Ancient Christian Faith Against The Modern Secular Drift | Witness Weekly 004 "That" Episode

We connect headlines, books, and everyday dating talk to one repeating theme: we blame the world to avoid looking at our own hearts. We argue that Orthodoxy answers secular modern habits by restoring a sacramental view of worship, marriage, and repentance. 

• praying for peace while discussing the damaged Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv 
• Metropolitan Saba on secularism shaping prayer, fasting, marriage, and death 
• challenging materialism and “Western baggage” that flattens spiritual life 
• Southern Baptist Convention vote on women pastors and how Orthodoxy honors women 
• A Confederacy of Dunces as a warning about pride without self-examination 
• why being correct can turn into cruelty without humility and repentance 
• the marriage and dating crisis as a symptom of Enlightenment rationalism 
• marriage reduced from covenant to contract and people treated like counterparties 
• “dating market” language and ROI thinking as a form of dehumanization 
• Orthodox marriage as martyrdom through crowning, sacrifice, and theosis 
• comments on worship music, entertainment, and why Orthodox chant feels sacred 
• latria and the Divine Liturgy as the missing category in many Protestant frameworks 

Please do leave us a comment down below. As you can see, we may read some of these on air in the future. If you haven't already, give this video a like. Please go check out and subscribe the various channels represented here in this episode. 

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/jRXxRaqK9

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Audio: https://cloudofwitnessesradio.buzzsprout.com

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Transcript

Pre-Show Banter And Prayer

SPEAKER_03 0:00

It's beautiful. Won the Pulitzer Prize, I think. But I'd love to have that discussion someday. Like, how do we read those? Because a lot of Protestants read that stuff. And how do we read that as Orthodox Christians? And you know, is the is the context different now, the more we understand, you know, about the Zionist agenda, et cetera. Yeah. Um, I'm ready. If you guys are ready. If you guys are ready to read it, everything's ready. Oh, yeah, we're going to go. Cool. I'll do a quick prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, O Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Eternal Father, thou hast said, without me you can do nothing. In faith, we embrace thy words, O Lord, and bow before thy goodness. Help us to complete this work we're about to begin for thine own glory in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Ready? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

All right. Here we go, boys.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And again, we can pause between transitions. Totally. You know, like it'll be you, blah, blah, blah. Welcome to Cloudwinds. I'm ready to take it tomorrow. And then pause. And then like you mean like and do a real transition too. Exactly. And then from there, I'll already have the article up and it'll be me. Yeah. This is for this week. Yeah, we're going to be in such such a totally cool. Cool. All right, here we go.

Witness Weekly Kickoff And Introductions

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Hi, welcome to Witness Weekly. This is our third episode, three for the Trinity gentlemen. We've got a full house as usual. We've got Mario Andrew over there on the keys. James St. Simon joining us, as well as Michael with the red lines. Mario, get us started with the news.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Perfect. And that's a pause, and now we're back to me. Do you like with the red lines? We can figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

I like it. I think it's really cool. And by the way, we he's kind of a uh a sleeper. You've I've seen your YouTube page. You got like a super cool icon, like on the red lines. Like he knows what he's doing. Like I think it's a great concept. As long as you like it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. We can switch it up at any time.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yeah, we'll talk about that. Maybe just him, and then he's like red, like that's his channel.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

Well, here's the thing though. Here's can I say why? Yeah. Because Mario Andrew, Jeremy Jeremiah, James St. Simon, Michael. It's like this. I want to be able to say Michael, something something. And that's why like I feel and it's just me. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

My only thing is if people don't know what it is referring to. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, it's gonna have the Michael Red Line.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

It'll have your thing. Yeah. Um did you guys see that by the way? Yes, I did. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. It just sounds so awkward. And you just smile so awkward. I love the point.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

I love the point you did. That was you see it in the picture? It's perfect. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

All right. So

Ukraine Cathedral Damage And Caution

SPEAKER_01 2:57

for our first uh for our first story, we're going to be we're going to be going to Ukraine. So I don't know if you guys saw, but the Dormitia Cathedral in Kiev was damaged. Now Ukrainian officials are saying that Russia had bombed it, while Russia is saying that it was actually the Ukrainian defense system that had actually malfunctioned and burned part of it down. I don't know if you had. Did you guys see the article?

SPEAKER_02 3:21

I did.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Mike?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

I think it's kind of too early to say. Um, because honestly, it very well could just be like Ukrainian air defense that malfunctioned. That's happened before. And I don't know exactly what Russia's reason for targeting the monastery would be in the first place. So that's what makes me skeptical if it really was a Russian attack.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

My thoughts exactly. So pray for peace. Remember, I mean we prayed every liturgy, you know, pray for peace in both Ukraine and uh Russia. Yeah. Um,

Secularism And Leaving Western Baggage

SPEAKER_01 3:52

for our second story, we're gonna be going to Metropolitan Sabah. So Metropolitan Sabah, he releases almost every week a reflection. And so this week's reflection was on secularism. And so for this story, um he argues that a lot of our uh sacraments, a lot of the ways that we view things as Christians, including prayer, marriage, fasting, and our attitudes towards death, are becoming secularized, you know, um, towards this secular Christianity, as I like to call it. Um, and so we really need to analyze what we're consuming, you know, how we're looking at things. Have you have you experienced this at all?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, I'd like to speak to um one of the things that we went through in our book club was the Pearl. And something that we took away from the Pearl is that the indigenous people had a an ability to see not just with their eyes, but through their eyes, in that they didn't trust what they saw physically, more so they trust what they saw and felt and perceived spiritually and through their imagination. Because nothing is ever purely material to the outside world, outside of the Western post-Enlightenment mind. We become so materialistic that we see everything as just what it is, and that's such a Western way of looking at the world. And I think that's what Metropolitan Saba is getting at is we're, as one um theologian said, as um in his theology class, when someone was really bringing in this kind of Western idea into this Orthodox seminary, and he said, leave your Western baggage at the door. Yeah, right, because that has never been a part of the church. The church has never looked at it that way. The the spiritual things are the spiritual world is in everything. And we need to learn to see things not just as purely material, but also spiritual. And until we do that, um, we're gonna unfortunately secularize many things in the faith.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

Yeah. Totally. Well said. If I can piggyback on that a little bit, because I think this is such an important topic, Mario. So I'm so glad you're bringing this up. What I want to say, James, is westernization is around the world, right? We used to talk in East and West historically, and I think that was an accurate uh line of demarcation. I don't know if it's true anymore. With the internet, with the the proliferation of Western society, Western culture, everywhere, right? You go, you see some small Indian village, uh, and what are they wearing? They're wearing Nike and you know, Jordans, and you know, it's Western culture and and Western scholasticism, right, in this post-Enlightenment world that we're in, scientist scientism, right, naturalism, has pervaded everything. And I think what we're seeing is the Orthodox Church, which for many years was kind of protected, if you will, in an ironic way, under the persecution of the Turks and the Ottomans, they had their own problems. That's all they cared about was staying alive. Yeah, right. Well, now in the proliferation of Western culture and really Western affluence, you have Eastern Orthodox Christians and the church, the clergy, having to confront this infiltration of this secularism, which I would just call Westernism, right? It's this Western mindset that has become so secularized, right? We live in a post-Christian world. I think we people often comment, you'll see it in the evangelical circles, oh, America is a Christian nation. Is it? Is it? I don't, I think that we can have a conversation on that someday. But I so I agree 100%. It's a super important issue. And I do believe that it's probably one of the things we have to confront as individual people, right? And if we can change ourselves truly and get rid of our own Western baggage, as you were saying, James, that hopefully will help to continue to change the church as a whole.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Thank you, Jeremy.

Southern Baptists And Women Pastors

SPEAKER_01 8:10

And then for our last story, we're gonna be going to the United States and we're gonna be talking about the Southern Baptist Convention. Funny enough, actually, I think my first video I was ever included in the Cloud of Witnesses, I think was me talking about the Southern Baptist Convention a year ago. Yeah. Actually talking about this same thing because they do this every year, where they're voting on whether they should have female pastors.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Happy anniversary, Mari.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Thank you, thank you, Cherokee. Um, and they voted again to ban women pastors, 6,000 to 2,000. Um, and they're looking to put it in its constitution, to put banning uh women in their constitution for the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a pretty big deal. Um, for my conversion story, the reason I started looking into orthodoxy was actually because of a female pastor at the church that I was at. And I was like, I don't know if I don't know how I feel about this. And so I started looking into traditional Christianity. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Mike, thoughts on that? No. I was gonna say your wife is listening.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Oh no, no, I'm not worried about that. I just yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what to add.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you know, not to say that women are not incredibly capable teachers, and they have an incredible calling from God in leadership in the family over the over the children, and women have such an immense responsibility to teach other women and how to be um how to be icons of Christ within their femininity. And the scriptures talk about let the older women teach the younger women. Um so it's not that they don't have this position in the church of reverence and honor. I mean, we hold the Theotokos in such high esteem, right? And there are so many uh women who are saints in the church that are are powerful, even held up to high regard with the apostles themselves. However, the this is a a triumph to holding to the religion, that the office of the clergy is for men.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

See, and the thing though about that is I feel like this view on women is specific to orthodoxy. Because I feel like in Protestantism, they don't have the same reverence towards the same reverence towards female saints. And so I feel like women feel like they're being overlooked, and the only way that they can get they they feel like they have to become men. They have to become leaders, they have to be able to serve in the church, you know. They I feel like they feel devalued, where I think in Orthodox we we value women. You know, we we we talk about it about the women. We venerate them. We we venerate them, yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Well said, Mario. Well said. Yeah, no, sorry, I'm not trying to cut you off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a great point. It's like there's a vacuum created in Protestantism, if I can piggyback on what you're saying, exactly. Right? You have this hole where where where do women, where do Protestant women look? Where do who do they look to, right? Well, what are they told about the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary? She was a vessel, right? She was just basically a womb for Christ. That's it. Other than that, she's a normal, normal woman, right? So they almost have to, if they want to see importance in themselves or in the role of women, they have to kind of create the importance. Where in Orthodoxy, it's baked in, right? It's baked in.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

One more thing to add on just because it came to me at at this moment, Jesus was very intentional, our Lord, on the cross, with so many breaths left in his lungs, to pay honor to his mother and to even charge John to look after her. Right. If you're gonna use your dying breaths to speak to your mother, I think that counts for more than just a woman.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Well said.

Confederacy Of Dunces And Self-Deception

SPEAKER_03 12:21

With that, we will turn now to our book, um, which may sometimes be film. The we can may almost be like the art review of the week. James St. Simon, take it away.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Well, this week, the book of the week is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. One of the funniest and yet most tragic books I have read. Um, part of the tragedy is the life of the author. Uh, John Kennedy Toole uh took his own life at the age of 31. Um, and his manuscript was rejected by many people. And part of what led him to despair was um failing mental health. He was dealing with paranoia. Um, also, his relationship with his mother, whom he was living with, was uh very tumultuous, and she was a bit abusive in the way that she would ridicule him about his weight and about his um his living situation. And you see a lot of that in the character of Ignatius J. Riley, who is actually quite a hilarious and comically grotesque character who is supposed to be very smart, and he goes on this crusade about how the world is perverse and the modern-day world is degenerate. But he himself is a mirror of everything wrong in society, though he he makes it seem like he is some uh knight errant out to save the world through his theology and geometry, as he says. But um he himself is enormous, he is perverse, he is gluttonous and absolutely degenerate. But he fails to see that because the world's problems and the world's errors are so much louder and so much worse than his own that he fails to ever examine himself. And his mom is his only critic, and he thinks, well, what does she know? Right. Um, it's very interesting. And uh uh John Kennedy Toole ended up winning after um after his death uh the Pulitzer Prize for this book. And it was the mom who actually went on a crusade to to get her son's story out, because then she realized how important this was. It wasn't just another Don Quixote story that takes place in New Orleans. Um, it was really a critique of society, a society that was critical of others but didn't have the intelligence to examine itself, or at least um the humility to examine itself. And um what he lacks though uh was how Don Quixote, in trying to go on this ninth errant adventure, he was chasing an ideal, but he was doing it innocently in a way. Uh and he wasn't cruel towards others. He took Sancho Panza along for the ride, and and he really wanted to, you know, set him up for success, and he was charitable, but unfortunately, he was this delusion was bringing him harm, and it was also bringing other people harm. In the case of Ignatius J. Riley, um, he was swollen with pride, and his moral imagination gave him this sense of superiority that didn't make him charitable, it made him cruel. And that's kind of what we're talking about, how our principles, in a way, can make us cruel because we're correct and other people are wrong. We can somehow lord over this truth in a way that makes our virtues irrelevant because the virtue of being correct is is superior, right? And it's really a defense mechanism. Because as long as I'm better off than the rest of the world intellectually, because I understand morality, it's somehow not a judge against me. And that uh it seems counterproductive, I think. Um so he has theories about everything but his own soul, right? He this caution for Christians, I think, is in the way that we look at dating, in the way that we caricaturize masculinity and femininity, right? We have this idea about what men should be. And anybody who's not that is not good enough. And you have to be this uh this macho masculine, you know, guy who lifts this much, makes this much money, and the woman, she's gotta wear the dress, she's gotta be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen with six kids. And if she's not doing that, she's not fulfilling her role as a woman. Man has to be a protector. And the gender roles in the marriage, they have to be just so. And anybody who isn't doing that is low-tier family, beta male, uh feminist, right? And what that does is it discredits the people who are in their real situation, right? And what their intentions might be in doing and living the way that they are, right? It could be victim of circumstance, it could be that there's no other choice. Think of women who can't have children. What are they? Now valuable? Think of men who are injured through and they they can't provide for their families. Are they less men, right? So it's not that the world doesn't have problems. None of us would argue with the world is flawed. It has problems. There is a very real degeneracy out there. But the real problem is the rather than the brokenness of the world being the central issue, we need to look at the brokenness in ourselves and not look at the brokenness of the world as our excuse to avoid repentance. And that's where I think orthodoxy, the focus of orthodoxy is on the Jesus prayer. It's on humility, on repentance. Lord have mercy on me as sinner, not Lord have mercy on the world. It begins with Lord have mercy on me. You need to be the change that you want to see in the world. And I want to just read a couple of quotes because I think they're hilarious from the book. He says, Apparently, I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking, which is saying that the only reason I don't have a job is because I'm not uh as bad as the world wants me to be. So it's the world's fault I'm unemployed, right? I mingle with my peers or no one. And since I have no peers, I mingle with no one, right? I love it, but that sense of superiority, right? No one matches up to my intellect, so I have no friends. Yeah, it's not my fault, it's their fault. See, if our theology makes us more resentful, suspicious, and cynical of the world and less capable of love, then we're not defending orthodoxy. We are using orthodoxy as armor for the passions, right? We can get along with all forms of degeneracy because we're not as bad as the world is, and it's really the world's fault for being so sinful. So I would say don't be Ignatius J. Riley like this guy. Be like Saint Ignatius, who prayed for the people that were about to feed him to the lions, and in doing so, we're gonna find that, as Saint Seraphim of Sarov says, right, find the spirit of peace, and in doing so, thousands around you will be saved. That's gonna be much more uh impactful than winning arguments. Win people's souls by being a heart that shines with the humility and the love and the mercy of Christ. And that's the book of the week. So you may not get that from this book, but you'll at least get the caution of what not to be. Yeah and you'll laugh a lot.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

You will now. Uh, James, thank you so much. That was awesome. You and I have talked about this book in the past. It is one of my personal favorites as well. Um, I will recommend to anyone who's maybe thinking, well, I'm not a reader. The audio book of this book is phenomenal. The reader does such a great job, as you said. It's set in New Orleans. So he does all the accents and is absolutely hilarious. But you, it's such an important point, James. I I think of one of the elements of the character Ignatius, one thing that he does when he's not just laying in his room, in the filth of his room, eating the worst food ever. You know, he's he's completely obese, et cetera. One of his favorite outings was to go to the movies. And he would go to kind of the worst. He would go to the salacious movies, the movies with probably a lot of sex scenes in them. And he did so, again, never checking his own conscience as to why he's doing so. He was doing so, you'll remember, James, because he needed to be able to comment on the downfall of society. Right. So he had to go witness it himself so that he could then reflect to one day his writings were gonna save the world, in essence, right? Um, and and I think that there is such a huge caution in there for us as as Christian men, right? To how often do we, or do I'll just speak for myself, right? Do I justify the things that I watch for me to say, well, because I need to comment on this, right? When really it's taking my mind into a place where it shouldn't. So um thank you so much, James. That was that was fantastic. Mike, Mark.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah, talking about um him criticizing the world, but you know, not having any self-reflection reminds me of the quote from St. Sarah from Rose of they might be orthodox, but are they Christian? So, you know, you can be right about everything. You can cross every T and dot every I and be completely right and Orthodox. But if that is not accompanied with repentance, then it's not doing you any good. And in fact, it can it can make things worse for you. Wow. So I think that's just that quote came to mind when you're talking about it.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Yeah.

Dating Crisis And Marriage As Sacrament

SPEAKER_03 22:38

And now we're gonna turn it over to Michael for red lines. Do you not want me to say the don't do my?

SPEAKER_01 22:45

It's just do this topic. Don't say it with red lines. I'm gonna bring it to Mike now.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

I love Mario's like the director behind the camera, going, no, do it again, Nidny. You didn't do it right. Okay, I'll do it again. You ready? I actually got this. And now we're turning it over to Mike.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

On the topic of the marriage and dating crisis, not just um, you know, in the Orthodox Church, but just in the world as a whole, when people talk about topics like this and this one specifically, I think we spend too much time talking about symptoms of the problem rather than trying to get down to what is the root of it. And one of the roots, I think there's several, but one of the roots of why there is so much um strife in the dating and marriage world today, is the result of enlightenment thinking, where one of the things that happened was people took on this super rationalistic approach to thinking about the world, where everything had to be clearly understood and you had to be able to explain and understand everything. And so what that led to, I think, partly was desacralizing the world, where the sacraments that were so much of a part of the ancient world really were forced out because they're outside of this bound of rationalistic understanding. And of course, one of these sacraments that has been affected by this way of thinking is marriage. And we we see this with how people talk about marriage, where it used to be viewed as a covenant performed in a in a sacrament in the church, and now especially in in secular conversations, marriage is it's been reduced to a contract, it's a legal arrangement between two people. And so your perspective of the other person, whether you are married or considering marrying somebody, has become to approach them as essentially a counterparty in a in a negotiation for a contract. It's a legal arrangement rather than viewing this person as someone made in the image of God, and you are aiding each other in salvation and in theosis. We hear this in the the just the language they use, the terminology that's used, in both responses to the problem, you have responses on both sides, whether it's feminism or even in the manosphere, which from the outside it looks like they're opposite of each other, but really they're approaching it from the same perspective because they use a lot of the same terminology. One of these is the marketplace. So they'll talk about the dating market. But I and I don't think this is just um uh nitpicking or or splitting hairs, but using that terminology when you're talking about marriage as a marketplace. What do you do at a marketplace? You find something to extract its value, you find something to consume rather than finding somebody who's gonna aid you in salvation, and you can aid them towards salvation as well. And so, of course, um the answer to this is found in orthodox marriage. And there's several aspects of marriage in orthodoxy specifically, not just Christian marriage in general. But one of them that really comes to mind is um the crowning that takes place in marriage. When you're crowned with the crown of martyrdom in marriage, that's what it really is. It's self-sacrifice, whereas the secular view of it is what am I getting out of this? What can I extract? What can I take from this arrangement, like in a in a contract, versus being crowned um as a martyr, to sacrifice yourself for for this other person. Um, and one of the one of the chief goals of marriage is children to you know continue on to that's the best way to make m more orthodox Christians. It's for orthodox couples to have children. But in this secular post-Enlightenment view of relationships and marriage, when people talk about children, it's almost exclusively a discussion about the cost, a financial cost or a lifestyle cost of children versus the traditional Christian perspective of children as a gift. So the secular world has completely inverted the the view of marriage and children and family and what the purpose of all of that is in the first place. So I think a lot of the conversations on the feminist side, on the manosphere side, they're just talking about the surface level. They're trying to fix a problem without getting to the root of it. And the only solution, the only answer is going to be found in the Orthodox Church. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Well said, Mike. I I you make me think of uh Thomas Jefferson famously, you mentioned the post enlightenment, and then Thomas Jefferson famously kind of created his own Bible, right? Yeah, where he basically redlined, cut out every miracle, right? Anything that was kind of supernatural in nature, took it out, so all you had left was the bare bones or the science, yeah, the science-based, right? What can be explained through logic and reason, et cetera. I know that the modern American church thinks that it hasn't fallen prey, it hasn't gone that far as to what Thomas Jefferson did, but I think we live in such a secular, post-Enlightenment scientist world. I mean, I know I went to, I even went to private Christian school for my primary years. I was taught these things in terms of the, you know, how science is all the answers, and yes, your faith is real, but all my faith was in here. The faith really wasn't out here in those years as a Protestant. And so what I hear you saying is that they've they've kind of gutted the spirituality, the very real spiritual, which is what a sacrament is, right? It's a spiritual reality that we're experiencing in this world, in this life. They've gutted it. And so the natural consequence, as you said, is becomes well, uh, two people get together and hey, you get a tax break, and um I don't know, you get to leave your, you know, your heir against your things when you die, right? It's this this legal contract. Um, and how sad that is, right? And what I'd like to ask you to pontificate on a bit more, Mike, and then certainly get other people's thoughts. You said how really the orthodox marriage is the actual answer. Why? Why is that different than Christian marriage?

SPEAKER_02 29:51

I think it's because of what you're alluding to. I mean, Protestantism itself has been deeply affected by Enlightenment thinking, which as I said earlier, I think one of the consequences was desacralizing everything. Most Protestants don't have sacraments. Um so specifically in orthodoxy, that's where you're gonna find it. Obviously, you know, we can have a a discussion about Roman Catholicism, it's kind of a separate uh question, although they have issues with how they view marriage as well. But I think just the West in general is mostly influenced by Protestant thinking, which itself is desacralized. Uh they they've gotten rid of the sacraments essentially. Um so even within a Protestant view of marriage, even if kind of conceptually they know it's more, their theology doesn't give really give them the the tools to understand why and how it's more than just an agreement between two people.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

You know, something that you mentioned, um, the marketplace and how that's affecting dating. I saw this um clip that was quite vulgar from um Clavicular, and he was talking about um women and what they kind of uh what they contribute to a relationship um as ROI, right? The return on the investment. And um that really devalues something when you look at it uh purely from a you know money standpoint, from a a value that is quantifiable. Yeah, and those terms are really hurtful, and we don't realize it because it's it's an illustration that kind of works, right? And it's a metaphor, but that's that's the mindset that you get into into looking at these things. And that's what has become even in the orthodox spheres, in what they're looking for. The value is either in their physical appearance or in how traditional they are, and that's kind of how they they rank um these these women. And also the same thing for women on men, you know, they want them six five blue eyes, uh trust fund, yeah, trust fund exactly, right? Um, which is no one is considering salvation, no one is considering the sacrament when they're looking at it in that kind of way. And there are plenty of people in the church who, if you would look at them from how is this person going to um benefit, how are we gonna mutually benefit our salvation, our souls, through holy matrimony? And that's really what we should look at it. Not a civil union, but marriage is holy matrimony, that even our priest talks about how the only thing that that is close to the Eucharist and the intimacy of that is marital relations. And if you were to look at it that way, and how holy and how sacred that is, I think it would revolutionize the world. And people, when they are looking at another person for what they're what ROI they're gonna get out of it, I don't think they're looking at what do I bring to the table. And that's where that whole responsibility and what's wrong with women is whatever, and that's why I don't have a girlfriend. That's not the problem. The problem is how you're looking at the world, and you need to work on making yourself a worthy husband. And then if you look at a woman who is going to be uh a person that is going to want the same thing, and that's to to be in communion with the Lord as a couple, and may that communion bring forth life more abundantly through children or even spiritual children, right? Adopted children, whatever that may be, may it be blessed, but it has to be sacred, it has to be holy matrimony. If not, what is it?

SPEAKER_03 34:01

Amen. Well said. I hope you guys notice and hope our listeners notice how everything is tied together. I feel like the theme that's coming out here is look, may we look to ourselves, right? As opposed to tearing down others around us who we disagree with or who have the problems, right? May we look to ourselves. Do we find the holiness within um in our own lives, right? Seeking union with Christ as opposed to uh looking outside, looking outward, you know. Um, I see that in in every conversation we've had today, which I think is pretty awesome. You guys ready for viewer uh comments and questions

Listener Comments On Worship And Music

SPEAKER_03 34:41

and whatnot? Ready. Awesome. Maybe, maybe I am.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

You may not be. You may not be.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

Yeah, I know, right? Um, so this one I always love seeing these. Um I was always so frustrated when I listened uh to Cloud of Witnesses, but I followed. Something about that question of why was I frustrated? And he goes on to say, the Lord sure has used what you're doing to soften my heart. And one of the reasons I've been doing such a deep dive into orthodoxy. Thank you. So beautiful. We love hearing people who are you know are learning about orthodoxy, coming to the faith.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

These, this is really cool. This is from our our episode last week. So from the previous episode. Um I gotta sorry, it's not I can't read this.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Somebody get them some glasses.

SPEAKER_03 35:33

I'm on it right now.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Sorry, is this last week or two weeks ago technically?

unknown 35:37

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

It's gonna be two weeks.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Two weeks ago. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

The release of our first episode.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

Can I say that again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um as I go to 250.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

That's true. Because by the time this comes out, it'll be two weeks ago. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

So from our episode two weeks ago, we've got some comments here. Um, as a recent convert, um uh and now in catechism, who left. Sorry, guys, I got to I have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Let's see. Let's see. Let's put the glasses on. I know.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Just say, just say from our last episode. Yeah. Just say from the last episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:19

Oh, this one helped. I'm just gonna do this. All right, guys. Mario, is my laptop on the screen? Does it make it doesn't really?

SPEAKER_01 36:26

All right, here we go. You guys ready? But I wanted you to put on your glasses. Like, no, no, no, no. I want you to be like this next comment.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

And now this next or now these next comments come from IG. I see him trying not to crack out laugh.

SPEAKER_04 36:46

Oh man, I'm trying to really bad at this point. Oh, man. Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Yeah, I'm better having fun.

SPEAKER_04 36:56

All right, here we go.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

And from our last episode. Good stuff. Totally. Oh, okay. Here we go. And from our last episode, we had some comments as well. Um, Carson City Collective said, as a recent convert, um, he's still in catechesis. He left a leadership role. Um, you remember we talked about that leaving the Protestant church, um, and he joined a congregation. Um, and here's his summation. Theology might have brought him through the doors to his parish, but it's Christ who has kept him inside. Period. All glory to God. Pretty awesome, right? Beautiful to see. So it was, right? It was he talked about the videos and theology. The church brought him in and got him to look at orthodoxy, but it's the presence of Christ that kept him there.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Yeah, on that point, very quickly, I think that's that's the utility of the apologetic sphere. Um, how many people has Jay Dyer brought into the church through apologetics, right? Through um breaking those presuppositions. But at the end of the day, it's the life of the church that that makes all that theology real because it's lived. And I think that's that's the important part to also emphasize is at the end of the day, the online orthodoxy is very different from the parish life orthodoxy. Yeah. And you won't find, you can get directed to the church through the online sphere, but living orthodox, it has to be by going to a parish, attending divine liturgy, that'll transform you.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

Participating. Love it. Yeah, amen. Um, our next comment here is from uh Jason Fox. He says, Um, regarding quote, praise and worship music, he says, I think the big problem is that it's low-quality music with low-quality lyrics. To this day, I love some traditional Protestant hymns that were proposed before the 20th century. With the rise of evangelicalism and the guitar uh church service, the music deteriorated more and more with each successive decade. The current slop, as he says, of Christian radio is painful to listen to, even if you don't have a chip on your shoulder about being Orthodox. It's interesting, right? We talked a bit last time uh you know a little bit about Christian music and Christian worship in the modern evangelical circles. And he's saying that he thinks it's kind of degenerated. You guys agree? I know, James, I know you like some modern Protestant.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

I mean, call me controversial, but I think that there are some great uh Protestant songs that are literally um scripture put to music. I don't see anything wrong with that. Um, but I think we ought to look at it as entertainment, right? Um it's just like a Christian movie, right? A Christian movie doesn't mean it's a Christian service, right? Or it's some kind of uh um it's just a form of entertainment that um you enjoy. So I think there is a clear boundary as to what constitutes um liturgical music and what is music that can be Christian because of the the subject matter and and whatnot. But at the same time, um I think there is a difference between the the hymns and I we talked we saw that one video about the doxology. Yeah, I love the doxology. Right, me too. I got no problem with the song itself. Right. Um, it's beautiful, it's cultural too. And exactly. So that's my view of it. I don't see a problem with it, and I enjoy it personally, not all of it, the you know, Jesus is my boyfriend kind of songs where you can't really tell the difference between the three, or it's a Christian artist writing a song that's vaguely thematically Christian, same time. I'm like, well, it's just entertainment, it's not really worship. I think worship is a lifestyle. Yeah, worship is a way that you uh engage with the Lord, and it's either worship or it's not. Yeah, but yeah, that's my tip.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

There's something about music, I think, like like any other art form, or it's really hard to articulate exactly like what makes it um a certain thing or not, because you could if you didn't know or understand the lyrics of a lot of the contemporary Protestant music, you wouldn't know that it was meant to be religious in any way.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

But if you listen to like Orthodox chants, um you you might not know the lyrics at all. But there's something about it, something like kind of intuitive that you can't really explain. You're like, oh, I know this is a religious song, this is something spiritual going on here. So I don't know. It's it's like a lot of art forms, it's hard to explain, but you hear it and you know, like, okay, that is a religious song. Hear a lot of Protestant music, and I'm like, I this might be a Protestant song, might just be a secular song. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

Yeah. I love that you said that, Mike. The just the other day, I was at work. I work in a you know, a secular office, and I happened on my Spotify, a Georgian hymn in Church Slavonic was playing. And I I play my music kind of loudly when I'm working sometimes. Well, one of my co-workers walked in, um, and he again, it's in Georgian, Church Slavonic. So he clearly had no concept of what it was saying at all. But he knew right away, he goes, What is this you're listening to? Is this I think he said, Is this religious? Right? He knew, and this is in like 10 seconds, he heard barely any of it, right? But something about it, he knew it was different from what he was used to hearing.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

He could have said, No, it was a Halo theme song.

SPEAKER_03 43:14

Yeah, exactly. So that that's that's a great point, Mike. And this is so fast, I'm really glad that we had this conversation because the last comment, you guys, is really interesting and it gets to the heart of what we were just talking about. This is from uh Joachim. He says, the practical problem is the lack of latria, which means worship in Protestant liturgies. Hear this guy out. This is fascinating. He says, with neopagans, for example, latria might be sacrificing a goat in the forest or whatever. In other words, they understand what worship means, right? Sacrificing an animal. He says, but for us, Orthodox, it's the mystical supper, right? The sacrificial, the spiritual sacrifice, the means instituted by Jesus. Now, by contrast, he says, for Protestants, he goes, they don't have the concept at all. They are correct to point out that we honor the saints the way that they honor God, but that just means they haven't managed to follow that particular commandment of Christ. What he's saying is Protestants, in essence, by default, are kind of just venerating God, right? Because they don't understand sacrifice in the same way we do in the sacraments. And so therefore, when they see us venerating the saints, they think, oh, well, you're we do this, this is how they understand worship. So for them, we almost need to be talking more about Litria, actual worship, so that they can maybe see the difference between worship goes to God, and here's what worship looks like. Come take a look at the divine liturgy versus all this venerating that Protestants are doing all the time. We're showing honor to God, we're showing, right? We honor the you know the memory of what Christ did for us, these types of things. I think that's a fascinating point. What do you guys think? Great point. Yeah. Amen.

Final Thoughts And How To Engage

SPEAKER_03 45:13

Gentlemen, that it we did it. That was episode our third. Um, witness weekly. We hope that you're enjoying this. Please do leave us a comment down below. As you can see, we may read some of these on air in the future. We look forward to hearing from you guys. If you haven't already, give this video a like. Please go check out and subscribe uh the various channels represented here in this episode. We really appreciate you guys. God bless, and we hope to see you on the next one. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Perfect. Did you start with an intro? I don't think we start. Like, did we start with the welcome to okay? Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah. It was so long ago. I don't think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 45:53

I know. Mari, how long do we record? I'm afraid to ask. We're at an hour.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

Oh we probably have like we have yeah, we probably have it's probably gonna be a fifty minutes. Okay, yeah. It's gonna be ten to fifteen minutes cut out.

SPEAKER_03 46:05

So let me ask you this, guys, right now. Oh, yeah, please do.