Orthodoxy in America

if I was asked what is the number one most difficult Christian behavior that must be assimilated to by cumans I would say it's learning to endure yourself being patient with failure and not freaking out recognizing that you're not a saint that the Lord is going to make you on and you may make a lot of progress in the life towards that destination you may make less and everything in between depending upon how much you're engaged but you're not not going to make any until you learn to put up with yourself there's only one virtue that Jesus ascribes by itself salvation to it's called Eon in Greek and it means patient endurance and for that one alone he says the one who has Eon the one who endures to the end will be saved yeah you might be a wreck but if you can endure yourself keep yourself in the church keep yourself repenting and keep getting up you're going to be [Music] saved this is Jonathan Pedro welcome to the symbolic world [Applause] [Music] hello everyone I am Overjoyed to be here with Father Josiah trenum many of you who are watching this will have already seen him father Josiah is the priest and the pastor of St Andrews Orthodox Church in Riverside California he's also the head of patristic nectar publication that publish books they have podcasts they have videos and you have probably seen him talking about Orthodoxy and also other subjects all on the social medias and so father Josiah thank you for talking to me thank you Jonathan very happy to be with you and so father ji and I have seen each other a few times I've been to his amazing Parish it's a it's astounding what it is that they're able to do they have a school now and they're looking towards all kinds of taking over some of the social services that we think of helping people doing all kinds of wonderful things uh full of families and uh there's even like a brewery associated with the church it's quite it's quite it's quite an astounding thing like I have to say I I I was I feel very inspired by the parish another thing that inspires me quite a bit is also to see the effort that father Josiah and his Parish are doing to get through the ethnic problem of Orthodoxy you know the they're joining they're making these beautiful way in with they're joining the music of the different jurisdictions some some Byzantine chant some Russian chant and you know chants from different Traditions kind of joined together uh and so father Josiah has been on the Forefront of something that seems to be happening in America a kind of Reawakening of people towards Christianity and in our case more specifically towards Orthodoxy and so father Josiah maybe you can tell us a little bit about when it is that you started seeing this happening in your Parish well thank you Jonathan I've been a priest for 31 years I was ordained in 19 93 so I've been trying to fulfill uh the priest's calling a portion of which is evangelization right any decent Pastor has to both lead his people uh towards God and take care of his flock but also study the culture uh this is the tradition of the church is that priests have to be students both of the scriptures and that which is unchanging and also of the culture to form a bridge and to be able to preach the gospel to people so I have been watching and I would say that uh I have seen a number of movements and Cycles in these three plus decades but the most exciting has been really the last four years the last four years so there has been when I first uh was converting this is the late 1980s the early 1990s there was uh had been a a a large movement uh towards Orthodox Christianity that had been going on for about 20 years MH remember at this time from about 1955 on um the great ascendancy of Roman Catholicism which was just exploding from the turn of the century from 1890 really until about 1955 people like uh the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen who dominated the television I mean he was the most watched person in 1955 really W yeah can you believe that and all he was doing all he was doing was uh he had his little Beretta he's he was quite educated man he had a PhD from the louon and he would write you know theological like lessons on a chalkboard and he was the number one watched show and uh Hollywood used to send their movies to Arch Archbishop Spelman Cardinal Spelman in New York City and if he didn't give the thumbs up you know the producers would reconsider or make changes you know I mean we can't even imagine that world but that's what it was they had at in the 50s they had the Catholics had six million kids in their schools in this today they have 1.5 million wow a 75% reduction so something was really going for them uh in the in the first half of the 20th century Mainline protestantism was strong but really from the from the middle of the 50s on there was a massive kind of over assimilation to American Life uh just imagine President Kennedy you know the first Catholic President when he was being grilled by a mostly Protestant Congress um and public he he made it very clear that that he would not allow his you know religious Faith to influence him in his governance you know that what a bizarre thing to say I mean right you're not going to allow your religious but that's what he had to say to get elected as a Catholic M but but he did it and that was a major accomplishment for the Latins but they have been you know the the multiple scandals they've been suffering terribly the Latins have just been tanking the last half century and the same thing happened with the uh the Main Line Protestant churches so most of the second half of this of the 20th century the mainline Protestant churches uh became very secularized and many people came into the Orthodox faith for instance the man who catechised me had been a very influential Episcopal priest in Los Angeles in 1977 when the American Episcopal Church began to ordain women that was it he left uh and he became Orthodox uh under the late Metropolitan Philip CBA who was a tremendous uh evangelist for Orthodoxy in America America during his his Archbishop Rick which was from 1966 until 2014 almost 50 years he received so many Protestants when I became Orthodox in '93 I met priest after priest the vast majority of our priests were converts from they were C they had been Catholic priests they had been Lutheran pastors they had been Episcopal priests and now they were uh Orthodox and so that was just the millu into which I came after about 10 years uh around 200 4 that really the the incursion into the Orthodox Church from non-orthodox clergy really stopped H uh and the the great sense of Orthodoxy coagulating groups together and with the hope of becoming an American Orthodox Church really collapsed around 2004 uh and since that time up until covid I would say we were in a period of very serious decline very serious all jurisdictions were shrinking some shrinking more quickly than others and then out of the blue uh comes the covid catastrophe and death shows its face and the next thing we know we went from shutting our churches down by order of the state and here in California it was really bad really bad our governor governor Nome um passed orders uh forbidding us even to sing like literally regulating singing such a catastrophe such a catastrophe he actually was his his orders were refuted five times he lost five cases before The Supreme Court before he even acknowledged losing one and and loosened things up thankfully in the county where I liveed we didn't obey him at all our our our Sheriff went before our County Supervisors the after the first unconstitutional order and said to them if you think I'm going to support the shutting down of churches and enforce your unconstitutional laws you have another coming so nothing happened here we just cannot went on as usual but since that time really since death showed its face I have I have seen an massive massive movement towards the church I'll give you some numbers mhm uh over the course of my pastor until covid I would have maybe 20 or 25 cumans uh and I considered that pretty good we worked hard that's was amazing at the time at the time we were feeling good about it yeah um but you know everything's perspective and uh we were feeling pretty good and we were working constantly praying for more and trying to fulfill uh our duty to make a bridge uh to our brethren in our community and then Co hit and it just spiked so and it's continuing it has shown no sign of stopping and as of last pasca we receive our converts into the Orthodox Faith always on great and Holy Saturday in the eve of East we had 110 cumans wow 62 of them we received into the church others needed a little bit more time but since then we're back up now to about 95 almost 100 and I suspect we'll be at 120 or 130 by the time that Easter comes uh those numbers just are continuing to increase and I I usually do about 10 or 12 trips every year around the United States to give Retreats uh at different parishes or universities and Everywhere I Go Jonathan everywhere I go the numbers are massive I was just I was just in Ben lomman two days ago I was in Wala Wala a couple Washington a couple days before that I was in Raleigh North Carolina before that and I was in North Royalton Ohio before that all like in the last two months and in every one of those places one had 80 80 cumans one had 54 cumans I mean just shocking it's absolutely shocking that's amazing I mean some Churches I'm seeing is like they're doubling tripling they don't know they just some I some parishes just finished building their their building and they already out have outgrown it you know what a great problem what a great problem a great problem exactly and so what is your what is your vision I mean what do you think do you think it's it's just Co do you think there's something else a foot do you think there's you know I before we started recording I mentioned how everybody now and their brother is writing a book on re-enchantment you know some people were kind of ahead of the Curve uh I know Rod Dre for example he's been kind of harping on on this subject for several years but now even Ross doit is publishing a book on re-enchantment so you know what do you you think there's something spiritually happening at a even at at a bigger scale than than just let say what's happening in Orthodoxy what what do you see going that's going on Father well first of all I should say uh all of those people published in the books that's a compliment to you Jonathan many of them have been listening to you and uh you've been helping us think about these things for a long time so it's good that more books are being written uh and your message is being received I think a lot of things are going on uh larger issues both culturally and spiritually mhm so when I say the the rise of Co it wasn't just uh the the bug right it wasn't just the disease uh the disease is serious and especially in a a very wealthy pleasure-loving self-centered culture which forgive me I'm speaking about the United States no offense to Canadians but probably it applies directly to you also right um you know the one thing we can't stand thinking about is death we just can't we have no way to process it in our secular culture secularism has no answer for death and so we've hidden it we've worked for decades to hide death all of the traditional rituals associated with death not not just for for Christians but even for people of other religions have all been squelched people are mostly dying alone mostly dying in hospitals and then they disappear they get within an hour usually they're in the hospital basement in the morg uh someone calls the mortician he comes and Picks Them Up and puts him in his basement charging you $250 a night more than a nice hotel room really really the the scandal of the uh Mortuary movement which is a very recent phenomenal an $85 billion industry it is a scandal of immense proportions um we we've hidden and then we even our funerals for a lot of Christian people funerals don't even involve a body anymore they their celebrations of Life the person's already been cremated or buried somewhere more often than not cremated because of the cost involved these days to Buri it's like buying a new car yeah for all of these reasons we we've we've just kept death away and there's nothing about Co that in which you could do that it was uh it was too shocking it was too shocking on top of that you had just prior to co this whole rise of the new atheism this hokey kind of uh reassertion of a classical atheism but very poorly done very thin yeah uh and but a lot of people bought it because they were so dissatisfied with the declining religious leadership in our in our in the west uh as I was mentioning what was happening in the Catholic Church the grotestraat arch dases in America is here in Los Angeles 4.4 million members Archbishop Gomez just signed uh uh an agreement $880 million settlement the largest settlement ever uh for sex ual abuse by clergy uh and his predecessor Cardinal Mahoney was just an absolute Scandal and catastrophe for decades uh so I think the the the incredible lack of leadership among in the Christian Community in America made it easy to to think that Christianity was cheap and not very serious and the new atheists came along a lot of people bought this one of the new things about cumans today in the church is they come in I have them describe their previous religious commitment or if any almo --- we have that mentality but I was really impressed with that the idea you know when I was a presbyterian I was I was born and raised a presbyterian when I was a presbyterian seminarian I was being licensed uh by my local body of pastors it's called the presbyter and you get tested you have to defend you know your faith and get the acceptance of the other pastors in order for you to get a license to preach and so when I went before them and I was confessing my faith I brought the standard which was the Westminster Confession of faith and they asked me do you have any do you want to make any exceptions to this and I said well actually I do and they said well tell us what they are so I told them all 15 all 15 exceptions things I disagreed with mostly because of Orthodoxy I had been studying Orthodoxy I wasn't yet ready to become Orthodox one of them was not giving communion to infants mhm so Presbyterians don't do that in general and so I took an exception uh and they end they ended up approving me and licensed me nonetheless even though one of my theology professors the Seminary had been sick and he came to see me the the Monday after I got licensed on the weekend and he told me if I was there you never would have got licensed he said I know what you really think yeah he said never would have happened but I I thought to myself you know that that's it that's just it right that they want uphold the standard but they approve 15 changes MH 15 alterations and uh you know the the 16th the end of the 16th 17th and the early part of the 18th century were were periods of lots of detailed confessions were written both by the Catholics and by the Protestants and the problem with writing all of these detailed confessions is that you say too much yeah you know you say too much and then you have to revise them and then where do you stop what can you what can you throw out what do you have to keep I went to a Protestant uh Evangelical Protestant liberal arts college in Santa Barbara called Westmont really loved my time there and they had kind of the standard at the time Protestant confession of Faith some years uh after maybe 20 years after I graduated I got an email as everyone did from the school from the president informing us that they were changing their statement of faith and it went from this very long detailed statement to like very short like four paragraphs but not the four paragraphs of the nyine Creed right right their own four paragraphs and I thought to myself if you were a Founder like people put their life savings into starting this University and if they thought that in you know 40 years 50 years the leadership was going to gut what they considered to be basic protestantism and invent something very kind of new uh and simplistic what would they have said like are they going to give their money to that that kind of phenomen uh in the western Protestant world is so thin that I think people young men especially are seeing Orthodoxy and its unwillingness to budge matters of the faith I remember I told people when I first got ordained as an orthodox priest I was so happy because if I stood up and preached and I said something that was untraditional something that was not credal the ladies the old ladies in my church literally would have CAU they would have grabbed me by the ear and they would have just walked me out of the door that would have been the last time I preached they didn't need the bishop they didn't they would I mean they would have called them for sure but they would have take care of me they would have taken care of me themselves yeah there are cannons in some of the Russian later Russian cids that say exactly that they say if a priest come in your Parish says something which is not traditional kick them out like you don't don't wait for the bishop it's pretty funny up throw him in the boss forus yeah there you go um and so one of the like one of the things too that how can I say this one of the things that your parents have done well has also paid very much attention to Beauty both in terms of the music uh but also in terms of the icons uh you know for those who don't know there's a little chapel at father Josiah's church that just has some of the most Splendid painted icons I've seen in North America to be honest um beauty is expensive father like it's comp it's difficult and it's expensive uh why are you putting so much effort into that aspect in your Parish this is our way this is the way of the church just think of the The Widow's might think of Mary when she broke that you know what $10,000 vase of sacred ointment on our savior and the apostles were scandalized why' you why'd you do that why such an extravagant Act of devotion when that money could have been better used elsewhere I think our commitment historically to building the most Splendid buildings and always making them better than anything else is a as a measurement of a love for God you know the the church is for God and it's for the people and uh if we're going to spend we look at all these people who are W are rich and they have fancy houses that doesn't scandalize us yeah but Christians meet in gymnasiums I mean what's the message there you need Beauty for yourself but the church can just be ugly no I don't think so I think it's a measure of devotion which is why for 2,000 years as soon as we could you know for the first three centuries in most parts of the Roman Empire if there was a military Garrison near you could not build because you would be arrested and punished the only archaeological remains that we have of churches before the Edict of Milan in 312 are on the outskirts you know near Armenia and places like that where there weren't soldiers to kill us we and even then we met in the best houses uh and we did our best to make them beautiful we had beautiful vessels in the first three months we had beautiful tapestries we had beautiful uh painted gospel books we had beautiful crosses but we just didn't have any churches cuz it was impossible but it was like a pressed spring and as soon as we were legalized as Su as emperor Constantine began to give our properties back and allowed us to actually have assets it was like the spring just exploded and we we common deared great Roman buildings and we made them explicitly Christian we took these great basilicas and we make made them gorgeous and then in the 6th Century we invented the expanse Dome and that changed everything yeah and um we've always had this commitment to the sacred Arts architecture Sacred Music iconography wood carving all of those for the glory of God and this is just the church's way there when I was becoming Orthodox one of the things that really drew me was the sacred Arts of the church I remember when I was uh in seminary as I was mentioning earlier as a presbyterian there was a new Orthodox Church just down the road that was built and I used to drive by it all the time and watch just watch the architecture going up and they had put in new icons and I was too timid actually to go in but they left the doors open often so I would just go out and like look through the doors I had some sense that if I went in it was over for me it was over for me and sure enough as soon as I did start going in I went in for great Vespers eventually and that was it I would always go on Saturday nights and still go to my Protestant church but very quickly I looked at my wife I said sweetheart why am I so motivated to go to Great Vespers every Saturday 9 way more than I want to go to church on Sunday morning M and the beauty just grab yeah I think I mean of course you know I agree with you I asked that question but you know I totally agree with you that or else I wouldn't have done what I did for so many years uh but there is I think also there's that contrast you know the contrast that's related to the situation with covid you know this extreme loneliness this facing of death and also facing of tyranny at the same time like this this contrast of what true organic organized liturgical uh Community looks like I think it's the same with beauty you know we our neighborhoods are mostly ugly you know if at Le if there if some of our neighborhoods aren't so bad then for sure go to the go to the shopping districts these strip malls and you know the highways and all this there's a kind of ugliness about our world that uh you when you go to Europe and you go to the old towns in Europe you realize just how ugly we're used to we've accepted that how ugly the world is and so the the draw of something absolutely you know unapologetically beautiful I think like you said there's a there's a kind of powerful strength in that but it's not for our sake you know it's you could make a big gilded something for whatever uh but when it's dedicated to God there's a you know there's a sense in which it's like well who is this who who did this to their own Glory it's like well no it's not to anybody of Glory around here you know it's dedicated to St Andrew it's dedicated to God you know this is this there's and because of that it feels like we can almost it makes not how can I say this like it makes certain things that if you put them in your house it would actually be completely unacceptable like if you did so much luxury in your own house it would almost be a scandal but because it's dedicated to God we can just smile and and and enjoy you know you're right I don't think it's there's anything selfish about it it's for the glory of God it reveals heaven so it's also a witness about what our future is there a huge shot of encouragement into the hearts of everyone who comes this is why when we we come into the church it's one of the reasons there's many other reasons we literally are altered we come in our hearts are changed our minds are uplifted our even physically if we're sick we feel better when we're in the community when we're in church it is of course a Heavenly realm where Heaven and Earth mixes there are angels present there are Saints present but the beauty is overwhelming and sanctifying and healing and it's the revelation of heaven but it's also for us it's also so normalizing and it makes all of the divisions of Society come into a sense of Harmony you know the rich and the poor are the same in the church everyone has the same access everyone has the same experience doesn't matter if you have a lot of resources or not you could be a general in the Army and some new recruit comes in and you kiss each other by and me talk to each other by the by your first name when you come to the chalice and when you greet each other in the midst of the church so it's so uplifting it's so absolutely magnificent it has nothing to do with self-center I remember reading an article recently I may it was a couple years ago about an archaeological dig in Rome and they found uh you know Emperor Nero the insane he used to have this big ballroom and he had a rotating floor a massive rotating floor and he had a a massive statue of Apollo carved statue and at the top Apollo's head was him of course it was Nero right so they they found that and I I thought to myself okay so uh that's his icon right his self- glorification effort uh self-deification effort and the Romans were into that right they love doing that for their Emperors and they wanted us to go along with it we're like no no no we're we're not going to bow down to you we're not going to like the incense before these Emperors but that's not because we were against it uh against the idea no we're we're against the it's the wrong person put Christ face there and we're there absolutely we're there makes perfect sense to us and that I think is what we're expressing in in the CH worship of the church it's a great love gift of him who is worthy yeah yeah yeah I I mean I think I think it's wonderful because the excesses of Nero right now think about like the excesses of Nero of the emperor there to in the day but now we have those types of excesses you know but for private citizens you know or there are people who have that type of exess in the in the private world people that have absolutely no responsibility to the public at least Nero had to pretend like he was actually you know kind of responsible for the people there and so we are in this weird uh contradictory world where luxury is actually abundantly uh available to people more than ever but the people don't have any responsibility and so the church I think also once again becomes such a a bull workk to that in saying okay you know yes we actually in North America we are the richest you know civilization in the history of the world and so why can't we make beautiful churches it's so hard for us to to I mean some people are doing it obviously you're doing it there are other examples of it but so many people feel like this is impossible to them uh despite the fact that luxury is so abundant to us you know yes it's a it's a representation I think of a little bit of our worldliness uh in the church which we need to correct right we need to repent the idea that our any parishioner is going to live in a house that's more expensive than our church building that's just impossible that's just impossible uh and for us to call our people also our whole view of of dispossession this is very hard for us Americans you know for us the Temptation is if you think God loves you that that you're going to have everything's going to go well you're going to be blessed you're going to hav --- ut you know end up in this situation like you said where you're basically servicing your debt uh at the highest level of your budget what happens when you know the servicing the debt of the of the country you know becomes the number one item what happens when it's higher than your GDP like I don't know what what limit there is you know for this to go you know who knows plus increase in medical costs and aging population less taxpayers putting their money in because people aren't having kids I mean it is a recipe for disaster it seems it seems it seems um so I want to ask you a question that one of the things we've seen in the return to the church is is the we call people call them Ortho Bros I don't personally like the term but there is definitely something that I'm seeing is that a lot of the people coming into to the church are very they're very heady like they're very they they have a intellectual and so for the good you could say because it's pretty amazing to have you know intellect usually in the in the past people who would come to the church it was often you know personal crisis right it's like you you know you lose someone you you go through a very difficult time and and then God kind of reaches out to you but now we have people that are coming in through a search for meaning and therefore they they they're also quite heady and sometimes amazingly but sometimes also with great difficulty like they're they they they come in with all these ideas and so I'm wondering how how how you see that and kind of how you you deal with that question I share your perception uh of what's happening and I thank God I thank God for the level of Orthodox books excellent pedagogical instruction uh about life in general none of this existed when I became orthodox when I became Orthodox very few Orthodox books one of my oldest parishioners who I just buried 2 3 years ago she converted in 1963 there were three books that her priest could give her in English three books and they were small that's amazing today we have tens of thousands of of orth BS they're not all you know quality uh but certainly we have an abundance of catechetical material and it's important the mind has to be engaged it's very important but that's the beginning beginning that's just the beginning and I always tell my cumans it's not just the beginning that's the easy part yeah yeah it's the easy part now you have to transfer that thought into your heart and into your behavior and this is why getting involved in a serious catechetical program is very important and a catechetical program is not just an informational program of course priests are going to teach the faith they're going to teach who God is what a human being is what sin is who Jesus is what Jesus has done to save us who the holy spirit is and how he'll Inspire your life and connect you to God what the church is what repentance is what faith is who are the Saints I mean this is all constituent elements in a in a catechism that's basic uh but just as important is coming to the services learning how to stand in the presence of God learning how to fast learning how to feast those both have to be learned learning how to forgive that's a huge issue and very very important and of course the church has whole Services designed to teach us how to do that uh learning how to listen and follow obtaining a father Confessor that's a big deal yeah having a an accountability it's of course a great blessing too because you have an unbelievable support that you never thought you would ever have uh to have a father Confessor learning to relate to a bishop learning to relate to a priest learning to have Elders in your life this is also one of the gifts of the church when young men come especially to the church they get a family they they all the old ladies in the church and all the old men they become their aunts and uncles in in reality I mean we actually believe in the reality of spiritual relationships that are constituted in baptism and by sh sharing a common chalice that are just as real sometimes more real than our our biological and relations all of that takes time which is why catechism absolutely cannot be done quickly assimilation takes time and submersion and is a lot more than just uh thoughts yeah in the head and I'll tell you if I was asked what is the number one most difficult uh Christian behavior that must be assimilated to uh by cumus I would say it's learning to endure yourself this is being being patient with failure and not freaking out recognizing that uh you're not a saint that the Lord is going to make you on and you may make a lot of progress in the Life toward towards that destination you may make less uh and everything in between depending upon how much you're engaged but you're not not going to make any until you learn to put up with yourself there's only one virtue that Jesus ascribes by itself salvation to it's an amazing reality he of course HS so many virtues and teaches us so many virtues not just by by his behavior but by his own pedagogy but there's one that's unique and that is it's called Eon in Greek and it means patient endurance and for that one alone he says the one who hasoni the one who endures to the end will be saved yeah you might be a but if you can endure yourself keep yourself in the church keep yourself repenting and keep getting up you're going to be saved yeah yeah I I think father that's amazing because I I I've I've obviously experienced that myself especially coming from the context where I came from you know some strain of protestantism protestantism that I came from I remember a pastor once saying in church you know Christians uh don't sin anymore and it was like and he said well he said at least we don't practice sin that was the thing you said he said we sin occasionally but we don't practice sin and I was sitting there you know whatever I was like 19 years old and I was looking at him like well I don't know what to say because obviously this is so I guess I'm going to go to alter call every week it'll be like my Protestant version of confession because I definitely sin all the time uh and and there's this sense in which you know the kind of way we beat ourselves up sometimes morally is actually because we think we're better than we are you know it's like we think like how could I do that I should be a I agree yeah and and that's what I've learned I think through confession is because the thing about confession people who haven't practice it especially if you try to do it you know often I'll have to be honest with you as I travel I don't con go to confession as much as I should these days but there are moments in my life where I've gone to confession as much as possible and and you just keep saying the same thing and so you're like you know and then you realize I am nothing like I I really can't do this you know there's and and then the surprise at least sometimes is that at some point something happens that you don't totally know what it is through prayer just through going to church through going to communion you're like oh wait a minute this is actually this thing that used to I used to confess every week all of a sudden it's gone or it's almost not there anymore what happened you know it's and this is the sense in which you see that God is working is working through us you know without even we obv have to make efforts but God is always working you know sometimes even in the moments when you you think that you're you're lost and nothing you're doing is working and and know you you just keep falling and falling God is still working yes I love that text that the Lord Jesus quotes from the Old Testament and applies to us where he says that God resists the proud but he gives grace to the humble humility is so beautiful it's so beautiful and the church is by asking us to keep our eyes on oursel and not upon others or in St Paul's language to esteem other people as more important than ourselves you know Jesus modeled of course putting a towel around our waste and washing people's feet esteeming them that highly that brings Grace like a magnet into someone's life and the more that we can learn to endure ourselves and not make up stories about who we are or how much we've you know we've progressed best not looking down on other people the more that we can avoid doing that the more that we can become more settled in the grace of God because he pours out his grace upon people who choose to take the humble position and that is the most secure position of all it's only when we raise ourselves up that we get insecure is when we lift ourselves up then we can fall if we can keep oursel low uh there's no place to fall where like we're spiritually crawling on the ground and we're looking up towards people it's so peaceful and it's so safe uh and it keeps us from falling into the the horrible position of judgment one of the things I'm trying to convince converts of constantly is that when you when you see something terrible you see something that's a lie or dark and how how can you live one day in our culture and not see those things all the time you have a choice right then what you're going to do when you see it how are you going to respond to this if you choose to like point at it and to criticize it to judge it what you're doing right there is collaborating with the one that we call in the scriptures the diabos the one who points the finger you're actually collaborating with Satan himself or with a demon in actually promoting a spirit of Darkness on the land the scripture says that Jesus did not come into the world to judge the world but that the world might be saved through him and yet he is the judge if he wanted to exercise his judgment he could have done that but he didn't he wanted to save us not judge us and so we have the better choice when we see something that's terrible every day I think we can do two beautiful things one is we can collaborate with Jesus and bringing Grace and salvation to someone's life so when you see something terrible going on you can lift up your mind and you can say Lord look on this person open some spout in heaven and cause Grace to come down upon them cuz they're in great need right now send your mercy to them right now and save them from this catastrophe then you're actually collaborating and a second good thing to do is be convinced that God only allows his his children to see horror so that they can discern some portion of that Horror in them mhm what whatever we see some in some way it's in us and if we turn from what we see and say Lord I know that's in me too please get it out get it out those are two very gracious Grace uh summoning actions that would collaborate with Jesus and bringing grace to the whole world which is what we're about we want every single person Jonathan I want every person on planet Earth to be baptized to have their sins washed away to have God come and live in them to be established in peace forever so that they can live a beautiful life this is this is what I'm this is what this is the Christian Vision this we're interested in everyone we want everyone and this is our task yeah um kind of change the subject here all over because there's a bunch of stuff that I I was wanted to get your opinion on uh one of the things that we're seeing and you mentioned that a little bit is you know you mentioned how the people that come to church are have some atheist aspect to them you know um the sense that I also have is that there are also a lot of people going into all these weird religious directions you know we have the spiritually not religious and everybody has their own little kind of new age uh version of uh of spirituality or something and I'm wondering if you're seeing in your own Parish people that have gone in that direction kind of coming back and how do you account for that or what is it that you're seeing you know what is it that's touching these people uh I think I understand what your the question you're raising and it does exist uh the re-enchantment right isn't always finally tuned theologically no that's for sure so we we have in my if you come to my Parish you're going to see what shall I say a collection of tattoos uh yeah yeah I never thought about that Norse gods you know witches covens people have tried these things you know they've just you know I I look on it and forgive me but it was an improvement it was an improvement if you look at uh the ancient Pagan World forgive me the ancient Pagan world was a lot better than our secular society I'm sorry so much better in in many measurable ways uh how they treated The Unborn even though they were terrible compared to Christian standards way better than what we do how they treated marriage I mean many Roman men had Mistresses but they they they also took care of their wives they also knew that they had to support their children or else society would collapse people weren't giving up having kids no one was that stupid I'm the pagans were a lot smarter than us they they had bad Gods I mean I'll give it to you but at least they believed in the Divine and Supernatural realm they knew that they owed something to that realm they knew that they were accountable to that realm the idea that today our people think that really that despite all the evidence that every society in the history of the race has recognized as evidence of the Divine now all of a sudden it's not there I mean how stupid do you have --- s desire to kind of build an intelligent machine that that will that will uh influence us all of that is is are symptoms of the same thing that's happening in our society yeah I share your sentiment have you thought about the AI thing I don't know I'm just asking you because it's it's just everybody it's just happening everywhere what is your perception of that what do you think of this of the AI thing wow ask am I the only one who's ever asked you that father just sign public I think maybe I am one of my kak cumans uh is employed uh as an as a ethicist for artificial intelligence big tech company and we had we we we collaborated a bit uh matter of fact we contemplated there's a big conference uh going on actually I think it's going on this month end of this month in Athens um and we we submitted a a proposal a joint proposal to to talk a little bit about ethics and artificial intelligence I begged out of it uh much to my happiness I just my traveling is driving me crazy yeah yeah absolutely crazy just can't do it but this is whether we want to think about it or not it is apparently upon us how can we not think about it I have a spiritual son who's uh uh doing his PhD in Byzantine studies at a big university I won't say where uh here in America and he's taing right now some graduate classes and he's been giving a he gave a test recently to his grad students on some aspect of Byzantine history very complex aspect like between the 12th and the 14th century very um neglected portion of Christian history which means that the AI resources for that are very limited are thin yeah yeah they're very thin and so this is a a way that he discovered uh that even top level I mean this is a very top level University in America graduate class uh he got a paper back that was just superb it was perfect except it make no reference to any of the Greek text that he had these grad students read that were not popularly in the English language and he asked in his you know requirements for the paper that they reference these texts well when the paper was turned in there were no references to the text so he knew immediately this was a fake paper he went to the head of the Department of the uh department at the University to ask what should he do he said this is a perfect paper but it's a complete fake and the professor said that who was head of the department said I agree with you it's clearly the case and there's not a thing we can do about it they don't have the apparatus to address it uh and it would be a he says she says thing and very hard to prove but that is catastrophically horrific MH people are are now able uh to fake their intelligence by a dependence on chat GPT or something else uh and what's that what is that going to mean when we need competence in human beings and you don't you don't have access to your phone to you know make a fake paper yeah it's a wild it's definitely a wild time it's it's it's an amazing resource like I use Chad GPT because I mean you can have ACC if you have very actually sometimes very esoteric question very difficult questions you know especially the new versions they just give it to you it's it's quite astounding but at the same time it is in some ways you know the problem that Plato brought about in the fedra right this problem of the exteriorization of memory and the exteriorization of thought and so like you said it at some point the people the only thing skill that will be useful for humans is the capacity to use the AI like that's the skill that you have to develop it won't be to actually learn anything it'll just be like are you good it's kind of like now it's like are you good at searching on Google that's what it was for a while that that's what made you smart and now it'll just be are you capable of using the GPT um but uh yeah so I think we're one of the things it might do interesting love father is that it might bring us back to old school stuff like they'll you'll be in the class with a pencil and a piece of paper and then it'll be like I'm sorry but anything you do right now is going to be from your own memory or else it doesn't count and then people will be forced to to actually make efforts that they didn't have to make even 10 years ago to prove that they know what they know we going have to go through the pain though are we going to have to go through the pain first and then Rec calibrate I just wonder you know I we do do we ever do anything in any other way father like well said well said I have these two marvelous priests here who who work with me there's the three of us at the parish who work full-time and they're younger priest and they're far more technologically savvy than I and one particularly has been working uh from a priest perspective with chat GPT and he's been showing all sorts of things about I'm giving this talk to this kind of group I need uh highlevel Byzantine Graphics uh I want to emphasize especially these Church fathers and you know he's been walking us through the the creation of these uh incredible presentations that you're able to to make if you know how to ask the right questions and to lead the intelligence uh the way that you want but I looked at him and I said after he you know showed this to me I said never use that [Music] it's going to stunt you it's going to stunt You So you you're going to miss you know a priest speaks from his experience and he wrestles with the scriptures and he wrestles with the saints that he reads and you develop relationships with them I mean you pray when you reading St John Chum's text right you're you're praying to the Saints you're asking him to help you you're entering into his life and it's satisfying it's the same with the scriptures when you're interacting you're asking for the spirits for illumination if we miss all of that the whole process of Discovery the whole process of learning it's so deeply human and so deeply satisfying we're going to be so sad we're GNA feel terrible yeah yeah father so we're kind of coming up on time very soon I want to give you I want to ask you I guess one last question it's a two-part question you know in some ways I'd like to get your your intuition about what's coming you know let's say I know it's I don't want you to to to feel pressured but you know I think that mind you know I've seen you as a very intuitive person as well and so I'd like you to give us a sense you know the election was rough for uh America and people's perception of themselves and people's perception of uh of what's actually happening in the world there's a big divide in in your country but also here in Canada we're seeing that divide appear appear um there is all this the there's all this uh searching that people have and and it's leading people into all kinds of directions and so I would like to ask you kind of at least a little bit what you see and also what what's your advice for the young people especially the young people that are watching uh and that they want to know how to be in the world and and where to look what a question you know there is there there are two important symbols that everyone should have in the Forefront of their mind and they should have them in the proper order the cross and your nation's flag in my mind those are two very very important symbols and for Christian people it's very important to have them in the proper order you know to be a parishioner to be a Christian and to belong to a church become a parishioner that word comes from a beautiful Greek word paros which means Sojourner MH there's an incredible letter uh an epistle that's usually Bound in our books on the apostolic fathers uh it's called the epistle to dius it's an incredible text it's Anonymous we don't know who the author is but sometime probably around 200 150 to 200 and he describes the disposition of Christians and he says Christians consider every foreign land to be a Home Country and every Home Country to be a foreign land mhm and of course that's a Biblical concept right when God called Abraham out of the polytheism from Ur of the CES right ancient Mesopotamia a very developed culture he called them to walk out and for the rest of his life following God he was a Sojourner and he built altars and he erected and established worship as the foundation of his life life he fulfilled Civic duties you know he he had good relationships with his neighbors sometimes he even went to war for good purposes uh but he never was acting like his Earthly attachments was were the most important he was looking St Paul says in his epistle to the Hebrews he was looking for a city whose architect and Builder is God an eternal City uh I think that we orth o Christians Prosper when we keep those relations distinct the cross Supreme and the flag second and we we have duties of course to our nation we love our nation but we never put the flag above the cross when we do we die we die and that's been my experience in in Orthodoxy in America when we emphasize our nationalism above the gospel we trivialize oursel and we're appearing and we shrink and we should shrink because we're not being good Christians MH uh when we exalt the cross above the flag we have a proper relationship to the flag you have certain patriotic duties you love your country of course this is your ground that God made you from I'm not denying any of that I'm patriotic myself very much so I love my co my country but I love God more and I love his kingdom more and I I evaluate my nation according to his his standards I try to make a contribution according to what is unchanging I feel very uncertain very uncertain about uh the our Earthly scenario right now if you ask me like I'm uncertain if president Trump is even going to make it to inauguration that's how uncertain I am the things that have are going down in our land are so outrageous they're so outrageous these assassination attempts the of manipulation of Deceit uh that is just in the heart of our existence it's uh completely sobered me it's completely sobered me such that I uh every day I no I don't know what to expect um I'm hoping for the best I'm hoping for the best I'm hoping that this will be the beginning of a major reorientation I think it's possible a major social reorientation in which there can be a return turn to uh the importance of religion the importance of morality this is one of the most grotesque expressions of contemporary life you know in 2003 the late uh Supreme Court Justice here Anthony Scalia he issued a minority opinion uh in this case called Lawrence versus Texas which was an LGBT staged case to strike down uh anti-sodomy laws which used to be so normal in in America and they still were on the books in Texas when he wrote his minority uh opinion going against the the majority of the Supremes who did strike down uh these anti-sodomy laws he said this is the end of morals legislation in America and if you don't have morality inspiring your legislation what is it's the end of Justice he could have written that just as easily if morality is not under ging your law code then you do not have a just law codee and we have we that is us now that is us so I think how that doesn't take a great Theologian to articulate I mean that's so basic it's so normal you can't abandon morality it's inescapable you either have uh an articulated true morality or you have something made up and who's making it up whoever's making it up is the god of the nation mhm I mean you go up up the moral law to the author and then you have the god of the nation if it's not from God it's not Jesus who is it exactly that kind of religious chaos and I look at it even religiously speaking one of the things that's fascinated me is on on the Trump side you have this collection of Hindus it's mind-blowing they're very attractive to me I mean JD Vance's wife is a Hindu Vic ramaswami is a Hindu uh we have of course uh Kamala Harris CLA you know have this background as well we have all this the rise of Hinduism uh which is fullblown polytheism and are we are we that doesn't matter that's not going to have an impact on uh what we think about Justice or what we think about about the Dignity of a human person ultimate I I'm hoping that part of this radical re adjustment in our society will lead us back to some basic Rock Solid you can acknowledge God you must acknowledge God even if it's in some way that's you know more generic compared to an orthodox fine but to acknowledge God to acknowledge the 10 commandments to acknowledge the existence IM morality the this seems so basic to me and I just can't imagine if we continue down this path of pretending that none of this exists it's going to end well well father thank you for your time you know and thank you for for everything you're doing uh for your witness uh and also for showing us you know what's possible even at a parish level for people who who who at least try to put you know the right let's say the right order of priorities the beauty and uh also the dedication I mean when I was at your Parish I think one of the things I could see on everybody's face was just this like this is my home you know and you can feel that in the way that people are with their kids crawling around and the you know it's just it's really astounding and so thank you for everything you do and and I hope you know I hope we can also also talk again very soon father please uh keep enchanting us Jonathan please keep enchanting us thanks father I really appreciate it