The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
“Be Angry and Do Not Sin” - Episode 46 in the series, “Letter to the Ephesians”
Our next episode continues with Paul’s description of what we might expect as we attempt to put on the true garment of our humanity, the resurrected Jesus Christ (Eph 4:25-32). The Risen One was transformed almost beyond recognition, but he retained his wounds. He suffers for and with us, willingly sharing in our suffering and offering us his peace. That is the new meaning of being human—acknowledging our wounds and offering our substance for our Beloveds.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Morning. Patrick Hi Jonah, you beat me to it, you were about to say it. I was like waiting, patrick Hi Jonah, you beat me to it, you were about to say it. I was like waiting, waiting, I've got this one. I'm going to get the first good morning in, you got me.
Speaker 3:Well, good morning, it is a good morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, welcome to everyone to our conversation here in the somewhere in the interwebs, wherever you might be listening into this conversation around the world, a conversation between two priests who are also working as directors at a seminary of the Christian community in North America, here in Vaughan, ontario, canada, in North America, here in Vaughan, ontario, canada, and a place where we seek to deepen the mysteries of Christianity in conversation that we call the Light in Everything.
Speaker 3:And we will begin, as we always do, with the Gospel of John in chapter 8. Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 2:So we are making our way through this, the few pages within the New Testament called the letter to the Ephesians, and we are in chapter four, moving into chapter five, which will be our kind of last work to do there. So we have a chance.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking it could be that by Easter of this year we might be through and it will have taken us about a year, and a quarter or a year and a third or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to get all the way through the letter. Amazing, beginning January of 2024, we started, and the last couple of times we were focusing in on this putting on of the new human being, it was one of our kind of central contemplations here at the end of chapter 4. Contemplations here at the end of chapter 4. Chapter 4, verse 22,. Take off the old human being, in which there is a power active that is connected with deceit and desire that lead to your destruction, and put on the new human being. And then it says in verse 24, and this human being is created after God, kata, teos or teon, in true goodness and holiness. And the translations often use the word after the likeness of God. They add likeness because the phrasing in the Greek there of after God is a reference to that picture in Genesis where the creator is always working to make a creation and looking at something for its model.
Speaker 2:So if it creates the animals, each after their kind, it will say and the human being is made. And where does God look to find the model, god's own image, so made in? The image after God's likeness is the phrasing there. So putting on the new human being, put on the new human being created in the after God, in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness, so a garment you can put on that's a human.
Speaker 3:It's just already an amazing thing, right, that we're not yet fully human, that we're practicing putting on a garment of our humanity that's been created after the likeness of God of God and, as we've talked about, in many other places and as something understood since the very beginnings of Christianity when they looked at.
Speaker 2:What is it that happened when this human Jesus, in whom the Spirit of God was at work, suffered and went through death and rose from the dead? Who is this one who rose from the dead, who so changed even his nearest disciples had trouble recognizing him when he was in their midst when he was walking with them, when he appeared
Speaker 3:to them. He was so utterly new. Right and they weren't exactly sure he was the same one, Right, and that sometimes is lost in modern theology oh yeah, Right. Even in certain movies, like the Passion of the Christ that many people have seen, it's not really something that's emphasized because it's not well understood. I would submit that this being that rose from the grave is really a new creation that's radically transformed and therefore it's hard to recognize.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we can. Let's take a little moment there too. So when you, jonah, think of some of the qualities and elements that the writers of the Gospels, for example, those who experienced him in those first days after Easter, or when Paul writes about his experience of him in different places, what are some of the things that are really different than the Jesus that they knew prior to the resurrection?
Speaker 3:Gosh, I mean one thing that's pretty radical. I'll just mention two things, and it'd be also interesting to hear what your thoughts are but the fact that his physical body has a shape and a form and a gestalt to it and yet can go through walls he came through locked doors in the upper room to the disciples or the fact that it had a similar shape to Jesus and he could eat they even witnessed him eating, and yet he still had wounds. He still had wounds that he was bearing bearing. So certain things had radically changed in his being from the time that, even though some of those things, like the wounds, were helpful in recognizing him because they knew he had been crucified.
Speaker 2:Part of how they knew it was the same one right were the presence of the crucifixion wounds as one of the the things that carried over. More recognizable than his face is what that means, because we usually look at each other's faces to recognize each other. So he was so changed right, that's true.
Speaker 3:we usually recognize faces, faces. Oh, it's you, I'm looking at you.
Speaker 2:Oh, there he is, but he's so. Even his countenance is so new. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:That the anchor for them to connect between the Jesus crucified and the Jesus resurrected are the wounds, and that, of course, is very, very powerful and also very, very shocking On the other side, which is a spiritual being who's not subject to things like the limits of space, who can appear and disappear, who can be simultaneously in multiple places, who doesn't seem to travel the same way. So he's walking. There are two disciples walking to a village up in a little bit north of Jerusalem, a day's journey, called Emmaus, and he suddenly is walking with him. Where did he come from?
Speaker 3:Right and they don't recognize him.
Speaker 2:They're walking with him for the whole time. They don't recognize him Talking to him, hear his voice? Don't recognize his voice. I'm just trying to think. If you were talking, jonah, I would know you. You're literally. Your signature is in your voice.
Speaker 2:And sits down with them inside a room, and only in the breaking of the bread are they able to see it. So, in an action that he does, that is his signature that he did prior. Also, for me it's another reason why he celebrates the last supper or it's not the last supper. He keeps eating the supper with us. So I'm a little bit not so happy with that name, but that's the traditional name the supper before his crucifixion. He celebrates this sacred gifting of his body and blood before he's crucified, in part, I think, so that when they celebrate that meal they recognize him again in his risen form. So they have to do that. And then they see him, they recognize him. They head all the way back to Jerusalem to tell everyone the news. And he's there in Jerusalem, but they didn't see him walking on the road. So he doesn't seem to be subject to our travel issues that we have on earth with that kind of body.
Speaker 3:Our physical laws that we're used to like going through a wall, going through locked doors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's an interesting phrase. It's not that they describe him passing to a wall, going through locked doors. Yeah, and that's an interesting phrase. It's not that they describe him passing through a wall, but the walls are closed, the doors are locked and he appears in their midst.
Speaker 3:Right, so clearly those walls had no effect on him Exactly.
Speaker 2:Maybe he didn't pass through, but nevertheless the physical laws are not the same for him and then at the end of the 40 days they also see him ascend this imaginative image that the forces of gravity also have no power over him. He actually can fill the atmosphere of the earth and be in the heights and then still appear to Paul on the road to Damascus here on earth.
Speaker 3:Right, and the way Paul recognizes him is a little more complicated. But also interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean you, least if we stay with the text. Paul doesn't necessarily recognize him in his physical form. He hears Saul, saul, why do you persecute me? It's Jesus. So he has the link. Okay, this human, angel-like being is saying to me I am Jesus. But he's also saying, more importantly, I'm in the ones you're persecuting. I'm in the ones you're persecuting. My being is literally being persecuted through you persecuting other humans that you think are outside the will of God.
Speaker 2:So the community of Christians, this being, is identified with. So whatever you're doing to them, you're doing to him.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's a deeply that whole idea, so to speak. That here's this one Savior-like being that is living in the persecuted ones is deeply connected to what Paul talks about in Ephesians 1, which we talked about, where he says we were all in Christ Jesus from the very beginning pre-purposed, which is a concept linked to the Son of man idea that the Son of man, or the Savior, or the Messiah, is a being who will live in his community. He will feel the pain of his people by living in them. He's both individual and in all of them. So I would submit that that's why Paul knew this deeply, this esoteric Jewish picture of the Son of man. And what was new for him and this is why he says it's Jesus is that that being is actually the one that died on the cross, that Son of man being, that Messiah, that celestial human.
Speaker 2:Who he experienced. His first impression is light Is light. This is the illuminating power of the world.
Speaker 3:But also he knew about this dynamic of this Messiah Son of man being that lives in the elect ones as the elect one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And that that's the link. And, oh my gosh, paul realizes Jesus is the Messiah. Yeah. And I think that's how he recognized him yeah, beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 2:He recognized. Yeah, beautiful, yeah. And that's really not such a description that comes in the resurrection stories in the Gospels, for example, and that I think is all a part of his further work. That is, christ Jesus, after the 40 days, ascending and filling and going to the Father and then sending the Holy Spirit into the disciples, and then he appears to Paul.
Speaker 3:Right, it's an even further evolution of this new creation. That's a good point. Yeah, and Paul had never known him in his material, earthly reality, never knew him. He just met him in this new form and had to link, so to speak, this being with what was on the cross.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's so much information there. This being is so richly complex. It is this power of light, a spirit being who appears to him, speaking that he calls a Kyrios a Lord, spirit being who appears to him speaking that he calls a curious, a lord. He is. This is his damascus experience, right there we're trying to talk about. He is someone who knows his name. He's a shepherd, saul, saul. Why are you persecuting me?
Speaker 2:So he's aware of also all that's happening on the earth, that this destiny I know you, he calls him by his name, calls him by his name and then why are you persecuting me? Reveals to Saul that all of the attacks against these individual humans is an attack against this being of light. But he still doesn't recognize who he is. But wait, who are you? Are you some kind of new folk spirit, of a new people? What is this? And then he says I'm Jesus. And that's when his world collapses. It's Jesus. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. I, the light of the world, the community, am the one who died on the cross. It's just so moving, and so he's so changed, and more than just the one who died on the cross.
Speaker 2:He's so changed, and more than just the one who died on the cross that one went through something of a needle and kept expanding his nature into these other layers.
Speaker 3:Exactly, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Always had that character, always had that was connected to the mysteries of creation, that is light that shines in the darkness, as well as the being who encompasses the mysteries of all of humanity, every human being actually seated inside him and then involved in making a people of God and then involved in the incarnation into a single individual human, named Yeshua, named salvation, god is salvation, and that is what Paul is saying when he says the new human being. So this one who rose though, who's on the so, an Adam, an Anthroposos, who's on the other side of death, who has wounds from the suffering and death that earth brought to him but has been made new by the gift of the relationship with the earth been made new by the gift of the relationship with the earth.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's yeah, just the fact that this being, this new creation, has wounds is unbelievable. Yeah, unbelievable, I mean, when you look at the creation of the human being in chapter one of genesis.
Speaker 2:You don't see any wounds. No, you don't see any wounds in the image and likeness, it's all here, there's no adversary, there's no suffering it's tov, it's very tov, it's very Tov, it's very good.
Speaker 3:And yet this new human being, this new creation this is also why it's hard to recognize has wounds that are not festering, that are sources of healing, and is suffering what we are suffering.
Speaker 2:Right and is victorious, is on the other side of this one event of its own life, has wounds from all that it went through, but then hasn't continued to choose to weave itself into and experience everything we're going through.
Speaker 3:It's unbelievable, and and that also means living in the midst of the adversary still.
Speaker 2:So this is a beautiful contemplation of we're trying to get at. Who are we supposed to put on so that enormity that expanded? Incredible, deeply compassionate, full of wisdom, deeply compassionate, full of wisdom. New human who was birthed on Easter Sunday.
Speaker 3:He says put him on.
Speaker 2:Put him on. So this is what I want to get into today Great great. What are the consequences then? For us to put him on, and I think that's what he's going to meditate on next Nice? It's like if you put him on, what happens.
Speaker 2:And what do we need to do to honor that, to fill our garments Right? How do you wear this Right, nice, all right. You wear this Right, nice, all right, nice, exciting. So his next line is, I think, really striking. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with the one near them, for we are members of one another.
Speaker 3:There we go, right there you go. It's after the likeness of the new creation. So the new creation, paul, discovers that the new creation is a being who is totally united with the community, so much so that he is experiencing, with peace, the suffering of the community. He's not like, he's not tormented by it.
Speaker 2:I think that's what he's going to address, because of our issues, of what starts to come up for us, if I feel woven into you, but that that is what we're putting on there, for is salvation. We're putting on Yeshua, whose name means God is salvation. We're putting him on, whose name means God is salvation. We're putting him on, but that means I'm also now a part of you, because that's what he is. It's after the likeness.
Speaker 2:The healing of the isolated, separated, extremely isolated, separated, extremely suffering experience of being stuck in ourselves, is healed by putting on a humanity that is a part of every other human being, so becoming a member of one another. So putting him on means I'm putting on, I'm entering a body beyond myself. Why is he in there? In part because all of them have communed with him. How have they put him on? They've literally eaten his body, drunk his blood, put on his, taken in his Holy Spirit into their souls, opened their hearts in faith to his being. So he's in me and upon me. I'm wearing him, and he's in you and upon you and you're wearing him. So in that moment I'm receiving my new humanity individually, but I'm also now woven into the community-sized human. But what happens then? So speak, that should change your speech, how you speak to one another, because he is truth, put off falsehood.
Speaker 3:Remember this deceit piece, right, therefore having put it off, put put away falsehood.
Speaker 2:Let each one of you speak truth and then he, he goes into a really simple, you could say, list of just be good and kind, right, you're like oh you know, don't steal from one another, don't be angry, but don't act out of that anger. Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger. That's amazing. Did you want to take a moment with that? Yeah, yeah, and give no opportunity to the adversary, to the devil.
Speaker 3:Right, Don't let the sun go down on your anger. So it's also not saying you know.
Speaker 2:Never be angry.
Speaker 3:Never be angry. Just don't let the sun go down on it so you can understand it and be with it and act righteously in and through it and with it. Yeah, yesterday night I had a a dad episode where, um, you know, it was time to go to bed and there's certain agreements and rules in the house where you go to bed at a certain time, enter your room. My lovely middle child, who I love, was experiencing that she needed more time and adamant that because she was caring for her face and doing a facial and caring for her body, that she was justified to way overstep the agreement and the boundary and she proceeded to just basically ignore me.
Speaker 3:Ooh and just say I don't care.
Speaker 2:That's even worse than outright defiance through verbal engagement. Right, I'm so disrespecting your authority and rule as a father in the house.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to ignore you Teenage moment and just like so. Then I started, with a consequence.
Speaker 3:You know I have a certain litany of consequences that grow, yeah and just I don't care, was always kept being the response. The teenage and in me is growing this rage of you will respect me and you will follow the rules of this house, and it's just escalating. It's just escalating and escalating and she just is like I don't care, do whatever you want. It was just escalating and escalating and she just is like I don't care, do whatever you want. It was just. And so finally it ended in raised voices and a slammed door into her room, as many parents of teenagers will likely relate to.
Speaker 2:I haven't had to wait, even for teenagers. Maybe that's just me.
Speaker 3:And I was definitely angry, and I tried, though, not to let the sun go down on my anger. So I stayed with it and just stayed with the experience, and it was all very quick, and I had the deep feeling that I don't know if that was the most righteous way to be a parent.
Speaker 2:So, as you let it echo on in your reflection after the battle ended, you got some feedback.
Speaker 3:I got some feedback. So one reason why not to let the sun go down on your anger is so it can teach you something how much of your anger is out of your own personal pain and how much of your anger is justified and righteous. And not letting the sun or not letting your witness being you're the one who can just observe what's in your soul I could start to learn something and I reflected on it. And then I asked Katie because my wife it's always this is. Another wonderful thing about having a partner is you can sometimes find a truer way through reflecting on things with your partner and I just said do you think that was?
Speaker 3:I said to my wife I said do you think that was a little bit too harsh with the consequences? And she said yeah, and I could feel her just having an insight in that moment, even though she's very kind about it because she knows what it's like also to be in that situation. But she said I think maybe it would be good if the consequence wasn't so much a punishment but a direct consequence of that kind of behavior. And it just hit me through her words.
Speaker 3:It was like I heard a little piece of the garment of this new human in image and likeness of the new human, because the new human doesn't punish. Actually, God has never punished and I wouldn't know this if I didn't know the gospel. I wouldn't have been able to recognize this through my wife. But God doesn't ever punish. Actually he brings consequences of a kind of lawful consequence of the action so that growth can possibly take place. Yeah, but I had just laid down a bunch of punishments that really didn't have anything to do with the action.
Speaker 2:It had to do with bending her will to yours anything to do with the action.
Speaker 3:It had to do with bending her will to yours. It had to do with bending her will to my will so that I maintain the kind of outer authority in the house.
Speaker 2:Inner too.
Speaker 3:Inner too, but it was kind of like. Yet I felt like the inner authority could have been wounded because it was a little arbitrary and punitive. Yeah, it's a subtle feeling in a parent, but I think parents can recognize it. Yeah, and so this word through my wife. Oh, and then she just again I think she was being spoken through a little bit too was well, what if the consequence was just now? The bedtime ritual has to start earlier now. The bedtime has to be earlier because you've pushed, you've pushed through the agreement.
Speaker 3:Push beyond the bedtime boundary. So if you need more time to get ready for bed, we're gonna make that earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's awesome and that's it and so you're allowed to do the facial work. It's awesome, great good Look at you taking care of yourself. There you go, but we're going to have to start there because we do that top side that we need you in bed by. That's for your health and that's my job.
Speaker 3:Right and in that moment I knew oh, that helps me feel like there's discipline and boundary and structure, but it feels more rightful in terms of the gospel.
Speaker 2:And what happened to your anger?
Speaker 3:My anger started to just slowly dissipate and I felt a kind of sadness that I had lashed out so quickly and I wish I would have been more composed. So I had a bit of a repentance moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that would be the be angry and do not sin. So you feel the anger, but you then acted out of it. That's right, and that you were able to only see by doing the before the sun goes down work looking at it.
Speaker 3:And I saw my sin.
Speaker 2:With the help of a sister who is in the truth, who could mirror back to you also some as you were having trouble trying to see it. I know that so well, right back to you also. Some as you were having trouble trying to see it because you're right, I know that so well right. Like your eyes lit, like in in in in the cartoons they go red. Like you can't see straight and you're like maybe I'm not seeing, but you like I'm doubting yourself, like maybe I'm not seeing straight. Let me submit to the eyes of someone I trust.
Speaker 3:Right, it's so beautiful and I could have been like well, they need discipline and I don't give a crap, which I have done before, but thankfully this not letting the sun go down and allowing that process of that feeling of it's a little bit off to start to school me, feeling of it's a little bit off to start to school me and put on, I really felt the garment come through my partner. So seeing, feeling, knowing christ, the gospel through another, yeah, and I put it on. I was willing to put on a consequence reality that was much more attuned to upbuilding than mere punitive action.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, yeah. So I think that it's just such a beautiful picture where you kind of acted out of a of the old human yeah something felt wrong yeah couldn't quite discern it.
Speaker 2:And you went through a process to seek the new human and received it. And now I've put that on. I want to go at that differently. And your anger was transformed. So these pictures right take off the old human put on the new human. Nice picture, but what does that mean in my life? And the details of it? Right, and Paul never shies away from that it's like.
Speaker 2:This is very concrete, it's right down in the midst of your life. Be angry, but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger. And he calls that not giving an opportunity to the enemy. It's very powerful, me it's very powerful. And then he says in verse 28, he moves on to some other ones let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor. So there's a thief in the community, apparently. So there are thieves in the Christian community, there are angry ones in the Christian community. Let them do honest work with his own hands, so that they may have something to share with anyone in need. Not just do honest work so that you actually can be generous. Why would you want to do that? Because that's the nature of the one you are wearing. This is, I think, the thing to keep in mind. Why am I, why am I tracking these things? The question is how am I expressing the nature of the one created in the right after the likeness of god, in goodness and holiness?
Speaker 3:exactly right. So it's, it's, it's trying to image. So it also means that when we're living, these also form new eyes and ears to recognize when this newness comes through other people, through a dream, through an insight, through our daily lives in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because in the midst of it it's difficult, Exactly these things come up. The old human asserts itself in me.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's probably radical to say the thief doesn't deserve to get their hands cut off. Or be cast out of the community Right. It's a radical thing, it's a redemptive gesture.
Speaker 2:It's totally redemptive he's not interested in, because he knows in the whole community there's a bunch of old humans who have the old human still with them. So the putting off isn't a one time thing, as we've talked about. This is this daily work too. But if you notice it, shed that and put on this and put on him and then you start to be members of one another and that has all kinds of social consequences. So he goes into speech let no corruptive talk come out of your mouths and he talks about how your speech should build up as fits the circumstance and offer grace to those who hear. So a speech practice. It's beautiful. Verse 30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, so let your behavior not be a source of grief in the gaze of God. What does that mean? This is what I'm very, very interested to hear, but maybe still Verse 31,.
Speaker 2:let all bitterness, and I'm going to translate this word impulsiveness think that's, that's consistent throughout this letter because it's differentiated from anger. So the the esp translated translates that as wrath that all bitterness and impulsiveness and anger, it says here clamor, clamor is shouting, shouting and slander, using your language to ruin the reputation of another through lies or rumors that all bitterness and impulsiveness and anger and shouting and slander be put away from you. So what do I mean by the old human?
Speaker 2:This stuff along with all malice. Along with all malice, intentional malice, intentional ill will for the other, wickedness, depravity, malignancy, trouble, affliction, malice this word and instead be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Yeah, so he closes this imagination. Who would I be if I was wearing him and who wouldn't I be?
Speaker 2:mm-hmm, it's a description right be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you, and therefore the next sentence at the beginning of chapter 5 is therefore be imitators of God as beloved offspring. Right.
Speaker 2:I just I feel, if I look around myself and look within myself, I am finding that the test here is intensifying so much. It just seems that so many of the people I know are being invited by a power of gravity. This is just like this natural, instinctual invitation to bitterness, like people are being pulled into. They're looking around themselves, at what's happening in the world around us, they're looking into their life circumstances. Why has this all happened to me? Why don't I? How come everyone has rejected me? How come I don't what? And there's just this like a, like a black hole of bitterness. Just people being sucked in have every reason to become bitter, every reason to be full of impulsiveness and anger, to shout and slander and to have intentional ill will, malice. There's like a gravitational pull. I don't have another word for it myself. It's like pulling our human.
Speaker 2:Something in our old human is pulled, is subject to the gravity of that world yeah and there's this anti-gravitational force that only comes from this other being, who has every reason not to forgive me and to have a bunch of ill will towards me, to be angry, and instead chooses something else. Yeah, how, how? And maybe you've already answered it today. Yeah, how, how? Maybe you've already answered it today. Maybe the way is the same with each of these, but I guess I'm so interested in the lived life of this, in your work as a lanker, trying to care for congregations and priests, working in non-profit board, situations where you're trying to work with the money, situations making decisions, working as a priest within a congregation, and the dramas that can happen there, as a priest within a congregation, and the dramas that can happen there. Being a father, being a husband, and what does this all have to do with the old human Right? What is this? Be imitators of God as beloved offspring.
Speaker 3:Children. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, I also feel that gravitational pull that you described, that I think many people are feeling, pull that you described, that I think many people are feeling which is a kind of despair and powerlessness and helplessness. That then gives rise to bitterness, because it's like you get into a kind of cynical space of, well, it doesn't really matter, because it's all crap anyway. Or kind of a comparing despair, where I see all these things on Facebook and YouTube about how to be successful and what successful people are like, because you just see a little snippet of their life and then I look at my life and it's just full of crap.
Speaker 3:And I think there's so many places in modern life, especially connected to social media and our life on the internet, that exacerbate the comparison muscle and can lead to just feelings of God, I'm not making it, I'm not quite there. That can lead to a kind of bitterness and despair. There's all kinds of ways to describe it, but I feel that gravity too. I also feel in terms of referencing the task of being a shepherd of a region which you also are, a region which you also are. There's such a temptation to think well, let me just get it to a place where there's no more problems. That's the goal. Let me just get it so that every congregation has what it needs and is kind of relatively happy, and that's great. That's a part of the motivation in a certain way.
Speaker 3:But what I'm discovering is, once I kind of manage to put out a little bit of a fire here, then another fire starts over there and I'm finding that in my soul, if I lead with the expectation that the successful anchor or the successful task is to solve the pain, then I get more and more tempted to be bitter and despairing Ah, interesting. Then I get more and more tempted to be bitter and despairing, ah, interesting. So the first orientation which I think is schooled from putting on this new human which we talked about, is that he is willingly entering the suffering, the community. I don't know if there's a more important orientation expectation that is a consequence of putting on this new human, that I change my orientation to what it means to be in a relationship with brokenness and pain, and it sounds a little depressing, but I think if it's orientated to rightly from, in my experience it can help stay connected to humans but also walk with that in peace. That's beautiful.
Speaker 3:I was listening to a podcast yesterday and I forgot her name, this one, I forget the podcast, oh gosh. I forget the host and I forget the guest. We'll see if we check it out later. But it was the spiritual mentor of Oprah Winfrey who was being interviewed.
Speaker 3:Very intelligent person, very nice, very accomplished woman, a kind of sociologist, also a little bit of a brain scientist, and her whole thing was a kind of method which she was inspired by by some of kind of a pseudo-Eastern pictures of detaching from any attachments that would lead to suffering. So the whole goal was finding a place in life, a bliss in life that had no relationship with suffering and, if you were fully realized, had no relationship with suffering and if you were fully realized, you would not be suffering. And I find this message to be maybe the most prolific spiritual orientation. That is, I would just say, a counter-adversarial image to the gospel, to this new human, in that he is not merely suffering what everyone's suffering, he's not just in pain, but he's not detached or disconnected from it. It's not his orientation, he's walking with the pain of his community, but his peace and his love are deeper. So he's not despairing over it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you just said it. I think it's like he's walking with, but that's not just like a next to. Yeah, you said there's something coming from him that his choice to participate is a gift and you feel, and we feel that with each other, right, it's like, listen, jonah, if you're going to hang in there with me and work with me, then I know you're going to have to suffer me. That's something I know, because I'm not all a big, fuzzy, warm blanket all the time. I'm also something that gets in your way or makes you have to have another meeting or whatever. It is Like you could. You could get to your goal maybe easier if you didn't have to also work with Patrick's process. But in the sense that, and when I feel you choose that like I can start to weep because it's like, oh, you're pushing past the sense of any kind of annoyance of walking with me. You're choosing, you're saying to me you're in it for all of it.
Speaker 2:That means you're going to walk with me, while I'm also not yet only a blessing, but I'm also a burden, right, and that is a gift to me. It's a gift, and it's a gift you are healing me and and helping me by saying patrick uh yes, I and, and I want to be with you. Anyway, I'm going to stick in there with you. Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3:No, but this is so beautiful because the more we find that beautiful, the more we find that true and good as a part of this new creation, this new human being, the more we also benefit ourselves from putting that on, but it benefits.
Speaker 2:It starts to be Mutual. He's doing it also because he thinks it's beautiful. This is the thing. It's not like he's just enduring. Right, our crazy, that's the key. All right, we'll get through this at some point. I'm in it with you. Right, that's the key.
Speaker 3:All right, we'll get through this at some point.
Speaker 2:I'm in it with you, right? It's not no, exactly. He also finds us beautiful, right.
Speaker 3:And he's not also doing it to behave well. Yes, like to follow the rules Like this is also really important. Like to follow the rules Like this is also really important. The Christianity is actually not based on following the rules. It's following the beauty, truth and goodness of a new creation.
Speaker 2:So let's go back to your middle child. Who's driving you crazy? And after all that battle, you're like could I have done? That better, why? And you wake up the next morning and you want to.
Speaker 3:And I made amends. You made amends. I went to her and I said my dear Saskia Saskia daddy last night got a little bit too angry and I changed my mind about the consequences that you're going to receive for what you did and I told her your bedtime is just going to be pushed back, but the other things that I said you were going to be consequenced with I'm taking back. And she looked at me and she said thank you.
Speaker 2:But I mentioned it too, because it's like you begin, because she's beloved.
Speaker 3:She's beloved. That's exactly, and that's what I think the point you're trying to get at is Beloved, that's exactly, and that's what I think the point you're trying to get at is. It's not so much that, yes, I do want to be a better dad, yes, but it's even more than that. It's I want this child, I love this child. She is my beloved and I want to see her become the most best human she can become, and I know this will be better for her. In that way, it's a creative moment in terms there we are.
Speaker 2:So that's the next line. So chapter five sums. So, after the description of the behavior work, it starts off with the repicturing of the new human in us. Therefore, verse 1, chapter 5, therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. So the quote-unquote suffering is actually me gifting myself to my beloved ones. It's a generative, creative, sacrificial, priestly act. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And this is where I'm so glad you said that, because this is where the suffering, if it's worked through this doorway, it can be painful, but it also starts to become something you long to do because it's so beautiful, amen, because you love. Yes, you long to go through that holy pain. In a way, it's like giving birth to a child or something because you want to be in a love relationship with your beloved God and your beloved humans. Yes, so as soon as that starts happening, it's not correct to call it mere pain or mere suffering.
Speaker 3:It's really communion, it's really love Holy sacrifice, it's love, it's holy sacrifice, it's love, it's holy sacrifice, it's all of these things that God is, and so that's why I find it to be really important to mention, not to condemn, souls like Oprah Winfrey's counselor, mentor, because she's a child of God as well, absolutely. But the direction that she's being inspired by by certain spiritual beings, the theology, the way of actually God, exists outside of the realm of pain and we've got to work to do everything to get into this detached bliss state I would say is totally unhealthy if we want to learn to put on this new human, this new creation actually entering into love. Love is not bliss.
Speaker 2:Actually Love has blissful elements but love is not something that's free from pain. Maybe that's this false idol of what bliss is actually this experience? Actually, the truest bliss is the experience of the mystery of golgotha amen, it's not.
Speaker 3:It is a true divorced from pain. It includes everything in this. It includes everything and the and the gesture of getting away from most of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah which is the only way to do right. It's like, yeah, because it's because that's okay. So how do you avoid the gravity? Yeah, and there's a. I mean, I think there actually is a really beautiful meditation on this mystery in the film gravity. Oh, have you seen this film, sandra bullock?
Speaker 3:you know as an astronaut?
Speaker 2:I don, I saw it, it's basically it's just a long meditation on this question. Wow, oh, it's incredible. I can highly recommend it to everyone. Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:It's an artistically beautifully done film about a woman astronaut who has left the Earth and has been living in a space station. She's outside of gravity and she has lost her loved ones and she is tempted to want to stay outside of the pull of the earth and its weight and pain. And it just shows her process of how she chooses to return. And it just shows her process of how she chooses to return and the visceral experience of hitting the ground. Wow, and it's so moving, cool. So she goes through an internal soul and spirit process to choose the physical process also of the earth. Yeah, it's just a meditation on the same mystery. I think I can highly recommend it. And I think that there is this question how do you avoid the bitterness, the wrath, the anger, right? How do you get out of this pool?
Speaker 3:It is a way, it's a way, it's a way. But what I've seen in that way of up and out, let's call it, or the kind of nouveau Buddhistic idea even though it's not really Buddhism of just detaching, detaching and finding this bliss devoid of all suffering and pain, it leads, in my experience, to a heart and a mind that's aloof, that's disconnected from community, that actually lacks love, and that is not an image after the image and likeness of our Lord. Yeah, yeah, so it's unhelpful in that light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's unhelpful in that light. Yeah, so this picture, then if we want to feel the bliss of putting the new human on, we should know that that means the way is that our life will look like his life.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It will be that the mystery of Golgotha will be my destiny. It will be that the mystery of Golgotha will be my destiny To enter into a human community that betrays me, attacks me, lies about me, slanders me, has malice towards me. If a student is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they crucified me, they will crucify you, and you will go into that crucifixion as a priest offering your life because you love them. This is what he's saying. I'm just trying to put it all together Exactly.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's no small order. No small thing and this is again why it's so important this call this command even to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. I mean this is maybe the core of the seminary training is to gradually grow this seed of finding love for, and the beauty in, and the truth in, and the goodness in Golgotha, mystery of Golgotha, where God is revealed in his fullness, so that we can begin to start to have a chance to love that love him.
Speaker 2:Have a chance to love that Love him, because everything in our old human is going to say no, thank you, no thanks, get out the nuclear weapons and destroy all these horrible people so I can be at peace, exactly, rather than let them destroy me so I can be at peace, offering my life for the life of another. It's just the inversion of everything. It's a new human. It's not like a slightly better version, totally new.
Speaker 3:Totally new, and the old human in us is adverse to it.
Speaker 2:It's actually very often fighting the emergence of this new one.
Speaker 3:So to feel that inner tension also yeah between your old human or or my experience of my, my tyrannical father, who wants to just be respected and obeyed.
Speaker 2:Period right where the goal was actually about you receiving respect.
Speaker 3:It's about me and my reputation in the household.
Speaker 2:Which has consequences. Also, it's important that it's there.
Speaker 3:It has to be there, but the type of authority that I found through my love for the creative gospel still maintains authority, but it's up-building and creative and actually loving to the emerging human that I'm trying to shepherd, and you're now walking around with the wounds of that disrespect.
Speaker 2:It's not like, that's not there, yeah, no, yeah, it's not like that's not there. No, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, just because of time, we have to end. But that I mean, I just I'm very moved by the conversation and by St Paul's genius, Just the way he calls us to put someone on, meditates on what that looks like in our life and then concludes in the picture of then you would reveal his life and you would be a priest, offering your life like he offered his, forgiving others like he forgave us. He is the high priest who made his life his altar. Go do the same. Thank you, Jonah, Thank you, Patrick, ©. Bf-watch TV 2021. © transcript Emily Beynon.