The Meaning Crisis and the Gospel - with Jonathan Pageau
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- čas přidán 7. 05. 2024
- What is the Meaning Crisis? Where did it come from? How is it affecting us and our world? And how does the gospel make sense of the crisis and heal us from it? I welcome @JonathanPageau for my channel's first conversation to talk about all this and a whole lot more.
Stuff we mention in this conversation and/or relevant that I think you should check out:
+ The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God podcast by @justinbrierley: justinbrierley.com/surprising...
+ Jonathan's interview with @justinbrierley: • The Next Great Revival...
+ Jonathan's interview with Tom Holland: • Discussing Dominion wi...
+ My 2021 interview with Jonathan on Re-enchantment: www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts... & www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts...
+ Secret Wars II: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_...
+ My book "Arise, O God: The Gospel of Christ's Defeat of Demons, Sin, and Death": store.ancientfaith.com/arise-...
+ Tom Holland's book "Dominion": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominio...)
+ Charles Taylor's book "A Secular Age": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secul...
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QUESTIONS ABOUT ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY / HELP FINDING A PARISH: www.orthodoxintro.org/
MORE INFO ON ME: andrewstephendamick.com
MY BOOKS: store.ancientfaith.com/fr-and...
BOOK ME FOR YOUR EVENT: See email in channel description.
SUPPORT: ancientfaith.com/support
If you would like to support the work that I do, you can make a tax-deductible donation to Ancient Faith Ministries.
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
- Bob Dylan
Father Andrew, since you mentioned Tom Holland and Justin Brierley, check out their recent video in which Holland tells about his miracle after asking the Theotokos to pray for him. It's heartfelt, honest, and even funny, because Holland is a Protestant and Agnostic, but his transcendent moment happened on Christmas in front of the Mother of God.
Holland still worships the West.
Do you have a link
BOB wild to catch you here! This is Bailey 😄
Such a great story! It is a story that has helped me love Our Mother!
@@henrik_worst_of_sinnersSo?
My wife and I were raised Wesleyan Methodist, and in college, we became completely disillusioned, feeling that God was far away and we were so distant and broken we had no chance to be saved. After a year of no church attendance, my brother-in-law visited and took us to visit an Orthodox Christian Church, and we joined a few years later in 1998.
21:33 "You are not your thoughts....there's something behind that..." This has been one of the greatest insights that I have gained from the Orthodox Christian life. A glimpse into the true mystery of personhood. Terrible to think of this malicious deception by the spiritual forces of evil -- so many enslaved without even knowing it. No idea of their true self. Carried away. Never taught to be watchful. Not even aware that they must guard the inner gate. Anyway, Wonderful talk, sirs.
Definitely. Has been a wonderful and harrowing experience to come to this realization over the course of the past year. We are something that we don't very readily understand due to the influence of sin against God in the world and in our minds.
I loved the new atheists saying we can have morality without God, then 10-15 years into it we got to see what that morality looked like. Y’all can keep that. Atheism fell apart for me when I discovered orthodoxy and the church fathers. Who knew you couldn’t gain wisdom from arrogance but from radical humility? A lot of people I know are turning to traditional Christianity after seeing where atheism led us. I agree that post great awakening Protestantism is responsible largely for atheism in America at least; a lot of Protestantism became trite, materialist, dumbed down and yet intellectualized, without ritual or mystery and full of fear mongering and shaming, and it’s no wonder people began to hate that form of Christianity and rebelled against it.
I am going through your book Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. It's awesome. Thank you for your inspiration
Christ is risen! Thanks to both of you for helping me begin to understand spiritual reality, restoring my sense of meaning and story, and for telling me to go to church. I start my Orthodox catechumen course at the end of this month.
Only 20 minutes in, this is GREAT
I love it when Jonathan said. “ Meaningless is Impossible “ Yes how human and not just being some kind of material we are. That is seeing reality as it really is
Christ is risen!! You are both modern evangelists for the Church. May God grant you both many years!
Christ Has Risen ! ❤️☦️
Indeed He is Risen!
Interesting discussion, pre Christian times that holds validity. Raised Roman Catholic as a youngster, I was a non participating Christian about twenty years ago the word smashed me into the ground. I opened my heart and ears to our Lord Jesus Christ in different Christian denominations and always take great joy in His Scripture. In my opinion to follow Jesus is to understand His walk through life in righteousness, it seems many churches today do not follow in the footsteps of Jesus but choose a different path.
Hebrews 4:12
For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
What an Incredible first video, two great minds discussing one of the most important issues people are struggling with today.
Brilliant conversation. May I share my baffled awe? I belong to a 12 Step
AA program 40 years now, and am surrounded by transformed lives, some explicitly Christian, others no. We are each blessed to have hit bottom, witness own lives and beliefs fall apart, be slammed to our knees by booze and Life Happening, and in the Dark Night manage to gasp 'Help' to Nobody in Particular. Somebody was there...for me it was the Christ whose loving gaze burned away all my illusions of self and God. For another He might have another name, but our hearts have been cracked open by humble desperation, and let in the One who knocks (Rev. 3) and doesn't crash parties. This bucks me up and gives hope that like hidden yeast, Love and humility are being spread all over the world, nones, nons, or explicit believers.
Truly He is Risen! Being a cradle Orthodox, I would love to hear these types of discussions from the apologetic perspective. Great presentation!
This right here is one of the most important conversation I have ever heard and I wish more people could hear it and understand.
Two great minds! Looking forward to this discussion! ☦️🔥🔥
Conversations = Best-versations!
“But you’re going to have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re going to have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re going to have to serve somebody” Bob Dylan
Thank you both for this fantastic conversation!
So much revelation in this discussion. The embodiment of the logos is the solution. Jesus has risen.
Thanks 🙏
Thanks
So glad to come across this interview - enjoyed it very much, excellent topic. Thank you!
This was wonderful. You articulate things in a way that is easy for us to pay attention to.
I especially liked the section about myth and mythology. It's real again.
From one lover of etymology to another: “professional talker” is redundant.
I loved the interview.
Explaining things intellectually brought me in and I can only speak for myself but as someone who has made the leap from secular non religious world to a Christian world I would like to hear more about the faith. Like this might sound stupid but how do you acquire faith. Do I trust that it will grow? Is it like a muscle? I understand the psychological and intellectual part but what about the mystery and faith? Hearing about the lives of the Saints has started to open that up for me.
From what I have gathered faith usually increases with practice of love. If you love and act accordingly to someone, or someone loves you and acts accordingly - faith grows. You could think of it as a personal living proof of faith.
The key is to realize it's not "faith" in some isolated sense but rather *faithfulness*.
I suggest reading Tito Colliander’s book “Way of the Ascetics”. It’s easy to read and it’s available as free PDF online. It’s a good and practical introduction to the ascetic tradition of the Church.
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of things unseen. It does grow as you walk in faithfulness - the Bible talks about faith being like a seed. But, for some, faith is a gift bestowed by God. You can pray for this gift everyday. It's a beautiful and mysterious thing to believe whole heartedly in the Lord with absolutely zero intellectual proof. It's the faith like that of a little child - sincere and unwavering.
24:29 Nowadays I always hear people say things like “Hey, live your truth”. I think it applies to this way of thinking as well.
A great quote from Protestant pastor Doug Wilson: “They like the apple pie, but want to cut down the orchard.”
Помаже Бог ☦ из Православне Србије 🇷🇸 светитеља Светог Саве, помиритеља браће, првог српског архиепископа и православног царства светородне лозе Немањића.
Christ is risen! ☦️☦️☦️
Truly He is risen!!!☦️☦️☦️
This was amazing! Thank you!
So grateful for both of you.
So much to unpack here - but I have to comment that "free will" and belief in this, is to accept an intrinsic responsibility for our actions. Those who do not like or believe in the idea, are perhaps too scared to admit that they are fully responsible for their actions. No free will = no need for repentance.
Thank you💙Christos Anesti🙏Warm greetings from Greece 🇬🇷 💙
Subscribed. Thanks Father Andrew. Al Maseeh Qam!
Great Stuff thank you for attempting to address these subjects with Grace.
wonderful discussion! I listened to it twice.
Great talk.
Another significant aspect of "Word becoming flesh" is its contrast with "ideology." Ideology creates an insurmountable chasm between ideal and reality, which in turn gives men an excuse for their actions. So, in practice, it's just like any idol that absolves the guilt of its subjects. "word become flesh" removes this space and calls out men for their hypocrisy. Jesus expressly warned that men will give an account for every word that they have spoken.
Truly AWESOME ❤ conversation between you and Jonathan
Just today, I was talking with a good friend about how the most in need people are online. So I'm glad you are doing this! This conversation in particular is fantastic, Jonathan is one of the best at understanding and communicating about this issue of meaning crisis. Some notes in case you find them helpful:
Domicde as the west losing it's way in giving someone a place to be - interesting.
Secular promise of perfection via science is a good frame. Implication is that you can get this from logic, reason and rationality from the 'view from nowhere' which is also the Objective Material Reality frame.
Society and people are wandering and looking for purposes and prone to ideological capture because we cannot tell good from evil. That means two things, at once, lots of new things get created without the awareness of their goodness or evilness (relative and otherwise) and people cannot choose things to grasp on to based on good and evil because they have lost the poetic way of informing the world.
I wouldn't put this at the breakdown of the enlightenment, perhaps the breakdown of the misunderstanding of the enlightenment by removing it from its inherently religious context. You can see that in the US, where everyone seems to forget that the founding fathers said explicitly that this experiment doesn't work without God. They had no problem with enlightenment, whereas, the French totally misunderstood it, which is how you get the French Revolution.
For me, the better way to understand Peterson is not that he has a way of speaking, but effectively, he's better at the Materialism game and has reached the end. He knows where it fails and he can easily lead people there. He never resorts to mystical, or woo, or Christian (very important) language to describe things, he can use purely secular language. Now, that doesn't work, because it cannot explain any of the most important things, but that his part of what Peterson does so well.
There is no argument against free will, if we didn't have it, we couldn't even consider the concept. So, that is the better way to go there.
I do not think the intellectuals stopped knowing what they were about, I think they lost the ability to see entirely. To do science, you must compress the world, constrain the variables to a single variable, so that you can isolate something. That breaks relationship, explicitly (causing an Intimacy Crisis) and forces the world to be flat, but rational, logical and reasonable. Of course, this fails, eventually, especially to explain the most important events. Things like agency cannot be explained, the materialism (which is also a collapse of the four causes into a single cause) cannot keep up and so invents new terms like consciousness and hyper-object and network effects to explain observable patterns. This avoids all Christian language entirely and gives people the impression that the 'answer' is just one (more) scientific finding away. Physics did this with the so called god Particle (Higgs Boson). Then when they found the thing, it was 8 more new questions, rather than the one answer they promised.
Yes, most people will not choose Christianity, that is the big danger in not properly dealing with the Meaning Crisis for sure.
While we are subject to the thoughts of dead philosophers, the problem is far worse, we are subject to wrong and often flat interpretations of their work. Plato's Cave is a fine example of this (see my video on Navigating Patterns) where the whole thing has been twisted to make the exact opposite point that Plato was getting at.
The larger problem is that we have lots of 'knowledge' passed on to use without having any clue what knowledge is (John Vervaeke does a good job with this point) and how it got there. We cannot inspect it, because we aren't aware of it at all, it's just axiomatic for us. That is always how you can catch New Atheists, you ask them how they came to their moral conclusions of what is right and wrong and they never have an answer.
You do you doesn't work because it's self referential, always a good clue for BS. More importantly, you cannot know yourself clearly, you need an external reference, we outsource our sanity as Pastor Paul Vanderklay likes to point out. So you could not do you under your own authority anyhow.
While I cannot disagree on the proposed solutions to the meaning crisis, for people who aren't merely crisis of faith, Christians who exited or lost their way or were drawn away from the story, these simple 'go to church' solutions cannot work. This is a technical problem of lack of skill at engaging in things like symbolism, poetry, art, etc. Our model uses loss of the poetic way of informing the world to talk about this. There are a heck of a lot of steps for meaning crisis people (not merely crisis of faith people) to get into a mode where they can engage. Sure, many of those solutions that work for the 'worse' case also help crisis of faith folks, but they are different approaches for people starting in different places for sure.
Saying that the world is held together by purposes is the same as making final cause great again, in my opinion. We have collapsed (flattened) so many things with materialism, including the causes.
This idea that meaning makes you suffer in nihilism is excellent. I'm going to steal this.
The idea of removing participation is in alignment with John Vervaeke talking about participatory knowledge. We have lost participatory knowledge of the story we are telling. The core issue in our model is that if you don't have the poetic way of informing the world, you cannot inform it through participation properly because you cannot properly connect to the world. You default to propositions (John's Propositional tyranny) and procedures, misunderstand ritual and need to re-invent it all using fancy science words when the Christian language is superior.
The point about money is good, but I think a better way to think about it is binding. When you cannot use something rich and multi-faceted to bind things, you end up with 'money' or a lame church ritual. That is flattening, it's reduction, compression of the world. This happens because you lose the ability to make many to many relationships (poetic information) to things. This is how Materialism works, you reduce the world (so that you can know it - Age of Gnosis - propositionally) then material is the prime mover of all things, and bang, you have a meaning crisis caused by a loss of intimacy (quality of relationship).
The problem of The Age of Gnosis is that people want a story (words) to convince them (even though it will not) and the key is to break them open to a world beyond mere propositions. The approach for meaning crisis is very personal, in general, but showing people how the story they have now (science y, most likely) doesn't explain what they need to address their problem is a good way to go, because then you can get them to try participation with a new expectation. The 'new' expectation is not immediate predictable result, but rather, change over time (which has been ignored due to the flattening of the world).
So the Christians that have been put things together are materialists. They are thinking in terms of science, objects, material as prime mover. They are going to hit the meaning crisis as well, it'll just look different. The real key is not in thinking the folks in church are immune to the meaning crisis effects, because those are downstream materialism and the materialism has really infected everything. This explains how the meaning crises happened at all, the materialism gets you into a corrupt church, which causes you to leave church, which means you fall into a meaning crisis. It is rarely a straight ine as I outlined, but hopefully this is helpful.
Христос Воскресе ☦
Lovely
IVE HEARD ABOUT THE BEYONDER! Thanks for mentioning it! There's a show called Death Battle on CZcams that is essentially that. The culmination of that channel is interesting because the show writers themselves admit that the only "higher" thing that these fights between fictional characters lead to can be unity among the people who like the characters.
25:35 I don't submit to peer pressure because none of my friends do.
🔥
Заиста Христос Васкрсе.
Nice video 👍
Marvel and Orthodoxy? Fabulous.
I have been trying to formulate or to name the situation we are in and the best I can say is that we are currently in the age of informational paganism.
In some sense it is even worse than regular paganism, since in our society we devalue wisdom and knowledge and exchange it to information.
On its own information is useless. It is precisely meaningless - it is a raw material for knowledge and wisdom. And there are tons of it. The proverb: "all that glitters is not gold" is very fitting today.
And in another way why this kind of paganism is worse is that any "god" can grant information. Earlier wisdom was valued and gods of wisdom and knowledge were as strong as those that could destroy populations with natural disasters and such. Now a pagan can just go to his god TikTok and get tons of information he "desires".
In addition no-one realises who they worship. Sometimes for us, Christians, it is hard to admit that we fall prey to temptation and worship lower gods on occasion. But for those who claim to be agnostic or atheist - their situation is much more dire. The most dangerous situation to be in is of willing ignorance. And out of that ignorance comes arrogance and pride. Like if the blind mocked the sighted for believing the horrors they see.
Ignorance is bliss... for pride.
These are some of my thoughts on the topic. Always great to hear from both of you. Thatnk you for such a great conversation, gentlemen.
Christ is risen!☦️
Could you clarify the difference between meaning and purpose?
Read "The Crisis of Religious Symbolism & Symbolism and Reality" by Jean Borella
Wonderful talk, Father! It was a blessing to hear you and Jonathan Pageau talk about the significance of meaning based on truth. I have two questions for you though, admittedly rooted in some passing but possibly significant comments you made.
First what do you make of the Council of Jerusalem (1672) and it's use of the word "transubstantiation" in response to Reformed and Lutheran eucharistic theology? Second, is the comparison between transgender ideology and transubstantiation logically valid? It seems to me, a fallacious equivocation since transgender ideology is typically de-ontological, while transubstantiation assumes that there's layers to reality; layers which are increasingly metaphysical and not just material.
Christ is risen! May the joy of Pascha illumine us all.
I was using the word analogously, not saying that they're equivalent situations at all. That said, transgender ideology definitely depends on the idea that there is some kind of ontological reality to maleness and femaleness, otherwise there would be nothing to "trans" (cross over) to.
@@frandrewstephendamick Father, thank you for the answer! I suppose I'm used to talking to transgender people who reduce their ontology of maleness and femaleness to the brain, or aesthetics.
Great book called Orthodox Psychotherapy by Metropolitan of nafpaktos I think is the right spelling but anyhow using the therapeutic method and coming to the divine physician that helped me to overcome some of these “isms”, Let’s not forget the spirit of the ruler of the area, oh and one quote from Fr. Edward Leen, When we resent anything that happens to us because of Gods desire to create free beings i.e being subjected to the free will of others in our sinful state is pride and knowing that the Christ God says learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart his physiognomy because being sinless he was subjected to the will of his creatures when he had the right to basically not be is truly humility or divine kenotic love. Therefore let’s be humble when it comes to these mainstream terms and psychological idioms and just learn to bear fruits of the spirit and not let ourselves be deluded either by the subtleties of the demons. May the uncreated grace of God reign in our hearts and enlighten or minds that we may know the love that surpasses understanding. Substance and accidents was an interesting take on the transgender basis. Thanks for the video and for your adherence to the faith that has established the universe. Baptized RC, practicing Melkite but catechised now in Greek Orthodoxy hoping to be received soon. Pray for me!
Christos Anesti!
Peace, Justin
Is there some Vander Klay influence in Fr Andrew?
I'm aware of who he is but honestly haven't spent much time on his stuff.
I believe in free will. I have no choice. 🤷
Can someone help me understand the comment at 39:32, please?
I can't really speak for Father Damick, but based on some Lord of Spirits material I've heard a long time ago now, he doesn't believe in them as "big G Gods", but he believes that they are things you can worship, and maybe even to some extent see some return on investment, though the degree to which this is damaging to your soul can vary. Some of these things you might say are demons, or fallen angels, or principalities, etc.
45:14 that awkward moment when you realize your Myth has turned into a Mythology.
Isn't it the case that learning philosophy and Metaphysics would clear up the ambiguity? Why don't the Orthodox have a school? It appears to be western academia again.
"For it is absolutely necessary that the person who says that the activity in God is not different from his essence falls into the trap of atheism."
St. Gregory Palamas tried to warn of the downstream consequences regarding the failure to distinguish between God's essence and His energies. Ultimately, this failure produces Nietzsche and nihilism and the meaning crisis being discussed in this video.
Freewill is a concept that is misunderstood by how English language works. Romance languages talk about the notions in terms of arbiter or referee. You have choices that are bound by rules of the game you are playing. Choices that are outside of the rules of the game are not available to you. So a literal interpretation of freewill, as in your will is free to choose whatever, is an absurdity. So yes, freewill does not exist but freedom of choice within the realm of possibility is a real thing.
Thats not abe froman
I weep for the future.
Regarding John Vervaeke…I like and appreciate some of his work and it’s nice that he traces the meaning crisis back to nominalism as do some Orthodox thinkers BUT he abandoned Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Maybe he will return to the way of Christ, I hope he does, but he would need to renounce Satan and all his works and angels and quit invoking Hermes for guidance.
Hmm video good 🤤
I'm a convert / reconstruction from psychedelic experience. Don't knock it all
Do you continue to use psychedelics and do you think it's generally advisable for most to experience/engage in?
Psychedelic experience helped me on the road to conversion as well but I think the point being made here is that it won't lead the majority of people in that direction and cones with a lot of risk. Going to war can lead to conversion as well but I wouldn't advise people to go to war to find Orthodoxy.
How does one find meaning in a religion whom have a God that isn't a particularly pleasant fellow
❤I see a circle that is being labeled as 'meaning crisis',,, and the both of you are 'positioning' your opinions from 'within' the circle,, looking outward.... I would suggest you both attempt in offering opinions,, standing 'spiritually' on the 'exterior' of this same circle,, looking inward❤...
Don't believe him! We do not have spring!
I was trying to be a christian until I realized I would never have a fair shot at life being born a millennial.
You want to talk about fair? Early Christian martyrs were torn apart by lions for entertainment. Christians in the U.S.S.R. were thrown into gulags and endured unfathomable misery until they died from starvation or disease. Christ Himself was born dirt poor, never had a wife, family, home or penny to his name, was tortured, humiliated and nailed to a tree naked in his 30s. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, pick up your cross and walk with it brother.
The Orthodox are complaining about Calvin fencing the table?! 😂
No, about building a whole religion around gatekeeping.
czcams.com/video/alk4SSY1alw/video.htmlsi=OBedYvY8EK7fnqDL King Missile - It’s Saturday- “I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like
I want to be just like all the different people”