Marriage Is An All In Bet

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So I have a pathway laid out into the future. This book we who wrestle with God concentrates mostly on Old Testament stories. And I finished that with the story of Job, which is an Old Testament story about suffering. And then also an analysis of the Gospels, but that turned out to be a far more complicated venture than I thought it might. And so that's going to be a separate book, which is fine with me. I also, by the way, many of you, some of you, watched, have watched the lectures I did in 2017 on Genesis. And then I followed that up with a seminar with the Daily Wire, which we also put on YouTube courtesy of the Daily Wire on Exodus. And I brought the same people back together who were part of that Exodus seminar. And we did a seminar in Nashville the first week of April on the Gospels. And so that'll be, they're going to have that whipped up in about three months. I think something like that. And so I've done a reasonably, well, I wouldn't say comprehensive analysis of the Gospels. I think, I think, is it John? Is it the Gospel of John that ends with the statement that if all the books that had ever been written have been written about the events in the Gospels, that still wouldn't be enough books to cover the material at hand to tell the story properly. And there's some real truth in that for a variety of very complicated reasons. In any case, I sit backstage before these talks and I review what I've been working on, what I've been writing about, what I've been thinking about because one of the real advantages to this tour, the tour that I've really been on with my wife and some of my family for like six years, really, is that I have an opportunity to think on my feet three or four times a week for 90 minutes or thereabouts. That's really a great, it's a great opportunity, right? It's a, it's a rare opportunity, of course, to have, to have a constantly changing audience of thousands of people. That's amazing enough in itself, but then also to have that opportunity to think through what I'm working on and then present it to see if I can get the idea straight but simultaneously make them comprehensible, right? That's a huge, a huge element of having an audience at hand, you know, if you pay attention, this is a good thing to do. If you're ever going to speak publicly, you don't speak, don't speak to the crowd. That makes everybody nervous. You speak to a crowd. There's a thousand people or three thousand people evaluating you. That's going to make you nervous. Well, that's not the right way to conceptualize it. First of all, it's not about you. That's the first thing to know when you're speaking in public. You should be, you should be serving something when you're speaking in public. You should be serving, well, at least your aim, if your aim is self-aggrandizement, then it's going to make you nervous because then it's about you. There's actually no difference between being self-conscious and being miserable and nervous. One of the things you might derive from that observation the next time you become nervous publicly is whether or not it's about you because if it was about the person you're talking to or if it was about the topic at hand or the higher purpose that you're attempting to serve and you were really concentrating on that, your self-consciousness would vanish and along with it the anxiety and shame that's attendant on that, it's very interesting that we become ashamed when we become self-conscious. Why would that be the case? It's like, well, it's because if it's about you, that's a sin and there's an instinct that signifies that and that's the instinct that makes you blush, right? It's an indication from the deepest reservoirs of your soul or your deepest instincts, if you want to think about it biologically, that you're acting in a manner that doesn't serve the communal interest or your own future because it's about you and it's strangely about you. It's not even about you in the higher sense. It's not about the you that would fit well into a marriage or a family or community or a state or a nation. It's more about the immediately gratified you that's looking for narcissistic self-aggrandisement and that is not the best version of you. That's for sure. Like seriously, it serves no master except your narrow whim and that's part of wrestling with God. So I was backstage today and I was thinking, I usually try to think about a question, right? Because one of the things you want to do if you're thinking, if you're praying, if you're meditating, if you're speaking publicly and deliberating, if you're having a conversation, even that's a deep conversation, is you want to have a question at hand, right? It's like you're trying to investigate something, which is what I'm trying to do when I do these lectures. I'm trying to investigate something. I'm trying to get further in my thinking. That's a form of wrestling as well. And I thought that the question that came to mind tonight as I wrap up my book and near the end of this tour as well is to further my understanding and explication of what it means to wrestle with God. That's the name of the tour. It's the name of the book. It also happens to be the meaning of the word Israel, which signifies the chosen people of God. And I learned that in 2017, it really struck me because we tend to think of the ancient Hebrews or even perhaps the modern Jews as the chosen people of God. But the biblical text is quite clear in its insistence that the word Israel means those who wrestle with God. And the reason that struck me was because I understood, at least to some degree, what that wrestling meant, which is part of what I'm going to talk about tonight. But I also thought it's a very expansive definition of the chosen people because everyone wrestles with God. And you might say, well, I don't believe in God, it's like, well, we're going to get into that tonight because there are no non-belief stances in life. This is a very interesting thing to understand about faith. You're going to have faith in something. It might be nothing. It might be nothing that you have faith in. Well, that makes you like a fractionated nihilist. But even under those conditions, if you are a fractionated and faithless nihilist, let's say, who believes in nothing, it isn't even the case that you believe in nothing. The case is that you then serve the spirit of your own whims, because if you truly believed in nothing, you just perish. And I've had very, very depressed people, let's say, in my clinical practice, who really had abandoned faith in virtually everything, like they were truly suffering from a deep nihilism. And that's fatal. Like if you're a true believer in nothing, and I'm not accusing my depressed clients of being faithless. Depression is a very complicated condition. And it can emerge. It's a pain-conditioned, most fundamentally. And it can emerge for all sorts of reasons, including physical illness. There's many pathways to depression. But the end point of a truly nihilistic depression tends to be either suicide or the wish for non-existence, right? And so the belief in nothing devolves into, like a degenerate hopelessness. And if it doesn't devolve into that, it devolves into something like, well, like the attitude that Dostoevsky's character, Ryszkolnakov, adopts in his famous book, Crime and Punishment. It devolves into something like the belief that if there's no God, everything is permitted, which is a famous line from Dostoevsky in a very astute, a very brilliant criticism of the atheistic presumption. If there's no God, then everything is permitted. And that devolves into something like an immature and impulsive hedonism, right? If there's no higher purpose, why the hell shouldn't you just do whatever the hell you want, with whoever you want, under whatever circumstances, present themselves. If it results in your own pleasure, let's say momentary, though that may be, especially if you can get away with it, if you have some power, why not do that? And that's a, you know, the typical reductionistic atheist, which say, well, that isn't what you do if you were a good person, but the right objection to that is, good by what standard? Exactly. What do you mean by good? And where does that conception come from? And what is it? This rationalistic conception of good that you think rules over people who are somehow sensible enough to be ethical? It's like, that's a very naive view of the world. And if you've ever met any truly bad people, you understand that that argument bounces off them. Like what would you say? It's like shooting, it's like shooting, it's like shooting down at a rhinoceros, it's just, it just has no impact whatsoever. So called, Pete's an Academy. Peter's an Academy. Peter's an Academy. It's called Peter's an Academy. Peter's an Academy. If you want an actual education, we can selected professors from top universities around the world. Bringing the best professors together, making sure they're not censored in any way, giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve. And you are true to your work. You gave me absolute intellectual autonomy. I have had it through every course. We figure we can offer people a high quality, university level education for under 2000 dollars. Congratulations Jordan, it's honestly brilliant. I can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight off to this. Fungio. What does it mean to wrestle with God? Well, that's the question for tonight. Well, the first thing I would propose to you, proposed you a number of things. The first thing I would propose to you for perhaps is that you wrestle in part because you're ignorant and and life is beyond you in its complexity and possibilities. So what do I mean by that? Well, you don't know everything. In fact, there's a lot you don't know. There's a way more that you don't know than you think, even. And that doesn't really, it doesn't really matter who you are, right? I mean, experts are aware of the limitations of their own knowledge in their field of expertise, but they're generally not aware of how limited their knowledge is and feels they're not expert in. And so you can be ignorant about your own ignorance and there's some relief in that, but but that's just an indication of how much you don't know. No, imagine what you know about a military helicopter. You kind of know what one is. You could probably draw one at about the same level of skill as your average four year old, but that's pretty much the sum total of your understanding. And there are things in the world that are a lot more complicated than military helicopters. And so a lot of what you know is pretty damn patchy. And so how do you make your way in the world in the face of all that ignorance? And the answer is you take some walloping risks. You sort of hurl yourself into the unknown, right? And you do that likely armed with something approximating principles. And so and you pay your fee and you take your chances and what that means in some fundamental sense is that you have to confront the world with faith. Okay, so what do I mean by that? I want to be very specific about this. See, in the modern world, when you hear people who are religious or a religious or anti-religious debate, they often start with a disagreement about faith and the atheistic rationalist types accuse the religious of faith in nonsense, right? The faith of a child, the faith that a child might have in Santa Claus, except it's the old man with a beard in the sky, right? That it's faith in superstition, it's faith in the religious description of the world as if it's a scientific theory about the world. But that isn't really what faith means, not in the most fundamental sense. If you have faith in something you commit to it, right? And that means you sort of throw yourself all in in relationship to that. So let's just think about that, how that plays out in your own life. Well, you do that when you get married. Well, obviously, because like, what the hell do you know about your future partner or about what you're going to encounter together, right? You're you're even more ignorant about the person that you fall in love with than you are about yourself. And so that's pretty much an unfathomable ignorance. And especially when you put the two of you together, because you're both mysterious to each other and to yourselves. And then when you put yourself together, that unit is even more mysterious than the sum of its incomprehensible parts. And so how do you manage the marriage? You know, and the answer is, well, it's difficult, it's difficult, it's challenging, but you you manage it with a vow predicated commitment. That's the first thing, right? It's it's you engage in a kind of a mutual beneficial shackling. And and it's a bet and it's a faith predicated bet. And the bet is, I'm going to take my chances with you if you're willing to do the same. And we're both going to presume because what do you have for proof, we're going to presume that we can model through this mess better together than we could apart. Right? And that's a very negative way of putting it. And I don't really want to do that. Well, it's good to be, you know, bloody minded and and and non naïve about such things. I mean, I know there's a huge positive upside. You you fall in love with someone and you want to have them with you and you want to continue your adventure with them. And but I'm thinking more about the times when life is very difficult and the relationship is strained at least in part because of that complexity. You know, you've made an all in bet and you do that in faith. And it's a sacrificial gesture as well. Very and this is something to understand too is that virtually all the important decisions in our life are sacrificial gestures because we give up much of what could be to have something that actually is. And that's what you do in a marriage, right, is that you forego all others. And that's a lot of potential that's no longer at hand, at least potential of a certain type, but you you bargain with faith in faith in the assumption that the possibility that will reveal itself in consequence of the faith-based commitment that you make to your partner is a possibility or potential that's richer in its potential return than what you might gain by investigating, continually investigating all other options, right? But what do you know? You know, did you find the person that was best for you? Well, first of all, that's a foolish quest to begin with because then it's about you. And we already established that that's a mistake, right? It should be about what you can offer to the other person. But you still leap into the abyss with your partner in good faith, right? And it's a good bargain. And all things considered, I don't, you know, if you know this, but I think this is insanely comical. But as comical as the fact that the Babylon be exists, I mean, Christians, satirists, like where the hell did they come from? That's like a complete impossibility. But you know, who has the most sex? This is hilarious. Religious married people, right? So that no one would have guessed that, like in 1968 when all the flower children wrote there, you know, fornicating in the alleys. And so dawn of this sexual revolution will all be free. It's like 30% of Japanese people under the age of 30 are now virgins, right? And we're creeping up on that in all across the West because it turns out that the net consequence of the unbridled hedonism of the sexual revolution is that relationships and sex just disappear, right? So it's very, what a paradoxical realization that is is that if you take sex out of its box, you destroy it. And so no one saw that coming, that's for sure, but it really does, it truly seems to be the case. And, you know, the evidence for that is accruing quite rapidly in all sorts of different dimensions. So you leap into a marriage in faith. And that's a wrestling with faith, you know, and you do that in part because you see, you might say, well, what do you have your, what do you have faith in in relationship to a marriage? And some of it's obviously tradition and community, right? Because if you didn't have faith in tradition, you wouldn't get married. You just live together, living together, by the way, doesn't seem to be a very good solution. Couples who live together before they get married are much more likely to get divorced, not less. Turns out you can't just try someone out like you might like a used car, hopefully not one that's too used, let's say, sorry about that, couldn't resist, couldn't resist. So no, it looks like to establish a relationship with someone given how short life it is and how high the stakes are is that you have to make a commitment. And you actually don't get the relationship without the commitment. And if you try to have the relationship without the commitment, you just destroy the relationship and even the possibility of relationship. And so that's a weird thing because it's sort of suggest that to have the advantage of a marriage, you have to take all the risks up front. And that the evidence, you don't have evidence for that at the beginning, quite the contrary. So you have to leap in while on what basis? Well, you have some faith in tradition because marriage is a traditional arrangement, right? And you might be all annoyed about that and think that marriage is nothing but an extension of the power, mad patriarchy, into the private realm. And who needs a piece of paper anyways, but the evidence suggests that that's not a very productive attitude for you or for your community. You leap in faith and in faith in what? Well, to some degree, faith in tradition, as we already defined it, faith in the religious tradition even because most people who get married in church and the secular replacements for a religious predicated wedding are pretty dismal and dry. And so the religious enterprise itself certainly brings something to bear on the sacrament of marriage, defining it even as a sacrament. And you also have faith in love, right? Which is an interesting thing to have faith in because it can lead you astray, especially if you're a little demented in your vision to begin with. And you have faith in love, and that's an interesting thing to just carry with you. And faith in love is, well, what is that exactly? Is that faith in a deep instinct, obviously, because speaking biologically, again, obviously love is part of the web of instincts that binds us together. But it does more than that, right? It reveals what does it do? Is it reveals the wonder of the other person to you? Because maybe what's best about you, you know, because if someone's foolish enough to fall in love with you, they are attempting to establish a relationship. I would say with what's best in you, that's probably what they see. And that's what makes them fall in love, right? And, you know, you couldn't be a cynic and call that a delusion, but you really have to be a fool to be that cynical because even if you're cynical about that in relationship to a romantic partner, are you cynical like that in relationship to the love you have for your children? I mean, if you're that cynical, well, God help you, like seriously, well, seriously, you know, I mean, you have to be a cynical person indeed to question the intrinsic value of the love that you would feel for a small child, for your own child, for other children, for that matter. And one of the things that really shocked me when we first had little kids was how having them brought out the best in everyone around, you don't even know this till you're a parent and you have a little kid and then you, you know, you're fairing your little kid down the street and even the hardened street alcoholics do their best to smile and, you know, act momentarily like relatively civilized human beings capable of love when they see, you know, a small child who's sort of enticed and entranced by the world and so you have to be very damaged in your soul before that love, that what naturally obtains between adults with any moral orientation left in them at all in children. And so you have faith in love to be married. And what else? Well, you have faith in your partner to what? To wrestle with you, like alongside you with faith and with the possibility and opportunity that the world presents, but then also with you. So the word eve, the Hebrew word for eve is, is easier connect though, something like that. I'm sure I'm mangling the Hebrew. It's very interesting combination of words because it means it has a martial element. So an easier ZER, easy ZER is a military ally and a connect don't mean something like aid or helper or combatant or I think I think a really useful interpretation is something like partner in play and so the idea is that if you have a marriage, you know, you want why partner in play? Imagine that you want to, I don't know, maybe you're playing chess or checkers or one-on-one basketball. I don't really care. You're going to pick an opponent. An opponent in a game is someone to play with, right? They're an opponent. They're competing with you, but they're not exactly a competitor because they're playing the same game, right? And so that's emblematic of deep cooperation to be playing the same game, even if you're both jockeying for position. But you also want, if you have any sense, you want a partner in a game who not one that you can defeat, not one that you can certainly defeat. One that you could conceivably defeat on a relatively equal basis if you were both trying your best and the reason you want that is because if you're playing with someone who pushes you to the limit of your development, then you develop and grow and that's the best sort of victory in a game, right? And so, and that's what you want to marriage, and love likely is an instinct that signifies that as a possibility, right? To a lovely thing to think too, you know? I'm very pleased at the moment in some ways as a scientist thinking about religious matters because I can see a great convergence taking place between the findings of the evolutionary biologists and psychologists, even even the ones that are, let's say, interested in evolutionary biology. I can see a convergence between all that and the deepest of religious notions so that there's a concordance between the calling of what you might describe as the deepest possible instincts and the invitation of the divine, that those things are united, they're not united in the human breast, that the material world stretches upward to the domain of heaven, like a tree stretches upwards and displays its sleeves to the sun, and the heaven reaches down to the material world and invites it upward and there's a joining in the middle, and that's probably human beings, and so you can think about these things biologically, or you can think about them religiously, and I don't think it makes a bit of difference, and I've talked to a lot of very advanced psychobiologists who have come to the same conclusion, and so that's a very interesting thing to see, but with regard to love, let's say, well, obviously you can think about that as the instinct that bonds us together in our pair bonds that can last. for decades, that's sort of the human pattern of reproductive strategy. That's the human reproductive strategy, that long-term high-investment mating strategy that can even span generations, and that's initiated by love. And what that implies is that love is the instinct that marks the pathway forward to, let's say, the optimal challenge that matures and enobles that also sets the stage for the commitment, the long-term commitment that's the right foundation for children, and that also motivates the pattern of parenting and mutual commitment to the marital partners that maximally encourages the development and maturation of children, right? And what that indicates to some degree is that love itself is the instinct that marks that pathway, and you could think about that as well as divine, a form of divine grace. I'll give you an example of that, an example of that, and what would you say, a parallel to that from the Old Testament texts? This is so cool. This is something it's so fun to walk through these ancient stories. I've spent a lot of time studying biblical stories and other accounts from the religions of the world. I'm not an expert in comparative religion, but I've done a fair bit of reading and a fair bit of investigating, and now, and then I crack a story, and it just changes my life. You know, you hit one of these ancient stories and you get to the core of it. It just transforms you when you understand what it means, which is why the stories are religious, right? Because religious stories are deep and deep stories transform us as we act them out and as we understand them. So there's this, there's an account of instinct in the story of Abraham. That's a way to think about it. We're going to think about it in the way that people with their feet on the ground would think about it, right? Telled any of. High flying forays into naive superstitions, so to speak. We're going to keep our feet on the ground. I want to tell you about what happens to Abraham at the beginning of his sojourn into the world. So Abraham is a privileged person when we first encounter him. I mean, that in the modern sense, you know, you and your unearned privilege. We all have that. Well, we all have that to some degree, right? And you can think about that in your country, which is tearing itself apart. Now, with guilt because of this, of course, you have unearned privilege. I mean, you didn't build the bloody highways. Well, some of you might have brought you to the roads in the highways that brought you to this theater. You didn't build the theater. You're not working on the power grid right now, keeping the lights on, but they're on. And, you know, you were privileged to have been born, perhaps, or otherwise, to be citizens of this country, which happens to be free, productive, generous, and hospitable country. And so, isn't that fortunate for you? And, of course, it is. And is it fair? It's like, no. Well, there is a group of psych philosophers following the philosopher Heidegger, a German philosopher who talked about this concept of thrownness, T-H-R-O-W-N, to be thrown into something, that there's an aspect of the world that has this characteristic of thrownness that you're just tossed into the world in this random way, you know, or that's how it appears to us. You happen to luck out on the geographical locale side. And so, you know, you have the privilege of being Americans, and there's a lot worse places. You could have landed geographically and historically. And so, you know, how's that fair? And the answer is, well, it's no more fair or less fair than being young instead of old. Let's say, are being attractive instead of unattractive or being healthy instead of ill. You know, we're being educated and not educated or intelligent and less than intelligent. There's all sorts of arbitrary aspects of life, and they are awarded in a somewhat apparently random manner, talents, and temptations, right, distributed unequally. What are you supposed to do about that? It's like, well, you take responsibility for what you've been given and try to make something of it, and that's how you pay the cosmos for your privilege, right? And that's a good thing to know instead of being guilty about it, right? You're supposed to let your light shine and not hide it under a bushel and you're supposed to take your talents and multiply them. And if you happen to be intelligent, which in many ways is a biologically determined phenomena, let's say, or a gift from God, you're not supposed to become Luciferian in your intellectual presumptions and you're supposed to humbly serve your intelligence. Humbly let the intelligence you've been granted serve the, what would you say, the higher order in the communal, right? And so that's how you pay for your privilege. In any case, Abraham has privilege. He's rich. His parents are rich. He didn't do anything to deserve that, and he doesn't really have to do anything. And he doesn't. For like 70, for seven decades, he's slow to launch, right? Seriously. And why? Well, you might ask, look, if you have everything given to you, why do anything? You know, if you're in the position of permanently satiated infant and everyone, there's people hired to attend to your every need, because we all know we'd be perfectly happy if all of our needs were satisfied, or at least that's the materialist theory. If you have all that at hand, why not just lay there like an overgrown infant and enjoy it? And that's actually a serious question, right? I mean, there are political offerings of that type. The offerings of the status utopians are always something like, wouldn't it be lovely if you were nothing but an overgrown infant? And everything was given to you right from the time you were born till the time you died. You'd have nothing at all to worry about. And of course, nothing at all to do, which turns out to be the fly in the ointment, let's say, or the serpent in the garden. And this is actually what Abraham realizes. It's like, what's this life? This is life is just the satiation of my infantile needs at the hands of other people. Is that what I'm built for? And God comes to Abraham as instinct or voice from above and says, it's really time for you to get the hell out of your zone of comfort and to make your way in the world. And that's a patriarchal voice. It's a fatherly voice. Why? Well, because it's actually an encouraging voice, right? I mean, you see this in your interactions with your children if you were fortunate enough to have good parents or good mentors because they said to you constantly, you know, just don't be sitting around there being all satisfied with whatever fate has provided for you or what you're lucky enough to enjoy. It's like, get out on the edge a bit, dance there and make something to yourself, push yourself, develop a good parent. And this is the paternal aspect of parenting in particular. A good parent wants not a child who's protected and wrapped in styrofoam or bubble wrap so they're never damaged by life, but someone who's capable of enough to journey outside the confines of the domestic world and to make their way successfully, right? And that's means that a good father raises his children not so much to be terrified of and avoid serpents, but to handle them, right? And that's a higher order good than mere protection. And that's what, right, that's something to know, you know, this is why, by the way, that Abraham is eventually called upon to offer his son to God. And this is a brutal episode in the Old Testament and one that's often pointed to by people say like Richard Dawkins or other atheists who are angry at God as indications that the Jehovah of the Old Testament is nothing but an absolutely bloodthirsty tyrant. It's like, well, who else would call upon his devout follower to sacrifice his own son to God? The answer is, well, that's what parents do all the time if they're genuine parents because you, I saw the piety, this great sculpture of Michelangelo's in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome and it's a representation of Mary, beautiful representation of the mother of Jesus and she is holding the broken body of her son post crucifixion in her arms and looking suitably distraught but also accepting in a kind of, in a, what would you say in a beatific way? And it's very interesting that it's placed in St. Peter's which is the central cathedral of Catholicism, let's say an arguably of Christianity itself. And it's, what would you say it's a representation that runs parallel to the crucifixion itself, because it isn't obvious who suffers more in the gospel accounts, Christ or his mother who observes his death, and we all know that in our own lives that there are terrible things that befall us as individuals, but perhaps nothing more terrible than the decimation of one of our own children, right? That's a very intense form of suffering, and yet Mary is presented as the woman who offers her child up to be broken by the world, right, and that's an offering, that's an offering to God, and what happens in the story of Abraham, when God calls upon Abraham to sacrifice the long-promised Isaac, is that there's a substitutionary sacrifice arranged to Abraham actually gets his son back, and what that means is that if you let your children go, they will return to you, right? If you encourage them to develop and leave, then you'll have them. If you give them up, then you maintain them, and that's a hell of a thing to understand, and the, what would you say, the impetus of that story is the realization that everything that you offer up will be returned to you with interest, right, and that's a remarkable thing to understand, and that's true, even in the situations that require the most extreme sacrifices, right? And so certainly the sacrifice you make as a parent is exactly that, because the Sproidians do this, the Freudian line, this was the antithesis of the Edible Devouring Mother. The good mother necessarily fails. Well why? Well, because she stops offering her child everything and starts requiring them to forage for themselves, right, and that's a painful process in some ways, that separation of mother from in the infant to whom she delivers everything, the transformation of that infant into increasingly into a self, what would you say, into the kind of maturing creature that can be productive in themselves and establish joint productive relationships with others, that's a sacrificial offering, that's the work of a mother, and that's the voice of the mother, that's the eternal voice of encouragement, that's the eternal voice of the father who encourages it, that's the voice that comes to Abraham and says to him, leave what's comfortable and make your way in the world. Now, you see, this is a good place to reflect on what belief constitutes or even faith, it's like you might say, well, what is the proper attitude to that voice? Do you have faith in it? Well, the problem is, is you've got faith both ways, you either have faith in the voice that calls you to adventure or you have faith in your infantile security, there's no non-faith choice in this situation, right, and Abraham harkens to the voice of adventure, even late. This is also a very optimistic story, it's like, takes him a long time to get going, and I had clients in my practice, for example, who, you know, were maybe in their early 40s, and really they hadn't got much happening, and they were starting to despair because you're sort of young at 40, but you're also sort of old, and which of those has the upper hand is not exactly obvious, and you might think having wasted 20 years, let's say, or 30 or even 40, that it's a little late to get anything going, but, you know, better late than never, and I'm dead serious about that, like if you put your nose to the grindstone and your shoulder to the wheel and you determine to aim upward and you make the proper sacrifices, you can have the same consequence that befell Abraham, and you can embark, however late, on the adventure of your life, and this is something to know at every age, you know, I watch people to transition into their 50s, mid 50s, let's say, when people are starting to retire, it's like, you make a choice when you're 55, it's like, is there more to you, are you just going to die? And that's sort of the retirement question, you know, I'm going to pull back from life and just, what, slurp my ties on the beach in the south Pacific, with all the other fat, pasty, sunburned drunks, what would you say, a plan that works for about three days, and that's that, it's like it's not a good vision, and so you need to know that no matter what your age, as long as there's breath in you, there's room for another adventure, and it's time to leave your zone of comfort, and that's the way you don't just stop and die, seriously. So Abraham decides to have faith in, well, in what? Well, in the story, it's the voice of God. Well, that's interesting. It's like, what is that voice? Well, I said, you could think about it as the instinct to develop, right? That's a funny way of thinking about God as a deep instinct, but that doesn't bother me. I think everything unites in the final analysis, and what makes itself manifest within us at the deepest level of biological reality is indistinguishable from the highest calling, and of course, that has to be the case of everything is actually a manifestation of an underlying unity, and in any case, that's how God is characterized in the story of Abraham. You understand? That's the definition of God. It's such an end, because modern people, of course, especially the ones who are, it doesn't matter, religious or faithless, it doesn't matter. They're always looking for evidence of God. It's like, well, what's your evidence that you know anything about evidence? Right? I mean, you have to examine your initial presuppositions. It's like, how do you think what makes you think you're wise enough to actually identify where God makes His miracles evident? Do you ever think about God as the impulse to love, for example? Like God could be making Himself manifest before you in multiple ways without you ever noticing. You all think, well, if there was just one miracle or two or three or five, in front of me, I'd be, I'd be a believer at no time flat. It didn't work for the disciples, by the way, it didn't work for Peter, because he denied Christ, despite having been with Him for like three years, and seeing what was going on is don't be thinking that you're wise enough. So a mere demonstration of the divine willingness to suspend the rules of the cosmic order just to convince you would actually do the trick in the face of all the miracles that are continually unfolding around you that you're too bloody blind to see in the first case. And this notion in the story of Abraham that God is the call to adventure is a great example of that, because it's such a brilliant idea. Right? And what, what you do see this dynamism in the Old Testament is often a dynamism between God as calling that which invites you forward to, let's say, the adventure of your life and God as conscience. Right? Those are the twin pillars. You might say of God that lead the Israelites when they're lost across the desert. It's like your conscience upgrades you and keeps you on the straight narrow path. And the calling of your life invites you forward to climb Jacob's ladder into the ever-receding heaven's right that constitute your upward aim. That's God, that dynamism. It's like, is that real? Try ignoring it. I'm dead serious. Ignore your calling, your hopeless. Ignore your conscience, you're a psychopath. It's seriously, it is not a good thing. And so is that real? Well, it's as real as hopelessness and psychopathy. It's as real as despair. And what would you say the furthest reaches of criminal hell? That's real. Is that real enough? Is that evidence enough? Well, here's a positive form of evidence. This is so cool. I don't even figure this out in about the last three months analyzing this Abrahamic story. So you see in the biblical library, because it is a library, what you see are the same thing that you see at a movie when you go watch the hero develop in a movie. You see the main character good or bad doesn't matter because it points in the moral direction either way. You see the main character pursuing his aims. You see him characterized in a variety of different situations. You come to understand his character and you establish a relationship with it. That's the literary experience. And that's exactly what unfolds in the biblical stories as you have multiple characterizations of God. It's like the ignorant, we ignorant people are getting a glimpse of something complex and multifaceted from multiple perspectives and trying to assemble all that into a singular vision. That's the monotheistic vision to understand what it is that sits in that sits properly in the highest place. And you might say, well, nothing sits in the highest place. And then I would say, well, why do you bother with anything? Then if there's no up, if there isn't anything calling you forward, if you don't believe in anything, past where you are, well, then you're back in the same situation of infantile satiation. It's, well, there's nothing for you to do. And so in so far as you do have an upward [BLANK_AUDIO] at all, you're aiming up, and unless you think that you're capable of apprehending the ultimate in upward aims, that up that compels you is just a fragment of what would you say? That which calls you forward into the heavens themselves. And that's real as motivation. Right? And motivation is plenty real because without that you do nothing. And so the reason to do something, that's almost like the definition of what's real. Right? A reason to do something, that's real. It's real enough to make you do something. It's like, I don't know, you want a better definition of real death maybe is better. But you know, a reason to do something is one of the tools you have in your fight against the fear of death. And so even in that situation, it's plenty real. So God calls, God is defined as the voice of that which calls human beings upward. And that's a hell of a definition. Right? And it is what you encourage in your children. There's no doubt about that. If you love them, absolutely, it's what you encourage in people around you that you love, whether they're friends or family, when you're mentoring, when you're happy for their accomplishments, right? When you, when you have sorrow for their, their stumbling off the path, all of that's a manifestation of your faith, your belief, and exactly that. And God is further characterized in the Abrahamic story as the maker of a covenant, right? Some, someone or something with which you have a relationship. And that's there's an insistence of on that in the biblical text that's continual to have a relationship. What does that mean exactly? The relationship is a covenant. That's how it's defined. And what's a covenant? A covenant is like a contract. Okay, let's ask a question. Do you believe that you have a contract with the divine, a covenant with the divine, with the ideas of relationship that are attendant upon that? Here's a way of thinking about it. Can an able, who are the first two people, real people, in the profane world, out of it even being made by God, can an able being born in the normal manner when history begins? They're emblematic of two different patterns of existence. Cane makes improper and second rate sacrifices and able offers his best and is therefore met with respect by God. What does it mean to make the proper sacrifices and why is that associated with relationship or covenant, let's say, or contract? Okay. To explain this, I'm going to offer you another key to the biblical text. Okay, so one of the tools that you need to know to understand the essence of the biblical text is that work and sacrifice are the same thing. Okay, because it's very difficult for modern people to actually understand what our ancestors were on about when they talked about the necessity of sacrifice, the building of an altar, the offering of what's best. It was an acting out of the notion of something like the essence of work. What's the essence of work? Bring your best to the table, right? But in a particular way, what does it mean to work? It means to sacrifice the present for the future, right? And I want you to consider that very, very carefully. That's what it means. If you're working, you're not doing what it is that your whims would have you do right this moment, right? Or even even the spirit of play within you, you're not doing what you want, you're doing what you have to do, have to do for what? Well, you're making a bargain. Well, what's the bargain? Work now, benefit your family and your community and stabilize the future, right? That's thought. This is the human mode of existence, work and sacrifice. This is unique to human beings. This is what we do is we extend our consciousness across the entire span of time, at least for the duration of our lives. And we say, don't do something stupid today that's going to screw up next week, right? Or next year or next month. Invest now so that there's a future return. Well, that's a contractual relationship, right? There's an offer there, which is if you tread the mature path and make the offerings that are of the highest quality, then, then what? You're guaranteed a pathway forward in the manner that benefits the community and stabilizes the future. Is that a bargain? Is that a covenant? Is that an agreement? Well, what do you think you're doing when you're saving or you're investing, right? That's a contractual relationship. There's a relationship. There's a relational element built into our mode of adaptation. And you could say, well, you're really only drawing a contract with your future self and the broader community, storing the value that you've created in the social world, in the form of money, let's say, or actual investment. The relationship is actually with other people or your future self. But, you know, that to me, that just muddies the water because you and your future self are a reflection of the fundamental order of existence. And so is the harmony that a community that will deliver on its promise. And so the notion that the relationship is only social ignores the fact that the society that functions in a manner that enables it to sustain that contractual obligation, right? Your investment in the future. That has to reflect an underlying fundamental order or it'll collapse. And so it's relation with the spirit of the cosmic order, no matter what bloody way you slice it as far as I can tell. And it says, real as your belief in work. So Abraham establishes a covenantal relationship with the upward aim. Okay, so how's that signified? This is something you can understand in your own life too. You know, bloody well that the moments of true transformation in your life come when you consciously determine to aim up or down. You know, let's go for down first. I don't know, you're gripped by the spirit of bitter resentment. And you decide in consequence to wreak vengeance and to wreak have all can take vengeance and act out your darkest desires. Knowing full well that you've committed to following a very dark spirit at that moment. You can do that, but you can take the alternative route too. And this is more the upward path, the pathway towards maturation. And I would say proper adventure. You can decide enough stupidity. I'm going to try to be better. What does that mean? Well, it means that in so far as you're capable with your obscured vision, you're going to aim up. Now, is your upward aim unhearing and accurate? No. Why? Well, because what the hell do you know? Plus, think of all the mistakes you've made. So you're blind and foolish in your initial forays upward. But that doesn't mean that the determination is false or that it will steer you wrong. And you see this repeatedly in the Old Testament accounts because the heroes in the Old Testament are very flawed. So Jacob, for example, he's a complete, he's a terrible young man. He he does nothing but conspire with his enabling mother to trick and deceive his older brother out of what's rightfully his. That's Jacob. But Abraham, as we already said, it's like he's 70 before he gets up enough courage to step outside the tent. And then the first second thing he does is lie to the Egyptian authorities about who his wife is. It's not exactly covering himself in glory. Why? Well, we're all fools when we start, but that doesn't mean that the upward aim is false. It just means that we improve as we develop. And as we make the proper sacrifices, what does that mean? Well, when you're no longer a child, you put away childish things. It means, and you know this, as your opportunities expand, you're called upon to leave the idiocies of your past behind and to become, to become what? Who you could be, to become more truly who you are, what to align yourself with the voice of adventure in the cosmic order itself, right? And to engage in this never-ending series of progressives, progressive transformations that help you strip all the deadwood away from you and that constitute the never-ending series of mountains and valleys that you climb on your way to the top of Mount Sinai, let's say, to the ultimate pinnacle, right? That's the adventure that Abraham is invited to embark upon and it doesn't really matter where he starts. And that harkens back to the notion, well, he's 70 when he starts and you're going to be flawed when you, if you decide to aim up, but you know, people do this in their life. They take stock at some point or maybe sequentially and think, well, there's a lot of foolish things I'm still doing that I could stop. There's some upward aim that I could manage. Even in my blindness, I can see that this is better than this. And I could pursue what's better. You don't have to, but you could. And you could see that and your ability to see that's your offering to the divine. That's your invitation to the spirit of adventure to guide you forward more thoroughly. And that's an accelerating path, too. You know, Christ says something brilliant, surprisingly enough. In the gospel of Matthew, you know, to those who have much more will be given. What does that mean? It means that once you start improving, it's an exponentially increasing process. And so you can start in a pretty bloody, lowly place like Christ Himself does in the manger. Or Moses, for example, when He's threatened at birth by the Pharaoh. You could start in a very precarious and lowly place. And that's no necessary impediment to your progress forward. And that's a hell of an optimistic thing to understand that there might be enough possibility at hand for you, no matter what your apparent situation, so that the potential for continual upward transformation is at your fingertips if you knock, you know, and let the door open. And if you ask and enable yourself to receive, that's a real possibility. And it's, it's the realest of possibilities. I believe it's why you're not to construe yourself as a helpless victim. It's like you don't know it, but everything you need is right in front of you. If you would only approach it with the proper aim in mind, and that would be the aim that's the ultimate upward aim. So this is what God tells Abraham. It's so cool. You can imagine this again as a hard-headed biologist. So imagine that there's an instinct within children to mature. You don't really have to imagine that. It's like they're curious, they're exploratory. You know, that more extroverted kids, even when they're three, my son was quite extroverted, fearless when he was young. We'd take him to the playground and putting him on the ground at the playground was like holding a puppy above a puddle, you know, a puppy will start paddling before it even hits the water. That was Julian. His feet would be moving before he hit the ground and we'd put him down and just be gone out there into the playground to investigate and to make friends, you know, and often to get him to leave, we'd have to walk like a quarter of a mile away so that the threat of being left behind was sufficient to disengage him from the interesting exploration at hand. And that's all part of the manifestation of that impulse to grow, right? And what is that? That impulse to follow what compels you forward to pursue your interests, to abide by the dictates of your conscience, it's all something like that. Then imagine that that is the instinct, again, to speak biologically that motivates you to stay on the, at the edge of what you understand so that you can continue to develop in the manner that, what, would fit you most properly if you were all in on the bed, right, could be, right? Now, so why would we assume anything other than that the instinct that impels you to develop is also the instinct that would guide you in your attempts to wrestle with fate and God itself, himself, to take your proper place in the world. You'd have to propose a mismatch between your psychobiology or your soul and the environment itself for that not to be true, right? And so what is God offer, Abraham? It's the best of all possible covenants, the best of all possible deals, and it speaks of an alignment between the divine order or the most fundamental instinct and, well, and everything and the integrity of the individual psyche, the stability and productivity of the community and the harmony of the natural world, all that. What is God offer Abraham? He says, "If you take the risk, if you step out of your zone of comfort, if you move into the terrible world away from the comforts of your infantile security, then you'll be a blessing to yourself." Well that's a good deal, you know, are you a blessing to yourself, to a rare person who can say that, you know, most of us narcissists accepted are harder on ourselves emotionally and in judgment than we are another people, right? Then we are with regard to other people. There are people who judge others more harshly than themselves, but they're not the standard person. The standard person, firmly aware of their insufficiencies and false, has a very difficult time being a blessing to themselves, right? That's a hard thing to pull off and I don't mean to be self-satisfied in self-aggrandizing. I mean to what would you say? To sleep the sound sleep of the man or woman whose conscience is at rest, right? And who are fulfilling their moral obligations to their future selves and to the community? That's to be a blessing to yourself. That's a good deal if you could pull it off and God's offered Abraham is if he follows the call to adventure without reservation and makes the proper sacrifices along the way, then that's the mode of existence that will come to characterize his being, right? And there's some evidence for this as people mature as they become older, they become more emotionally stable, so less neurotic, less prone to pain and anxiety. They become more compassionate and empathic or at least broader in their ability to do that, and they become more conscientious, more reliable and dutiful. There is an expansion of character that is a measurable part of maturation and I certainly noticed on my sporadic trips home to my hometown when I encounter people that I knew in high school, you know, when I encountered them five years later, 10 years later, 20 or 30 or now, 40 years later, 45 years later, they're much better than they were in high school. Many of them were completely insufferable as I was no doubt in high school. And as adults, they've had some sense beaten into them, let's say. And so, they're more who they should be. You know, it doesn't happen to everyone, but it's the standard course of human development, certainly what you hope for yourself and for the people that you love, it's what you want to foster in your marriage and within the confines of your family, and that's real. You want people who are around you that are reliable and trustworthy, and maybe you want to be one of those people yourself, and that would be part of being a blessing to yourself, and what God tells Abraham is that that's the same as following the spirit of adventure. God, that's such a great deal, right? If your wildest dream, let's say, a true dream, let's say, though one that would be made by someone who was sensible with their eyes open and reliable, if you could follow your heart's content, let's say, in the highest sense, that that would actually produce for you, the mode of being that would make you a blessing to yourself. God, that's a great deal, right? You could have your cake and eat it too in a situation like that, and why would it be otherwise, and that isn't the offer, that's only a bit of the offer, because God tells Abraham, if you follow the pathway of adventure, then the adventure that calls to you in the deepest sense, then your name will, your reputation will validly grow. Well, that's a good deal. You know, you store value in your reputation socially, right? It's the most reliable place to put your investment is to act in a manner that makes all the people who know you regard you as trustworthy and reliable and honest and fair dealing, and they're in a crisis, not least because if you are that person, and you are in a crisis, the people that you've acted properly towards are going to be thrilled to have the opportunity to reciprocate, right? And that's the basis of community. You put some work into aiding others, maybe even your enemies, if you could even manage that. You put some work into sacrificing yourself and your whims in a manner that's evade to the community, and then you build around you this storehouse of reputation that is the most reliable form of wealth and security imaginable, right? And so that's the next offering to Abraham. Follow the pathway of adventure, become a blessing to yourself in a manner that will establish your relationship far and wide and validly, not narcissistically, not in a way that makes you aggrandize yourself or advertise yourself, but in that reputational manner that makes everyone in a small town know exactly which carpenter to call, let's say if they actually want the job done, right? Which is, that's the brand, you might say, brand value that's the central core treasure of any genuine enterprise, right? So that's the next thing that's on offer. So that's a good deal. You get to have your adventure, you get to be a blessing to yourself and your reputation grows and validly. Hey, and that's great because part of of our orientation towards community is our hope that we'll be celebrated validly by the people around us. And that can go astray like all motivations and potential gifts, but there's nothing wrong with, what would you say? Enjoying the reciprocal benefits that come as a consequence of your selfless commitment to your wife, to your family, to your friends, to your business, and to your community. That's a good deal for everyone. And that's the next thing that's on offer. God says to Abraham, you'll be a blessing to yourself in your adventurous way, and you'll establish your reputation, but you'll do it in a way that's also of benefit to everyone else. That's a non-zero sum attitude, right? It's an anti-envy attitude, and the attitude is something like a new people in the United States. You've mastered this more than any people ever anywhere. This relative absence of envy, this admiration for success that really does deeply characterize your country, except in its most vial excesses, let's say, I've never been anywhere in the world, and I've been plenty of places where the dream, the American dream is still part and parcel of the culture, and still truly something that all those who are not corrupted, still dare to dream, and make no mistake about it. The reason that you have life more abundant in the United States, the reason that you're a destination place for the impoverished of the world is because of the reality of that dream, right? And that is the dream that you could have what you want, and maybe even beyond your wildest dreams. And if you did that properly, all that would happen is you'd increase the resources that were available to everyone else. And if you don't believe that's possible, well, then you're likely a resentful and bitter cynic who's trying to justify their own pathological failure in consequence of their refusal to offer what's best in their rejection by God, right? Not a wonderful pathway to walk down and one that if gets the upper hand impoverishes absolutely everyone, right? That's happened many times in the 20th century when the resentful mob gets the upper hand, and then everyone's equal. They're all equally miserable in starving, right? They're all equally in the cauldrons of the devils in hell, right? There's a very, what would you say? Relevant equality there, right? The equality of the descendants of Cain, right? So that's not the last of the offerings to Abraham either. God says, well, if you follow the pathway of adventure, you'll be a blessing to yourself. You'll establish a valid reputation, right? That's the treasure in heaven that moths can't eat and rust can't devour, by the way, right? That's where you put your heart so that your treasure accumulates in heaven, so to speak, by undertaking the appropriate ethical actions. And that's the truth, there's no doubt about it. It's a very wise truth. You'll be a blessing to yourself, your reputation will grow, you'll be a blessing to others, but then there's a final offer, which is so phenomenal. You know, I've been contemplating Richard Dawkins, selfish gene hypothesis, you know, that were driven to reproduce, were driven by the mindless impulse of our genetic code to do nothing, but have sex and reproduce. It's like, wait a second there, buddy, there's a lot more to human reproduction than sex. The mosquitoes have sex and that's pretty much it. Millions of eggs, just like fish or puff balls, right? No investment whatsoever, millions of offspring, all of them die except one or two, right? Zero investment, high mortality rate, that's one reproductive strategy. That's not the human strategy. The human strategy is pair bonding, sacrificial pair bonding, few offspring in radically high investment, right? So that's reproduction, not the simple act of sex. It's this pattern, this ethos of long term multi-generational sacrificial care that also typifies, let's say, the man who embarks on the pathway of adventure properly and properly matures, right? So what has gone off Abraham? The opportunity to be the father of a dynasty, right? To have the descendants who are innumerable, so at least the possibility of establishing something lasting and permanent, but a particular kind of lasting and permanent, which would be something like, well, some of you have had the privilege of having a wonderful father, and maybe you had friends who weren't similarly blessed, and you could see what a gift it was to have a father who encouraged and cared, and provided that for you as a model so that you could be that, and maybe improve upon it to some degree for your son, so that he could be that for his son and so on, for how long, how about forever if the pattern was established properly? And that would be the pattern that according to the covenant with the God of Abraham is the logical consequence of faith in the calling to adventure. And so that is one hell of a good deal, and I do think thinking about it in as hard-nosed manner as possible that that has to be the case, because as I said, the alternative is that we're somehow mismatched in our fundamental orientation with the structure of ourselves, and our marriages, our families, our communities, society itself and the natural world. It's like, no, maybe we're at our deepest essence, part of what would you say? We could be part of the process of unfolding personally that brought harmony to everything, so that everything was lined up along the proper stabilizing axis that reaches from birth to heaven, so that we could allow ourselves to journey out beyond our zone of comfort into the world and to make this sacrifice as attendant on our continued uphill adventures, moving ever closer to what would you say? The perfection that beckons behind all those opportunities to call us forward, right? That we could do that and do it in the manner that makes our lives everything we'd hope they would be, 'cause that's something to think about. Maybe death would lose its sting if you lived your life completely. That's a possibility if you exhausted yourself entirely in your upward aiming transformations, right? Maybe you would have everything beyond that infantile association. You'd have everything that you could need and want and wish for, you could have the adventure of your life, and maybe that would redeem you and maybe it would redeem the people around you. In the broadest possible sense, I mean, that's the fundamental calling, that's the hypothesis that sits at the basis of your culture, right, your functional culture, what's the presumption of your functional culture? You're all made in the image of God. And even the state itself has to stop it's, what would you say? Even the state itself has to limit itself in relationship to what you have to offer because without your capacity to sojourn forward and upward, the state itself would degenerate into a tyranny and grind to a halt, right? And you all know that, right? That's part of the essence of the American dream and you can see what the consequences of that are. When it's working, the consequences are a rising tide, the rising tide that raises all ships, right? And in so far as that's worked, and you've brought the benefits you and the rest of the west, let's say, have brought the benefits of the free trade that's often pilloried as capitalism to the rest of the world. We've seen an unparalleled improvement in living standard in the last since the Berlin Wall fell in a manner that's absolutely miraculous. And that's another indication of the power of the ethos upon which the productive community is actually properly established. And the story of Abraham indicates that that ethos is a consequence of following the call of adventure. And so what a bloody good deal that is. And so is that something you believe? It's like, well, like I said, you're gonna believe one thing or another. Why not stake yourself on that? You know, what have you got to lose exactly? You're gonna die anyways. I'm dead serious about that, right? Like you've got everything on the table as it is, right? Like it or not. So maybe you could bet on the highest possible stakes. You know, and maybe if you had the faith to do that, which is a form of commitment, right? A form of daring, not a form of superstitious idiocy. It's like maybe the rewards of that would be heavenly, right? That's the offer. And I tell you, the more I look into this, the more I just think, yeah, well, that's right to the point of absolute self-evidence and everyone knows it. And I think you all know it in the bottom of your hearts or maybe even closer to you than that because you wouldn't be here tonight listening to whatever the hell this is. You wouldn't be motivated to do it. And you know perfectly well that there's something to be said, man, for the upward aim. And God only knows what you're trying to make contact with when you do that. And why should you think any less of yourself than to presume that you're a reflection of the structure of reality itself, because you're real after all, and here you are. And so you're a foreigner in a land that's beyond you, or you an inhabitant of the eternal Garden of Eden, if you only knew it. It seems to me very much probable that the latter is the case. And I would also say that it's your best bet, man, to conduct yourself as if that's the case. And so that's certainly what your wife wants from you, or your husband wants from you, or what everyone, anyone who's ever loved you wants from you, it's certainly what you want from everyone you meet, and you're constantly disappointed when you don't get it. And that's the longing of the soul for what, to meet the, the longing of the soul to establish the relationship with what's most truly real, right? And that's the person who acts out the pattern of self-sacrifice that integrates them, matures them, stabilizes the community, is a benefit to the natural order, and that serves what the spirit that engendered the cosmos, right? That's all part of wrestling with God, right? Thank you very much, everyone. All right. So I'll ask invite Michaela to come back out on the stage and she'll curate the questions that you so kindly asked, and maybe she'll have one or two of her own, and we'll do that for a reasonable amount of time, and we'll get through a reasonable number of questions hopefully, and away we go. You nailed that ending. Thank you, dear, that's always fun. Yeah, well, that was great. Yeah, so it's, it's like a joke, you know, in a way to do a talk like that, because if you're, if you're fortunate and you can be taken up by the situation and the place and you can specify your aim, then you can conduct the flow in a manner that brings it to a punchline, and it's such fun when that happens, you know, and it can happen if you pay enough attention, and I think if you were practicing that sort of thing all the time, that every microadventure that laid itself out in front of you would have that structure, right? Is that you would throw yourself into it completely. You'd pay enough attention to establish a harmony between yourself and what was unfolding, and you'd bring it to, what would you say? You'd hit the, you'd hit the target in the middle. You'd bring the adventure to its proper denouement, and, and that every day would be a sequence of harmonious occurrences of that sort in a continual spiraling upward. You could have that, right? If, if you sacrificed everything to it, that's the, that's the rub, but I think it's the case. It looks like it's the case. So, are you ready? Okay, some of these questions, some of these questions were, were decent. Can you imagine having dinner with dad as a kid and just learning how to listen really well? Okay, this is a good one. So, it's, how would you suggest a wife, but we could just say, how, how would you suggest anybody? A wife or husband, open a difficult conversation with their significant other who grew up in a household where all conversations were attacks rather than discussions. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. Yeah, well, first of all, okay, so the first thing I would say that the person who asked that question is that that's not rare, you know, like people, we are not taught well to negotiate, we're really, we're, there's virtually no emphasis whatsoever on that in our education system, for example, you know, and we don't even know generally what negotiate means. The proper negotiation ends with you being thrilled with what's on the table and me being thrilled to, right? And that's a, because you know, you, you can think about negotiation as compromise and you can think about that in the confines of a marriage, but compromise is, what would you say, compromise, compromise beats having your hands around each other's throats, which is, you know, a common situation in families, but it's nowhere near as good as playful negotiation towards an optimized agreement. And you can actually have that. And so let's see if we can make that concrete. Okay, so what are the preconditions for negotiation? Helps if you know what you want, right? So, so here's a way to stime me a conversation. Your partner, you're complaining about something and maybe you have your reasons and your partner says, what do you want? You know, and they say that with a bit of an edge, so that puts you on your heels and you say, well, if you love me, you'd know what I wanted. It's like really, don't even know what you want. You know, like I don't even know what I want. How the hell am I going to know what you want? Especially if you can't figure it out yourself. And so one of the things that's very useful when you start a difficult conversation with your partner is to figure out and maybe even let them know what you would accept as a successful conclusion. And if you don't know that, it's like, well, either you should go away, you should shut up and go away and think about it, or you should let your partner know that you don't know and that you need to sort of explore what a potentially positive outcome might look like, you know, because sometimes that's obviously grounds for discussion too. You've got to set some rules. So, what would the rules be? The purpose of this discussion is to make things better for you in a way that you would regard as better and for me in a way that I would regard as better and in a manner that's better for us as a couple. Okay, so that's a pretty good opening-selfal, right? It's like there's something in it for you. We're not going to quit until you're happy, okay? And likewise with the other person, you're not going to quit till they're happy. That's the goal. Now, you may have to come up with an awkward compromise now, and then that happens when neither of you can think of a better solution than the one that's at hand. And so, you know, sometimes you're in a situation like that, but there's no reason not to aim up. And you can do that even in the simplest things. I'll give you an example of that. It's kind of a trivial example, but that's kind of what makes it perfect. So imagine that you're trying to imagine what it would be like to have a good marriage and family life. Okay, but we're going to make this very concrete. We're not going to disappear into some abstract world. So imagine that you're awake and functional for about 16 hours a day. And then let's assume that you spend like 10 of those hours around your family. Okay, so we're looking at a 10-hour day. So that's 600 minutes. Okay, so now imagine that that 10-hour day repeats in many ways day after day. Those would be the sort of routines of your life. You know, you get up, you prepare for the day, you have breakfast, you go off to work, you come home after work, you re-enter your household, you do whatever you do between that. And dinner time you have dinner, you maybe have kids, you have a routine with your kids, writing that repeats. Okay, so imagine that 10 things make up that repetition or 20, you know, that make up that repeating pattern. So each of those things is 5% of your life. So then imagine that you got all those things right. You're just those 20 things that repeat every day. Okay, so what would right mean? Well, that's where you have the negotiation. It's like, okay, so imagine you come home from work or I don't care, your wife comes home for work or whatever and you think, well, if I could come home from work and that worked, what would that look like? Yeah, go to ask yourself, this is a form of prayer. It's a request for a revelation. If I could come home optimally by my own definition, what would that look like? It's like, well, I'm often hungry and angry because I'm hungry. So probably I need something to eat. Okay, so how could I arrange that? Well, my way for my husband could have something to eat ready, or we could buy groceries so that there were sandwiches and we could just have that in the fridge and I could have 10 minutes on the front porch to eat something so I'm not a complete wolf-like monster when I trump into the house. And then maybe I need a rest or something to drink or just unwind in front of the television by myself for half an hour or I don't know what the hell you need. You hypothetically know what you need but you probably need something and so you could figure out what that was you know and maybe that occupies half an hour of every day and that's one-twenty of your life right and so you could get twenty things like that right and well that that'd be good you could do that with your kids bedtime you could do that with like we had a rule at our dinner table which was act like you're happy that your mother bothered to feed you something well why well because maybe she won't serve it with hatred and contempt right and maybe she'll put some effort into it and maybe she'll like you and since you depend on her to be light and loved and fed you might want to be nice to her and show some gratitude and then that's a lovely thing for everyone you get to have some food that isn't poisonous in attitude or delivery and your mother likes you and she's pleased because of your gratitude to be of service to you that's a good deal and so how do you establish that negotiating territory well you have to have a discussion with your partner and you say well look what what's the purpose of us talking like we're gonna have to we're gonna have problems because life is full of problems and we're gonna try to talk about them because then maybe we can solve them but the goal of the talking is the solution to the problem not it's your fault or your fault you could be thinking about how it's your fault and your wife could be thinking about how it's her fault and you could trade self-accusations that's a good way of taking a lot of the tension out of an argument it's like how are you stupid you could probably think up 10 reasons no problem and you know that's a good offering to your partner here's what I think I might be doing that's not quite up to scratch you know and and maybe I could improve that a bit and it's that mutual offering and if you you have to have case of that means you have to have trust each other and you might say well I have difficulty with trust you know because I come from a family where there was damn little of it and I would say trust is a form of courage when you're not naive right this is something to understand is that well why do you trust well it's not because you're a fool especially if you've been burned a couple of times it's because you're willing to what put your heart on the line courageously and you want to do that with your partnering marriage in particular because if you don't offer that trust what are you going to do you're going to guard yourself for like 50 years you're not going to let the other person in you're not going to have anybody who loves you then you're not going to solve any problems that's not a good way to act and of course she's going to fail he's going to fail they're going to betray you in small ways and sometimes larger ways from time to time but that doesn't alleviate you of the moral responsibility to have the courage to trust that doesn't mean you should be a fool and you know set yourself up for repeated betrayals at the hands of a narcissist that's not the issue is that you set the rules we're trying to aim up that's what you do when you get married that's why you get married by the way in Christ in a church so you're both subordinate to the pattern of redemptive self-sacrifice that establishes the community that's the purpose of the religious sacralization of the marital bond it's not about you it's not about your wife it's about your union you're both subject properly subject to that higher order union right and that's the divine individual that you could be in unison if you communicated in consort with the logos right that's that's the notion behind the marriage and that means that you could use the opportunity you have to negotiate with your partner as a tool to guide you on the sacrificial journey uphill to the realization of who you could be that's the deeper purpose of the marriage and that's real you know you have a wrestling partner in your in your wife or your husband and you're a lot more sane crazy as you are you're a lot more sane than you would be without them I've watched people who are alone you know sometimes for decades man you drift it takes at least two people to keep you sane at least two and probably more like ten but two is an absolute minimum and if it's just you you're gonna spin out in whatever crazy direction you're most inclined to spin and you might have like five of those directions so you get pretty damn in coherent and in articulate if you've got no one to spill your soul to and so at the minimum your wife or husband is like one person who cares whether you're you know screws are loose so so you set the boundaries right and it's the boundaries the upward aim and you say I'm gonna do my best to communicate in truth in relationship to that aim and you're gonna let your partner stumble around stupidly just like you will and and you know let them wander as they try to hit the target and you can get better and better at that you know you you truly can with practice and another rule you can institute is that you don't get to run away right there's a problem you're gonna negotiate a solution if you get upset you can go cool off and you can think about what the hell it is that what stupidity you're bringing to the table but you have to come back to the negotiating board it's very hard on a marriage when one person just clams up and won't budge it's a very it's a terrible form of narcissistic passive aggressiveness and people might say well I do that because I don't trust it's like that's a failure of courage buddy it's not a moral virtue so I can remember you telling us that at dinner oh yeah no can you remember our negotiations our negotiation rule or no our negotiation sessions vividly and you do you remember those yes we had a rule that was we're not leaving the table until this is sorted out you know do I remember those okay speaking of trauma how do we as parents accurately prepare children for the landscape of good and evil without traumatizing them or screwing it up well stories help with that you know a lot that's kind of what they're for I mean I really like the I'm a real aficionado of classic Disney movies for example because for a good time 40 years or so that studio man it had an unaring aim it was something to watch it was brilliant animated movies the Harry Potter people did a great job with that at JK rolling man that girl can hit a she can hit a target she's got quite the mythological imagination and so you know stories great stories they lay out the landscape of good and evil I was I've just been rewatching the Hobbit with Tammy and what's the Hobbit about what's about this slow launch dwarf character you know the Hobbit Bilbo who isn't much when he starts and has to learn to be a thief because he's got integrated shadow and he goes off on a quest to combat totalitarian evil and that all seeing eye of Soron which is what they're building in China right at the moment and seriously man that's the eye at the top of the Tower of Babel that the idiot engineers insist upon creating and so the Hobbit goes out and into the world and has his adventure and develops along the way and what is he encounter he encounters the terrible dragon that is every worst nightmare that guards the goal that's the greatest of all possible treasures and that's life itself right that's the eternal story of mankind is that we we look for the place of maximal adventure that's the place of maximal challenge and danger and it's the place where the eternal treasure is always stored and that's the straight truth and that's what's portrayed constantly in stories and those scary stories you know and it's good to read children's scary stories not too scary I exposed my poor children to stories that were slightly beyond their basket to grasp now and slightly he he showed me Dante's peak the volcano that's scary volcano movie I was five I had I'm not I'm not even joking I had a volcano phobia only for about 10 years yeah for about 10 years every trip every trip we went on you know more than Saskatchewan. Are there volcanoes here for 10 years? Yeah, yeah. Trauma. Yes, well, you know, that was an experiment that went slightly astray, but, but, on a happier note, let's say, one of the things I remember telling Julian, I don't remember how old he was when he went, saw the Lord of the Rings, because he was pretty shorted out by the Nazgoles, you know, those things that sucked the souls out. He ran screaming from the theater. Shorted out. I'm not, I'm not taking you anymore to these events. Anyways, I told him when he was sitting on my lap that he should keep his eye on the hero, right? If you're scared, you keep your eye on the hero, and that is what you do internally too, is that you, when you're scared, you keep your eye on the hero, and you make the presumption that if you were aiming upward, that you could prevail. And, well, that's the, that's the gospel story fundamentally, right? It's because Christ is the man who faces the ultimate trial. And the promise of the story is that if you do that voluntarily, then death and hell itself are defeated. And, again, I think how could it be any other way? Because the alternative would be that you could withdraw from the fray that you could hide from the reality of the world, that you could pretend that mortality and evil didn't exist, that you could hide, and that victory would be yours. And no one's foolish enough to think that. I mean, obviously no challenge that you don't take on is a challenge that you can prevail over. Obviously. And so what's the logical conclusion of that? It's the logical conclusion is that you should be up for anything because you could be and that if you were, that's the thing that occurs in the miraculous gospel narrative is that the degree to which God is present with you is precisely proportionate to your faith, right? And the faith is advanced by your willingness to contend with catastrophe and malevolence because that's the real challenge. And so if you are up for that, then the God of your ancestors takes root within you and enables you to prevail. And I don't think there is a more accurate way to tell that story. I think that's, that's, you know, when you face challenge, you grow. You know that. So it's like, well, what's the upper limit to that? Well, that's, that's the religious question is what's the upper limit to that? The upper limit is something like the descent of God to man and the ascent of man to God. It's something like that. And of course, that would be the ultimate limit to that because that's the ultimate limit. And so is it true? There's nothing that psychology has demonstrated more clearly in the clinical realm than the truth of the proposition, two propositions. You should get your story straight and you should practice confronting everything that stops you cold in your tracks. And if you do that, you get not less afraid. You get braver. And it's better to be braver than to be less afraid because there are things to be afraid of. If you have any sense, you know, you can't hope to be free of anxiety. You just run out in traffic and perish if you were free of anxiety. You can hope that you move ahead despite the paralysis of your fear. And man, you know, people are capable of unbelievable things like seriously, ordinary people, ordinary people, there are no really ordinary people. There are people who make themselves ordinary. People are capable of bearing a man's burden and still struggling uphill, you know, the idea that you get corrupted by the tragedies that they fall you. That's a complete bloody lie. I've seen many, many people in my life take geth blows, you know, betrayal, catastrophe of every sort you can imagine and still walk uphill, you know, without resentment. And you can do that. That's the story of Job, you know, Job is the victim of a bet between God and Satan. That's not a happy bet. And God says, Job's a good man. And he's pretty happy about that. And Satan says, I don't think so. I think he's just privileged. And God says, no, I think he's a good man. And Satan says, you let me have a crack out of him. And we'll see. And God says, do your worst. And there'll be a time in your life where that happens to you, you know, or to certainly feel that way that despite all your proper sacrifices that, you know, all hell breaks loose around you. And you lose or risk losing everything that you've worked for. That's what happens to Job, right? His fortune, he's accumulated validly, is devastated. He loses most of his family. Then he gets a terrible illness that's not only terrible, but disfiguring and humiliating. And then he's sitting in the ashes. It's so bereft that his wife comes to him and says, there's nothing left for you. But to shake your fist at God, curse, fate, and die, which is not the kind of message of hope that you want from your wife, but is reflective of the depths of Job's misery. And then that's not bad enough. His friends happy to see their erstwhile hero brought to the dust, come and tell him that he must have done something wrong or been flawed in character because otherwise these terrible things wouldn't have happened to him. So that's pretty damn miserable. And what does Job do? He refuses to lose faith in himself despite his tragic and catastrophic loss in suffering. He admits to having the flaws of the man who is good and those are still flaws, but he insists upon maintaining faith in the essential goodness of his being. And he refuses to curse God. And the moral of the story of Job is something like you are called upon to maintain faith and aim up no matter what happens to you. Why? Well, first of all, because the alternative is worse. You know, imagine that you lose everything and you're suffering and then you lose hope and you become bitter and resentful. It's like well, you were in hell to begin with and now you've opened up a whole new multitude of pits of hell beneath that and you haven't yet hit the bottom and so you can take a bad situation say no fault of your own because that happens from time to time and you can certainly make it worse by shaking your fist at God and cursing fate and you know, wishing for death. So you're called upon to maintain faith no matter what. And that's that's also part of your capacity to to aim up in spite of everything, you know, and that is how you set the world right. That's Christ's example is to maintain the upward aim on the cross itself, right? It's a hell of a, it's a hell of an ask, right? It's the ask that it literally requires everything, but why would you assume that you could make your way through something as difficult and challenging as life in all its reality without being called upon to offer both the best and everything. Like no one, you know, that just can't work. You know, this is a difficult enterprise. It's going to, it's going to require you to bring everything you have to the table seriously. And then that's the best deal you could have anyways because then you could be the person who brought everything that he had to the table. And so that's how you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And that's how you overcome death and evil. And that's the case. And you can do that. And you need to, because otherwise they win. And so when you know that, oh, you all know that. That's another reason that you're here because you can feel the tectonic plates shifting under the world. And you know that we're at a point of crisis. And you understand that there's something you have to do about it. And there is why? Well, because you're made in the image of God. And the proper unfolding of reality requires that you become who you are. That's of course, of course, it has to be that way. If you keep something within you that should be revealed, then that which should be revealed stays in the realm of non-existence. And the whole in the world that results is on that's on you. And that's not a good idea. It's very hard on you. It'll be very hard on everyone around you. It's hard on the world. It's not a good idea. And that's such a big risk that any other risk you could take is a trivial risk in comparison. Seriously, that's why when you're called upon to speak and you have something to say, it's time to talk because the cost of not doing that is so massive, so incomparably massive to whatever trivial hardship you undertake by having the gall to say what you think that they're not even in the same conceptual world. So. You know, the totalitarian hell emerges when the good remains silent. That's, that's the way of the world, man. So. Jumanji also messed me up. Oh, going to get grief for this for a long time. Okay, one more. One more. The timer ended. We're still up to do one more. One more of the brief we hope. Okay, we'll see about that. Okay, this is a motivation one. How do you battle against the inevitable deviation from goals you have set in life that occur as a result of fatigue, human error, and obstacles in front of you? Briefly. Well, I'll give, I can't answer that question fully, obviously, because there's so much to it, but I can give you a practical hint. I worked with a lot of people in the last 10 years of my clinical practice who were very hardworking and diligent people. Many of them very successful and they worked like 70 hours a week. And they had very demanding jobs and they were usually high paying. And one of the costs to having a job like that is that you're never done. Like there's always work, way more work, you're called upon to do it when it's necessary. And that could be two in the morning or some, it doesn't matter. It's like now is the time to do it. And you know, that's exhausting. So and with these people, they couldn't really shrink the number of hours per day that they worked even because they were in a very competitive landscape. And if they didn't do the work, then someone would just step forward and do it. And so one of the things we did was to plan time off well in advance. And so one of the things I would say is that if you are overwhelmed with your responsibilities, one thing you might ask yourself is whether you burdened yourself in a manner that's fundamentally counterproductive, right? Because you should live on the edge, but not past the edge, right? Because you need to live in a manner that you can sustain. Like one of the things I learned, for example, I've been writing daily for like 40 years. And I learned pretty early on that I couldn't write for more than three hours a day and do that day after day. So, you know, maybe I get on a roll and I write for six hours one day, but then I wouldn't write it all for three days. And so three hours a day I could maintain. You've got to learn what you can maintain. You know, it's good to learn that in your 20s, but if you don't, you can learn it later. And then you have to, you know, we have push yourself beyond your limit. Then you have to scale back until you see what you can sustain without becoming demoralized. If you're demoralized, your one practical problem is that you're asking too much of yourself. The other thing I would say is you also should ask yourself if you are a micro manager, like one of the prideful elements of the proclivity to take responsibility is to think that you're the one that has to do it all. And that's not a good attitude partly because, well, first of all, you're not. There are other competent people, but also second, you'd be much better off if you had competent people around you. So one of the things you see, for example, in the Old Testament accounts with Moses, for example, he's the leader. He's the leader that moves the Israelites away from tyranny and out of slavery across the desert to the promised land. So, you know, thumbs up for Moses, but right at the beginning of his adventure, he realizes he can't do it alone. And he doesn't have the speaking capacity in Moses' case. And so he allies himself with his brother, Aaron, who becomes his political arm. And that's on command from God. And the moral of that story is there's enough work for everyone. And so if you're overburdened by your responsibilities, it's time to set up a bit of a subsidiary structure around you. It's like if there's more than enough for you to do, well, invite someone along for the ride, right? And then the two of you, I mean, you have to be judicious about who you partner with. And that's an art in and of itself, for sure. But there's no reason not to multiply your force. And you do that generously, right? And if you do that generously, you could build a team that is a radical multiplier of your force. That includes them in the adventure and sets them on their own adventure in a way that's, well, has the benefits that we're offered to Abraham, right? It works for you, works for them, works for everybody else. It establishes something permanent, you know, it's a great deal. And so if you're overburdened and exhausted, ask yourself if you've pridefully bitten off more than you can chew. See if you're willing to treat yourself as someone whose long-term sustenance has to be taken into account and see if you're distributing requisite responsibility. And because you want to get into a place where you're looking forward to what you're doing, you know, and I think you can do that if your aim is upward because then you're serving something you want to serve, right? But that's how you transform toil into play is that work transmutes into play if it's serving God fundamentally. And there's no limit to the number of people that you can bring on board to aid in that venture. And that's why Christ had disciples, you know, I mean, he took the cross of the world on his shoulders. But he also said before he died that there would be more than enough for everyone else to do, right? And so that's worth thinking about. And I know you have to push yourself in your life to find out what you can do. And you do have to push yourself beyond your limits just so you know what they are. But you're not required to bear the weight that only crushes you. And I think doing that is actually a form of pride. So, so that's the answer to that question or at least partially. All right, everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. It was a pleasure being here tonight. Nice to see you all. Thanks a lot. Well, some races draw attention, others become the race, everyone watches. In Texas, James Tallerico and Ken Paxson are facing off in one of Kalshi's most traded midterm markets. Follow the race in real time on Kalshi and then trade on the candidate you think is going to win. Each correct contract is worth $1 at settlement. Don't just follow the midterms, trade what happens next on Kalshi. Use code daily, D-A-I-L-Y to get up to $25 when you trade $25. That's Kalshi, K-A-L-S-H-I, Kalshi, trade on anything. 18 plus only, restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. For more information, see kalshi.com/regulatory. 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