts on anything but they've kind of figured

00:08:59.720 out something about how the world works yeah which means that they'll always be successful

00:09:03.600 because it's a meta pattern right it's not just so that's the story that's basically the story of

00:09:09.900 jack yeah that's way more interesting than my version of jack and the beanstalk what do you

00:09:15.140 mean well i mean i just remember it from when i was a kid and it was just like yeah it's a funny

00:09:18.680 story with giants if do you go into what the giants represent so are those problems yeah so

00:09:23.480 the giants the giants these are also the questions that i asked myself when i was younger and i was

00:09:27.640 growing up i was like why are giants in heaven right aren't there isn't heaven the place for

00:09:33.660 like angels and spirits and stuff aren't giants usually like hidden underground in caves and

00:09:38.360 stuff and so i think the best way to understand it is the giant is something like the obstacle

00:09:47.920 of masculinity the the aspect of masculinity that's an obstacle or the aspect of pattern or

00:09:54.720 the aspect of purpose that's a that's an obstacle to you so if you think about it you know anybody's

00:10:01.940 dealt with this you you're hired in a company then now you realize that the people above you

00:10:06.940 some of them they actually want to prevent you from succeeding because they see you as a threat

00:10:14.520 to their order you know and so this young boy that comes in and all of a sudden there are these men

00:10:21.320 that are there and now these men are like giants that will devour you because all they want is

00:10:26.960 basically oh you know it's like you see that when people find jobs too it's like oh i love the fact

00:10:32.280 that you work as long as it credits me then we're good to go and so i'm going to eat you right i'm

00:10:37.860 going to devour you and i'm going to use your energy for myself and so that's the image of 0.84

00:10:43.200 the giant that wants to eat the the boy like it's like yeah this boy is in my house i'm going to

00:10:48.060 take his energy and his power for myself so in some ways it's the obstacle of so it's all the

00:10:52.920 corruption of the of the hierarchy all the the officials that are just doing things for their

00:10:57.760 own or the boss that doesn't really want to help people kind of move up or doesn't want to it

00:11:02.760 doesn't even care about the purpose of the company but just wants to basically gather power and

00:11:08.200 influence for themselves so in that case you can kind of understand how the the man in heaven and

00:11:16.780 to some extent, can be something like a giant,

00:11:20.960 like a king or something.

00:11:23.000 And so that's the way that I understand

00:11:25.020 the giant in the heavens.

00:11:27.600 That's cool.

00:11:28.800 Why did I decide to build an online university?

00:11:32.700 Well.

00:11:35.460 There is a crisis now in higher education.

00:11:38.160 The president of Harvard University resigned today,

00:11:40.980 weeks after-

00:11:41.820 Does calling for the genocide of Jews

00:11:43.740 violate Penn's code of conduct?

00:11:46.420 We have a problem of affordability and cost, spiraling student loans.

00:11:50.380 We have a groupthink emerging, and that warps the entire academic enterprise.

00:11:55.620 I experimented with putting my lectures online and found that I could teach far more people at very low cost than I could at the university.

00:12:04.840 And I thought, well, why not scale that?

00:12:10.460 What I'm hoping to do is to find the best lectures in the world.

00:12:14.160 and to bring them to as wide as possible an audience.

00:12:19.580 He came to me and he basically said,

00:12:21.160 I want you to do the best course that you've always wanted to do.

00:12:24.900 We want to bring you the highest quality education possible

00:12:27.780 at the lowest possible price.

00:12:29.740 It's extremely high-level content that anybody can use

00:12:32.260 to educate themselves, and it's available to everybody.

00:12:34.980 Well, that would be good.

00:12:37.880 I think it's funny, because I got cancelled at the university

00:12:40.900 so I could try to return the favour.

00:12:44.160 because you get bosses or you get people that you work with, whether they're above or below you that

00:12:50.120 do understand that the more everybody can succeed, the more everybody can succeed, right? If you end

00:12:57.740 up pushing people down and taking credit for what they do, then things eventually fail. Like you

00:13:02.200 can't operate a business like that, but there are definitely a lot of people out there that do grow

00:13:07.300 up and they want that power, even though that, I don't think that's actually what leads to success.

00:13:12.500 do you have any idea so it's what happens it really is like it's the sin it's the ultimate

00:13:18.600 sin it's the sin of pride it's the sin of the devil it's the sin of adam and eve it's you know

00:13:23.780 basically the root of sin is thinking you know this is for me right this is not serving some

00:13:31.140 higher goal like it's not serving some higher purpose it's like no no this is mine and this

00:13:35.920 is for me so something that's actually good right becomes perverted because it's trying you're trying

00:13:42.600 to capture it for yourself and that's the you know and that's what leads to corruption and that's

00:13:48.060 what leads to you know companies failing or states failing is because the policeman right instead of

00:13:54.260 thinking as a policeman i'm there to serve order and here to serve the higher good it's like oh

00:14:00.320 wait a minute i'm in a position of authority yeah i'm in a position of power huh that's actually an

00:14:05.500 opportunity for me to gather that to myself to become like a little tyrant you know like a little

00:14:10.960 micro tyrant so you can have tyrants like that at every level you know we all we often think that

00:14:16.060 we always think that like the highest level of authorities they're the ones that are corrupt you

00:14:19.880 know they're the ones that that fall into corruption but you know we do it for petty

00:14:24.580 reasons we do it in families we do it in all kinds of you know people parents who you know

00:14:30.840 how can I say this parents who are jealous of their children all kinds of perverted situations

00:14:36.440 where people don't realize that in fact like you said the best result comes when everybody

00:14:43.580 is kind of brought along like when you kind of lift everybody with you you know that's when you

00:14:48.620 actually get the most for all of us right for everyone involved you get the most and successful

00:14:53.660 companies right you see that usually that's how they at least started that there was something

00:14:59.280 about the excitement and the energy and the company where everybody felt like they were

00:15:03.100 able to do great things and were accomplishing wonderful things that's why they kind of raise up

00:15:07.420 and then sometimes they become giants and once they're giants then they start to get corrupted

00:15:12.200 and yeah it's kind of yeah i don't think it takes very many people to get into some sort of

00:15:17.180 organization for that to happen yeah like what even just one bad apple can take out a number

00:15:22.640 of people around them because i suppose in order to aim for the highest good you also have to have

00:15:29.180 trust in everybody you're working with to be doing the same thing yeah yeah which is tricky

00:15:34.080 moving towards the same goal yeah yeah and but it's and it's wonderful when you see it it's like

00:15:41.700 a dance right you see these see people working together and they're so excited and there's this

00:15:47.340 just joy of being together and moving towards a purpose you can feel it like you can actually

00:15:52.320 sometimes feel it in the room when you walk into places like that um and then you can also feel

00:15:57.260 the opposite you know when you walk into a place and it's like like airports yeah everybody yeah

00:16:02.640 everybody's just like and nobody's nobody wants to step out of line nobody wants to say anything

00:16:07.680 nobody you know and so you can you can see it and you're right that that leads ultimately

00:16:13.020 to failure sometimes it takes a while because you've got a giant yeah giants take a long time

00:16:19.140 to starve so if you you have big huge things that get corrupted then they kind of surf for a while

00:16:25.720 or and they just basically or it takes a while for them to decompose so sadly sometimes it takes a

00:16:31.340 while for the corruption to show in giant systems you know but that's a that's an it's you know it's

00:16:38.820 weird because we're we move from jack to talking about this but that's what fairy tales are about

00:16:43.800 fairy tales are really the closest thing besides the bible right that we have that are like bible

00:16:51.400 stories in the sense that they are these very short stories that compress a lot of information

00:16:57.160 in them and then have almost infinite levels of understanding and like you said when you're a kid

00:17:04.220 and you hear the fairy tales you don't understand any of that and it's actually totally fine you

00:17:09.060 actually don't have to understand any of that because in some ways it is similar to the story

00:17:13.760 of jack it's more like a seed being planted in you right so you're a kid you hear these stories

00:17:18.960 that have all this insight in it but you don't have access to the insight you're just basically

00:17:24.580 having a seed planted in you and then that will play itself out whether you know it or not it'll

00:17:30.460 kind of tune you like a tuning fork yeah yeah that makes sense yeah or like the bible you can

00:17:36.860 understand it on different levels and still pick up the same overall pattern you get that yeah you

00:17:41.620 get so basically like you know the story of jack at the simple level for a child that's like this

00:17:47.700 is really exciting young boy defies difficult odds goes up into the heavens faces these dangerous

00:17:54.100 giants you know and nonetheless is able to come out of it with but be careful watch out for those

00:17:59.300 giants watch out for those big guys that want to devour you watch out for the bullies watch out for

00:18:03.500 all that stuff and so just implicitly then the child you know it's obviously not just one story

00:18:09.220 but like it being exposed to these different types of stories yeah will make them attentive

00:18:14.280 will recognize even without knowing it you know that giant that wants to eat you like oh yeah

00:18:19.960 it's kind of like that you know that's what's going on here i think that's so important too

00:18:25.280 for people to understand the difference between good and evil at that level yeah because it like

00:18:30.780 i i know and we talked about this in our last podcast a bit a bit about disney changing you

00:18:36.620 know core parts of fairy tales and getting rid of i think a lot of what they got rid of was the evil

00:18:42.020 part yeah everything was kind of nuanced really you're like there's bad guys kind of bad the good

00:18:48.060 guys kind of bad like everyone's just kind of middle of the road and there's no lessons and

00:18:53.940 then you go out into the real world and you're like at some point you're going to come across

00:18:57.800 evil and you're like that can't be real yeah and in some ways i think that what's important to

00:19:04.700 understand is that the evil just because people have reasons let's say to be evil

00:19:11.640 we all have reasons yeah but that doesn't justify the action it makes the evil still evil no matter

00:19:19.500 what like even if you as a person had a difficult childhood or abused or whatever it is that you

00:19:24.780 went through it still doesn't justify that you take that you know and your dad has talked about

00:19:30.620 this he's talked about how you know if everybody who's lived some kind of abuse became evil

00:19:37.420 you know we'd basically after a few iterations everybody would be evil that's not what happens

00:19:42.660 actually most people that go through very difficult situations are able to somehow turn it for the

00:19:48.420 best or at least a little like at least say oh i'm going to do better than my situation that

00:19:53.460 i grew up in i'm going to do better than the the things i've experienced and then there are a few

00:19:57.440 people that see it as a way to justify their resentment as a way to justify their evil behavior

00:20:05.080 yeah yeah I think that's the one of the things I learned later um because I was always especially

00:20:12.820 when I was not well I had a lot of compassion for people who went through difficult things

00:20:16.820 um and and in just like I guess I was trying to understand like I had a roommate who was

00:20:22.400 insanely awful like it was a bad situation my mom came in and met him was like yeah he's crazy and

00:20:30.100 left. Right. Although she left me there, but anyway, I had a number of roommates, but he was, 0.81

00:20:35.380 yeah, good luck. Welcome to the real world. Um, and I remember being like, well, his mom,

00:20:40.780 like I found out later, his mom was really hard on him as a kid. Like things were bad in his

00:20:46.080 household, but he was also, I think I was 19 at the time. I had a number of roommates. I think

00:20:50.260 he was 22 or 23. So he was on the older people in the like res we were kind of in. And I remember

00:20:57.240 eventually thinking you're too old to use that as an excuse like you can't use it as an excuse

00:21:02.460 everybody has an excuse yeah about why they could be bad why their life is hard or why their life

00:21:08.300 is miserable but you can't make everyone else's life miserable because your life was miserable

00:21:11.940 like that's not how it works yeah but i feel like i had too much i don't know why maybe because my

00:21:18.360 dad's so compassionate so i like growing up i learned the reasons behind why people act the

00:21:25.880 way they act um and i think it took me until my mid-20s to be like it doesn't matter at the end

00:21:32.140 of the day it doesn't matter what happened to you yeah and also i think that in your case it's

00:21:36.740 exemplary because you also suffered so much when you were a child and it could have been an excuse

00:21:43.360 for you to become you know angry at life i saw that too with other chronically ill people because

00:21:48.760 when i went to the hospital i would meet people then like this is like teenagers that are sick

00:21:54.380 and they were really sick and I remember some of them were really angry and mean and I remember

00:22:02.000 being like I know that that's because they're sick but like you can't do that there is just

00:22:07.700 going to ruin their lives and I know dad told me that from a young age was like you got to be

00:22:11.420 careful here that you don't end up seriously resentful yeah yeah yeah that's amazing I had

00:22:16.920 symptoms or there was a young boy in my neighborhood when I was a child it's sad because I just

00:22:21.940 remembered so much he was burnt he got burnt because he tried to light touch a lot of fire

00:22:27.300 with gasoline as a very young child just melted right um and uh he wore this like plastic mask

00:22:34.460 right oh my gosh and stuff and he was just the worst bully i mean he was so mean you know um

00:22:43.320 and i mean obviously it's understandable at that age but it's something to to think about you know

00:22:49.600 because we were all scared of them and it was weird because you know it was like he was he was

00:22:55.600 embodying his own accident right it's like he looked really scary but then he was also really

00:23:02.180 mean you know uh so i was it's weird because i don't know what happened to him but i always hope

00:23:07.240 that he came to some peace at some point you know and kind of found some balance in his own life but

00:23:12.400 yeah it's rough yeah we all have some people more than others obviously you know there's we all have

00:23:18.440 a path down to resentment like towards resentment that's possible for us you know yeah yeah nobody

00:23:25.700 doesn't right that's just part of what like being human yeah is everybody can be bad pretty easily

00:23:31.040 yeah and you can see it you know it's interesting to see in the fairy tales like like we talked a

00:23:38.260 little bit about stone white but stone white you can see that happening right to the queen where

00:23:41.980 the queen starts to lose her charm starts to lose her beauty and then immediately becomes resentful

00:23:48.420 and jealous and murderous ultimately i mean obviously it's this extreme but you know you

00:23:53.460 you can understand how there are so many paths down that line where if you let your own desires

00:24:00.420 or something take over there are dark things down the road so it's important for as we raise our

00:24:07.540 kids to always can i say this you know always help them understand that difficulty is is an

00:24:17.380 opportunity to grow and sometimes because we can't help it right we're all gonna have challenges

00:24:24.100 but that's really the only way to look at it positive even though sometimes it seems

00:24:28.820 unsurmountable or impossible any other way to look at it from your own perspective leads to dark

00:24:36.340 places you know yeah so where can people go to find your books okay so uh for now we're selling

00:24:44.660 that on my store so people can go to the symbolicworld.com and click on store we're we're

00:24:51.460 selling them through our shopify uh we're offering for people who are willing to sign up for our

00:24:56.500 main list right now we're actually offering free pdfs of some of the books that we're publishing

00:25:00.660 oh cool so we're just trying to kind of like gather energy we want you know we decided to do

00:25:04.900 it this way because i've actually had offers to publish it with publishing i'm sure yeah but

00:25:10.740 But, you know, with the state of culture right now, we just want to have control over what we're doing.

00:25:16.800 We want to make sure that we don't have to cede any terrain, that we can really tell the best stories and the most beautiful.

00:25:23.120 And also, like, we're non-compromised with the beauty.

00:25:25.700 You know, we have so many illustrations in this book.

00:25:27.860 Oh, they're gorgeous.

00:25:29.000 Like, it's not a normal level of illustrations for, like, a kid's book.

00:25:32.140 We've had, like, at every page, every other page, we have illustrations.

00:25:35.140 And so we just wanted to do something.

00:25:37.460 and like the covers are like cloth bound with you know gold foil yeah yeah it would very difficult

00:25:43.100 to get uh like a normal yeah a normal publisher to do that but we we're trying to in some ways

00:25:48.740 go against the grain of of just digital you know we have nothing against digital we have even we

00:25:54.500 just put out a like a kind of semi-animated audiobook of the snow white book oh cool yeah

00:25:59.780 it is really cool but we also want people to enjoy sitting in bed with their kids you know

00:26:06.560 with the book in their hands and feeling that sense of kind of a almost like a precious object

00:26:11.520 you know and helping the children kind of value know that some things have value yeah like the

00:26:17.800 story has value but we treat the book with respect because it's also beautifully made and it

00:26:22.380 everything so so that's kind of the the tack we're taking and the reaction has been really amazing

00:26:27.140 people are are happy about it like i'm getting messages even like educators are writing me and

00:26:32.800 saying you know that they've been waiting for books like this because the state of kids publishing

00:26:38.600 is quite dismal yeah as a young mom i'm sure you've seen it yeah well i'm getting like most

00:26:45.080 of the books i got for scarlet were like books i read growing up yeah it was pretty like pretty

00:26:50.080 easy i just avoided anything after like i don't know like not like 2002 like 1999 i don't know

00:26:58.300 yeah yeah around there at some point it starts to get really dismal yeah yeah and it's not just

00:27:03.680 like it's weird because it's it's a mix of things on the one hand there's a there's a kind of dumbing

00:27:08.940 down in the stories and it's difficult because they dumb down a lot of the stories in order

00:27:15.840 because they realize that this is more the level of the child that's listening but it's like why

00:27:22.820 are you doing that isn't isn't your purpose to like accompany your child up the hill so if you

00:27:30.700 just give them something that hits them exactly at the level that will in some ways give them the

00:27:36.880 most little satisfaction of the moment you're not doing them a service you know the that's why the

00:27:43.240 old fairy tales or the old stories for kids they're sometimes a little difficult they're

00:27:47.640 they're pretty they're pretty intense and because you're you're also asking of the child to to uh

00:27:54.400 to kind of make an effort you know i read and i remember when i was like 13 i read uh the jungle

00:28:00.640 book right by eudary kipling and my teacher at the time said you know kids used to read that when

00:28:06.900 they were 10 and that was like normal but it's i mean it's not an easy book like it's i mean it's

00:28:12.380 easy obviously for us like you're a 10 year old to read something like that yeah and it shows you

00:28:17.320 that we've we've in some ways dumbed down the story so much that and so what we've tried to do

00:28:21.800 in our in our books is make sure that there's enough there for like even a four-year-old to

00:28:27.300 to find it interesting to love the illustrations to just be attracted to the basic story but always

00:28:34.000 have little things in it that will you know kind of point up so that you could read it again at 13

00:28:41.020 and go oh okay all right yeah I didn't notice that and then you can read it again at 40 or 30

00:28:46.320 or something and then also have that same experience where it's kind of push it's kind

00:28:52.060 of pulling you up towards more insight yeah there's something of substance there yeah that

00:28:56.640 makes it way more interesting for the parents too if you guys ever consume alcohol ever it should

00:29:04.040 probably be vodka but that's not what i'm talking about right now i drink probably once a month but

00:29:10.240 this supplement eliminates the hangover people in japan have been using it for thousands of years

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00:29:28.040 with one order if you don't drink very often it helps save your brain from the toxic effects of

00:29:33.900 alcohol and if you like it please leave a review I love reading the reviews you guys know I don't

00:29:39.360 push supplements because most of them are a complete waste of money this one isn't it has

00:29:44.280 no fillers or extra ingredients and we have a 30-day money-back guarantee so you're safe

00:29:49.580 you could even try it and then complain and get your money back even if it works don't do that

00:29:55.620 though please but uh give it a shot fullerhealth.com enjoy the rest of this episode even finding recent

00:30:03.380 movies to watch with kids is hard it's like there are some movies that are like the incredibles is

00:30:10.060 a pretty good story yeah the first incredibles is pretty good and that's enjoyable in all ranges

00:30:14.920 but a lot of the newer animated movies i'm just like this is terrible it's painful and terrible

00:30:21.700 and like the old disney movies didn't have that as much no the whole disney movies were done were

00:30:28.220 made in a way again that would appeal both to the children you know and to the adult because they

00:30:33.940 were beautifully crafted the stories were were well crafted as well the characters there were

00:30:38.880 levels of depth kind of hidden under the the superficial you know you watch the lion king and

00:30:44.740 that's not even that old of a disney movie right it's like the 90s and you can you know as an adult

00:30:50.380 you really see all of these you know these deep patterns of mythology and religious storytelling

00:30:56.800 but as a kid obviously you just love the silly animals and you you know the the characters are

00:31:02.040 well drawn so and if if only we could you know reawaken that type of storytelling yeah i think

00:31:10.060 it's probably i mean you're you're helping obviously i think it's happening we were talking

00:31:14.320 the other day i read something online about how there's a resurgence of bookstores because all

00:31:20.540 the bookstores were closing i know in downtown toronto a whole bunch of the big bookstores i

00:31:23.960 closed down because nobody was buying books, especially during COVID, but people stopped

00:31:28.320 buying physical books as much. And Amazon, of course, wiped out a bunch of them, but apparently

00:31:33.380 they're opening up again. I think people are really missing the high quality, tangible, real,

00:31:40.120 real things. Yeah. And in some ways, that's why I think we're aiming up with these books. We're

00:31:45.820 saying, okay, if someone is now being deliberate about that and he's saying, okay, I love the

00:31:51.780 feeling of the actual book in my hand sitting in bed you know that even the smell of the book yeah

00:31:58.260 yeah let's have like a certain smell all of that I think then then we can say all right so let's

00:32:03.700 let's make people happy like let's actually make nice books so that if they are if that's what they

00:32:08.480 want then we'll give them something something powerful but you know it's like I hate reading on

00:32:13.680 kindle like I have one but I really struggle I struggle too I kind of I like I kind of

00:32:21.500 i kind of hate it i know people who love their kindle too i kind of hate it i was so attached

00:32:26.380 it's practical you can store a whole bunch of books it's way easier for traveling yeah but i

00:32:30.740 used to i don't know i got so attached to books as a kid like all my nancy drew books with the

00:32:36.080 old covers and i was i just had i don't know more of an emotional connection you spent time

00:32:42.220 with a book it's weird because like you know my wife she doesn't she's not someone who read that

00:32:47.960 much let's say when she was younger and uh you know I have these books in my library and she's

00:32:52.440 like what you've read them right I'm like yeah she's like well just get why don't you get rid

00:32:55.840 of them why are you keeping them and you're like oh why am I keeping the books that I've read

00:33:00.740 already and you realize that the reason why you keep them is because you you spend time with

00:33:06.100 these books there's like a memory attached to them there's something about just knowing that

00:33:11.940 they're there or seeing that they're there it's like a memento of the of the moment that I read

00:33:16.740 it when i was younger that is so true yeah i wonder if you get the same thing with kindle

00:33:22.500 with a kindle i would think i i probably a lot less i was reading this kindle book under a tree

00:33:30.040 at this certain time i don't know if the memories would stick as much i i definitely have that i

00:33:35.060 have a whole bunch of books from toronto in storage so i still have them but i have like

00:33:38.320 an old edgar allen post set that i remember getting when i was like 13 off of ebay and it

00:33:44.620 was really old i was like that was really cool yeah i missed those i gotta get those out of

00:33:50.440 storage obviously and it's odd because you think you know and then the book has a whole other life

00:33:55.880 to it and there's something about yeah yeah seeing people's notes in it too like that was 50 years

00:34:02.420 ago yeah yeah i get it and also it's weird because this these are very subtle experiences but

00:34:08.280 you know the the like when you walk into your house you have this experience where you kind

00:34:13.980 of scan the house and there's something about everything that makes you know your home right

00:34:19.500 and it's very subtle like there's especially if it's in a home that you've lived in for a very

00:34:23.260 long time like you know little creases in the floor like all these things that just kind of

00:34:28.080 make you feel like you're home and I think that books do that too because you're just even without

00:34:33.440 reading them you're in your living room and you just glance you glance at them you see them like

00:34:38.720 kind of shimmering you know in the bookshelf and all of that presence makes you grounded it's like

00:34:44.580 oh yeah this is my life like this is my life this is my home this is my place um that's a little

00:34:50.620 difficult to you know explain but i think if you if people pay attention to it they can kind of see

00:34:56.360 that that is the way that homes are made like we you know we keep pictures of our family members

00:35:02.940 we keep pictures of people we love um you know we put up things on the walls that have specific

00:35:09.360 meaning to us but i think books play that role too that's so interesting i haven't thought about

00:35:15.740 that i've moved so many times like i moved i moved quite a bit when i was a kid like mom and dad

00:35:22.940 moved a lot but then we were in a in a house like the house in toronto for a good like 12 years

00:35:31.760 until i moved to montreal but i've moved every six months since then wow except for in the last

00:35:38.000 year when i moved just once in the last year instead of every six months but it's been like

00:35:43.800 so i haven't had that you know where all the creeks are and you can recognize i've been like

00:35:50.380 recognized a house since i was like 17 or 18 and i think in the last couple years i was like i don't

00:35:57.920 need that maybe you don't need that yeah but then you talking about it i was like no i kind of maybe

00:36:02.600 i do miss my edgar allen poe books that i've been like trekking around from city to city in storage

00:36:07.760 things like that but i think there's also a time for different things you know as your kids kind

00:36:13.340 of grow up and you realize that they need that sense of home you know that they need let's say

00:36:19.160 their room to have familiarity you know the old stuffed animals that the kids stay attached to

00:36:25.480 even until they're teenagers they don't want to admit it but there's like all of this of this sense

00:36:30.360 of of home you know probably you'll also start to feel it again I think it's normal in your 20s

00:36:36.820 when I was in my 20s we lived you know we moved around we lived in Africa for seven years we were

00:36:41.240 constantly moving and stuff and and we we in some ways didn't need that as much either and uh and

00:36:47.620 then as our kids got older then that sense of home became more okay so maybe it's an age thing

00:36:55.260 possibly or having kids having kids thing well you'll see i mean you're you're in that moment

00:37:01.480 now you'll kind of see it and you'll you'll experience it if if you know and your child

00:37:06.020 sometimes will force you to some extent because children you know we tried with our kids very

00:37:12.460 young we tried to keep them on that travel like we've moved them around so much but at some point

00:37:18.900 the kids themselves are telling you like you know i i want home i want pattern i want something

00:37:25.720 stable i like i like going into my room and recognizing things where they are things go in

00:37:33.440 their place and stuff kids really thrive on on pattern they thrive on stability you know and

00:37:40.040 then and if you offer them that then at some point they'll be ready for the adventure too right they'll

00:37:45.020 be ready to go outside of their home and to to move out into the into the wild and have their

00:37:50.000 own adventures but and then come back and have that sense of memory like our you know in 2019

00:37:56.620 my house was flooded this massive accident where the dike in our town broke that's terrible and

00:38:04.420 then within an hour we had to rush out of the house because the water was coming we could see

00:38:09.260 it coming and the police were the sirens and you know they were they had megaphones and were telling

00:38:14.640 everybody to get out of the house oh my gosh when we got in the car there was water under the wheels

00:38:19.940 of the car you know and we left and then the the water filled the whole basement um and ruined our

00:38:28.240 house pretty much yeah yeah um and so what happened well sorry what happened after that no how did

00:38:36.760 that happen well because it's it's a it's one of those stories that jordan that your dad would

00:38:41.640 would tell is that they built a dike and they didn't they didn't keep it up and then once every 0.63

00:38:47.780 once every you know decade once every 50 years or 100 years or whatever then there's a massive

00:38:53.420 amount of water that comes that's why they built the dike in the first place because they knew that

00:38:57.500 most of the time it was fine but then once in a while there would be the surge and um and then

00:39:02.920 the dike just broke because it had been kept up and then everybody's blaming everybody else and

00:39:07.380 it's like the provincial government saying it's the fault of the city and the city's saying well

00:39:11.420 we sent you a request for money, but you didn't, you didn't answer blah, blah, blah. But, and this

00:39:16.180 is Quebec, right? Yeah, that is definitely Quebec. So we're talking about 2,500 homes, you know,

00:39:23.580 around 10,000 people more than that. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. We lived out of our house for a year

00:39:29.320 and a half. And, and then I lost my whole library, by the way, like my entire library. And my son

00:39:36.140 lost everything that he owned, you know, and people live that when they go through a fire and

00:39:41.040 stuff and it's for my kids is probably the single most traumatic thing that they went through

00:39:48.280 and and they they experienced what we call domicile right all of a sudden they thought

00:39:54.220 that there was this place for them that was safe that they recognized i was home and then in one

00:39:59.720 instant it was gone uh and uh they struggle with that like we struggle struggle with the kind of

00:40:05.900 mental health down downstream with our kids for years you know and and my wife has been deliberate

00:40:12.460 about rebuilding our house in a way that would be a home for them you know and going out of her way

00:40:19.540 to like ask each of the kids like when we rebuilt the house and we rebuilt their rooms you know

00:40:24.840 what would you like what would be something would make you feel at home there and she she went

00:40:30.760 through she like went through crazy amount of effort to like get get the kids to be able to

00:40:36.000 go through that and they did help though and now we all feel like it's our it's our home but

00:40:42.340 did that take a while a couple years took a while yeah it took a while but it's important for people

00:40:47.880 to understand that these things are very important you know that this sense of home it's not one that

00:40:54.320 you can totally put your finger on like you can't say if i remove this or if i put this in then it's

00:40:58.980 not home anymore it's more like a general just experience that kids have like obviously you don't

00:41:03.660 have to keep things the same all the time like you can change your kids furniture you could like you

00:41:07.700 do that stuff but there has to there has to be some sense of consistency that your kids can still

00:41:13.120 feel like this is where they belong you know definitely something to think about i like that

00:41:19.660 well i'm not planning on moving again i've moved plenty of times i don't need to move anymore 1.00

00:41:24.440 as long as no dykes break here it shouldn't happen yeah i'm in a desert haven it should be fine 1.00

00:41:31.700 yeah what's the worst thing we can have in arizona monsoons happen okay once monsoon season 1.00

00:41:37.400 and things flood with that but not like you know miami or something yeah so glad i'm out of there

00:41:45.400 that was a crazy place to live um okay i've got i've got kind of a random question it's not

00:41:53.240 fairy tale related but i wrote it down so my like my knowledge of christianity is like from a

00:42:03.500 protestant perspective more and more like that's what i'm familiar with and that's what seems to

00:42:09.620 resonate with me um why are i i know almost nothing about saints yeah we were talking about

00:42:17.860 saints a bit yesterday i don't i know almost nothing about them other than kind of stories

00:42:22.800 my dad would tell me when i was younger about like saint george and the dragon like that's a

00:42:30.420 story i know but i don't really know anything about saints what's the purpose like why are

00:42:34.680 they important if you have a relationship with jesus so we could we could phrase this in a few

00:42:43.040 ways uh one of the aspects is that when christ came into the world he seems not seems he he told

00:42:52.960 us that that we would rule with him you know he told us that in some ways we would become like

00:42:59.580 angels you know not become angels directly but become something like angels not angels also in

00:43:05.100 the sense of just messengers but angels in the angels in the sense of principalities right there's

00:43:10.960 There's a sense in the Old Testament that God set up these principalities, these angels in the world to kind of manage the world.

00:43:19.880 They were kind of like lower tier management, you know.

00:43:23.840 And the idea is that because of Christ, then we are called to become that, to rule with him, to sit in the divine council, right?

00:43:34.800 And so one of the things we're seeing with the saints is we're kind of seeing that happen already.

00:43:40.960 we're seeing some people that are very close to Jesus in some ways participate in the kingdom

00:43:46.260 with him. So it's not just like an individual relationship. It really is a body. And in the

00:43:53.660 body, there are some people that play roles. And that's true in the world here. But the way that

00:44:01.140 the traditional Christians understand it is there isn't two churches. There isn't like the church 0.62

00:44:07.820 here and then the church in heaven, let's say, there's only one church. There's only one body,

00:44:13.520 right? There's only one Christ. And that body is united. And the people that are with God,

00:44:20.740 like the people that are no longer in their bodies, we don't understand them as being dead.

00:44:25.980 We think that they're alive, that they're fully alive in Christ and participating

00:44:30.260 in the salvation of the world. Like they are ruling with him already.

00:44:34.620 um and so that is a way to kind of understand what the saint the role that the saints play

00:44:40.780 and the other one is also related to intercession which is that in the old testament you really

00:44:48.040 don't see intercession you don't see someone in the old testament like could you pray asking

00:44:53.440 someone to pray for them it just doesn't happen that's not how it works in the old testament it's

00:44:57.440 like no go to the temple offer your sacrifice you know uh and then you know go to the common

00:45:03.360 worship you know you sing your psalms you do that you do the the rituals and that's just how

00:45:07.640 it functions but one of the things that christ brings about is the idea that we can pray for

00:45:14.680 each other and that to pray for each other is already like i said to in some ways participate

00:45:21.340 in the kingdom of heaven because the question you asked me about the saints you could ask about

00:45:26.060 intercession itself yeah i mean same question you say why are you why are you asking someone

00:45:32.160 to pray for you? Like, why would you ask your pastor or your mother or your friend to pray for

00:45:37.040 you when you could just pray to God? What's the point, right? And it's missing the entire point

00:45:43.540 of what salvation is and what the church is, which is that one of the aspects of the way in which

00:45:51.380 we're going, we're being saved is by the love we have for each other, right? It's by the fact that

00:45:57.140 we are interceding for each other we are you know asking god to to uh and so in the way that

00:46:03.740 so there are like little examples of intercessions in the old testament like a good example is

00:46:08.480 when abraham uh intercedes for the people of sodom and gomorrah right where he asked god like

00:46:15.380 don't destroy the city and he's like god is like if i find so many just or whatever so in some ways

00:46:20.640 now we all can play that role we can all pray to god and ask god to have mercy and ask god to help

00:46:27.920 our friends and to help others that that makes sense to me we also but then we also believe that

00:46:33.020 there's no separation in the church so the the people that have shown in their life to be

00:46:40.160 particularly close to christ you know if you look at the apostles or you look at certain saints

00:46:44.720 that they are in some ways the best people to pray for us you know in the in the book of james

00:46:51.980 it says that the prayer of the just is efficient that is a just person their prayers are more

00:46:59.140 powerful than the prayers of someone who's just chaotic and messed up and that's a real thing

00:47:05.700 And so we know that St. Peter or St. Paul were just

00:47:11.520 in the sense that they are close to Christ

00:47:15.360 because we saw it in the testimony of their life

00:47:18.040 until their death, and they kind of showed it to us.

00:47:21.720 So that's the way to kind of understand the... 0.94

00:47:23.920 It's like an extension of what Protestants understand

00:47:27.100 to be the idea that we all pray for each other

00:47:30.160 and that we ask each other to pray for each other.

00:47:32.460 It's just that we see it as bigger.

00:47:34.040 okay okay i i can understand that i think there was one line if i was more biblically literate

00:47:40.720 this would be a much more interesting conversation but there was one line

00:47:43.820 saying michaela say this michaela say this yeah why aren't you saying why aren't you quoting this

00:47:49.140 verse i'm i'm definitely not there yet there isn't there one line in the bible oh my gosh let me see

00:47:55.200 if i can google it and find it is it is it intercept is it there's one yes it's that one

00:48:02.280 It's our mediator verse that says that there's one mediator to the Father, Jesus Christ, is our mediator.

00:48:08.320 So then how does that get around?

00:48:10.500 Doesn't praying to a saint to intercede on your behalf, doesn't that get around that verse?

00:48:18.200 Well, so then the question you have to ask is, why then does Christ ask us to pray for each other?

00:48:27.420 Why is it that the people in the New Testament prayed for each other?

00:48:31.700 Why is it that Christ healed people through St. Peter and St. Paul?

00:48:40.940 Why is it that St. Peter could go to a person, a crippled person, and say, 0.76

00:48:46.720 I mean, I guess my response...

00:48:48.100 I heal you in the name of Christ. 0.61

00:48:50.580 Wouldn't that be because, okay, this seems like a silly response,

00:48:54.960 but wouldn't that be when they were on earth,

00:48:57.920 and then once they're in heaven, you just go directly to Jesus?

00:49:01.700 like like honest question that's what i would see the difference as obviously i don't know how it

00:49:06.580 works in the spiritual realm so how can i say this like the verse itself if what it means

00:49:14.600 is that we only go straight to jesus and we don't go through anybody else then it doesn't matter

00:49:20.880 whether they're in the world or outside of the world like you we do say we do go to other people

00:49:28.440 like you know we do ask other people for help we do ask other people to pray for us and but the way

00:49:34.400 we have to understand okay you're saying it's either it's either or well you either have no

00:49:38.520 mediator or you yeah or you can have you have any meter and it's not and so the way to understand

00:49:43.600 is that it's not that the me the the mediation let's say we could use that word we could use

00:49:49.000 other words or intercedes the intercession of the saints and the fact that some people are vehicles

00:49:54.660 for the love of God to us.

00:49:56.520 It's a good way to understand it.

00:49:58.020 It's like something that mediates

00:50:00.280 is something that is in between.

00:50:01.720 So you have God, you have you,

00:50:03.240 and you have something in between.

00:50:04.100 But every time someone shows the love of God to you,

00:50:10.240 they are, in a way, mediating that love.

00:50:15.480 But it doesn't remove the fact

00:50:17.180 that Christ is the only mediator to the Father.

00:50:20.980 Christ is the only mediator to the Father,

00:50:23.040 and to the extent that we are in Christ we participate in his life and we participate in

00:50:29.260 his ministry and we pray for one another in the way that he prays for us to the father it's like

00:50:35.440 that is just it's like it's an extension of the idea of the in some ways of the kingdom you know

00:50:41.060 like of that the church is a kingdom in which we all God gives us these authorities God gives us

00:50:47.600 the power to pray and to mediate his love for others and it's a wonderful beautiful thing

00:50:52.760 because it's not about just me and God it's about this whole body coming together in love

00:50:59.940 and in forgiveness and in prayer in order to kind of lift each other up but it doesn't at least for

00:51:07.300 the traditional Christians it doesn't change anything to the fact that we understand that

00:51:12.600 a way to understand it would be like you have the father and the son descends and then the son

00:51:19.160 becomes the anchor point and then we are called to participate in the life of the son we're called

00:51:25.620 to be his body we're called to be the the continuation of that ministry in the world

00:51:30.300 um but it doesn't take anything away from christ and and if you read like the the prayers to the

00:51:37.680 saints most of you know if you read the prayers to the saint you'll see that we always acknowledge

00:51:43.080 their place we always say like we actually don't say to christ pray for us because we pray to christ

00:51:51.640 you know and he is yeah kind of stands you know in the presence of the father and kind of brings

00:51:56.700 our prayers but we don't we don't ask him to pray for us because he is god but we ask the saints to

00:52:02.860 pray for us and that's how we ask them to help us is we say pray for me and sometimes like we have

00:52:09.100 There are some, let's say, prayers to the saints or songs to the saints where we celebrate them, where we say, but usually if you look at the structure of the celebration, it's always something like, I don't know, we say, you know, we're grateful for St. Peter for what he's doing, and we thank God for making St. Peter who he is, you know, and we thank St. Peter for helping us see God better.

00:52:33.300 and so it's like yeah the order is pretty clear we're not treating saint peter as a god we're

00:52:38.600 basically saying we're so grateful that we have these characters that are like bright lights that

00:52:44.540 help us see the the the love of god the will of god in particular spheres in particular areas you

00:52:50.360 know so that's the way to understand it okay cool well that helped that's interesting there's so

00:52:56.880 many i don't know i've been it's very it's it's all very interesting but i understand it this is

00:53:02.280 Definitely, like a lot of the people that are listening that are very Protestant evangelical,

00:53:07.760 I understand that they'll struggle with that, that they'll resist it.

00:53:11.900 And it's understandable, but I would say that the best way to get at it

00:53:17.820 is to understand that although God has saved us completely and truly

00:53:21.860 through Christ and through the incarnation,

00:53:25.380 that the people around us can still become little mirrors for God's love for us.

00:53:31.040 and then that is not a bad thing it's actually a beautiful wonderful thing

00:53:35.040 that fills creation up with god's love

00:53:37.580 yeah i can get behind that i think i know i think that's right

00:53:43.000 i think that's very right okay well that answers that question oh i'm gonna have to think about

00:53:49.260 that for a while yeah probably i like i get the protestant argument you know i i think part of

00:53:54.800 what i've heard is but which you already addressed is isn't praying to saints treating

00:54:00.800 them more like an idol like why not go directly to jesus but i can also see where you're coming

00:54:07.480 from with like i like i get it i can i can understand both sides but the thing so but

00:54:12.820 this is important to understand and in some ways it's related to the jack and the beanstalk story

00:54:17.140 actually interestingly enough okay let's go that's related to this idea of the giants which is that

00:54:22.020 god has set up an order in the world right and then you could call like an order procession of

00:54:28.080 his love into the world and there are people like authorities like pastors or priests in the old

00:54:35.120 testament you know priests and prophets that are somehow chosen by god to be vehicles for god's

00:54:41.920 grace for god's message for god's for kind of showing what god's will is now and that is

00:54:48.720 completely normal it's a wonderful thing now the problem that happens is that anytime someone is

00:54:54.280 put in a position like that, there is a danger that they do become idols. And that's, that's a

00:55:01.100 real thing, right? So a good example, of course, is in the story of Moses and Aaron, right? So Moses

00:55:07.560 is called by God. God calls Moses and says, you are going to save the people out of Egypt. You're

00:55:14.180 going to take them out of Egypt. You're going to bring them in, bring them out, and they're going 1.00

00:55:18.100 to be my people. And I'm going to give them my law, and they're going to be my people. And Moses is

00:55:22.620 like i can't do it on my own i need some help i'm not i'm just not the guy i'm just not the guy and

00:55:27.660 so god actually accepts to give him aaron and it's weird the way it's said in the text it's

00:55:34.420 actually almost scandalous if you think about it because god says to moses he said i will be your

00:55:41.680 god and you will be aaron's god and he uses the word god oh wow yeah and so obviously it doesn't

00:55:50.120 mean that yeah just to understand it's like it's saying you you will receive from me and then he

00:55:56.860 will receive from you and then he'll be like your voice he'll be speaking out to you so so Aaron has

00:56:01.800 this kind of intermediary position right it's kind of easy he's kind of like a mediator you could say

00:56:06.000 towards the people uh but then as soon as Moses kind of goes up the mountain with Aaron do he

00:56:13.900 makes an idol yeah and so he kind of as soon as he's separated from his source he makes an idol

00:56:19.280 that's a good way to understand it so that's why you know everybody complains about the pastors and

00:56:24.000 the priests who become corrupt and become but it's the nature of the world that people who

00:56:29.560 are put in authority put in positions of power are in danger of of trying to take that power

00:56:36.360 for themselves like the giants right to like gather that power for themselves and to become

00:56:41.940 arrogant and to want to receive the honor themselves and so we have to be of course wary of

00:56:48.520 that necessarily we always have to be aware of that we also have to understand that it is also

00:56:54.400 the way that the world works that it is also the way that god functions that god chooses people

00:56:59.760 that god points to people that god lifts people up and makes them you know vehicles for his work

00:57:06.220 and so we we just have to be you know innocent as doves and wise as serving we have to be

00:57:11.560 attentive you know when we see a spiritual authority or we see a character who tries to

00:57:18.080 take that power too much for themselves or you know starts to act in in ways that are a little

00:57:23.060 narcissistic or a little kind of power hungry and then be able to kind of turn away from that

00:57:28.100 but in the case of the saints what we have are people that fought the fight until the end right

00:57:34.220 that basically ran the race until the end and the testimony of their life has remained impeccable

00:57:39.880 and shiny and so we know that they're no longer in danger of taking that power for themselves

00:57:46.240 it's like if you ask saint peter to pray for you he's no longer in the danger that your local

00:57:51.960 pastor or your local priest is yeah yeah well i'd like to i don't actually know the

00:57:57.320 like protestant argument for like why do we ask other people to pray

00:58:03.700 for us but don't ask saints and my guess was because other people are living but i literally

00:58:12.760 have no eye like yeah i'm so new in this i don't even know what people would argue that's the

00:58:17.600 argument but the answer is that they're they have eternal life yeah okay like they're not dead

00:58:24.820 they are alive very much very much alive in christ that if you if you believe if you live

00:58:32.820 in christ then you then you will not die okay here's another question then this is this doesn't

00:58:38.600 really have anything to do with well maybe a little bit to do with that so i was trying to

00:58:42.040 figure out in revelation like what what happens biblically well well just biblically what what do

00:58:50.180 people believe like what happens when you die is there this period before jesus comes back where

00:58:55.340 you're kind of asleep but then or do you just go directly to heaven so i mean i know no one can like

00:59:02.660 know okay yeah so we have to be very cautious in when we talk about these things because

00:59:07.000 obviously many of the things that are portrayed are extremely imagistic yeah and imagistic for

00:59:16.100 a reason because we're talking about things that we can't completely see we see through a veil

00:59:21.400 yeah that's for sure and so when uh for example when christ describes the story of lazarus and

00:59:27.580 the rich man he describes the story of someone who is just lazarus who goes into the bosom of

00:59:36.360 abraham which is already like if you think this is literal like you know you have a bit of an issue

00:59:42.700 like he goes back into the abraham's body like he goes back into his wisdom no it's like that's not

00:59:48.280 what it that's not what it means it kind of means he goes back to his ancestor he goes back to

00:59:52.440 the he goes back to an origin that precedes him he's kind of entered into into something that

00:59:58.360 is more than him maybe that's a good way of understanding it and then the rich man who never

01:00:04.080 had any sympathy or any care for lazarus is put into a place of suffering and a fire and so

01:00:11.120 you can see that in christ's parable he seems to be suggest that there is it's not like soul sleep

01:00:18.300 soul sleep doesn't seem to be it doesn't seem to be what he's suggesting here you know and the same

01:00:24.240 with uh with the the thief on the cross yeah yeah it says i'll see you in today right me in paradise

01:00:30.900 right of course paradise and heaven are not the same thing we could talk about that if you want

01:00:35.020 to but that's not the point is to say that that that at least traditional christians there is

01:00:40.540 there was that discussion about that because uh saint paul uses the term uh those that have fallen

01:00:47.220 asleep in the lord and that some people have taken that to mean something like soul sleep but

01:00:53.000 ultimately ultimately the church because of those other examples yeah have come to the conclusion

01:00:58.200 that let's take Christ's words over Paul's

01:01:00.840 as a way to understand Paul

01:01:02.520 and that in fact we don't believe in that

01:01:04.700 but then the way that people

01:01:07.680 attempt to understand it

01:01:09.080 is that in some way

01:01:09.760 there's a particular judgment

01:01:10.920 and a universal judgment

01:01:12.540 that when you die

01:01:14.160 you're judged particularly

01:01:16.640 and then in the end

01:01:18.420 there's like a great judgment

01:01:20.160 that it's like the entire cosmos

01:01:21.980 is judged, the final judgment

01:01:24.020 and in some ways those two things

01:01:25.960 I think the best way to understand them

01:01:28.160 is that they're two aspects of the same of the same thing you know that the judgment that you

01:01:33.680 go through after you die is not going to be different from the judgment at the end like

01:01:39.100 it's the judgment of you basically you know when you all through your life you have the possibility

01:01:46.060 of change that's what life is for you can change you can change you can change but once you get

01:01:50.800 to the end then that's it that's you like you're boxed up you're boxed up like this is

01:01:59.200 Michaela and yeah that's scary yeah that is you gotta get on top of it right now that is scary

01:02:05.640 that's why that's why there is an urgency to to basically orienting ourselves properly you know

01:02:11.280 and and understanding that our that understanding that our priorities need to be in the right place

01:02:16.900 uh because there is this and it's not like uh this is something that everything is like that

01:02:23.740 like everything is judged when it finishes you don't you tend not to judge something while it's

01:02:29.100 happening it's like you watch a movie and you kind of maybe you like it you don't like it but

01:02:32.740 you're like i'm gonna withhold judgment unless it's really horrible but most of the time i'll

01:02:36.260 withhold judgment and then when it's over then it's like okay now i have the whole movie yeah

01:02:41.240 now i can tell you if it was a good a good or a bad movie i think that's the way to understand

01:02:46.140 people's lives it's like once you're done you this you've had this has been the chance for you

01:02:50.840 to kind of orient yourself properly and so that's that tends to be the way that it's understood is

01:02:55.600 that then there is some kind of particular judgment that happens once you once you die

01:03:01.440 but it's a continue but it's a continuation of you like it's not this is something that at least

01:03:07.900 at least for more traditional christians we kind of understand is that when you die you're not

01:03:13.280 going to become another person right if you if you are still attached to certain sins really

01:03:21.420 strongly or still attached to certain passions very strongly then the fact that your body stops

01:03:28.280 functioning does isn't going to take that away and so that's why also you kind of have to

01:03:33.980 get through this stuff when you're alive because when you die then it's going to play out you could

01:03:42.220 say a good way to understand it it's something like your body is actually a limit to the worst

01:03:49.860 aspect of you right let's say you become you let yourself become really really vengeful and resentful

01:03:58.520 you know and in your life and you don't deal with that you don't forgive you don't deal with it you

01:04:03.860 just keep it boiling um your body is actually a limit to that because your body will prevent you

01:04:10.920 and the reality of the physical world will prevent you

01:04:13.940 from going to the end of your desires.

01:04:18.280 But once your body is gone, then the limit's gone too.

01:04:23.800 Interesting.

01:04:25.160 So then the desire becomes something like a fire that burns you

01:04:30.480 because you can't, you know, it's like imagine you're hungry

01:04:36.200 but your body can't eat.

01:04:38.520 but you you're you're obsessed with eating it's something that has that has let's say taken over

01:04:44.820 your life where it's like it's your only pleasure it's your only joy it's the thing you that you've

01:04:49.200 centered on and once you once your body's gone then then it's like a fire that burns you

01:04:56.160 it's a good way of understanding it like it's a good way of understanding why we describe how the

01:05:01.080 way we do i i mean yeah yeah that's a good way of visualizing it and so it's it's actually love

01:05:08.980 that's burning you in hell right it's also a good way of understanding it's like we we're asked to

01:05:16.320 love the right things in our life we're asked to properly order our loves you know and so you

01:05:22.160 should love god you should love your neighbor you should love your family you should love

01:05:27.080 the people around you and you are allowed to love beautiful things you're allowed to

01:05:33.100 to to have some type of let's say um not just allowed but it's good to enjoy a good meal or to

01:05:41.280 have a good time or to like all these things are good it's just they have to be in the right order

01:05:46.300 and that's all it is is that if you the sin is when you put loves in the wrong order

01:05:51.940 right because it's like sex is a good thing it's when it's in the wrong place that it becomes a

01:05:58.700 problem when you put it above the you know if you put sex above let's say the true love of a family

01:06:05.540 united then all hell breaks loose then all things then people cheat on each other then everything

01:06:10.760 becomes crazy and so that's the way to understand it but it's love that burns you in hell because

01:06:18.260 it's the fact that you you so you could understand some sometimes this is even extreme but some of

01:06:24.220 the orthodox uh saints have said that the fire in hell is the love of god and that the the love

01:06:32.460 that the fire of pentecost right the fire of the holy spirit that comes down on the on the disciples

01:06:39.340 and it's the same fire that's burning in hell it's just that if you love the proper thing if

01:06:46.160 you love god if you love others if you forgive if you if you live a life that is transparent to god

01:06:52.560 then the fire will will consume you in the right way will like bring you up right will kind of

01:06:59.940 push you up into that's so interesting and so you see that like there's a lot of there are even some

01:07:06.640 modern like c.s lewis talks about that he kind of presents heaven and hell that way i think it's

01:07:11.800 the best so like the same kind of the same place but but people react to it something like that

01:07:17.040 based on their aim almost based on exactly based on their based on what it is that they love

01:07:22.520 wow that's cool yeah so think about it like a good way of understanding it too i i've used

01:07:30.900 this example which is that imagine that you do something really horrible to someone right and

01:07:36.660 and then that person answers you with love and so you're faced with this person this person

01:07:44.300 basically forgives you welcomes you with open arms and in that moment you have two choices

01:07:49.480 but you can accept that or you can refuse that you can let it go and you can move into the embrace

01:07:56.160 or you can say you can be even more angry at the person even more resentful and then that person's

01:08:03.380 love is will burn you it's like saint paul talks about you know coals being shoveled on your head

01:08:09.720 and and that's a that's a that's a real thing you know people experience that experience that all

01:08:17.500 the time and it's the same again with any love that we have we could already experience hell

01:08:22.600 a little bit in this world when we don't get what we want and then we get angry and then we let that

01:08:29.680 kind of consume us and it's like especially if what you want is your dinner on time or whatever

01:08:34.960 or some ridiculous like some ridiculous detail about life that really is secondary and when you 0.75

01:08:41.440 let that consume you it's like that's love consuming you and that's love burning you but 0.87

01:08:45.820 it's the wrong love it's the love that's pointed in the wrong direction you know because you really

01:08:51.520 want that you know i don't know whatever it is that you want you can't get it so it's you're

01:08:57.180 you're touching hell there wow crazy you said c.s lewis talked about this yeah a little yeah

01:09:03.560 there's a he has a book called the great divorce okay it's a beautiful book it's kind of like his

01:09:08.360 version of uh dante's uh comedy where oh really yeah well it's it's different but in some ways

01:09:14.660 he he gets taken into the the into the afterlife or into the the world of of heaven and hell and

01:09:22.520 And his guide is actually George MacDonald, which is hilarious.

01:09:27.080 George MacDonald is one of the great fairytale writers in the history.

01:09:34.120 He kind of precedes C.S. Lewis in that fantasy-type storytelling,

01:09:38.540 and even Tolkien, too.

01:09:39.840 Oh, wow.

01:09:40.160 So, yeah, he's a great—George MacDonald is wonderful.

01:09:42.400 I haven't heard of George MacDonald, actually.

01:09:43.860 People don't know him that well,

01:09:45.800 but he really is kind of at the outset of what we think of today

01:09:50.200 as kind of modern fantasy and modern fantasy.

01:09:53.180 And so that's his guide in the afterlife.

01:09:56.220 And then C.S. Lewis really explains

01:10:00.200 how in fact hell is something that people do to themselves.

01:10:04.360 So for example, like a good example,

01:10:05.840 it's basically saying like in the afterlife

01:10:07.920 you get everything you want, kind of like that.

01:10:10.900 But sometimes if you don't want the right thing

01:10:13.840 that you'll also get it.

01:10:15.800 And so he explains how there's a place in hell

01:10:18.340 where people it's as big as you want like it's it's huge and you can have an amazing house right

01:10:25.680 so people like build these amazing houses but then what happens is that they get in a fight

01:10:29.940 with their neighbor and so then they like they can do whatever they want so they build their

01:10:33.640 house further away from that neighbor because they don't want to fight but then like you know

01:10:38.120 then they fight with the other neighbor and the other neighbor and then what they do is they keep

01:10:41.200 building their beautiful mansion further and further away from each other and then at some

01:10:46.500 point like they're millions of miles from each other and just living in their beautiful mansion

01:10:51.320 completely alone without any relation without any friends without anyone around them and basically

01:10:56.700 just living in that kind of frustrated resentment you know so it's like this idea that yeah you can

01:11:02.160 get anything you want but if you don't want the right thing i've definitely heard of this before

01:11:07.000 like i've heard of that idea i wonder if it was from c.s lewis or is this idea propagated

01:11:13.600 in other ways i've definitely heard of the hell being you have everything you want yeah

01:11:19.560 and i think that it's an image it's a story it's an image that it's also um it's propagated in

01:11:25.020 different ways dante in his in his book he he basically suggests that he suggests that the

01:11:32.140 people in hell want to be there like if you go to hell it's because you want to go to hell it's not

01:11:36.980 it's not it's not that god is just putting you there arbitrarily because you for this or that

01:11:41.660 reason yeah it's because you you're living in a in a cycle in a passion that devours you

01:11:48.760 so there's one image in dante's hell for example where it's two lovers you know that basically

01:11:55.080 cheated on their spouse to be together and they they're so caught up in their own in their passion

01:12:01.640 for each other that they're like they're like the swirling flame that never stops and they have

01:12:06.820 nowhere to rest and they're they're like just kind of dancing in this fire and they got what

01:12:12.700 they want you know but they they're they were they became drunk on it and it consumed them

01:12:17.620 and now it's a form of suffering wow that's dark i need to that's horrifying i need to familiar

01:12:26.380 familiarize with myself with that i wanted to find somebody on uh peterson academy to do

01:12:31.280 Dante yeah that'd be good and C.S. Lewis all those would be amazing they're really the foundation of

01:12:37.800 West civilization I got a great guy for Dante if you're interested oh you do yeah I'll talk we

01:12:42.460 could talk about it okay okay fantastic and I love I mean really excited about what you're doing

01:12:49.420 at Peterson Academy by the way thank you and uh it's astounding I mean it's really you know I

01:12:56.540 remember when you when the dates you know when like it wasn't happening and like you kept putting

01:13:01.180 off the dates i was like what's going on i hope everything's okay i hope everything's okay we had

01:13:04.820 a rough summer but then then when you when it came out then i was like oh okay they wanted it to be

01:13:11.080 perfect like they want it to be just great and it turns out that that's the that's the case and

01:13:16.480 yeah thank you a great job and i think that there's a really is a possibility to use that

01:13:21.960 to kind of reset some of these stories like to kind of help people recapture some of the things

01:13:27.980 that we've forgotten and Dante is one of them I mean Dante the the comedy is one of the greatest

01:13:33.720 texts ever written and so and people don't know it people have just read people just read the

01:13:39.180 inferno yeah everybody just reads the help part you know because it's closer to us we understand

01:13:45.040 the help part isn't that weird we totally understand the help part but it's like we don't

01:13:49.960 actually we just we just we did our own version of a Dante class on the symbolic world and we did

01:13:57.000 we just did purgatory and ah it's beautiful it's actually amazing it's actually better than hell

01:14:02.860 like you know because it's this mountain that goes up to the earthly paradise you know and

01:14:08.040 they're way more insight like really powerful insights in that so yeah it's worth anybody

01:14:13.660 who hasn't read the comedy you have to read the comedy it's one of the things you have to read

01:14:17.760 okay we'll talk about that after this podcast and if people want to find you they should go to the

01:14:25.080 symbolicworld.com and like i said if you if you want just sign up for our mailing list

01:14:30.100 we're trying to kind of trying to consolidate people so we can keep them informed and we offer

01:14:34.360 we're offering free pdfs of some of the books these books are really nice though and then

01:14:38.880 obviously that's what we also think that really nice see some of the digital versions they'll

01:14:43.680 just want to get the real yeah because they're nice and like hefty and like heavy pages yeah

01:14:47.960 well printed like everything about it is complete how can i say we like end pages you know we just

01:14:54.580 really took the the time to uh you can tell as well as we could so and we're gonna we're gonna

01:14:59.800 put out six more at least so that's so cool every six months that's the goal really every six months

01:15:05.480 yeah oh that's pretty quick yeah so next one we already the next one is already half half finished

01:15:10.140 we're doing rapunzel nice then we're doing uh the valent little taylor trying to do oh girls and

01:15:17.040 boys and then one of the things you can already kind of get get the idea is that one of the things

01:15:21.140 were doing is that we're actually going to bring the stories into each other and so we're going

01:15:25.400 to tell the actual story okay so you can imagine that if the story of the valent little tailor is

01:15:30.000 also about giants and so there'll be a connection with jack like there'll be this connection that's

01:15:35.700 going to appear in the story so i think they'll be fun for people that is fun yeah yeah a box set

01:15:42.080 would be lovely for these individual ones are beautiful yeah congratulations they look great

01:15:47.000 thank you for the copies oh no you're welcome thanks I appreciate it well thank you very much

01:15:51.560 for coming on thanks Michaela it was nice to see you again it's great as usual

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - November 15, 2024

Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Fairytales ｜ Jonathan Pageau EP 212

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