Why We Matter - Rev. Dn. Anthony Turjman - (Special Episode)

 The Question That Changes Everything: Why Do You Matter? 

The question that won’t go away is also the one that can change everything: why do we exist, and why do we matter? Rev. Dn. Anthony Turjman starts with the blunt honesty of Solomon’s conclusion after chasing pleasure, wealth, power, and knowledge. Even when life looks “full,” the heart can stay empty. We talk about why that restlessness is a spiritual signal, and why purpose and meaning don’t hold together without God at the center.

We wrestle with why we exist and why we matter, and we argue that life stays confusing until those questions are answered through communion with God. We trace how spiritual life becomes real transformation, not religious habit, and how that healing brings genuine freedom.

 • King Solomon’s search for pleasure and success ending in emptiness without God
 • Spiritual life as ongoing transformation rather than occasional belief
 • Healing through prayer, repentance, confession, Holy Communion, and obedience
 • Habits and desires becoming passions that distort how we see and choose
 • Christ as light revealing pride, fear, and selfishness for healing
 • Commandments as protection that exposes drift away from Christ
 • Sin as a chain of thoughts that leads to action
 • Freedom as becoming different rather than merely behaving differently
 
 From there, we get specific about spiritual life. Not vague inspiration, not occasional church attendance, and not prayer only when we’re overwhelmed. We describe Christian spiritual formation as an ongoing transformation where God heals the heart, purifies desires, and restores the soul through repentance, confession, Holy Communion, and daily obedience. The goal isn’t legalism or rule-following to look good. It’s inner change, the kind that makes you whole.
 
 We also dig into how we lose freedom without noticing. Repeated desires become passions, and passions become lenses that shape what we call “truth.” That’s why we often stop choosing and start reacting, repeating the same patterns even when we want better. We close with a different way to see the Ten Commandments: not as cold restrictions, but as a fence around a garden that protects the Tree of Life. If you want a deeper prayer life, real spiritual healing, and a clearer path to freedom, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share, and leave a review, and tell us what part of your inner life needs the most light right now.

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Transcript

hy Do We Exist

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I always get this question back from even my childhood. Why do we exist and why do we even matter? And it is because of this answer. If we do not address this answer in a in a proper way, then everything will be in confusion. So addressing those two important questions, who we are and or why why we are special, why we are why do we exist? Why do we matter? Answering it makes everything clear or should make everything clear in our life. And always I remember reading when those two questions come up. I remember King Salomon when he said in his wisdom that he tried everything in life and he sought out pledgers, earthly pleasures, wealth, knowledge and power, everything that we know of. And in the end he concluded, and he said, Vanity of vanities, says the teacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity, there is nothing new under the sun. And he discovered something very important that sometimes people go through all their life, sometimes actually not, that nothing worth anything without God. And everything is in this world is ultimately leaves and leaves the heart empty. And uh success, pleasure, and all the other or wisdom, if you want to say, self without God will make us the more we have it, the more we we're longing for something deeper, and we we we longing for this connection. And instead of us going through it and going more, we get more thirsty, and the longing of God gets more and more. So this is why the spiritual life is very important, because spiritual life is the answer of those two questions. Why we will have a spiritual life, because we were not created just to exist, we were created, we were not just created just to survive or to work or to achieve, make money, but we were we were made so we will be something greater. We are to live in communion with God, to know him and to love him and to find him and to find life in him, to find a purpose in him. And this is why I tell my godsons that spiritual life is not an option. It's something that each one of us have to seek. But then I get this question, what is a spiritual life? And how we can how we can how we will know that are we in living a spiritual life or not. Spiritual life is not just simply believing in God, it is not just going to church occasionally or praying whenever we feel. It is a life of an ongoing transformation. And it is when when God begins to heal the heart and purify its desires and restores the souls. Of course, this happens through uh through the church, through prayers, through repentance, through confession, the sacraments, holy holy holy communion and uh and uh confession. Uh it will require obedience and we are in parti we have to participate in in God's grace to be able to receive that. This is not about following a rule, so you will be as good. It is not it's not about rules and legalistic, it is about us allowing God to work in us and to change us from inside to outside, like how Christ mentioned that you have to change the cup, you have to clean the crop from inside, and the outside will be clean. And yet, if we are honest, we often do not live this way. We all we often think that we are free, we think that our choices are truly ours. We think like we see clearly and decide rightly. But the truth is we are shaped, and we are shaped by our habits, we are shaped by our uh outbringing, upperbringing by the people around us, by the environment, and and most of all, we are shaped by our desires. When we repeated those desires, like continuously doing those desires, what we feel, those becomes passions. And they act like lenses, like like you know how we have glasses, and through those lenses we see and then we interpret the word. So we become interpreting the word and see it and understanding through those passions. And we and they make things like you would have the love of God sometimes, and you want to do what's good, but because you're shaped by those desires, by those passions, you will you think you're doing the right thing. You you it looks good to you, but it's not. And sometimes it is attractive, and sometimes it's unbearable, those passions, and it it grows more and more. And slowly without realizing, we stop truly choosing, we just begin reacting, and we live out our pattern, and we repeat it, and we keep just doing and repeat it. And this is why two people can see the same situation and walk away with completely different truths, if we want to say truth, because they're not just seeing the word, they are seeing through their heart. But of course, that does not mean there is no hope. In reality, Christ came to us and he does not leave us alone, and we become trapped in our patterns and passions, and this healings come from Christ throughout the church, through the church, in the church there is the grace. It is not just an idea, it is not something intellectual, it is something real and present and active. And through the participations in the prayer, confession, communion, your your daily interaction, when you're obedient, when you love, when you when you allow yourself to to humiliate yourself, or when you have humility, your soul begun b starts to transform. And of course, without a humility, this can run humility, obedience, and love, which is what we need to have, we cannot accept God's great grace. It's not about being perfect, it's about being sincere and and available with with Christ. And God will show us what is hidden. It will show us that pride we did not notice it before. We will see fear that we always try to hear to hide. And we we see selfishness that we always try to justify, but we always now we see it. And he does not reveal those things to us at one time, like to condemn us, but he's showing us, he's he's like revealing the light, so it will shine into the darkness of our heart, so we will be able to see it, so we will take it and bring it to him, so he will heal us from that. That's why I love when Christ always says, I am the light, I am the light. People think of a light switch right now that they go, but light is the fire. There was two lights in the ancient Greece or ancient Palestine or that culture. It comes from fire and from the sun, and both of them you know you have to know how to handle them because if you don't handle the fire well in your house, it can kill you and and and burn you. So, anyways, so the many people see those are like rules, and that the commandments are rules, but they're not. The commandments are not there. Uh it is there to follow, of course, but it I always think of it as a fence, and the center of like imagine there is a garden and there is a fence around it, and in the center of that garden, there is the tree of life, there is a Christ in there. And the whole point is for you to go and go closer to that tree, to eat from that tree, and to be with that tree. So the commandments play a role here that when when you are jumping out of that fence, when you break a commandment, it's like you're jumping out of a fence. It is not the beginning of the sin, it is actually the result of a continuous choice of you moving away from Christ one by one. God showed us, for example, for example, when Christ said, or God in the Ten Commandments say, do not steal. Stealing is the last step of a continuous waterfall of thoughts. Because what is the root of stealing, for example? It can be from a pride that I deserve this, it can be out of fear, God will not provide for me, or it can be out of selfishness, and those are the triggers that will show you that we're not looking at the tree. And I want you to imagine that each time you want to do sin, you're just walking away, and those thoughts, we are not judged for it, we're not condemned for it. It is it is wrong, but in the end of the day, there is no action. The action was you stealing in the end of the day. But what led you to breaking or to steal is that continuous of thoughts where if you stopped it from before and you dealt with it, you see why am I prideful, why I am selfish, why I had fear, or one of them or all of them sometimes, then this this the sin of not stealing or stealing will never happen. And that's the commandments come to expose our priorities. It comes and see and we it shows us how much we are drifted from Christ. So you're you're you to orient yourself back to Christ instead of uh just going away and trying. Do not feel like in shame that you break it, but feel guilty, but go and see why did you do that. That's what's more important. And this is the journey of transformation, how we call it. It is not just to behave differently, it is to become different, it is to have your heart now purified, your desires are healed, your visions are made clean, and you and yourself, you're inside of yourself, you'll become in more in peace, and you will become united with yourself, and then you're not living reacting to the passions, but you are living in communion with God, and the more you draw near Him, the more the darkness fades, and the more the heart is illumined, and the more we begin to see clearly not just the world but ourselves, and in that light we finally begin to be truly free.