SPEAKER_00: Alright, so here we get the thrilling conclusion to the book.
SPEAKER_00: Now I do want to point out if you want to backtrack and listen to the specific ones we've done, they're all available on the website.
SPEAKER_00: They're already there.
SPEAKER_00: So you can if you can't sleep at night, you can listen to this for like an hour or a pop.
SPEAKER_00: And um I hope, you know, I don't want to cut off thoughts, but I want to remind you that one way to read the book is at surface level, and it's very bizarre and awful.
SPEAKER_00: And once again, we have this other opportunity, I think, to hear that this maybe even more so, and in some ways, like more readily than the rest of the Bible, is trying to describe the inner nature of things, not the outer.
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, I think revelation is easier to interpret because it's so bizarre that if we can say, aha, that's about the inner nature, then it's easier to apply that.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we read stories about Jesus or stories in Genesis, and it well it sounds very much more reasonable, so we make the mistake of reading it literally.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation does not allow you to read it literally, or else it's a horror tale.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I don't think it should be.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that's an okay thing.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, I I think the goal of all these animal pieces and symbols that it the book itself often decodes for you, often decodes them, is for you to see how things are under the surface.
SPEAKER_00: The point of apocalyptic literature is not to confuse things, but to unveil them.
SPEAKER_00: Apocalypse means unveil.
SPEAKER_00: So here we are at the conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: Um, were there items this week or residual that continued to agitate you or encourage you?
SPEAKER_00: Did you get a new picture of anything uh this week?
SPEAKER_00: That's because it's got that paper in front of it.
SPEAKER_00: I can fix that quickly.
SPEAKER_10: I wanted to say that.
unknown: Well, we really didn't get it.
SPEAKER_02: What did we say?
SPEAKER_02: Any anybody?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what do you say?
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You flooded?
SPEAKER_02: You're the street.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it usually does happen because it happens every time.
SPEAKER_00: Well, not all at once.
SPEAKER_01: Repeat yourself, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: My terrible question is always what stood out for you this week?
SPEAKER_00: What did the readings do for you to confuse you, or did you make any new connections?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I go back and forth on it.
SPEAKER_01: I go back and forth when I read it, and I don't have my Bible in front of me, so I can't be specific.
SPEAKER_01: But it's like first of all, they say yes, he's going to forgive you for your sins, and then the next time it's all the sinners are gonna be dead, and and the other ones are gonna be stuck.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, I don't know what I am.
SPEAKER_01: I know I'm a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: So let me see if I can help.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's always options, and I want to point out not that I'm I'm not going to tell you the right way to read it, but I want to say there's actually you put your finger on some ambiguity, right?
SPEAKER_00: I think there is some ambiguity.
SPEAKER_00: So here are some of the images that we get.
SPEAKER_00: Death and Hades, that's death with a capital D, is going to be thrown in the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a really interesting thing to think about.
SPEAKER_00: We usually read um Lake of Fire through Dante and John Milton's eyes, which is like a place of torment.
SPEAKER_00: But the book is clear that the lake of fire is going to burn up death with a capital D, like incinerate it, obliterate it.
SPEAKER_00: It is that there will be no more death with a capital D, nor will there be a Hades.
SPEAKER_00: So Hades is like the place of the dead, or it's Sheol, it's really dark, that's going to be gone.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we also read that if your name is not in the book of life, you will also be incinerated.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is whose names are not in the book of life.
SPEAKER_00: Now we've got choices.
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, I didn't think the book tells us um how to decide.
SPEAKER_00: I think we're left to decide based on the rest of the themes of the book, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So one thing we could choose is that um good people, their name is in the book of life, and bad people, they're not.
SPEAKER_00: So they'll be incinerated.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you go that way, certainly the book, I think, is saying there's not an eternal torment, you just don't exist anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you're gone.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing to feel pain, you're just gone.
SPEAKER_00: Um that question would be who's good enough?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Who's good enough to have their name in the book of life?
SPEAKER_00: Christians have wondered this for a long time, right?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that you get your name written in the book of life?
SPEAKER_00: Is it something that you earn?
SPEAKER_00: That's works, Christianity, right?
SPEAKER_00: So what do you have to do to earn it?
SPEAKER_00: More good than bad.
SPEAKER_00: Is it something that God gives that you have no control over?
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you pick that, you've got two ways you can go.
SPEAKER_00: One is with John Calvin, you can say, God's already picked, some people make it, some people don't.
SPEAKER_00: A cute way is that number six isn't a fix, but number seven goes to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It's arbitrary and it's numbered.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Martin Luther believed that too.
SPEAKER_00: That's called predestination and election.
SPEAKER_00: So no one's, Martin Luther says no one's good enough to earn it.
SPEAKER_00: And no one does.
SPEAKER_00: God gives it to some people.
SPEAKER_00: And we can say that's not fair, but that's from a human point of view, and our fairness matters not to God.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so there you have it.
SPEAKER_00: There's another read shared by well, a number of people who said, well, okay, it is a gift of God, and to whom does God give it?
SPEAKER_00: Everyone.
SPEAKER_00: That's called the universalist position.
SPEAKER_00: Um, people like um, not just our Unitarian brothers and sisters, uh, Carl Barth believed that as well, probably the most influential Protestant theologian of the 20th century was a universalist, uh, whose name is in the book of life, everybody's.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, then what do you do with these images of destruction?
SPEAKER_00: Well, like with John the Baptist, um, who talks about there's a uh God is sort of at the threshing floor separating the wheat from the chaff.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we choose are some people wheat and some people chaff and they're completely destroyed, or are our all people a mixture of wheat and chaff?
SPEAKER_00: And what God wants to do is burn the chaff up out of us so that we can be wheat.
SPEAKER_00: Or to put it a different way, there's a refiner's fire in which it involves heat, it involves well, trial, frankly, but the point of the trial is not to see whether you're good enough, it's to pull the draw sound of you, and here's this lake of fire to burn up all the parts of ourselves that are getting in our own way, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um that was a couple of different choices.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think the book is very clear as to how this works.
SPEAKER_00: I think we decide consequences of our decisions.
SPEAKER_00: If we decide that we're no good, and some people make it and some people don't, so we better earn it.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think we will, like Martin Luther, I mean Martin Luther really pushed that to its logical conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: How can we ever know we've really done enough?
SPEAKER_00: Which means pretty much life is going to be lived in hell.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's the point of the book.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in some ways, I think that counters the whole message.
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
SPEAKER_00: Um if we go with John Calvin and say, listen, it's God's gift, nobody's good enough, uh, and God gives it to some and not others, and you know, don't let that get your panties in a wad because that's God's choice and you've got no control over it.
SPEAKER_00: I just don't even see the point of trying myself.
SPEAKER_00: Now, John Calvin said, well, if you think that, that means that you're not one of the ones that gets there.
SPEAKER_00: So that could be me.
SPEAKER_00: John Calvin sort of said, you know God's picked you if you choose to persevere.
SPEAKER_00: He'd like to have his cake and eat it too.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he really would.
SPEAKER_00: That's you know one of the five points of Calvinism.
SPEAKER_00: The P is perseverance of the saints.
SPEAKER_00: I think we could also make that same thought, like, oh gosh, you know, well, listen, if everybody gets there, what's the point of trying?
SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer is there is no point in trying, there's a point in living into a larger life, God intends.
SPEAKER_00: So living authentically is not about earning God's favor, it's because we already have it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, there's problems with all of those.
SPEAKER_00: But I do want to remind you that fire is never a torture, it's always a destruction.
SPEAKER_00: So at the very worst, people who don't make it cease to exist.
SPEAKER_06: I have I guess in looking at this.
SPEAKER_06: And looking at all the people that ever been doing, I get really I get a little anxious because I think, well, if right here is meant for us, how what has happened to everyone else?
SPEAKER_06: I guess I I don't I don't see how I can I get kind of squeamish about this because it doesn't seem right.
SPEAKER_06: If if if I'm explaining myself.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe I can can make this uh see if I can clarify, see if I got it right.
SPEAKER_00: Um and I'm gonna use different words, but but see if I got it right.
SPEAKER_00: The way the way that um a lot of Christians approach this book and frankly theology is that God has acted differently in different periods of history.
SPEAKER_00: So in the Old Testament, people were under the law, and look, they weren't making it.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus offers us a new deal.
SPEAKER_00: It's a deal of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Good for us, but what about those people?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_06: And also what about the Hindus or the people that about the Hindus?
SPEAKER_06: Or people that passed away before before there were Jews on the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: These are great questions that it that I think invite us to think about revelation.
SPEAKER_00: So so let me tell you the first one, and and we talked about it for a second, the first idea, I think, is one that is a Christian idea only.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think any other world religion has this idea.
SPEAKER_00: Dispensationalism.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever heard of the Schofield Study Bible or the Ryrie Study Bible, or if you grew up fundamentalist and read Revelation, a lot of people approach that there are different dispensations or epochs of the way that God relates with the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, there was the one of I forget, they have clever names for these and charts and maps and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: Life or something is the first one.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve had this wonderful thing, but then they busted it.
SPEAKER_00: So God said, Alright, you busted it, I'll change the deal.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's law.
SPEAKER_00: And then, wow, that's not going great.
SPEAKER_00: So then there's grace.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there's somehow seven of these, and uh, it used to make sense to me, but then what doesn't make sense is if God is infinite and not changing, how can God change the deal?
SPEAKER_00: And geez, that's convenient for us that we get the grace, but those Old Testament people sucks to be them.
SPEAKER_00: We just sort of decided that that was the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Sucks to be them, and glad we're not.
SPEAKER_00: And the diagram we use that was a little more hopeful, is that hey, all these Old Testament people had to offer these sacrifices for their sins that didn't work.
SPEAKER_00: Now keep in mind, most sacrifices had nothing to do with sin.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing that had to do with sin was on Yom Kippur when you put your hands on the scapegoat, and that was that.
SPEAKER_00: So what happened was the cross is here, and all the sins of the people, so we decided, were pushed forward to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus bore the sin of the world, not just in his own day and for the future coming back to him, but for all the people before him, he bore all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, actually, not an awful idea if you think about this.
SPEAKER_00: If the cross is infinite, that means it's always been and it always was and it always is and always will be.
SPEAKER_00: So whatever happened on the cross happened forever.
SPEAKER_00: Which sort of means, I think, against this rather, I think, foolish idea, that the cross is just that moment where we got who God was.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't change, it was a moment where we understood.
SPEAKER_00: So then Tim brought up another question.
SPEAKER_00: And this is really good because you can read this in C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis's book, The Last Battle.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh the end of the chronicles of Narnia, and I think I've mentioned it before.
SPEAKER_00: Um fundamentalists really get their panties in a wad over this.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry to use that phrase.
SPEAKER_00: I should be more gender inclusive.
SPEAKER_00: Their underwear uh start to become chafing over this.
SPEAKER_00: These are uh theoretically three points of view.
SPEAKER_00: The first is the exclusivist point of view.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know Jesus by name and pray the sinner's prayer, oh my god, I'm worthless, but I accept you as my Lord and Savior, you're going to hell and you'll be tortured forever.
SPEAKER_00: So, what about Aborigines in Australia who have never heard the gospel and don't know the word Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're going to hell.
SPEAKER_00: Which explains why fundamentalists have so much fervor to send missionaries out.
SPEAKER_00: So that people have a real opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: And now, now, one of the problems with that is that if you were born Muslim in Saudi Arabia and you convert to Christianity, you will be killed.
SPEAKER_00: And they just can't understand why Muslims don't want to convert so they can go to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Well, because they'll die.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they'll they'll die.
SPEAKER_00: So they would have to hate this life, hate this life to go on to the next.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the New Testament uses images like that, but hate this life, I think, could equally mean not like I hate living, it could mean I hate what I've settled for.
SPEAKER_00: I hate the living we've settled for, and I choose to love life enough to live in a bigger way.
SPEAKER_00: This is all ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible can support anything we come up with, including slavery and misogyny and racism.
SPEAKER_00: You can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Inclusivism is a different one.
SPEAKER_00: Inclusivism says, listen, uh, this is sort of like what Gandhi said.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Gandhi almost converted to Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: I think this is true.
SPEAKER_00: Now there is a saying that Gandhi may or may not have said.
SPEAKER_00: I like their Christ, I don't like their Christians.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if Gandhi said that, but listen, whether he did or not, it doesn't have to be true to be the truth.
SPEAKER_00: I think we all get it.
SPEAKER_00: What Gandhi did ultimately say is that every person should be the best blank that they were sort of enculturated to be.
SPEAKER_00: So if you are a Muslim, don't convert.
SPEAKER_00: Be a really good Muslim.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Hindu, be a good Hindu.
SPEAKER_00: In so doing, Gandhi sort of had this principle when you uh when you do the best you you can where you are, in the Christian perspective, is you're actually serving Jesus whether you know his name or not.
SPEAKER_00: So in the last battle by C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, um, there's Aslan, who's clearly the Jesus figure, and um then there's this other false god, Taz.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Taz's biggest supporter is anti-Aslan.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he supports Taz.
SPEAKER_00: When he dies, he stands in judgment before Aslan, and he's like, oh my god, I was wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And Aslan said, Come on into my country.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, I was serving Taz.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you were really serving me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the inclusivist position.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the inclusivists sort of say, Well, listen, but if you know better, then you're not gonna make it.
SPEAKER_00: So it's somewhere in the middle because the universalist position says, God's country is wide open.
SPEAKER_00: It would almost be like saying that the gates of Jerusalem, the heavenly city, are never closed.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wait, the book says that.
SPEAKER_00: So you can see how the gates could be open because all the bad people have been killed, or the gates are open because they are open to everybody.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think you can support either reading, but I think what you can't support with Revelation is that people are punished forever in torture.
SPEAKER_00: Is that helpful what I've said?
SPEAKER_00: Now, these words may not mean anything to you, depending on your background.
SPEAKER_00: My evangelical background taught me that these are really, really important positions so that I can flatten people and say that they're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, you sound like an inclusivist, you sound like a universalist, dispensationalism, you are or you're not, and it's right or you or or you're not right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's sort of how it goes.
SPEAKER_04: Did you say revelation does not support eternal torture?
SPEAKER_00: No, not at all, because death with a capital D is incinerated.
SPEAKER_00: Now remember, death with a small D is not incinerated.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: Death with a capital D, like separation from God, is burned up forever.
SPEAKER_00: So um, Lion and I have talked about this just a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: At the quantum level, all things are connected.
SPEAKER_00: Which means we have experiences of being disconnected, but we never are.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody could be cruel to you and you will experience disconnection, but actually you're not.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I've read philosophers who don't refer to quantum mechanics.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the truth is, you're actually very connected at that point of injury.
SPEAKER_00: It just feels awful.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the book challenges that.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think the book upholds that.
SPEAKER_00: So we I I don't know how to answer your question other than to say we choose our own adventure.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what's really, really important is that sometimes uh we settle, we say, oh, the words mean this, but in general that's what we've been told that they mean, not what they actually seem to be pointing to.
SPEAKER_00: And I think our criterion is, you know, when we read the scriptures, we can dial in on a phrase or a paragraph and use that to support a notion we've already been given.
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, again, I I put to you Jesus on the cross in Luke says, God forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's pretty, well, at least inclusivist, I think that's pretty universalist to tell you the truth.
SPEAKER_00: That at our worst, we don't know what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we're intentionally separating people from God, we think that's How we're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: For whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we could read Matthew, where if you don't have righteousness better than the Pharisees, you don't have the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_06: Why are they so different?
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I think they're really similar.
SPEAKER_00: Because righteousness doesn't mean piety, it means justice.
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't live into justice, we're not living into the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Our choice.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when we die?
SPEAKER_00: That's the big confusion, right?
SPEAKER_00: So you didn't live into the kingdom of God while you're alive.
SPEAKER_00: Either God destroys you utterly, or God says, welcome to the kingdom you've always missed out on.
SPEAKER_06: Is there a is there anywhere in Revelation where there is a period where God that if you have been an unbeliever or a bad guy or an ad or a father or whatever, that somehow you see the light after you die?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't think all that's clear.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's predicated on what we bring to the book, not what the book offers us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, God dwells among mortals, read that this week.
SPEAKER_00: New Jerusalem comes down to earth, we don't go up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So the whole idea about rapture taking us away from the world, I think is poppycock.
SPEAKER_00: The book that rapture is based on so much has a counterclaim about it.
SPEAKER_00: So what about bad folk?
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, I think it just comes down to listen, the the gates of Jerusalem are always open.
SPEAKER_00: The gates of the heavenly city never close, and the gates of the heavenly city, which is here on earth, we don't need the sun for illumination.
SPEAKER_00: God will be our light.
SPEAKER_00: There's no tree of life, and well, there's no tree of knowledge anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's just the tree of life, and there's a river that flows out.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation gives us those images, not I think these other ones that are about picking and choosing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what happens to the beast?
SPEAKER_00: We could choose that the beast is like human beings at their worst, and they get thrown into the lake of fire and they're gone, or we could choose to read that the beastliness of humanity is thrown into the lake and incinerated.
SPEAKER_00: So is it the beast in and of him or herself, or is it the beastliness?
SPEAKER_00: These are choices that we make.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, either way we pick, the book is really clear, I think, in its imagery.
SPEAKER_00: There's not eternal torment for Adolf Hitler.
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't make it, he just didn't make it.
SPEAKER_06: There is um in in in heaven coming down to earth.
SPEAKER_06: There is a book in the angel in the bishop's name.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis read a book, Surprise by Joy.
SPEAKER_06: This came out probably three or four years ago.
SPEAKER_06: Oh.
SPEAKER_06: I mean I mean a video with four or five or something on it, which is very, very good.
SPEAKER_06: And and and also one of the book calls by the title.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But I uh I also don't read as much as I used to.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Did I touch a nerve here?
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's by N.T.
SPEAKER_00: Wright, who is not just a bishop, but like kind of a scholar.
SPEAKER_00: I mean he writes scholarly books.
SPEAKER_00: I know I just gave a long monologue, and you're welcome to agree or disagree or titrate those points.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, um what do you all what do you all think?
SPEAKER_05: Well there's there's so much in your monologue or in all of this.
SPEAKER_05: Um I I don't, you know, it's for me anyway, it's it's hard to break it, to separate it a little bit.
SPEAKER_05: Because it also it takes also self-searching you know to because it's not just intellectual.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: No, I think I I think in the last couple of times, I think we're so we're carrying so much baggage about what this means, that to make some of these conversions I'm offering to think about, we have to convert a whole lot of what we've already been told everything means.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, this this book is like a keystone to our whole theology.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh it's really hard to say, oh, it just means that, because we have to really decide that a lot of what we've decided is variable.
SPEAKER_00: And and some of this, I think, going back to what I'd said at the beginning, in some ways Revelation is easier to read at the symbolic level because it's so symbolic.
SPEAKER_00: But we often forget that, hey, when Revelation says there will be no more sea, it doesn't mean that there'll be some kind of scorching heat that will dry up the oceans.
SPEAKER_00: It means chaos itself will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well that's okay in that book, but when Jesus walks on the water, is the story about him walking on the water really?
SPEAKER_00: Or is the story about him walking on top of chaos and not being submerged in it?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Mike, that's a different story.
SPEAKER_00: Is it?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean about when we start to take one symbol, the question is, how much do we let it integrate into the rest of our reading?
SPEAKER_00: Um it's really hard, I think, to say, well, I'll do this here and I won't do that there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the whole point is that we do it everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We can reduce these stories to historical facts like George Washington crossing the Delaware.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to dispute the historicity of them, but I don't think these stories are about history in the factual sense at all.
SPEAKER_00: I think the point of the whole book actually is to unveil what's underneath the surface, which is why we keep it.
SPEAKER_00: We keep it because it offers an unveiling instead of a description.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_05: No, no, yeah, that that makes sense.
SPEAKER_05: Because I it's interesting that you you mentioned something about the capitals, because at one point when I I was reading it aloud to Tim, and then we were taking turns reading it back and forth.
SPEAKER_05: And I said, wait a minute, why is it capital here and right here and it's not there?
SPEAKER_05: And sometimes it's in the same sentence.
SPEAKER_00: That's because the translators have made an interpretive choice on your behalf.
SPEAKER_05: Which, yeah, which, yes, that that that intellectually you you figure that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But um, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I I I I I just realized I I meant to I meant to translate this into Catholic speech.
SPEAKER_00: This is fundamentalist speech.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can translate this into Catholic for you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what happened in 1964?
SPEAKER_05: The Vatican II.
SPEAKER_00: The Vatican II conference, which is a real shocker because they elected this Pope that they thought was just going to die and not do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And he he called the first ecumenical council in like, I don't know, like 150 years, and brought the Catholic Church into the 19th century.
SPEAKER_00: And prior to this year, here's what happened.
SPEAKER_03: Mike, wait a second.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_03: Because I either you made a mistake or you did it on purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I did it on purpose.
SPEAKER_00: In the 19th century, Vatican II brought the Romans into the 18th century.
SPEAKER_00: Into the 1800s.
SPEAKER_00: Prior to Vatican II, Roman Catholics were exclusivist.
SPEAKER_00: If you weren't Roman Catholic, you were going to hell.
SPEAKER_00: Period, done.
SPEAKER_00: If you were Greek Orthodox, you were going to hell, period, done.
SPEAKER_00: If you were um Ethiopic or Protestant, going to hell, done.
SPEAKER_00: Catholics had the reign on who God was.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why you'd better not marry a non-Catholic really hard.
SPEAKER_05: And I'll just say, as a Catholic, you also um were very rigid about what you believed.
SPEAKER_05: Well, it's not just who joined you, but also what you did.
SPEAKER_05: You I you know I went to Catholic school first Friday of every month.
SPEAKER_05: We went to confession.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, the 400 kids that went there just lined up from Kinder.
SPEAKER_05: Well, but not from Kinder once you got the first school community.
SPEAKER_05: But does that and then at the door, I you guys were raised Catholic, that's every Catholic door.
SPEAKER_05: There was a list of movies that you could see and couldn't see.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to know I want you to know that this has not changed for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I still know plenty of Catholic folk, and that is still their approach.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that you gotta be Catholic to get it right, you've got to really be Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll tell you when to eat fish and when to eat meat, and they'll tell you when to genuflect and cross yourself and when not.
SPEAKER_00: You better not mess that up because there's an exclusive one way.
SPEAKER_00: Vatican II changed it a bit.
SPEAKER_00: Not everybody knows this.
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't change it like, oh, I'm okay, you're okay, it's all good.
SPEAKER_00: What happened was there is some inclusivity, some, but the doctrine of Vatican II says we're on a ladder to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You may say, Mike, I don't know that, so it's not the case.
SPEAKER_00: This is the case.
SPEAKER_00: Guess who's on the top rung of the ladder to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Romans, of course.
SPEAKER_00: The Roman Catholics.
SPEAKER_00: They're on the ladder to heaven, they're on the top.
SPEAKER_00: Now, lots of other people are on the ladder.
SPEAKER_00: This is the goodish news for them.
SPEAKER_00: Well, because there's like the Orthodox people, and they're wrong, but they're just maybe a little wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And this Protestants.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you know, they're they're up there.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're down from there, but you know, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're uh whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and then you got Jews and Muslims and then miscellaneous, basically, just to give you that idea.
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, yeah, they can make it, depends on how they live.
SPEAKER_00: You see.
SPEAKER_00: The depend is really just a a mitigated risk of exclusivism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you can buy this, but you still have exclusive claims about which spiritual practices are better than others.
SPEAKER_00: So this doesn't get you out of the rules.
SPEAKER_00: This just sort of says, I'm going to live like this, but I'm going to hope God is gracious.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: When you're in this position, you don't have hope for other people.
SPEAKER_00: They better do the right thing.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: At least the first three are all baptized.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course, and they're but the Well, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some Protestant people didn't do that.
SPEAKER_08: Well, like in general.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: In general, those people are baptized.
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
SPEAKER_08: The people underneath.
SPEAKER_08: The Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, they're not.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now Hindu people baptize is not in the name of Jesus, yeah.
SPEAKER_08: Go in too much too many details.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, Vatican II wouldn't appreciate what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't say there's any similarity between immersing yourself in the Ganga and getting baptized by a priest.
SPEAKER_06: But I guess my point is, is if if they are, if you're not baptized in the way we baptize, whether you be Protestant, Orthodox, or Roman, you don't stand a chance.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you do.
SPEAKER_00: You're on the ladder.
SPEAKER_08: But how can you be on the I thought, forgive me, Catholics, I thought if you weren't baptized, even if you were born, died, not baptized.
SPEAKER_08: You didn't go to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the Vatican II doctrine?
SPEAKER_08: Put an end to that?
SPEAKER_00: Put an end to that idea, although most see the thing is, in concept, put an end to that idea.
SPEAKER_00: But that conviction is so strong that you'd better be baptized.
SPEAKER_05: Well, you know, as a Catholic, my but this was my own interpretation, I think.
SPEAKER_05: I'm not sure that somebody told me, but if you were baptized in the Ganges, that is water.
SPEAKER_05: Sure.
SPEAKER_07: By a Roman Catholic priest.
SPEAKER_05: Well, no, because a Buddhist priest was, but this is this is maybe my, maybe I did my own shifting things around.
SPEAKER_05: Because it was still, and because I've spent time in India and spent time where Buddha was and all that.
SPEAKER_05: I have a very deep feeling about that.
SPEAKER_05: And it and that came from childhood and I'm not sure why.
SPEAKER_05: So I think we were left a little bit open.
SPEAKER_05: Unless you were in a place where, you know, I don't know, you know, a convent.
SPEAKER_06: I suppose if you were in a convent or you were, because there were some priests that I knew that the the pretty the inclusive idea was um uh Pope Bend was you know the book about inclusiveness.
SPEAKER_06: And that's and he expounded on that quite a bit, saying that everyone there is a path to heaven for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: Um I think he opened it up a little bit, but not much.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit, but not much.
SPEAKER_00: That's official church doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Now you can say, hey, as a Catholic, I had a different thought.
SPEAKER_00: That's fine, but that's Catholic doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: You can disagree with what I'm telling you, but it is Catholic doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: You can say, I didn't believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, but the church does.
SPEAKER_00: So, interestingly enough, if you're not aware of what I'm saying, or if you say we don't even have that much latitude, it probably depends on how you were formed and by whom.
SPEAKER_00: I know Catholic priests who will marry a Catholic and a non-Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: Even if they don't pledge to raise their children Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: Now that shouldn't happen, but I know priests who will do it.
unknown: St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's will not.
SPEAKER_00: So there's the difference between official doctrine and what the local priest will do and what we internalized.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_05: And it and it was after Vatican II that that started happening because you didn't have to have the service in Latin anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we came into the 1800s.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_05: As a Catholic, the whole idea that the priest turned to face the people.
SPEAKER_05: See, we you we never knew as little kids what was happening, really what was happening.
SPEAKER_00: We might have not been anything happening.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, well, the the consecration and all of that, but when that happened, and I'm just this is I'm speaking as a Catholic, a very the Catholic who was raised in Catholic church school and all that, um when that turned around and you could see, and the priest could talk to you, and you went to confession, you could even do it face to face.
SPEAKER_05: You didn't have to go into the little box.
SPEAKER_00: The box.
SPEAKER_05: So it was it in my heart thinks that in a lot of Catholics' hearts.
SPEAKER_05: It just opened up everything.
SPEAKER_05: And and it tended to be more, I think, Catholics who had some education who were it seemed you know, my parents sort of, you know, they weren't too sure, but but they gave me a lot of leeway to so I want to tell you what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: I think this is not just about whether you go to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: These things are helpful to think about with the sacraments.
SPEAKER_00: So let's think about that just for a second, right?
SPEAKER_00: One of the things we've inherited in our in our Episcopal Catholic Orthodox faith is that the Eucharist is really important.
SPEAKER_00: Consuming those elements does something for you.
SPEAKER_00: So who gets them?
SPEAKER_00: Baptized Catholics, by the way, that's the Catholic position.
SPEAKER_00: Baptized Christians of any denomination, don't you see?
SPEAKER_00: That's inclusivism, and the table is open.
SPEAKER_00: That's universalism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll tell you that the Episcopal House of Bishops is inclusivist and not universal.
SPEAKER_07: So inclusive is baptized.
SPEAKER_00: Baptized universal communions for the baptized.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't want to dicker with their position, but I do.
SPEAKER_04: Because I'm so glad you do.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm on recording and this is awful, but our directions are we're supp we're not meant to offer Eucharist freely.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't say unbaptized Christians are welcome.
SPEAKER_00: I just say it's the table of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: My question is: do you have to earn the Eucharist?
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, God gives it.
SPEAKER_00: Then you don't have to be baptized.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I like that, I like that.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, baptism isn't earning anything.
SPEAKER_00: If it's a qualification, then in fact it is.
SPEAKER_00: Who does God disqualify from grace?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I grew up saying some people.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this frame of mind going way back, Martha, I know I got way off.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, how do we read the whole book?
SPEAKER_00: And then how do we read our faith life now?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we read ourselves and one another?
SPEAKER_00: God excludes who and for what.
SPEAKER_00: God includes who if they do what.
SPEAKER_00: Is baptism something you have to get right?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk kind of both sides of my mouth for a second, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because I think that uh the Eucharist can be open to anybody, but I'm not sure marriage is.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a if I had a couple who I didn't have anything to celebrate, I wouldn't marry them.
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean then?
SPEAKER_00: Well, once upon a time, these people wanted to be married by me in Coronado, but I didn't know them at all.
SPEAKER_00: In the first session, what I learned was that the man had been married for maybe 35 years and his wife had just died eight months ago.
SPEAKER_00: And now there was this Filipino lady who didn't really speak much English, and he wanted to marry her.
SPEAKER_00: And when I asked them about their relationship, he answered all the questions.
SPEAKER_00: She never did.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest with you, I wasn't really sure there was much in the relationship.
SPEAKER_05: He was arranged.
SPEAKER_05: Was it bought?
SPEAKER_05: I didn't know if it was.
SPEAKER_00: It might have just been a rebound.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, maybe.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, who am I to say whether there's grace in a relationship?
SPEAKER_00: So this is where it gets sticky, right?
SPEAKER_00: I might give anyone the Eucharist and I might baptize anybody, but I won't marry anybody.
SPEAKER_01: So you didn't marry them?
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to get married somewhere else, thank God.
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I I'm so loath to say no, I don't know what I would have done.
SPEAKER_00: I hope I would have said no.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I made everyone go to premarital counseling with the PhD.
SPEAKER_00: Person.
SPEAKER_00: And if she'd written me a letter that said, listen, they need more work.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Counselors, they don't ever say no, they see they say needs more work.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But but it seems to me that that life, whether in a society, has rituals.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, you have steps, you have ways to so that those rituals may have to mean something.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's the thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: So some and that's the hard thing is figuring out which ones you have to earn and which ones you just deserve.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think everybody should be ordained because they want to be.
SPEAKER_09: No.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard one, right?
SPEAKER_00: To say we believe in grace and God, but we just didn't think you need to be doing this.
SPEAKER_05: Well, it's like when you're raising kids and at 12, your kid came to you and said, I want to have sex.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I've started my period, I want to have sex.
SPEAKER_05: Well, no.
SPEAKER_05: You're 12.
SPEAKER_05: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Um and see now, and I I didn't think I'm betraying myself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying there's there's two sides of life.
SPEAKER_00: There's the part that is unearned that you just deserve.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's other things, honestly, we only celebrate when the work's been put in.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in grace, but I didn't believe everybody should just be handed a college degree because they want one.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: I think we attain that.
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, you're not a diminished person if you don't get a degree.
SPEAKER_00: You're not.
SPEAKER_00: You have diminished opportunities because of the world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: But it means something to earn and celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Do we earn baptism and do we earn Eucharist, the primary sacraments, or do we deserve them?
SPEAKER_00: Jeez.
SPEAKER_00: Now this is a good one, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because you can do this two ways.
SPEAKER_00: You can say, we deserve them because God offers grace freely, or you can say, we don't deserve them, but God offers them freely, and either way you come up with the same conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone gets them.
SPEAKER_05: But the the earn well the earning part in most most systems, and I would say in religions, you go through catechism or something.
SPEAKER_05: You go through some kind of training.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00: You earn it.
SPEAKER_05: You go to direct true training, you you meet with a priest, you because if you don't understand it, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_05: That's what well that that's that's oh God.
SPEAKER_00: But that betrays the whole point, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: You can't understand what it's doing.
SPEAKER_07: Would you baptize anybody?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh unless they didn't want to be.
SPEAKER_08: Well, that's the I mean, who wanted, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And and and if I took the parents in and they didn't have the right theology, would I refuse to baptize their child?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's something they want, but they don't have to do.
SPEAKER_00: So my position is the church should really say yes to people who want the church.
SPEAKER_00: Do I marry people, this is tough.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying I'm on film here, do I marry people who may not have much spiritual belief, but they want to get married in the church by a priest?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Because otherwise, I mean again, if there's something to celebrate in their relationship and they want the church involved, I just think that's a home run.
SPEAKER_00: They want the church involved, even if it's not for a good enough reason.
SPEAKER_00: But when good enough reasons are criteria, people lie.
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the thing, they lie.
SPEAKER_00: And and we believe in telling the truth.
SPEAKER_00: So if I if I would only give you a marriage if you say the right words, I mean I'm I'm I'm I'm giving you the wrong incentive, aren't I?
SPEAKER_00: I'm incentivizing lying to me.
unknown: Why happened to me?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could have a really good reason, but if it's not the church's official position, you don't get it?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, if it and I mean think through that, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and obviously there's not an either or an or.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's shades of this.
SPEAKER_00: But this kind of thinking influences lots and lots of things.
SPEAKER_00: Not just heaven, but life.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, again, I I think in some ways we say, okay, well, if the new Jerusalem's on earth and the gates are open, then that could mean grace is meant to be open in this lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: And afterward.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, where Islam is exclusive, and most of the other religions in the world are fairly exclusive.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Islam's inclusive.
SPEAKER_00: It includes the people of the book.
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now some Muslims are exclusive, just like some Christians and some Jews are.
SPEAKER_05: And and and some and some Catholics.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I tell you, most Jewish people didn't believe in an afterlife of any kind.
SPEAKER_00: Or if they do, there's only a positive one, and bad folk just don't make it.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a totally different schemas out there, you know.
SPEAKER_05: We have secular dreams, right?
SPEAKER_05: Well, I don't want to practice anything anyway.
SPEAKER_05: But he says you die, you die, that's it.
SPEAKER_08: So this is what is confusing, not confusing me with what I don't understand.
SPEAKER_08: You've got exclusive and inclusive and universalism.
SPEAKER_08: Is all of this the the end result going into going to heaven or going to the next place?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, what's the point?
SPEAKER_00: I think there's multiple points we could draw.
SPEAKER_00: One is that this is how we get treated when we die.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say that could be the case, but I think if that's the only way to read the book, I think the book is actually about how we live.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point of the whole dang book is about how we live.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I want to say I think exclusive, inclusive, universal are questions about how we live.
SPEAKER_00: Now.
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: How we live now.
SPEAKER_00: And I I think we can read, like when people get thrown into the lake of fire, the horror of Jezebel and Babylon gets thrown in the fire.
SPEAKER_00: But see, that's not a person.
SPEAKER_00: That's like that's like a sort of a mob mentality that gets thrown and incinerated.
SPEAKER_10: So the difference between inclusivism and universalism, practically, is that inclusivists accept all Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Inclusivists might accept all other people as long as they do a good enough job.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, and there's still there yeah, there's still some.
SPEAKER_00: It's still kind of white wired in to like how you function is currency.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like the good works theology of the Catholic Church is if you're a good person, you're included, but I'm gonna tell you in most of my life, I'm I'm an inclusivist at best.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a perfectionist and a workaholic, and I've got really high standards.
SPEAKER_00: You can't have those dysfunctions and be a universalist.
SPEAKER_00: The best thing you can be with those dysfunctions is inclusivist.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I I agree with that because I tend to be like that.
SPEAKER_05: And I and I I'm I I'm pretty sure that that I'm an inclusivist.
SPEAKER_10: So do the universalists just believe that everybody Love wins.
SPEAKER_02: Love wins.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's this interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: You can be a universalist about after you die and an inclusivist while you live.
SPEAKER_00: And I think you've missed out on love winning.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: So universalism essentially is everyone is included.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's included.
SPEAKER_05: No matter what they've done, no matter who they've been, whether they're Stalin or Hitler or I was thinking more about Hindus, Jews, you know, those that are not Christian.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: That don't make the top three rungs.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: That's right.
SPEAKER_08: But you can carry it beyond religion.
SPEAKER_00: So then I think like what this what does conversion about?
SPEAKER_00: Is conversion about an intellectual fact pattern, or is conversion about a way of life?
SPEAKER_00: So the earliest Christians weren't called Christians, they were called the way.
SPEAKER_00: This is interesting to think through.
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, and that's where, I mean, I think, and I didn't think all Episcopalians do this, I just think there's room in the Episcopal Church to say, we can study world religions critically or we can study them affirmatively.
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, I think Gandhi is correct, it would be really difficult for me to change my native tongue to Islam.
SPEAKER_00: Because my native tongue is this story.
SPEAKER_00: There are neat bits about Islam, don't get me wrong, but it's not my native tongue.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean, by the way, that it's worse or inherently flawed, but for me, it's a second language.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know people that convert from second language, you know, they their second language becomes their first language.
SPEAKER_00: It takes a lifetime to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I I think.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't judge somebody who converts as like, well, you shouldn't have done that.
SPEAKER_00: But I I sort of think, and this is part of the mystery of the book, I I once had a mentoring rector who says sort of said, the gift of Christianity is language.
SPEAKER_00: The way he did it was he said he had to take calculus in college even though he had no math dreams.
SPEAKER_00: It was required at his school, that you had to pass calculus.
SPEAKER_00: And math was always fine, and calculus was confusing until his takeaway was one day he realized calculus was just a language.
SPEAKER_00: A way of trying to orient ourselves and understand and describe.
SPEAKER_00: A language.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, when we say English is the language, we fail to realize we brought loner words in that do a better job describing things than English does.
SPEAKER_00: Like pajamas.
SPEAKER_00: Pajamas, not an English word.
SPEAKER_00: Angst.
SPEAKER_00: Not an English word.
SPEAKER_00: We've included it in our lexicon because we find it helpful descriptively.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mean to say that, hey, all rural religions are just languages, but I think that's what I mean to say.
SPEAKER_05: Well that's true.
SPEAKER_05: No, no, that that that's true.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all languages have edges to them.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And you realize this when you learn another language, even just in high school, that there are bits and phrases and idioms that do a better job than English does in their equivalence.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think so, anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We we we get it, and I'll just tell you some of the ones, like in Hebrew, Holy Spirit, my god, what is a spirit?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, hopefully it's helpful to hear a spirit's moving air, not a ghost.
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, but I don't want to just say moving air in English, that's weird.
SPEAKER_00: But to think about an extraordinary movement of air that is breath or wind that's sort of pushing or bringing oxygen and life, okay, well, like all of that in the word spirit is nice.
SPEAKER_00: Shalom doesn't mean like, oh quiet, hello.
SPEAKER_00: Shalom as the word of peace really means like the opposite of war, like something that's constructive and and and and life-giving.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean like quiet, it means creation.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't they just say that?
SPEAKER_00: But they did, they used the word shalom.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why we try to use it, but we sometimes we flatten the word to mean, well, shalom means peace.
SPEAKER_00: But peace for us usually means quiet or no conflict.
SPEAKER_00: And we mistake that, hey, peace means no conflict, so conflict must be bad.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, conflicts sometimes are important to build something new.
SPEAKER_00: So conflicts aren't bad.
SPEAKER_00: Ways of managing and mitigating conflict are bad.
SPEAKER_00: Certain ways.
SPEAKER_00: So, like again, we have these other words, and we often like we brought them in to enhance English, but sometimes we just flatten them.
SPEAKER_00: And then we lose the whole point of why we brought them in.
SPEAKER_00: Obagape love.
SPEAKER_00: That means unconditional love.
SPEAKER_00: So it's better than brotherly love and erotic love, and no, it isn't.
SPEAKER_00: It's a type.
SPEAKER_00: It's a language to understand.
SPEAKER_00: We have different relationships.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean they're better than others, it just means we have different ones.
SPEAKER_00: I can unconditionally love somebody and I have no erotic interest in them at all.
SPEAKER_00: I should not marry them.
SPEAKER_00: Do you get what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: And in a marriage, I can have both.
SPEAKER_00: Even if I never have sex with the person, erotic love is not just sexual.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that.
SPEAKER_00: It's about intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: I can unconditionally love people and have no intimacy with them.
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you that love relationship is lacking.
SPEAKER_00: Not that I need to have intimacy with everybody, can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But again, they're just it's a language.
SPEAKER_05: And that's it kind of interesting to me from being uh Spanish was my first language.
SPEAKER_05: And to me, speaking when I speak Spanish to someone, it is it is more intimate.
SPEAKER_05: Um that doesn't mean sexual intimacy.
SPEAKER_05: It's just it's it's like family, it's like speaking to family.
SPEAKER_05: Um it's a close, it feels, and and there's more, there's more feeling to it.
SPEAKER_05: It's not so much in your head as it is from your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think we flatten the word so much that we get that it can be very confusing to have non-physical intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is like in the Arab world, when you have an air an intimate friend as a man, you hold hands.
SPEAKER_00: And that has nothing to do with erotica, and it's very erotic.
SPEAKER_00: In the sense of intimate.
SPEAKER_00: You don't hold hands with your non-intimate friends.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have sex with them either.
SPEAKER_00: But there's something intimate about showing a physical connection from a spiritual one.
SPEAKER_05: In Spanish, back then when I was growing up, unabrazo, you came in to see aunts and uncles, every you got hugs, everybody.
SPEAKER_05: It was not it was not a sexual thing, it was not but uh you know an abrazo was something.
SPEAKER_05: If you didn't get an abrazo, it was bad, it's bad thing that it is.
SPEAKER_00: Um it was I practice intimacy when I anoint people with oil.
SPEAKER_00: I touch them on their head.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And that's intimate.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that is intimate.
SPEAKER_00: It's erotic in the Greek sense, not the English sense.
SPEAKER_04: I was raised that way too.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_04: How do you define erotic?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't the way you you are are a way that's it it's about intimate love that extends into the physical plane.
SPEAKER_03: So when you say intimacy, can you simply mean touching?
SPEAKER_00: And it may not even be touching.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's people who have emotional affairs.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: That's erotica.
SPEAKER_04: So like um you were talking about universalism and race you don't have it, right?
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
SPEAKER_04: It's it's a good so that's why I feel so uh relieved and delighted that we declare that we're an open and inclusive parish.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is we've made that declaration as a way to guide our journey.
SPEAKER_00: We're not there.
SPEAKER_00: No, but it's who is there?
SPEAKER_04: Who is there, right?
SPEAKER_04: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And again, the language is not descriptive, it's prescriptive.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that becomes really important.
SPEAKER_00: Language does two things, right?
SPEAKER_00: It prescribes where we want to be, who we hope to be.
SPEAKER_00: Do we hope to exclude or do we hope to include?
SPEAKER_04: So it helps us live into.
SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a good mission statement does.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say who we are but who we aim to be.
SPEAKER_00: That's one read of this book.
SPEAKER_00: Another read of this book is we ought to exclude people.
SPEAKER_00: So we can hear that the cowardly, the vile, uh, idolatrous, magic practicing, immoral are thrown into the lake of fire, and those are people, or we can hear that those ways of life are incinerated.
SPEAKER_06: I like that way of looking at it.
SPEAKER_00: I like it too.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't live it.
SPEAKER_00: Like just be honest.
SPEAKER_00: I like it, I'm not there, and maybe that's part of the point is to like it enough to live into it.
SPEAKER_06: Well, I think that's what the journey is about.
SPEAKER_00: I hope now I hope so.
SPEAKER_00: I could be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It could be, if you're immoral, God will incinerate you forever.
SPEAKER_00: But based on whose standards, I think that's the difficult part.
SPEAKER_06: How can how can then how can he destroy something that he has created?
SPEAKER_06: That that that doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_06: Doesn't make sense to me.
SPEAKER_00: Except the children love to do it, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean children like to build castles and knock them over.
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And that's an analog between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: So I think we always have to choose, is God like us, or do we get to be like God?
SPEAKER_06: I think that's that's what the journey is about.
SPEAKER_00: This I think is a really hard thing.
SPEAKER_00: If you hear that the idolatrists are burned up in the lake of fire, there's no hope for you.
SPEAKER_05: No hopefully.
SPEAKER_00: No hope for me.
SPEAKER_00: There's no hope for I don't think who has a pure faith.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's why I'm really drawn to definitions.
SPEAKER_00: Like a saint is someone aware of their selfishness behind every motive.
SPEAKER_00: A saint is somebody who's comfortable in their own skin.
SPEAKER_00: It's really what that's saying.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean saints are selfish.
SPEAKER_00: Saints realize that they're present in everything they do.
SPEAKER_05: And it was not always right or not always correct, or not our shadow?
SPEAKER_04: Could be setting your shadows?
SPEAKER_00: Could be.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and I knew by the way, I I guess I'm really like pounding kind of like Mike's interpretive key to revelation.
SPEAKER_00: I I just I just want us to weigh it carefully because I think it's not a key many of us have been introduced to.
SPEAKER_00: And and then if we hold the key, it doesn't just unlock this book, it offers to unlock a lot of other things for us.
SPEAKER_00: So so Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal preacher, says that salvation is whenever someone who has a key uses it to unlock a door that they could have locked.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is with someone who has a key to a door unlocks it instead of locks it.
SPEAKER_00: Includes instead of excludes, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's a lot of other symbols speak, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I think we have to really.
SPEAKER_00: people don't even know about all that liturgical history.
SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the history.
unknown: Good evening, everybody.
SPEAKER_05: You know, Sunday when we came to Mass and Samuel had the stick.
SPEAKER_05: I thought what the heck was the stick for?
SPEAKER_00: Just to hit people and wake them up.
SPEAKER_05: Well I well I read I read that what the Virger faculty and that after and I got the name for the stick too.
SPEAKER_05: Because in the day big days of old in case someone got in the way that they had to move them out of the way in order to get to uh to get up there.
SPEAKER_05: To get up there.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah they were riot police vergers.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But also if you fell asleep they'd bonk you in the head.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we ring them bells the ones that go the ling is to wake people up at the important part because they mask they didn't even understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Oh that's the moment that something magic happens.
SPEAKER_00: Oh now see that's interesting because magic gets thrown into the lake forever too.
SPEAKER_00: Magic like even Christian magic.
SPEAKER_04: You're making this book much more accessible and interesting for me.
SPEAKER_00: Who I think challenging there because I'm going to tell you as an evangelical we we use the phrase O Lord or Jesus like a comma when we prayed.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus we just asked Jesus heal this woman Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's Christian magic and God would like to burn it up that was a bold statement.
SPEAKER_00: I fully believe it.
SPEAKER_06: I fully believe it why do evangelicals do that because it's magic it makes God do what we want and that's the point of faith is to get what we want out of God I when I was young I'm from Ohio program his hand on your head and you in the name of Jesus be healed.
SPEAKER_06: The president get up and start running around.
SPEAKER_00: It might work it might I just didn't think the point of faith is to get God to do what I want I didn't think that's the point.
SPEAKER_00: That faith starts with you're gonna be thrown in the lake of fire and be tortured forever.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: How do I not have that happen?
SPEAKER_00: We pray every week thy will be done that's our anchor prayer but what we believe is our will should be done.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is what's God's will?
SPEAKER_00: That we get tortured forever or that people have larger life right now?
SPEAKER_00: That influences how we live not just now but later I think I know this is really hard I know we're really spinning our wheel but I think the question is there's a difference between shrewdness and wisdom to circle back.
SPEAKER_00: We can read this book shrewdly there's cataclysm how can you jocke yourself in the game of thrones or there's wisdom here shrewdness what's in it for me wisdom what's in it I know this is a hard read and I'm really hammering it.
SPEAKER_05: Well no I'm glad you did because frankly I when I read it I just felt dumb I don't understand I mean I mean it's it's there's a there's beauty in it because of the words and there's but there's also fears there can be I mean consider this image the saints wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb okay that could be really gruesome it could glorify suffering it could be something like hey remember our linen our robes are the righteous acts of the saints and we gotta wash those off or it could be hey holy people ones who point to God saints literally wear the life of Jesus not the death of Jesus the blood of the life of Jesus well don't you think that's true?
SPEAKER_00: I mean no matter what kind of eschatology you have aren't saints people who wear the life of Jesus around so what if we just read it that way it'd be really easy to affirm that don't you think I mean I I don't have any trouble with that image lots of people in the book say don't worship me I'm just the messenger worship God seems like that's a really good way to live right there won't be any temple in the New Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: There won't be one so if there's no place that's better to pray than another in God's future then we should live like that now right I mean that means we don't privilege places above we try to make them all holy places even the Costco parking lot it's challenging for me because if you want to see how the rest of the world drives you go to Costco on Richmond there there is no distinction between the holy was there every it's just like saying at the quantum level there's ways we experience connection disconnection but there's really just connection and energy's always flowing but it gets blocked up sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: We do that sometimes we have holy places we go because in that place one time the blockage come unblocked so that's holy so then then I think you know our our necessity is to make a temple out of every place to try to orient ourselves so that places where energy is blocked we're part of getting it flowing again.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctuaries are really important because they're practice spaces for us.
SPEAKER_00: We go there because hopefully it's been that place so it's safe it's a sanctuary so that we can then go out and make new ones but if that's the only sanctuary the world's a really small place.
SPEAKER_05: But it's a place to start it's a place to start and that's why we need it even though we don't we were we were in Varanasi in Buddha Buddha and this was this was in the middle of his where he lived and grew up and all that I have that was the first time that I felt like I was in a holy place other than when I've been in a Catholic church and and there it was so overwhelming.
SPEAKER_05: I it was really amazing and I guess as we were doing it we were following his life so to speak and his life was like Jesus there's parallels if you um anyway I I don't know why this came to my head but that that was felt holy holy holy to me and but every place you're right but every place not just like that but should feel holy.
SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't it doesn't mean there's something wrong with us but it might mean there's a failure of our imagination sometimes we're really good at hearing but we're not good at listening.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah because it's like uh many places we've we've traveled so much and we've been there seen that but there in that space I was more than just there it was and yes it is a lack of imagination.
SPEAKER_00: See we all have I think thin places where the veil between heaven and earth is very thin.
SPEAKER_00: Often it's the Rockies you know or we've been to Hawaii and that was the thin place where we just felt at rest right and they think the goal of these places is to be nourished by them but then to thin out the border to thin out prison to make those thin places sometimes the thickest places are our homes because there's so much residual stress or hurt how can we make them thin places?
SPEAKER_00: How can we open the gates to the New Jerusalem well wherever we go that's one way to read the book.
SPEAKER_00: See I think if it's just about here's a fact pattern you make it or you don't there's no real invitation here.
SPEAKER_00: But if this is language describing a larger reality that we're invited to participate in, see then there's an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: Like we can do something about it now that will be enjoyable for us and other people that will like make God manifest on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And you know this is one of those things like I just was involved in wedding planning and somebody said well we can just play songs from the hymn all right just sacred songs as if there are secular ones.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't always like the genre of rap and I think rap lyrics can often describe realities that I think well are less than what I'd aspire to however if I spent the time to decode what they're trying to express they might actually have something to say that I heard but didn't listen to I don't think I would consent to a couple playing or to someone asking for highway to hell at their funeral because I just think that would be a funny song choice.
SPEAKER_00: However I will tell you there's some reality to that song I've been on Highways to hell before and speeding up and I knew it and I pushed the accelerator harder I don't know if you've traveled those roads that song's very descriptive Hell's Bells boy I wanted to ring some bells and bring other people along with me.
SPEAKER_00: I knew where we were going you ever want to ring Hell's Bells oh well that's secular now it's darn descriptive I've stayed at the Hotel California I mean right I mean you know I I understand there's an underbelly to these but that underbelly is real you know I hate gangster rap lyrics that describe women as hoes yeah but boy that's describ that is so descriptive of how we treat each other how we perceive one another.
SPEAKER_00: I mean again there is truth in what that expresses about us.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be though it doesn't have to be I just wanted to point out Jesus rides a white horse in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do you notice that?
SPEAKER_00: So people who say there's no animals in heaven are they haven't read the scriptures there's at least one horse and probably my dogs are there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And he has a tattoo doesn't he has a tattoo do you notice that?
SPEAKER_00: And it's on his thigh now I would have put it somewhere different that happens to be a very painful place.
SPEAKER_00: But do you notice that people the book have tattoos they have God's name written on their heads so how interesting that we would exclude people who literally read the scriptures because in so doing that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Tattoos may not be for you and that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: But to exclude somebody else because of how they present we could read Revelation that way people who aren't the saints who aren't wearing the right clothes they're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: But if clothes is metaphor right for being dressed with the life of God we are in trouble aren't we?
SPEAKER_00: If we're not dressing ourselves with this life like we're we're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Not like God's gonna get us we're getting ourselves lots of alternatives to how we read this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah and he used to author you see Justin Well I will tell you that if you'd like a um I think a really good description there's this course by the um the teaching company and it's called like the apocalypse and it's through art.
SPEAKER_00: And this Lutheran guy Craig Kester um talks about this book and then gives an art history of the book.
SPEAKER_00: He's a good lecturer I mean I like it.
SPEAKER_00: Teaching company great courses probably head at the public library you could borrow it.
SPEAKER_00: I used to have it and I think someone borrowed it indefinitely so I don't know if I've got it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But it's quite good if you want more revelation.
SPEAKER_00: But I think you know um I guess that's revelation specific I'll tell you who's really good follow-up that's linked to this let me look up the title of the book to get it right to you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know Marcus Borge uh he's a New Testament scholar often called a liberal guy and maybe he is I I just think Marcus Borg tries to say we have this book so what do we do with it?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Not did it happen what do we what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book um that I thought was really helpful about words and it's called Speaking Christian he read it in 2011 uh why Christian words have lost their meaning and power and how they can be restored.
SPEAKER_00: It's not specifically about revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Well it does for example say you know like we often use the word mercy which is about like clemency a king grants a serf we probably would benefit from something like compassion or empathy instead.
SPEAKER_05: So he actually advocates sometimes changing words we've killed Lord have mercy Lord have compassion and he he does this now you know in some ways right if faith is a language then words are really darn important using the word empathy in the counseling sessions I would never use the word empathy never in a counseling session unless I defined it.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think most people then get it understand and and it's gonna sound like splitting hairs a lot of times we think sympathy and empathy are the same thing and I think it's worth a 30 minute lecture on exactly how they're different.
SPEAKER_05: Because it just that language helps us understand ways of being that that's that's that's a good point because people generally will say sympathy and empathy are the same thing but they're not the same they're not the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I would say this is a good book this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe hey maybe we'll read that this summer in adult forum and talk and talk about it on Sunday mornings because we're about to do summer reading list.
SPEAKER_05: I'm torn because there's a couple books I want to do already and one of them is The Daring Way by Brene Brown right which is not the Bible but it does this it it talks about ways of being that are more heavenly than we are already being they have to do with shame and empathy and sympathy and vulnerability and the way we respond to critics and who earns vulnerability from us who earns it you know I've I've paid attention a little bit to Brene Brown because several people have said I should I have I've it seems to me like she's just restating what a lot of other people have said which is alright I'm not but there's there's a lot there's still a lot of power in in all that and when I say all that it's in how people interact with each other and and um anyway that would be good.
SPEAKER_00: So we may do that this summer yeah well that concludes session 31 see we have one more to go which will be like sort of our grand not a review but remembering putting everything sort of together next week.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sticking around for a really long monologue today