Message from JBP | What You Should Put First in Your Life

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We've been working late at night when my symptoms recede enough so that I can finally concentrate to make this release a possibility. At the same time, recently, I've been able to write a little bit and I'm working on three essays, which I hope to finish and release in the near future. One deals with the climate lies propagated by the socialists and the leftists. Another deals with the issue of the alphabet. Mafia and the associated pride movement. And the final one deals with the so-called rape gangs in the UK, asking whether the terminology rape gang, which is definitely an improvement over grooming gang, is sufficient to accurately describe the magnitude of the crimes that are being committed. In any case, I'm working on these now, hoping to contribute something to the ongoing public debate about these crucially important issues. I'm unhappy with my silence, however necessitated it might be by the conditions of my illness, so I'd like to get back to my work, you know. Anyways, that's the update. Thanks for your time and attention, and I hope you enjoy listening to this second lecture as much as I enjoyed delivering it. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. It's very good of you to come. I'm looking forward to tonight. What does it mean that we wrestle with God? Well, Tammy made some introductory comments. One of the things I've learned from writing the book that, you know, I've learned from writing the book that, you know, I've learned from writing the book that, , You see, what you're doing in some ways is, in a series of questions like that, you're, you're leading people to either the apex of their value structure or to, or downward to its foundation. You can use either metaphor and, you know, You might say that the highest value or the most foundational value in that broadening hierarchy of values is also equivalent to God. One of the things I've learned by walking through the biblical corpus is that each of the stories that's associated with, with the characterization of God is a snapshot or a dramatization of another aspect of what should be put in the highest place. Once you understand that you have, that you inevitably put something in the highest place, no matter how fractionated that might be, no matter how confused you are, once you understand that you have to put something in the highest place, even to perceive, even to look, then the next question becomes, well, what, if anything, can be properly put in that place? And I would say that's been the eternal question that's faced. The human race, since we became conscious, what is it that should be put in the highest place? The story I'm going to tell you tonight, which is a story of Cain and Abel is a brilliant exposition of that problem. It's, it's a very short story. It's really about 12 to 15 lines long, depending on what you count. It's, there's nothing to it in terms of length. And yet it's, it's inexhaustible in its significance. And that's, that's a very interesting. That's a very interesting fact as well. You might ask yourself how stories like that can be so dense. I would say, well, it's a consequence of a variety of factors, a very old story. And the story of Cain and Abel is a very old story, at least multiple thousands of years old and likely older than that. Because the older a story is, the higher the likelihood that it's even older than that, because the farther back you go in time, the less rapidly things change. So something, if a story is 10,000 years old, it's probably 50,000 years old, right? I mean, it vanishes into the sands of time, so you can't be sure, but, but you can be reasonably sure. What is it, what happens when people tell stories across a very long period of time? A lot of people observe a lot of people and they compress that into a very long period of time. To an account of the fundamental elements of the human drama. And then they tell that in a manner that, if remembered, has to be memorable, right? So it has to attract the attention of its listeners, and then it has to be remembered. And then it has to be remembered and transmitted across the centuries, let's say. That's a very long period of time. So then you could imagine as well that not only is a story that's abstracted. And foundational and remembered, compelling and interesting, but it also modifies itself so that it's, it fits in the psyche. That's a good way of thinking about it. It adapts itself across time so that it can be remembered. And so it reflects the structure of memory itself. And you could imagine, even if you're biologically oriented, let's say that our memory is adapted to remember what's important. And so a story that fits in the structure of memory is going to be a story that only concentrates on what's important. Because everything else will get forgotten. No one will pay attention to it. It'll just drift away. Now, a highly abstract story like the story of Cain and Abel is memorable, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we understand it. Now, that's not necessarily, precisely a problem. You go to lots of movies that you don't necessarily understand. You do lots of things you don't understand. You probably don't really understand why you put up a Christmas tree, for example. Well, it's a very old ritual, right? And it predates Christianity, that ritual. And it isn't obviously linked in any way to Christianity, and yet it's something we do in celebration of Christmas. And I'm just telling you that not to pick on you because you don't know why you put up a Christmas tree. And everyone else is doing it isn't a good answer. But it's to celebrate rebirth, right? It's to celebrate the birth of the light, which is why you decorate the tree with light. The tree is the tree of life. The crucifix is a representation of the tree of life. Those things are all tangled together in that ritual. And we act that out, even though we don't necessarily understand it. And it's meaningful to us, even though we don't necessarily know why. And so, like our dreams can contain more information, than we understand our stories, the stories that we tell, and the stories that we live by can contain wisdom that we don't fully realize. I mean, if we fully realized all wisdom, we would be omniscient. We certainly don't understand ourselves, and we don't understand the drama that we're involved in, even though we act it out and represent it in image and in drama and in narrative, in story. And then, as we do that, as we act it out and we represent it, and we come to tell it, we do come to develop more and more understanding. And I would say, in the 20th century, there's actually been substantial progress in making the meaning of the deep myths upon which our culture is founded more conscious. Now, what I would say, enlightenment minds tend to equate, myth with falsehood and superstition. But that's a, that's a big mistake. Because it fails to grapple with the centrality of the story. I mean, you can be cynical and you can say we were compelled by stories because they're entertaining, but that's a foolish observation because the mystery is why they're entertaining, right? Because to say something like a story is entertaining, entertaining enough so your children will torture you to tell them stories, right? Entertaining enough so that you'll pay to go see them, right? Gripping enough so you'll even go to pay them, you'll even pay to go see them if they take the form of horror or if they're upsetting, right? They're, and compelling enough so that children can learn and be engaged in the learning process if what they're learning is encapsulated in a story. They don't have to struggle with that. It's, it grips them and compels them. The story is a very important thing. And, a story is an abstraction. Like, we tend to think of story as fiction and fiction as the opposite of fact, but that's, that's not very wise. I mean, think about it this way, you know, you've read some shallow books in your life, no doubt, and seen some movies that were basically tripe. And sometimes there's a place for that because maybe you've worked hard all day or all week or for a year. And, you know, you're at home and you're tired and you just want to put on like Barbie and zone out for, an hour and a half, right? You're, you're not interested in wrestling with God, let's say, at that moment. But you know perfectly well that what you're watching is shallow and you don't do it necessarily with any pride. It's just, it's a form of, of effortless relaxation. But then you also know that now and then you read something, a work of fiction, or you watch a movie, another work of fiction, and it strikes you very deeply. It, which is an interesting metaphor. It strikes you very deeply, it, which is an interesting metaphor. You know that you're moved and you're moved deeply. Something stirs within you. There's something to the story that's compelling and transformative. It might, it might make you tear up. It might, it might even change the way you look at the world. If the story is deep enough and we do presume that great literature has that capability and it does have that capability. I mean, I was, I've been struck to the core by, well, by many things I've read, but I would say there's a cardinal dozen books that I've read. I mean, I was, I've been struck to the core by, well, by many things I've read. That really changed the way that I looked at everything. For me, Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, sort of top of that list. His books, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground, The Devils are unbelievably compelling works of fiction and they're deep. Now, they're not facts, so does that mean they're not true? And they are true in a way, because the events that Dostoevsky details, for example, in Crime and Punishment, never happened. Or, or wait, or did, or is that accurate? It's not that easy to tell what's happening. You know, you know, this, you know, this, if you're married or, or in a long-term relationship, you know perfectly well that you can exchange a few casual words with your wife or husband and feel things moving underneath the surface, right? And you can exchange the wrong words casually. About nothing and, and not be able to look each other in the eye for a week, right? Because something, something in that exchange moved something that was way under the surface. And maybe it's something under the surface you bloody well both know is there. And the last thing you want to do is admit it or talk about it, right? And so, and then you might say to your wife, well, what's wrong? And she says, well, nothing. And, and you both know that that's a lie. And you know that the exchange pointed to something deep. You know that it's part of a, a much, a story that has not yet been told and that maybe needs to be told. And so maybe you delve into that and you try to get to the bottom of it. And it's, it's pretty awful, you know, to sort out exactly what was said and what wasn't said in a situation like that. So called Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy. It's called Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy. If you want an actual education. With hand-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 were true to your word. 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 $2,000. Well, congratulations, Jordan. It's honestly brilliant. Can't wait to hear it. Can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight after this. Fungio. If you're a great storyteller, what you do is you watch a lot of different people act in a lot of different situations and you start to extract out regularities of of action and attention. So if you go see an action adventure movie, like like a James Bond movie, let's say what you get is a distillation of romantic adventure. Right. Everything that isn't romantic or adventurous is edited out. And you might say, well, that's unrealistic. It's like, well, not exactly. It's not exactly unrealistic. It's more like hyper realistic. It's like the the writer and the filmmaker decided to. Watch a thousand people and pull out the most exciting elements of their life, the most exciting and romantic elements of their life, you might say, and then amalgamate all those into something that's super romantic and super exciting to get to the core of what constitutes romantic adventure itself. And then you're pretty interested in that. You'll go, you'll go watch that movie partly to be entertained, but also partly maybe to live the life you haven't lived. That's a good way of thinking about it, but also maybe to get to the core of what constitutes a romantic adventure. To learn. And so it's a distillation. Now, here's a question for you. Is an abstraction more or less real than the thing that it's abstracted from? Right. Because if you make this fact fiction separation, you say fiction is falsehood. It's not true. It never happened. You're left with a problem that you could make the same criticism of abstraction per se. Like we abstract. We can't make the same criticism of abstraction. words are abstractions and yet they have motive force in the world what's what's the reason what's the possible rationale for presuming that an abstraction isn't real well a great story is an abstraction a story about a great man is an abstraction about what it is about men that make them great and a story about the greatest of all possible men would be the ultimate abstraction of greatness itself and why how is that not real you might say well it's not about anybody in particular well it might depend on how great the man was right how well that man played out that pattern it could be about someone in particular could be about a genuinely great man who acts out or embodies or incarnates the pattern of greatness as such say it's about you too insofar as there have been there have been times in your life where you made that pattern manifest and we understand these things because you understand for example if our men that we can be fathers and being a father is to participate in a pattern and we know perfectly well that we can be better or worse fathers and we generally even know if we are being better or worse fathers and so we understand that the abstraction represents a mode of being and it's something that we can participate and should participate in and don't participate in well to our great loss and also the loss of our children we can abstract out stories and great storytellers abstract out great stories and the greatest stories we abstract out are myths they're religious stories and they're hyper true they're not true like ordinary truth is true they're they're true in the way in a way that reveals to you what truth itself is that's a strange way of thinking about things well here here's a here's a hypothesis i think it's true i think the scientific definition of truth is that that's a strange way of thinking about things well here's a scientific definition of truth is that data suggests this by the way i mentioned at the beginning of this lecture that in order to even perceive you have to prioritize right to prioritize means to value so if i if you're out on first date with a with a woman that and you want the date to go well and you're in a busy restaurant there's 50 conversations going on around you and you could attend to any of them but you don't you you you you you eliminate from consciousness all the all the conversations you could be attending to even the one that you could be having with yourself in your own mind you ignore that and you prioritize what it is that she's saying and how she's acting and you elevate that above everything else right and you do that because you're for well god only knows what your reason is but you know it could be you're going to have a reason right and it could be the reason you're all thinking of or it could be or it could be a higher order reason because maybe you're a serious person and you're looking for a long-term relationship and the way that you're going to structure your attention while you are listening is going to reflect that aim and she's going to be watching you like a hawk also depending on what it is she's aiming at to see just exactly how it is that you're directing your attention moment to moment in that interaction right and if you both are out for nothing but a night of fun well the conversation is going to go one way and if you're actually looking for someone to share the rest of your life with and you think the possibility is there in that moment then you're going to interact and attend and focus your attention and prioritize in a completely different way and all of that is going to be dependent on what it is that you're aiming for and that aim is actually going to structure the way that that person makes themselves manifest to you and that's something to know too because one of the things you could hypothesize this is a terrifying notion is that people make themselves real to you in a way that you're not aware of and that you're not aware of and that's something that's going to be a real threat to your relationship to your aim and i think it's worse than that i think that the world does that now we kind of know this even as scientists of perception because your senses are actually navigation equipment right the reason you have senses is so that you could move from one place to another successfully and so when you and when you're moving from one place to another you have an aim the aim is to get to the next place right to get to the promised land best place possible in in in the short variations of that or over the long run right and when you make that aim then the world lays itself out for you this is how your perceptual systems work as a pathway to that end accompanied by obstacles that make you that produce negative emotion and facilitators or tools affordances that produce positive emotion so the facts of the world make themselves manifest to you in relation to your aim and the emotional valence of things is determined by the relationship between those facts and where it is that you're headed and so that's an amazing thing to know because one of the things it suggests is that if if the world keeps kicking you in the face it's possible that your aim is wrong and so one of the well it's either that or god made an arbitrary world that's designed to torture you right and that is the story of cain and abel because that's cain's conclusion right and so we'll delve into that and so that's an exciting possibility and then another hypothesis that you might derive from that set of notions is that the aim that would reveal the beauty of the world the beauty and the significance of the world to you in the highest degree that aim there's no difference between that aim and aiming at god that's a definition so you can imagine that you could organize your perceptions so that the best of all possible worlds could make itself manifest to you right hypothetically imagine that was hypothetically the case and that a certain aim would have to go along with that well i can give you an example of that so one of the insistences in the gospel text is that you should treat other people as you would like to be treated it's actually quite a complex moral directive because it doesn't mean be nice to other people because you know perfectly well sometimes nice isn't what you need you need a slap on the side of the head you know you need to run into the obstacle you deserve to run into you know perfectly well if you have children and you love them that just doing what makes them happy right now is not the right thing to do you you want to take your son or your daughter and you want to think i want this person to thrive in the world and their behavior at the moment is not in accordance with that aim and they need a certain degree of correction and if i'm not in accordance i was that child and someone who loved me was interacting with me they would stop me if i was eric right so treating people as you would like to be treated doesn't imply that you should go out of your way never to make them uncomfortable emotionally it means you should put yourself in that in their position you should assume that what you're trying to do is to help them live in the world in a manner that reveals the beauty and the significance of the world to them and then you should decide how it is that you would interact with them so that that was possible so that they became increasingly possible and then you might say well imagine you did that to everyone you came in contact with there's immense emphasis for example in the old testament on hospitality it's a sacred duty hospitality well you invite people to your house and you're you you're generous and you you're productive so your house is well apportioned and you're having you do that wholeheartedly and in a genuinely generous spirit well imagine that you're hospitable in everything you do which is the same thing it's an earlier version of treating other people like you would want to be treated imagine you do that with everyone you meet all the time with every word and gesture well then you might say well what's going to be the consequence to you well you know now and then someone's going to take advantage of you but i would say to their own detriment it's not a reasonable way of reacting to someone who's being productive and generous people who do that their reputation suffers very very rapidly everyone understands and notices no one wants them around no one wants to cooperate with them or trade with them or and it's impossible to build a productive relationship but if you're the sort of so now and then you know you may encounter someone who's going to play a short-term manipulative game with you if you are productive and generous but by and large especially if you're good at doing it especially say when people are suffering or lost and you can offer them a hand and it's genuine they're going to remember that and there's a lot of people in the world that aren't you like eight billion of them and you're going to interact with at least a thousand of them in some real detail in your life and you could store up goodwill in their hearts you know and then what would happen if a thousand people are happy with you what's your life going to be like especially if you went out of your way you know and most people this is god's own honest truth it's we know this we know this scientifically it as well as practically almost everyone who's vaguely sane has a ledger you know if someone does a favor for you there's part of you that thinks you know some reciprocation is in order right that's the basis of the turnabout that makes fair play it's the definition of fair play it's certainly something you want in a marriage is that you know i mean not like you're exactly keeping track of what's on track because that's petty but but there is an expectation that that kindness should be met with kindness and and and vice versa. No. And so, and then you could imagine so that if you were productive and generous, even to a fault, not, not that you should allow yourself to be taken advantage of. That's not what I mean. But if you're productive and generous to a fault and you made that manifest to a thousand people, the probability that that would return to you in spades is exceptionally high. Now, so, so that, that the reason I'm telling you that is because for example, that's one of the injunctions in the cert in the sermon on the mounts that you should aim high and then you should treat other people like you would want to be treated. Well, why? Well, because that's the aim that will best reveal the pathway, the golden pathway forward to you. It's absolutely the most practical possible. It's interesting advice because it's practical as hell, but it's also deep. It's theologically sound. It essentially means that if you aim up and you act generously and productively and you're wholehearted, about that, that the, the Jacob's ladder makes its appearance, right? And you can start ascending the, what would you say? The endless spiral upward to the place that gets better and better, right? And that's an, that's a game that improves as you play it. That's a good definition of the kingdom of heaven. Now it's certainly something that characterizes a very deep friendship, for example, because a friendship can become, if it's, if it's well played, let's say, or marriage can become better and better across time, richer and deeper across time. And so, so one of the things you see in the biblical corpus is that there's a characterization of whatever God is as the thing that should be put in the place of highest value, right? It's something that you establish a relationship in with in some ways. And you see this in the story of Cain and Abel. And so we'll talk about that. Story directly. Now I'll give you a little setup to the story because you need to know what happened up to this point. Now, Cain and Abel are actually the first two human beings, right? Because Adam and Eve, they're made by God. And so they're not born. They're not ordinary people. They're born in paradise. They're the eternal primordial ancestors. Cain and Abel, they're, they're born in profane history, right? So from the perspective of the biblical narrative, history begins with the fall of Adam and Eve. And it means something like, it means a lot of things, but it means something like the dawn of self-consciousness among human beings. It means many things, but that's one of the things it means. Self-conscious human beings realize that there's a future. That's part of being self-conscious. You're self-conscious and you know yourself as a bounded entity in time. You know your borders and you're, and you know what you are and what you aren't, but you also know, I mean, you know yourself in place. Sorry, in space, you know, your borders, your bodily borders, and you know yourself in time, you know, that you were born at some point and that you're going to age and there'll be a time when you aren't. And so we're human beings are conscious as no other animal is of the entirety of our span of life. And there's a tragedy that goes along with that because being self-conscious in that manner means that we're aware of our own finitude and our mortality in a way that other animals aren't. We're aware of our own vulnerability. You know, like zebras are perfectly happy grazing where there's lions. If the lions are asleep, well, it's not very bright on the lion. The zebras should be getting together and thinking, why don't we just go stomp those lions while they're sleeping? And, and there won't be any problem with lions in the futures, but the zebras think to the degree they think sleeping lions, they're no problem. They don't think about the future lions, right? Those are completely different creatures, but not us. Like no matter how calm you are in the present, there's, there's something you have to worry about the future, right? And that's because you're conscious of the future. You're conscious of your extension across time. That's part of what makes you self-conscious and Adam and Eve. Well, there's in, in the story of Adam and Eve, they become self-conscious. They know they're naked. They, the scales fall from their eyes. They become aware of themselves and the consequence of that. There are many, but one of the consequences is they have to work. Now, this is an unbelievably profound. Realization and, and characterization. What does work mean? Well, let's say we could distinguish it from play, play, play, might have a productive end, but it's enjoyable right now, right? If you're playing, you're not exactly sacrificing anything, right? If you're playing, if you're enjoying yourself, you're doing what you want in the moment. Well, what's the opposite of play work? Or more accurately, the work you have to do, well, why do you have to do it? And why do you work? And what is it about human beings that makes us work unlike other creatures? And the answer to that is, well, we're aware of the future. And so what have we learned to do? Well, we've learned to work. Well, what do you do when you work? You sacrifice the present to the future, right? That's like the definition of delayed gratification. If you want to be gratified right now, you get what? What you want right now. If you're going to work and store and save and toil and labor, what you're doing is you're sacrificing the pleasures of the moment for your long-term continued security and opportunity. Or more than that, more than that, because it's not just about you, right? If you're working, you're also working for your family, you're working for others. And so it isn't just your medium to long-term security and opportunity. It's the medium to long-term security and stability and opportunity of your, your family and those you love. And you sacrifice the present to that. Okay, now we've done something useful. We've drawn a relationship. We've established a relationship between work and sacrifice. And that's useful because once you know that connection, you can understand much of what happens, especially in the most archaic stories in the Bible, because they're all about sacrifice. Okay, so let's try to bring that down to earth. You have to sacrifice. Well, why? Well, let's say you just pursued the pleasures of the moment. Well, then you sacrifice the future for the present, right? To do anything, you give up a multitude of other things that you could be doing, right? So the human mode of existence is sacrificial. And that's in some ways why work enters the world. Now, God condemns Adam and Eve to work. And that's partly a consequence of their pride. They sin. That's why they fall out of paradise. One of the things you might ask yourself is if your work is utterly miserable, how much of that is a consequence of the mistakes in perception that you make and keep on making? You know, I know people have to do difficult things to get by, but there isn't exactly just because things are difficult doesn't necessarily mean that they're intolerable and embittering. It might depend on what attitude you bring to bear on the sacrifices that you have to make. And so another mistake. One mystery might be once the human race had established the fact that work was necessary and work was sacrificial, that a question immediately emerged, which was, well, what work works best? Which is the same thing as saying what sacrifice is most pleasing to God? It's the same thing. What pattern of sacrifice do you have to engage in to maximize the return in the future all things considered for you and the people that you love? In consequence of giving something up or investing now, right? You have to do that. You're going to sacrifice one way or another. Okay, we accept that. Now the question is, what pattern of sacrifice is most effective? The entire biblical corpus is an attempt to answer that question, right? It's a continual investigation into the covenantal relationship, between the spirit of being itself and humanity. So how does that mean? Well, look, think about what you're doing when you work. Because the gratification is deferred, you don't get what it is that you're working for right now. You're saving up for the future. You're basically engaging in a contractual relationship. Your assumption is, is that if you put in the time and effort now, there'll be a return at some point in the future. There's no difference between that and a contract. It's the same idea. And that's why the relationship with God in the Old Testament is construed as covenantal. It's a deal. It's a deal you make. The deal is, you put in your time. The payoff is, you benefit in consequence. So that brings up another question. How do you best guarantee the proper future return as a consequence of your work? And that's a perfectly practical question. That's exactly the question that's addressed in the story of Cain and Abel. So what happens? What happens is, we end the story of Adam and Eve with the revelation that human beings are destined to work, to toil. And then Eve has the first two brothers. They're a pair of opposites. They're the eternal, warring, hostile brothers. Right? They're Batman and Joker. Or Superman and Lex Luthor. They're Thor and Loki. Right? They're Christ and Satan. They're two parallel patterns of. Being and sacrifice. And one works, another fails. And they're at war and they're always at war and they're at war in the world and they're at war in your soul. And you understand that because if you didn't understand that, you couldn't go watch Batman and the Joker and understand it. You remember in the dark night with Heath Ledger, remember the Joker, very, very interesting character, this evil clown. Remember he surrounds himself with people from the mafia and they, they steal money from banks and the mafia guys, they're kind of like you and me. They're pretty happy about the money, right? And so you can understand them criminals though they are, they sort of abide by the same rules you do. They like money, you like money, you can understand each other. The Joker takes half the money that he steals. And what does he do with it? He burns it, right? And that's a very accurate observation about what would you say? The pattern of sacrifice that's almost, that's entirely anti, antithetical to the proper pattern of sacrifice is the creation of misery for its own sake. The, the destruction of accrued wealth for the demonstration of its futility. It's the ultimate form of destructive nihilism. And, and we find characters like that compelling because that is a temptation that presents itself to all of us, right? Because we suffer and because we suffer unfairly and unjustly, it's very easy for us to turn against the covenant that unites the present with the future and to wish in our heart of hearts that everything burned and suffered. Adam and Eve, Eve gives rise to Cain and Abel, right? The first two human beings. So now they're, they're paired off in an eternal struggle and the struggle most accurately characterizes not only the world, but the struggle of the world. But the struggle in people's soul, right? You could say that two spirits war within your breast. That's part of the eternal battle between good and evil. That's part of wrestling with God. When, whenever you're making a judgment, you're making a moral judgment, right? And sometimes it's a judgment between two relative goods, but sometimes it's a judgment between what you would like to do, especially if you're bitter and resentful and hedonistic and what you know you should do, right? And every decision you make is a reflection of that fundamental decision. That's some micro level. You know, there are venal sins. There are small ways you can miss the mark, but they're generally embedded in a much larger pattern of missing the mark, right? That, that has as its archetypal foundation, something like the battle between good and evil. The fact that we have to value even before we can see, right? Even before the world reveals itself as fact means that everything we do is conditioned by the desired aim up or down and vacillating between the two. It's the same as aiming down or perhaps worse. And Adam knew Eva's wife and she conceived and bear Cain and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord and she again bear his brother Abel and Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So they picked two different occupational pathways now, both Cain and Abel make sacrifices. Now, this is a, mysterious part of the biblical stories because modern people can't understand what archaic people were doing when they were offering sacrifices. But imagine this, imagine this is that in order to understand something, you have to act it out. Okay. So let's make that concrete. That's what children do when they play, right? It's like before a child can become a father or before a daughter can become a mother, she has to play at being a father. She has to play at being a father. Just like the son has to play at being a father and to play is to embody right to play is to represent with your ritualized actions, some pattern that you're striving to understand. That's what people do when they're in a play. That's what people do when they're in a movie, they're acting out a pattern and they're, they like their audience are trying to understand the nature of that pattern. Maybe well enough to describe it explicitly by enacting the drama. You know, and as I said, maybe you go see a hundred action adventure movies, romantic action, adventure movies. So you can extract out the pattern of romantic adventure and embody it in your own life. And maybe you could do that merely as a consequence of imitation rather than explicit understanding. And the imitation would be acting it out. So what are archaic people doing when they sacrifice, when they make a sacrificial gesture, when they offer something on an altar? Well, they're acting out the principle of sacrifice. They're trying to, they're dramatizing the investigation into what it is that you have to let go of an offer so that the spirit of being itself will be pleased with you and maintain its contract. Now it's archaic conceptualization. Why do you burn something on an altar? Well, that definitely, you're definitely offering it because it's destroyed, but you burn something in an offer and the smoke rises. And God hypothetically is an aerial spirit. And you might say, well, why is that? It's like, well, it's for the same reason that you're struck by awe when you look into the night sky. I mean, archaic people like modern people were capable of being odd, let's say. And certainly the awe that characterized the heavens is a primordial form of awe. And it's reasonable to assume, and maybe it's, it's literally reasonable to assume that there's some concordance between the, in the infinite expanse of the heavens and the spirit of being and becoming itself. And to know, and to have that notion that God is akin to that, which dwells in the heaven is not an unreasonable hypothesis. And given that God is an aerial being while smoke is a reasonable way of communicating with them. And so God is the spirit that can evaluate the value of your sacrifices as a consequence of the rise of the smoke. Now there's a element of primitivistic thinking in that, but these people weren't stupid. There's many of the things we know today that they don't know, just as there are many things they knew that we don't know today, but that doesn't mean that what they were doing was without significance or meaning. And the notion that first of all, the notion that you have to offer something of value to take your place properly in the world, that is, that is a major realization. There's no difference between that and maturity. There's no difference between that and the rise to self-consciousness of the human race. There's no difference between that and our ability to build culture because our cultures are actually a storehouse of value to be drawn on in the future. Right? And so the, the fact that our ancestors were compelled to act out what constituted the appropriate sacrifice is a Testament, not to their foolishness, but to their genius. And so, well, what do they offer? Well, they offer the fruits of their work. Well, that is what, that's what you offer. That's what you offer. That's what you offer to your wife. That's what you offer to yourself. In so far as you're a provider, that's what you offer your children. If you're a mother, you sacrifice your time to your children, right? You're offering something. Okay. So what should you offer? And then also in, what spirit should you offer it? Well, if you're a child and your mother's affection is doled out begrudgingly, how's that going to work for you? Or if you're a husband in a relationship and your wife's affection is doled out, begrudgingly or vice versa, right? That's not a gift. That's going to give back. It's a gift. That's going to engender a corresponding resentment in all likelihood. And so there's a, there's an idea lurking there. And you can, you can evaluate this idea for yourself. Imagine that now you're, you're, you're conversing with your conscience. You're it's at night and you're taking yourself apart because you're guilty. And you're trying to scour your imagination for some time. When you acted in a manner that was sufficiently admirable, so that you maybe have something to cling onto in the wreckage of yourself, conceptualization. And what, what do you remember? If you're fortunate, what do you remember? You remember some time in your life where what you offered was the best you had, right? And if you're fortunate, not only did you offer what was best that you had, but it was received as the best and the consequences were positive. And then you can calm your debate with your conscience, at least to some degree by saying, well, at least there was something that I did right. And cause you know, you know, perfectly well in your heart of hearts that, you're called upon to offer your best is why it says, for example, in the gospels that you're not to hide your light under a bushel, but to, but to shine like the city on the hill. And then there's an idea there. And it's a deep idea. And the idea is if you did your best, you'd be accepted. And that's exactly what God tells Cain. So Cain and Abel make sacrifices. Abel, he brought the firstlings of his fat flock and the fat thereof. Okay. So what does that mean? This is a complicated thing. THERE'S AN IDEA IN THE BIBLICAL CORRESPONDENT that the firstborn should be consecrated to God is a very complicated idea. First impression. That's the most important impression. Why? Because it sets the frame for the interactions after that. If you read people a list of words and then you ask them to repeat them back, they're much more likely to repeat back the first and the last word. The first of something sets the frame. So what does it mean to offer the firstlings? It means when you embark upon something, you bloody well better make sure that what you're aiming at when you begin is correct. Right? First things first. Well, that's what Abel does, is that the sacrifices he makes are from the first moment of the highest quality and in the proper spirit. Right? So they're not narcissistic or psychopathic or Machiavellian or self-serving or short-term or hedonistic or powerful. Or oriented. None of that. They're aimed up. Right? They're aimed at establishing psychological stability and harmony and extending that out to the family and extending that out to the broader community. Right? And then he offers up the fat. Well, why the fat? The fat's the highest quality food. And the fat of the lamb is the highest quality of the fat. And so what does all this mean if you strip it of its archaic terminology? Well, first of all, livestock was, very valuable to archaic people because they weren't wealthy in the manner that we're wealthy. Their wealth, what they had was literally embodied in their flock. And to offer to God the choicest cuts of the flock was absolutely equivalent to offering your best in the world. It's a demonstration of sacrificial intent. Now it turns out, and this is the optimistic part of this story because fundamentally, it's a very optimistic story. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. Okay, so let's think about this. You know, we have lots of reasons for assuming that the world isn't just. You know, I was re-watching a debate I had with Stephen Fry, great Englishman who's an actor and very interested in mythology. And he, part of what we discussed was an interview he did where he mentioned how he would call God out if he ever had the misfortune to meet him. Now Fry claims atheism, but he, he got quite heated when he was discussing the centrally evil nature of God. And he said, how is it that we're supposed to proceed in a world under the assumption that the created order is good when innocent children die horribly of bone cancer? And that's a perfectly reasonable question. You're going to ask yourself in your own life how it is that you can cope with the fact of being alive given the unjust suffering that you're being put through or that someone you love is, being put through. Well, what's the counter position to that? Well, this statement and the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. So there's a proposition here. It's a proposition about the nature of man and God. And the proposition is this regardless of the circumstances, if you offered your best, that offering would be gratefully that offering would be incorporated into the covenant in a productive manner. And then you think we can, we can think this through. Let's say you have a daughter and she's diagnosed with a terrible illness and that's enough to make you shake your fist at God in the world. Well, how, how should you respond to that in a manner that's going to be best for her? Are you going to become bitter and resentful and nihilistic and turn against the world? Is that going to be useful to her? Maybe she's eight. She needs you. What are you supposed to do? Aim up. Offer your best. No excuses. And, and that, that idea is echoed continually through the biblical works. Job, for example, Job is literally the target of a bet between God and Satan. And Job is a good man. And Satan comes along to God and says, I don't think he's that good. You let me have Adam for a while and he'll turn against you. And God says, yeah, I don't think so. Do your worst. And so you'll feel like that at times in your life. And Job's answer is twofold. Answer number one is he's good enough. So he doesn't have to take himself apart just because he's suffering. Because one of the questions you'll ask yourself, if undue suffering visits you is, are you the sort of corrupt entity that deserves this, right? It's just what you had coming to you. Now that's what Job's friends tell him, by the way, while he's, you know, nursing his disfiguring illness in the ashes, his friends come along and say, well, this wouldn't have happened to you if you would have had your act together, you know, and they're kind of happy about being able to say that, which is a bit of misery. A little excess misery for Job, just when he could use it the least. And he also refuses point blank to do what his wife says, shake your fist at God and die. That's what you've got left. And Job's answer is no matter what happens to me, I will maintain my faith no matter what. And then you think, well, there's an, there's an element of that that's unreasonable, obviously, because you can certainly imagine, and no doubt experience being tortured to the point where your faith is sorely tested. And you can certainly imagine being tortured to the point where your faith is sorely tested. And you feel entirely justified in cynicism and bitterness. In fact, you might even regard it as a form of justice, but then you can ask yourself a question in consequence. It's like, how's that working for you? And then you can see too, when you encounter people who are suffering unduly and you see them bearing up under that nobly, and they're still aiming up and maintaining their faith and their integrity and their honesty, and even their willingness to be of service to others. That's someone you admire like instantly. That's the, that's the sort of person you want to have around when the waves rise and the winds blow a little bit too roughly. And so there's a promise here. It's one of the first promises. It's the first promise in some ways that God makes to, to the men who are born rather than created. And the promise is if you offer your best, it will be accepted. And so, and this is something that requires immense soul searching. Because you could well ask yourself always, always, if the world is not laying itself out for you in the manner that you deem acceptable, maybe your definition of what constitutes acceptable could use a little work, but maybe there's something that you still have been unwilling to part with, or maybe there's some manner in which you are still not offering your best because the best is that's a lot to ask, especially under dire conditions. It's an all in full commitment, right? In every second. That's why Christ says in the gospels that you're to be perfect. Like your father in heaven is perfect, right? That's why the doorway to paradise is barred by cherubim who wield swords that turn every which way and burn. And what does that mean? It means that everything that isn't worthy will be cut away. It means that nothing that is unworthy will be allowed to pass into paradise. Well, by definition, obviously, because it wouldn't be paradise. It wouldn't be paradise. If everything that was unworthy wasn't cut and burned away before entrance. And so you can ask yourself too, if you're suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, are there still things that need to be cut and burned away? And is that a sacrifice that you're willing to make? And that's going to be dependent to some degree on your faith, right? Are you willing to stake yourself on the presumption that if you let everything that was in you out, that the world would lay itself out properly at your feet, or are you going to hold back, right? Are you going to keep something in reserve? Are you going to do what Cain does? And offer what's second best? Well, what goes along with that? Well, first of all, he's fooling himself because every one of us knows perfectly well that life is far too difficult for you to be successful with a second rate effort. Like you can just forget that getting through this properly is going to take not only everything that you have, but everything you could become if you gave everything you have. And everyone knows that. And so the notion that you can cut corners here and you can offer what second rate there. It's like, do you believe that? And if you do, who the hell do you think you are? You can't, you think you can fool yourself with that presumption. You think you're going to fool other people. And more importantly, you think you're going to pull one over on the source of being itself. Do you? That's a Luciferian presumption, right? And that's exactly what God tells Cain, by the way. But unto Cain and his offering, he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell countenance, facial expression, right? Cain becomes depressed and bitter and angry. Well, why do people become depressed and bitter and angry? Well, obviously because their sacrifices aren't rewarded. Clearly like that's the embittering pathway. Cain's thinking, I break myself in half every day, you know, to please myself and other people in God. And all I get in, in response is a lack of respect. And underneath that is the presumption that Cain can offer his second rate sacrifices. And that's okay. And that other people are at fault for not accepting them as if they're the real thing. And even more that God himself is to be called out for the reality of creation, because God won't allow himself, won't allow himself to be fooled by second rate sacrifices. You, You can't possibly imagine and anything more self-centered, psychopathic, and narcissistic than that proposition, right? Job, one of the things God tells Job when Job is working through his suffering is that human beings have no right to judge the cosmic order. We don't have the wisdom. We don't have the perspicacity. We don't have the humility. If we set ourselves up as judges of the cosmic order, there's no difference between setting yourself up as a judge of the cosmic order and acting as an agent of the spirit who eternally conspires to overthrow God. That's the same story. That's Luciferian presumption. That's the Luciferian presumption of the intellect more technically. And Cain is in alignment with that because it's the person who makes false sacrifices who always thinks that he's smart enough to get away with it. He's smart enough to fool himself. He's smart enough to fool his partner. He can pull the wool over the eyes of his friends and the people in the community. And in the final analysis, if it was down to a showdown between him and God, he'd be on top and wants to be. And the Lord says unto Cain, why are you angry and upset and miserable and disappointed and bitter? And why is your face fallen? Why are you viewing the world in a sour manner and bitter and resentful and angry? Why is that? Sitting in the shadows. Stewing in misery. Not least because of failure, self-induced, but because of the painful example of Cain, of Abel's counterexample. Because you might ask yourself, well, if you are bitter and resentful because your second-rate sacrifices have been rejected, does that instantly make you jealous of everyone who's done the right thing? And worse, you hate them? And worse, does that make you murderous towards them? Even if they constitute your own ideal, even if in destroying them, you would destroy what was best in you. Well, why do people become murderous? And people certainly do. Fratricidal, that's Cain's sin. He kills his brother, not just his brother, the brother who's an ideal, right? That's an echo of the eventual crucifixion, the death of the ideal, the resentful, jealous, bitter, nihilistic murder of the ideal. There's a movie I'd recommend. You could watch this if you want. It's a very deep analysis of this conundrum. It's a movie called Crumb, and these are the Crumb brothers. And as you can tell, their countenance has fallen. And the man on the right, Charles, he commits suicide six months after this documentary is filmed by drinking furniture polish. It's the sixth suicidal attempt he made. The person on the left, Max, he's a serial sex offender with an IQ of about 160 and a hyper creative person. And all three of these brothers, Robert Crumb is the middle, a famous underground cartoonist. They're exemplars in their countenance and the spirit of Cain. There's nothing heroic about that second-rate sacrificial offering. It's not the noble Lucifer or Loki who rebels against God in the spirit of what noble revolutionary fervor. It's exactly this and that absolute miserable hating pathology that goes along with it. God says, if thou doest well, shall thou not be accepted? Well, that's, that's a tough one, right? Because like, do you believe, and you have to believe one way or another here. Do you believe that if you did your best, you would be rewarded? And you might say, well, a fool would take that bet. But I would say, well, have you got a non-foolish bet you're going to lay? Your life's on the line anyway, so you're going to bet on something. You're going to bet that you can hedge your bets and thereby attain the final victory. How could you make a bet like that? How could you presume that any reward would be rewarded? Wouldn't exist in proportion to the effort that you expended in attaining it. Even if you made halfway, half rate sacrifices, second rate sacrifices, and you accrued some reward, doesn't that merely imply that if you had done better, that the reward would have been greater? And then like, what's the limit to that? You know, perfectly well in your own life, when you serve the people around you and yourself in the most wholehearted manner, that things turn out for you the best way they could turn out. And that might be even true in the midst of your suffering. And if thou not doest not well, sin lies at your door and unto thee shall be his desire and thou shall rule over him. Well, this is one brutally miserable bit of correction from God. So basically what's happened here is Cain's bitter and he's angry. And so he goes and has a chat with God. And he says something like, what the hell's going on here? What kind of sin is this? And he says, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't what kind of planet did you make? I'm like breaking myself in half here with my second rate sacrifices and it's just not working out. And that doesn't seem fair. And what about this able character? Like everything he does turns to gold. And you know, how dare you make a universe this corrupt? And there's a fair bit of presumption in that you might say. And so, and what does God say? The last thing Cain wants to hear, the last thing anyone wants to hear when they make a proclamation like that, he says, sin lies at your door. And he wants you. And you could rule over him, but you chose not to. And you invited him in. You know, there's an idea in vampire movies that when they tap at your window, you have to let them in. Right? It's the same idea. It's exactly the same idea. And this is exactly right. And I know this from my clinical practice. Let's say you want to get bitter enough to shoot up a school. Well, I'll tell you how to do that. It's like, first of all, accumulate all the evidence that you have the evidence that the sacrifices that you're offering aren't paying off and allow yourself to become bitter enough so that you believe that the world is unfair and turned against you. And that the only pathway to justice is your revenge. All right, now start fantasizing about what you could do. Okay. So what do you do when you fantasize? Well, you take that spirit of bitter resentment and you ask it, what do you want? What do you want? Exactly. Maybe you're angry at someone who turned you down at school. If you're a high school kid, someone you would respect and admire that someone you would rather have on your side, some girl you admire, some guy you'd like to have been your friend and you get turned away. And so now you're bitter about that and you're angry and you think, what would I like to do to that person? If I had them alone, right? If I had them alone for an hour, if no one ever knew, and then you have a little fantasy. And why? Because you invited it in. And so then what do you do? You do that 10,000 hours in your basement and you let that fantasy go wherever it will. You 10,000 hours of that, and you'll, you'll be there with your, with your automatic rifle shooting elementary school kids and thinking that you're doing a pretty fine job while you're doing it. And that's a consequence. It's a very deep line and it has many precursors. There's another mythological stories. The notion is that sin is something that's a collaboration between the spirit of evil itself. That would be the bitterness and resentment that makes it self-manifest when your sacrifices have been rejected and the creative power of your own imagination. It's a, it's a collaboration. So what God actually says is sin lies at your door, like a sexually aroused predatory animal. And you've invited it in to have its way with you. Right? To brood, to sit on the fantasies and to nurse them. And as a consequence, they've taken you over. And that's exactly right. And God says worse. He says, not only that means not only are you at fault because you invited this thing in, but you're at fault because you could have resisted it. Even though you had your reasons to be upset, you could have resisted it. And you voluntarily and consciously chose not to. And that's the last thing, Cain, wants to hear, right? He wants to hear God say, well, you know, I made a mistake when I was laying the foundation of the world and things didn't turn out in your favor, despite your second rate sacrifices, because there's something not wrong with you, heaven forbid, but something wrong with the cosmic order itself. And God does exactly the opposite. He says, this is on you. You knew it all along. You played along. You dug the pit that you fell into. You know it. I'm lying about it now. And you, you could change and you should change. And Cain, of course, does what tyrannical possessed spirits always do, like the Pharaoh in the Egyptian story of the plague, like you when you're at your most stubborn. And instead of letting go and sacrificing, say, the pathological attitude that brought about the catastrophe, he doubles down. And Cain talked with Abel. Abel, his brother. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, slew him. So what does this mean? Well, it means essentially that Cain invited Abel to go work with him in the field, right? Inviting him along like he's his brother. And then when he got out in the field, he decided that he had enough of his successful brother and kills him. And then you might say, well, why does he kill him? And one answer is, well, because his example is intolerable to him. That's a good, that's a good reason because it's a form of vengeance against Abel for the pretension of his success, but more it's to get revenge against God because Abel is God's ideal, right? It's God's chosen is the person who's walking the divine path. And the best way that Cain can determine to shake his fist at the almighty who's torturing him by not accepting his second right sacrifices is by destroying God's ideal itself. If you ever wonder, by the way, why high school shooters shoot everyone and then themselves, well, now you have your answer because, you know, they can save themselves a lot of trouble and everyone else just by committing the suicidal act first, but no, they can wreak the most havoc by distributing the most misery and then cap it off with a demonstration of their lack of worth, even to themselves. It's a much more effective way to shake their fist at God and die. It's a dark story. And the Lord says unto Cable, where is Abel thy brother? And Cain says, well, how would I know? Am I my brother's keeper? Well, there's an implicit answer to that question, which is supposed to be yes, right? And that's an echo right there of the notion that you are in fact, your brother's keeper and not because you should be nice to him, but because by acting in that manner, you partake in the eternal proper cosmic order. You sacrifice your own power. You let go of your pretentious desires, let's say to the wellbeing of the people around you. And that that is the most effective possible form of sacrifice practically and theologically. And God says, what have the, what are you done? What have you done? What has thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. No crime goes unmarked, not least by the person who commits it. And now you're cursed from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou has driven me out this day from the face of the earth. And from thy face shall I be hid. And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. And that it shall come to pass that everyone that finds me shall slay me. My punishment is greater than I can bear. And I shall be a fugitive and a greater than I can bear. What happens when you destroy your own ideal? What's left? What's left for you then? Right? You've destroyed the very concept of up itself. And that's what Cain comes to realize in the aftermath of the murder. It's like, there's nothing for him now. And he thinks as well that everyone will kill him given what he's done. And God marks him for a very particular reason. And the reason is to stop a cycle of vengeful counter slaying. Right? To stop tit for tat revenge. And the Lord said, whoever slays Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon him, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. The land of Nod, that's where you drift off when you're asleep, right? Off to the land of Nod. What does that mean? Cain goes and lives an unconscious life on the margin. Right, which is exactly what happens to people when they slay their ideal. And Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bear Enoch. And he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. The story branches out in complexity from here. Cain's sons are the first builders. They eventually build, it's Cain's descendants that build the town. They eventually build, it's Cain's sons are the first builders. It's Cain's descendants, the descendants of the bitter spirit of Cain, who are the builders who attempt to supplant the divine with technology, right? And they do that as a consequence of their intellectual pride in their technological pretensions. And if you don't think we've been building towers of Babel recently, of a gigantic size unparalleled in human history, you haven't been paying attention. And if you haven't noticed that it's the engineers who are doing it, you also haven't been paying attention. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bear Enoch, and he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. There's nothing wrong with technology, except when it's, it's pretensions are to supplant the divine order. Well, how are we doing that now? Well, how about pornography? How about the fact that we've taken a single woman and transformed her into a million images of women that can invade every corner of every house in the world and supplant the divine order? How about we're trying to do the same thing with robots, female robots, even sex robots, even female robots? How about we're trying to do the same thing with robots? How about we're trying to do the same thing with females? How about we're trying to do the same thing with males? How about we're trying to do the same thing with in the optimal possible manner, then your shortcomings are linked to that failure in some way that you have yet to become conscious of. And that's a terrible thing. It's a terrible thing to contemplate, but it's an amazing thing to wonder because it does mean that just as there's more resting on your shoulders on the side of sin than you think there's way more available to you on the side of opportunity than you could possibly dream of. And that willingness to own the, the malformed aim, that's no different than learning to take advantage of the opportunity. And I would say just as the abyss that lies underneath all of us is infinite in its depth, the opportunity that lies at our hands is infinite in its scope and the proper sacrificial attitude attitude brings you away from the abyss. And moves you towards the realm of infinite opportunity. That's the kingdom of God that spread upon the earth that men do not see or will not see very stark division of choice, right? There's a place where you have the landscape of heaven and hell laid out cleanly and clearly related to individual conduct in the essentially the third story of the biblical corpus. It's absolutely in 12 lines. It's absolutely. Inconceivable and Adam knew his wife again and she bear a son and called his name Seth for God said, she has appointed me another seat instead of Abel who came slew and to Seth to him. There was also born a son and he called his name Enos and then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Well, Abel is dead to the terrible grief of Adam and Eve, but he represents a spirit. That's not, that's not mortal. That can't be finally killed. And if it's killed in any of its incarnations able, let's say then it reappears in another guys. And that's what happens to Eve is that the spirit of good cannot be overcome permanently by the spirit of evil. That's another optimistic element of the story. So that's the story of Cain and Abel. I don't think there's a more terror. I don't think there is. I don't think there is a more terrifying story than that story. Actually there's, I don't think there's a more terrifying story in the biblical Corpus, but properly understood. I don't think there's a more terrifying story, especially if you take it with some degree of seriousness, because it ties, like I said, it offers this terrible stark representation of the reality that's at hand for you. It's like when you make a moral error, when you fail to make the proper sacrifices, when you've refused to aim up, you're by definition aiming down and hell is a bottomless pit for a reason. And what that means is that the degeneration of societies into totalitarian hell is a sin that can be placed on the shoulders of every person. Who's a denizen of that state. It's a process you participate in every time you're called by your conscience to stand up and say something, you know, you should say, and you refuse. And by the same token, the words that you could bring to the world, that ring of truth and noble aim, they are literally the salvation of they're literally salvation and redemption itself. And you want to know what the meaning of your life is. That's the meaning of your life. Dreadful as it is promising as it is stark as it is adventurous as that, as it is, adventurous as that, is it's not for nothing. You know, that our society is predicated on the notion that human beings are to take up their crosses and bear them right. More cataclysmic demand can not possibly be imagined. And yet the proposition that lies at the base of our culture is that you're the sort of person that can do that, that that's your core. That's the core of your being. That capability to face the catastrophe of the world, full frontal eyes open, no reservation and to transform it into the glorious resurrection. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, Tim, how's it going? How does one keep focused on the day to day processes of goals instead of being overwhelmed by the big picture of a change in the world? achieving them if the spectacle of you achieving your goals is too overwhelming you're biting off more than you can chew right you're taking on to yourself more than you can bear if if your ambitions demoralize you then they should be scaled back they should be scaled back to the point where you feel challenged by them but that but that with some effort you could do them and you look at that and you ask yourself if there's a sin of pride embedded in it presumptuousness right adam and eve get thrown out of paradise because they bite off more than they can chew right that's the eternal fallacy of man really that's that's that's that's really the the moral of the story pride goes before a fall that's the same moral if if your ambitions are so daunting that they paralyze you you picked a dragon bigger than you can fight and you should pare back now you might say well why should i pare back i i hope to be ambitious and i would say well everything in its proper place you have to to use a terrible cliche you have to walk before you can run you know if you're if you want to do one-on-one pickup basketball you probably don't want to play michael jordan right because you're just going to get crushed and you don't want to play your three-year-old nephew either because you're just going to stomp him you want an opponent that's matched to you and it's the same with your ambition now i would say what's positive in that regard is that if you choose an ambition that's well suited to your abilities as they actually are then as you pursue that your scope of vision will broaden and so you don't have to sacrifice your high ambitions if you replace them with a more proximal ambition that's more properly matched to your time and place and that's really what humility is i would say humility is the proper matching of challenge to ability right and and you you can tell that by the way and this is something very important to know you can tell that because if your challenge is matched to your ability optimally you'll proceed in the spirit of play right because play is the marker of optimized challenge you know if you if you if you're playing a good game you want to play against someone who could beat you right not someone who will certainly beat you but someone who especially could beat you if you don't do your best and your your challenge your ambition should be a partner of that sort something you wrestle with that's an angel of god that's a good way of thinking about it right you want to pick the right size avatar of the highest to wrestle with and and you'll improve in the wrestling so it doesn't mean you'll forego your ambition so scale back this is another thing that's really useful to know too if you find that you're you have an ambition and you continually fail to implement it one of the things you could ask yourself is well possibly you're demanding too much of yourself at the moment what if you what if you scale back by half and if that doesn't work half again here's a hint scale back till you do it really like that's what you do as a behavior therapist if you're if you're setting someone off for example i'll give you a i'll give you an example so i had this client who he got some girl pregnant and she decided to keep the baby and he was going to be a father and he was completely immature he's about 30 and he lived at home in his high school bedroom which he hadn't cleaned up since he was like born and and uh he came to see me because he he knew he was immature and he felt he should get his act together so he didn't doom his new son which was you know a noble ambition and uh we decided we're going to start by cleaning up his room and so what do you do as a what you do as a behavior therapist is you you pick a fairly concrete task that's aligned with some reasonable goal and you're going to do it and you're going to do it and you're going to do it and you're going to do it and you're going to do it all you know like if you're going to get your act all you know like if you're going to get your act together you live at home in your high school together you live at home in your high school together you live at home in your high school bedroom under the care of your parents and bedroom under the care of your parents and bedroom under the care of your parents and you're so useless you don't even keep the you're so useless you don't even keep the you're so useless you don't even keep the room clean well cleaning it up isn't room clean well cleaning it up isn't room clean well cleaning it up isn't exactly a heroic struggle although it's exactly a heroic struggle although it's exactly a heroic struggle although it's more heroic than you might think because because there's many things that stop a room like that from being cleaned up. There's many devils guarding the mess, you could say. But you have to scale back until you find a starting place. And we decided he was going to vacuum his rug. He'd probably need like a dumpster and a front-end loader to do that. So what he did, he went and got the vacuum cleaner. It was this upright vacuum cleaner, and he got it all the way to the door of his bedroom, and then he left it in the door, propped at 45 degrees for a whole week, and walked over it. And then he came to me, and he was embarrassed about this, as he should have been. And what it was, it was an indication of the fact that he knew that he was risking all hell breaking loose by cleaning up that room. God only knows what sort of revenge his parents would have taken on him for having the unmitigated gall to move towards maturity at the age of 30. So he left the damn vacuum cleaner, you know, on the threshold. So we reconsidered the task, you know. I said, what sort of shape are the drawers in your cabinet, you know, where you keep your clothes? He said, well, you can imagine. I thought, yeah, I've seen drawers that haven't been, that are stuffed with the chaos of a wasted life. That's for sure. You think you could clean up half of one drawer? And that's pretty humiliating, right? That's a thing you have to do on your knees, if that's where you got to start. That's a dismal realization, you know. But he came back the next week, and he'd done that, you know. And, well, then it was a whole drawer, and then it was the bureau. And it wasn't that long before it was the room. But he had to start where he could start. And that meant he had to face who he was. And he was a man who, at 30, was too terrified to vacuum his rug. And that's a lot more common than you might, I think. And it is a humbling experience to take yourself as you are. But, man, there's another rule. To those who have everything, more will be given. From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. That's an economic law, by the way. The economists call that the Matthew Principle, even though it's derived from a gospel saying. What it means is that if you start moving forward, you start moving forward more rapidly, right? The mirror, the first step you take increases the probability, of the second step and the first two increase the probability of the next two. And so you don't improve like this, you improve like this. And because of that, it doesn't really matter where you start. And that's something extremely useful to know, because no matter what skill it is that you're lacking, if you're willing to face that lack squarely and start where you are and begin to practice and to make the appropriate sacrifices, you can learn far faster than you might imagine. And because it's an exponential increase, it doesn't really, in some ways, it doesn't matter where you start. It matters that you start. So if you're biting off more than you can chew and the result dragon terrifies you into paralysis, you know, swallow your pride, man, and then start where you are. And that's why Jung said, Carl Jung said, the fool is the precursor to the savior, right? The fool is the person who's willing to be wrong, honestly, wrong, because the person who's willing to be honestly wrong. And to reveal that that's a fool, that person can learn. It's always the fool who learns. So the honest fool, a good man is an honest fool. Do you have any regrets with regard to parenting or one piece of advice you'd offer to parents of older teens slash young adults? Thank you. I have things I wish would have been otherwise. I have things I wish I would have had the luxury of having otherwise, I would say one of the things that Tammy and I determined to do when our kids were teenagers was to take a trip with each of them separately once every year or two. And you might say that's not very often, but it's way more often than it usually happens. And you're bloody fortunate if you get to manage it. And I took one trip with Julian only my son, and then my daughter, our daughter got very, very ill. And that was the end of that. And so you took a trip with her to New York. I took a tree. I did. I took, I took a trip with Michaela. Yes, definitely. But we didn't get to take those trips with the frequency we would have wanted. Now, you know, generally, if you lose something, if you're fortunate, you can gain it back. Not necessarily in exactly the same manner, but in a, in a, in a manner that, that, that fills the gap, you know, and I have done many things with my children. I have done many things with my children. to ignore God. to ignore the voice of his own conscience, because it's well established in the biblical corpus by this time that one manifestation of God is the still small voice conscience. So it's, it's Jonah's conscience that comes calling and says, you got something to say there, buddy. And Jonah thinks not me. And so off he goes and he takes a boat and he's going to get as far away from Nineveh as he can possibly manage, right? He's going to go hide in the waves rise and the wind blows and the ship is threatened. And the sailors are all shorting out and they think someone on this boat is not right with one of their gods. And so they go around to everyone on the ship and they find Jonah and he's asleep because people who are doing this are asleep and they wake him up and they say, we're trying to find out who has not been attending to the dictates of their God, because this storm ain't good. And you know, we'd like to do something about it. And Jonah says, yeah, that's probably me. And they say, well, what God do you worship? And Jonah says, well, you know, he's the God. He's not some like God of the kitchen table or God of the local bar. He's like the God that created everything. And the sailors go, you just, you disobeyed a direct order from your God. And your God is the God who created everything said, that's not a good idea. And that's not a good idea. And, and, and, they feel they have to throw them overboard, but they're good guys. And so they try to get to shore so they can just get rid of them. They try not to throw them overboard, but God doesn't have not, he's not having none of that. And the waves get higher. And like the ship's going to founder. And Jonah finally says like, it's me like, just throw me over, you know, we're all going to die anyway, throw me over. And so they throw them over and you think, well, that's pretty bad. So what's the moral of the story? Disobey a direct order from God. And drought die. But that's nothing. That's nothing because there are lots of things worse than death and disobeying a direct order from God. Death is just where the fun starts. So what happens to Jonah? A creature comes up from the abyss itself, right? A whale and takes them in his jaws and pulls them all the way down to the bottom of things, right? Three days in hell, right? That's worse than death. If you don't know, there are worse things. If you don't know, there are worse things than death. You're a very fortunate or a very blind person. And so Jonah, Jonah is now in the grip of hell itself because he failed to say what he was called upon to say. And after three days, he repents. And the whale spits him out and he goes to Nineveh and he tells the people that they're sinning and he tells them why. And they listen and they repent and God just decides to spare the city. That's your job. That's everyone's job. That's the job of a sovereign citizen. Every single one of you, you know, your entire culture is predicated on the idea that you have intrinsic value and intrinsic responsibility, that your integrity is the foundation of the state. And that's no joke. That's not some casual statement. It means something very literal. Abdicate your civic responsibility and watch your society decay. Okay. And when you ask why, just remember you were called upon to say something and you remain silent, right? It's on you. Okay. So, so now you know what to be afraid of. It's like, you could be afraid of losing your job. You could be afraid of being called out by the woke mob, or you could be afraid that the ship will sink and that you'll end up in hell. Just like the Soviets did, just like the Maoists did, just like the Nazis did when they held their tongue, when they should have said, and if you don't think that could come your way, well, then why are you worried about the DEI people at John Deere? Okay. Now, having said that, and so harshly, I would say something else. You can't do this foolishly, right? When you, when you're called upon to speak, you have to speak wisely and you might not be in a position. There's no sense burning up your bridges with a, what would you say with a casual outburst at work because you've been pushed too far. If you've, if you've decided that you're going to do something about this, if you've decided that it's something that needs your attention, then you have to give it your attention. You have to start to prepare for the battle or for the war, even. And I don't mean the war that will be fought with guns because we bloody well hope it won't come to that. Although it often does. I mean the war that you'll have to undertake in order to set to set the society around you right. And I don't know what that'll mean for each of you individually. Ask yourself, ask yourself. It's like, and I mean this literally, you know, they say you knock and the door will open. If you ask, you'll receive. And if you seek, you'll find it's like, okay, you've got a problem. You know, something's rotten. What should you do about it? Sit on your bed, sit on the edge of your bed and ask yourself, you know, get your aim straight. I would like to do something about this. I would like to do it wisely and carefully and judiciously. I'd like to do it in a manner that doesn't expose myself and my family to undo careless risk. I'd like to find the right pathway forward. Is there anything that I could do that I would do? You know, maybe it'll take you a month to two for the revelation to make itself manifest. Maybe I've talked to your wife. Maybe I've talked to your friends. You got to be wise as serpents, right? That's the injunction. This is no casual thing, but if it's bothering you, people say, how do I find the meaning in my life? What bothers you? That's your problem. That's God offering you an opportunity. That's so strange, you know, because maybe it will be that you'll be like Moses. Moses was thick of tongue. He couldn't speak well. And maybe you're in the same situation. You think I don't have a political bone in my body. It's like, well, grow one, you know, and I'm dead serious. Like this, this problem that you're seeing could be the greatest opportunity of your life because in confronting it, you could turn yourself into what you are not yet. But that happens to people all the time. They find the adventure in their life in confronting the problems that beset them because you could ask yourself, here's a question for you. Why does it bother you anyways? Why can't you just ignore it? And if you can't ignore it, it's like, well, what is it that you can't ignore? Is that you? Or is that something reminding you of who you are? You know what I mean? This is as practically as possible. If it was just you, well then why can't you control it? We don't control our conscience. We can listen to it or not, but we certainly don't control it. It speaks to us and I would say a wise man listens or else and I like and I mean or else I spent a lot of time studying the development of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism starts with lies. It starts with some lies and then it's many lies and then once it's total, everyone lies about absolutely everything. Everything they do, everything they imagine, everything they say all the time to themselves and everyone they love and the grip of the lie. That's the totalitarian state. You think it's the dictator? It's like, no, everyone in the totalitarian state is their own dictator. So if you don't want that, don't do it. And that doesn't mean to act unwisely, right? There's no sense cutting off your arms so you can bleed on your opponent, right? And I mean this like I, I help lots of people in my clinical practice stand up to bullies at work like that's you have to get your act together to do that. It's it's you got to make the decision. You got to talk to your wife. You got to talk to your kids. You got to talk to your family and your friends. You got to think, are we going to do something about this? Like, or can we, you know, can we nurture our little family and continue in the shadows, you know, without taking on this additional responsibility or has push come to shove? And if you decide that you're in this, like, okay, wake the hell up, get your words in order, get your forces around. You muster up your friends, figure out what you have to say and do it wisely. And maturely and with forethought, right? What you'll find is that those who insist that you swallow the lie are weak. How can they not be? They're living in, they're living on a lie. That's the definition of weak. Now, couldn't they make things hot for you for a time? Not as hot as they'll be made if you hold your tongue. And that's for sure. So, so that's why you have to be afraid of the right thing. You know, there's nothing you should be more afraid of than losing control of your tongue. No, that's the divine word that produces the cosmos. That's good. And you're made in that image. You lose that you're done. So nothing that nothing that earthly authorities can do to you has that cataclysmic consequence. Maybe you have to prepare to fall. Maybe you have to find another job. Who knows what that would mean? Maybe you have to get your resume in order. you to make a move anyways who knows right fortify your walls and gird your loins and don't let people don't swallow the lie folks that's a very bad idea that that's every time you lie by omission or commission you move the world closer to hell and we can produce quite the hell now with the tools we have so if that's what you want for your kids then remain silent when you're called upon to speak that's it all right everyone thank you very much for coming one of a few minutes with god could change the direction of your entire day with pray.com you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers inspiring bible stories and messages created to strengthen your faith whether you need peace encouragement or a fresh start pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life download the pray.com app today