CVS Live Guest - 2022-05-26 - Rebekah Davis
There are 206 episodes in the Guest:Solo series.
Brenda, one of my All-Star guests, suggested I get in touch with Rebekah Davis, who runs the Bread of Life channel. We disagree about Hell, and a few other things, but I really enjoyed talking with her, and can't wait to go on her livestream to continue discussing the faith.
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These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
so i think we're live i'm here with rebecca rebecca how are you doing hi great thanks for having me yeah thanks for coming i've been looking forward to this for a couple of weeks since you agreed to do it and uh it was brenda my guest and friend brenda who suggested that we meet and talk so maybe you could just introduce yourself um as briefly or as lengthily as you think is appropriate in terms of who you are where you come from what kind of faith journey you've had how were you raised what kind of household was it and when did you realize that god exists and these sorts of things please sure david well um i am a christian evangelist i have been on youtube for a few years now and before that i was you know um doing a lot of evangelism with muslims um working with refugees and i've lived in three muslim majority countries and i am a mom i have two teenage boys i've been married for uh oh 18 years um and i grew up as a christian i grew up in a christian home my dad was a baptist pastor and i had a lot of questions as a kid so i i did wrestle with my faith quite a bit in my teenage years and my early 20s i wasn't quite sure what i believed i think i mean i know i always believed in god and i always experienced god through beauty and i i knew that god existed but um i i wrestled with some of the things in the bible i wrestled you know just with some theological issues and um eventually uh when i was 23 really decided to follow christ and um been doing that ever since so that that kind of sums up my life so you didn't have a rebellion where you denied the existence of god or at least started sinning with sexual sin or drugs or something oh i did plenty of sinning i mean this is that's what i was saying when i was a teenager part of i i never rebelled against the existence of god but i just wasn't sure about christianity i wasn't sure about the bible evolution had a big influence on me because i was taught evolution as fact in school and of course that that didn't seem to match up well i shouldn't say of course because a lot of people do kind of reconcile it with genesis but i don't and so um i i was like wow these stories are really different the creation story versus you know what i'm being told is fact evolution and that that was a huge point of wrestling for me um i wrestled with you know if jesus is the only way what about all these other people in the world like muslims who haven't heard about christ and so god kind of took me on a journey with that and i ended up actually but well i'll i'll get back to that um so i did a lot of in in the meantime i was also very you know pulled to the world and you know did all kinds of worldly things and just living you know a sinful lifestyle so and you know that changed when i was 23 and i feel like a lot of the things that i wanted as a teenager i i was kind of demanding from god like when you answer my questions i'll follow you and i realized when i was when i was 23 that i had not got i didn't have any answers to those questions that i was seeking to get the answers to and i saw that god would seem to be real in my brother's life and my brother's friend's life and they they had an impact on me i realized you know i believe in god but their god god is very real in their lives and he's not in mine and i haven't got the answers to my question so maybe i need to try a different approach and i just you know prayed a prayer with my brother's friend and my sister and i just said look god um i'm just gonna take a step of faith that the bible's true but i i need you to show me and from that point i started trying to live a christian life and i went back to church and god revealed himself to me not all at once um i you know i still had many struggles with the bible but you know even the first day that i went back to church as soon as i walked into the church service and the music started i had no idea why i was just crying i i was just uncontrollable weeping and i didn't even know where this was coming from um now i think it was just a spiritual thing a spiritual like a reconnection with god and what i was supposed to be doing and um it was just happening on a deeper level than i was even consciously aware of and then that day the pastor preached a sermon on a story that i had the most problem with the story i hated most in the bible was the story of god telling abraham to sacrifice his son and i just thought oh that is just so sadistic that's a horrible test why would god do that if and i just i hated that story so much but that day the pastor preached a sermon on that story and it opened up my eyes and i just saw that this was a wonderful picture of the savior who was to come that god provided the sacrifice through jesus christ and there was you know the heavenly father who was actually going to make the sacrifice of his son and so that was kind of the beginning and then you know god was revealing himself in different ways and and you know that's from that point my life changed and god slowly answered my other questions you know my question about muslims as soon as when i was a child when i heard that there were these people that were praying to god five times a day but they didn't recognize jesus as a savior my qu the question in my heart as a child was god don't you hear their prayers don't you care about them well god didn't give me an answer at that time he he gave me an answer years later and he the answer i got came through living among muslims living in muslim majority countries seeing the beautiful faith of my muslim friends and realizing that uh god is revealing himself to them now it's on a different timeline it's not what we always expect you know sometimes we think everyone should have instantly have the revelation of jesus but many people know god and have a relationship with god without yet having the full revelation of the plan of salvation and the lord has given us the privilege of being able to reveal that plan of salvation to people and so i've written a book about that it's called bridges of love and understanding and it's about how to share your faith with muslims so if anybody is interested in that um you know i it's that book answers the questions that god that were in my heart i mean that is the answers that were revealed to me uh as i journeyed in muslim majority countries how many books have you got out there oh just one just one you've only got one really yeah okay any plans for more well i a few years ago i got inspired to write a book um about to help atheists find god and they're on a different timeline too yeah and i i i actually kind of had the book outlined in my head and but then i was like wait a minute i can't write this book i've got to write the book about muslims first so i paused that and i wrote the book that i just told you about and then now i don't really remember what i was going to write but but i'm i i have like a few pages written uh so so uh since we're on the topic i just freestyle with these interviews so whatever comes to mind but we're talking about the muslims what about the jews i'm very fascinated with uh the chosen people the jews i do believe romans 11 that the jews will come in so now that the golden question i mean this is your universalist so this is going to be a little bit of a no i'm not a universalist no are you not okay okay we'll get into that we'll get into that okay okay i told you i didn't prepare i didn't get to know you really um but i just heard something about hell that's not eternal and all that but we'll get into that we will get into that but i want to talk first of all about the jews i do believe romans 11 that the jews will come in but then the question is who is a jew is woody allen a jew is he a good jewish boy or is he just culturally jewish you know what i mean and uh you know the which which sect of the true jews is uh most faithful to god i mean i don't want to set up a competition but i mean i'm sure there are just as there are devote muslims i'm sure there are good and holy devote saintly jews so um once the full number has come in then the the jews are going to be allowed to come back in because there's a partial hardening or whatever saint paul says can you talk about that uh biblically and then just in terms of your cultural christian cultural understanding of it and just in your own thoughts about what does it mean for the jews to be the chosen people i believe they are because that's what my religion teaches me but what does it mean and we are the younger son that sort of took the place of the eldest son as so often happens in the old testament so it's a it's a common pattern but just talk me through what does it look like the end times for the jews in particular well i'm like you i believe that the the jews will eventually have a revelation of jesus christ on a whole on the whole because many have um you know many messianic there's many messianic jews but um i you know a lot of people are offended by this idea of um god having a chosen people kind of like a favorite people well i think the way that i understand the jews being chosen by god is that you know the jews were and because of who abraham they abraham was the man of faith and god made him a promise that through him all nations would be blessed and so it's through abraham's descendants and that that god chose to reveal himself to the world and that god chose to bless the world and so it is not that god is loving a certain people more than another people god loves people but he has chosen the jews to be the the way that he reveals himself to the world and that culminated in the incarnation of christ christ coming into the world the savior of the world the messiah the chosen one the anointed one who would save the entire world and reveal the the the most beautiful things about god to reveal that god humbled himself and became a servant to humanity and that god's love for the world is that great that that he would do that and so um you know that's a that's a very special position to be in to be chosen by god to be the people through whom that revelation comes and so um you know but as you said in the book of romans it says that right now there is a hardening in part and not all jewish people have the revelation of jesus christ and um but of course many even at the time of christ did have that revelation so this isn't like an all-or-nothing thing um but broadly speaking the jews have rejected christ but until and toward the end god will at some point like you said when the full measure of the gentiles comes in god will give the jews the revelation and many more will be saved that also isn't an all or nothing thing i don't think every single person who has jewish heritage will be saved but it just in the same way that it's not speaking about every single jew when it says that there's a hardening because obviously paul was a jew so he wasn't hardened neither were the disciples so uh you know it's never an all or nothing thing but um in general as a whole they will have the revelation and come to faith in christ do you um say as we say in the catholic church that uh christianity is the fulfillment of judaism is that a common sense thing in all sorts of protestant denominations oh i don't i i wouldn't really like to say that no are you a child a spiritual child of abraham though yes definitely okay definitely yeah but i i guess i would just try to be a bit more careful because i i wouldn't want to i i maybe it's just hard to put the religion to say that christianity is um i don't know i would probably just not word it that way but i mean maybe in a sense that is what i it's it's a new covenant it's not judaism you know it's it's it's different it's you know a new covenant that god established with people what about um because i'm not familiar with you or your sort of denomination and what is sort of your i i did interview chris date uh in 2019 so i sort of have an idea of where he stands i'm not i don't think you're identical by any sort of imagination but you probably both believe in annihilation for those who don't make it to heaven right um but i want to sort of flesh out like where you stand and how you're seen by your family are you seen as flaky because you believe in annihilationism are you seen as left or right are you seen as more christian or less christian than some of your family members and people you grew up with like how how comfortable are the people around you with some of the positions that you've taken because they're very unorthodox from a catholic point of view right but i don't know how it is in the protestant world like are there expectations to conform to a baptist thing because your father was a baptist uh just talk about sort of like if there's any peer pressure or a judgment or like if you strayed a little bit this way if you're seen as left or right or weird or normal or what well you know in most church contexts that i've been in people aren't going to be grilling you about your various beliefs on these different things when you go into church so if you're the type of person who can hear a sermon and hear things that you disagree with and just you know accept it then it's yeah then it's then it's really not i've i've been in a lot of different churches with a lot of people who disagreed with me on many things but most of the time they didn't even know we had a disagreement because it just that wasn't what we were talking about we were talking about how can i pray for you you know and and encouraging each other in the faith and stuff so but with regard to my parents now you know um my dad is he has always been kind of a my parents have never been too dogmatic on some of these issues like hell i know a lot of kids have been are scared of hell when they're a kid because they were taught you know watch out you know you don't want to go to hell and they were scared with images of hell i never remember hearing my parents talk about hell at all as a child so i never had that fear of hell and i think um my parents i don't know that they really thought about hell that much until i started making videos about it and then when i did i think they started agreeing with me so um i i don't think the hell thing is a a big issue at least with my family um but you know uh it the the hell issue for some reason this really rival i've had a lot of christians like on youtube accuse me of being a heretic for not believing in hell and maybe if you're catholic and you don't believe in hell is it would you be considered a heritage sure what percent 100 yeah but just to be a protestant you're a heretic already so it doesn't really matter just go for it go for it do your thing you know but no offense intended it's just from the catholic perspective like we've got our uh our dogmas right so right um which i love they're sort of like the light lights along the path sort of thing but um you're a fascinating person because you're so full of light and life and you're smiley and cute how old are you if you don't mind masking 45 wow you look great thank you so uh your husband uh he's happy with you yeah oh you mean like because of my beliefs no i mean did he just pick a good woman he's happy with the woman oh yes yeah and in fact he he always says like if you die i'm never taking my ring off i'll never get married again and and i'm like no do it you i don't want you to be alone and you know but so so uh your siblings are they equally christian like like they're hardcore and all that yes yeah okay so there are no real black sheep to speak of in the family you'd have to go looking at the cousins or something to find some black sheep and some atheists yeah and actually i think most of my cousins are believers also wow so is it yeah is it a geographical thing are you like in the bible i'm in canada by the way in case you didn't know right oh really montreal quebec canada yeah it's a catholic place i was protestant or well i was atheist when i moved here but i was raised protestant became catholic after having lived in quebec i think it's a coincidence but god only knows so are you in the bible belt or where are you well i'm in utah right now but i've only lived in utah for a year i've um i grew up in new mexico um and i've lived in quite a few different places in the u.s and outside the u.s is santa fe in new mexico or is that yes yeah okay okay is there also a santa fe in arizona or am i mistaken about that oh i wouldn't know um that doesn't sound familiar for arizona but it must have been new mexico it must have been new mexico then yeah so um [Music] yeah so i i'm gonna talk we're gonna talk about uh helen i don't wanna dwell on hell because it's not a big deal but let's touch maybe first of all on uh evolution just briefly and uh i'm a young earth creationist i don't believe in evolution i think it's nonsense i think it's awesome i think it's uh philosophically untenable and uh you know the basis of my christian faith is god the father who i arrived at through philosophy okay so i have wow a philosophical approach to these questions these fundamental uh questions about metaphysics and stuff like that and god so my my faith in god is real i do have faith in god but that's a secondary matter and you do need it's a dogma of the church that we do need to have faith in god even though we can know with certainty that god exists just by the light of natural reason we can know that and so i came to god through the light of natural reason and of course lots of grace obviously nothing happens uh nothing good happens without grace right like this is what uh protestants and catholics sometimes argue about faith versus works and grace and these sorts of things but we we do actually agree it's just the communication gets jumbled because of language and it's just a hairy thing to unpack but um by the grace of god i was converted to god and i said yes to those graces i'm trying to cooperate i'm not doing a good job cooperating but god's doing an excellent job on his side right if it's a two-person dance he never makes a mistake but i'm constantly stepping on his toes and insulting him spitting in his face and hurting his feelings these sorts of things i can say hurting his feelings because he did incarnate right um is there anything you want to talk about with respect to evolution and young earth creationism or are we just on the same page and there's preaching to the choir here well i just absolutely love that you're a young earth creationist and i think that's it's kind of rare for a catholic to be a young earth creationist isn't it it's pretty rare yeah it's pretty rare if you know the colby center hugh owen you can look him up he's a catholic he's fighting really hard for um for the the traditional christian teaching on on creation and he actually what what got him into the faith and into the reality of young earth creationism actually ironically is darwin and evolution and all that nonsense because that's what tricked his father his own biological father into becoming one of the first if not the first head of planned parenthood so you can see now we're talking about some very fundamental uh chess moves on the game board of life that satan is making with abortion promiscuity pornography divorce and these sorts of things it's all connected to evolution we're just apes and we're just animals and it's it's a very very clever and subtle move that satan made with this uh with this silly story it's a just so story meaning that we can tell the story and we can't you know we can't go back in time and really test the veracity of the story it's just a cute little story and they they can put everything just in place they can line up all their fossils they can line up all the geological columns they can line up everything and tell their little story they forget that i can also do the same thing i can tell my story and i can line things up in a slightly different way right uh it's such as competition it's like a creative writing competition but we're competing against satan and he's pretty smart wow well you know i i need to have you on my channel and let you tell your story because this is really fascinating um especially like the way that you came to know the father so i'm really interested to hear more about that also and happy holidays yeah for sure yeah i've been wanting to uh i know you've had a few satanists on i was a satanist before becoming catholic oh yeah really yeah i was an atheistic satanist so uh don't get too excited it wasn't that exciting okay i was just what's not to say well don't worry i've had enough excitement okay i mean if you see those the interviews i had with the satanist it's like wow okay this is i slept with exactly four women and one of them is my wife so it's not uh i don't have a really uh tawdry past it's mostly just an intellectual trip you know uh satanism is just worship of the self my will be done instead of god's will be done and i don't know if you're aware of the fact that uh aleister crowley took his law of the lama from saint augustine one of my favorite saints saint augustine who famously said love god and do what thy wilt and so crowley just said do what that will shall be the whole of the law so it's really not that i've had a few people um jokingly say that it wasn't a big leap from satanism to catholicism these were anti-catholics by the way saying this joke but uh it is true there's not a big leap between satanism and catholicism is just is there aren't that many lies that need to be told to lead someone astray to lead someone from you know their two cities as saint augustine said they're characterized by two different loves love of self under contempt of god or love of god unto contempt of self and just takes a little shift in perspective and then you've switched teams and those really are the two religions right yeah exactly and that's you know i i thought as i was interviewing those satanists on my channel i thought wow you know i um if like they've already had experiences both of them with satan himself and their right now they're just believing satan's side of the story and so if they ever flip and you know choose to believe god then you know i mean they're they're already in a better position with the experiences they've had to actually become you know followers of christ it's amazing there's the story of blessed bertallo longo you can look him up if you if you don't know him already he was a catholic uh he was a high priest of satanism and he was living an exciting life unlike me but you know lots of women and stuff like that and uh drugs and i don't know what but um my body is very fragile i can't do drugs i don't even do cocaine sorry i don't even do caffeine let alone cocaine forget about that that would kill me but i don't even do caffeine you know never never did but i have to say it's quite funny uh when atheists say to me oh you were never an atheist you were always a christian i usually answer yeah you're right because you know i was pro life as an atheist i i did not believe in evolution as an atheist that's well that's weird that's a bit weird isn't it yes wow all i embraced as as an atheist was my will superiority the sovereignty of my will my will be done but i didn't believe in evolution why would i why would i believe it this just doesn't make sense and i didn't you know i didn't believe in killing the unborn you know so i've been really blessed i think by god i don't think every atheist convert to christianity can say that but for whatever reason i've always led a sheltered life first i guess in my home with my being the youngest and my mother you know doting on me and then on the mystical realm i guess god doted on me too and he protected me from a lot of uh a lot of danger right wow that's great because i'm weak if i were stronger he would have let me go deeper into the darkness right but i'm very very weak so he just let me go just far enough and he knows how to deal with each and every one of us so what do you think about uh abortion and all these sorts of things that are dominating the western culture is do you make a direct connection between this human sacrifice child sacrifice and some of the natural disasters and man-made disasters and uh the difficulties that we go through do you connect them like that or no you try not to well i do believe that um all of like natural disasters and things are a result of nature being out of control because it doesn't have the benevolent governors that it was supposed to have when god created the world he created everything very good and he gave us dominion he made us the governors of his good creation and so um what happens if a child doesn't have good parents the child is unruly and so i see nature as kind of a child throwing a tantrum um you know it it doesn't have a a benev it doesn't have benevolent govern governors to rule over it to teach it how to be and that our sin has corrupted nature it's given nature an example we kill and so nature kills um and so i definitely do draw a correlation and of course at times in the past there have been times when god brought natural disasters i mean we wouldn't call it natural if it was god um but you know brought plagues on the egyptians and such as a judgment but in general i feel that right now we are in a time of god's grace i don't think that's the primary way that god is operating with humanity today i don't think he's bringing plagues on people and things like that today but i do think nature is out of control and the reason it is is because of human corruption so i wouldn't make a one-on-one correlation like oh this city was being corrupt and therefore this you know typhoon happened or something like that i wouldn't do that but i would just say broadly nature has not it you know it hasn't been kept in check it has a bad example and it does what we do we kill it kills things are delicately balanced by god in his well-ordered cosmos and just a little nudge throwing things out of whack will have repercussions and that spreads and uh the time is out of joint as shakespeare said i think that's something he said once but um yeah so uh where do we go from here i guess we can talk a little bit i don't want to talk too much about the annihilationism stuff just because it's it just it annoys me frankly but let's talk yeah it does annoy me because you know for me morality is very important and you can't have morality without an eternal uh hell because basically that just let me air my uh my thoughts yeah it's just yeah because you know i tried talking to chris date about this it's like look which one is more um horrifying an eternal hell or an annihilation and he finally admitted that eternal hell is more horrifying so basically yeah i think so i'll have to go back and listen to it was in 2019 but i pressed and pressed and pressed him on that um because this is this is the sort of thing it's like i think that annihilation is a way out and what chris tried to argue i think i don't want to make this about chris but what he tried to argue he's the only one i've really talked to about this sort of thing he tried to argue that you know there's this certain shame on your name and these sorts of things and i can't remember all the arguments he made but it's just you know if i could if i could i would consider it getting away with murder if i murdered a bunch of babies and then just got annihilated at the end as compared to murdering a bunch of innocent babies and then burning in hell for all eternity because i've done an infinite offense against an infinitely good god right so i think it's it's just i don't want to see anyone in hell i don't want to see anyone suffer i don't want to see even satan suffer in hell for all eternity but my church tells me my faith tells me that he cannot be redeemed and you know justice is real and the sovereignty and dignity and goodness of god is real and it's something that has dire consequences if is if you know if we disrespect god so i'll let you talk i'm just generally disgusted by the whole position because i want god to be respected and i want there to be consequences for the choices that we freely make i i really do it's important it's very important to me part of the reason i'm agitated is because i want to sin i want to sin i want to get away with it okay but i can't because i can't so don't offer me the hope that i can get away with it or i might start sinning more boldly okay well maybe that can be a next topic but i will try let me try to alleviate what's really bothering you about this and the idea of people getting away with it you know there are about 10 11 times in the gospels where jesus discusses differing degrees of punishment for the wicked i agree okay i agree with that so um when i say people are being annihilated well yeah but still i think there is some who are going to suffer more before they're annihilated and that's and why do i believe that because that's what jesus said he said those who devour widows houses and for a show make lengthy prayers they will be punished the most severely and you know so they're they're it's not just this thing of like okay they're getting away with it no they're they they will have a justice uh there there is a judgment day and there are consequences for what they've done so is this helping a little bit it's helping a little bit yeah it's helping a little bit yeah yeah i mean okay it's um you know uh i'm not gonna press the issue just because it is a dogma of the church that hell is real right it's eternal you can't escape and these sorts of things so you're not you're not suggesting uh i mean at first when i just caught a glimpse of one of your videos and i saw that you denied the eternity of hell i just assumed you're a universalist and that satan would be up in heaven which i have nothing in principle against that other than the fact that the church teaches me that he cannot be saved so you don't believe that you don't believe that satan no and in fact you know i think in in fact you if you believe in eternal conscious torment you have more in common with a universalist than me okay because in a way you believe in eternal life it's just an eternal life of suffering right yeah so like this is the main reason i don't believe in hell it's because the hundreds of times the bible talks about the death and destruction of the wicked and life for the righteous just in the new testament alone there's more than 90 references to eternal like the afterlife as the contrast is life versus death not heaven versus hell and so and of course then we have to get into the issue of when it does mention hell what is that place talking about and i don't believe that that's a place of eternal conscious torment that is referring to a place where god slaughters the wicked and um where there is a burning fire and this is reminiscent of the fires of molech in the valley of hinom and that's exactly what this place is referring to gehenna is the place of judgment of the wicked it's not a fiery underworld where people are tormented forever and so it's very hard you know it and then you've got the old testament verses about what's going to happen to the wicked and the destiny of the wicked is always death destruction they'll perish they'll never be seen again and so if we think about people suffering forever in eternal torment that's not death that's not destruction that's not perishing that's life right it's a really horrible life but it is life and i don't think jesus is offering eternal life to the wicked yeah it's death it's eternal death right it's a falling away from god and all the goodness that flows from god that's the way i see it uh the the way i could debunk your position quite easily is to say that there is in your worldview there is hope in hell bingo game over for your side because there is hope in hell that hope is this will end this suffering's gonna end that's the hope that everyone has in hell and so it's pretty much game over for your side i don't know what you could possibly say against that there's hope in hell really well um i guess you would be hoping for your death at that point um but i i don't see how that is a problem jesus said jesus said to judas it would have been better if he had been annihilated right or never been born which is the same thing that's what the atheists all say the same thing they all say the same thing i don't fear death because it's just like before i was born it's the same thing and jesus said you wish you had never been born what does that mean the peace of not existing no it means the eternal conscious torment hmm right something to think about well okay we get we can i can let i i just let you end on that one and we can move on because i don't want to annoy you with that it's not about it's not about winning it's just it does it does aggravate me so we'll move on to other topics okay um because you know i love pleasure i love sinning i love doing my own well so that's as i already admitted that's why i'm aggravated because i don't oh i don't want to be tempted to go down the dark side again well and david see this is that i think this is highlighting a difference and maybe this is going to aggravate you too because you're a good girl and i'm a bad boy no it's highlighting it no i think it's beautiful that you're honestly admitting that you have desires to sin and you know i do too um but i think that the more that we know christ the less that those desires will you know but but i'm saying this is highlighting a difference between catholics and protestants because see i don't believe that i can out-sin the grace of god so i do think i could go out and sin it up right now and i would be totally and completely forgiven so um yeah i mean what so what compels me not to sin right because i already believe i'm forgiven i believe no matter what i do right now god will forgive me but i don't want to displease god so that's what keeps me from sinning is because i actually i want to do what god would and i know you do too so but right now if you knew that you could go out and sin and be totally forgiven because that's what us crazy protestants believe i still wouldn't right i still wouldn't sin yes right exactly so you'd be in the same position but maybe you wouldn't be so aggravated yeah thank you so uh yeah this is the highest uh the highest walk with christ is to be good for goodness sake and uh the fear of hell is useful this is what the church teaches it's useful but it's not perfect it's very very imperfect it's just sort of like a childlike way to get on the path of pleasing god for for goodness sake you love god for his own sake and you try to please him because he's all good and uh you know it's just you know it is it is a struggle and i'm struggling to be good and uh part of that struggle is um because i haven't killed the old man right like i mean i'm trying to make it my project to be virtuous and i can't right like i can't so i need to die to self and like christ live in me this i don't think the protestants and catholics actually disagree about much really but um but psychologically you know psychologically i've got some issues and so i um you know we just have to cater to our own tastes like for example i don't like garlic you probably like garlic so um you know if i walk into your kitchen i don't want to offend you but it's like i'm not comfortable with that stench of garlic right okay so it's just an example so it's the same thing with the stench of hell like it's a stench of hell um it just annoys me but i i i'm sorry i'll try not to cook it when you come over i've had i've had some wild dreams about um the smell of death this is complete change of topic now okay uh the smell of death it's a very special disgusting smell i don't know if other people have experienced this but it's it's like a horror horrible nightmare scenario where i've killed a baby and i've buried it and the police are after me and they're going to find out should i confess it or should i run away and hide you know just these guilt-laden dreams and stuff like that um i've never had a child actually so maybe that's part of the the weirdness with having killed a baby i'd never never had a child but um you know why am i talking about this now what the with this death the stench of death dream yeah the stench of death and these sorts of things um i guess what i guess what i'm shifting on to the topic now is away from hell and more onto the the demons satan and the demons and how they they bother me like they um tempt me or they you know give me nasty images and stuff like that um and in my dream life i have a lot of weird dreams i think a lot of people have weird dreams but i know we're told we're told not to take the dreams too seriously but it's sort of a litmus test of how you're doing spiritually and i think i know i know the great saints were bothered by satan and they were some of them were physically tossed around by satan so uh i shouldn't be too overly concerned that i'm getting some attention from satan he does want my soul after all right is that you agree with that much oh definitely i'm i'm not surprised to hear that you're you know having demonic attacks and that kind of thing yeah it happens to you to you also yeah definitely but you just smile them away with your smile well i i i command them to leave in the name of jesus yeah that's good and and so you know i think you can take you you might be able to take more authority over them than you have been right now yeah yeah i know i'm i am i know it's it's i know what it's about i know what the faith is about i know i know what to do and you know the power of prayer and you know um i know how to be a follower of christ the pro the pro that's not the problem the problem is uh doing it and committing to it and being fully committed right like that's the problem of the christian walk and uh you know i i don't want to sound petty and jealous but you know you've got a nice upbringing with the you know wholesome christian people around you or at least ostensibly wholesome people and it's sort of a little bit easier than my entourage which was like the mafia and you know drug dealers and stuff like that it's just a little bit uh harder it's a bit harder to um i feel a little bit jealous because i don't have the support maybe that you have right and a lot of people have like and i'd love to be part of a big christian family with lots of kids and it's all churchy and stuff like that well don't think too i mean look families we have our problems too i mean when my family gets together it's spiritual warfare because we're fighting you know i mean so don't get too it's not all right exactly yeah how do you how do you assess a church though like i mean i'm catholic so i go to catholic church and when i go to right when i go to a new catholic church i'm just watching to see is it really catholic or is it just pretending to be catholic and uh you'd be surprised at the horror stories of like just the the stuff that goes on where it's just like i'm never going back to that one but um how do you do it as a non-catholic like you pretty much could go to any church or do you look for what the label is or do you read the creed the creed or how do you do that like how do you church shop if you're into towns like you you move to utah you can't you can't go to lds right that's like totally right right right the charts in a bad sense so how do you how do you figure out like evangelical is that good like charismatic is that good or like baptist is that good like how do you navigate that was if you open a yellow pages i don't people still have yellow pages but back in the day you had yellow pages churches it's just pages and pages of different denominations so how do you do that as a protestant well when i got to utah i looked up christian churches and it probably would have been easier if i had a phone book like the old days because then you can see all of them right and some churches don't have websites and everything but anyway um i visited about five different churches and i got here before my family came like they i had to come and find a house and get us established so i was doing this by myself and i i went to about five different churches and there was one church in particular that i really felt the spirit of god um it was a very small church and probably more theologically different than me than most churches like it was a calvinist church i'm not sure you know um like anyway i am as far from calvinism as you can get i i don't believe in calvinism and so i really but when when the pastor prayed when he preached i really felt like you know this was a good church the people were very nice so that's the church and then my husband came and that's the church we ended up settling in um he visited a few other churches as well but we liked that church and it but i did tell the pastor you know i had a conversation with him and i was like look i i want to know if we're going to be accepted this church because you know we're crazy charismatic you guys are not right um you know because actually if i'm going to choose a church i i i'm more drawn to people who are charismatic i'm more drawn to like you know using the gifts of the spirit people who believe in prophecy visions and you know um all these type of things laying on hands and praying for healing in the service and things like that i'm very much into that but you know there's also when i've gone to charismatic churches there's also some things that kind of annoy me so you know i mean you know sometimes it's like a little bit fake like there's some stuff that happens that's not real and so that's kind of annoying you kind of always have to be like kind of separating and judging and that's weird so um so but anyway i told the pastor you know of this church like look i we're crazy charismatic we believe in ordaining women you don't um i'm an ordained minister um you know uh like you know basically like are you gonna accept us here i you know i don't believe in hell and um i told him i don't believe in calvinism i think it's horrible i don't believe any of your five points and you know he was so loving i was so impressed with him he was like look at our church we're we are concerned about you know loving god and loving people and we will we will know who is right about all that stuff when we you know are in god's kingdom so you know i'm not he's like i'm not concerned about that so we felt very comfortable uh and it's it's a very loving church people in that church with just a small church like 30 people and within that you have people taking others into their homes you have a family providing a home for an entire family in need and that family has been living with them for several years so this is the type of love that's in that church so um you know we'll we'll figure out the other stuff later right but like yeah wow so i i got a couple of ideas you sparked in me as you were talking that's pretty fascinating stuff um i guess i'll start with um uh what was i gonna talk about there the charismatics um okay well i can't remember the first question but the second question was are there some big names in terms of household names preachers and stuff like that that you can turn me on to that i can go check out um because i've been listening to protestant christian radio at work when i drive around in the truck and some of them i really really like like i just enjoy the preaching and uh some of them are just they spend a lot of time bashing the catholic church for some reason i don't like that but um are there some big names that i may have heard of uh people that you like yeah you know there's there's a pastor that i really like i think he's a great preacher i'm not gonna 100 say i agree with every single thing he teaches but i will say i feel like if i send people to him they you'll you will be blessed um by his teaching but he does get picked on a little bit for this idea of prosperity gospel but um you know i it is not one of those things of like god is going to make you rich and famous and it's not like that at all um but his name is joseph prince have you heard of him no okay well joseph prince is a he's a preacher from singapore and he's you know it has a giant church in singapore you can look them up yeah um but you know his teaching is very good you know just very filled with the spirit uh very much of gonna encourage you to believe god for miracles and to expect miracles expect healing and you know of course there's the prosperity aspect of it which you know i the way that joseph prince teaches it i don't think it is um negative as you know some others have preached it's you know anyway i'm that but that would that would be the point i would kind of argue with because i do think you know that many christians are very blessed and very poor and so um you know like i said i wouldn't 100 percent agree with him on everything but i think he's a great teacher any is there a second name you can throw it there it's funny it's funny before you go on uh it is funny because i just looked up joseph prince and i have seen his face before because one of my guests let his hair grow into that hairdo with the bangs and someone made a joke oh you look like joseph prince and i had no idea that was but i looked it up and it's like yeah it looks like joseph prince just because of the hairdo so i have seen this guy before i'll go check him out i'll go listen to his stuff i have a feeling i'm not gonna like him just because uh there's a sort of like a phony veneer like joe olsteen sort of fakeness that i get a vibe that i get off his photo i hope it's not true but that's the vibe i get is joel olsteen fake faker than fake well i mean it's not my place to judge anyone i don't listen to joel olsteen um does he seem to does he seem a little bit fake to you um i mean i'm not going to say that i don't i don't want to disparage like a you know a man of god um and so i like um but i mean you know i i i know a lot of people have issues with joel olsteen to me i i would say he seems like a sincere believer in christ who is doing his best to reach the world for christ and the way he does it looks a little bit different then maybe i would do it yeah maybe maybe some other christians would you don't creep me out like you seem warm and human he seems like a [Music] fake and creepy but anyway i don't dwell on it either i mean i'm just going based on like chemistry i've never actually seen the guy uh i've seen maybe one minute of footage from this guy so i can't judge him but um yeah you know i i know some protestant preachers like i knew i don't know if he's still alive ravi zac zacharies do you know him yeah i don't know what sort of camp he was in or whatever and uh i'm listening to dr michael youssef do you know him you know that john's family he's egyptian okay um i did want to ask i can't remember what the second question i was but you were in the middle of starting a new rant if you wanted to go for it do you remember oh no tangent okay so the charismatic thing it always creeped me out because you know the tongues and the hub inhibited if you listen closely you can see it's all just the same sort of tricky patterns that they use and i think tongues was actual legit languages that were being spoken so that people could understand it you know uh that's what i think tongues was but i believe in tongues but i don't think the hibi thing is real uh maybe it's like a trance state you can get into but i mean i'm from canada and we had this experience in toronto with the charismatics rolling around oh right in the airport and laughing and all this stuff it just creeps me out i think it's satanic i'm not saying your stuff is but a lot of that stuff seems very demonic to me like the laughter or the tongues or stuff like that can you give me a sort of a counter balance to my skewed perspective maybe well i can definitely understand people feeling that way um so um but i'm very much uh a believer and practicer of speaking in tongues um and the other person i was gonna mention is heidi baker she is a very she's probably the most famous charismatic right now in a good way um because she's do you know her no i'll look her up though okay heidi baker she moved to mozambique with her family um and she has been there serving the poor um you know making orphanages uh i mean like she started an orphanage she's planted like thousands of churches in mozambique um and so and the way that she plants churches is they their group goes into a village and they say bring us your blind people bring us your deaf people and they pray for them people get healed and then you know people turn to the lord so she is probably the most well respected charismatic um preacher and teacher uh in the you know in the in the crazy charismatic movement she is the most famous and most loved okay right now i just sent you a link of a woman that i really love because she is serving the the handicapped i love johnny erickson yeah johnny erickson uh amazing johnny not she says johnny not joanie jo she said she pronounces her her own name johnny yeah i thought said too yeah i would say joni you would say johnny or joni i i've always said johnny erickson okay yeah you know other johnnies that are women no okay so that's her own little thing but wow she she's lived through quite a lot and she's giving back and she's like walking the christian walk now absolutely she is a huge inspiration to me i i really love you know um her story and you know i actually carry around i don't have it within arm's reach but i have a christmas card with like an artwork that she she made you know um because she does art with her mouth yeah and so um when a lot of times when people will like get discouraged about where they're at in life you know and and like the the limits that they have i will bring that out and and then talk about her story and talk about the hopelessness that she felt yeah you could talk tell the two-minute version for our audience here if you don't okay sure yeah so johnny erickson she was you know a normal healthy teenager she had a diving accident and basically broke her neck and i mean i may not have the medical details right but she became quadriplegic so she could not move her arms or legs and all she had use of was her head she was extremely depressed because and and she was a christian um she was extremely depressed you know crying out to god you know why am i even alive not wanting to be alive because she knew she was going to have people pushing her around bathing her and doing everything for her for the rest of her life and that was just overwhelming well um eventually she got inspired and took a pin in her mouth and started learning how to draw with her mouth became an incredible artist just an incredible artist um and and then a motivational speaker she got married um she's lived just a life inspiring other people and so she um you know she has been a wonderful christian lady and she's done all kinds of charity work so it's just a testimony to what god can do through someone's life when you're really just um willing to serve him with whatever you have you may not have use of your legs your arms are there you may have some other kind of limit and many of us are limited in so many ways but god can use um any situation if we let him so that's our story amazing but if you have a mild inconvenience because of a pregnancy you should definitely kill the baby right absolutely not absolutely not and think about all the lives that have been you know people say why hasn't god cured cancer well you know what maybe one of those millions of children that never had a chance to live out their life had in its mind the secrets to unlock um you know and and heal cancer for everyone we don't know what we've lost we can't even grapple with what we've lost by um just murdering millions of children who could have come into the world and been a huge blessing to us in so many ways it's crazy to think about it that that's the fallen world we live in it's a sobering thought just to remember that another sobering thought that i have been contemplating lately since kovid is the children dying of hunger and thirst every day every five or ten seconds there's a child dying needlessly i would say needlessly um but it puts into perspective a lot of our other problems and uh certainly covet i mean close schwalbe read his book he said it's the least deadly pandemic ever basically or at least for two thousand years he said but um what do you make of the political and religious um governance top-down government governance in the face of this so-called pandemic did you get jabbed and if so why or if not why not and what's your perspective on the politics and the religion of it well i i i got the vaccines i got the booster um and you know i'm very much a believer in medicine using making the use of modern medicine even you know it of course many people were worried about the risks of the vaccine and i i did feel it was risky to do it you know with it being a new type of vaccine but i felt that the benefits outweighed the risk so i got it and um you know i'm i hope you know and i i'm thankful for having the ability to get the vaccine and you know but i'm also a believer in miracles and i believe you know god does lots of healing miracles today so um i rely on all the paths that god has given to healing i'm really surprised and very dismayed that uh the cr like christians have been associated with being anti-vaxxed not i'm not saying that everybody has to get the vaccine like if you if you're a christian and you're like no i really don't trust this vaccine i don't think you know it's not what i want to put in my body i totally respect that but it's just strange to me and um i i'm i regret that like christians and in particular evangelicals have like kind of become known as like pro-trump and anti-vaxx and like believing that you know the election was stolen and so it's just it's absolutely bizarre um i don't know how we got to this state in america is that so is that your camp sort of that um evangelical right-wing christian is that sort of where you belong but you're an outlier well i definitely identify as an evangelical but um not like right wing like because the vast majority are characterized that way in the mainstream media as being right-wing the christian right the you know what i mean yeah well uh people the people that trump was catering to i think are the evangelicals if i'm not mistaken yeah and that's what i i am i'm shocked and dismayed that evangelicals were deceived by him does that mean does that mean that you're more left than the majority of the evangelicals maybe um i mean but i'm rabidly pro-life um i'm but i'm more i'm more left-leaning on gay marriage i don't feel like we need to be telling people you know what they can do in that area is that is this going to be a hot button issue for you no because i don't want to be gay okay well anyway so um you know i i i yeah but like i i was i'm kind of i'm i'm horrified but i don't i try to avoid talking too much about politics actually i try to like i keep myself away from politics because i notice it actually is kind of it's a religious sort of thing um and when i get involved with thinking about politics talking about politics and like relating to other people on the basis of their political ideas then i find that does something bad to me spiritually yeah yeah i agree with you 100 the the thing is i am rabidly anti top down government i very much against the way the government's handling this and even the catholic church has been handling this and very much against it i didn't get jabbed i'm never going to get jabbed i'd rather die than get jabbed and i'm not i'm not a typical anti-vaxxer it's just i don't want the government telling me what to do right like even if they said you had agreed even if they said you have to eat a chocolate ice cream cone i love chocolate ice cream cones i'm not going to eat it sorry i'm just not going to why because you're telling me to do it i'm not going to do it period right so there's a bit of a rebellion maybe it's an antichrist rebellion in me i don't know but the thing is the thing is i see satan at work in the governments of the world and what is my biggest clue that these people are not our friends and they're not godly abortion right justin trudeau look at him catholic in name only look at biden catholic in name only they're pushing abortion so i hope you're not a trudeau or a biden supporter for that reason no yeah i'm not i i that's that i've always felt like um as much as i might personally like a particular candidate if they support abortion then there's something there's something not right like that's someone that i can't like feel like i can trust and so i i wouldn't support an abor uh a candidate that um you know is uh pro-choice yeah like explicitly and openly and pushing it and stuff like that yeah yeah the thing with uh trump is uh i liked him personally on a personal level because i watched the apprentice with for years with my wife um not a good reason to vote for him probably but i'm not american anyway so it doesn't really matter i was shocked i still can't believe he got elected um i do believe the election was stolen from sorry i think i'm crazy but i think they still it was stolen um but i don't really know i don't really i don't really know i don't really know but i've seen some interesting data with a forensic analysis of the data it looks very fishy to me but um you know i'm not willing to stake my life on it but my hunch is but the point with trump is i like him just because he's brash he's bold he's a pain in the butt and these sorts of things and uh but i never believed he was pro-life but i liked the fact that he was catering to pro-life people right i don't even believe he's christian but i like the fact he's pretending to be christian right and he may have undergone some sort of mild baby step conversion who knows god only knows but i think he's you know probably still a womanizer and an egomaniac and all these sorts of things but i mean i like him more than pretty much any other politician i've ever seen because he's so he's so he's such a cowboy but i did lose respect for him sorry if i'm making a cringe here no no it's fine it's fine i'm used to it now i mean i'm shocked the reason you're getting my expressions of shock is because i'm surprised that from just the conversation that we've had here like your your trump support surprises me but i'm i'm kind of used to like you know expect the unexpected but i did you know i did lose a lot of respect for him because he was pushing the facts which i don't believe in you know i just think it's it's evil to push the backs if you want to get it great right whatever um but um and the whole thing just i just lost respect for him and he's not really on my political radar anymore but um you know the the reason i'm talking about trump is because there's a difference between being pro-life and pretending to be pro-life but we see some old testament stories that sort of give me the idea that it's okay uh for god to use people that aren't necessarily the typical hero that we would expect for example uh king cyrus or whatever you know like this has been overdone with the comparison with trump i don't know if you're aware of that but that's been overdone with the trump mania people who are in love with trump to try to make him biblical and stuff like that i even have an atheist friend who is very close to becoming uh religious because of trump he's like maybe there is a god maybe there's a god maybe there is a god because it's just too it's too magical the way this happened like who would have who would have thought that this this guy could have won the presidency but well that's funny because i credit that i i thought you know what for him to win the presidency and to have this much power over people he must have sold his soul to the devil i have no other explanation there must be supernatural power at work and it must be the powers of darkness at work so that's it it could be yeah it could be but uh yeah i'm like i'm like you in a lot of uh i'd like to avoid politics i think it's always dirty it's always crew up well i don't know if you feel that way but i feel that it's always dirty and corrupt and i prefer to focus on the spiritual battle of good versus evil which i think is very very obvious i'm a little bit surprised and disappointed in you that you don't see the manipulation of the governments these godless governments and how they're you know controlling people and trying to lie to people educating children about this transgender stuff and trying to educate children into being gay and also i can't believe that you're okay with that well i don't think i said i was okay with that yeah all i said is i can't believe you're okay with it and i hope you're not okay with it no i mean i see lots of corrupt things happening i mean and and let's include evolution in that teaching kids teaching kids a naturalistic philosophy of life from the time that they enter school k through 12 you have um a a completely godless education and i i and not just godless though anti-god because if you were teaching different perspectives that would be one thing you know okay but um right now it is like that the naturalistic philosophy the evolution is pushed from day one and so um let's add that to the list of things the root i think that's at the very root of everything else including the sex education which i don't know if you've looked into it in the states but here in canada they're teaching fourth graders that if they want to be sexually abstinent why are you talking to a fourth grader first of all about sexual abstinence in the first place and then listen to the list of strategies that you can use as a fourth grader to be sexually abstinent if you choose to be sexually abstinent masturbation hand jobs oral sex anal sex these are forms of sexual abstinence for a fourth grader so satan's at work in the education system that's for sure right are you horrified by that i i am horrified by that you've seen you've seen i'm sure you've seen some of the books that they're uh pushing in the states in the schools like with the gay people and the sort of thing and i know you're you're soft on the whole same-sex marriage issue but i mean it's just it is it is what we would say uh disordered objectively disordered like we have men we have women they have their body parts and they have their function and there's a total commitment and self selfless self-giving one to the other and a lifelong partnership not closely related man and woman exactly we have the god-given definition of marriage and it's uh it's a natural thing it's also a supernatural thing and to to mess with that is to mess with the family ultimately and that has repercussions for the whole of society so i am a little bit uh disappointed that you support same-sex marriage if you do yes i do and um not just that i support gay people and i support transgender people well i support the people i support the people make no mistake about that yeah i love them i support them i don't have a problem with them i'm a bigger sinner than they will ever be so what's the big deal but i want to educate them i want them to make to choose wisely choose life i'm not going to smile when a gay couple adopts a child or whatever i'm not going to smile on that that's going to disgust me not because i feel superior to either of these men or whatever it is or the two women or whatever i don't feel superior to oh i do feel superior to them but i don't think that i'm superior to them okay feelings are we can dismiss our feelings i have a feeling of superiority over almost everyone but i i don't think that i'm superior to anyone god forbid but i don't want a child to be raised by a same-sex couple even though it might be a friendly couple and a nice upbringing and they got money and they're very kind and whatever it's just not ideal i mean and it's perverted i think it's perverted so well do you think with the child let's just say that you know the child's parents and you know if the child was adopted at a later date let's just say the child's parents were you know uh a heterosexual couple but they were you know shooting up drugs going to jail and other in in other ways bad examples to the kids would you like feel that the child would be better off with that family or i can think of a million scenarios where the child would be better off being raised by adolf hitler but that doesn't mean that i think adolf hitler is the best ideal of what a parent should be right so i could do the same thing with the gay couple it's like i can think of a lot of worse situations and then it's like a step up to go to this same sex marriage couple right but that's not the point it's not it's not it's not like lowering the bar so low that it's like oh but this is better over here with this gay couple like that's that's not the point that exercise is too easy i could do that with anyone i could do that with the like give me a sick serial killer perv rapist and i can find someone worse and then take the baby from the worst person give it to him say oh look i improved the child's situation right so that's not a good uh that's not a good uh way to approach the question i would say but yeah well i mean what if that gay couple though what if they were really excellent parents and provided an incredibly loving and nurturing environment for the child and the child excelled and thrived i mean i believe that can happen yeah i believe that can happen but uh [Music] you know it's like what i often like to do is say if everything else is equal and you've got the choice between the biological mother and father or some random same-sex couple which is better and you have to admit you have to admit that all other things being equal it's better to be with the biological mother and father period right so that gets rid of all the hypothetical situations and uh you know comparing it unrealistically with all these different sorts of constraints and uh we could just say all other things being equal it's better to be with but i'm not out there on the street protesting and uh you know i've got uh friends who are gay and whatever and it's just like we just don't talk about politics or religion so you know but live and let my philosophy is live and let live right and there you know there's always going to be something that you can disagree with or that you can that you want to wag your finger and it's usually not uh it's not appropriate usually it's not appropriate to do it in the catholic church we have a principle called mind your own business and uh you know it's different it's different when we're in an interview situation it's like i'm going to pick your brain you're going to pick my brain a little bit we're going to have a little bit of back and forth and i can say i can say well i'm not too comfortable with this topic let's change the topic and you could say okay i respect that whatever so it this is a little bit of a public forum where we're like uh comparing contrasting some of our ideas and we we love and respect each other and we're gonna we're not gonna have any problem after this and i'm gonna come on your show right yes i can't wait and you know what we got off track you asked me to respond about tongue speaking and that kind of stuff you do it can you do it for me can you do it for me right now or is that no i don't do it publicly because i don't want like it like i i just had people even like totally ridicule me for even being a person who speaks in tongues so i'm not going to give them uh you know there's some something to to record and you know like make fun of it's very personal it's very perfect i would imagine it's very personal yeah i'm sorry if i offended you when i went on about the jibber jabber and the little oh no i'm used to that and and i mean you're you're entitled to your opinion about it yeah um but i'm ignorant about it too right all i've seen is little snippets on youtube from years ago i'm ignorant so it's just a prejudice and uh a vague notion of what it's about and so it's not like i i know a bunch of people who speak in tongues and i've like deeply observed it or something right like i've just got a hunch like it seems weird yeah well you know the way that you know when what do you think then about what how paul describes it in first corinthians like what do you think about foreign languages that they don't like i mean suddenly i'm speaking spanish and swahili it's like wow because the people from abroad were there and they were they were all understanding in their natural uh mother tongues right well paul says if i you know like i if i pray in a tongue my mind is unfruitful so i'll i'll pray in a tongue but also pray with my mind yeah because if i'm speaking swahili it just sounds like jibber-jabber to me but to my swahili listener he's like whoa i didn't know you understood swahili and like i don't understand it's jibber jabber to me but the message is from god to you so that's tongues for me that's what tongues i see okay um well and you know that's a lot of people have that interpretation i personally you know had the experience of speaking in tongues um you know very pretty early on i think i was 24 um when i started speaking in tongues and it happened at a church and and then you know ever since then i've i've been speaking in tongues i mean i i've probably missed some days but i mean it's a regular thing that i do oh yeah okay so it's interesting there's actually one of my favorite priests up here in canada uh is a charismatic priest and i told you i'm a bit wary and trepidatious of them because they're very emotional and they're very uh expressive and uh you know i'm a little bit more reserved and cautious about that sort of thing i'm okay one-on-one like i can joke around with you and stuff like that but i could even shed a tear if you got me going but um you know in terms of like a group setting and expressing yourself a lot sorry i think it'd be a bit awkward for me but anyway he doesn't do that on his youtube videos he's a famous youtuber catholic priest called father mark goring i think you'd like him you could check him out and uh he's just a nice guy and he's apparently he's a charismatic catholic and it may be the case that the charismatic catholics are more reserved anyway than you and your crew that you run with there right yeah maybe um what do you think about things like prophecy and the other types of charismatic you know distinctives well i believe i believe in prophecy obviously i believe in prophecy i i would be skeptical like if uh a trump supporter started talking to me about how trump is the whatever you know i would be skeptical of that i'd be like okay that's maybe a nice pious idea maybe i don't know like but if you know if you if you i do listen like i said i listen to protestant radio and as i'm driving around in my truck sometimes at work and some of these guys are fixated on prophecy and i enjoy it and a lot of it seems christian and common sense like yeah i mean christ is going to come again and these are the things we can look for and these are the things we see or whatever it's like kind of common sensical and even if it's out there maybe it's true like maybe this person had the gift of prophecy i don't know um the way to find out is if it comes true right like that's what it says in the bible that's a litmus test like if it comes true it's a true prophet if it doesn't kill him it's a fate it's a false prophet we have to kill him but we don't do that today obviously right well you know i'm i'm extremely skeptical of prophecies about political figures and things like that i i almost never listened to any of that um you know um so like that's kind of that that type of thing is not exactly like i think that's kind of like a a minority example of what prophecy is really used for um i don't think it's so much about predicting like big future events and stuff like that but but that it's it's used to to communicate to people individuals um often or churches on what god is speaking to them at that time and it it may it may be something about the future or it may be something just for the present time you know some insights yeah spiritual insights yeah i believe in that 100 i mean i'm not a deist i don't think god's just sitting back and like okay i've made the world now let it run no no no no no i mean i'm very i i tend to err on the other side where it's like i think there are a lot of miracles a lot more miracles than we'll know until judgment day right on judgment day we're like wow wow wow every little twist and turn that's my that's my hunch because i think god is very creative and active and he respects our free will and we do have free will but i think that people over exaggerate the amount of free will we have i think that we have a lot of constraints on our free will it's like if you were to watch me for two weeks you could say okay i got it i got it i got the pattern i know what he's going to do i know what he's going to say here comes that stupid joke ding ding ding ding ding i figure me out pretty fast so i don't think there's that much we like to blow our heads up and say oh i'm very special and i make a lot of decisions and i'm free and you can't tell me what to do but we're we're we've got a lot of constraints on our freedom and that doesn't bother me as long as i make that one fundamental choice for christ you know that i'm on the side of goodness that's the most important thing so i don't mind having my freedom constrained as long as i choose life you know at the end so yeah miracles and prophecy bring it on for sure like if you got a message for me like i'm ready to hear it right now well i'm not generally very prophetic uh my husband is much more prophetic than i am but um you know occasionally god will give me something for someone yeah this is what they call protestants call like you have a word on your heart or something like that is that right um yeah i i guess they would call it giving a word yeah i have a word for you yeah i have a word for you okay okay yeah so if someone says that to me i'll pay attention like yeah if someone says i have a word for you they mean they they feel like god has told them something for you that has happened to me in a catholic church an older catholic woman came up to me and uh she had some mystical thing to tell me and uh oh what did she tell you well i don't know if it was for me or if it was for my friend because i was there with my very close friend who happens to be gay and sadly since you know we've drifted apart because my catholicism when i converted you know at first it was okay because he's culturally catholic but uh eventually like he started to find out that i really actually believe in all the dogmas of the catholic church and that i for that i frown on you know unrepentant uh homosexual acts and stuff like that i love the sinner but i hate the sin so that put a bit of a damper on the relationship and it's basically over but um you know at the time we were going to church together and uh just because he loves the he loves the the mass like the the music and the experience and he was raised catholic and this sort of thing so he gets very emotional he likes it and uh we were there we're both kneeling and praying before or after mass and uh some woman came up and said something about sexual sin and all i could think of at the time was and she she presented it like this is a message from god or whatever like it was serious and she just said her little cryptic thing about sexual sin whatever it was and i thought my thought at the time was this message is not for me it's from my gay friend right but um you know i i also can't know for sure what she's talking about and i know you know a man with urges and lust and lustful images and sexy dreams and all this sort of thing so i know i'm not immune from sexual sin i have a proclivity to that sort of stuff too so you know it's possible there was a message in there for me too and it's something uh that i would take seriously i would own that but i thought at the time i thought okay she probably thinks that we're a couple right so she came with her message and so whatever it is what it is but um so maybe not the best example of a process prophecy because maybe it was just in her own prejudice her own judgment she made a value assessment or something yeah or maybe it was from god and she had something to say uh that was uh that was meaningful i don't know interesting but it did happen like that's the whole point like someone got the nerve together to come up and interrupt us while we're praying with our eyes closed and to tell us a message from god so it does happen even in the catholic church wow and she didn't know either of us so so that she violated that principle maybe that principle that thing has got so mind your own business but i like being anonymous at church because uh when people start to know you then they think that they have good advice for you right that is annoying isn't it um well i think it's much more annoying to be anonymous because i think the beauty of church is the connection with the people you know i mean i could i can connect with god on my own but the reason we do it together is because of the bond between us you know yeah yeah it's another just another uh defect in my personality where it's just i don't want to be bothered i don't want to i don't want to get involved you know what i mean i'm a bit of an introvert so yeah a lot of people feel that way a lot of people are drawn to churches where no one is going to bother them when they go in so but you're more of an extrovert yeah yes and and when it comes to church it's like trying to get a drunk out of a bar that's what my husband says you know like i'm like shutting the place down you know like i'm the last one standing here like talking and so yeah well i'm sure i would enjoy it like i mean if i went to your church or if you went to my church even better then i mean you'd be one of those people i'd be like yeah let's talk let's talk some more because i mean you're very attractive and lively and it's just it's just fun you're just fun fun to look at fun to talk to smiley thank you and you know i love going to mass i think yeah yeah because i feel it is very christ-centered and you know what to expect um and it's you know you're going to hear now in lots of protestant churches you will also get lots of bible reading and it will be very christ focused but you can also get where you go into a protestant church and you barely you hear like one line from the bible and then the rest is like the preacher talking but when you go to mass you know you're going to be reading the bible you'll hear the passages i i believe they do an old testament passage and a new testament passage and a song on sundays okay yeah and and so well actually but they do a second reading from the uh from the new testament on sundays i think i think that's how it works and then i do like how the culmination of it is you know the eucharist where you're you're celebrating together and you're really focusing in on what the lord and did and and who he is so um i i think mass is very beautiful i enjoy it have you seen a lot of different um beautiful art and architecture and like incense and candles have you seen the whole thing have you ever been to a greek orthodox or russian art yes yes i've been to orthodox services amazing um chanting the gregorian chant in those orthodox churches is amazing yes but the incense i it's got to go i mean i ca i can the the incense i'm not a fan of but um but yes i i do find the the tradition and and the liturgy very beautiful wow so i'm so pleased like i mean this just warms my heart but i'm not converting to catholicism [Laughter] i want to talk i want to talk before i let you go i want to talk a little bit about um ecumenism it's something very very very near and dear to my heart i love christian unity i i mean i would love it if it existed i mean i'm i'm loving the prospect and the promise of christian unity obviously uh christ didn't die for nothing he he died for christianity he's going to get what he wants um we are going to have you and i agree we will have ultimately that unity but in the meantime i love the the project of you know understanding our differences and accepting our differences and the overlap and the things we share in common as christians as monotheists and as humans like you you have a lot in common with your atheist friends if you have any and i have a lot in common with my atheist friends and we can build on that and like you were saying oh don't worry i'm never going to become catholic well from my perspective we're going to have unity one way or another like i mean like your calvinist guy said we'll find out at the end where we land but we're one thing is sure we're landing on the same page we're not going to be disagreeing right once we're in heaven we're we have that unity at that time so talk about ecumenism is that a word that gets bandied around in your circles i don't know that i've ever heard that humanism is that what was that humanism oh yes yes yes yes yeah and um you know it has to be because i've been in a lot of places where there's not that many churches you know when we were in turkey and you know we lived in turkey for four years there's like two english-speaking churches you know there's not it's not so english speakers no matter what your denomination you're going to one of those now there's also a catholic church but yeah even we would have we we would have ecumenical um gatherings even at the vatican embassy um in in turkey and so there was this um you know getting used to having differences and being okay with them is something that i've been on a journey i haven't always been good at this because i mean back in back like at my church in like 2010 or 11 man i gave my pastor such a hard time and and i and you know i i just i gave him a hard time arguing with him about you know even though we were probably quite a closer in in beliefs um than some of the other places i've been but i wasn't at that point um you know ready to be okay with other people having other ideas that i think are wrong right so i i gave him a very hard time and you know and like over time uh you know i've softened up i think i've become tempered i've i've been in a variety of situations where i'm serving with christians who think very differently than me and that's perfectly fine with me now like i have i i you know i i would never think less of someone for you know being a different type of christian or having different type of ideas than than me um so like to me we are unified it's up we are absolutely unified it's just up to us to be okay with um you know being different or having different ideas do you have a technical theological word for the lost the damned the those will be annihilated the reprobates or what what do you call those who don't end up with us in heaven assuming and hoping that we end up in heaven i think the the the term the bible uses a lot is the wicked the wicked okay so um like there are certain people who will not make it yeah and um if you're at a busy public space whatever it might be you can sort of do a thought experiment look around the 150 people that are around you you don't know them but you're just looking around and you're sort of having an impression like that seems like a nice guy this woman seems surly and nasty and this child seems cute and innocent and whatever okay uh you can have different gut impressions like you're attracted to this one more than that one and so on and so forth but you probably wouldn't want to put any money on the fact that oh the ones that i'm attracted to they're all the good ones and the other ones are wicked they're they're going to be annihilated or go to hell in my case what i would say in hell right so we know we're going to be surprised in different ways like what you made it to heaven wow you know i thought you were evil or whatever and uh you know there's no saint without a past and there's no sinner without a future so they're gonna be surprises in heaven so the thought experiment here is about ecumenism because if we mark the wicked as lost and we put them to one side of the stadium or the gymnasium or whatever we're in our church or whatever we put them to one side on the left they're the goats and then everyone else we won't say it's a church we'll say it's a football stadium or something okay because we don't want to say it's a church because it's a religious context i want a non-religious context so we put the goats to the left and everyone else to the right now if we look at that group that are going to make it to heaven we have christians muslims jews buddhists atheists everything we even have some pedophiles in there right so um this is my vision of ecumenism this really softens the theological and dogmatic battles that we could get into intellectually like you don't believe this therefore you're damned you're a heretic you're schismatic whatever it softens all of that and it doesn't make it irrelevant because it is rel it is relevant one day each and every one of us is going to have to kill the old man and live for christ and you know get get in touch with that uh christ-like way of being and to actually go to heaven right nothing in pure can stand before god so we're all gonna get there um those of us uh who make it so uh there's an explicit teaching actually in this book the fundamental fundamentals of catholic dogma where it talks about the three kinds of christians the first kind is in the state of grace meaning that if they were to die they would they would go to heaven and of course they have the faith because you can't have you can't be in the state of grace if you don't have the faith the second kind has the faith they believe the right things they believe in the trinity they believe in this not the other thing but they're not in the state of grace because their self love makes them choose poorly and they give in to whatever weaknesses they have so they're not currently in the state of grace but they have the faith and they have the potential to get into the state of grace and the third kind of christian is the person that doesn't even have the faith much less being in the state of grace so this is a sinner who's unrepentant at the moment and what we're taught in the catholic church in particular in vatican 2 is that those people are potential christians and it's how exciting is that to see the bum on the street corner that's got a heroin needle dangling out of their arm and to say oh this person is either lost a wicked person destined for hell or it's a potential christian that can get the faith and then get in the state of grace and bingo up in heaven with us so what do you think of that vision that catholic vision of uh ecumenism and the three types of christians that rub you the right way the wrong way or how do you like um the wrong way okay because it uh it it assumes that there's something about what the person is doing that is going to be what's causing them to be in the state of greece and so like go ahead well i said earlier that we can't do anything without grace but once we right once we receive the grace we can cooperate more or less with that grace so i don't think we disagree but maybe if you want to okay articulate a bit further well i guess it's maybe the difference between like where our righteousness is coming from not just the grace not just the grace to you know be in the faith or the grace with god's forgiveness but but where is the righteousness coming from god obviously yeah and so it it it's not see we've all been gifted righteousness we have been gifted righteousness even you talk about conversion stories right even you talk about that person that was lost but now is found that which yeah and now sees right you know this idea like what do i have that i've not received like that's the that's the the clinch right it's like we we agree we agree 100 we don't have anything good right we haven't received and evil has no substance right there is no substance to evil it's just a privation of the good so uh just like health is uh illness is a lack of health and you know these sorts of things and um so the evil has no substance everything that is is good like you said in genesis god created a good world a very good world so yeah everything is god everything good is from god and everything that everything everything good we have is received a received good so yeah i don't i don't think you disagree with me well i guess i i don't see the the you know you gave the example of the heroin needle and the person and i think you're giving an example of someone who's sinning right and so we could broadly apply that to well go ahead explain i don't know if you've met people that are down and out but they don't have hope and they don't believe that god loves them and they don't you know they don't have faith in the mercy of jesus christ that is a sin i mean that is so yeah it's a sin but it's a sin of despair i don't know if you are okay with that sin but there is the sin of despair and i think that's the sin that um put judas in hell right the sin of despair he could have repented i think i think uh i think it's pretty clear that it always confused me because i think there is a little discrepancy in the storytelling about judas one says that he felt bad about what he did is that is that true can you correct me on that yeah it it says that like he yeah it seemed that he was up like he was regretted what he had done or he was remorseful or yeah yeah depending on is that maybe a bit of hope a bit of hope for judas maybe i don't think it's hope for judas simply because jesus said it would be better for him if he had never been born so i mean like i i i think um i i'm not sure what the difference between peter and judas is except that judas didn't seem to i mean he might have felt bad about what he did but did that mean he believed that christ was the messiah and trusted in him you know i think that may be the the key difference is that peter believed that jesus christ was the messiah the savior of the world and it doesn't it seems that judas recognized that jesus was innocent and didn't deserve to be betrayed but that maybe he was not you know another good example i guess maybe a better example would be the good thief and the bad thief right because they're both criminals and there's no particular reason why one would have the faith in the other one wouldn't right that's a deep that's a deep mystery also as to why uh why god favors some of us with the gift of faith like i was a satanist and god gave me the gift of faith now i would say that god gave me not only the gift and the graces but he also gave me the choice to choose to cooperate or not like i could have said wow thanks for the gift and then just neglected the gift right like the story i think that's that's an interesting story jesus tells about two sons one who said yes didn't know the other one who said yes i think we have that kind of analog in religious conversion stories and the other the other image of course is the seeds that fall on different uh the path and the rocky ground or whatever and the good soil that's why when i first converted i made that part of my daily prayers is like let me be a good soil let me be good soil this i don't take it for granted you know that this is going to take root it's delicate right the little seed of faith is delicate so this is the catholic perspective we can lose our faith we have to struggle we have to cooperate and i don't know what you would say maybe you agree maybe you have a subtle nuance of difference well i definitely i've seen enough people who have lost their faith that i don't think i could say someone can't lose their faith um because it seems i talked to a lot of people on my channel yeah that seemed like they had faith for a very long time and then they lost it so i definitely agree with you on that point i guess i'm just trying to see if we disagree because you mentioned the three types of christians the one and the third one was kind of like the christian who will become a christian but is not yet potential christian but maybe where the the difference is is the between the first two because i don't understand for you what is the person in the state of grace but versus what would what did you call the second person okay so there are two two components that you need you need the faith and you need to be in the state of grace okay so there are plenty of people who are christian for example mafiosos like the catholic mafioso in italy i'm just inventing a fictional character right but i'm sure i'm sure there's some concrete examples but the mafioso guy is dealing drugs and women and guns and he's going to church on sunday supporting the church financially more than everyone else combined right and he's saying his prayers and this and that and he's going to the sacraments uh he's committing sacrilege and he's committing all sorts of blasphemies because he's pretending to be christian he he he knows what who and what god is who and what jesus christ is he knows he's been educated his whole life he's been absorbed in the culture his whole life he knows but he is not in the state of grace why because he chooses his selfish desires and puts his will above god's will he's not willing to leave his comfortable position in as the dawn of the mafia family it's just too much for him it's unimaginable it's like the right rich kid that came to jesus and he said i already keep all the commandments and jesus said well and give everything away and he went away sad because yeah i ha i have the faith but please don't inconvenience me jesus right like it's like yeah you know yeah i believe in god i worship god in my own way but please don't ask me to suffer or to be inconvenienced right so that's what we're talking about in the second category it doesn't have to be that dramatic or that systematic i am i am sometimes in the state of grace sometimes not in the state of grace depends what i do right how do you know if you're in the state of grace how do i know as a catholic well it's very very easy like i could show you my calendar my spiritual calendar it's like i'm in the state of mortal sin today because of my thoughts words or deeds and then oh saturday i went to sacramento confession i confessed my sins and i got obs absolved of my sins i got the penance i did the penance and i'm in the state of grace so it's and not only is it on my calendar as an event a concrete event i feel a world of difference like you're a charismatic you would love to experience the emotional rollercoaster of being a sinner and getting dirty and rolling in the muck and eating my own vomit like a dog and then going to confession and getting my sins forgiven now i want to be very very very very clear that it's not like the bart simpson said in that episode of the simpsons where he was in the confessional saying i did this and i did that the other thing and please forgive me now so i can go and do the same thing all over again no you have to have a firm resolution never to sin again when you get absolution like you have to hate your sin even the venial sin but you know i'm weak and uh you know so we we can't make any bones about it if you make a sacrilegious confession it's worse than worse worthless it's a damnable sin to do that you have to be honest you have to tell your sins honestly and you have to be detached from sin you can't say i can't wait to go and sin again you can't but because we're weak uh we're caught off guard and we'll have a moment of anger selfishness gluttony sloth you name it right envy whatever it is it just the evil erupts out of the heart like jesus said it's not what goes in it's what comes out that shows the evil of the her so we're striving uh hopefully we christians are all striving by the grace of god striving to be virtuous and to not be in the state of mortal sin because if i can tell you i've had some sleepless nights where i knew for a fact i was in the state of mortal sin and if i were to die i would go to hell and then when i woke up early the next morning rushed to church and got my sins forgiven it's an amazing feeling and i don't want to abuse that by taking my sin lightly and saying oh that's okay i'll just go to confession that is a bit of a stereotype that gets leveled against the catholics well i really appreciate it that you do take it that seriously and strive very hard you know not to enter that state of mortal sin but since i'm not catholic do you think i'm always in a state of mortal sin well three things are required it's harder for you to sin than it is for me to be it's it's almost impossible for you to be in mortal sin because you don't know what the church teaches and you don't therefore you can't give like you can't have full knowledge you need full knowledge and full consent right it's like you're a sweet innocent person going about your life being a christian i think you're in so i don't think you're in the state of uh mortal sin i think you could i think you commit venial sins just like the rest of us i think you probably commit fewer than i do but the the biggest danger the most dangerous lifestyle to have is to be a catholic and a lot of the saints said that most catholic priests most are in hell or as you would say and highlight it these are catholic saints saying that most catholics go to hell because it's a dangerous game to play to actually know what the fullness of the christian faith is and what's required of us is heavy it's very heavy right you're so you've got you've got the bliss of ignorance on your side no offense intended well now what i'm wondering is what do you do with the idea of the gift of righteousness like you know like in in romans and i'm trying to find the verse right now i think it's romans 21 but it says you know therefore no one will be declared righteous in god's sight by the works of the law rather through the law we become conscious of sin but now apart from the law the righteousness of god has been made known to which the law and prophets testify this righteousness is given through faith in jesus christ to all who believe there is no difference between jew and gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by christ jesus yes it's 100 free gift the faith is a free gift if you if you are given other gifts uh charisms or um virtues it's all it's like saint augustine said when he crowns our merits carefully when he crowns our merits he is crowning his gifts to us right this is a catholic theologian and saint saying when he crowns our merits catholic merits he's crowning our gifts to us protestant gifts to us so is there a difference between the catholics and the protestants no there's not there's no difference it's just a misunderstanding it's just a subtle issue about the merits and the gifts the merits are the gifts right this is this is a very deep deep subtle topic of justification and it's been uh investigated by the lutherans and by the catholics they sat down and hammered it out and they've understood a lot of these passages where paul talks using the same words about slightly different things and we've come to understand that we do not differ on the doctrine of justification people think that we differ but we don't actually differ i would highly encourage you to read the documents of uh the council of trent and the uh joint declaration on the doctrine of justification by the lutherans among others i think the methodists were in on it too and the catholics and they really did a good job of untangling a really subtle hairy mess when it comes to the language like what are works of the law what are these works of the law when is he talking about ceremonial judaic law the 600 and however many commandments and when is he talking about the ten commandments you know we believe in the ten commandments that we have to strive to keep the ten commandments and i would hope that you agree with that much no no i don't okay and the reason is because um and well i don't want to interrupt you if you were like in the middle of a point no no no no that was the end of my point i want to hear what you have to say about the ten commandments so i think that ten commandments are great and it won't hurt you a bit to follow them okay but that they're not part of our covenant with god so they were part of god's covenant with the israelites they are not part of the new covenant with god we don't have like in the letters of paul paul saying look you know um don't forget you guys need to follow the ten commandments right he did it he there's never this appeal back to the old covenant commandments instead right he says walk in the spirit and you won't fulfill the desires of the flesh so there is a focus we've give we've been given something more powerful than the commandments because the commandments were there and they did nothing for us because we didn't follow them right i mean what i mean is they were harsh they didn't help us out right they didn't there was no help within the commandments but yep go ahead but god gave us something more powerful in the new covenant he gave us himself so he is our power to live righteously so we are empowered by the holy spirit to live righteously we are in christ we are righteous as christ is and we have the power of the holy spirit to overcome all sin so it's not that now oh therefore i can murder no why would i go out and murder when the holy spirit is in me telling me not to murder the holy spirit would not guide me to murder i don't need the commandment to tell me because the holy spirit is in me and that's what god said in the in the old covenant he said i'm gonna this covenant is you guys i'm gonna make a better covenant for you guys and i'm going to write my laws on your hearts okay let's play a little uh game okay very short game it's it's called uh fill in the blanks of a famous quote by jesus okay jesus said and i quote and you're going to fill in the blank jesus said and i quote if you love me keep my blank yeah commandments commands commandments yeah so we don't disagree we don't disagree it's all grace it's all the indwelling of the holy spirit it's all death of the old man and christ no longer i live christ lives in me we don't disagree we have to keep the commandments we're just quibbling about like uh how that happens right but we're not we're not actually disagreeing because we agree with you 100 it's a gift it's a grace and it's not from us what do we have we haven't received so we do not disagree and jesus said if you love me keep my commandments right and he said i'm giving you a new command love each other yeah and from the catholic perspective there's one commandment another little game here guess what the commandment is love right and we can subdivide that into two love of god and love of neighbor love of god for god's sake and love of neighbor for god's sake we can subdivide those into love of god in thought word and deed and love of neighbor in thought word and deed and so we can have six commandments and then the some of the commandments that have to do with neighbor we can further subdivide we end up with the ten commandments so this is the augustinian breakdown of the ten commandments uh together with uh sort of thomas aquinas analysis of it there have been a lot of people thinking about uh meditating on the ten commandments and how they fit into uh christian morality uh virtue and uh faith grace and the the indwelling the holy spirit the indwelling of the trinity because we have to remember that it's the entire trinity that comes in dwells in us but there's been a lot of uh a lot of thought put into it a lot of meditation a lot of prayer put into the ten commandments and it's a beautiful beautiful thing the sort of fractal nature of the uh it sort of brings to mind the whole notion of god as being a perfectly simple being and how his creation in his finite creation we seem to have as separate notions justice and love and peace and goodness and health and beauty and all these sorts of things but in god they're all one they're all united so uh for our finite intellect it's a little bit challenging to bridge that gap right how can they all be one how can truth be health or whatever but we take it uh we have to accept it as a fact because the to deny it would be completely absurd it would say that to approach one perfection is to abandon another perfection which is completely absurd so we know they all lie in one in the same source and that's god um and it's the same thing with the ten commandments like we think of the ten commandments and i can show you books where it goes into great detail about each and every commandment and the different ways of uh loving god and loving neighbor and the dangers that we face in this fallen world in our fallen but good nature of how we can go astray and how we can violate this one law of love as it is in these sub categories right like the two laws this six laws the ten laws these commandments so it's it's the sort of thing where it's a little bit too um easy to dismiss the ten commandments when you look at the individual trees and there are many many trees and you might think that this is not faith but more religion and there's another saying in catholicism that religion is for those people who lack faith because it's like the pharisees of jesus day it's easy to go through the motions it's easy to say i got the checklist and oh on my calendar i went to sacramento confession on this and i'm in the state of grace that's easy the hard part is having faith and walking uh walking the walk that's why i'm impressed by people like uh johnny walking the walk it's like wow i'd like to be a christian one day so i could do that sort of thing you know it's an aspiration for me it's it's like i'm an aspiring christian and i see examples like that or saint paul it's like wow you know i get tears in my eyes reading the the life of saint paul an actual christian doing christian stuff it's amazing you know but to remove virtue ethics and to remove the ten commandments from the story of paul i'm sorry it's it's not gonna work right but we can agree that it's all a gift and that jesus david actually i just want to say i'm agreeing with what you're saying and i'm actually i'm surpr happily surprised i did not realize that the catholic church said there's one command and it's love and that they divided it because that's exactly like that's how i understand it is that really this is what is sin it's anything that is not coming from love right we god is love his expression it hit like he created us to be beings that would express love and anything that is not from love well that's really that's what sin is right so um i love what you're saying and like i i wanted to be clear that i'm not saying that the ten commandments as god gave them were like um like i'm not i'm not saying therefore we should not do what is listed in the ten commandments um what i'm saying is if we are doing what jesus commanded which is love then we don't need the written command because the written command is it being expressed through us when we do that one thing that you mentioned the love yeah well i mean i just had a flash that came to me as you were speaking try to trying to communicate to you yeah how we don't disagree and the image that came to me is uh i have a suppose you have a spouse okay so we can have a picture on the wall of the spouse smiling okay so it's like what i think you might think that the catholics are doing is say well you better walk up to your spouse and go like this so that it matches the picture on the wall right like there you go there's your smile no it's not like that putting a smile on your spouse's face face is a very organic human natural and supernatural divine process it's a it's an organic holistic thing it's called loving her or him and being there and being supportive and pulling your weight and you know so it is i'm sorry to say it involves work pleasing your spouse imagine pleasing god it's going to involve work too so i i think i i sort of um made an analogy there that will reassure you that it's not about some stupid superficial adherence to oh here's the checklist and i've got to like you know that's my means to the end no it's an organic thing it's a life and it's like are you loving well if you're out there raping children probably a good litmus test that you got some improvement right in your virtue ethics in your ten commandments whatever and it really doesn't matter to me uh if you know if you want to say that it's 100 just a gift the the spirit that keeps me uh on the right path and i'm not out there robbing and stealing and lying and cheating or if you want to say like i tend to as a catholic that i'm going to try to fight my impulses the way saint paul talked about himself with please remove this thorn from me and god said my grace is sufficient for you that's one of my favorite lines god will you know paul was striving he was striving unless he you know he's trying to show others the way and he himself doesn't win the race or however he phrased it so beautifully so yeah we we could go back and forth it's elusive trying to nail it down but we i i really don't think that we disagree and the bottom line is that it is a trap religiosity is a trap and you can fall into that superficial white washed tomb and but the problem is uh well not the problem but the reality is we can't fool god he knows the hurt and only god knows the hurt really that's why we can't judge rash judge uh the hurt of our of our neighbor but we can and we must judge things like if my neighbor comes and takes a young girl into his van and their weird noises coming from the van like i have to judge like this is not right i have to go in and save the child but um you know in terms of condemning someone that they're wicked in their heart and their their reprobate or whatever yeah we can't we can't judge that there's always hope for hope for the living but uh it's a mystery it's a deep deep mystery the human heart and uh you know you know i think it's a book of wisdom that talks about the the wickedness of the human heart do you know the quote um the the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked yeah yeah so that's how i feel i don't know about you that's how i feel i can relate to that you know i don't know you give the impression that you can't relate to it but i know you told me your story that you you know you went through your own little dark time there yeah well i think it depends where we put our focus and so um you know i have a friend who um i i just still remember what she said because it just was like yes this is exactly it she said sin i don't have time to be thinking about sin i'm too busy thinking about how holy i am and so this is what i think like if we focus on our sin and our wickedness then yeah we could definitely like spend a lifetime wrestling against our own wickedness but it i find it so much easier to overcome sin when i'm focused on how holy and righteous i am in christ that i couldn't be holier than i am right now because he's holy so um he's you know he's my holiness he's my righteousness and so focusing on that helps me to not focus on the flesh walk in the spirit and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh um so that's kind of where i try to focus but i mean i can get bogged down and start thinking about my sin and you know get wrapped up in that so i'll take your advice i'll take your advice on board because you know i uh like i alluded to earlier i don't get a lot of um spiritual support from my actual life people in my life so i'm gonna take that uh i think it's it reminds me of something a famous catholic monk said at one point in history hundreds of years ago i don't remember who it was but he was disturbed because he kept asking god in prayer every day like how can i know that i'm saved how can i know that i'm saved how can i know that i'm saying how can i be sure that i'm saved how can i be really sure i can be how can i be really really sure that i'm saved and uh god said to him just act as though you know that you're saved bingo so he all of his anxiety left he's like oh okay so i'll act as though i am saved and that i am holy and then it just started to flow so i think that's what you're talking about right yeah i'm saying wake up tomorrow and say wow i am so holy i i'm thankful god thank you for making me holy thank you that i'm one of your people thank you that i'm righteous in christ thank you you know and then the the things of the flesh and if you walk as if you're a holy person like i am a holy person i am filled with the spirit of god and anything could happen right now if a sick person if i encounter a sick person i can lay my hands on them and they will be healed because the power of god is inside me and this is how holy i am it's pretty cool so and you know some people will say well that's just pride that's spiritual pride that's you're being prideful but it's not prideful when it doesn't come from you yeah right yeah it's not prideful when it when it's coming from god the cro christ is our holiness he's our redemption that's how we became holy so we can rejoice in that holiness in fact i think he wants us to rejoice in the holiness um because if you're still such a miserable sinner then what has christ actually accomplished no well it's kind of like it's kind of like the the predicament for me and for every other uh sinner who's sort of lukewarm because i i do consider myself lukewarm because uh it's like saint augustine famously said yes god give me chastity like a couple of years from now not now i'm enjoying this right so um it's like being of two minds being lukewarm and it's like are you going to commit like and the clock is ticking you know what i mean and uh so that that really is the that really is the issue at hand so i appreciate your uh your inspiration that you're giving me the motivation you're giving me and the the yeah the christ like radiance and beauty that's emanating from you thank you well let me leave you then with a homework assignment no you said uh sinners like you know you you you put yourself in the category of sinner find out if the new testament puts you in that category look for a place where believers in christ are called sinners if you look in the new testament oh okay i'm not gonna make you do the homework there's only one place that could be alluding to believers in christ as sinners and that's in the book of james everywhere else believers in christ are called holy hmm beloved of god yeah so um i i would be very careful about calling yourself something that the bible doesn't call you okay that's good this is a good this is a good motivational speech i appreciate it and i'm going to take it to heart i really will because uh you know it's it's uh it's the most important thing it's the most important thing is to be christ not only to be christian but to be christ right i know that is my objective that is the objective of every human being is to be christ and we're supposed to see christ in our brothers and sisters and i you know i've certainly seen that in a lot of uh protestant christians i have to i have to be honest you know it's mainly the protestant christians that have that sort of uh childlike innocence which um you know christ said we have to be like children and i do without being condescending i do see a child like innocence in the protestant versus the orthodox or the catholic and this is not to denigrate the orthodox and the catholic it's just it is a different vibe right it's a different vibe not to say that there aren't dark vibes among the protestants i've seen lots of that lots of that judgment uh hatred severe hatred and judgment like i've seen a lot of that um on the catholic side and the orthodox side they're just a different form of you know some rigid thinking and some uh check mark uh phariseeism and these sorts of things and different traps for different people it also depends on your your personality your your predispositions and stuff like that and like i said about myself i'm sort of a weirdo introvert and uh so i might tend to get a little bit over overthinking christianity and you have a very refreshing uh refreshing take you haven't taught me anything i didn't already know so don't get too excited that you're a genius [Laughter] no you're you know what david you're very knowledgeable i could i can tell you have really studied you know your your faith catholic doctrine christian history like i can tell you're very knowledgeable and so i don't think that i'm teaching you anything here but i want you to know i see christ in you i i i very much see christ in you so yeah very nice of you to say that whether you believe it or not there's another question but i'll take it at face value thank you very much what are you doing saying i'm lying or just saying you're being nice you're being no i am not being nice i'm not being nice yeah i'll just take it i'll take i'm not very good at taking compliments thank you very much so we'll leave it there it's been wow it's been over two hours i thought we'd only done like an hour but it's been over two hours so i appreciate your time and i think i've given you enough compliments for one night but um we'll leave it at that i do look forward to seeing you again i hope we get to talk again and send me an invitation or something if you want me to come on your show absolutely it was such a pleasure thank you so much for having me on and i i i really look forward to having you on my channel it's gonna be great i hope you'll pray for me and my family my families uh my family situation is a little bit sad so with the parents and siblings and just it's a long story i won't go into it but just a lot of uh you know um not a lot of uh unity and uh stuff like that so i pray for unity and peace and i hope you'll add me to your prayers and i'll be i'll be praying for you and yours and i actually have enrolled you and your family in a perpetual mass which means every day you're getting a masthead for you and your family so what yeah so thank you so much it's something i do i love to do it because it's just it's just so it's such a it's such a nice gift and i do it for all my guests actually but um it also benefits me so there's a little selfish edge to it where it's like oh i'm i'm also going to benefit you know what i mean how does it benefit you well because i'm doing something good i'm doing something whole well it's a precious gift that means so much to me that's that's amazing thank you excellent to meet you and we'll talk very soon god bless you god bless you thank you for everything love you bye love you bye