[Music] Hey fellow G&T, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we are doing something that I don't know Daniel I see is very quintessentially G&T. We are going to do our very best to give kind of a history of Christianity. Um and this is us putting a sort of more of our kind of educational podcast hats on, right?

Kind of have different hats we put on at different times. And this is the hat we're going to wear now. We got to this as part of what was like kind of our project. America, what the hell? And we've tried to give different um perspectives, different aspects of what has gone wrong with the United States, how things have gone so crazy and uh you know how that affects us both collectively and individually. And part of this I think has to be the acknowledgement and it's not an easy acknowledgement that America has a kind of a Christianity problem. And we did one other episode on this. We're going to continue can you continue on with this, you know, but in our spirit and our style tried to make it educational at the same time, right? So we're not just sitting here just and whatever you call it just just talking smack. We wanted to make it educational, too.

Yeah.

So, uh, so you know, just the acknowledgement that the major part of the problem of how we've gotten where we are is there's this sort of toxic version of Christianity. That's not to say that all versions of Christianity are toxic, but there are toxic versions of Christianity and we got kind of an authoritarian one that's here and it's uh has nasty qualities to it. So, as an educational podcast, like we talked about, we're going to try to do something about uh just looking at what really Christianity is about. But, uh before we get into all that, if you could do all the things that people ask you to do, right? like, subscribe, you can share the video with people, you can give a little feedback uh on the videos or on wherever you're listening to. That's awesome. It helps us out a lot. Uh again, we're trying to go to meaningful places in a kind of a really toxic and polarizing time. And there you go. To me, like when I think about why this matters, you know, and this has come up in a lot of the conversations we had over the past year. Some of this is collective. like the fact that there is this toxicity problem and I just did a little bit of like quick research on it and we have like 80% of the people who support the authoritarian kind of things going on in the country like identify as Christian. So you're like, well, what does that even mean? And then there are people obviously in the government themselves who kind of identify this way. And so that's a problem. And then the other part that strikes me, Daniel, and I don't know what you think about this. And on an individual level, we live in like a deeply kind of Christian culture. And whether we're Christian or not, we're living in the millu of like Christianity. So I think this stuff is really important to think about what Christianity really means to my mind. And uh I feel like there should really be this kind of educational project should be part of what people learn, but we really don't. So, but to understand what this is really all about, I think is really kind of a good thing.

Plus, on the other hand, I feel like it's just an amazing story to try to understand, right? It's such a deep part of our cultural history.

And so, we'll try to do our part and maybe doing something a little educational around this. And it's strange for me, but like I was talking with someone about this and I was like, this is such an important subject to understand. Mhm.

Uh but uh I don't know, you know, uh uh we don't get the opportunity to really do it. So that's my opinion on that. You got you got opinions on that?

Yeah. the um importance that we that we do not place on something shows in my opinion because I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Um just a little bit the level to which the powers that be would prefer you not to know about that particular thing.

Um yeah. Mhm.

And so when it comes to this in particular, while I am uh uh you know what do they call that? uh sectarian, you know, in my views about separation of church and state, which is oh, surprising what this country was founded on. So strange I'm aligned with those people. Um

yeah. Yeah. But that like because of that though the downside is is that the only place in which you learn about religion at all until you get to college basically when you take a world religions course which I don't know about you Eric but anytime I've talked to anybody they people love that class and they learn have they've learned so much in this in a world religions class you know

start to understand why the world is the way it is. It gives you real insight into why things tick the way they do. Right. Absolutely.

Totally agree.

And so because we're a se because we are sectarian rightfully so and I believe we should be even more sectarian than we are but okay that we don't take the the critical lens to religion until most of your opinions are probably formed about any of the religions. Oh, I see what you mean. You already have something already established before you get

correct

the chance to really look at things through a more thoughtful lens.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I think that's true.

And that is a problem. That is a problem because you are not able to hold an open mind to something you're you're the concepts that you have on things are generally going to be polarized. So if you, you know, were young and impressionable and you were paying, you know, like just listening as a young kid after 911, boom, you're not into Muslims.

Yeah. You're you're going to have that

Islam. Get it out.

Out. Who cares? You know, because that's the only that's that's the the the sensationalistic view of things is going to make it into the millu of everybody, right? That's it. It's not the

I think we used the the word no yield twice in this episode.

Oh wow. Let's do it.

I think I used it too.

I like it.

Drinking game you. Yeah.

Um and so that's that's the unfortunate part. You're only going to get the salacious and downtrodden aspects of any of any practice or any religion. They're not going to be like, "Wow, look at all these uh I don't know uh theosophical people who uh are giving to the poor." No, it's going to be like these people are a cult. You know, like that's what they're going to hear. And so it's a very puritanical view of of religions on the outside and it makes it very difficult for people to study something because if you're in the thing, you're drinking the Kool-Aid, you're never going to be able to know what it actually tastes like. and and and as a one one layer backing out of that, that is the one of the major goals of this podcast, especially of the last year, but really over the last couple years, is probably starting with the femininity stuff a couple years ago, if I'm being honest, is understanding the conditioning. You really have to get a feel for the container for which we are all living in so that you understand what it is that you are being steeped in on a daily basis. And I think once you can kind of understand or at least get a feel for it, then you can make decisions for yourself and say, "Do I want this influencing me every day or do I want to choose something else?" And so these conversations that we're having, the research that we're that we do and what we bring forth is brought out of that very specific intent.

Yeah, I think that's really true. And I think there's just a fundamental like whether you want to say it Zen or Dowist or Tantric or whatever you want to say Sufi, there's just a fundamental idea there, right?

Mhm.

That I think has been the spirit of what we've been trying to do ever since we were in the pandemic and we're like, let's do this, right?

Um, as far as that goes, I think what struck me from the last episode is that we wanted to look at this big and I think it's fair to say and this is sometimes words help in this way. I was like, "Okay, yeah, there's like authoritarian paradigms across all the spectrums of all the different religions." You know,

sometimes I'll talk with people and then maybe they like you were saying, people can be anti-Muslim or something like that for whatever their exposure was or you can be I have people I know who are kind of like darker on Christianity than I am.

Sure.

And uh I'm like, "Yeah, well, no, there's there's authoritarian versions of all of these different systems, right?" Mhm.

And if there's one thing I think based on what you're saying too, if there's one thing that I think what we're trying to do is we're trying to like fight against that,

you know, authoritarian, oppressive, hyper orthodox things, you know, are destructive of spirituality at the core. So, we kind of did that in the last episode and that I thought was helpful for me, right, to think about that and then you can start to make some distinctions like and I think that's important. I was thinking about it from the Chinese medical point of view because they talk about like the the small intestine trying to separate what's good that you want to keep from the turban and what you want to eliminate.

And as I was thinking about episodes, I was like, okay, you know, that's part of what you have to do. You have to get a filtration process going.

Right.

Right. And figure out like, okay, this I want to keep. Let me thoughtfully look at this. Which is what you were saying before. You know, I'm going to try to keep this. This, no, this is toxic. I got to flush this down the ultimately down the commode. This has to go. you know, talking about the intestines. So, you know, you sort of can think in that way, right? Yeah. The other thing that was the big takeaway for me, and it took a bit in our episodes to talk about it, but uh you know, one of the things that really I just find amazing is like how for millennia people have been arguing about what the real Christianity is or what the real Jesus is. And I think that's what we're going to try to educate about here, which is that there's never really been like one definitive real person of this. Right. Correct. always meant such massively different things to so many people and I don't know entirely what that means you know uh for different people who might be listening or you know for different people's belief systems people who are listening and people who aren't listening I wonder out what that means but you know you think about how much conflict there's been over like who has the right version of this particular set of ideas or who this person is it's kind of amazing you know that you could have so much conflict over that question and if we could take a step back and really look at it and we're going to try to do an educ educational thing about this you realize from the very beginning it was just especially in this particular system I don't know how it compares to other ones but especially in Christianity it's always been like a poperri of like different people with like radically different views and you can make out of that whatever you want I suppose again I think it's troubling that you look people look at people clashing so violently about this for so long

or people like saying that they are justified in like running roughshot over other people to the present day because of these beliefs right correct

it's not the only part of what's happening but it's a part right

it's definitely a part

what's happening in the world now you know if if people had if the group of people who identify you know within this faith changed their mind this couldn't happen right so Okay, so that's striking. But maybe on the other hand, as we got to in the last episode towards the end, I was like, there's something potentially liberating about that too, which means that you can kind of go with the version of truth, you know, and if you want to see, let's say in this case, we're talking about Christianity, Jesus is part of your influential spiritual figures, you can kind of have a Jesus that works for you or something. And that was kind of striking at the end of that episode for me. you know.

It's kind of a Zen story where um someone's asking a Zen master, did the historical Buddha exist or not? And the Zen master, I can't believe if we talked about it last episode, but the Zen master says, well, for the people who need there to be a historical Buddha, there was a historical Buddha. For people who don't need it, there's no Buddha. But you know the whole idea that I think for us talking about critical spirituality if I were to base my whole faith on the idea there's my vision of Buddha is the right vision of Buddha or something that's kind of crazy

right

on some level because there's so many ways of visualizing or thinking about who that spiritual figure is.

So I know I found that to be kind of positive at the end because I was like it doesn't undermine your ability to have a certain figure as an inspirational force within your life. You can have that and connect to that. It's just this idea that there's some concrete one version of this where if you really try to understand this there is no one concrete version

of this person or this set of ideas. So anyways, you got more on that or

Yeah. Well, that's the that that in essence is the problem, right? Is the one way and to me, you know, we we've we talk about ego. We talked a little bit about that in the last episode in particular. We talked about it in previous episodes. We have some episodes called uh egos then and I named it the existential guardian operating system.

Yeah. Guardian being existential and guardian being operative words there.

Yeah, for sure. But that I mean we could call that what that is here and that is the defense mechanisms of people's ego wanting to be right which is literally like the key aspect of your ego is being right you know being clearly identified and being the one the right one you know and that as a you know we've talked about this before especially with society is it's a society is a a macrocosm of an individual and so if the individual has an identity or an issue with identity, the societyy's going to have an identity or an issue with identity or say forget society, let's just say a larger a larger inroup, you know, any kind of particular religion. And when you have factions of religions or factions of anything, they want to be the most pure. They want to be the most right. And that brings up a whole lot of like headbutting and then falsification because once you dig your heels in, if you admit any any uh I don't know, you show any kind of shakiness to your belief or to your faith or whatever, you're going to a lose people and b people are not going to believe you anymore because they say, "Oh, well, you were wrong about that. What else are you wrong about?" So now you have all these people walking walking about saying, "Oh, this is the right way." And the next person, this is the right way. No, this is the right way. No, believe me, those others know nothing. This is the right way. And actually, it's this way in many traditions, many many traditions. I mean, look at the, you know, go back to Islam. Look at the Shia and the Sunni, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Much violence over this. But from the outside perspective, nobody, not not nobody, but many people in the world don't even know those two factions. They just

I don't think you would know. And I'll be honest because I haven't spent a lot of time with it. If you asked me like totally what the theological differences are, I'd be like, I don't know if I fully even understand them. That would be something really have to try to understand a fresh I like I know there's like different lines of transmission that people debate over, but I don't know if I fully get the core of that debate, right?

Yeah. So I'm just saying this this this aspect of being right and and wronging the others to the point of making them enemies even if you have the basically 90% shared belief. It's the hyperfocusing on the differences and the discrepancies that cause you know what what really are small gaps in teaching or in understanding to become creasses that are infinitely difficult to pass and therefore create dualism and then enemies and then you know

yeah even interesting because like if you look at like this people might have radically different points of view on they might not even be that small some of them are small some of them are big right

but Um I I just think that okay then I think we agree this is an important subject matter to just try to talk through this and it's it's enlightening to learn like the incredible diversity of this and then um uh I don't think it undermines your ability to believe in aspects of things but like I think it's a powerful and fascinating story.

Just fascinating as a thing. So anyways, uh the other thing we did last episode is I just want to remind about and just because I'm like a diagnostician in my day job, right? We're medical people. We diagnose. I like the idea of sometimes coming up with something quick that you can use as kind of like a little diagnostic tool. So I came up with a what did they just forget that part game where you take any part of any story that you know about Jesus and this is not to trash people's beliefs. It's just it shows something fascinating. And you could kind of take, we did the last episode, you know, you take a story like changing water in the wine. It's only in one gospel. Sermon on the mount is only in Matthew. And you know, so on and so forth. Take anything you know. Just do a little quick search and it'll be like, oh, it only appears here. It only appears there. It only appears here. And you know, you can go like, what did they just forget to mention that part game?

This one forgot or that person forgot. Mark forgot. Luke forgot. No, they're writing different stories because they have different beliefs and different theologies and different things to express. Try the game for yourself. It's just a diagnostic thing. It's kind of mindopening. So, and

throw it out to people who might be listening. Just do it. Take any story,

right?

Wow. Like, they're telling different stories. And that's not even bad. They're telling different stories because they just have different perspectives.

They're trying to share. And I never thought those books, their work was going to be jammed in with these other things. They just have a different vision

of what they're trying to communicate. And that's I think what I a lot of what I took away from like understanding the historical context around these things. You're like, "Okay, yeah, people had different spiritual visions they were trying to express."

Well, about that.

No, keep it keep in mind these stories were selected. They were canonized. Others were not. And we have never been able to see other stories. So, I at this point am in a pretty firm refusal to believe that decisions by man are in in reference to this kind of like biblical topic are all influenced directly by the hand of the creator or of God and saying, "Oh, no, they decided this, therefore, this is exactly how it's supposed to be." People make mistakes. So unless every single person which is against the which is literally against their religion because it would take it would take away their savior, they can make mistakes. They can do things out of ignorance. They can do things out of selfishness. They can do things just not so well on one day because they didn't sleep well the night before. I don't know, you know, but there's so many different influences that we have on us that it's impossible to just simply say, well, this is how it is, so this is how it should be. I don't accept that. I'm not accepting that's how it should be. I think, you know, we got to release all the Epstein files.

Yes. Yes.

Booyah. And release all of the uh the Jesus files.

Well, the thing that's striking, there's two things that hit me about what you're saying. One is the Jesus files. Release the Jesus files. That'll be like a thing.

Let's create a movement.

Like, I mean, get them out, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So, what Daniel's referring to in part is there's all kinds of other gospels under different names that never got into this book,

right? But I mean, so there's two parts. I totally agree with that and that's a fascinating subject and we'll try to do a little justice to that, you know,

but then also that uh even within the four that we got, they're not telling the same story and it's very eye opening, right? that that's the case as far as people. I never I'm taking this already past the point that we're going to look at these as like divine inspiration in a wordbyword way. I don't think we're taking that attitude.

No,

obviously podcast. One of my favorite historians on this though has a fascinating story about that because he originally, it's Bart Airman, University of North Carolina. I think he just retired, but you can do a search on him and he has a lot of interesting things on this subject. If this floats your boat, there's more to learn. we'll try to share things, you know, uh, and I'm I draw on some of his work and he like has a kind of a fascinating story from his own life. He like it's when he was in his teens, he converted to like hardcore evangelicalism, like really hardcore biblical literism, the whole thing, like as hardcore as you could get. And um then he found out that he was really interested in like the sources of where the gospels came from, the religious books came from, the New Testament came from. So he started trying to get himself educated. you know, he's passionate person, right? And uh he also realized he had a talent for Greek or something. So, he's learning all this stuff and he started going off to like these very initially really religious schools. There's one in Chicago that he went to and I'm forgetting the name of it.

Moody

Moody Moody Bible Institute. Thank you, Daniel. You know, that's going to be hardcore evangelical, right? But eventually he found his way to Princeton and he was still evangelical person you know but now he's in a much more challenging academic environment where you it's not moody Bible institute anymore hardcore evangelical conservative world and he wrote this long paper and he was trying to come up with a an explanation of it's a small thing why why Jesus said one date over here and one date over here or something things didn't match and since he was a biblical literist he was like what happened that you know these two things can't just conflicts and he was trying to write this wrong rationalizing paper for one of his professors at Princeton who was a religious guy too, you know, but not as hardcore or not as biblical literal. And like he wrote this long thing and he got the paperback and the guy had given him an A. He said, "Okay, A." But his only comment was, "Well, maybe the person who wrote that gospel just made a mistake." And it was like he describes it his moment of like where his world started to shake,

you know, because he was so hardcore into this very specific and very extreme way of being a religious person and a spiritual person and whatever. And just that one little comment, well, you know, maybe whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew just made a mistake of who was emperor at that time or something, you know,

and the whole thing started to crumble. So,

right.

Yeah. which shows you I guess in a way if you have that much fragility in your belief it's going to fall at some point or you're going to have to get what you were talking about Daniel which hit me too. You know, I was teaching a class on psychology for TCM people, and if you get threatening to people,

people freak out,

right? That's we've done an episode on defense mechanisms. People flip the [...] out, right?

And you get to these core things where people feel fragile and you get these very strong

psychological reactionary mechanisms that like kick in, right? So, all right. Well, let's give a tumble. We'll start giving like a little bit of an educational thing to do. Uh we had like kind of two rounds to do with this. I guess we'll probably get to that both of them eventually, but let's take a tumble on just talking about the different views that people had about Jesus just from a historical perspective, right? And then at some point maybe we'll look at the different versions of Jesus and gospels that made it and gospels that didn't make it. But um you know going back to like the whole like earliest versions of this people began to believe like different things almost like right out the gate. So we'll just talk about the different kind of big views that people had and then maybe we'll focus on the things that are a little bit more narrow.

All right. So when people do this like in a historical context they tend to say okay here's one group of people here's another group of people and then here's different people different interpretations. The first one we can talk about would be a group of people that they called the Ebianites which mean like the poor or the poor ones. And then this group of followers of Jesus again umbrella term for a group of people but a way of talking about you know a a big part of the collective that were the original people that were part of the Christian movement. They saw Jesus as like a human messianic prophet. So it wasn't like he was, you know, some special divine figure in the way that Christianity would evolve later. He was more just like a prophet, right? And divinely inspired but similar to other divinely inspired prophetic figures, right?

Uh out of the Judeaic tradition. So Ezekiel and Elijah and these other kinds of figures, right? Um, and they preached especially vows of poverty and uh, and then kind of nonharm. So like vegetarianism. We just flipped the food pyramid upside down, I guess. So that would like not work.

Our food play. I didn't paid attention to that at all. I didn't want to go off on it. Oh man, they just totally flipped the food pyramid. JFK or RFK did it and now it's like steak on the top and

We'll save We'll save the red meat for the idiots, you Yeah, vegetarianism, poverty, and then kind of renunciation and uh they also were people who were rejecting of like we've talked about this a little bit. I know this is a fascinating point for you. They kind of rejected St. Paul, right? Who ran off with a way of looking at Christianity that probably went more to like a gentile population, right?

And they were more people who said, "No, what Jesus's point was that you were going to uphold the law." And this became like a kind of a massive point of conflict. So that's one of our first kind of groups. You got anything on that, Daniel, or should I say a little bit more about it?

What I find really interesting about it, I happened to read this book recently called The Name of the Rose.

They made a movie of it with like uh Shan Connory used to play James Bond. It's kind of an older movie, kind of a great movie if you if you can get into it. It's like a mystery set in a medieval abbey. And uh Sean Connory plays this monk who uh is also like a great detective. He's kind of like a Sherlock Holmes who's a monk and he's trying to like use rationality.

Uh so it's a great movie. You can check it out for yourself. I think it's a young Christian Slater if that means anything to you as a Gen X kind of person.

Yeah, he's a bigger deal in Gen X world. But anyways,

I know. But that's not our audience for sure.

Yeah. Well, Gen X is not Well, maybe we got some Gen Xers out there. Yeah, not so many. Well, you can learn the wonders of a young Christian Slater.

Yeah,

he's a decently handsome young man. So um uh so this name of the rose what's really fascinating about is I actually listened to the book of it you know it's a great movie I listened to the book in the past year don't have as much time to sit and read and this poverty question keeps coming up

I just wanted to throw it out you know like to what extent we would have a tradition that would believe in like you know simplicity and poverty and vegetarianism and like nonharm right and what's wild in the name of the rose is that this fight continues on like forever so the guy who wrote the book is a guy named Ombberto Ekko. He's an Italian guy who's also like a like an expert in theology.

And so he embeds the book with all this stuff. And in the book there's this incredible fight between the Franciscans, the followers of St. Francis, who are still preaching poverty and simplicity and all these things. You know, they kept that line going, right? That that's what the tradition should be about. And they're kind of fighting with like the Benedictines. And I'm not saying they have expertise in either of these orders, but the Benedictines are more like, "No, we have to have money and glory and power because that's how we sort of proclaim the church or something like that." And the book is kind of wild because there's this huge fight going on.

Well, Eric, isn't that emblematic of the previous two popes, one literally

Pope Benedict and the next one St. Francis?

Yeah, they're exactly good call. I wasn't thinking about that. And that's exactly their personalities

for sure.

Still going on, right? Fight down to the present day. Like what is this supposed to be about as a spiritual tradition? I love it. Right. Is it supposed to be about simplicity and uh what the Ebianite perspective might be more like you know simplicity, poverty, giving away riches and all this kind of stuff or is it more like

accumulating whatever you want to say power and uh authority so that you can

if you want to frame it in the most polite way you can have more influence or something. That's a good call.

Yeah. And they took the names of those two things. It's like right there. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. So anyways, in the in the name of the rose, the other thing that comes up is like you get these divergent things and often you can like get executed violently over this. So that was a very educational thing for me and maybe in a way educational for the podcast. I was listening to it a little bit from that point of view too. There's another group who were called Delinians and they uh ended up like in the crosshairs of like the Inquisition and they're the more radical group of people. So I wanted to throw them out too because you get that line of Christianity too, right? That is kind of there and it shows how complicated it is, right? Even in just talking about this, you end up with like, you know, these different people with like radically different perspectives. What's I think fascinating about these Delinians and they were like wiped out, but they were the more radical people. So their idea of Christianity was that it was supposed to be about human liberation from restraint and oppression from entrenched power including those that might be accumulating in something like you know a church system. They wanted like at their time the fall of the feudal system and a reinvention of like a new economic system that would be more fair and a new society based on mutual aid, respect, shared property. So something that feels like a little bit more socialist or something like that, right? And uh especially respecting gender equality too. And it was it's an interesting part of the book like these people get executed. But you know the founder of this thing uh Frier Dulino and then one of his other important co-leaders was a woman Margaret of Trent who are both killed in the Inquisition. And in the book Name of the Rose, he does describe these events because I think the author is trying to give a feeling like see how diverse this is, you know, but I think, you know, I think a lot of people that kind of more doinian view is what they think Christianity is about. What do you think about that?

I think it's probably more the first one.

The simplicity and the poverty and all that.

Yeah. But I mean, don't you think there's a lot of views of Jesus as sort of like a social liberating figure?

Totally.

Appeals to some people, too. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I mean so, you know, in in defense of the New Testament, which you're not going to hear me defending it a ton, I I believe it was, you know, curated and there was intentionally different stories chosen to highlight different aspects because they're they got a they're they're marketing also, right? So, they're doing this intentionally. Um, but why I say I feel like it's probably more the first one because that one is the one that is the least sexy and for me like the deeply kind of like any any spiritual leanings that I have ever had that are that that really touch the heart generally are not really sexy. You know, they're not. And because there's it's simple. Real wisdom is simplistic. It is often not. It is you know like even for people who have very ornate practices. The wisdom and the change that comes from these practices really makes somebody a more clear person. You know your understanding becomes more clear. These practices are clarifying. And so I feel like the the movement towards simplicity generally again just from my experience is a movement towards actual understanding on a very deep level. You take away the complexities because from a from a pra a practice standpoint this is a faith-based tradition. The practice on most of the practice here is on an external uh in the external world right giving alms and doing community stuff like it's outward uh outward driven and the internal practices generally are you know prayer and you know things like this right I don't I don't even know the internal practices and and this conversation might be over the heads of some of the audience but you know generally speaking you have things that you'll do internally as a part of some kind of overarching spiritual practice and then you'll have the life that you lead on the outside. And the hope is that the the things that you practice work on you in such a way that your outward uh actions in society are an extension of that. And so I have never I have never pursued but I have never been given an inkling that there is and I'm sure there probably is um you know because there are Christian mystics that there is like a a real deep tradition of mysticism or something like this in the Christian tradition. It doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm just saying I have not run into it myself. I've run into it in in in Islam, right, with the Sufis obviously. I've run into it um with Tibetan Buddhism. Have definitely run into it in Hinduism with, you know, through v via different yogic practices. Definitely run into it in in Dowoism and like the longevity practices and and things like this. um totally through Zen, totally through some uh martial arts, you know, that bring your awareness sort of in inside and you're working with your chi or your key as some traditions will call it. So, I have been introduced to internal practice from various other traditions, but I haven't been with Christianity and I grew up Christian and I went to a Christian college, studied Christianity in school as well as theology in school at a collegiate level. It doesn't make me an expert. However, it it means that I've studied it at a level that I had to write papers and and say you've been around something your entire life that you don't have like I I've been I've been exposed so I know what it's been like to be exposed, right? That you know, right?

That's what I'm saying. And so because of that because again just the appearance to me is an intentional movement towards the external. It's an intentional pushing of of people's um view to the outside, right? You have your one view on the inside. Christ done. You're good. You got it figured out. And then everything else is external. If again just my interpretation, if I look at it as far more simplistic, far more we call it meek, right? Far more about giving, far more about clarity. That to me seems what what is lacking that to me that's I you know I yield back. So I think like on the mystical side what we'll eventually get to because it's part of the group of people who are like

you know when historians look at this part of the original groups of people who are following different paths around this is we'll talk about gnostics right

that's probably we get to the more mystical strain of this

and we'll get to those folks right

I thought like that's probably be our capper because they're the most different than what we're going to be talking about you know where you'll probably get the more mystical side my other reaction is the thing that strikes me is so fascinating about this is if like you've had different inklings I mean people listening or either of us about what we want to connect to within this tradition probably somebody else has come up with a similar way of thinking about it which is kind of amazing you know you have the Franciscan thing we were just talking about and their deal is we want simplicity and uh you know humility and all these kinds of things and then you get the Benedicting one we were talking about but if you want something that's a little bit more rebellious We got that for you too,

right? And if you can tap into a more rebellious version of Jesus and that's what you feel connection with, somebody else felt connection with that too at some point or another because all of these things exist.

And it's wild to think about that. But it's true, you know, and on some level maybe that's if we want to say that that's liberating that you can connect to a different vision of what this means. You're not on your own,

You know, someone else had a vision like that too. If you think about what we're talking about, human liberation from any restraint, from entrenched power, entrenched power, we want to like top over the economic system and make it more fair, have a society that's based on more mutual aid, respect, shared riches and wealth, equality of all people. There are people who thought that they got inquisited,

You know, they got wiped out, but it wasn't like they didn't read it that way. They didn't see that as being the point. Maybe there's something powerful in that, you know,

to know that if some vision of this resonates with you, someone else has seen it through that same that same lens.

All right, that's why I got in the EB nights. Maybe we'll do one more and then we'll call it a day. I think

the other really interesting tradition about this that you know, you would not necessarily have heard of at all is a group called the Marcianites. This was a big deal. It's founded by a person named Marcian. This is in 140 AD. and he's a fascinating figure in like history of uh you know Christianity and that he set up like the first New Testament. So he's the first person who started like putting together uh um you know texts into something that we would see as similar to a gospel. not like the not like the one we have now these exact texts but he started putting together and he's credited as a lot of times the person who invented s of the concept of a new testament right so he was sort of a rich uh uh a rich person within the Roman Empire you know he had uh financial resources he had a vision of Christianity he went to Rome I think in the beginning he was trying to make even financial inones in Rome it's kind of a funny story because he gave a bunch of money to the churches that were starting to develop in Rome in the beginning and then when they found out what he was actually teaching they kicked him out

and got rid of all the money. So what's this radical vision? Wild. But this is what Marcian says. He says that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is actually an oppressive, malevolent deity and not the true God. So he takes a thread that you could follow through to its kind of logical conclusion. His take is basically that um Jesus is describing a vision of divinity that is so different that actually it's just a completely different divinity.

And so there's like, you know, he kind of follows that line through. He reads the teachings around this. It's 140 AD, so a lot of these texts are going to be out and established. And he goes, "Wow, this is so different. We're not even talking about the same divinity anymore." And so he follows that kind of line through. And you know, it was a very popular version of things. So the vision there is that Jesus was sent, you know, from the more true divinity, right? To liberate people from under the thumb of this more oppressive deity, which was the one that's more associated with like the Old Testament and kind of the idea of the vengeful God and the God that has all these demands of rules and compliance and all these things. So in this vision of uh you know Jesus as a divine figure, he's kind of a divine messenger from the the more true divinity uh and uh and then he kind of shares this idea of uh you know there's a more true god. What you're being presented with isn't the true god. You have to break out from under the oppression of this false deity. And like that's the point of the teaching, right? It's also you get this other little bit of like interesting concept here. There's a thing called dosatism which is like the take that Jesus was never really like a human person right he was always sort of what you might call like an avatar not like some blue guy in 3D though I guess he would be in 3D but you know he came as you know a figure that was you know appeared to be human but only took on human form right and appeared in the material world to show that no this material world is like this flawed odd creation of this false divinity that's the one that's constantly rampaging around and is such a destructive figure

like the Old Testament. So, it's sort of it gets to a term that we'll get to when we get to the Gnostics, too. This idea that there's a demi-urge,

you know, a creator divinity that is like not the true divine source that's also somehow kind of diluted, you know, and it's Marcian's way of talking about this. To Marcian's perspective, he also saw Paul as recognizing this too. So this is the side that sort of likes Paul more, but Marcian saw Paul as like backing this interpretation that Jesus was a figure who came from the true divinity. All right. You got thoughts on that before we I throw more of my two cents in it?

No.

What's your reaction to it? You got You don't

What do you think? I mean I think that this is these are obviously people who think uh who thought far outside the box and who have given ris you know who have given the seeds for um you know I don't want to say counterculture but you know counter Christianity counter Catholic uh belief and practice from that time up until today. You know what's interesting about it, Daniel, just as a historical thing, and you know, we can kind of talk about as we go forward, but that what I find fascinating about what you're saying there is that

there wasn't like when you listen to historical historians of this tradition talk about there wasn't even like an orthodoxy yet at all.

You know, so it wasn't even just like a reactionary movement. It's so early that everyone is like branching out into these really like kind of wildly different directions of what they think this means, you know.

Well, this was well at this time Judaism was the orthodoxy. So the Old Testament was the orthodoxy. Well, the Bible at that point, whatever you want to call it, you know, whatever they call it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That the theor Testament, the Torah and

Yeah. So that was that was the orthodoxy. And so this was they're going to you know there's going to be contra you know that's a what do you want to call it an archetype of the human psyche is a contrarian you know I don't know what the proper archetype is called for that kind of thing but you know the opposite day you know so

you're bizarro world or something like that yeah

yeah it's like oh this is my god no that's not the real one there's another one and that one's not the real one you know so this is I think part of human psychology especially when you're looking at again we talked earlier about um you know understanding the shape of the container that binds us you know so they're looking at it and saying how can we poke holes in it and and based on what we see when we poke those holes how could how do we explain what's coming through what's coming out the other side and so this to me seems like one logical uh explanation to say well that that's this person came because the other one was not the right one this is the right one

it's interesting to Because if you talk about like 140 AD, you're talking about the other gospels are being written like if you get to the So some people say like Mark's written about 70.

People are guessing maybe Matthew's about 90. They kind of put them like 10 to 20 years apart or something. By the time you get to John, you're pretty close to when people are coming up with these beliefs, too.

So, I think the thing that's fascinating about it to me is that all all of this is in the original stew. you don't even necessarily have like there's no established New Testament yet even at this point.

You know, so you get people reading what they think that these teachings mean to them and it's striking that you have like this take that is like no this is like a completely different vision of what divinity is right and that's what this tradition is supposed to be about. We're not supposed to be under what you know Marcine is saying like and it's like the contrast is so great that he just says no we're not under supposed to be under a rulegiving oppressive deity that's the wrong vision of what divinity is I think that question still resonates down to the present day I guess to my mind I still find to be kind of fascinating what's the nature of divinity what are we supposed to be under are we supposed to be under this rule driven you know like uh uh demand ending potentially vengeful, potentially judgmental force, right? Or are we supposed to be under something different and it's wild that people were picking up on that like you know in the very beginning from the time that this started. I find that kind of fascinating.

Well, I think the other thing that that is very hard for us and now we got to wrap. Um, the thing that is hard for us to understand, hard for me to understand, I think hard for society to understand because things are so solid because this religion has been here now for 2,000 years. Islam has been here for 1600, 1650 years.

You know, Buddhism in the way that it's practiced today, a thousand years. Well, I mean like Buddha's like 500 BC or something, whatever the exact dates,

right? But I guess I'm looking at like the codification where you know some of these texts were being written like you know Shanti Devas and uh

well that would be like the Tibetan version like you're talking about like 10,000 but they have

right there 1500 years before Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, you know, these things, they've been here for a thousand plus years, all of these major traditions, you know, that it's hard for us to fathom, at least it's hard for me to fathom that there would be a person like a Muhammad, like a Buddha, like a Jesus. I'm just using traditions that have a singularity, right? that would talk about things and do things, but say things primarily that would change the the beliefs of people around them. And then people who never met them or at least waited 30, 40, 100 years after they died to start writing about them. Hundred years. So that'd be like somebody who was born in 1926 or somebody who died in 1926 and now we're going to start writing about them, you know, like it's it's just a it's a very different mindset to think about in terms of historical figures, you know, in comparison to Freud or Karl Marx or Einstein or something. You know what I mean? Like there was there was documentation of them while they were alive. there was none of of of of Jesus in particular, but you know, because that's what we're talking about. But then as that moved forward, it influenced more and more people. And I think that like again, this is just me looking at society from an anthropological, you know, an anthrop what do you call evo? Evoy, evolutionary psychological perspective. Mhm.

That because society was far more um simple that this

formative stages, right?

Formative more formative stages. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That this was that the the speech was the way was the wave of transformation that this is what people talked about. you know, you heard news, but you heard things, gossip and, you know, some town hall, which would, you know, be happening in the middle of the city or, you know, whatever the case was. I mean, we didn't live back then, so I'm just guessing from movies and books, you know, but that like this was the way that that it it ripped through it ripped through towns and it ripped through households and it ripped through families and there wasn't a lot of context that people had outside of their community because not many people did a ton of traveling. You know what I'm saying? um that this would come from, you know, from a land far away or however well, you know, and whispers of a new god, whispers of a new something outside of, you know, normaly that then now could change the way that we believe. You know what I'm saying? And so I think it's hard today because we see such fantastic things, you know, on movie screens and on hell on your phone, you know, on TV. We have, you know, such a a long history really now, especially post- enlightenment of really fantastic writers and artists and and things that we have access to as normal people. I can look at art from France in 1500 if I want to. And you could look at, you know, poets from Iran in 1300s. Back then, that none of that was possible. It wasn't even possible. So our minds are so much more expanded to what's possible at this point that the influence of some guy in Indiana, let's just say thinking of the book in Chicago. Yeah.

Well, I'm also Mormon too. Yeah.

Thinking of the book of the uh Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Jonathan Bach who also wrote uh Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Oh, that's where you're going with it. Okay. you know that, you know, some some guy somewhere who had some vision and and you know, made his friends uh wine out of water because they wanted to have a party. I I wouldn't even believe it. I had a friend ask me, he's like, "Well, what if Jesus came back today?" I was like, "Nobody would care." He's like, "Come on, bro." I said, "Nobody would care. Nobody would know. There'd be some following of some conspiracy folks that would say that this was craziness was happening, but everybody else would brush it away because we don't hold space for those kinds of things anymore." And I think as as you which you put very well, society in its formative years literally was waiting holding space for this kind of thing because this was the crux of our connection to other people was through talking and through pondering what was but now we you know rightfully so have been influenced by science and technology for so long that what's possible really is only at the fringes. Even though 96% of space is unidentified, 96% is dark matter. 96%. So, but yet we still are like, "Ah, dark matter. Who cares? Dark matter." But it has mass. It has a gravitational field. It's something. We just can't see it. So, we just What? You know what I'm saying? So,

I guess it's a paradox of the possible, right? On the one hand, you were saying, "Well, now there's all these possibilities because we get exposure to so many more things." But on the other hand, there's a closing of possibilities saying because

certain ways of looking at the world, if you want to be evocych about it, have sort of solidified into things.

Yes.

Yeah. What strikes me about it is like again I'm guess I'm being kind of zen about this. I don't know if there's a real person that any of this is based on. And the more you look at it, if there was some real person, then you wouldn't have all these people to whatever extent there was a real person. Obviously, what you really have is an explosion with a bunch of people with different visions. Yes. May or be may or be not connected to that original person. Who knows? Right.

But the thing that I find fascinating about it, I suppose, and it's something that struck me as I was prepping this a little bit and then as we're talking today, it's even solidifying for me more is like if you ever had the instinct of like I think that the divine is not some oppressive, demi-urge, law imposing, vengeful, judgmental force. I don't believe that. Right. Uh, I believe that there's another source of divinity that isn't true. And I think that the vision I have is much more of a a liberator. Well, then Marcian was there for you, too.

Right at the beginning. someone had that same thought, you know, and maybe what this really was is about if I'm Marcian, right,

is about we're gonna break ourselves out of this idea of a vengeful, oppressive, uh, judgmental rule-based divinity, and we're going to break out of that.

Whether that, you know, and on some level whether or not like any of these divinities exist at all, okay, we can even leave that question to the side. It's just a different vision of what you think the universe is.

Yes. different vision of what you think divinity is. And I think that's powerful to think about.

I mean, if you're listening to us and you're like, I think about like I got my two kids and my daughter will talk with her friends. They're in their early 20s and like, well, we want to be spiritual, but we're not religious. You know, if you poke around in that a little bit, what does that mean to them? Well, I think in part it means that they're not going to follow any of these much more sort of orthodox religions because they're not going to like resonate with them, right? They don't

that's not what their vision of how the world works is. And if I said to them, well, do you see that that kind of way of thinking of divinity is wrong, but a way that's much more uh compassionate, loving, whatever, if we want to associate that kind of vision of divinity with Jesus, which Marcian did, right? If that's your instinct, someone else had that instinct too, right? And they had it like going on uh like 1900 years ago.

Little late to the party.

Interesting, right? to me, you know, because you see lots of different visions, you know, you're open to kind of thinking of it in that way. All right. Thanks, Daniel. This is like this is helpful. Hopefully, other people get some benefit out of this, too. You know, I think it's very clarifying to think about. I feel more clear about it.

I'm still slightly confused, but, you know, we we'll we'll keep going.

Well, we're working on it.

That's it. That's it.

We got another episode or two.

Okay. Perfect. All right. Good. That that's good. So, make sure to tune in to those. If you made it to this part in the episode, your attention span is at the top 3% of humanity forever. Uh, so, you know, pat yourself on the back, drink some, uh, you know, beverages that would quench your thirst. Uh, like, subscribe, share, hit us up, jinantra@gmail.com, the Jinatra podcast. Leave a comment here. I'll definitely get back to you. I love to hear from people. Thank you for sharing. for everybody who has so far. We've got some really personal comments um really great emails from people around these different kinds of topics. It's a sensitive topic for those especially u for people who were you know brought up in a religious household and definitely felt oppressed by it or felt diminished by it. These are for you know these are these are for you and for those who think they got it all figured out. Uh as long as what we say doesn't bother you then uh yeah you totally do. And if it doesn't sit well with you, then maybe use the God-given ability that that you have of questioning and answering to uh continue to ask the questions until you no longer feel like it's necessary. For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one.