Red Dirt Catholics
Join Jayce, James and guests from "Red Dirt" Oklahoma as they discuss what evangelization and discipleship looks like in real life.
Red Dirt Catholics
Religion of the Day - Part 2
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Exploring the intersection of modern secularism and ancient gnosticism with "The Religion of the Day" from the University of Mary, the follow-up publication to "From Christendom to Apostolic Mission." This is part 2
Register now for the 2025 Discipleship Conference for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City! This full-day, bilingual event will feature amazing speakers, breakout sessions, adoration, Mass, confessions, vendors and more at the Oklahoma City Convention Center on Saturday, August 9. Register now to get the early-bird price at OKDisciple.org.
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Links and other stuff from the show:
Pastoral Letter, "On the Unity of the Body and Soul:" archokc.org/pastoral-letters
Red Dirt Catholics Email Address: reddirtcatholics@archokc.org
The Book "From Christendom to Apostolic Mission" (Digital and Print): Amazon
The Social Dilemma: https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Daily Examen Prayer: https://bit.ly/309As8z
Lectio Divina How-To: https://bit.ly/3fp8UTa
So the first thing that I want to talk about is this witchcraft that you're able to do. Producer Avery, you need to like make some sort of arrow pointing to this. It's a special thing that you can do with a bubbly can, I guess. Is it just bubbly cans or any can really Really?
Speaker 1:any can that has a ridge at the bottom like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So most soda pop cans, anything in a can this shape yeah.
Speaker 2:I've never seen this before. My ADHD is going wild. Seeing it, I'm channeling some secret Gnostic.
Speaker 1:Seeing it, I'm channeling some secret Gnostic tenets and beliefs to make this. You're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some secret Gnostic things. James, you are so much better. You are part of the elite. Yeah but essentially what you've done is you've sentenced a significant portion of sparkling water that I would otherwise enjoy and put in my body to death, to be spilled when I try to start pulling this off in my own home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first secret is get a full can and try it and see what happens. And then, and see what happens, it'll fall over. No, it's funny.
Speaker 2:I feel like, and if you can't do it, then you don't have the gnosis, yeah exactly To know if you're a Christian.
Speaker 1:If this falls over, you're doing it right and if you have the secrets of Gnostic power, then you might be a pagan. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's just gravity and balance and physics. I guess that little ridge provides enough support for like two little legs there. If you get it down to like a third, it's like a or high school or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You get it down to about a third or so, maybe a little less, and you can get it to balance that way just from its own equilibrium of water weight there.
Speaker 2:Makes me really happy inside and stuff. But the other thing that we did it was like a cool family win for us. So my family, when I was younger we had the oldest of eight kids, right. So we have to figure out ways to hang out and spend time with each other in somewhat organized fashion. Sometimes, otherwise it's chaos.
Speaker 2:So we had something called family night and it rotated different nights. It was predominantly Friday nights and it was something that was really sacred to our family, like so sacred that my parents like. The idea behind it is that my parents wanted it to be so awesome that you're not that upset if you miss something else, yep, as a result of it. Um, so what we would do is there would be like there's different age groups, so there would be the little kid game so they'd play spill the beans or candy land or whatever activity. It could be a game, it could be a um, an activity of some kind that you would see in a youth group. You know they were very board games more often than not, but you could do anything. You have a little kid one and then you had the one for the big kids where we play monopoly or presidents was the card game that we would play, and then there would be a special dessert that we only get on family night like.
Speaker 2:This is so like root beer floats was the most common, but they would go out of their way that like I don't want to miss the root beer floats, so I'm not going to go hang out with you, jimmy, and go see a concert or whatever it was, and then we would all watch a movie together or something like that, and typically the dinner was pizza, and so I kind of was like you know what? I want something like this for our family that we can look forward to, that Peter can look forward to um, and like build a hype for, uh, for all of us. So I kind of like instituted that and we had our first one the other night. The cutest thing was um is the day. I told him, like two or three days before hey, we're doing this, these are the things that are going to happen, get ready. And I went to the grocery store with Peter and let him pick out whatever he wanted as far as for his snack. We ended up with Minion Popsicles.
Speaker 1:There you go, it's pretty special.
Speaker 2:They weren't bad, and so we came up with different things. We ended up he asked for us to do a science experiment. So we did the Diet Coke and Mentos thing as part of our deal. So I mean you only get one shot at it. So I spent like an hour before we started like trying to come up with the quickest way to like shoot all the Mentos into there, Because you don't have very long. Once you put one in, it's going to start bubbling, yeah, with little kid hands, not practice.
Speaker 2:you wanted to find a good way yeah and um, eventually was like peter, I gotta do it, otherwise it's not gonna work. I should have gotten a test tube or something, but so we do that. And he was like, wow, this is amazing. And then, like, danielle, prepared a craft for what happens.
Speaker 1:I've never done the trick. Does it does, is it like it? Just do you put the cap on, it explodes off.
Speaker 2:Well, you could do that, but really what you do is you throw a whole tube of Mentos into the Diet Coke.
Speaker 1:And then the.
Speaker 2:Diet Coke shoots up like 10 feet into the air.
Speaker 1:Did you do this outside? Yes, yes, we did it outside.
Speaker 2:I was talking to someone, I was telling someone else about it. I was like, oh, you're going to have ants. And I was like, guys, you're missing the point of fun here. Bonding, we'll deal with the ants, we spray, you know, and all that stuff. So we did that. We had like a little danielle made. We made paper or not paper, what do you? Pipe cleaner, snakes and stuff. Um, we built a, we built a blanket fort and we all got in and watched the movie like paddington, um and uh, it was super great. But the best, honestly the best part about it was I told you, peter, that two or three days ahead of time to like build up the hype for it and his, the day of his teacher, comes out, miss robin, and says dad, peter is very excited for tonight you know, and I was just like come on yeah what a win, you know, and it was super great.
Speaker 2:Um, so we got to do that as a family tuesday night, so don't ask me to do anything on tuesday night.
Speaker 1:I got better plans, nice for the night, for the most part tuesday nights. I love that. Yeah, we do the friday night thing and we probably should take a note out of your book. I like that, having some extra fun experiences. We usually do like a fun family dinner we wouldn't normally do like pizza or something like that and a movie, a good movie, and we still the bedtime routine changes, so it's usually a little later, right.
Speaker 1:What we do is we usually watch like the first part of the movie and then have intermission and eat pizza, brush her teeth, put on her pajamas, come back down and watch, so it's like that second part's like all extra time that you wouldn't normally have, sort of. So, yeah, pretty fun. Uh, we did that with my mom when she was in town and they were trying to think of a movie they would all want to watch and that grandma nate would want to watch, and so they chose sound, were the one to watch, and so they chose sound of music, which I was fairly impressed that three young boys would choose sound of music and they. That's very impressive and they really liked it, which honestly like really engaging plot when you, when you watch it as an adult, like very.
Speaker 2:Catholic it's.
Speaker 1:It's quite awesome and there's like a nice plot turn in the middle where you can see the attraction level building between the widower and Maria, and then there's like the Nazi Germany backdrop where he's like a total Austrian patriot and like having that happen, which is true to the story. They took some creative license, but true to the story of the Von Trapp family. Yeah, really honestly, as an adult, really rewarding film to watch.
Speaker 2:It's three hours long it is a very long film.
Speaker 1:So we didn't watch the whole thing on Friday night because we started far too late, but we had steak in the middle, which was pretty awesome Whoa steak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that Family Movie Night. Your Mentos thing reminds me of Works bombs. Do you remember when those were cool? No, it's like Works toilet bowl cleaner and like little pockets of foil. You like fold up little foil and put those in a bottle and so you take. You take like a empty water bottle. Okay, squeeze the toilet bowl cleaner in there. Sorry if parents if you're listening with kids probably stop this. Um, we got high schoolers got in a lot of trouble for this, squeeze it. And then you'd like roll up with some air and and little foil balls and drop them in there and the foil in the works has like a chemical reaction and it literally like it sounds like a firework, maybe bigger, it's that loud, yeah, and it makes so people would like do these and like toss them in a trash can at school or something.
Speaker 2:Bad idea. Maybe I know what we're doing next Tuesday night we did a bunch of them in a park.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean that's pretty cool and I think in the environment, with with parents, like it could be a fun little project. Yeah, emily and I went to this thing that was hosted for a bunch of parents and it was about how to build sturdy kids or resilient kids, and one thing he talked about was you got to like set a family vision and have like boundaries. So you're going to have to have nose, like maybe it's no smartphones until such an age, or no sleeping over, and like you might risk being the ostrich family that has these weird rules or whatever he's like. But in order to have big nose, big nose or or some nose or boundaries, you really need to have big yeses. And so he was like so in my family, like we don't play video games but we shoot guns and blow stuff up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you have to like be engaging and exciting and be all in on these other things. In that case, like which is more fun?
Speaker 1:like going and playing paintball target practice and like real target practice at a shooting range or doing a first-person video game or something right. I mean, arguably they're both pretty stimulating, but the other one's like real, yeah, and so it is a big yes. Or like having a boat, or like where they go doing sailboating or whatever like that costs money and time and energy, but it was like a really big yes that prioritized the family time. And so I think this your example, though, of like a family night with something fun that's messy and a work and risky, with the ants or whatever, right, right, or something that might that might be like without a parent, not a good thing for kids to do and a little risky, but yeah, it makes it really special for family life. And you have these big yeses where you do cool things, yep, so I think that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we really liked it, we it. We're going to keep it. He was just like when's the next one? I was like next Tuesday and he was like could it be sooner?
Speaker 1:No, it's part of the fun. It'll be real soon.
Speaker 2:It's part of the buildup. You can't have it every day. You know that's so cool. So yeah, he was really excited about that, but all today really Not too much. So we're moving towards part two of our series on the book from St Mary's Press, or you, mary Press, the Religion of the Day. In the first part we talked about Gnosticism really and just like what it was and what its core tenets were, the primal heresy being that we deny the fall and we deny that the evil is coming from our own hearts, but it's coming from evil, oppressive structures and things, and that we're rebelling against that. Did you have anything else?
Speaker 1:that you wanted to add If you hadn't listened to that one, maybe catch up on the first part of the series and then jump in. This will be, I mean, four or five parts, maybe six, just depends on how we go through it, but really great stuff. And we'd encourage you to grab a copy of the book this Religion of the Day, green book sequel to From Christendom to Apostolic Mission by University of Mary. Yeah, I think I don't know that I have a lot to add, but the neat thing to realize, I think, for all of us, is that Gnosticism is here in the Greek time pre-Christ and the Neo-Gnosticism is here now, and there's been this trend line where it kind of follows Christianity around, because yeah, whenever we get big, Gnosticism gets big right behind, yeah, and so as a largely Christian nation, it makes sense that it would be kind of, you know, all around our society.
Speaker 1:And the cool thing is we can see, like, here's that problem. That's in the culture, maybe in the church, but also it's in my own heart and belief system and paradigms that I view the world through. And this next episode we're really walking through the 12 aspects of this modern progressive religion and are going to get a step through that. And I think the thing I I'm excited about is this really like challenging me in my own conversion continued to Christ, cause it's like some of these things are very similar to Christianity and then there's a slight twist, which is what the devil always does, yeah, um, and then some are like blatantly like in the face of once you're caught in it. But, yeah, I'm excited to unpack it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just a parasite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good way to put it that feeds off of similar overall backdrop in a culture and then spreads like wildfire once we get to a certain point, which is where we are now I think of. Whenever I think of all of these, I'm thinking of like everyone's watched, like louder, with crowder, or any of these people who are like doing the change my mind mid videos on college campuses, and especially right now with all of the protests, the pro-palestinian protests that we see on our college campuses, like where people are having like really hard conversations, whether it be about any hot topic like abortion or transgender or whatever it is. You see it, you see a lot of these things the most in some of those spots.
Speaker 2:Some of these tenants and you're like wow, that's what it looks like and that's what's happening here in some of those when those dialogues are just breaking down. Um, I can't remember if I talked about this. I might have talked about this last time I went and saw the movie civil war. Yeah, uh, anyway, go see that. It's a great movie. It talks about what happens when we all stop having conversations with each other um it's really good.
Speaker 2:But let's dive into this first thing. The first point of the progressive religion, or Gnosticism as we'll call it, is the human deal of evil in the world.
Speaker 1:And I don't know. Just pausing there sounds familiar. That's the kind of part of this alienation. Like there is a great evil in the world.
Speaker 2:And recognizing it as evil.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's part of why this is so attractive, actually the belief system, because that's true, there is a great evil in the world and I think where it differs is the invitation, you know, starts to be like in my response or, I'm sorry, where it's kind of like, kind of similar, but a little bit different and attractive still is like this reality of like founding euphemisms, of like make the world a better place, or like the bumper sticker, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention, like even as a Christian, like those kind of feel like right responses, like there's, we should make the world a better place, and there are lots of things, if we're paying attention, that are should make us outraged.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so it kind of follows Christianity a little bit and kind of breaks from the book talked about like polytheistic religions. Polytheistic religions sort of have this circle of life. Yeah cyclic, you know, kind of like what you see in Lion King.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so stop watching Lion King. You Gnostic? Are you Buddhist? Yeah, you're going to pre-monotheistic religion. Just kidding, I'll never stop watching Lion King, yeah.
Speaker 1:But so it actually kind of follows it in this way of thinking that the condition of the world is seriously flawed and the last thing that someone wants to do is conform to its corruption. So very interesting, and that's like super similar to the tenet found in Christianity.
Speaker 2:And it's flawed, but it's almost addressing like the human, like human needs in a way like that we're alienated from the world, that we are struggling to like find some of the things that we need community, that we're struggling to have our basic needs met, that there's something that that's the evil.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that suffering exists is the evil which is they don't talk about it here, but it's one part that makes this tenet different from Christianity, in that like we don't necessarily view suffering as innately evil all the time. Right, it's a part of the human condition and there's redemption to it. But later we'll kind of get into that reality. But the cure to the evil is where we're different. But really this first tenet, like I don't know that there's a lot of difference between Christianity and the first tenet, cause I think later they talk about where the evil is actually found.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's where we, and that's where we start to distinguish.
Speaker 1:But on, its first invitation. It's like recognizing this. But I think the unmentioned thing and I don't think the book even says this in this part of the book. It says it later, but the unmentioned thing is like they're just recognizing that there's evil, not recognizing where it comes from or whom it comes from or who it's pointed against.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're recognizing that there's a problem, there's alienation between each other, and even so much that, like they talk about, like alienation from our own very selves yeah, which sounds very Christian in a sense as well, which I think is an important distinction to make. It's not just that there's evil, but there's like. There's like evil, there's like in the way that I relate to myself is really difficult, and we see it in like, and they have to think that way with the mental health crisis that we have, with all of that. Those are, those are things that are really objective, that we can see. So they acknowledge those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one one thing I would say too, like one power in this belief system that I think we should kind of learn from a little bit, is like to juxtapose it with, like a presentation of the gospel, like a good presentation of the gospel, like acknowledges the bad news, right, like it acknowledges, like the human condition, the suffering, acknowledges the fall. This doesn't acknowledge the fall, gnosticism doesn't, but that's part of why it's powerful, because we're as Christians, we believe we're redeemed from something, yeah, and into something that we were designed for. And so here there's not this view that the cosmos, you know, or that God has designed us for a particular purpose, but there is this here's the bad news, and they have some good news. So it's very interesting how that parallels and there is kind of this hook like recognition of the need, yeah and the good news rolling this.
Speaker 2:Number two is that salvation is achievable and possible.
Speaker 2:Like that, it's clear that progressive believers hold that. Salvation meaning escape from their state of alienation, escape from suffering, escape from like utopia, you know, is what we're talking about here. One of the things that I think in from history that remind me the most of this is it was when communism and uh, and the cold war was in full swing and we were making those like worker utopias, you know, where everyone was living in those boxes. And this is when all you live to do is work and you go home and there's nothing else. You know that peace can be found there or that the injustices of that, everybody you know wouldn't be there. But we obviously knew that that wasn't the case and the Berlin Wall ended up coming down, knew that that wasn't the case and the Berlin Wall ended up coming down. But so the promise is that, if we can, that is just that it's an attainable goal, that it's something that we can do, and it's something that we can do as human beings, which is where we start differing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's powerful to your point, like to the parasite, in that this very much mirrors Christianity that there's this, that salvation is possible, that we can be saved from this darkness. As Christians, you know, we believe that there's a hope, that in salvation of something no eye has seen and what no ear has heard, and that will be completely healed and glorified in eternity, the progressive religion's twist is that we can have that now. It's that we can be made perfect now. In reality, today, if we do X, we will have this. Yeah, if we do these things, if we push against these structures. And so there's this real strong incentive, especially to like someone who might be really altruistic or really excited for change or transformation. There's this real promise that within our own hands, we can achieve a perfected state through our faith in goodness and self-sacrifice.
Speaker 1:And so that's attractive because it's kind of partially true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that all injustice would be gone and that everything would be equitable and that people can live that they would like to live. There's a key difference in what Christianity would define as freedom and what the Gnostics would define as freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get into that in a little bit yeah and diving into there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's all really important. The third tenet is that there's a transformation within our humanity. So not only is it possible salvation, but that humanity completely transforms as a result. I think that that's an important thing to look at, and when you look at history, you know it's almost and we'll talk about this a little bit more in a second but there's a desire to recreate ourselves in a better, like in every new years ago. That technological advance makes us better and what was happening before was immoral and wrong and shouldn't have been a thing.
Speaker 1:So there's just this progressive, yeah, even the cult of the body. A little bit, we can be healthier and perfect and have these hacks to get ourself to an ideal state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know how to work out now.
Speaker 1:we know the science of not that that's bad per se, but like if it's taken to an idolized place it could be the way I save myself or the way I fix myself. It's interesting I shared in the first episode the guy I met on a plane who like deeply had the religion of the day, you know neo-gnosticism. It was like a when you really pulled back the tea leaves, it was like from a demonic source. He kept saying to me something on the plane that was very interesting, like lots of them were euphemisms, but at the core it was like you are the maker of your salvation. Like he didn't say this necessarily, no, I think he did. Like your God. Like was the thing. Like you're God. Like was the thing. Now, lots of us who are trapped in some neo-gnosticism ideas like we might not recognize that but we'll recognize something short of that, where you fundamentally deny who God is Right. But some people, fully indoctrinated in this, do believe. Like I'm God.
Speaker 1:And I think the interesting thing from that is, again, it is kind of partially true and what I mean by that is like we're invited as Catholic Christians, as Christians in general, to be partakers in God's divine nature, and so there is an idea of divination that exists within Christianity, but not the way that it's been usurped Like the Bible actually tells us that divination in the way that like Wiccan and witches and sorcerers and whatever are trying to do is totally immoral. But that's like this it hits the human heart like in a friendly way that we're invited to be like God, and it's like really satan's invitation to eve, like he just didn't want you to be like him, which is a lie, because he did want you to be like him. Right, he does, like that's what he wants.
Speaker 1:This is his plan yeah, he wants to, he wants to keep this from, but satan wants us to, to see, and this religion of the day neo-gnosticism, progressive religion wants us to realize that we can attain.
Speaker 2:And, as a result of attaining it, you are fundamentally transformed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like we can go get it and grab it and make it ourselves and we're better now.
Speaker 2:And you will be. When you are transformed in whatever this way, on an individual, and then society is transformed on a, on an entire plane, then everything, everything will be better you mentioned freedom earlier.
Speaker 1:Like give me the distinction of christian view of freedom, progressive or neonostic view of freedom?
Speaker 2:right, the christian, the christian view of freedom is that we are free to do the good, and the good is something that is defined by God, by our creator. When you create something, when someone creates that can of bubbly, they define what is good for that can of bubbly. The good is that it will hold the bubbly and be able to be transportable and holdable and even do this cool trick. Those are the good things, Whereas if you were to decide to use that can as a projectile weapon it's not, it's pretty, it's pretty bulky it wouldn't make a very for a very good bullet. Or if you were to use that as a hammer, you'd probably get water all over yourself. Like, it's not designed for that purpose. So the human, so the human good is to freedom to do the good for what you're designed for, which is to know love and serve God and live by His commandments and everything that Jesus had.
Speaker 2:We've talked about that a lot, you don't have to dive into that right now, the idea of freedom that is frankly very American-sounding is just to do whatever you want, to be whatever you want to be. If I want to go and make a ton of money, great You're. You're free to do that If you like. If someone is free to like, it's kind of a libertarian view of freedom where, like if you're, if you want to go and get addicted to alcohol, you are free to do so you know, as long as you're not harming someone else, right as long as you're not harming, um, somebody else, which would be a key tenant of the.
Speaker 1:the niceness of the gnosis yeah, nicest, but it's, it's a. It becomes problematic because it's kind of circular in its definition, right, like if we freely determine what we will be and what freedom is, then the definitions are all over the board of what freedom and what good is. But it's really about it's more like a freedom from limits that are placed on me, as opposed to like a freedom purchased by Christ, like being delivered from other things and a freedom to be conformed to him. Again, like real tricky to the undiscerned eye. Because, like the Gnostic, could you know be like I'm going to think about what I want to be and I'm going to become it, and the Christian understanding is like, well, sure, like you can have a road of discipline and development and virtue to achieve the thing you're after. Yeah, like, so long as God's will like, yeah, that can happen. So like the outcomes feel sort of similar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, virtue good Virtue for the sake of saving yourself. Bad.
Speaker 1:But the path and the life you live trying to get there become much different.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. Developing virtue as a Christian versus developing virtue as a Gnostic.
Speaker 1:Versus getting what you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which, what's interesting, like, let's say, they got to the same end. Like wouldn't Satan want me to get exactly what I want he would If it wasn't subordinated to God's will, you know? So it's kind of tricky, yeah, if it's not subordinating or leading you away from it if it's a distraction, Enforcing my own pride and ego like, yeah, actually he'd be fine if I got something that God even wanted me for it, and I attribute it to myself.
Speaker 2:I remember when I think it was in that Lent episode that we were talking about with Father Jerome, where he kind of laid the truth bomb on us that like there's a reality, that like the Lord can allow sin to exist in our lives, just for the pure grace of knowing that we're sinners, yeah, and that, and destroying our ego. Because if our ego got so big that we didn't even feel like we needed it and didn't sin, then it would be all that much harder to find a Lord. And which is, like you know and people talk about this with someone who's extremely wealthy. They have all of their material needs met, they provide it for themselves, they've been extremely successful and virtuous in saving and doing things well, having a great job, doing everything right in the American way, that's a really like Jesus talked about.
Speaker 2:It's easier for a Camel to get through the eye of a needle, eye of a needle. And rich people go to heaven. That's a thing, but it's more difficult because the need for a savior is like I'll just have my Roomba bring it to me. You know, roomba that I bought is my savior. You know, in this key point, yeah, which is a wild piece within it, so that there's a self-creative process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, freedom is creating yourself by the neo-gnostic vision.
Speaker 2:And thus making you God. But the fourth point, like and we've, I think we've discussed this, we discussed this a lot in the last episode, so we can speed through this one a little bit more is that the source of the alienation is not within us, and this is just like one of the very first tenants. Um, that's really important to understand. Like the problem isn't me, you know, and we, we do that with ourselves all the time. Like there's, like I can tell when someone's you know, really trying to grow in virtue, and like their first inclination if something's gone wrong is like, did I, where did I go?
Speaker 1:wrong here? Yeah, what did I miss here? How could I grow?
Speaker 2:in this area, versus like saying I really wish this person had done it this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was interesting, I think, when we had Monsignor Shea and Archbishop on over the first book, I think Shea attributed it to Chesterton. Maybe, like the Christian, the secular man says the problem is there, out there, not pointing away from himself, and the Christian man says the problem's in here, pointing to his heart. And so here, yeah, number four, we begin to have what was similar. We now have a pretty clear distinction between Christian thought and neo-gnostic or progressive thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we ourselves are fundamentally good within that neo-gnostic view, but we find ourselves trapped in these evilressive structures, and so we have to defeat the structures, and that's how we cure the evils of everything like fatherlessness, homelessness, you know, mental health. All of it will be solved if we just are able to remove these structures. And even so much, like they would say that like even the family might be one of those structures. Based on what?
Speaker 1:we're seeing right now that needs to be removed, which we would say is which is interesting because there is kind of a partial truth there in certain areas but the institution of the family is not Like the institution of the family is really good, but like, if you were to put this fourth point in, like the simplest statement Christian view is that we are fallen. Progressive, neo-gnostic view is that the world is poisoned, and so take family as a great example. The Christian view would be like man as a world. It began with Adam. The man didn't protect and keep and we began to fall in our fallen nature and we've inherited some of that. And we began to fall in our fallen nature and we've inherited some of that. And so across the centuries men and women have fallen in their responsibilities to be good parents, good spouses. And then the Gnostic view would say well, clearly the family unit is a problem and clearly that's poison and messed up. We gotta dismantle that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So rolling into the fifth point is tragic hostility. God, I don't know about you, but this is the spot where I was reading, where I started to feel a bit of a gut check for myself and the understanding of what this tragic hostility means, like it's typically expressed, not so much as like all out hatred or all out atheism or denial or anything like that. Like that's not, like there are people like that. We can see those people on YouTube and it's wildly entertaining to watch. But more so than anything, what we see is we see when that people see God as like this nice thing that really doesn't, is of no consequences. There's like a. What is the word that I'm looking for? Not a hatred, not a love, but like people say, the opposite of hatred isn't love, it's, or love isn't hatred, it's. What is the word that I'm looking at? Narcissism? No, not narcissism. I've heard that hatred.
Speaker 1:It's. What is the word that I'm thinking of? Narcissism? No, not narcissism. I've heard that too.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting one, which would be pride. Which would be pride, but like disinterest. Oh yeah, or not disinterest.
Speaker 1:What is the word? Are you thinking about the difference between like apathy and no, yeah or apathy?
Speaker 2:towards another person, but just like absolutely not caring, it's like not relevant. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, the book like to quote it exactly said something like an expressed hostility towards God, but like viewing God as kind of like harmless figure who doesn't interfere with my self-realization.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So sort of like yeah, kind of important, but like kind of harmless, not disruptive in my life, not the center of my life, certainly not lordship I'm subject to Right. It's interesting to kind of share a personal story that I see Like I think this happens. So where it's where we have, if we buy into this at some level, explicitly, super loud, or like just by our own inner logic, anything that God would ask of us that disrupts us being who we want to be, like our own creative process, self-creation process, is going to be something we reject as like not that important. So like one thing Emily and I have noticed and reflected on, like in the area of birth control, for example. Like when Emily was on birth control, anytime the topic would come up. While she wasn't hostile towards God generally, she'd be hostile about that and like attack why that was wrong. And here's everything science says. As a trained medical professional, like there's some baked in answers We've noticed, as we've continued to give NFP witness talks and things like that, like that same hostility when the topic comes up.
Speaker 1:So if you think about that, whether you're a man or woman and you're willingly participating in contraception, like being able to contracept, lets me have what I want and kind of limit the resources time, energy, money I have to spend on children.
Speaker 1:I get my life my way.
Speaker 1:Well, god's view would be God's ask is like trust in me, like I will provide everything you need and also I'm going to give you a great gift here on my timing and on my plan.
Speaker 1:Well, what we've noticed is a great hostility, even if it's just in the eye contact level and facial expressions that people were talking to, but also even like maybe, let's say, when we haven't given the talk but a priest has or something, some of the backlash and kind of scuttlebutting from the crowd of like we shouldn't have done that, that wasn't appropriate how we did this. We're like attacking some of the semantics about how it was done. It's like we just really didn't like the truth that that's going to limit how I want to live life. And so, while those people weren't saying I hate God, and while Emily wasn't saying and I wasn't saying I hate God, we were saying I don't want what God asks of me and I really don't think it matters for this area that I figured out on my own Right and I was like there's a pride there that I know better and he's gatekeeping something for me as a personal confession, we can see where this goes Like.
Speaker 1:if earlier we accepted that I can make my own way and I can rely on myself, well then, just by that alone we have to deny who God really is. Even if we're not, even if we love our Catholic faith, we love the tradition, the heritage, who the Father is, who Jesus is. We just changed who they are in buying that, yeah, you know. Or we changed our view of who they are right.
Speaker 1:And Satan's really good at getting us to buy that in lots of different small ways and frankly, this isn't in the book, but like if our image of God shifted to a God who has arbitrary rules that like don't make sense for me and aren't good for me and he isn't relevant, are we even gonna worship that God? Like, probably not eventually, because that's not God. Yeah, that's not who he is. He's not worthy of worship, that image.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's wrong on this spot so you know what I mean and so I don't know. I actually it was a few months back, but in confession, like the sin I confess is like honestly I've denied that God exists as who he really is, and like I'm with you. Like when I reread this I was like, yeah, that's like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's easy. It's a lot easier to do than we give Like we don't give ourselves enough credit for how Gnostic we can be about this, sometimes with our you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because God's not a who God is in the Gnostic view is a limitation on who we're supposed to be Right and so like. If we have any of that, then then we're trying to break apart the oppressive structure of who we view God to be. But God's not that.
Speaker 2:God's a loving father who knows a better plan for me all the time, but there's also times within this, so that's like what's more relevant to us today. But there's been spots in history like the French Revolution is the really easy one to. Where it gets outright hostile.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, when the priesthood got lumped in with some of the fat cats and we decided that we want a sharp, real break from this and the hostility towards God became huge. And like with Voltaire's writings and different things like that, completely changing the game for what everybody thought there. So it's an important thing to see throughout history some of these things happening, and I think we see some of them today we see culturally similar things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, attacks on churches because of the pro-abortion kind of movement, things of that nature. Yeah, yeah, it's a very this part of the book, if you've got a copy and reading it. I mean, most of these little sections are like two, three pages. This one has a couple extra and it does outline several historic events and it's quite, quite a good read.
Speaker 2:so yeah, the sixth. The sixth point here is that there's a high but ambiguous moral call. What is ambiguous about a high moral call?
Speaker 1:it would seem like there'd have to be a prescribed set of rules to not be ambiguous right, I would agree, and I and I think it comes from some of the earlier parts here like even the definition of freedom, right, like it's kind of hard to have a non-ambiguous high moral call. If freedom is being who I want to be, yeah, what do you think on this one? What would be the takeaway here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. The takeaway is that they're good people, people that are a part of the Gnostic movement and they have morals that they don't want to. They're trying to address the evils that we see. They're trying to address the different evils that are there. They're just going about it in a way that Christianity doesn't agree with. You know, like they want to get rid of, like they want to bring about. You know, women's rights we talked about a little bit last time.
Speaker 2:That was a great thing, and it was a thing that needed to happen and it was a shame that hadn't happened sooner and it was an embarrassment for the church that it hadn't happened sooner.
Speaker 2:And there's still growth to be done in in that particular area. Um, but I think it's ambiguous because it constantly is changing, you know, can't like. It makes me think of cancel culture, like just a little bit. Like you can't be seen doing, like if, if someone who's a part of this particular religion is seen like I, like I'm thinking of I can't wait to watch this show there's gonna they're gonna make a show about Donald Sterling, who's the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and the NBA basketball team, and this guy got caught on tape by his mistress that he was super racist, like using the N-word, doing all of these terrible things.
Speaker 2:This guy's super rich, has super well-connected, but got thrown out of the National Basketball League like a billionaire For good reason yeah, for good reason and was just like. You're gone and nobody talks to him again. No one's ever heard of Donald Sterling ever again Not saying that what he did was right and everything. But I feel like we denied the humanness of who he is by not leaving room for growth and and, uh, for forgiveness, like that's something that's a part of.
Speaker 1:Christianity. But to your point that it's ambiguous. We've never canceled Walt Disney. You know like as a culture and he was anti-Semitic. It's been written about in literature. It's like very clear and there's all sorts of other issues with some of their production now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the line changes. Like when I try to show my son Aristocats on Disney+, they throw up a thing saying, hey, there's some characterizations in here that are evil and wrong, but we kept them in for the continuity of whatever it is, but just as a warning label, a disclaimer, and like that wasn't the way it was. You know this long ago. Or you'll watch a show like I'll watch the Office and be like man. That joke would not fly on TV today.
Speaker 2:You know that's interesting and like comedians get canceled really really easily too for pushing the boundaries.
Speaker 1:What's tricky about this one is, I think, that, like at the outset, like name the right name, the wrong injustice that's actually wrong. Like most of the time progressive and Christian, like we're going to label them the same, like that's wrong. Like racism is wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a real injustice that they're attacking.
Speaker 1:Poverty is an injustice, you know, poor elderly care is an injustice, like all these things right, but it isn't really until towards the end of how we're solving the issue that we realize we're, like pretty far apart often on the solution. And I think and the book touches on this a little bit, I think it's, it seems to me that the neo-gnostic view we're attacking this kind of from a place of anger and hatred and like resentment and revenge, Like we got to win this back, as opposed to a place of like, love for the neighbor who's suffering, and so like because just the beginning of the heart is wrong. While we've rightly labeled the injustice as wrong and needing some solution, it's coming from this place of winning and stamping out and eradicating, instead of this place of like I love these people and I suffer for and with them. Like you know, it's like a, it's a focus on the problem versus a focus on a love of the person.
Speaker 2:Right and the and the elimination of the problem. We see this most especially with the unborn right. We see suffering as the ultimate evil right. So an unplanned pregnancy, a young woman who has a baby out of bed, wedlocked, has no money, isn't going to be able to take care of this baby. This baby's going to have a harder life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the woman will and is going to suffer. And the women will.
Speaker 2:Yeah and both. And as a result, that suffering that's there justifies removing the baby from the equation. You know in the pro-choice debate, and we see this get amplified even further when we see the suffering of the elderly.
Speaker 1:Which like to defend the, to like totally strongman the position, like I'm going to say something that sounds really wicked, but like that is a solution. Like if the problem is this suffering and we want to alleviate the suffering, a solution is to terminate the pregnancy or kill the baby. That's a solution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they make arguments. They're saying that the baby isn't suffering, doesn't feel, it's not alive. Yet All these different things that we don't have time to get into.
Speaker 1:What's not considered in the solution is like what's most loving, right and like is it okay to permit and coexist with some suffering, like, and that that's a part of the human condition?
Speaker 2:yeah, and so it keeps going farther than, like the being poor is suffering, and so the whole idea is like we need to eliminate the poor and like figure out and how to change some of that stuff, or the suffering of the elderly, like they're losing their cognizance, they're losing their ability to walk and run, and that suffering is so evil that we've gotten to the point where, in Canada, we're euthanizing.
Speaker 1:Which is interesting is if my primary worldview on all this is through the prism of like making my own self best, is through the prism of like making my own self best, like a view of the poor is very tilted because in some sense, like the poor do affect me, like this part of town that I go through or the homeless, like I kind of want that problem gone, like fixed, like not affecting my life and my community's life or whatever right Right, as opposed to like that poor person is made in the image and likeness of God, as a beloved son or daughter and I want to help dignify their humanity and help them out of that when the heart is on. That could have two radically different solutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and not everybody who's a part of the progressive faith is necessarily supportive of abortion, and euthanasia and all of that. Like there's. It's ambiguous.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, even you and I we've identified we tend progressive or agnostic on some thoughts. So, like you know, like we wouldn't support that but we could other less hot button causes, we could find ourselves denying the good of the other in an effort to solve the problem, whereas love is wanting the good of the willing, the good of the other, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a very big difference there. So number seven is a really important thing and it's similar especially to like 0.5, I think a lot of it is that salvation comes through human effort alone. In the progressive belief, the salvation that comes through the radical reordering of the external world is brought about solely by human effort. That it can happen, we can do it together if we all rise up and change whatever oppressive thing is needing to be changed at the time, and a lot of the time that thing can be religion, sometimes that thing is the family, sometimes that thing is their erotocracy, capitalism in the terms of the Russian movement, or sometimes it's the Jews and what they're doing within the Nazi movement. All of those things are. We have to destroy what is keeping us from this salvation and we can do it.
Speaker 1:Now is the time to rise up and claim the destiny that's owed to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's not easy to wait on God for the solution to problems that we think we can fix ourselves.
Speaker 1:That was a good gut punch too. Yeah, it's like in this view we just totally don't have any room for perseverance, trust, patience, humility and like miss all that goodness for us, and it kind of puts us being trapped back in pride again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And for seeds like this, like Christianity is where the seeds of these types of thoughts, like this understanding of your own faults and the brokenness of the human person, like all of this and the ability to rise up because we don't like waiting, and all of this and the ability to rise up because we don't like waiting, we don't like not understanding that the Lord's timing is better for us, and the idea of providence. We dove into that idea in a big time. In that one episode we were talking about surrender to the divine providence and it's just like, it's just really unintuitive in our fallen human state to be reliant upon somebody else.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they close this little section with a like kind of note that areas that are like now nominally Christian largely, like now nominally Christian largely, and so there's this great backdrop of the fact that evil exists and salvation is possible and like what goodness is.
Speaker 1:But maybe virtues waned and humility and patience and those sort of things have waned because we don't really need like day to day, we don't need a lot of patience, we have everything instant, like I don't have to farm my own food, like there's not these natural reinforcements of that. Yeah, and so it's like very ripe for this, because I do have the energy, the free time, the ability, the intellect, um, the connections, the resources to go make the change without waiting on god. Yeah, um, and so it's like our culture in america, the culture in europe, has been ripe for a while for this type of belief to run ramp, run rampant, because, like the same seedbed, the same fertile soil that Christianity fosters in is there and neo-gnosticism thrives. But now we've taken out some of the other things that are good for Christianity, bad for Gnosticism, like basic virtue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's just like. I mean. This is just proof that we live in this culture, that we talk about this so often. Certainly the self-reliance and everything. We are heading into part eight, but this is where we're going to have to press the pause button. We'll be back. For those of you that are excited to keep going through 7, we're bringing Father Erwin back. He's going to be a guest on the podcast as we keep going through this book and it's great talking about all of these things with you guys and we hope that it's been beneficial for you, but for now, this has been Red Dirt Catholics. I'm Jace.
Speaker 1:And I'm James.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time. Take care, thank you.