yeah we are live i'm back with kieran karen how's it going man yeah boy what's going on what's been happening since i talked to you last nothing i was just so i was like oh dude i'm going to have some free time this afternoon give it up and see if he wants to do a live stream did you know though okay so yesterday when i talked with you on telegram you said oh i have two interviews going on today yeah they didn't happen like i was like oh sweet when i get back from my dad's house because i don't have service there i'll have something to listen to tonight and this always happens with your with only with your youtube channel but when you post something it doesn't come in right away it takes like until the day for it to show up on your uploaded videos no yeah the only way that i'm notified that you have a new video is if it comes in through my feed where i'm like scrolling down through youtube videos really yeah that is bizarre i should look into that maybe i'm being shadow band because of my controversial stance well you are uh jersey theorists so yes yes tin hat i gotta give a shout out to my friend pycruz because uh pie chris is a an old friend i guessed uh from back in the day 2017. remember him yeah i remember him he was uh he seemed like the last time he did an interview i think he was outside smoking a cigarette yeah yeah yeah he had the camera right up on his face and uh he's in the live chat now saying hello hello sir so uh yeah big shout out to pie chris nice old friend on the pie on the podcast so yeah i gotta get pie crust pie crust back on here and uh chit chat see i see how things are going again well yeah definitely get them back on don't be don't be a squib i don't know what that means but don't get your audio cut a little bit your audio cut a little bit say something again something you know it's cutting out again it's cutting it's choppy it's chopping wait done yes waiting let me do something stay right just look at look at my empty basement yes so yeah uh pie chris uh i got a new thing pie chris i'll send you the link and you can use it to book whatever time is convenient for you here's the link anyone else watching [ __ ] says he's smoking a joint that's is that legal i don't know if that's legal or not it's legal here in canada uh depends which state you're in i guess if you're down in the states but uh yeah i don't enjoy any narcotics not even caffeine hey oh hold on hey hold on sorry i'm just making sure that the bluetooth is uh oh you're using bluetooth bluetooth is notorious for uh dropping out dude it's it's mine has just been really bad lately and your mic sounds a bit tinny and thin tinny and thinny yeah i feel like it sounded like the past couple times though like it's very what about now it's fading in and out like uh waves on the beach do you think i should just turn off my headphones uh i don't know exactly what your situation is are you on laptop or a desktop your audio's bad it's very quiet now very quiet what about now that sounds better all right we just got to keep it like that even if it's not perfect i guess yeah yeah i don't know these headphones are these headphones have been going out what what device are you on and what's your wi-fi you're using wi-fi or you've got a wired connection so my phone is so i have an iphone 7 and um they're notorious for malfunctions like the iphone 7 is like one of the worst gen right and i just don't really care that much to get a new phone because it's like it's in good physical shape it's just that it malfunctions on me all the time right now one of the new things that's happened with my phone which actually the last time it was like this too it doesn't allow me to get on wi-fi like when i go to turn on my wi-fi it literally doesn't pick any wi-fi um server uh servers up so even my home wi-fi can't use my home web yeah so um yeah so you don't have a computer i do but i only use it for recording music it's uh it's just a crappy acer but my recording software takes up a lot of space on it uh what's your software um it is uh presonus studio one okay it's like yeah it's a newer version of presonus but anyway so i've had that on my laptop and i have a rule that i don't i don't allow wi-fi or the internet yeah um because i don't want it to you know corrupt fire yeah basically screw it up so what i'm working with dog it's uh so you got the iphone 7 that's why it's a bit crappy yeah yeah um so what's been going on what do you what have you been thinking about what kind of religious philosophical ideas bouncing around in your head these days jeez no i don't know did you watch any of the recent guys i had on i had a young guy on yesterday i started watching the one which morning um of the guy who was a catholic but is like now a professing atheist i only got like it's in his he seems like a really nice guy yeah yeah yeah um i really liked his whole like his backstory is cool yeah uh yeah i don't know i so i didn't get that far into it but it gets a bit heated a little it gets a little bit heated in the middle oh does it yeah about what well i just start sort of uh preaching a little bit heavily and he kind of gets his back up a little bit just a little bit but it was we recovered afterwards um i didn't get far enough along but did he pose any like philosophical reasons as why he wasn't why he's no longer yeah yeah yeah it was it was uh you know as always very loose and conversational but um you know uh we got a little bit into the uncaused first cause not too deeply into it he wanted to talk about uh morality and pragmatism i i threw out the word utilitarianism just because that's the typical approach that the atheists use and i tried to show him illustrate to him i didn't do a good job but i tried to illustrate to him how uh it's it's it's just it's not genuine it's not sincere when people use these pragmatic arguments for atheistic basis for morality it's not sincere it's not authentic it's full of lies and justification rationalizations which are the end goal is to rationalize sin and we all know it and even the atheists that are doing it know it that they're just rationalizing their license to sin especially sexual sin and he admitted that he left the church because of sexual temptation and he couldn't remain pure and chaste or he made the choice not to because he was struggling at one point during prayer like with sexual images and i've talked about i've talked about this many many times how satan loves bombarding me with sexual fantasies and stuff like that and yeah if i just give a little bit of attention to that like oh that's interesting then it's just like a wave like it just like you know it's uh it's a real trap for a lot of men like this idea of you know female bodies and the body parts and what we can do with them and all that sort of stuff so uh he gave into that you know he gave into that but i just watched last night i watched unplanned story of abby trump yeah i saw that and then i watched i went ahead it was a bit i was like cringing the whole time just because it made me very uncomfortable and i wasn't like a huge fan of the the way they did it the acting and all that sort of thing but um you know the content is just undeniable like and then i went and watched for the third time i went and watched uh silent scream have you seen the documentary about abortion silence scream i have not uh that's a really cool title it's on youtube it's on youtube it's old and it's grainy but it's good um so we actually saw my wife and my mother-in-law went with uh their pastor a number of years this would have been three years ago or more than three years ago it was right before oliver was born we went and saw unplanned in the theaters and it was uh is it that old yeah it's pretty old but i mean so like pure flicks and all that stuff there's such an element to all of it cheesiness yeah yeah i liked i liked god god's not dead the first one i liked it a lot that was so that was pretty decent but also i did find that a lot of the strong kind of arguments within like not that they weren't valid arguments when he saw the kid debating with his atheist professor but there were it was like well atheists have made better attempts at like answering some of these questions in regards to like the classic uh apologetic type approaches that most you know mainstream christian apologists go for so like there was that and then also the idea of like at the end he's like on his deathbed you know after he got hit by the car and he's like oh just give your life to christ it's like yeah like that's all you need right that's all you need you don't need a rationalization for believing in god we can justify these things but some people don't like don't have the mind to think about the philosophical underpinnings of faith so like it suffices for this person over here to say well god did this in my life and so i believe and i trust in god and his son jesus christ and you know glory to god that's awesome so like i i did find that at the end there it was kind of like okay i could i see that from the christian perspective how they did that with the atheist kind of turning his life over right at the end which is beautiful and wholesome and that's what we would hope for anybody who spends a life you know denying christ but at the same time you could see it from the atheist perspective of like well that's just an emotional appeal or whatever but back to that my dad wrote a song back in 93 and i was with my dad all day yesterday we're getting ready to go on vacation next week so i went there picked up some dried beef jerky and stuff for the road trip down and we ended up playing some songs and stuff and he has this one tune that i always loved he wrote it in 93 and i don't know what it was originally about but it was very sad the contrast of the beauty of the melodies and everything with the con with the uh sadness of the lyrics always like struck me so my dad turned this song he changed the lyrics and tweaked them just a tiny bit because he had this like revelation of like oh this song's really about abortion so he wrote this song about abortion and it's freaking amazing i'll send it to you then we recorded it when we were we were hanging out but the whole idea of like utilitarianism in morality and stuff this is what like what kind of the approach that brenda was taking a little bit where he was saying you know um what i believe is good and and whatever so again ascribing a value judgment to something and also faith what you believe to be good but the problem with utilitarianism is that you can never you can never judge whether the quantitative good for an individual is higher or lesser than the quantitative good for the surrounding community or like people as a whole so like if you were to take the idea of like okay i'm in my town there's a serial killer on the loose it's a small town and it's got to be one of these 500 people that live in this town that's killing all these people the town is up in arms their economy is suffering because nobody wants to go to to work nobody wants to leave their homes they have anxiety fear if the option is given there for the police to come in and find a possible suspect and just pin it on this person to quell the the fears of the community but you end up putting an innocent guy in jail is that technically for the greater good an atheist or a theist could say well yeah i guess but at the same time you're putting an innocent man in jail so is that one person suffering worse or better than the community suffering or not suffering and there's no way to delineate which one is better so the utilitarian aspect doesn't work just on that basis alone plus all of the i yeah i mean all the philosophy i have to turn my rice up i'll be right back my rice is cooked one second all right i'm just gonna you can see my sexy red shorts as i walk into the sunset just say i'm gonna chill for perrier energize caffeine and yerba meat it's delicious i'm back the kitchen's handy it's right right okay i just i just showed the sponsor for the show so uh yeah perry so um pika says i'm not a catholic i was raised protestant methodist we actually do believe in some of the catholic rights and he spelled it r-i-g-h-t-s i think that's a mistake because it's r-i-t-e-s rights but uh yeah i think the methodists may have a couple of sacraments baptism and uh lords alert supper whatever they do the the john wesley leslie was actually well yeah john leslie was actually uh admirable in his i mean obviously he was in heresy but at the same time like he drew a lot from the eastern fathers like they even have a pretty it's not as well-rounded as the concept of theosis but um that the whole idea behind methodism is the method to be sanctified and growing in union with christ so john wesley like did see the importance of certain sacraments like eucharist and stuff like that but i don't you know i don't know what he thought in particular about those things whether you know baptism was regenerative or whatever but yeah there was definitely sacramentology yeah it's often the way when there's a split there's a lot maintained at first and then less and less is maintained as time goes on i think uh from my perspective the orthodox is exceptional and from your perspective the catholic would be exceptional in that way too because yeah of all the offshoots whatever perspective you take if you take the orthodox or the catholic perspective whatever offshoots split off from either of those two they're prone to real much faster uh degeneration and decay and evolution whereas if we look at the if we look at the issue i would use the issue of contraception you know abortion all the sexual stuff marriage divorce uh that's the stuff i i focus on is the litmus test like how apostolic is your church you know so those are the things i look to uh that have really fallen by the wayside in 99.99999 of the christian communities and uh it's like it's all about the family it's all about uh life as the first principle and uh i just i just don't understand how you can have fornication uh in as a as a doctrine of your church like i was talking to the italian guy yesterday mike about uh warren jeffs and how he had his fundamentalist uh latter-day saints organization and how sexually perverted he was and he was teaching from his highest position as the prophet of flds he was teaching that this sexual perversion is from god and it's godly and a lot of these uh christian sects that really fall hard and fast away from the apostolic roots they almost inevitably fall into sexual sin and they teach it as god-given doctrine that's the difference and i i hope you do continue listening to mike's uh mike's interview because we get quite heavily into the bad fruit argument from an atheist perspective he said there's bad fruit in the catholic church therefore the catholic church is not good and i said well make the connection for me between the teachings of the church and the bad fruit because if the bad fruit doesn't come from the teachings if it comes from the the rejection of the teachings then you're just proving my point right which is that the teachings are good we have to stick with the teachings and all these sex cults that claim to be christian they're straying from many many many teachings including the teaching of the trinity that's another thing that he and i discussed and be interested to hear your feedback on that because i didn't i didn't really do a good job of defending uh the trinity but uh he was very adamant that it's irrational it's illogical and that you're you're christians are polytheists you believe in three gods no we don't that's not what the church teaches the church teaches oh that way you believe in one guy so it's so juvenile the argument that that he made yeah it's like the it's like the muslim apology one one one equals one how does that you know equal equals three or whatever you're saying one one one one big it's like dude uh i don't even know like so if you don't start with triadology and if you don't start with christology everything else is just gonna flounder everything else is gonna fall apart so you know most in most protestant churches they start with soteriology they start with the doctrine of salvation and then they work out from there but what they end up what ends up happening and this is to get kind of a little off topic but what ends up happening is because they start with their presupposition that penal substitutionary atonement is the only uh claim to how christ's death and resurrection was efficacious for our salvation they end up actually having a historian jesus that really isn't god because in order for god to properly damn the sun and pour his wrath upon him there needs to be a separation in the trinity which obviously can't happen you can't have christ not be a part of the trinity even if it's for a split second because now you have a christ that is that isn't god you split up his natures and it becomes nestorianism the the trinity is hard to explain right but we have modes by which we talk about the trinity we have the analogia or the analogies we can make of god but it's not a one-to-one correspondence so when i call god my father he's not like my earthly father in every sense of the word he didn't physically beget me he didn't physically beget christ the way that we would imagine an earthly father doing the same thing so it's just like that with the trinity as a whole they're uh they're each fully god they're distinct persons but they're one in essence one and being and to say like oh because you can't describe that in human terms for my mind to comprehend that must mean that it doesn't make any sense therefore it's uh it's illegitimate it's an illegitimate doctrine which i don't know most people from the orthodox side would argue that the deterioration of the doctrine of the trinity comes in with the improper understanding of the filioque way um i'm just not well versed enough in that stuff i know that we have the doctrine of the monarchy of the father meaning that he's the sole sore of the other two in the trinity but that all of them are co-equal so you have the father as if you picture it like a triangle god the father is at the top and then you have the son which is eternally generated from the father and then you have the holy spirit which eternally spirits or proceeds from the father through the son so you have all these different things with the trinity you could talk about that but to an atheist it's just not gonna it's not gonna make any sense like it's not it's it's almost not even worth it in one aspect but um yeah i don't know dude that's that's pretty disheartening um that he's gone that far to reject you know the trinity i don't well i mean he's an atheist so yeah i mean you wouldn't expect him to believe in the trinity as an atheist right i suppose but i think that kind of like takes me you know it takes me for a loop is the idea that like all this stemmed which heresy just stems from pride that's what that's where heresy comes from acceptance and an indulgence in sin yeah which we all do some degree or another but it's the idea that like he went from engaging in sexual immorality to then all of these logical reasons as to why he doesn't any longer believe in god it's terrifying like that's really terrifying it is yeah because we can fall into that i think god help us god help us to not be blinded the way he's blinded but you know he was studying for the priesthood right did you not when he lost this yeah well i listened to where he was like actually was yeah he was like he was doing a liturgy of the hours and all that stuff he said yeah yeah yeah so he was not like in seminary i thought he was in seminary but i asked him about that and he said no i wasn't actually in seminary but he was kind of discerning the priesthood and hanging out with these priests that he met and stuff like that but you know the fact that he admits that it's sexual sin that railroaded his faith i mean that that should be that says a lot that says a lot and it says a lot not only about his faith and the fragility of his faith but the fragility of my faith here faith everyone's faith and the priest the pedophile priests if there are any i'm sure there are um you know it's just like it's satan's working pretty hard to lure us away and uh you've seen the meme right with the guy and his girlfriend walking down the street in europe and he's turning and looking at the other sexy chick so i'm sure you've seen that no i don't mean no you haven't seen it um it's very famous um but that's the way it is like we're we have our spouse jesus christ and we're just tempted by these ugly stinky [ __ ] and we're turning our head and it's just the way it is like we need to be aware of that that satan is working very hard to put us under his spell and uh it's enchanting you know it really is a chanting but the whole issue of abortion the reason i love the pro-life movement and i love focusing on abortion is it really helps to it's an antidote to the allure of illicit lustful sexual license because if you think about i think it's one in four women in the western world have had an abortion so um if you think about that if you think about the it is nauseating like abortion is nauseating it's disturbing it's disgusting it's it's frightening it's horrifying and if you think about that that this this woman you're lusting after is potentially a baby killer it's an automatic turn off and you'll realize the value of having a wholesome christian wife right like it's like there's nothing better and it's rare it's very rare to find a good wholesome christian wife um and we should uh we should we should use that as an antidote for our male lust like we just want to spread our seed everywhere right like naturally and those who believe in evolution which say oh we've got uh hundreds of thousands of years of or millions of years of uh habit bad habits and we're just apes we're just monkeys and so it's like if we look at what they're doing and we're not different and so they have a rationalization of justification for wandering and uh being uh promiscuous but we as christians especially if we believe a young earth uh we don't have that excuse that cheap excuse dude darwinism is is a literally a a philosophy flash religion that allows for notice that it always tends towards nihilism like the the logical outcome of darwinian evolution is nihilism just from a philosophical standpoint yeah it is so disturbing it is so disturbing you can use it to justify almost anything but what's what's um what's really just mind-blowing to me is the sort of like sam harris kind of approach of like no no no i can get i can get an ought from an is like even though i believe in all these things that are totally contrary and contradictory to uh moral good moral right wrong it's still no no but we should do this but it's like but wait a minute you're saying i'm an ape who literally i'm sure child has eaten their own young before why why should i not do that like it's so ridiculous and it's constant contradiction because you'll find the same person be like but yeah that is a human being let me kill it like it's it's it's mind-blowing dude it's mind-blowing and it's it's even more disturbing that people don't want to actually look at the history of abortion in the west and the uh that sprang out of the revolution the idea that people are intrinsically inferior to other people and therefore because of that have the right to kill them it's like that's literally hitler you're a hitler that's eugenics 101 kill the undesirables like where does the stop because you'll get that that most people anymore that they won't even say oh no it's not a kid they'll just say like well it might be but it's still my body i get to kill it and it's extremely disturbing because most of them will say well okay what about the person that was raped or is the case of incest it's like oh right so the zero point zero four percent of women at that like if you're going to admit that every other case of abortion apart from rape or infested wrong then maybe we can have a discussion but none of them want that it's out of convenience it's out of let me just kill this because i don't want to have it anymore uh disturbing it's really it's really sick and you know i just sent you a link by the way to that uh famous meme there you can check it out at your leisure but um you know i want to i have a new i have a new uh a new kind of joke that i want to use on on against the uh abort pro-abortion people who were to recall and pro-choice people um i'm gonna start calling them holocaust deniers but i'm not like when i when i'm talking to people about uh libtards like people on the left i'm gonna talk about how the reason i don't like them is because a lot of them are holocaust deniers without giving them a clue that i'm talking about the the holocaust of abortion okay i'm not gonna give them that clue i'm just gonna say their holocaust deniers really i've never met a progressive who's a holocaust denier and then i'll just slowly work it into the conversation that i'm talking about the holocaust of abortion and uh oh i thought you were talking about the six million jews no i'm talking about the 50 million babies or whatever it is what's the number yeah what's the number it's at 60 million 60 million plus yes so yeah it's 10 times the in since since roe v weighed since roe v was oh that's only since roe v wade so since the beginning of time i don't know what the number is like were the were the romans doing abortion i guess they were because because they were okay but here's the thing like even child sacrifice within chicken like ancient paganism was like one of those things that was really reserved for like crazy out there pagan cults okay so like that was not even enormous like ancient rome or anything like that that was actually pretty abhorrent to even romans right but the fact that the hippocratic oath hippocrates talked specifically and explicitly about abortion that means that it was ongoing during the the classical era right i'm sure yeah yeah so like the pre-socratics and all the way through till today but i think now we've really got the marketing down pat and we've got that justification and it's just like sexy to kill your baby now sad it's just sick like the idea of like they got the advertising down pat like like it's so foul dude it's so foul that's why i really want to talk to brenda but he hasn't responded so i i don't know like i just don't i was so i was so surprised his his justification for it's like dude so you're literally saying this is a kid this is just another example of one of these babies but then but then in the other uh the other at the other corner of his mouth he's saying well yeah but it's it's uh it's my body it's like no no like that's why i like when you press them and you were like dude is it your dna is that your dna and he even said yeah first before you pressed him on it more it's like wow you've like really given up like logic right you've really given up any basis for actual thinking well that that's that brings me to my original point that i wanted to get to when i was talking about my guest mike the atheist who was a catholic because he really focused on the irrational what he calls irrational nature of the mysteries like the trinity the immaculate conception these sorts of things and i tried to explain to him i didn't do a good job as usual but i tried to explain to him that some things are beyond our reason but they're not unreasonable they're not irrational they're just beyond our rational capacity because we have a finite reason the finite intellect right and he's saying well no i mean if god uh if god exists then we must be able to know him i'm like yes we can know him but not comprehensively and so i use the example of the ocean you can go to the ocean touch it dive into it explore it a little bit but you'll never you'll never comprehensively map it all out as one individual so it's the same thing with god if it's true for the ocean yeah well and and that's the little cup of water that's in your hand that's the energies of god that's what we interact with that's his church that's his sacraments that's his scripture that's his word that's christ the logos coming in the flesh that's what we interact with right these are the energies but the trinity is the essence the trinity together sharing in one essence of course we can't know that that's the whole point that's what we're saying it took christ to come in the flesh be able to know him so that's the whole point to say christ is god the trinity the godhead is above reason it's above logic god is above everything he supersedes all of those things and he precedes all of those things so to think that the essence of god is something that we can understand within space-time there there's no there's no possible way for us to do that that's why we have the essence energies of god we distinct between the two we make a distinction and we say you know um that these are what we're interacting with this is god this really is god that we're interacting with and that we're comprehending and understanding is that accepted is that accepted by that distinction accepted by all orthodox or the branches of the orthodox that side more with the cuts that's that is all orthodoxy and actually there's strains of thought within catholicism that uh necessitate that because if you get to that that believe in it by necessity because of the seventh ecumenical council in dealing with the uh iconoclasts because this really had to be fleshed out in terms of why it's okay for us to depict christ in the saints why it's okay to have a halo around the head of the stains why we can venerate these images because this is a clear depiction of the incarnation of christ we say that now he's come in the flesh we have a real distinct energetic procession of god in the flesh that we are able to partake of that we're able to depict that we're able to interact with and that yes we are able to our own abilities understand who god is why he created us where we're going etc so technically catholicism believes that too when you get into aquinas that's when you start to see a more heavy approach to absolute divine simplicity which in one sense we agree with um but the distinction and the the debate is on what exactly does absolute mean and absolute divine uh that brings me to another pet project of mine that i want to look into maybe you have some thoughts on it you could share with me which is uh the human soul i've always just assumed and i don't remember what i've read about it but i've always assumed that human soul is simple not composite uh and that it's immutable it's not subject to change but i'm thinking about the fact that uh we as human beings are body and soul and we there's no doubt that our bodies undergo change so i mean i'm just not sure i haven't understood that you have any thoughts on that from an orthodox perspective or a christian perspective whether or not the soul is immutable i'm sure that there's been much spoken on about it within even probably our our our hemography um i'm not entirely aware all i know is that the soul is the form of the body and the way that most the way that most people view the soul as being something that is like indwelling is actually not the way that the church views the soul right we are body and soul yes soul is the entire person the soul is incumbent but so i don't know if if the implication then is because of that because it's the form of the human body because it it encases or encapsulates that that one my physical body changes if the soul changes i i don't know because you can also make an argument while your soul is changing as it's going through deification yeah right yeah so like that mean that it's and certainly there's going to be a delay in those that end up in the outer darkness than with the souls that are enjoying eternity uh moving forward and forward into the eschaton and coming closer to christ so i don't know when you think about the mystical body of christ the church the mystical body of christ and where we have different there are different parts and you know the hands and the feet and the eyes and the mouth and all that um metaphorically speaking obviously um but when you think about that mystical body and you think about the church triumphant church suffering and the church militant from a catholic perspective i don't know what your take is because of purgatory you've got a slippery way of dealing with purgatory but it's basically the same thing right we should talk about purgatory in a second because we don't we're not that far off yeah so your brother your brother talked to me about it he's very comfortable with your with your perspective on i think from what i've understood the those literally the only we don't the only the only thing that we don't ascribe to is that there is ongoing intentional suffering as a means to um per gate so we don't we just don't describe definition but like if you're gonna if you were to ask me aaron do you believe that you need to be pure before you see god yeah i would say yes and that's not not everyone who dies dies in deification i'm god willing i will but uh it's not likely gross so like i'm probably gonna have to endure some purification after my death before i can come before the lord um and so the toll houses is more of like um um a very base way to look at the the the judgment of the angels the accuser that comes to us at our hour of death that's why we have so many friends with coco um because in the accounts of her um repose i know you guys don't ascribe to that you guys have the uh bodily assumption but in our tradition we have the bodily assumption after the repose of the blessed mother and because she was free from having to be accused by the demons her son and king took her personally we pray and supplicate to the theotokos uh to the blessed virgin to come and do the same thing for us so that we don't the accused moment of death judgment um you know because if my soul is going to linger that's why we have 40 day prayers right because we don't know like we don't know how long the soul lingers before it starts to ascend or or whatever um and so the tall houses is a nice way to kind of look at like these are the different it's kind of uh based off of aiden just got me this it's kind of based off of the seven deadly sins that have been enunciated by evagrius and so some people say there's seven toll houses some people say there's 21. but the bottom line is that each one where stronghold of sin is in our life for the demons going to come and judge like hey did you confess about masturbation did you confess that sin about feeling from somebody or whatever and so the idea is like you're you're paying right and then you have your guardian angel and another angel that comes and escorts you and helps you through the toll houses to um when when the demons lay an attack against you or a judgment against you or an accusation the angels will say well no kieran did x y and z he did confess this look at this poor person he helped out look at that stuff so it's a very literal description or a picture of what the soul goes through after death um but perhaps some people take it too literally like oh i have a money bag and i'm paying the demons a coin so that they don't take me down to hell or whatever which obviously is not the teaching so yeah um really there is some sort of purgatory there's some sort of progression but we just wouldn't say that like i'm very uncomfortable i was always very comfortable as a catholic with some of the like uh what the heck is her name she did like mist of mercy and stuff like that do you know what i'm talking about and a lay apostle okay so these people that get like locutions and stuff like that in these visions of purgatory and the suffering and all the stuff that goes on and then like moving through purgatory and stuff i'm always i was always very leery of that kind of stuff where i'm like yeah dude this is like too defined and in contradiction and contrast with what some other people in the catholic church have said about purgatory so it seems very speculative and to me it doesn't seem like it does a lot of good trying to um define one way or the other what purgation is after death uh my friend and future guest near future guest m88 is in the live chat she asks has kieran ever been through death have you died yet have you died no yeah so i'm not sure about some time i'm yeah not sure uh what's uh the subtext of that question but i can think of a few uh i can i won't speculate but uh it might be it might be because she is curious about um that transition between life and death and some people do walk that fine line have near death experiences but it's more likely having to do with the fact of um uh not having the direct experience yet so we shouldn't take our speculations too seriously oh here we go saint if seraphim rose yeah yeah what the soul after death he's gonna be he's gonna be a saint but okay so i can kind of infer as to what this lady was saying um and if i'm wrong i'm wrong i apologize but yeah i mean like the speculation and stuff like that we can't definitively say that's why we leave things sort of open enough but the fathers do have a lot to say about the soul after death the church fathers that both you and i as catholic and orthodox would agree these guys they're no slouches right they're not slobs in the faith so even their speculation should be highly regarded right and we do have accounts throughout church history again shared between both of our traditions where people did have death experiences and then were granted or allotted the ability to come back and to warn people and so from a from an empirical kind of standpoint maybe people wouldn't uh you know from like a naturalist material standpoint maybe that doesn't suffice to hear some thing down you know the annals of history where somebody claimed to have died and come back or whatever fine that's all well and good but i don't care because my presuppositions are that the saints are with god and the saints are illumined and enlightened to give us what we need as christians my presupposition is that the church will not lead me astray and that christ because he loves the church is going to continue to lead the church towards theosis and enlightenment and all of these things and so that's what i hang my hat on and so you know there's yeah some of these things are open-ended some of them you can still question but at the same time like if the fathers of the church say something i'm probably gonna believe that over like someone like uh elizabeth kubler-ross or whatever talking about near-death experiences like i don't really give a crap what you say about near-death experiences because it's the interpretation it's the interpretation of what actually is going on that matters we know people die and come back to life like that is uh there have been plenty of studies throughout history specifically within the 20th and 21st century of people having near-death experiences or being declared clinically dead and coming back and being able to uh elucidate on all these things that they shouldn't have known were happening like whether with the medical staff with whoever and then being like how did you know that this doctor said this to this nurse you are clinically dead at that point and coming back that stuff is all established but it's the interpretation of what's going on with these things how do we view this and obviously from the christian perspective we have to take into consideration what the church fathers say about the soul and what happened yeah and with all the the godless interpretations you have to know that satan is delighting in all the deception that he's very easily able to slide in there i wanted to ask you about uh the greek orthodox funeral and the memorial like the these memorials that they have but in particular and they do a lot of them like on a regular basis uh like how many months and how many years afterwards but the main thing i'm interested in is that one uh chant or song aeonia or a aeonium or something it's like it's one of these uh very sad funeral chants that they do if you can find out what it is and if you can get me a recording of it i'd love it absolutely i know that like if i heard it i would know it i'm terrible with greek um but when um when we chant for the not i've never been to an orthodox funeral yet um but we do memorial services yeah for everybody in the parish so do like a 40 day and we'll do a year and then we do it like annually you know and it's uh may your memory be eternal and we chant that um and we ask supplication um because you know there is the pious idea that the supplication of the church militant and along with the church triumphant is efficacious for the one that is uh potentially suffering within hades like even if it's a small um even if it's a small consolation like the turning of like do you remember in the desert fathers i think it was that they talked about how i think it was saint marcarius he walked by a skull of a pagan priest and this pagan priest skull ended up talking to him and he said why are you not praying right now and he said well what do you mean he said you're a pagan you're a pagan priest he said yes but even your prayers benefit us down here in hades he said hades is such that i can't see anybody we're all crammed together but we're all facing in different directions so i have the simultaneous feeling of being smushed and claustrophobic but i also have the feeling of not being with anybody else because i can't see anyone i have nobody to comfort me and when you pray i'm able to turn my head just a little bit to see the person next to me and it consoles me is it going to end up in heaven that guy is this a pious i don't know is this a pious illustration of something that is is above our understanding right now yeah probably but i mean again these are stories that help us understand the importance of prayers for the dead um and that that's one of the greatest losses of protestantism some traditions to do that like lutherans depending on their synod will still do this i mean it's actually in the book of concord like like they're bound to certain practices even though some of them don't do it lutherans i think methodists did it for a while there were still prayers for the dead because they understood that just because scripture says to be absent from the body is to be present with the lord is not a one-off that doesn't mean that everybody that dies like if you were to take that at its most literal then that just means that literally everybody who dies is going to be in the presence of the lord obviously not true so you just extend that out a little bit further and say yeah he's saying that the saints like that's that's applicable to the saints and the church triumphant so we need to be careful with just assuming that somebody because they claimed or professed faith in jesus christ is automatically with him in heaven because they died and i don't care if people don't like that i mean people protestants get really bent out of shape uh because it's like that's an insult to the to the death and resurrection of christ you're saying his you know his sacrifice wasn't efficacious to cover all of my sins and they totally it's like gets like a really weird calvinistic bent where it's like totally monergistic and it's a it's an assumption on their part so you know if i offend people whatever but so the reason i brought up the mystical body of christ was not so much to talk about purgatory but i'm glad we did it was fun but um it was to talk about this new vision i have of speaking about holy scriptures and i want to bounce it at the idea off of you what i the the new vision i have of the sacred scriptures and sacred tradition is that the mystical body of christ is the church and the you know the analogy that i want to make is the sinners in the church militant like those who are corrupt those who are sexually perverted and give themselves license to sin that are priests and bishops and cardinals and popes those corrupt those corrupt sinful elements of the church who are ostensibly members of the body of christ some of whom will sadly end up in hell uh not many i hope but i mean god godly knows if you read some of the saints they say most priests do end up in hell but let's hope that that's not the case let's hope and pray that that's not the case um but the analogy i'm making is between the fact that the church is one holy catholic and apostolic it is holy and that's in spite of the human element where we see the weeds among the wheat here below and the wolves and we in sheep's clothing okay now with that clearly in mind this dirty messy church militant with that in mind i want to think about the physical book the bible that most protestants catholics and orthodox love and they have their own favorite version and this is my translation that i like i like it dynamic version i like a literal version i like the king james i like the whatever and uh so this to me is corrupt it's full not full of errors but it contains errors 100 percent guarantee there are errors in every single bible that we own so this is a physical bible but what we have behind the physical bibles is a mystical bible this is what i'm getting at there's a mystical bible the actual bible that no one has ever seen or touched there is a mystical bible and the living magisterium i would say is a catholic the living magisterium has a mystical uh connection to the mystical bible and to the mystical body of christ the church and it enables the living magisterium to make pronouncements and you know declare dogmas and so on and so forth and have discipline and doctrine all everything in between and of course that human element in the church is always going to be here in the church militant but there's also that divine part of the church and the infallibility of the church the indefectability of the church and so i wanted to talk about the mystical bible how no one has ever seen the original autographs all together in one place bound into a book it just has never it's never been yeah well because it's because the irony is that if that were the case if we had that bible protestants would worship it by and large they would they would then dare i say they would actually cross themselves and kiss the bible yeah would they cross themselves to the left or to the right right like oh they would do it the proper way they would go to the right first the pay trinity and the figures touching down on earth and they would cross themselves i do that okay you know occasionally i do that yeah well i like to do it all the time i sleep all night long i sleep i remember i remember stepping into an orthodox i remember stepping into an orthodox church and being like wow this is really counterintuitive going to the right first and then i'd say after my first liturgy i was like oh yeah that's much more comfortable than going left to right but anyway uh yeah i mean yeah so so i i i like that i like that idea that there's a there's a mystical bible that we don't have access to yeah in the proper sense but in the same magisterium of the church um do you ever we're giving you a living registering in your orthodox church do you have your is it called a living magisterium is that what they call it so we wouldn't we wouldn't use that same terminology but there's nothing wrong with it's just a teaching body that's what we just talk about the the tradition of the church and tradition and i think you have this too but there is a distinction between oral tradition and the tradition of the scripture is tradition obviously yeah so without tradition as the starting point you don't have a church and you don't have the bible and you don't have the recognition either of those two things um yeah the oral the oral tradition is vocalizing the tradition right like that's like it's it's subservient the oral tradition is subservient to a dependent on and logically subsequent to the tradition right so is that properly understood yeah yeah i would say so because one of the things too is that like if you don't have this if you don't have this big tea tradition right if you don't have this uh tradition that encompasses both oral and scriptural tradition and practicing of the church and all that kind of stuff uh one thing that kind of ends up happening is uh is this the circularity of both oral tradition uh validating scripture and scripture validating oral tradition you can make a full circle those two things but again you're kind of well one just validates the other so we need something above that and we would look at the phronema the mind the church the tradition of the church yeah it's basically it's the church it's the life of the church there is no tradition without the life of the church as a whole which means services um the saints which means obviously christ is the head all of this start like we have a tendency to like d or like deorganize everything or disorganize everything but what i mean like the church is an organism so like we try and think of like things in like distinctive like well when did we get the first canon of scripture well not until the fourth century and even then it was still disputed for however long the point is is that the church always had the same universal beliefs it was just it took time to flush things out because heresy's cropped up misusing some of the other traditions misusing oral tradition and misused scriptural tradition so you needed the tradition of the church the church as a whole the life of the church to form what was proper about um both you know sacred tradition and sacred scripture um yeah you know the church christ and his church are one they're one flesh right so and i'm sure you would agree with the catholic position that the holy spirit the holy spirit is the soul of the church right and christ ascended into heaven so that he could send the holy spirit to inhabit the church so i think you and i agree about that but what i want to what i want to visualize now it just came to me as you were speaking is uh an analogy where you've got a human being like myself it's a sort of a pinocchio story okay so you got a human being and this human being is good and well formed and everything and this human being is in the jungle where there are all kinds of vermin and parasites and stuff like that and there are bugs crawling in his ears and everything like that and biting his flesh and his armpits whatever okay so i want you to picture this he's in the swamp it's it's disgusting it stinks okay but he's there and he's offering this invitation to the little parasite the bugs and the worms and everything that are invading his body he he has an open invitation to these lower creatures to become a part of his body and so i the reason i'm talking about this the reason i'm talking about this like it's because christ on his church right the perfection of god and the theosis this is what i'm focused on so uh you could say well this is disgusting and why would he why would he humiliate himself and why would he lower himself into the stinky swamp and why would he invite a worm to become a man and you know um but the the reality is those who accept the invitation ultimately will not be disgusting will not be slimy will not be wriggling around like a worm they're gonna be a part of the human body they're gonna be that part of that beautiful machine that we call the human body and it's not going to stink it's not going to be gross right and those who refuse the invitation for whatever reason they say anything but yes to that invitation they remain disgusting and gross and smelly so i mean we need a vision we need a vision of christ and his church always that there's no there's no sin too great there's no depth too deep for christ to plumb the depths and it's like choose wisely choose life think about the offer that's on the table think about what's at stake think about how disgusting you are and how great god is and just think about that and if you want to use that analogy that it just presented of the human being going into the disgusting swamp i think it's a very powerful it's a powerful image and what do you think about it i think it is too i think the only thing that somebody that's not a christian who doesn't he doesn't hold to the idea of christ and his church being one body would be like well the man's not gonna change the critters and stuff that are invading his body they're gonna change his body because they're invading it and it's the exact opposite obviously in the life church we enter into christ's body regardless of our disgusting worm-like appearance and habits and all that stuff and we're changed rather than it changing his body but it is a good analogy i mean it's um it's a good very uh it's a good depiction of it drives the point the point that it drives for me the point that it drives home for me is it clarifies to me it clarifies that um the purity of god is not sullied by the incarnation period it is not solid it helps me to to to understand that uh you know it seems counterintuitive because my analogy is very disgusting right like it's like a human being who's already a creature of god right it's already a lower example but um no it's it's just it's just it's just like it's just amazing it's amazing if you think about it like we we cannot grasp the like we were talking about earlier we cannot grasp the goodness the infinity of god and this is what i said to my friend mike yesterday this strapping young man i said look is your intellect limited or not just tell me because those are the only two options either intellect is limited in which case don't be surprised that god's beyond the grasp of your intellect or your intellect is not limited in which case congratulations your god like those are the two options and i mean he's trying to he's trying to pick some middle ground where well my intellect's limited but i should be able to comprehend god no no pick one pick one yeah yeah right right that's that and that's where your analogy of the ocean and the apprehension of the ocean comes into play because there's a difference between apprehending and comprehending something you can have something without fully understanding its significance its meaning its purpose its nature all of these things and like the idea the idea to say like oh well if god exists i should be able to comprehend him it's like but if god exists and you are the effect of his cause why would that necessitate the idea that then you should understand him isn't the mere fact that you acknowledge that he created i'm not saying he does but just from anybody who's like a deist or whatever would say like yeah god created me why would that mean or necessitate the fact that because he created you you then have to understand exactly who he is and what he's capable of and his reasoning like there's no there's no there's no good reason for that the mere fact that he created you should speak volumes about the idea that well okay he's way he's way above my pay grade level like he's way above me in every way he literally created me so why would i then why would i then just uh assume that i should be able to understand everything about him like that's just nonsense that's like yeah that's that's like you know a bug to a human analogy and it's even infinitely more so than that where it's like there's just there's literally no framework by which you can understand the essence of god and god's gracious enough to give his his energies and is able enough to communicate with us for what we need for our salvation like that's all that that's all that matters we're given enough we're given enough we're given enough reason to know that you don't get an effect without a cause like that is the most basic thing that you could possibly think like a kid can understand my three-year-old son can understand that you don't get something nothing there's something because of something else and like if you're not willing to acknowledge that if you're not willing to acknowledge the uncaused first cause and the reality in our materialistic world of you know cause and effect then you're an idiot i'm sorry that's just dumb like you're you're it's like it's like brenda denying psr what do you mean what do you mean you don't you you don't believe in psr that that is that's literally the basis for any empirical type of science like nobody will deny that so ridiculous it's absolutely absurd it's it's absurdity they they you know these people they're deluded and it's just it all comes back to like i said with the sexual sin it's just a rationalization well you know it's not a big deal and you know it's just a little indulgence or whatever or well it's not technically whatever like just just trying to find a justification like my friend mike did when he left the church little did he know his whole faith was going to crumble right but um the other thing that astonishes me is like about atheists or non-believers it's like they they get very very excited about the opposite sex i'll talk from the perspective of a man because for me the man is outward pointing and he's got his external sex organs and all this sort of thing and he wants to penetrate and this sort of thing so um the woman becomes this object like wow like almost an object of worship and the atheist believe me the atheist has that sense of awe wonder respect love admiration uh worship adoration like it's there it is there so i mean if you were to come back to this guy that just spent a weekend with this sexy woman doing everything he ever fantasized about doing with a woman and her personality was wonderful and she's a good cook and she's courteous and whatever and she seems wholesome when she's not in the bedroom and all sorts of things um you would not sit there and ask him to prove to you that this woman is wonderful you just say well lucky you like you know what i mean lucky you you got to spend time with this wonderful woman i've never met her but i know what you're talking about why because i've seen women i've seen some very good looking women i've met some very charming women i've seen women that have the wholesomeness and all these things you talked about it's like we don't need mathematical proof for that and the atheist doesn't ask for that and the atheist would think you're crazy if you if you demanded that so why is it with god that like suddenly we need like we need to comprehensively understand all of the you know all of the reasons and all this and that the other thing it's like no it's like i'm in love i'm like i like i'm in love with goodness everything that's good and god is the source of everything that's good what part of that don't you understand why do i need to make a mathematical proof for you it's like what don't you understand i love peace i love justice i love goodness i love health i love pleasure what part of that don't you understand why do i need to go an extra mile and have a rigorous philosophical paper and i need a six phds and i need them from reputable ivy league schools before you listen to me you know what i mean that's that's absurd and a book deal and a book deal i mean yeah i mean dude just look at dawkins look at dawkins the sorriest excuse for an atheist i've ever seen if you've ever watched that guy debate i mean it it there's no argument it's so funny his basis for argument is personal testimony he's an evangelist for scientism he literally believes like even the way that he talks about when you talk about men having an innate desire atheist or not to penetrate into um their you know what they see as as a good as a higher good right so like looking at god this innate desire to worship something this innate desire to see things as beautiful and and like all these abstract things love justice peace goodness all these things that there's no there's no basis on an empiricist type of worldview or on a materialistic worldview by which you can say that these things actually have any merit or they have any rational um existence within space and time right but yet they still what they do is they just swap out god for whatever their particular uh bent or desire is in this case in dawkins case it's literally um the way he talks about the big bang dude it is the most childish sounding fantasy ever practically fomenting at the mouth when he speaks about like oh science is beautiful science is good science is all these things and you're like i say that about god and i have more of a reason to believe in that than simply something popping into existence out of nothing i for reason to believe in god and yet you're saying that is is something to believe in reasonably and you're ascribing all the things that god to this ridiculous notion of a fantastic world where something just again popped into existence from nothing he loves it you know why you know why he loves it i'll give you a hint why is that well it's licensed to sin that's the big bang is license to sin right evolution is licensed to sin it's licensed to sin they love their license to sin they love their license to sin they love the creature more than the creator that's it that's it and my friend mike that i interviewed yesterday he said well why should we have to go to hell like why how can you how can how can you justify belief and how it's like huh what's that i said well you don't even have to you don't even have to go to hell i mean like that's like why do i you don't he's giving him a choice dude that's the whole point it's a simple yes or no like if you like that this is one thing that they just they can't wrap their head around because they can't see past the surface level of things where it's like well either my yes is yes and no is no or you're saying that there's things that i have to do it's like well if david comes to me and says karen will you go and pick up some food for me i just ordered it from the taco place down the street i say yes david i will go pick up your tacos from the place down the street and then i just sit there and do nothing did i really mean my yes no but ultimately speaking it's a simple yes or no do you want to be with god or do you not want to be with god yes or no it's simple so the whole idea of like why do i have to go to hell it's ridiculous you put yourself in hell that's it you know it's i listened to protestant christian radio as i'm driving around sometimes at work um and you know i love it i do love it i do love the the childlike faith that they have but it's not sophisticated it's not sophisticated and one of the things that they're always pushing some of them are very pushy about demonizing the apostolic faiths you know chris uh catholicism and orthodoxy because of the works issue and they talk about works and how you know it can't we can't run our way into heaven it's all about faith and you know grace and i agree 100 percent i agree you agree 100 but what at the same time they're speaking out about both sides of their mouth because they're constantly preaching what we have to do what we have to do you have to do this you have to do that well i mean you know how do you know they're constantly telling us how to get saved they're telling us what to do and you know thinking thoughts is doing sorry but thinking thoughts is doing praying is doing i'm sorry it's doing it's doing you're telling me what to do it's works i'm sorry yeah it's works how can you not see that what do you enter yes i know and to say listen to say that all but those works are the fruit of the grace yeah we know that stupid we know that every good work is is christ it's not me my works are evil everyone knows that it's christ if i'm if i'm doing the will of god it's god it's not me right all i do is cooperate i just cooperate like you know there's like i think this is a settled issue but they don't understand that it's a settled issue they don't understand that we're just using different language to talk about the exact same thing we're both emphasizing works we're both emphasizing works and we have to emphasize works because otherwise like you said like jesus said who who did the will of the father the one that said yes and did nor the one that said no one did yes or yeah exactly or it's very simple it's a you know um he who believes will have eternal life he who does not obey will not have eternal life now you would think that it would be he who does not believe will not have eternal life belief and obedience are not an opposition one they're one in the same thing it's this whole idea of like exactly i say this to people all the time on youtube comments or whatever where you get the whole idea of like oh orthodoxy is a cult because you guys preach work for salvation and then i always ask a question i always say so do you believe in solafide you believe that salvation is by faith alone and of course he'll get to yes and he'll say okay so that's interesting i as a christian do i have to believe that salvation is by faith alone in order for me to obtain salvation by faith alone and then they realize right then oh yeah i i mean yeah you you have to ascribe to that it's like so i need to engage in a work i need to mention simple mental assent to us of doctrines of the church no no that's not what it is belief is not just next what do you do a person with no way to to actually believe in the idea in the in the uh in the sense of mental ascent to doctrine propositions what do you do with that person i mean you're limiting self the people who have functioning minds now and you can mentally ascend to whatever it is you're dishing out but there's plenty of people in the world who for whatever reason can't mentally ascend does that mean that they don't believe that they don't have faith no no so that that's what it just blows my mind everything contrary to sola fide is within the first book of the new testament everything within uh within the entire bible that you need like when you get some people that talk about once saved always saved or talked about talk about solafide they'll go to the conditional statements that christ makes in terms of well if you don't do x then y is not going to happen y being salvation or if you do x y is going to happen for you so they take all these all these conditional statements and they go well it appears it appears that these teach that your salvation hinges on something but we have this little minority of verses over here like uh taking for instance that everybody might have salvation or they take oh see it says you'll have eternal life how can i lose something if it's eternal not realizing that that's a basic grammatical mistake on their part but they'll take these little things and be like see so because of these few sentences here uh that seem to talk about eternal salvation and not losing salvation in solo fide and the rest of it that must mean that that's what that is not realizing no no there's not one single verse within the entire scripture there's not one single verse that says that faith alone is all that's needed faith meaning mental assent to a certain set of pre you know of uh doctrines of the church there's not one single verse in there that says that that's what faith is every single verse even if properly translated would be more along the lines of your faithfulness meaning do something you're faithful to your wife what does that mean you don't cheat on her okay if i say i have faith in my wife okay or i'm or what does that mean like oh i'm faith to my wife or whatever because i don't cheat on her no it doesn't make any sense i'm faithful to my wife there's a it's a verb there's something there okay there's actions that come alongside that faithfulness and protestants for most protestants just can't seem to wrap their head around it it's mind-boggling it's absolutely mind-boggling i love the whole eternal salvation thing of how is it eternal if i can lose it it's like it's eternal life it's just a very simple question are you god like i mean okay leaving aside the question of theosis like we're not going to say is your theos is complete but just simply like are you god because like i mean that's the only way you can take your eternal uh uh place in heaven for granted right it's the only way right well or unless you're already if you're in heaven or if you're in purgatory it's like i'm in if you're in purgatory from my perspective it's like i'm in well david if i came up to you and i said here's an eternal basketball dave david this basketball is never going to pop deflate it's never going to wear thin the gripping on it's always going to be awesome it's an eternal basketball so i'm just giving it to you as a gift and you and and then what happens if you lose it the basketball is still it's still eternal life the basketball is still eternal okay that is what carnival but you lost it you no longer have that eternal basketball it's gone it's it's that simple right yeah i mean just swap out the word salvation listen to just listening to paul like i mean these people quote paul they love paul and paul talks about like lest i run and had run in vain or whatever it's like hello this is the propiscuity of the scriptures i mean it's like which they which again they love the they love the on about is the the perspectivity and dude i was i was i was guilty of this as a protestant but again these are all just different uh gradations of denial to excuse certain behavior and but like honestly like and i have no ounce of humility i'm not saying that i'm humble i'm a honestly like if you ask my wife a good christian like ask anybody i'm not a good christian i'm just not right all god is asking for is to say and actually know that yeah you're not a good follower of me and what's the solution to that repentance you know that's it that's it that's what you got to do if like they set up all these boundaries they meaning protestants they set up all these boundaries where you say they say you know salvation by faith alone but then they're preaching this is what you've got to do to get saved and all this stuff right so they're doing the same thing that christ did only guess what they're not christ because christ said you've got to do f y and z in order for you to have salvation or eternal life and if you don't do those things you're not going to have salvation or eternal life and the protestants are saying no that can't be what he's saying now let me tell you what you have to do you have to do x y and z in order to have salvation whether it's the sinner's prayer whether it's not believing in in the act of repentance that believe it there's actual uh fundamental baptists out there that say you're not allowed to repent because that's a work literally in the chat they're asking about which protestant sect do you belong to at one point lutheran uh not not well so so technically yes i was confirmed lutheran as a child i was baptized catholic confirmed lutheran and then i came back to the catholic faith when i was like 21 i'm 30 now uh i came back to the council faith when i was 21 uh did that for about two years then i left and i just kind of went off into some non-denominational evangelical type of church um they were not calvinistic so they didn't hold to the five solos in the same way that calvins would or the doctrines of tulip but there were people within the church that believed in tulip so it was kind of wishy-washy there was no sad thing it was basically the whole mission statement of the church was we believe that christ is the son of god we affirm the trinity um in the most generic sense and you know that kind of stuff so my friend mike thanks for the answer mike my friend mike that i interviewed yes i'm calling my friend just because i call everyone friend that's been on my podcast even once but i like them but um no he's not in the chat no uh he said uh he said yesterday how do you know that you're right and what if you're wrong about your religion and my perspective on that i didn't articulate it very well like i was put on the spot i didn't really articulate it but my perspective is very crystal clear it came to me afterwards as it usually does like after oh i should have responded with this zinger here but um you know it's just very very clear it's like my foundation is god the father i'm a monotheist above everything else i believe in monotheism because of philosophy it's like reason pure reason without the use of any faith-based beliefs get can get us to monotheism that's the foundation i'm not worried when i meet god and he says oh you were part of the wrong religion i'm not worried about it at all because everything else is faith-based like i had to look at history i had to look at the the claims of the different monotheistic religions and decide who's this jesus guy that everyone's talking about the jews are talking about christians are talking about it muslims are talking about them which story makes more sense am i infallible to make that choice no i'm just using my god-given reason the same way i found god in the first place using my god-given reason am i worried that i'm wrong no i'm not worried i'm not worried at all and when it comes to orthodox versus catholic am i worried that i may have misunderstood the whole issue of authority no i'm not worried about i'm even less worried about that than i am worried about the fact that christianity might be wrong how certain i am am i that that christianity is true i'm like morally certain i'm morally certain that means i know when i cheat on my diet i'm not i never i don't go on diet i don't i never go on a diet but when i cheat on my fasting on fridays for example i know that i'm cheating on my fasting and there's no one then that can convince me that i'm not just rationalizing and i'm not cheating i know i know when i'm cheating and it's the same thing with when i choose a religion i know i'm not pretending that i think this religion is better than all the other alternatives i know that how do i know that because i love the truth and if i think there's something better i'm going to go there no matter what it is even if it's islam if i think islam is true i'm going to go to islam if i think judaism is true i'm going to go to judaism and even uh kent hovind who i had on my podcast he admitted that he he does not believe in the christian community that he belongs to the baptist whatever it is he does not believe that it is the one true religion he thinks it's just the best thing that he's found so far it is not the best i could not belong to that religion i would never i would never subscribe to anything that's just kind of sort of the closest thing that i've found so far no way forget about that forget about it you know so that's what that's why i feel confident before god i mean putting aside the question of my love of self but i'm comfortable meeting god and he says oh well actually just generic monotheism is the one true religion but that was the basis of your catholicism so come on in you know i'm i'm being silly here but uh you know this is this is the reason why i'm very very very very secure in my catholic faith in my christianity and because it's based on something that's immovable it's monotheism period you agree yeah and one of the things that you you've said multiple times that i always kind of like my simple answer um would just be well god gives us everything he makes our salvation optimally possible every individual is given exactly what they need and he does everything that is optimally beneficial for our salvation so if it happened that i was wrong that i was wrong but i i like i like about the difference between the the the the the like the surety of uh catholic versus orthodox or whatever like because i look at it like from the obviously from the opposite my peppers are burning my peppers are burning my peppers are burning i'll be right back my peppers are burning one sec guys these peppers are burning anyway to work from our sponsor perrier energize uh cuba cuban peppers in the oven the cuban peppers in the oven they smell fantastic they smell like they're burning but they're not burning i just turned it down you got to do you got to do an air fryer dude my my stomach my stomach is my god that's what they say in the bible right their stomachs are their yeah well okay yes i do remember so here's so here's what i look at so like it's either it's either catholicism orthodoxy or nothing right now for me i'm in a position where i through my conscience and through what i've studied it's orthodoxy or it's not right but even in the small percentage chance that catholicism roman catholicism is the one true church and orthodoxy is not i feel even more confident in that because according to vatican ii um and the uh encyclical on ecumenism we have valid apostolic success and by by uh by extension of valid after stomach succession we have valid sacraments and so the only thing that i then have to worry about is whether or not my conscience is telling me that it's orthodoxy or it's catholicism and so i feel totally confident in that but if i were to take it out of like we already believe in jesus christ we already believe in an apostolic faith we believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church we just disagree is if we were to just take it down to the base level and your average person were to come up to me and be like what if what if christianity is false i would literally just say what you always say and just just be like well i mean i can be assured that god exists and since god exists i can have confidence that he's giving me everything that's necessary for me to do to come into his kingdom that's all i need i don't need anything else i mean and we can do our you know we do our due diligence and we use our god-given reason and logic and we use the gifts that god has disposed us to and we we we can investigate it is very simple like when i was uh i've always been a christian i've always been a monotheist i've never not believed in god right even when i was being a heathen and uh was living in in major sin and partaking of drugs and alcohol the copious amounts and all this stuff right like even then i was like yeah god exists i just don't like him because i'm scared of him i'm getting i'm going to burn in hell for all eternity and you can chalk that up to documentation or would always have an innate sense that god exists so for me i didn't have to be convinced of monotheism first i barely even had to be convinced of christ i mean i really i did some you know preliminary searching after having my born-again experience or whatever you want to call it and i was like yeah sold totally sold but looking back in hindsight i can look at the futility of like polytheism and then i can look at the futility like you can you can derail polytheism with philosophy yeah you can derail uh you can derail judaism and islam through history and through proper interpretation so what does that leave you with that leaves you with christ in his church that's i mean it's very simple where's the church where's the church where's the church remember my first interview i did with you back in the day and you're like you're like you guys have a website because my website [Laughter] oh that is so absurd it's absurd but it works it does work emily now i'm like i'm like i'm like i thought huh what go ahead uh emily in the chat emily i think that's her name says m says can you ask kieran what he thinks of methodists i know there isn't something wrong with one or the other but does this condemn me i just honestly cannot discern the difference i don't quite understand the question but i i think we know for sure she wants you to talk about methodism and uh she seems to be asking about you know one path is it is something that could condemn someone maybe if they were wrong about the the christian path or something like that that seems to be your question but specifically about methodism what do you have to say about that well gen i mean just generally speaking that's kind of what david and i are talking about in terms of like your conscience doing your due diligence and being able like if you feel like there might not be something right within the methodist church then it's incumbent upon you to investigate what that is what's wrong with you she was baptized methodist baptized methodist baptized methodist which is which listed which is which is sorry not listed but valid right valid but not listed would you say that right right um yes yes barring that there was not some sort of abhorrent uh or or heterodox form by which she was baptized like if she was just baptized in the name of jesus or something like that we would say that's probably not a valid battle but all those things aside methodism started out with john wesley kind of trying to get back again it's always a uh this idea of we need to get back to the apostolic faith when hello it's right there in front of your face all that to say he started reading the church fathers saying like there's more to the bible and the church and salvation than just penal substitutionary atonement and you know this cheap mental ascent to doctrines and he saw the his big thing was on sanctification in the orthodox church we don't make a distinction between sanctification and salvation your sanctification is your salvation in orthodoxy in orthodoxy it's that's how it is in methodism he he almost got there but now um so he still kept sacraments he still um kept the method of how one is sanctified staying close to christ he emphasized works these are all things that contemplation different forms of prayer etc but what's happening now with the methodist church is because it's because it's divorced from the apostolic faith you see all sorts of uh divergent groups within methodism where you can go to a methodist church that believes that homosexual marriage is okay and then you can go to another one that believes almost everything that your classic uh conservative presbyterian would believe so the the point is that um no you're not automatically damned if you're in the methodist church but i would say that if you are uh concerned and you think well maybe i'm in some sort of heterodox tradition or i was baptized into it or whatever and you're still searching keep searching keep searching i would say honestly from my perspective again the only viable options are number one who's claiming to be apostolic who's claiming to be one holy catholic and apostolic there's only two churches that do that well if you you can count the orientals too but even them they would deny certain parts of whatever so there's really only two churches orthodox or catholic that you can that you should really look into look into the history of the theology look into what does the church claim immediately because i've i there are some traditional protestant churches that will recite the creed but they have no way to properly define what the most important part is which is the identify of the church when you ask them well what does one mean you'll get all types of different answers with that with the catholic and north dakota say no there's a physical demarcation as to what makes the church i can point at that one church whereas a protestant is usually uh left kind of saying well the church is spiritually everybody that believes properly or some such notion like that but uh so methodism is weird okay sorry sorry to cut you off she just uh am just um said i this is a bit uh important that's why i interrupted you i took communion in a catholic church at a time i definitely needed faith and growth some catholics tell me this is this is an immediate sin no it's not a sin because you didn't do it in order to sin if you were if you were a satanist desecrating the host that's a sin if you're a christian coming not knowing what the rules are and not knowing what that you have to be in communion with the church before you take communion because it's a symbol of that of that unity it is the symbol of unity in the church you didn't know that you didn't know that it was not permitted or whatever it's not a sin it can't be a sin you need three things for sin grave matter objectively grave matter and you need full informed you need to be informed and you need to give full consent you didn't do that you were not trying to do you're not trying to insult the dignity of jesus christ anyone that tells you that you sinned doesn't know the faith he this man or woman that's claiming to be catholic doesn't know their faith it's very hard to sin because you need those three things to be in place and i know when i'm sinning i can tell you that there's a special feeling you get like oh i'm just spraying but it's fun and it's an opportunity for pleasure or or are going to indulge in hatred or jealousy or envy or vengeance or lust or gluttony or sloth or whatever you know when you're sinning so you don't need someone to tell you hey you just sinned you don't need anyone to tell you that and it's none of the business anyway but i mean if they wanted to come to you and say look uh in the catholic church the eucharist is the actual literal body blood soul and divinity of our lord and savior the god man jesus christ and you need to be in communion with the church you need to be a member a full member in good standing in the church you can't be promoting abortions you can't be living in sin you can't do all these things like it's it's not easy to become a catholic or an orthodox but there's a way if you're interested it is the way the truth in the life so if you're interested i highly recommend it i'll help you do whatever can to help you to get in but i'm not going to condemn you before you even get in you know what i mean it's ridiculous it's just so sad when we see people members of the church trying to keep people out of the church what's going on do you see that in the orthodox catholics sad i mean oh i haven't personally witnessed that no um i've heard stories though of like maybe some churches that are maybe more interested in their cultural heritage than they are about the actual faith and like there's this idea that like well because i'm russian or because i'm greek that means i'm orthodox but um it's uh it's um yeah that's a totally wrong way of thinking i haven't ever experienced that but i would say yeah i mean now you know just don't do it again just don't go to communion until you're part of whatever place you're taking communion at um there is a tradition with our church like where if i even for me as a as a orthodox christian like i wouldn't go to some random church and take communion even if it's a russian church or whatever without first being like hey i'm you know a member of the orthodox church i can't commune because um yeah i mean it's not good like you shouldn't do it um but you didn't know so i mean like david said you don't have those three necessary elements to have it be considered a sin where is somebody like myself like i know that if i'm in sin in a particularly serious sin um and i don't go to confession and i refuse to go to confession but then i want to partake of the mysteries like no you can't do that that that's that's condemnation i'm doing i'm condemning myself by doing that but you're not doing that and certainly nobody else should condemn you for that um so yeah i mean i i sympathize with you i actually think it's kind of um uh it definitely was misguided but it was an admirable thing you were lacking in faith for whatever particular reason and you went to church you did something isn't it kind of funny david though that the one thing that she did was go to participate in what actually gives the the the yeah right he just knew oh i should probably go get communion even if she wasn't actively thinking that isn't even somebody that is is is ill-informed about these things just innately knows well this is what you do christ told us this is what you you want life okay eat my flesh drink my blood yeah i mean and she did it so good of christ when the when the priest said to her the body of christ and he gave her the body blood swollen of jesus christ in that species of the what was bread and is now the body of christ i mean uh think about that from god's perspective okay just we're going back in time to whenever that happened and we're thinking about god almighty witnessing because he witnesses everything witnessing that scene it's a beautiful scene it's a touching scene it's a moment i believe it's a moment of great grace in the life of this this woman and i'm sure there was consolation i'm sure i'm sure it was just and it's god almighty giving himself to her in that moment despite all the rules and all i got in my book and rule 13b and that that yeah in spite of all that god's above all that right and he was blessing her and he loves her and there was a spiritual a spiritual spiritual communion and a physical communion and it's like the it is actually the body of christ that she consumed so like wow can you imagine as a catholic uh chastising her for that you would rather congratulate her when you just be like wow so oh so you kind of snuck in and got a freebie that's cool it's like i struggle i struggle to stay in the state of grace but guess what you got a free pass you got a free pass now you know now you can't get any more free passes now you know but you had a free pass i didn't get that but i've had lots of free passage from god because of my imperfect knowledge of how to confess my sins when i first started into the church my imperfect knowledge of this my perfect knowledge of that i got so many free passes and uh the it's just it's just graceful and grace upon grace upon grace and i'm still getting free pastors now because i'm not a saint i'm not i'm not perfect i don't know what i'm doing and uh we're all in the same boat like we're just in this messy messy world this uh church militant here below and we're just struggling against uh love of self you know it's just like it's all we can do just have the energy to go to work and take care of business day to day if you have a family whatever and then to try to be a saint to try to strive for virtue and to not be lazy and gluttonous and whatever it's like come on so look on that moment as one of the highlights and one of the highlights of your spiritual journey it's like wow amazing and think about it and think about it often think about what happened you received the body blood soul and divinity of the god man jesus christ think about that cherish that and thirst for it build a thirst and a hunger for that and come back for more and to come back for more it's gonna involve suffering because you're gonna have to give up this you're gonna have to give up that you're gonna have to like be hated by your family and friends because now you're a part of the apostolic church you know there's suffering involved you know i lost many friends and many family members because of it but hey it's like it's god what are you gonna do you're gonna say uh yeah i believe but uh no thanks it's too inconvenient no it's god almighty you know so uh yeah that's my motivational speech amen good stuff brother hey my brother so i'm gonna go eat i'm gonna go eat yeah i gotta go put girl struggling up there huh put yeah looking at each other and then we both bought at the same time no i said uh yeah that's good because i have to go help my wife with groceries i hear you're struggling oh oh go do your duty go suffer and build your virtues what do you mean suffer with my uh she's awesome she's great we're going for a walk today dude super nice outside we're gonna go for a nice little doodly down street and it'll be uh it'll be good although it is really hot but yeah so but uh i don't know i'll talk to you later on this week for sure um yep and then we gotta get we gotta get eventually we gotta get the group stream going last time you you and nicola and aiden all all bagging on me but you next time you get next time you get ayden ask him about the time that i made that kid apologize for calling aidan fat at this pool it's a classic it's a classic you can tell the story you'll tell the story you'll tell the story when you come on and we'll get uh we'll get uh huh you want to tell him i'm gonna get eight oh okay yeah he'll hold tell it he did it he he was he he told it yeah at my wedding oh well yeah so take care of yourself and give my love to your wife and your three three and a half year old kid there and tell your wife yeah thank you for how many kids you have one or two one we almost had two well we almost had three actually but yeah really two two uh almost yeah yeah yeah like our son um our son our well our first child would be like seven now seven or eight was it a spontaneous abortion uh yeah so she had a neck topic this is the first time around um and it was actually really dangerous she was like this close to bursting it was really traumatic for um he had to endure that and and then we had oliver and then we were we were pregnant last year around this time and uh i don't know if you remember what was right around the time i came back uh we had another it was a master miscarriage second that one was a little bit she actually had to like second trimester miscarriage yeah that one that one was even more traumatizing for but she's uh she's doing you know she's really she's really strong and that's i don't know dude women do it bro they're tough they're like it was painful for me for sure you poor guy you imagine like you imagine oh could you imagine you found a baby in your stomach and being with that baby i thought you meant basically i thought you meant physically painful i'm sorry yeah no you obviously had the emotional and the trauma and all that yeah of course yeah yeah i'm not downplaying that no yeah i mean at that point it did suck really bad i was you know obviously it was devastating but like i can't even imagine like like let alone the physical stuff that women have to go through especially like my like my one priest his wife she had a third truster a trimester miscarriage uh she was almost due bro and she she was stillborn but they she knew she had to carry the baby for a couple weeks after knowing you know or however long was it yes oh my god and my wife yeah there's lyla cute so cute oh she just she just winked at me yeah she does that she's uh she's chilling for treats right now yeah so i'll let you go i'll let you go and uh do your uh do your uh domestic duties and have your domestic bliss and we'll talk very soon okay my brother all right man it's always a good time to talk to you man yeah i love you lots say hi to your uncle for me too peace peace bye everyone i'm not gonna do your dirty work contacting yourself okay bye all right love you lots bye hey