 I've I've been seeing you all over the place. Have you? Yeah, since we since we last saw you, I saw you on Ben Shapiro and Rubin and Jordan Pierce. Yeah. And you're on mainstream, I think, news channels or or having a big break. Yeah. We try we try to take credit for that. The mine pump box. So we call it. It's things growing or things is what you're doing seems to be working. Yeah. I mean, we're on fires going great guns and, you know, a lot of different fronts. So we still do the YouTube videos, we do podcasts, the long films. You know, so we just got back a few months ago from Europe. I was filming over there. So we were kind of moving a lot of different fronts. But but one of the things we're focusing on is that kind of going out to the wider culture thing and especially addressing audiences that wouldn't normally, you know, maybe come to the Catholic Church or to religion. So that's why someone like Peterson, you know, I've always found intriguing and he's speaking to a lot of people. About, I would call them religious themes, you know, and I'm not in a way that I would consider, you know, just right in every detail, but he's opening a lot of doors for people. So I was happy to dialogue with him, you know, talking to you guys. I mean, as part of that strategy to is to kind of go outside of the walls of the church. That's a big part of our work. The last time that we met, we were, we were actually talking about Jordan Peterson. That was a big topic and you hadn't got linked up with him. We obviously have listened to them. I think we've listened to that interview multiple times because we like a lot of the stuff that he talks about. We love what you're talking about. What was that experience like for you? What did you, what did you say? Yeah, we did kind of a Skype thing, you know, so I was just in my house and then he was on Skype. So it was kind of really informal. But we talked for a long time, like an hour and a half, maybe long conversation covering a lot of different topics. You know, he's an intriguing guy and we have a similar background in some ways. We've read a lot of the same people. He's got a philosophical interest as well as psychology and the mind is sort of philosophy and religion. So it's a lot of overlap in our interests. And I think our approach is similar in some ways. So we had a lot to talk about. And he was very, you know, very moved obviously by religious themes. Whenever that would come up, you could tell he was very emotional. Right. And that at the time surprised me a little bit, you know, but I thought, good, you know, if he's really being affected personally by it, it's not just a matter of ideas. Yeah. And so I enjoyed it a lot. It was a real pleasant conversation. It was easy going. It wasn't in any way confrontational. You know, it's our first chance really to meet. Yeah. So I was delighted with it. You know, from our standpoint, you know, we're obviously in the health space. Yeah. And, you know, our journey through health and fitness took us through exercise and then nutrition. And then eventually you realize relationships around you contribute to health. And then eventually I think you start to realize that there's a spiritual component to health as well. And you actually see this quite a bit in the fitness space, but just not in the form of what you would consider traditional religion. So you see a lot of people in health and fitness that are like, you know, crystals, and they talk about the universe and stuff like that. And I think that they're acknowledging that there's a spiritual component right to health. Everyone's hungry for God. That's the first thing, you know. So it's always going to come up in some form. Even those who say, oh, I have no time for God. I'm an atheist. I'm agnostic. They're not really fundamentally everybody is hungry for God. I don't know if last time around I shared this line with you, but whenever this issue of like body and soul comes up, I always think of Thomas Aquinas, who's my intellectual hero. And Thomas said the soul is in the body, not as contained by it, but as containing it. And see that is right to that point. The soul is not like hidden in there someplace. Or boy, I got to get my soul out of this lousy body so I can, it can really get spiritualized. The soul is in the body, not as contained by it, but as containing it. The soul is kind of, it's a greater reality. It includes the body, so to speak. And so, you know, in a biblical vision, which the Catholic church hangs on to, the body is extremely important. It's not like body versus soul. That's a Platonic or agnostic game of let's get the soul out of the body or let's denigrate the body. You know, if you pay attention to the body, that's a bad move. That's just not biblical. It's not Catholicism, certainly. So I think, to me, it makes perfect sense that an interest in bodily health naturally leads to the issue of health of soul or spiritual health. One of the most ancient terms for a priest is the one who does Kura on Imaram, right? He cares for the soul. Just, you know, doctors care for the body, psychologists care for the mind. Well, who cares for the soul? But when you care for the soul, you're also caring for the mind and for the body because the soul is what contains all of it, you know? So my years like doing seminary formation, I was just training people who were into soul training, soul doctoring. And so all those things are connected, absolutely. So I could pretty clearly list the symptoms of what you would find with a poor diet or the symptoms of inactivity or poor activity or inappropriate activity or even the symptoms of poor relationships. What would the symptoms be of poor spiritual health or lack of training there? Sin, self-reproach, sadness, depression, aridity, the spiritual masters call it, you know, dryness. But, you know, the best term actually would be sin. When sin manifests itself, so in particular sins that we commit, that's a sign of a deeper dysfunction. So Paul talks about like being in sin when sin has taken control of me. That means you've got a much more fundamental issue going on and it's manifesting itself in the particular sins. So do the physical analogy, you got symptoms, right? Symptoms are manifesting themselves. A doctor will say, okay, those are coming from a deeper dysfunction or like in the case of, you know, physical fitness, we're like, lethargy or I'm getting fat or whatever it is. You say, well, that's all coming from a more fundamental trouble here with diet and exercise or whatever. So that's what a sole doctor is attuned to. What are the sins in this person's life? And then what's the sin that they're coming from? And you can always trace it by the way, look at all the spiritual masters back to one fundamental problem, you know. Sin with a capital S is always making an idol out of the ego. So that's always the fundamental form of sin. It'll manifest itself then in a million different sins. And you know, a mistake actually that some beginner spiritual directors make is they can focus too much on sins. I'm just looking at your sins and how do I address the sins going on? But what are those sins symptomatic of? Oh, wow, this makes a lot of sense. Sin, and that's what we have to get at. This reminds me of like someone coming to me and saying, hey, you know, I got to lose 30 pounds so I can get happy. And then I realized, actually, you got to get happy first and that's how you lose the 30 pounds. And when you're mentioning the sins as these symptoms, when you're saying it initially, I'm thinking like sins, like having sex before marriage or using God's name in vain. But I think when you said creating an idol out of the ego, explain that a little bit. That's the ego drama versus the theodrama. That's when you say, my life is about realizing my plans, my projects. You're my bit of players. You're my supporting cast. I'm the center of the universe. My life's about me. I'm the writer, producer and director and star of this great drama and all of you are kind of bit players in it. So right now, you know, the Robert Barron shows on the road here and you guys are, I'm going to move on. That, the ego drama, right, making the ego central then produces all the dysfunction that we associate with sin. The key is making a transition to the theodrama, which is saying there's a great drama that God is producing and God is directing and God wants you to play a role in it. But we discover that role. Then you found who you really are, but it's not about you. Your life isn't about you. It's about what God wants for you. And when you make that transition, then things tend to fall into place in your life. That's when you get healthy spiritually. You know what I'm saying? So that's one of the major ways to name the difference. Are you ego dramatic or theodramatic in the way you look at your life? How would that look in terms of how I would live? Like let's say I wake up in the morning and it's not just about me and my ego, but it's the steel. Well, you know, I'll tell you, I'm kind of a morning person. I wake up early and I do my holy hour that we call it the first thing in the morning. So I go to my chapel and bless the sacrament and I pray the office, you know, which is part of my obligations of priest. You pray this series of prayers and psalms and stuff. But you also spend time, I spend time with the rosary or the Jesus prayer or just in silent contemplation, right? Well, one of the questions I always kind of force myself to ask during the holy hours. All right, Lord, what do you want me to do today? So you can begin your day by saying, okay, how can I become more famous, get more pleasure, find more power and be more honored, right? I can structure my day that way. That's what I want to do. Now how will I do that? Or you can say, no, Lord, what do you want me to do today? What's your plan for me? How can I speak your word today? Tell me, show me. And part of it is a surrender of control, you know, because the ego dramatic thing is, it's I'm in control, it's my life. It's my mind, it's my will, my desires, my projects. The theodroma is allowing God to operate through me, you know. And see, and it never involves the negation of the self. It always involves the elevation of the self in the good way. It involves making you more yourself because when you surrender your mind and your will and your powers and your energy to God, now it's like the burning bush. It becomes more beautiful and more radiant, you know, without being consumed. That's the symbolism of the burning bush. It's on fire but not consumed. So it's more itself, it's more beautifully itself because God has set it on fire. That's the fulcrum on which this thing, teeter taught us in some ways. Are you more ego dramatic or theodramatic? What you're saying makes so much sense and when I hear you talk, I often wonder how and why religion has fallen so out of favor, especially with the younger generation. Yes, and you know why I think, I'm glad you brought it up, because we've forgotten our own language of soul doctoring. Prior to the modern period, so let's say the rise of the sciences, prior to that, the smartest people in the west all went into soul doctoring. So think of the greatest minds, you know, in the ancient world and into the medieval world. Think of your Dante's and Thomas Aquinas' and Stelms and Abelards and Bonaventures and all these people, right? What did they go into? They went into soul doctoring. They went into understanding the soul, what it wants, what it desires, where it goes wrong, how to address it, how to sav it. And I use that word on purpose, S-A-L-V-E, because that's related to the Latin word solos. It means health, right? And you say salve to someone in the ancient world. That meant health to you. Salve, you know, that means like a greeting. Salve, S-A-L-V-E, is sav, like a sav to make you healthy. All these people studied the savs of the tradition that you would rub into the sin sick soul to make it functional again. But see, we forgot a lot of that. Religion devolved, there's all kinds of reasons for this, into a lot of bickering about science and religion and that kind of stuff and questions like that. But the fundamental questions are always soul doctrine questions. They remain just as relevant today as ever because people suffer from the same things they always have. And the solutions can't be found finally in the physical or in the psychological realm. They've got to be found in the spiritual realm. But we've stopped propagating that. We've stopped talking about it. Many of even religious leaders have forgotten that language. And I think that's exactly why, one of the reasons why religion has sort of fallen away. It just seems like, oh, it's old-fashioned science. It's outmoded cosmology or something. It's soul doctrine and that remains as relevant as ever. We just recently had an interview with Ryan Holiday. I don't know if you know who that is. He's an author of Ego as the Enemy, Stillness as Key. And he's a big Stoic reader and something he said to me that I didn't know that, and he referred to one of the Stoics and I don't remember the Stoics name that was born at the same time Jesus was. What is your thoughts on Stoicism and where does that fall into all of this? Well, it was used to some degree by Christian thinkers. So it was appropriated to some degree. And even the language of detachment that you find in a lot of the Christian spiritual masters has a Stoic overtone, meaning that kind of letting go and letting be and I'm not going to try to control things. Here's the main difference though. In a Stoic view, it's more like fate. There's like this sort of the forces of fate to which I surrender myself. But see in the Bible, it's not that. I mean, God isn't as bland as that. God's a person. God's an actor. God wants something. God is involved in our lives. So yes, we got to get detached from our egotistic desires. So wealth, pleasure, power, honor, right? And all the things that are into that. So my whole life becomes my attachment to these four things. So that, that's true. Become detached. So that, not like fate can take over or some abstract, you know, necessity, but that God can take over. And boy, now you're in for a ride, man, because God is active and he's a person and he wants to accomplish something. So that's very different from Stoicism, which is, you know, in a way, I don't want to oversimplify, but there's something like that in the Buddhist tradition. There's a lot that we find a lot of congruence to that kind of detachment and acceptance and all that. But the difference is you don't have that vibrant active sense of God as a person who now is sending you on mission. That's key to Christian spirituality is it's always a mission spirituality. You've got a job to do. Because no one in the Bible, there's no exception to this, no one in the Bible ever confronts God without being sent on a mission. So it's never like, oh, I'm now in my contemplative aloneness with God. The Bible's not interested in that. The Bible says like the Burning Bush is a good example. You know, so Moses, Moses, come over here. And Moses communes with God and God reveals his sacred name. You know, I am who I am and all this high mysticism. But then, all right, Moses, I got a job for you. Now you go liberate my people. It's true of every single person in the Bible, period. And in Christian spirituality, that's true of all of us. It's finding your mission. When you find your mission, you found yourself. You don't know who you are until you find your mission. Now the concept of the Holy Trinity is a very sort of a complex topic in general. Is there a way that you can sort of more clearly define that for people and have them understand like the definition of God and why this is a Trinity? Yeah, no, super important. The Trinity is the technically theological way of stating that God is love, if that makes sense. So that's the distinctive claim of the New Testament. Not that God has love or that God loves. All the religions will say that in some way. But Christianity says God is love, right? Well, that's true. There has to be within the unity of God. So we're monotheists. We don't think there are many gods. There's one God. But within the one God, there's got to be a lover, a beloved, and the love that they share, right? So if he is love, if like, you know, I have love, right? I love from time to time. So that's an attribute of mine. But if God is love straight through, that's all he is. There has to be from all eternity of a lover, we call him the father, a beloved, we call the son, and the shared love we call the Holy Spirit. Because Spiritus just means breath in Latin, right? It's Pneuma in Greek. So it's the holy breath breathed back and forth between the father and the son from all eternity. That's what the Trinity name, see? So it's just a, you can't say, oh yeah, I hold that God is love, but I think this Trinity stuff is a lot of, you know, who we. There's two ways of saying the same thing, right? If God just loves, I don't have to opt for the Trinity. So let's say in a Jewish or Islamic framework, I can say the one God who loves, but in Christianity, I say God is love. So I have to hang out of the Trinity. Very interesting. A couple of interesting things come up when we talk about certain truths like detachment and how they, that's shared in multiple religions. One thing that I learned through fitness is you can look at science and you can see what studies show. I can know anecdotes or what I experienced with my clients. And then oftentimes I'll look at practices that span different cultures. And many times you find a lot of truths in that. For example, fasting. Fasting is practiced all over the world. It has for thousands of years. There's lots of truths in that. Detachment seems to be a shared truth. There seem to be these shared kind of values. What one common question, one even that comes up for me a lot is how do I know that this is the right religion or this is the right belief over others? Yeah. And your two things you're raising, they're both important. First of all, the points of commonality. And you're right. Anyone that looks at the philosophical and spiritual, even psychological tradition, let's say it like a Peterson does, you're going to find these points of contact for sure. And detachment is one of the great unifying elements because where we tend to go wrong is we get hung up on something creaturely, I would say something finite. All good in themselves, like wealth, pleasure, honor, power, they're all good in themselves. The material world is good in itself. The body is good in itself. But if I make any of those things absolute, I get in trouble. Hence, I fast. Hence, I abstain from things. Hence, I give up wealth. Sure. Hence, like in a lot of spiritual traditions, including Catholicism, you've got celibacy, which has always been a sign of a certain detachment from sex and marriage and the things that we usually get preoccupied with. So those are points of commonality for sure. Now, how do you know the Christian path of all these paths is the right one? What's hard about that question is it's a bit like asking, let's say in Einsteinian, well, how come you think Einsteinian physics is the correct path? Well, there's no one formula. You have to walk someone through all kinds of things. I'm looking over your shoulder with a picture of John Henry Newman back there. We just celebrated his canonization. I was just over in Rome for that. And Newman famously says, the way we come to ascent, to say like, yeah, that's true. It's hardly ever by means of like one clinching argument. It's hardly ever by means of one thing. It's this argument, this experience, this hunch, this intuition, this example, this person, you know what I'm saying? All of which tend to come together in one place. They tend to one conclusion. And that's the process by which we come to say, yes, that's true. And I think that's true of Christianity. It's a whole slew of things. And if we had time, we could sort of take it step by step through that. But there's never like a silver bullet thing about that proves like Christianity is true. Here's one way I might just put out like a little teaser sort of answer. Name a religion or philosophy that's more compelling than this, that God went to the limits of God forsakenness to find us and bring us back. This Christianity seems to me is the father. You know, God so loved the world that he sent his only son. But where so we could, you know, proclaim things from a height to us and tell us how bad we are. No, he sent his son all the way down. That's the cross, right? I mean, into cruelty and into hatred and into violence and into deep suffering into death itself. God died. Why? That he might find us and then bring us back. Now, do you early question about the Trinity? See, in the name of the father. So there's the lover, the one that did the sending and of the son and see what we do with that. We go all the way down. So the father sends the son and then of the Holy Spirit. That means the love that connects them is now the love that contains me. See, so the father out of love sends the son all the way down to get us. Think of people in their worst moments in life, right? And we've all been there. We've all been there. Your time of greatest despair when you're in some addiction, you're caught, you've lost a loved one, you're in deep sadness and suffering. That's what this means, right? The father sent the son all the way there. So when you look at a depiction of the crucified Jesus, that's what you're meant to see. That's me in that situation. We've all been there. But the father sent the son all the way there so as to gather us back into the Holy Spirit, which is the love that connects them. I don't know. I've studied a lot of the religions and philosophies of the world and just from a kind of aesthetic standpoint, if you want or what's compelling. I mean, I don't know. I don't know anyone that's more compelling than that. You talk about the four things to detach from in themselves that can be good. How do we find that balance of pursuing maybe those things or being apart or living amongst those things but then also detaching at the same time? Yeah, I'll give you St. Augustine's great formula and I've told people if you want to be happy, this is it. Throw out all the other books. This is it. Augustine said, love God and love everything else for the sake of God. Now you'll be happy. In other words, love God in the Bible says with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. That means God is it. God is the center of your life. Now once that's in place, okay, I love God. Now I love everything else for the sake of God. So do I have wealth? Okay, good. Now use it for God's purposes, not your own. Do I have a pleasure, whether it's in sex or food or drink or the sensual pleasure? Terrific. How is that part of God's desire? Do I have honor? Have I been honored? Great. What's sick is when I say, honor, honor, honor. Oh, is that great? I love that. I want more of it. See, which will inevitably happen, by the way, because you will get addicted to all these things. Guarantee. There's no way around it. You will get addicted if you don't have God as your anchor. Right? So if that's what you have fame, you've been honored. Good. Use it for God's purposes. You know? Power. You've been given power. All right. Terrific. And we love power. Tolkien, I think, is right about that. Maybe of the four is one we love the most is power. Okay. Good. You've been given power. Now use it for God's purposes. So love God, and then love all those things for the sake of God, and you'll be okay. But when you start loving those things for themselves, then you get off kilter, you fall apart on the inside, and then you tend to radiate unhappiness around you. You know? I noticed for myself, and this is kind of, I think a common belief that when things tend to get hard in life, that's when I start to search for some of these answers. And do you think that life has just gotten so easy that people are less likely to search for some of these answers? No, because I think the search is going on all the time. I hear it all the time. What could happen is I get lulled into a kind of complacency, and I think, okay, I've got enough. I've got enough to make me happy, but nevertheless, because we're not wired that way. We're wired for God. Right? We all are. I won't be happy. Trust me. And it'll manifest itself. You always see it. Somebody goes, oh, I got it all the wealth I've ever wanted. I got all the pleasure. I got all the honor I've ever wanted. I'm going to sit back and relax. Good luck. It'll never stay that way. You'll want more. You'll get frustrated. You'll lose it, you know? And so there's a permanent hunger for God that's hidden in all that. See, behind every addiction, that's the thing that a sole doctor has to see, behind every addiction is a quest for God. When you're saying like, okay, I'm looking for pleasure. So whether it's booze or it's pornography or it's drugs or whatever it is. And I find it. I find it. I got it. I got the pleasure I wanted. But what happens is of course it fades away. Right? So now I go back. I want more of it. And maybe I do get more of it, but then that fades away. And then I start to panic and I start looking for more of it. And before you know it, you're addicted. You're addicted. But see what's underneath that is a hunger for God. You want God. So that the spiritual master's got to get in there and say, here's what's really going on in these desires of yours, you know? Bishop, you talked about how God plays an active role in our lives. And from what I know of the Bible is that in the beginning there's stories of God playing a role. And then there's Satan that plays a role. Does Satan play a role in our lives? What is the belief around that? And if he does, or how? Yeah, I think he does. And he does through temptation for the most part and spiritual insinuation. There's a famous fresco. It's up in Orvieto. And it's by Luca Signorelli. It's his great image of the Antichrist. And the Antichrist looks for all the world like Jesus. So he's got the typical, you know, vesture and look of Jesus. And he's speaking to the crowd with these two hands coming out. But you look more closely at the picture. And next to him is the devil. And he's up to his ear. And he's whispering something. And actually it's the devil's hand that's coming through his vesture. And so it's a beautiful depiction of how that works. That the dark spiritual powers tend to do it through insinuation and temptation so that it looks like, oh, I'm acting. And you aren't away. But it's the dark power has kind of insinuated something to you. So yeah, I do think, Paul said that we battle against not just flesh and blood, but powers and principalities. So there are flesh and blood opponents that we face all the time, you know, people around us and the culture and so on. How similar is that to the concept of yin-yang, like with that duality? Well, no, because that's more positive. Well, there's a couple of things I'd say. The yin-yang thing I think is a really rich and profound principle that you've got this sort of dark light if you want or positive negative forces that are at play and finding the balance between them is the right thing. So that's good. There's something really right about that. But we don't want to find a balance like between Jesus and the devil. Like let's find the right balance. This is more of like a direct affront to spiritual well-being, you know. So the devil has to be rebuked. So that's the, you know, Jesus' move in the gospels is to rebuke him. You don't compromise with him. But yin-yang is a different thing. That's the, and the Taoist thing I think is very rich and profound. And actually, you know, Jordan Pearson plays with that, I think in a very provocative way about... Yeah, I've noticed that. You know, what we know, and then there's the kind of the realm of the unknown and I got to move into that realm. And, you know, so, I mean, all of that, I think, is very positive. And that's just the, that's kind of a cool way of looking at your psychological development. But this would be a different game we're talking about here. How does, can the devil possess people? And is it like you see in the movies or are there different ways where people get possessed with this? Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that. What I mean by that is it's such a rare phenomenon. I think there is that phenomenon. I think typically the devil moves much more subtly through insinuation and temptation. That's much more common and much more dangerous, frankly. I think possession is real. I've known some exorcism. I mean, people that are involved in that work directly. And yeah, I think it happens. But it's a very, very, very rare phenomenon. And the church would call upon formal exorcism only in extremely rare cases. Four criteria have to present themselves with utter clarity before a bishop would ever agree to that. So it's not like it's a common thing. Have you ever witnessed one? No, no, but I've known exorcists over the years who have been involved with them. And again, talk to the exorcists. They'll tell you the same thing. They'll say, this is extremely rare. And so when people get, they get too excited about it or too interested in it, that's not a good thing. I wouldn't mess around with it. People I think who, I'm speaking now more broadly outside the Catholic church, I think that play around with this thing in an irresponsible way. I wouldn't play around with it. Yeah, I went to church as a young kid. My family took me to, I think, eight or nine different denominations as a kid. So I kind of saw a lot. And we were in a Pentecostal church for a while. And I saw the slain in the spirit and rebuking Satan out of people. And what I had a hard time as a kid was, it seemed like it was almost a show that they were putting on, but it was happening every Sunday. Every Sunday we were rebuking Satan out of people and they were falling over and getting slain in the spirit. I'll try to walk a careful ground here. I have no quarrel whatsoever, praying for people. And if people are in some kind of spiritual distress, psychological distress to pray for them, that's great. But I'd be extremely skeptical of that sort of, as you say, garden variety. Every single week we're casting out the devil. And the Catholic church is much, much more reticent and careful. And it needs the four criteria very clearly before it ever makes that formal move. I've heard spiritual leaders talk about methods and ways to be more aware of the presence of God, whether it be meditation or chanting or fasting. And more recently, I've heard a lot of spiritual leaders or whatnot talk about using psychedelic substances. Ayahuasca, for example, or LSD or mushrooms and how those substances can open them up and then they can see God. And what is your, I guess, belief around those, or understanding? I'd be very skeptical of the last one. The ones you mentioned first are all classical spiritual paths. And you're right. And there are techniques, if you want to use that term, that people have used. That's trans-culturally, trans-religiously. But sure, when I go on retreat, let's say to a Benedictine monastery and I get up early in the morning and that's part of it too. You're not lying in bed all morning. You get up early and you join the monks in prayer and they're chanting the Psalms back and forth in a choral manner. And you join in there and there's something in the repetitiveness or some mantra like about the reciting of the Psalms. No one's trying to be a histrionic about it. You're just kind of chanting them back and forth. That's a spiritual practice, very, very ancient spiritual practice. And it does give you, you know, if you want, it's a sense of God. Now you want to avoid any sense of automaticism. Oh yeah, just go there, do this and don't worry. God, you'll see God. I mean, God does what God wants. But there are classical techniques that the great spiritual traditions have seen. And you write it like about fasting and that sort of thing. Yes, to rid us of attachments but see that then opens a lot of things up. You know, when the Lord Jesus says, you know, in regard to a possession and they say, Lord, we've been praying all day. You know, some of these, it's only prayer and fasting that will do it, you know. Some of these techniques do open up certain doors, you know. Read the Desert Fathers on that and the different techniques. But what I was doing this morning, you know, in my holy hour, even like the office, what's the office but Psalms, it's the Psalms of the ancient prayers the ancient prayers of the church. And I'm, I don't speak them out loud but I kind of, you know, quasi I try to read them slowly. Well, that's a spiritual practice. I also do the Jesus prayer, which is from the Eastern Christian tradition and it's the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Repeated over and over and over again, hundreds of times. I don't do it hundreds of times but I have the little, it's like a prayer rope. The Rosary is like a mantra prayer, right? Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed are thou among women. As you're praying the Rosary, you're not really attending to every single prayer individually. It's setting up a sort of spiritual and psychological space, you know? Thomas Merton said it's, he used the Buddhist term of calming the monkey mind, you know, the mind that jumping around. Like when you wake up in the middle of the night, it's always that to me, that's where the monkey mind comes in. If you happen to wake up in the middle of the night and it's like, oh, suddenly you're worried won't you shut up? The mind just won't. So the Rosary has that quality to it, you know? I started journaling, maybe about a week and a half ago and I cannot believe the benefit I'm receiving. I'm getting from journaling, just waking up in the morning and then doing that practice. And I noticed that it almost is taking the form of what you might even consider to be prayer. Oh, absolutely. He's this close to praying, but yeah, we're getting them. Yeah, but read Thomas Merton. I mean, Merton fills volumes of journals. And that was definitely a way of praying. Merton, you know, Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk from the last century, great spiritual writer, but Merton lived as a hermit the last couple of years of his life. So all by himself in this cabin out in the woods and wake up in the morning, sit out in the porch, drink his coffee, do his morning prayer and then he would, he would write, you know? And it might just be there's a bluebird sitting on the fence and he's against the, that pine tree. And, you know, he's just, it's a spiritual exercise as he's describing. Observing. Yeah, observing the real, you know, that's a spiritual principle, but the real is always going to bring you to God. See, to be in sin is always to live in a realm of illusion to some degree. False consciousness if you want to use that term. Distraction, right? Yeah, distraction or false consciousness. I'm just, I'm not in touch with the way things really are. The real is always a path to God. You know, can I anchor myself in the real? See what's, see what's right in front of me to be seen. It can be a spiritual exercise. If, you know, Aquinas says God's in all things by essence, presence, and power. Well, if that's true, then God is, is here. You know, you know, in the Jesuit tradition, they've got the prayer called the consciousness examine. You heard about that, but it's Ignatius of Lyola, the founder of the Jesuits, great spiritual teacher said that if, if you eliminate all prayer, but kept this one prayer, you probably have enough. And he meant the consciousness examine. And what that is is the end of the day typically to review your day. Right. Like a movie. You know, okay. I woke up at 530 and I had a good night's sleep. Thank you. Thank you Lord for the good night's sleep I had. And then I did my prayers. I had, I had scrambled eggs for breakfast and they were, they were good. And I went for a walk and I saw how beautiful that was. I met this person and I could have been kinder to that person. I was a bit of a jerk, you know, I'm sorry about that. Then I, I did this and I did that and you go through your day and you just review it in light of God and say, all right, what were the opportunities of grace today and how did I cooperate with them? Seeing journaling can be part of that. Do you can journal your way through it? That's exactly what I do. A consciousness examine. Like what happened to me today, but put it in terms of God. What was God offering to me today? You know, God's, you know, in the present moment always, we get obsessed with the past and the future. That's a typical way of living an illusion, by the way, right? I'm obsessed with my past. Oh, what I did. Oh, what a terrible person I wasn't. Oh my God. Or, oh, how great it was way back then. Or, oh, if only, if only this happened to me, I'd be so happy if only, but those are both illusions. You know, Thomas says the ends realissimo. He's the most real being. So, when I'm in touch with reality, what's right in front of me, I'm in touch with God. And journaling is a way to do that. And so is the consciousness examine. Yeah, they call that being present in many. Yeah, I wanted to talk to, yeah, keeping on the real side of, you know, talking about Jesus as a human being and talking about that, him actually being here. Do you worry sometimes that, you know, in this post modern world, you're not going to be recognizing the fact that he was an actual real human being? No, I think it's the opposite. I mean, when I was coming of age, everyone emphasized, you know, the humanity of Jesus. Jesus was a real historical figure and boys, he's a human being like us. I think it's the other side that our time has forgotten that he's divine. And see, if he's, he's human indeed. So, we say he's true God and true man, right? But if he's just another human teacher among many, okay, you know, there's the Buddha and there's, you know, Deepak Chopra and all kinds of people I can choose from. Jordan Peterson maybe as a spiritual teacher. If that's all Jesus is, well then, okay, I mean, who cares? What Jesus is, is the, God so loved the world, he sent his only begotten son all the way to the limits of God forsakenness, that I might be drawn back into the divine life. Now we're talking. Now see, for that to be true, he does have to be both divine and human. If he's just divine, he's not going to reach all the way down into my experience, right? It's not going to relate. If he's, right, if he's just human though, he's not going to save me. He's like, you know, he's in the same boat I am. He's as lost as I am. So what makes him the savior is that he's both divine and human, which is the great Christian claim. And you know, go historically, this thing oscillates back and forth. You go over the centuries. Sometimes the humanity of Jesus is really emphasized. Other times the divinity is really emphasized. And the church has always said, both and, both and, and if anything, I'd say in my lifetime, it was certainly the humanity of Jesus that was emphasized. And the divinity was kind of like, oh, well, who knows? But it's the two of them together that makes him the savior. What really attracted me to you initially, Bishop, when I saw you on YouTube was your ability to communicate the way you communicate things. You were, you're able to pierce through the cynicism that I think is so common, the cynicism that can sometimes overpower me. And so I see a lot of times with what you're doing with social media and your new media, your podcast and whatnot, is you have a lot of non-Catholics, non-Christians who are moving over listening to what you have to say and saying, oh, this is really good. But I also see you getting a lot of criticism from Catholics and Christians. It seems like they seem to be the ones that have issues with maybe the way you're reaching out or how you communicate. Is that, is that what's happening? Well, I mean some on the extremes. I mean, honestly, some on the extremes, both left and right, but some on the right are mad because I suggest that we may hope that all people be saved. Now, that's not a claim that they all will be saved. I don't know. It's up to God. You know, I don't know, but maybe hope for it. And I stand with a number of theologians who say yes. So some on the extreme right have gotten mad at me for that, but, and I've clarified a million times what I mean and don't mean by that, you know, statement. So I don't worry about that too much. I mean, I think that whenever you come out in a very public way and you talk about religion, you're going to get a lot of people throwing stones at you because this is where it goes from, from Jesus on. I mean, religion just stirs up people's ultimate feelings. How does a church feel about what you're doing? Are they very supportive? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they haven't, we say like the church, you know, whether it's my bishop when I was back in Chicago, Cardinal George is a big supporter when I was doing out here. Now I'm an auxiliary bishop in LA and, you know, Archbishop Gomez is never in any way set limits. There's, I don't do this or that. When I go among my brother bishops, they're always like super enthusiastic about it. They elected me chair of the evangelization committee, you know, for the USCCB, the Conference of Catholic Bishops. So no, I think that, you know, the church, whatever you mean by that, but it's been, you know, supportive. When you, when you are teaching, what do you, what do you find the, the hardest book of the Bible to teach and explain to people or which book do you think they have the hardest time receiving? Probably Genesis, the opening of Genesis because that's where people get hung up, you know, it's one of the great texts that's come down to us from human history, the book of Genesis, but people get hung up on the opening chapters as though it's proposing an alternative scientific vision. And I got it to side, you know, do I side with the scientists and the earth is 13 and a half billion years old or I side with the book of Genesis and it's whatever people say, 6,000 years old or, you know, I got a Darwin or it's the, it's the opening of Genesis. So in a way that's a problem. I mean, you're up against a fundamental misunderstanding of how that text functions. So to that point, can, can we believe in creation and evolution or is there a line? No, absolutely. You can and should because there, it's apples and oranges. The problem is people think they're, they're addressing the same issue. Evolution is a theory that, that purports to describe how biological species have evolved over space and time. It's proposed by Charles Darwin, refined by a lot of his, disciples over the last, you know, century and a half. Yeah, good. I find it to be, I learned as a kid and found it persuasive then, find it persuasive now. Can you raise, you know, questions about it? Sure. Serious people do. Fine. That's a scientific issue. If you ask me how the, how did the species develop? I'm not going to look to the Bible. I'm going to look, ask scientists. They, they can articulate the answer to that question. The Bible is asking and answering entirely different questions. You know, is it about the origin of all things? Yeah, in a way, but it's proposing it theologically rather than scientifically. Are all things created by God? Yes. Is the great claim of Genesis. That's dead right. But that's a religious claim, not a scientific claim. It's not trying to give an account. Say, the way, let's say an astrophysicist might or evolutionary biologist might. The Bible is making the point in answer to a different type of question. Creation. I'll do Thomas Aquinas with you. Creation names the relationship that obtains between absolute being and finite being. If I can put it that way. Aquinas says that creation is happening now. And that's, that's the way into this question. Don't, don't go back, way, way back. Creation is happening now. Namely, God. Absolute being is giving rise to finite being and sustaining it in existence. God is the answer to the question, why is there something rather than nothing? See, that's a different order question than how did the species develop? That's an intramundane question. That's a question about how these things in this world unfolded. But why is there something rather than nothing? Now, that's a different question. The biblical answer and the great traditional Christian answer is, well, God, God makes and sustains the world in its entirety. So there are different types of questions as apples and oranges. Speaking of science, there's this show on Netflix where they're showing these backyard scientists using something called CRISPR technology to edit genes and whatnot. Do you see any problems and potential future with that kind of technology from a theological standpoint where we can, you know, edit our genes and make ourselves, you know, genetically perfect or enhanced? Yeah, I wouldn't know enough about it to say a lot as first I've heard that term. I wouldn't be crazy about doing that. I think there's a very important spiritual move when you say, you know, let God be God and let God offer to me what God wants to offer to me. If I try to take control of life in too aggressive a way, trouble tends to follow. And that goes back to the beginnings of modernity. A lot of the critics of the early modern thinkers were worried about that, that I'm going to try to manipulate and control the whole of life. And point, I'd be very wary, especially of that, like trying to create Superman or something and eliminate anything that's that I deem imperfect. Hand that over to human beings with all their sin. I don't know. I'd be very wary of that. Yeah, we often get the question, like how would we feel if they invented like an exercise in a pill or whatever? And as guys have exercised and worked through nutrition for, you know, decades, I know, yeah, you'll take this pill and you'll get fit and lean. But you're not going to get the same benefits that you get going through the journey of getting to that point. I'll be blunt about something. So it's not quite what you're talking about. But in so many of the Western countries, down syndrome babies are simply aborted. That's why they've almost disappeared in our culture. That to me is a morally horrific state of affairs, but people saying, oh, that baby is not going to be up to my level. That baby is not what I want. That's a terrible spiritual stance to assume and a terrible thing to do on that basis. So I'm very wary of, I'm going to create the perfect child or I'm going to eliminate any children I think are inadequate. Heck, go right back to the ancient world when if a baby was born and was less than perfect, expose it on the hillside or the Nazis. To me, it's redolent of that sort of move and I'd really let God be God and accept what God gives me as a gift. There's a lot of technologists really worried about artificial intelligence and how we're all going to deal with this and the moral implications and I just would love to hear from Abisha how you guys are thinking about these types of issues. Yeah, and I hesitate because I really haven't thought about it that carefully. I get the danger and the difficulty of it but I'm just reluctant because I haven't really looked into it or thought about it that much. The AI issues and all that. Yeah, definitely. No, I appreciate these conversations and these are questions that often pop up and it's good to hear from the opinion from somebody like yourself. Looking now at the world now, so this was very interesting for me years ago even when I was atheist. One thing that I found fascinating is that I used to have a I still have a very deep passion for economics and government and I remember learning how modern Western societies came about when it came to the concept of liberty and free markets and how a lot of that came from the belief that we were created in God's image and we were gifted these inalienable rights. What is the connection between Christianity and freedom or is there one? Oh gosh, yeah. There's a lot we could say about that but I think your right in suggesting that any polity based upon the idea of human rights is tied, I would say, to a religious vision whether you know it or not and Jefferson of course says it explicitly they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. You go back to society like in ancient societies when people didn't believe in rights rights were the gift of the government or the gift of the aristocratic elite or the monarch, right? It's a biblical idea that every single individual made in the image and lightness of God is therefore a subject of infinite worth and is in possession of rights that aren't the gift of the culture of society or the king or anybody else but of God and therefore governments are instituted I'll go back to Jefferson again to secure these rights it's a very interesting move isn't it that he makes there to secure these rights not to create them not to ground them not to invent them but to secure them because they're independent of the government they come from God the government is there to secure them make sure that yeah people have the rights to life, liberty and so on so I'm very wary of non-believing polities because I think even with all their highfalutin rhetoric about you know the people workers or whatever it is take God out of the picture human rights will follow very quickly the other one of course is equality which I think is very interesting again Jefferson that all men are created equal and we might just let that run through our minds without noticing that word go back to classical societies like go Plato and Aristotle and Cicero equal? I mean they never thought people were equal in fact it was the radical inequality that was the ground for their political philosophy so Plato's got the three levels of you know types of people and only when they're in their right relationship is do you have justice Aristotle felt that a tiny handful belonged in the in public life the rest were consigned to private life and they should be they should do what they're told where the idea come from that all people are equal I mean to Aristotle would he said what do you mean all people are equal totally and it's I would say and it's reflected in Jefferson it's from the Bible it's the idea that we are all despite our differences right in intelligence and in courage and virtue in beauty and we're different in every way we're not equal at all but we are equal as children of God and that becomes I'd say the foundation for a lot of the modern democracy so take equality and rights you take God out of the equation and you've seen it by the way I mean look at the 20th century when in these monstrous ideologies of the 20th century when God was taken out of the equation that's exactly what happened it was actually part of their policy to eliminate God Karl Marx whom I read very carefully when I was a student in college I did my master's work in Marx and yeah the first critique Marx says the religious critique so the first move we got to make is get rid of religion and then you can move into the economic and political critiques yeah there's good reason for that I was blown away to learn about I was watching some documentaries again this is a passion of mine to learn of I think those Pope John Paul's role and potential role in the fall of the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union he did a talk and I don't know what country it was in it was a Soviet 1979 June in Poland when he went back home that date location it's a famous he had just been elected Pope you know and this is when they were threatening martial law when they thought the Soviet Union would move in and take over Poland militarily and John Paul goes home and this is the church was under tremendous repression but people came out by the millions despite there's a wonderful literature around that because there was extraordinary campaign of misinformation and roadblocks and all this to kind of keep people from getting where he was but they came and the millions and the famous speeches during mass in this is called Victory Square in Warsaw and I the privilege of filming there a couple years ago in this huge public square and John Paul is preaching right and in the sermon he's got the whole government behind him he's got the Polish communist government behind him I mean the bravery he could have easily been taken in absolutely and it's only because he was that they didn't dare go after him but he begins talking about God about human rights about liberty all the things we've just been talking about and how they're grounded in the scripture and in the great tradition and then famously as the people the crowd begins to chant we want God we want God and it went on for like 15 minutes so a million people chanting we want God and most observers say that was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire because it was just this it was a revolution of the spirit I mean that one shot was fired but it was clear that they lost the people they did not have the people you know and John Paul knew how to do that he knew how to awaken that in people you know and I think yeah that was the beginning of the end I read stories about how Christians are being persecuted in places like China which is obviously a communist country what's the role of the church in maybe securing the freedom of people around the world well first of all you're right in saying that the most persecuted religion around the world is Christianity not a popular thing to say but it's true and there's no one even close in terms of second we're the most persecuted religion in the world and that goes Middle East Asia it's in Africa in our country it's more subtle it's more of a cultural persecution you know but it's a fiery hot persecution in many other parts of the world and yeah the church has to witness very strongly against that and speak up and speak in favor of and there are a lot of martyrs I mean the martyrs have always been as Tertullian said the seed of Christianity I mean it's always the blood of the martyrs that gives rise to the church and there are martyrs galore all around the world including in China and so it's a tough moment no question about it it's a very tough moment for the church the 20th century had more Christian martyrs than any century combined then I mean then all the other centuries combined so you think of the early church that's when they were thrown to the lions it's nothing compared to the 20th century wow didn't know that yeah but look at you know from Hitler and Stalin and Mao and I mean the people that were they were putting Christian's death like mad in the 20th century why do you think that is well it's a complicated thing I would say my basic answer is tyrannies will always recognize religion as the fundamental problem their first move is always to eliminate religion again Mark said that that's the first critique you have to do you can't worship anything above the government and so when you speak of the government as we say being under God one nation under God that's a threat to tyranny it always has been this is why even back when I was atheist I understood this as an atheist but also as somebody who loved freedom and understood and loved the concept of liberty I was always so opposed to people who were so anti-religion because I knew I had read Carl Jung and I'd understood that you eliminate God and you're going to worship something and usually it's the state and that goes back to the very beginning of our conversation that's exactly right nature pours a vacuum and you kick God out of the central place something will move into that place and see soul doctors have always known when that happens trouble will inevitably come because you'll start worshiping you're right it's either wealth, pleasure, power, honor one of those things I begin worshiping my own ego I begin worshiping my career I begin worshiping my culture I begin worshiping a political figure someone or something will move into that place religion is always there to say no to that to say no to that idolatry that's why you know it's very go back to the cross again because Paul says I preach one thing I'm crucified right so Paul that's his message is the cross of Jesus and how weird that was a weird weird we look at the cross what a charming religious symbol when Paul was writing the cross terrified people it was Roman power it was the power of the tyrannical Roman state and so Paul saying I'm not afraid but I'm going to hold that up because that's a taunt to all of you because God's power is greater than the power of the state greater than the power of Caesar that's why the cross has always been a deeply subversive message and tyrants have always trembled at the cross and what it means so of course they'll in league with their academic lackeys they'll try to debunk the cross and say oh well it's just you know Jesus never existed or you know the poor thing just died on the cross that was the end of it or the cross is an archetypal symbol or you know you'll do whatever you can to debunk the cross but the Christian churches have always held up because it's judgment on tyranny that's one of its functions you know it judges the the tyrants people let's say somebody's listening right now and they're they're thinking gosh you know I want to kind of look into this a little more I'm a little where people start let's say someone's listening and saying you know there may be some value to religion maybe it's different than what I thought it originally was what are some good ways for people to to move into that space for themselves I was just in England you know for this talk on Newman and while I was there I visited the tomb of C.S. Lewis who's a great hero of mine and Lewis's book Mere Christianity I think is still a great way in it's a great opening of a door it's based on talks he gave you know for the BBC during the war so they were like 15 minute talks designed for they're intelligent but designed for a general audience and I still think that book is extraordinarily good and I give it to people all the time I recommend it if you you're kind of getting into it trying to trying to make your way that's a great way to open the door what are the what are the greatest challenges that you think are facing us right now like right now what are the things that you're kind of focusing your eyes on and saying okay that's what I want to well I name it different ways one is a secularism or an imminentism that just says this life this world that's all there is it's all I care about you know Charles Taylor is a Catholic philosopher that talks about the self and he means a self that lives kind of within this little buffered space and it doesn't try to break out to a transcendent one of the signs of that is what I call the culture of self-invention which is very big today as you know people say it's my life it's my choice I invent myself even to the point of my own body my own gender it's up to me I decide everything you know that's repugned into a religious view whereby my life isn't about me and my choices and my you know goals and my projects it's about what God wants to do with me and through me and for me those are some of the big obstacles so call it if you want a materialism and imminentism another obstacle related is what I call scientism which is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge so it's just an automatic self-limiting move the real is what the scientists understand it's always struck me as an incredibly narrow arrogant take on life I mean I just think for a second scientists are based ultimately upon our senses they're based on empirical observation followed by hypothesis formation followed by experimentation followed by conclusion scientific method great it's terrific for understanding the world that I can empirically verify but I think of these stupid eyes we have they're attuned to one little narrow part of the light spectrum that's what they can take in even within a worldly sense there's elements of the light spectrum that we can't see with these little eyes and what are the odds that these eyes that evolved within this framework of planet earth and the way the light is configured and all that stuff produced these eyes ultimately so they sure they're ordered to this world and that's it that's all the reality you think is limited to that and that's not saying one little thing against the sciences it's they're great terrific but to say to make the further philosophical move and that's all there is what the sciences can know and control that's all there is I think it's breathtakingly arrogant take especially when you look at the great tradition the pre-scientific tradition that would say are you kidding? I mean that had a keen sense of dimensions of reality beyond what the senses can take in in our last podcast I think you said there's scientific truth and then there's philosophical truth and then there's spiritual truth I thought that illustrated it quite well that's right and don't let them be themselves don't reduce one to the other so it's nothing against the sciences they're great, terrific but don't draw everything else into the sciences that's scientism and that's a real problem today with young people I find circling back to when we were talking about the devil and temptation do you think that as we are drawn closer to God that that increases? yeah, yeah that's a standard perception of the spiritual tradition not surprising if the devil is a person with intelligence and will now they're twisted and they're wicked but he would not be happy as someone gets closer to God and so see it in the lives of the saints all the time the saints themselves often have the greatest spiritual conflicts as long as you're far from God the devil is happy you're doing great you're doing great, I'll leave you alone do you mind if I ask you a personal question well it depends I'll personally before we did this podcast I thought to myself I'd like to ask some questions that I've always wanted to ask a bishop or a priest do you ever feel sad or miss that you maybe didn't have a family or married or have children yeah sure did you date anybody before moving into this space? years ago and then got on this path with some hesitations there were a few moments when I was much younger I thought no no that's not the path I want but then once I I think entered the major seminary I was pretty clear and I've been on that path ever since but yeah because life is always making choices right so you say A and not B that means you got to give something up every choices is painful because it's a decision it's a cutting right you decide something you're cutting something off so sure sure you know does God want us to have lots of children because you want us to have families and have lots of kids or is it different from person to person well I mean generally speaking it's a great biblical motif you know go forth and multiply and be fruitful and so God yeah I think in the Bible tends to like a big family who sees a sign of life and of confidence in God and a sign of the blessing of God now having said that of course every case is unique and different and I wouldn't want to you know hey if you don't have a lot of kids you're not doing God's will I would never want to say that but I think generally speaking you know God's a God of life and he's he likes that kind of fecundity and that you know go forth and multiply it's a sign of his you brought up in Jordan's talk where you you brought up Gran Torino and I just I find that even fascinating it's a movie that you would watch are you a big movie guy oh yeah yeah and I started when we first did the YouTube stuff it was it was Scorsese's the departed was the first YouTube I ever did and the movies once have always been popular whenever I do a movie review and yes maybe do you anticipate your question a bit I think Christians who are evangelizers can't afford to be super squeamish like oh if a movie has a swear word or you know it's got violence and we can't be that squeamish I think we have to enter and look you know it's so many of the great works of the literary tradition you know go back to someone like Chaucer, Dante it's a Shakespeare I mean they're full of body-ness and violence and you know so I don't think Gran Torino is that different than some of those great works but to your point earlier Gran Torino is the best one I know in the last 50 years of showing in dramatic form what salvation is like because it's someone that journeys into the darkest place to do two things to expose the dark powers for what they are to bring them out in the open and to liberate someone who is enthralled to them right but he had to do it through a great act of self-sacrificing love where he gave his life and remember of course that when there's another lord and everything when Eastwood is shot and then he's in the attitude of the cross well there's Christianity I wasn't expecting it at all it was purposefully put in there right but about a guy saying get off my lawn that's all I knew about that movie and as I watched that my goodness I have not seen any better presentation because in the church fathers that's what the cross means it means the powers are exposed see that's why it's so important that taunting so you know Bob Dylan said the enemy I see where's the cloak of decency it's always gone that way right so Pontius Pilate and Caesar Augustus and Quirinius that's why the Bible mentions all those guys because they were the cloak of decency there's all the leaders of society the cross rips all the cloaks of it rips away all that conceals them so they expose them for what they are but then it liberates that's why the cross is freedom for Christians it liberates us from the dark powers and that's what that movie is super good at showing you know but it has to happen look how awfully it has to happen through the complete gift of one's life there's no other way to do it and see the Eastwood character understands that he understands it's gonna cost me my life but when the kid at the end members in the Grand Torino and he's with a big smile driving away from that life that's the liberation that comes from the cross speaking of media when I work out and I want to lift really heavy I tend to listen to heavy metal music and often times you look at the pictures of the covers or whatever and it's like satanic and I know it's media and I don't know if it's real any thoughts around that do you like heavy metal I like I'm a big rock and roll fan not so much heavy metal but what we probably all classic rock when I was coming of age the Beatles and the Stones and the Who and Led Zeppelin and Van Morrison and of course Bob Dylan's my major influence but yeah I love rock and roll and I like all kinds of musical forms I was seeing the other day I was watching the country music thing you know that Ken Bernstead this he did a documentary on country music and a great segment on Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and that's how I got into country music was those two figures and Willie Nelson the first record I heard of his was Stardust when he did you know the American classics remember that record from a long time ago I don't know but Willie in that wonderful voice of his and the great guitar work plays the classic American songbook because I grew up with rock and roll I didn't know those songs at all and that led me to Frank Sinatra I discovered Frank Sinatra through Willie Nelson so anyway I like all that kind of music but if you really you know push me against the wall and say what do you want to listen to it would be rock and roll that's what I like the most when we were talking about the money the power on are those is there something that you personally find you have to check yourself with the most that yeah probably probably especially given the way my life is unfolded honor you know because I'm kind of a public figure and and now I've been honored by the church becoming a bishop and all that and I'm kind of a public figure so I suppose that's the danger you know for something like me what does that feel like when you feel like you need to check it does it feel like oh this feels good yeah or maybe that being highly thought of is more important than telling the truth you know it feels like that if I'm holding back on what I think is the right thing to do or say because I'm concerned more about you know losing reputation or losing status yeah so but you know everyone's got a poison somewhere it's got to name it and admit it that's the importance of knowing you're a sinner which is one of the great spiritual paths when you don't then you get in trouble and you cause trouble for other people too but when you know you're a sinner then all right Lord take take this you know and transform it you know I'd be bummed if I didn't ask you this I had heard from somewhere I think it was like on a Joe Rogan podcast this guy brought up the fact that a lot of the passages in the New Testament don't really talk about Jesus's laughter or and all these other characteristics in like Jesus wept and like all these other emotions that he evoked but after wasn't one that was represented yeah I guess we'll never really know but I'll say this though when you read the parables and you read the great sermons of Jesus there's no question that he uses irony and he uses exaggeration and he's playing with contrasts and you know so I can't help but think people were laughing as they heard some of his and even the critiques of the Pharisees the way you know he characterizes them so I wouldn't be at all surprised if people laughed with him and I couldn't imagine he himself wasn't laughing now why they didn't put that explicitly in I don't know another way to do it because like we have the laughing Buddha for example there's a whole tradition around there's the fat Buddha and the laughing Buddha and then the you know the silent Buddha and they all are saying something Jesus came to die you know if you want to do the he's a teacher yes indeed and moral exemplar yes indeed but his purpose ultimately was to die was to go to the limit of God forsakenness and so that's kind of a serious business you know yeah but you know I remember that years ago Joseph Campbell remember him he's a precursor of Peterson in some ways but he always loved is it Luke it's one of the synoptic gospels when as before he goes out to the Garden of Gethsemane they sing so the last supper closes and they sing which was the Jewish tradition you know and I remember Peter not Pearson but Campbell saying that's the way to go to meet your death you go out singing you know and so Jesus singing with his disciples even as he's facing his own death that's kind of a cool you know image totally what are the the different arms of the word on fire now is it is it a company that's separate from the church is a yeah no it's not officially linked to the church I mean it's you know Cardinal George and now Archbishop Gomez have you know smiled upon it and all that but we're not officially like an arm of the church we are 501 C3 you know so we're independent doing the work of the church trying to serve the church but we're not officially tied to the church what are the different arms of it I know you have a podcast you have a YouTube channel yeah so all the different forms of outreach we got that but there's also now the word on fire Institute which we found it and that's the purpose of the Institute is to form lay people as evangelizers so interesting I'm trying to draw people and we've drawn now number them as as paying customers you know so they they get access to specialized videos in theology spirituality evangelism etc we brought some wonderful teachers and we've done you know we film them teaching and we present these really cool courses and so the Institute members my hope is that they then invade their worlds as evangelizers and my dream is that that continues to grow and then becomes a national force so that's an important part of it now now I you know we I we don't know I haven't met the entire staff or whatnot but I've met a few people that work with the word on fire and it seems like everybody works out a lot of them do not everybody to be fair there are some you know less less physically but no it's just I don't know they're built like they're not just like guys that work out they're they're more buff than we are yeah yeah well father Steve who's my kind of right-hand man and we've been working with me for years has always been into you know fitness and bodybuilding and then Joe Glor who met me my very first day in LA when I was announced as a bishop and he came up to me and I didn't know him from Adam and and then we kind of just gradually drew Joe into the work of word on fire now he's our producer and he's been you know for years a serious bodybuilder and is there a role of physical fitness in yeah spirituality yes and I would say that for sure and not that we were planning it that way everyone's got to be you know a buff model to be part of we're on fire but yeah circles back to our our opening move in this conversation but absolutely I think you know men's son and incorporate son is an old principle a healthy mind and a healthy body and especially if you do work of evangelization I mean you've got to be fit I tell the priest here I run this pastoral region Santa Barbara and got a hundred so priests that I'm concerned about and yeah their physical fitness is important I always ask him are you exercising and what are you doing and you see your doctor and how are you eating because it can happen to priests for all kinds of reasons you get over busy or whatever and you start going to McDonald's all the time and you know so yeah if you want to stay fit and do the work well you got to be in good shape yeah there's this big I don't know if you've noticed this big veganism push but it's a very moral push as if yeah eating animals is wrong and what not I wouldn't go that far though yeah I wouldn't push that far I mean I respect people that have that conviction but I wouldn't want to universalize that so but mistreating of course would be of course yeah yeah well I mean again great podcast every time every pleasure it's all I come with so many questions but as you talk I literally become dumbfounded and I can't remember totally after things I want to ask you and I think that's you have that amazing quality so well good I enjoyed very much guys thank you thank you