Catholic vs. Other - 2018-12-27 - Lucas Fehr

Author Recorded Thursday December 27th, 2018

There are 41 episodes in the Versus:Other series.

Recorded September 21st, 2017

Catholic vs. Other - 2017-09-21 - Tino

Recorded September 10th, 2017

Catholic vs. Other - 2017-09-10 - Judah

Recorded September 2nd, 2017

Catholic vs. Other - 2017-09-02 - William

Recorded October 21st, 2016

Catholic vs. Other - 2016-10-21 - Ben

I met Lucas about 10 years ago. He got my attention at a dinner party when he announced that he had met and talked with angels. We had some heated exchanges via email at that time, but I think we have both mellowed with age. I haven't seen him in a while, and so I'm glad he agreed to be interviewed. I enjoyed our brief chat. • Support the CVS Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/CVS • Be a guest on a livestream: https://calendly.com/cvs-podcast


Under Construction

Under Construction

These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
hello my name is Lucas fair and you're listening to Catholic versus other so if you would just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe okay my name is Lucas fair I'm 44 I'm Canadian I was born in Edmonton I'm a Sagittarius I'm an agnostic I was baptized Catholic and born into Catholic and Lutheran families and I was confirmed Catholic and I went to church to Catholic Church and Lutheran churches I actually did Lutheran confirmation until I was about 17 basically until I was allowed to not go and now I'm agnostic because my path since then has just taken me different places and my beliefs have changed when was the earliest encounter that you had that there's this thing called religion or that there's this Supreme Being called God what encounter might you have had as a very very young child well my grandma is really devout faithful Catholic and she used to sing me a song someone's crying Lord kumbaya Oh Lord kumbaya and then I was walking with her and I was about four years old and she always tells me this story I was like someone stuck in the snow Lord kumbaya Oh Lord kumbaya I don't know when I first felt like I believed in God I think it was always just assumed that you believe in God based on how I grew up and then we met my stepdad when I was about ten and my folks got married when I was 11 and up until that point we only went to my mom and I who were like on her own only went to church mostly through special occasions you know with my grandma or something at Christmas and I would go with my dad's parents sometimes or with my dad but then my stepdad who is sort of like rekindling his own faith in the United Church decided that he should be confirmed Catholic which was my mom's religion so that we could all go to church together because he was really spiritual and he prayed that God would bring him a wife and God brought him my mom and me and so we we all went to church a lot after that and then I got confirmed in the Catholic Church even though I went to Lutheran confirmation and I think when I took my first communion I felt what I felt like was the Holy Spirit I I also think it could have been the wine and the ritual in retrospect I mean I'm totally open to the existence of the Holy Spirit but I also think that there's other things at play I want to dwell just a little bit more on your childhood from the age of reason until like let's say puberty did you ever reach out to God in prayer spontaneously or because you were told to at night or before meals or when you're in danger or you thought you needed help with tests at school or something like that oh yeah and I still do I still petition God when I really want something or I'm really terrified and whether or not I necessarily believe that God exists I believe that prayer works and so I go for that and I know that when I think about it it's kind of maybe cheap to just be petitioning God for things that you want but it works I find I find it helps me it gives me solace and often things work out I learned to pray I think pretty religiously so to speak every night and at mealtimes we would say grace and just for all kinds of reasons if you think about an infant they begin their lives with petition it's only later like after the age of reason or in some cases maybe even after puberty or young adulthood it's only later that we learn how to say thank you to our parents at first it's just give me gimme gimme give me your breasts to suck give me the food give me the warmth give me shelter give me this give me that yeah petition is very natural there's nothing wrong with doing petition you know I consider myself a baby when I begin my prayers it's always with love first I love you that's the first thing I say to God I love you and it's the most often repeated prayer that I do and if you aren't in the habit of doing that I think you would really enjoy it and I encourage you and everyone listening to try it I think that's awesome these days actually for the last few years my prayers had been gratitude very rarely do I petition I saw it at a yoga studio and it was like if you can't think of anything to say just say thank you and it was true like that was like when my life was just like getting really really good a few years ago and I just picked it up and I was like yeah thank you because things are so good I don't even feel like I deserve it sometimes it's humbling yeah for sure it's totally humbling I'm so appreciative of what I am and where I am and what the world is and all my relationships and the opportunities so yeah that's my main jam when it comes to prayer is thanks and I totally get the I love you part too because that's the strongest purest way to approach the universe when I met you you're an artist give the listener a little portrait of your journey in terms of all the wild changes in lifestyle and all the adventures just in a brief overview sort of the highlights if you would please I'm pretty influenceable and so I have embraced a lot of different philosophies you know I used to think that if you stare deep enough into someone's eyes you start to see their soul and there were a couple moments I think where I thought I was meeting angels because they were just revealing themselves through their eyes and they're asking me questions like do you remember when you knew you and like are you from Calgary are you really from Calgary like asking me as though I wasn't really from Calgary I was from somewhere else and we knew each other from before but I should add also that a lot of my experiences along the way have been like with psychotropic drugs mushrooms pot LSD a lot of my epiphany zs-- have come from that I kind of discarded a whole bunch of Catholic and Christian philosophy or programming when I stopped going to church and I went to university and I started smoking pot and the world was opening up to me but I brought with me what I felt were the essentials the core which was the gospel of Jesus I've never never found anything that was morally superior to that except the teachings of the Buddha which I believe are just on par but like I've never found anything that made more sense than the Gospels and I was at a low point in my life when I was in Montreal like smoking a lot of pot I was working in telemarketing it sucked and I prayed for God to help me and then 12 seconds later two gentleman approached me and they were like hi what's your name would you like to come to the Church of Christ and I was like that felt like a sign so somehow I gave them my number and then I didn't go that weekend and then a week later I was depressed again and I was sitting on my balcony and I asked God again to help me and then the phone rang and it was those guys from the church at crisis I came we didn't see you last Sunday do you want to come back to your church so I went and I got totally wrapped up in the Church of Christ and they were all young and good-looking and really enthusiastic and we would meet and stuff and like talk about faith and what God wants of us and what the right path was and and then I was gonna like get confirmed in their church but then they're like well you need to break up with your girlfriend and I was like oh I don't know if I can do that and they're like well maybe I mean if you invite her to our church and if she converts as well then it's possible you can get married and you could stay together but you can't live out a wedlock together and I was like okay so I brought her and she was just like so uncomfortable there and it was just not her thing at all and then her buddy we all went out he said like I look at my hand I know what it is like I'm used to it it feels natural but I don't understand it I don't actually know how it works and there's a lot of people who know a lot about biology and about medicine about how things work but nobody knows everything and I always mistrust people who think they know everything I don't think you can know everything and I don't think these guys know everything and I was like no I'm not gonna jump off this cliff and incidentally it was funny because my greatest fear of like jumping off the cliff into like embracing this spiritual life I was always afraid that I'd have to like drop everything and give up my dreams and I'd end up being a missionary in Africa and I'm not a missionary but I am in Africa so what's funny also is that that guy who is my girlfriend's best friend now they're married speaking of love and romance can you just talk about how you met your wife I've never met her unfortunately but I've seen pictures told me the sort of the magical fairy tale of your love story please okay well she picked me up at a hostel in Winnipeg she asked me out for a beer a modern tale yeah I've been working as a commercial diver for the last four years and I was always away like working on the road so when I was back in Winnipeg I would just I was just staying at a hostel because I didn't want to get an apartment and she was in town for a veterinarian conference and she came back from hanging out with some colleagues and she gave me her number and it just turns out that I was working in the common room on my computer on an illustration contract which I took from an old client like I'd an illustration in years and but I just she just called me out of the blue and offered me the contract and even though I was just like oh I shouldn't be doing this I mean this is not what I do anymore I accepted and I was I never worked in the common room except for that one night and I was just sitting there that one night or maybe two nights working and then she like came along and that's how I met her and then yeah we spent two days together two evenings basically and the way you texted each other for like the next three weeks and then when work slowed down I just booked it up Chilliwack where she was living and we spent three weeks together and then I got called to go work offshore in India so I flew out there for three months and we stayed in contact and when I flew back to Vancouver she was the first person I met at the airport and we spent the next three months together tooling around BC together and then it turned out when I was offshore she had three possibilities she could work in Sierra Leone Malawi or Winnipeg and she chose Winnipeg and I already had a job in Winnipeg so we both moved up to Winnipeg together that summer she got an apartment and I was gonna look for one and then after like living together for a month she just invited me to live with her and so about a year later or not even she asked me to marry her and she so she has this friend she was like describing our relationship to like along the way and he asked her one day he was like are you still dating that homeless guy she's like yeah he lives with me I gave him a home I married him can you describe a little bit this psychological dynamic like in the relationship like you're making it sound a little bit like she's the man you're the woman that's how my relationship is the reason makes but can you just talk a little bit about that dynamic because it's always so interesting to hear about these marriages and these relationships yeah it's both right she's very much her own woman and she's totally driven and career oriented and she's got daddy issues so she's all about excellence and her dad's a biology professor so she's planning on doing a HD she really wants to make a difference she's really logical and super agreeable and totally like no nonsense no drama so that is such a refreshing relationship for me to be with someone who like is not interested in like conflict or throwing a fuss over like meaningless things that don't matter and my first marriage was kind of traumatic like we fought a lot and we fought a lot often about like little things and I learned so much from that relationship the kernel truth that I learned from that relationship is to remind the person you love your beloved that you love them and then explain whatever the conflict is from your perspective and that's why I think this relationship works really well we had like a couple arguments in the last couple years and we never raised our voice and they were just like kind of tense and we both realized that they were like a little tense there for a bit and then we talked about it afterwards and we're cool and yes so she's the man so she I'm following her around like in that role because her career is super important and she really wants to do her dream job here and I can kind of essentially work from anywhere and so I'm really happy really content just to enjoy my life to the fullest your life is good but you certainly would acknowledge that a lot of people don't have a very good life a very happy life so how do you deal with the problem of evil yeah that's a good question I used to believe in evil I'm not sure if I do anymore as like a force on its own and I think that love is the answer for sure and I'm all about planetary transformation and spiritual transformation of our culture and of moving towards like healthier happier more self-realized generous prosperous lives like I'm all about that but I don't know that the area is such a thing as evil I think that it's possible that everything is good and that even the worst thing that could befall you in this life if you have the right perspective it would be good if you were not afraid of to die and you were not afraid of pain and you had a cosmic perspective like you're the mind of God or whatever like you're you're approaching that kind of inner peace that it would not be evil it would be good yeah that's the Catholic teaching the technical teaching about evil is that it has no substance the only reality is goodness and love and ultimately God God doesn't create anything evil he's incapable of any evil evil is not a thing evil is a way it's a way of falling away from God and from all of God's good gifts choosing a lesser good over a higher good means necessarily that we are choosing goods we're always choosing goods so that's really what philosophy is all about striving for happiness ultimate lasting happiness speaking of philosophy what do you think about sexual morality the sexual morality that's taught by the Catholic Church do you think it's Stern and counterproductive or do you think it's beautiful but inaccessible yes so that's one thing I really didn't like about it I was told masturbation was a sin and I felt gross and uncomfortable about that about my sexuality as a boy and it took years and years and years for me to unravel that and for me to come to a place where my sexuality was beautiful and it was a blessing and I've always I think been a bit of a pervert at heart like it's always been a strong part of my life I adore women I have door sex I want to make that a huge part of my life the things that I like most in my life are drawing for his beat and sex and I'm not as into drawing or frisbee anymore I feel like my current relationship is really really good and I feel like I found my my special purpose you know like as being a loving husband a supportive loving a husband he takes really good care of my life it's it's a dream to me it's a dream come true but I felt so guilty and so uncomfortable about my own perversions for so much of my life I feel like that's the one thing that my religion growing up kind of failed me maybe not failed me that's the wrong word but just like I didn't get I didn't agree with like if I could go back and tell my pubescent itself don't worry about it just relax go on dates you know masturbate as much as possible doesn't matter you know draw erotic things you're really into erotic things just like those things are as holy as anything else those things are just full of love and you come to it from a place of love and just embrace it and and and if you come to it from a place of love I think it is just as Holy as anything else I mean it's a sin it's sinful a lot of sexual things in the religion I was raised in are sinful but I don't think that they are yeah I don't think that's cultural I don't feel that in my heart I feel that it's it's awesome are you pro-choice or you pro-life or what's your view on abortion I think it's it's really not even my choice to make it's it's I'm pro-choice I'm it's the choice of the person who has the baby I would totally welcome a baby into my life and I wouldn't advocate for an abortion but my wife doesn't want kids if we have an accident and she wanted an abortion and then I'd be up to her I think it's it's best for people to be able to choose so I think it's been how long has it been like eight years since you converted to Catholicism nine years yeah nine years so how's your faith it's growing stronger because I'm making an effort to nurture the flame of faith and to grow the faith it's just like a relationship with your spouse if you neglect it it will die there's no neutrality either you're advancing or you're retreating there's no stability so you have to make that effort you can't really get in the habit of neglect and I don't think there are 10 minutes in the day where I'm not thinking about God I think I asked you this before but what do you think about other religions well I'm growing to appreciate them now that I'm doing this podcast I've talked to a lot of different people not as many as I'd like to because some people are shy to come on the show but I'm I'm getting appreciation and my understanding of the scary Catholic dogma that there's no salvation outside of the Catholic Church I'm coming to understand that it's not as scary as I thought it was and that everyone is on their way into heaven except for those people that obstinately choose that they would prefer not to so it it's not a grim or scary scenario for me it's like I know that everyone I've met loves truth and justice and beauty and so they love my god whether they know it or not and something you said earlier about people being agents of God without knowing it unwittingly I'm not a universalist I don't believe that everyone is guaranteed to go to heaven because that would completely undermine morality we have to be responsible and I don't want a wife that's my wife only because she has to be I want my wife to love me and to choose me so we have to actively choose our spouse and we have to actively choose to love God too but I think most people do love God they just don't call it God do you know what I mean yeah so I have a very optimistic view maybe it's a little bit too rosy but I have a very optimistic view about all the religions and I've encountered some pretty wacky religions but even those people seem to have a lot in common with my love of truth my love of Justice my love of beauty and my love of goodness so I'm really not worried about it and I think everyone's on a journey there's psychological baggage there are a lot of daddy issues mommy issues and sexual issues and all that sort of stuff and it's none of my business so I just wish them well and encourage them on their way but you know I am very very very excited about my own religion and I sort of see every other worldview as a gateway into the Ark my obsession is with Noah and Noah's Ark I'm really obsessed with that I see the Pope as the anti-type of Noah Noah was a shadow of st. Peter and all of the Pope's have the authority of the keys so they can bind what they bind on earth is bound in heaven what they loose on earth is loosed in heaven so complete docile and obedient submission to Pope Francis is the emphasis now for me as a Catholic that's what I emphasize get into the Ark get into the church and for those who are not yet explicitly Catholic I'm not worried about them but everyone I meet I tell them as gently as I can get into the church it's not always appropriate to say that so I do bite my tongue sometimes but the basic message is there's one arc and you're in or you're out so get in but I see the hills and the valleys covered with streams of people wandering around doing this and doing that and a lot of them will make their way into the arc but I feel an obligation to be a voice the voice of Noah the voice of st. Peter the voice of Pope Francis saying come in come in everyone's welcome everyone's invited now will some people refuse to enter the ark yeah they will that's sad but God knows each and every one is hurt and so I don't need to worry about that I just need to be optimistic that there's a time and a place and let God work but at the end of my interviews I always ask my guests to give a little message of hope something positive what might you be able to say to someone that's out there listening now what I like to repeat myself to keep myself on my own path is may all beings be happy and I like the idea that everything is getting better and but life would not be nearly as interesting if it wasn't a minefield of problems and pitfalls I think the journey is the destination and just enjoy the ride and don't worry about being uncomfortable because you will grow from your suffering and as long as you keep planting seeds of light instead of planting seeds of darkness then things will just keep they will get better so have faith in that and the thing that sticks with me the most is that I don't know if God exists I don't know what's true just what I feel but I think the materialist atheist scientists and the devout faithful can both be right in a way that's like a miracle right like that all things are holy and we can't know God's thoughts and it doesn't matter one way or the other it doesn't matter if you believe it's real because it's real for lots of people if you like it will of you if you think you've got some questions piano go all you got to do is all you got to do you got to do is all you got to do