The Darkness of God

[0:00] Matt: It comes like a fleeting memory. Whatever you grab just turns to dust. Like eye contact with strangers. Okay. Do you want me to read it?

[0:23] Michael: If you want to.

[0:25] Matt: It pulled up. All right. Well, I guess first we should start the podcast.

[0:31] Michael: What? It's you and me and me and you.

[0:37] Matt: Cheers.

[0:37] Michael: To the shores. That's where we'll be forever. Forever. Nice. Welcome, people.

[0:46] Matt: Yeah. Welcome back to the shores.

[0:48] Michael: Yeah.

[0:49] Matt: Episode 294.

[0:51] Michael: 294.

[0:53] Matt: We're going to start in a way that we don't normally start, which is to read something kind of at length from T.S. eliot that you sent out on a group thread today. And we kind of had some interesting back and forth, so we thought we'd start with this and see where Mr. T.S.

[1:12] Michael: takes us. It's from the Four Quartets, and there's four of them. And East Cocker is one of the. I think it's the second or third. Second one, I believe. Burt Norton, East Cocker. Little giddling and I'm blanking on there. Oh, salvages. Salvages. I can never say that word.

[1:31] Matt: What is it? Is East Cocker 4? The next one? 3. No, no, I know we're going to read 3, but the one that we always talk about, old men should be explorers. Is that four or five?

[1:41] Michael: That's five.

[1:45] Matt: Five, which is one of my favorite pieces of writing ever.

[1:48] Michael: So good.

[1:48] Matt: So this is just slightly before that. So we'll start here. East Cocker 3. T.S. eliot. Oh, dark, dark, dark. They all go into the dark. The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant. The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, the generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark and dark. The sun and moon and the Almanac de Gotha and the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors and cold the sense and loss and lose, the motive of action. And we all go with them into the silent funeral, nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury. I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. And as in a theater, the lights are extinguished for the scene to be changed with a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness. And we know that the hills and the trees and the distant panorama and the bold, imposing facade are all being rolled away. Or as when an underground train in the Tube stops too long between stations and the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence. And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepening, leaving Only the growing terror of nothing to think about. Or when under ether, the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing. I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. Yet there is faith. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness, the dancing whisper of running streams and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen in the wild strawberry, the laughter in the garden echoed ecstasy, not lost, but requiring pointing to the agony of death and birth. You say I am repeating something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, to arrive where you are and to get from where you are not, you must go by way, a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know. And what you own is what you do not own. And where you are is where you are not. Something about. There's something about that one, especially the way that it ends. It's kind of like Dr. Seussian. And then as I read that, I just think there's something about T.S. eliot and the way that he writes that is you kind of have to chug through it.

[5:16] Michael: We'll chug through it.

[5:17] Matt: It's dense and kind of wordy. And he takes a long time to sort of make his point, but he always makes the point, even if I don't understand it. And when I read it again and again, I think, yeah, everything here is necessary for him to make that.

[5:36] Michael: Yeah, we said that. But what made me think, sometimes I have to press through. Like, I don't understand something.

[5:42] Matt: Yeah.

[5:42] Michael: And I have to, like, press through to read kind of the whole thing. And then be like, oh. And then I go back and I'm like, okay. And I kind of have to press through again because something doesn't make sense.

[5:53] Matt: And I feel like poetry has always been a little bit difficult for me to read. And it just occurred to me why. And as. Which is strange, because I. I write poetry, but I think it's because generally when I read, I sort of build up from the granular to the big idea. And it's like every letter has a meaning that come together to make a word that has a meaning to come together to make a sentence that has a meaning. And I'm stringing this from the bottom up as I'm reading, but I feel like with poetry, you can't do that. You can't really pause to reflect on individual thoughts so much as to just sort of let them come into, you know, and build a picture that you can then look at.

[6:37] Michael: Or a feeling, you know?

[6:38] Matt: Yeah. Or a feeling.

[6:39] Michael: Yeah.

[6:41] Matt: So what is the. What is the feeling that got you started sending this out?

[6:50] Michael: Well, I mean, I think just a lot of things you and I have been talking about and trying to. Like, we're always trying to figure things out. And I think recently we've kind of been more impressed with how much we don't understand. And so I think that's part that I've been kind of struggling with, is we talk about a verse that says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, Lean not on your understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. And there's this idea of. It's like, I lack something, and I don't know what I lack, but I know that I lack it. And it's like, well, how do you go after it? And, you know, so there's a part where it's like, okay, well, I'll just be more disciplined. I'll do more reading. I'll do more thinking. I'll do more meditating. Or, you know, I'll. I'll. In order to solve the problem, whether it's business or family or, you know, relationships or whatever, it's like, I'll take steps, I'll do the dishes, or I'll pay more attention to this manager or this store. You know, it's like. And. And it's interesting because, like, I see, like, okay, well, there's some. There's some benefit to that. To that discipline or that taking action. But in and of itself seems to. Some. It seems to fall flat if it. If it's just about, you know, taking the action. You know, it's like, if you trust to it. Yeah, if I'm trusting in the action itself.

[8:18] Matt: Yeah.

[8:19] Michael: And so something in this just really grabbed me about, you know, how do you get to something you don't know? Because it's. It's very. By very definition, you don't know it.

[8:30] Matt: Yeah. So it's.

[8:31] Michael: Or how do I get the skills that I don't Have. And. And, you know, I think in today's age, it's like, well, you'll get a coach who helps you and helps you get the skills that you need to. In order to achieve, you know, whatever you're trying to achieve. And I think that. That. That is a way. But I feel like sometimes we jump to these conclusions of, like, okay, I'm trying to achieve this thing, so I'll go get a coach to help me modify my behavior in order to achieve this thing. And I think sometimes if we sit with it long enough, we start to realize it's like, actually, I don't know what I want. And by achieving this thing, I'm actually not getting closer to the thing I actually want. And I think that's sometimes hard to. So you just think you just replace it with something else. Okay, well, it must be this or it must be that. And so you're always shifting your gaze or attention to something that you're trying to fill that you don't have because you don't know what it is, you know? And it's funny because, like, in everything I said, a lot of those things actually work, but it's very temporary, and it can become almost like a chasing after the wind, you know? Um, so that. That's kind of where That's. That's kind of when this. This. This verse, this kind of section of T.S. eliot's Four Quartets kind of really stuck out to me. It was just like. It described a feeling that I was having. And I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

[10:01] Matt: The feeling of waiting and not knowing or even pursuing.

[10:06] Michael: But then I'm getting closer to the thing I'm pursuing. I'm like, oh, I don't think I really want that. And so it's like I feel like spinning my wheels, just chasing after the wind or chasing after things that instead it's like. And this is talking about. It's like sometimes you have to just wait in the darkness. You have to wait in the unknowing. And I think that's really hard to do because we want to fill that space with something.

[10:30] Matt: Totally. Yeah. My initial reaction when you sent it, because you didn't send that whole thing, you sent an edited version, which was the parts that were sticking out to you.

[10:41] Michael: Yeah.

[10:41] Matt: And it was mostly the part that I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope for hope would be the hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. And it sort of offended my intellect a little bit.

[10:55] Michael: Yes.

[10:56] Matt: When I read it because I was kind of like, what are you on about? Like, hope and love are good things. Wait, without hope. Wait without love. I'm not going to hope for the wrong things or love the wrong things. And then I saw the trap in myself and I was like, oh, I don't know that I'm hoping for the right things or that I'm loving the right things or even hoping and loving at all. I mean, there's so much that I don't really understand about myself. And what is waiting without hope? What is waiting without love? And then he goes on to talk about. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. They're still there. It's just that you can't. Don't be too quick to. To think you know them, because I

[11:48] Michael: think it also defines something. It's like. Like there's something about a stasis in this, but then also a season. So it's like. I think there's like a. And he kind of gets into this in. In other areas, too, where there's times that you are in the ecstasy of knowing and loving and hoping.

[12:06] Matt: Yeah.

[12:07] Michael: And. And also that causes us to want more of that. But then whenever it's lacking, it's like, I think it's harder for us, probably in the west specifically, to sit in the darkness.

[12:21] Matt: I love. I love that word ecstasy. He said, to arrive where you are, to get from where you are not. You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not. Just to me, that says, it's like, we talk a lot about mindfulness and presence in the modern culture. There's something to it. That's what he's talking about. He's saying, do you want to be where you are? I mean, you don't. Like, you should at least be where you are. Because we all know that we're not fully where we are. We're somewhere that we're not. What does that mean? I don't know. But to accept that, oh, there's not going to be a lot of ecstasy just sort of coming to terms with where I am. The ecstasy comes with the movement. The ecstasy comes with the revelation. The ecstasy comes with the. The first grasping of something. But where you are, it's where you are. There's.

[13:26] Michael: There's.

[13:27] Matt: There isn't that ecstasy flowing in.

[13:31] Michael: Yeah.

[13:32] Matt: And to sort of say what he says before, To let the dark come.

[13:46] Michael: I think that's such a hard thing. I was talking to A guy. Earlier today, I just kind of was mulling over this a little bit, and. And it just kind of made me think of, like, when Alison. We have some friends that. I think I mentioned this before, but an older couple that, you know, now is in, like, in their 70s or 80s. And I just remember we were having dinner with them. This was early on in our marriage. And she told us, like, yeah, Jim was there. Wait, the other guy was there also. I don't want to give names. And she was like, yeah, there was, like, seven years where I did not love my husband. And I was just like, what? But, you know, what. Something. As, you know, as I get further, like, I've been married for 24 years, you know, and there's something about that is like, are you willing to sit in the dark with your partner and, you know, with your husband, with your wife, and. And part of that is almost necessary because you kind of have to somewhat throughout your marriage or even with your kids or relationships is you kind of have to. You have an idea or picture of who they are, and it kind of has to die so that it becomes something new. And I think that's something that we. We kind of hold on to as far as, like, you know, I have this picture of Allison, who's my wife and, you know, business partner and, you know, life partner and kid partner and all kinds of partnering. And it's like. It's like. But she's also becoming something else. And I can hold this old version of her, which is. Which, if I hold on to it too long, it actually becomes a idol, a dead idol of her, who she is.

[15:36] Matt: Well, that really opens up Elliot's line. Wait, without love, for love would be the love would be love of the wrong thing. You know, Jordan Peterson talks about how when you get married, what you're doing is really saying, show me who you really are, and I promise I won't leave. And especially, I think when relationships are young, you imagine that, oh, I love you, and I love this relationship because it brings me X, Y, and Z benefit into my life.

[16:09] Michael: Ecstasy.

[16:10] Matt: Kind of ecstasy, right? You know? Yeah.

[16:13] Michael: I feel belonged. I feel loved. I feel known. I feel.

[16:15] Matt: I feel comforted. I feel sexual satisfaction. I feel all kinds of things. But the thing that happens when you marry somebody is you arrange your lives so that you can and do often without meaning to show them your true self. And ultimately, that's a pretty horrific picture because we like to think of ourselves as good people. But I think we talked about a little bit about this last week. It's like, actually there really aren't any good people. I mean, the Bible is explicit. Bible says there are none, there are zero. And when you enter into a relationship with somebody like that, you start seeing it, oh, I see. What you said you loved about me was this, that, this and that. And now I'm in a season where I'm struggling with those things and so now those things aren't there. So you don't love me or I loved this, that and the other about you. But now we have kids and you're not doing these things anymore. You're not this, that and the other. And I don't feel loved. I don't feel love for you. And I think that's what Eliot is saying is like, wait, without love, for love would be the love of the wrong thing in that season. You know, holding onto the old idea of love that was attached to this kind of transaction, which ultimately I think isn't love. Because love is not transactional. Love as described in Corinthians keeps no record of wrong. In a sense, love does not tally. You know, it is not a, it's not a fair game. You know, listen to any popular love song. It's like, it's not a fair game. It wasn't ever meant to be. I mean, the ultimate love is. There is no greater love than this, that a man would lay his life down for his friend. You cannot repay that kind of love. And so you find out that you're conception of love was ill conceived. If you're willing to stare it down, right. And wait and say, okay, maybe I don't love you because I don't know what love means. And I was naive and immature and so I will wait without it, you know, which is, I think it's really hard to do in a romantic relationship. It's a little bit easier to imagine it in like a parent child relationship. You know, my grandfather used to ask me if I had gone behind the moon yet. And the whole phrase basically means like, you know, cause he lived in a different generation when we were flying to the moon. And when astronauts go around to the dark side of the moon, there's no communication. So comms go out for the four minutes or whatever it is that they're, I don't know how long it is back there. And his analogy was, you know, teenagers always go to the dark side of the moon. Like they go through a period where you can't talk to them. Nothing gets through. Yeah, you know, they're going to rebel, they're going to do whatever they're going to do. It's like, what do you do? Because there are many times when you're raising children that you don't feel like they love you. Maybe you even feel like, I don't know if I love them. They're really a pain in my ass right now. And, you know, nowhere is that kind of idea more disturbing than the sort of current case of this woman, Lindsay Clancy, which is an extreme version of that, you know, and it kind of betrays the point that, you know, we. We understand that more than we might like to admit, because there's a lot of people supporting Lindsay Clancy, which is really nuts to me.

[20:09] Michael: But some new stuff has come out with that, But I haven't been really

[20:14] Matt: following it closely because every time I turn it on, it just kind of makes me sick. But my point is that there are times that, yeah, we must wait without love, because what we are wanting to love might be the love of the wrong thing. So Elliot kind of nails it.

[20:35] Michael: Yeah, it really does. I mean, because I think there's something too, is like. Because it's not that. Because you can act. You can show love through those things, you know, the. The. The random note or the flowers or the, you know, you know, you bring coffee to her or something like that, or you, you know, see a little gift for your kid or whatever. And it's like. Like all those. Like, love can be communicated through, like, your actions, you know, and something like. Like even I think Paul talks about, I'll show you. Or James, I'll show you my faith by what I do. So there's something about the action has impact and has significance. But I think there's a. I think. I think where TSLA is really getting at is like. Is like, there's a part where you're going to lose that at some point, that the action no longer carries the love. The action no longer carries the hope or the communication that you think it is. And are you willing to sit in the dark place and allow that to be, I guess, not rejuvenated, but resurrected, you know, because something has to die for you to be able to sort of love or hope in this new way. It's like. It's almost like. It's like you become immature. So, you know, like, I always think of, like, understanding Jesus as a kindergartner is one thing, but when you move on to second grade, it's like your kindergarten. Jesus is no longer useful. It has to die. You know, same thing. It's going from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood is like, you know, there's certain things that have to die and you have to move into the next and. And a lot of that comes through. I think it. I think that's a hard thing too, is. Is you're kind of going to go through it whether you like it or not. And I think there's a part of learning to sit in the darkness that. That doesn't solve the problem. But I think there's kind of a peace in being able to. To be able to just sit there and be okay with not having the hope temporarily.

[23:02] Matt: Yeah, well, the image came into my mind because. So he talks about the laughter in the garden, Echoed ecstasy, not lost, but requiring pointing to the agony of death and birth. This image of death and birth seems to me to be very tightly intertwined in birth itself. I mean, so I have this very strange memory that I say is a memory of my own birth. And I say that because I don't have any other way to explain the memory. And there's no way for me to verify that memory. Only I have it. No one else experienced it with me. Right. So all I can do is just kind of carry it around and every once in a while sheepishly say, I have this memory that. Whatever. But part of that memory is reality as I knew it died. Like, I had a. I had a concept of reality, and then it died. And I was born. What I was. There is no understanding from in the womb about what outside of the womb will be. There is nothing inside the womb for me to hope about because categorically it is opaque to me. And one of the ways that I describe it is, you know, I didn't. I didn't have language when I was in the womb, but I had a sense of self, I had a sense of. Of being. And then I was squeezed out into extreme limitation, still having no language, but suddenly having need of it. Whereas in the womb I didn't have need of it.

[24:53] Michael: And at the time, you didn't know you had need of it.

[24:54] Matt: I didn't know I had need of it. Yeah, right. So there's this thing where you can be in this position. I use that as the example. You can be in this position where you are being birthed, which requires a death of something, and you are being birthed into a place that you know nothing about. You can't conjecture about it. You can't even imagine about it. And I think I've been really compelled by this. After my dad died, this. This idea that I came across and I'm going to fail to attribute it properly because I can't remember. But the idea that all of life, the life that we are living right now, is a second bir. And you know, this is talked about that way explicitly in the Bible. Jesus explicitly says that you must be born again. And Nicodemus replies, what should I re. Enter my mother's womb? You know, what are you talking about? And this second birth, it's hard to reason about. It's hard to talk about because what is it that we're being born into? We don't know. I think it's appropriate, but not complete to say, well, the second birth is a spiritual birth. It's sort of like trying to pretend we understand what a seventh dimension would be. It's like we can talk about it by putting some inadequate terms on it. You know, heaven is another way we talk about it, which is sort of a wholly inadequate term because it's something which cannot be imagined. And every imagining of it somehow falls short. And oddly enough, every imagining of it kind of sounds terrible when you really think about it.

[26:37] Michael: Totally.

[26:38] Matt: You know, you're going to be living on streets of gold. I'm like, well, what good does that do for me? You know, it's going to be infinite bliss. And in my human brain, anything infinite sounds awful, like infinite, never ceasing. Everything that I've ever experienced, which is never ceasing ultimately is horrifying. So it's hard to wrap your mind around all of that. But I think we are. I guess it gives me some. Some kind of comfort, I guess, to say, okay, can I believe. That there is good on the other side of something that I cannot currently see or understand? And I have no way of seeing or understanding it. I have no way of imagining about it. I have no way of conjecturing about it. No one else here has ever experienced it either. So we have no way of talking about it, really.

[27:43] Michael: Yeah.

[27:43] Matt: So it's like, yeah, wait in the darkness. And what does Elliot says say, wait, let the darkness come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. And that's a really strange juxtaposition to put there because generally God is talked about as the light. But what if the light of God we experience has the darkness of not understanding to us what is. What feels like darkness is him shining the light in the distance and saying, walk this way. You must go. In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by way, which is the way of ignorance.

[28:35] Michael: Which I think that's. I think it's very uncomfortable for us in a sense, because even coming back to some of the axioms we talk about, like, I know who I am and also don't know who I am. And that's also like. We apply that to God also. It's like, I know who God is, but also don't know who God is. And there's a certain darkness around, you know, not knowing who God is. It's unsearchable. There is no light that you can shine on that that can allow me to see that It's. The depths are like a. A well that you drop a rock and you never hear it hit the bottom, you know, and it's like, how do you sit with something like that? You know? And I think that's also. We. We experience that with our relationships here now, too. And I think that's something that sometimes we don't acknowledge. Like. Like, what is the well that is Matt? What is the well that is Allison? It is also a pebble that you drop down a well. You do not hear it at the bottom.

[29:34] Matt: Yeah.

[29:34] Michael: And. But we like things that we can define and put in boxes and it be predictable, you know, I think there are things around us that are predictable, and it's. And I think it's helpful that there are things, but there's. There's another side to it, too. And I think sometimes we close off that other side. I think that's why this is so challenging, is like, can you sit in the dark without hope, without love? Because if you know anything about yourself, you're going to hope and love for something that is temperamental. You know, even things that have sort of an eternal part to it. It's like our understanding is we're only going to hope our love in the most temporal, the farthest reaching temporal thing that we can.

[30:20] Matt: Okay, you said temperamental. You mean temporal temporal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[30:25] Michael: So it's. So it's kind of fascinating, too. It's like. It's like we. We cannot love or. Or even hope in the thing itself. It's like we're always coming up with an image that's less than the thing itself, if that makes sense. And part of it's just because we're human, we can't actually grasp. I could never grasp who Matt is. It's just impossible. But I'm going to work with the. The image or the idea that I have of you. But I also have to be careful to allow you to be more than that image or idea I have of you, you know?

[31:16] Matt: Yeah. I mean, I don't think the infant hopes to be born or, you know, looks forward to that. And if we sort of extend the analogy and say that life is a second birth, you know, we don't. Or a second sort of gestation period, we don't really hope to be born again. You know, it's a. It's a wacky and wild idea when Jesus says it. What we want is to, as you said, name, define, categorize, understand, obviously. Right. You wouldn't be able to function without it. And so we try really, really hard to get good at it. And then all of that work that we've done, you can't leave the womb with. Can't go with you, and you accomplish nothing that helps you on the other side of your birth.

[32:22] Michael: Maybe we could kind of go into, like, what we're talking about, because I think I kind of know, but it's just like this idea of, like, you know, we're talking about, like, being born. Like, we're talking about a physical born into the world. Right?

[32:36] Matt: Yeah.

[32:36] Michael: And the second birth is sort of. You're being birthed into something greater. Is that kind of what we're. Is that we're kind of talking about with second birth?

[32:49] Matt: Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm. I'm.

[32:50] Michael: Are we just kind of like, figuring it out as we go?

[32:52] Matt: I think we're figuring it out as we go. I don't know exactly what point I'm trying to make, but there's a concept of a second birth. Jesus talks about it.

[33:04] Michael: Yeah.

[33:04] Matt: Okay, what does he mean? What is he talking about? It's almost as if it's like, Okay, TS Eliot is arriving at the existence of the second birth, in a sense, by way of describing the womb, he is saying, I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. What is the darkness of the womb? Is it the love of the mother? And what can the. And what can the infant do in the womb to have any effect on the birth? Nothing, except to say, I accept the darkness. And I accept that my lack of understanding, my failure to hope for the right thing or love the right thing is not my failure so much as it is my inability to imagine what it is that I'm in store for here. And I accept that the darkness is the love of something which is carrying me. And in that sense, because you read T.S. eliot, East Cocker 3, which we've been talking about and just read, and we read it because this is our experience we experience these things all the time. And so I think it's like kind of coming in, the idea. Coming into this idea of the second birth from the back door by way of our current experience, sort of. Even though we think we've been born and we're here in this world, and we touch it and we smell it, and we learn to do things like throw a ball and talk or write poetry, and we think we have some handle on it, and yet our experience is constantly telling us, oh, actually, you don't have a handle on this at all. You know, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're talking about. And the older we get. It seems to be the case that the older we get, the. We don't feel less that way. We feel more that way. The deeper into the mystery you go, the grander the mystery becomes. You know, those who try to, you know, make some progress against the mystery in their lifetimes.

[35:30] Michael: And it's like there's this part where it's like the. There's a sort of innocence when you're thinking of, like, a baby being born into the world. And like, they're in an ecosystem that they have no control over and that is nourishing them and, you know, take. Basically taking care of them. And then they're born into the. Into a world where now there's something to contend with, where, you know, I need food, and there's no immediate gratification for that. And then something from the outside is now keeping you alive, which is the mother's breast. You know, it's like that's where you're getting your sustenance. But now it has to be. It has to be more intentional, you know, and there's something about. There's sort of a resistance because you. There's a certain ignorance that you have as a baby, as a child, like, why am I crying? Well, I. Let's just say you live in a good household and the mother is going to feed you. Why are you crying? Because I have needs that are not being met, and I'm lashing out on this world. And so, like, there's all this contention that happens once you're born into the world. And so, you know, you start trying to seek safety. And, you know, and then at some point, your parents start to. Or should at least start to feel like they are trustworthy. And there's a certain safety you feel. That's why you run to your mother's leg, you know, when you're scared or Something like that. Or your. Your dad feels safe or whatever it might be. You know, it's like. It's just, it's You.

[37:12] Matt: You ever have that experience of grabbing the wrong leg until you look up? You look up and stranger.

[37:18] Michael: Totally. That's great. So I think there's something in this where I'm not sure where I'm going, but. Because I think that's. Whenever you start getting in. This whole idea of a second birth is you are starting to see that I have agency in this world, but my agency is also not actually. Working out.

[37:46] Matt: It's not sufficient.

[37:47] Michael: It's not sufficient. Yeah. And it's like, what do I do about this? And, you know, I think that's when we start building sort of our towers of Babel, you know, to provide that safety, when actually that unsafeness is sort of what, like, should be turning us to, like, well, claiming ultimately to God. But it's sort of like a. It's like we're almost like that darkness is almost feels unsafe. I don't know where I'm going with all this, but just there's just something. There is. Like as you're. As you're talking about this, like, because I don't really. I feel like I understand on a very basic level this idea of a second birth, but it's also. I just. It seems like at some point we start to wake up to, oh, I don't see things as they are. And then we start looking for explanations to fill that void.

[38:40] Matt: Right.

[38:41] Michael: And. And the more that we try to fill that void with something that's not true, it's like we start to kind of build ourselves a prison of some sort. And I think this is where Jesus is saying, like, hey, no, I'm the way, the truth and the life. Like, there's not a prison if you come to me, like everything else is a prison because you don't know what's best for you. And. And I think that's something that God requires of us in a sense, is to be able to. To sit in the darkness, his darkness. And that kind of builds sort of like a trust of his. Of his character. And in knowing him is. Is being able to be in that darkness, you know, So I don't know. I just waited in the. In the deep water, but I don't know where.

[39:34] Matt: Well, there's a couple of quotes that came to my mind when you were saying that. One is something like, if you're going to go into battle, the plan, like planning is really, really important. And then once you're in battle. Step one, throw the plan away. Just kind of. It's kind of funny, but, you know, if you've ever done battle, like, I've never done battle battle, like war battle.

[39:59] Michael: But you've opened a business.

[40:00] Matt: I've opened a business. I've done. I've done battle in relationships. I've done, you know, I've gotten married, I've gotten divorced, I've raised kids. And I get it. Like, it's really important that you prepare yourself. And then as soon as the shit hits the fan, that you humble yourself to the fact that it doesn't matter how well you planned, it wasn't enough. And now you gotta be light on your feet. Then you got to be agile because things are going to go in unpredictable ways that you never could have planned for. There's some other quote, like something. Something lays waste to the best laid plans

[40:46] Michael: of mice and men or something like that.

[40:48] Matt: Something that sounds like it goes together.

[40:50] Michael: Yeah. I don't know who said that. Laid plans. Yeah,

[41:00] Matt: Yeah. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

[41:09] Michael: Who said that?

[41:13] Matt: Robert Burns.

[41:18] Michael: But it's interesting though too because like, again, just the take this line of thinking is like, I don't know how you actually get to God from this. You know, I. I see a world where you, you know, you're. You wake up and you start living and there's all these dangers out there, whether it be relationally, like, does this person like me? Does this person love me? Does this person feel safe?

[41:47] Matt: Does this person want to kill me?

[41:48] Michael: Does this person want to kill me? You know, it's like, like, it's like there's. There's this really like. Like basic sort of carnal to survive, you know, and, you know, and then you kind of see throughout the. The ages, like we've built societies and civilized ourselves or whatever, however you want to say that in a way that sort of propagates this sort of. Or wanting to at least propagate the sort of flourishing, you know, but we're always. It doesn't matter. We're always sabotaging ourselves along the way, you know, and it's, it's a lot of it comes from good intentions. And so, like, what good is God in all of this? You know? And I think that's the part that is sometimes hard to get to because you want to say that it's embedded in reality as far as, like, what there is to know.

[43:00] Matt: What's the question in there?

[43:02] Michael: Well, my question is, is like, it's like, because we're talking about, like, being born again. You know, it's like, how does. How does. How does. How do we even get to that? Because, like, you know, being born makes sense to me. It's like, okay, yeah, mom, dad, have sex, and, you know, sperm, egg canal. Hello.

[43:22] Matt: Yeah, but from the perspective of the embryo, the fetus, the unborn baby, there's no way they can know how you get to it. I think it's similar with us. If we are to be born again. I don't think we know how to get to that. Yeah, I don't think we even know how to talk about it. If the question is, how do you get to God? Well, quite frankly, the answers don't make any sense to me. Just like we talked about last week and you quoted it again tonight. Proverbs 3, 5, 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. What are you talking about?

[44:06] Michael: It's all I have.

[44:07] Matt: So all I have is my own understanding. Everything in this world requires my understanding. I have to understand my responsibilities. I have to understand the grades I'm supposed to get. I have to understand the time I'm supposed to show up to work, my

[44:19] Michael: social standing, or the time I'm supposed

[44:21] Matt: to pick my kids up from school. If I don't understand these things, I either die or go to jail.

[44:26] Michael: Yeah, right, Totally.

[44:28] Matt: You're telling me not to trust my own understanding. So it's backwards of what I would expect, you know? So I don't know. And maybe this is why the Bible says to work out your faith with fear and trembling, because you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're up against.

[44:57] Michael: God, this is so fascinating to me because it's like, you know, you and I read a lot and are super curious about different philosophies and different religions. And it's like I just see us always trying to build these frameworks. And this is the. This is the part where it's like, well, why does. Why is this important?

[45:27] Matt: Well, I think that's why I said that this East Cocker 3 offended my intellect at first, because my intellect, my framework that I've been trying to build up, it's like, well, if I find myself in the dark, at least I've got hope. If I find myself in the dark, at least I've got love. At least I have these things, which they are precious to me because I've spent a lot of time cultivating them. This is an easy Question. What is it that you're supposed to hope for? So many things that. But then I think about it, so many of the things I've hoped before have betrayed me. And it seems anathema to me to say, well maybe the solution to that is to not hope for them. But I don't think that that's actually what he's suggesting. I think what he's suggesting is. But there are times in which it is not possible to know what to hope for. And it's very likely that you will hope in the wrong thing. And so maybe it's better to accept the darkness and to sort of see what's there.

[46:37] Michael: It's interesting because I don't think you can actually do this without a belief in God. Because if you don't believe in God then you accept the darkness, then that's all there is.

[46:50] Matt: The darkness swallows you.

[46:52] Michael: But if you, if you believe in God that there is something greater that's going to lead you into a truth, it's like, it's like it's actually more of a confession than it is a, Maybe a state or something like that. But I would say it's like a confession of like I don't know, like you know better than I do and I'm going to sit in this darkness because I trust you. I have faith that, that you're going to reveal yourself. In fact that's, that's the promise of Jesus is that he would reveal himself and that he would come to you. You know, and, and that's the only place that that's the only, it's the only religion, it's the only philosophy that actually has that promise in there. Something from the outside is going to come to you that it's not based on your understanding or your will or your hope or your faith or your anything like that.

[47:51] Matt: It's like your diligence, your self determination, your. Yeah, discipline.

[47:56] Michael: Which is funny because when we exercise those things it teaches us the very thing that we need to learn is like when I do exercise discipline and diligence, like something does come out of it but it's very short lived and it's like you have to, it's almost like you start to kind of like move into a Sisyphus kind of world. It's like these things are true but they become meaningless because we're not oriented towards the source. You know, it's like, you know that if you do something nice for somebody else there is a reward for it. But then you know also that by just doing it Again and again that there's sort of like a law of diminishing return. Like it starts to die, it starts to become poison to you.

[48:50] Matt: I just got hung up on that word source.

[48:53] Michael: Why is that?

[48:54] Matt: Well, I don't know. It's such. It's like a spiritual buzzword these days. You know, it's like if you want to be somewhat agnostic and non offensive about, you know, an appeal to spiritual things, you don't say God, you say Source. You know, pray to Source or find something in Source. And I've just got. I started to hear that as like birthing person.

[49:16] Michael: Oh, okay.

[49:17] Matt: It's like, it's like as if your kid comes up to you and asks you for a cookie and you're like, go ask the. Go ask your birthing person. Who are you talking about? You mean my mother? It's like source. What are you talking about? You mean God? Why don't you just say God?

[49:32] Michael: Yeah, totally.

[49:34] Matt: Well, I don't want to offend anybody. I mean, I'm offended that you don't want to offend people. What are you going to do with that one?

[49:44] Michael: Exactly. Yeah. You're always going to offend somebody.

[49:47] Matt: Yeah.

[49:48] Michael: And also offense is also good. I don't get that.

[49:54] Matt: Well, was it Thomas Jefferson that said you can never tell the truth if you aren't willing to offend? I mean, the truth is offensive. That's why people lie. I don't want to tell you the truth. It's going to hurt your feelings.

[50:16] Michael: Totally.

[50:16] Matt: It's going to hurt my feelings. Let's just pretend.

[50:27] Michael: Wait, so why did source kind of trip you up in this other than the new age kind of using?

[50:35] Matt: Yeah, it had nothing to do with your point. Just the word kind of derailed my mind. So since this is our podcast, you come with me on the derail. That's the way this works.

[50:47] Michael: Totally. I'm the one who derails us. Okay, don't take my spot.

[50:53] Matt: It's my job.

[50:57] Michael: No, but I mean, it is. It is fascinating because, like, you really can't. I think that's the whole part about being born again is this is this part. You start recognizing that there's something outside of us. And then the question is, like, what is it? And I think that's. That's a really. That's a really difficult thing to. To struggle with, you know, And I think that also comes back to the. Even the hope and the love part too is once we start recognizing that there's something outside of ourselves is then we try to Fill it with something. And obviously I would say God is the only one that can actually fill that space. But we try to fill it with religion and philosophy and just discipline and actions and all these kind of things that always sort of come up short. And I think that's a scary thing too, is because if you do kind of what TSL is talking about, then you're kind of acknowledging that it's sort of like I'm going to sit in this darkness, that something will come to me. Like I'm not going to manifest it. It's going to come to me. And I think that's. Well, I mean, now I'm kind of like going through a couple of things in my head with, like, you know, Jesus says, come to me, all you are weak and weary. You know, it's like. Like there's something about going to, like. Like Jesus talks about I'm the way, the truth and the life. It's something like. Like, if you come to me, like, I will meet you in that space. Like, I'm the. I'm the only one that can meet you in that space.

[52:51] Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When we were talking about discipline earlier and the benefits of that, You know, in planning, it's important to plan. It's important to prepare yourself, your mind, your body. For what? Well, you don't really know. It's not for a particular thing. You know, if you train to be a fighter, for example, it's like you can never train for the actual fight that you will have. You rehearse fights that might be something like it, but then you go out and meet the fight and now you're on your toes, right? Because you don't know what's going to happen. So you are disciplined in order to go meet something. It's like if you're going to try to date somebody, you don't know the person you're going to meet. So you don't know how to prepare to show up for that first date. You do your best to make yourself attractive, right? Yeah, but. But you're attracted to what you don't know. Yeah, right. You don't know what her interests are or the things she likes and doesn't like, whatever. So you prepare yourself to meet. You prepare yourself for the unknown. And. So there's this great article, and I think I've brought it up on the podcast before. It's by Peter Kreeft, and the title of the article is Argument from Desire. And he makes this point that basically we find in ourselves desires and always within the Natural world, an object for those desires. If I'm hungry, there is such a thing as food. If I'm thirsty, there is such a thing as drink. If I am horny, there is such a thing as sex. If I mean there's all of these desires and they all have objects doesn't mean we get them all the time. But we know that the thing that we desire exists. And yet there is one desire in us that we find no object for in the natural world. And he goes on to argue for the existence of God because there cannot, he claims, be a desire for which there is no object. And if there is a desire for something which cannot be found in the natural world, then there must be something outside the natural world. And he makes the same point you started to make earlier, which is like, I think we all know that desire is there. And some of us, all of us at times say, well, I can fill. I can replace the objects of that desire, the desire for something outside of the world. I can replace it with more of this and that. And Kreeft says, basically, this has been tried and has a 100% failure rate. Logically, it would be the worst possible bet to try that again. No one has ever succeeded in filling that desire with anything in this world. He said, you could win the entire world and it would not fill a single human heart. That is the depth of this desire we have. There is nothing in the world that can fill it, even if you have the entire world. And, you know, obviously men have tried this. And so he argues the existence for God. And I think that's the interesting thing is like, okay, so if I take this unquenchable desire that I have in me, and I say the object of it must not be within this world, but outside of it. How do I meet it? And meeting it must be something like any other thing. Person that I meet, challenge that I meet. I don't know who it is that I'm meeting. How do I prepare for that, and how do I get them to show up? I don't have control over them. You know, I said, trying to kind of recover your point here, that it does seem like Christianity is the only answer to that particular question that says God will show up and he will meet you not only in your personal life now, but he did this on a, what you might call sort of materialist level. He said, not only will I show up for you in ways that are incomprehensible to you, I will come into the world as man and live your life and experience that. And you were making this point to me earlier today that kind of trying to wrap your head around the idea that Christ Jesus experienced fully what it is to be human. Which means that this thing that you're going through now seems so specific to you and circumstantial to all of these things that you could never recreate. This is the way you said it. I'm mapping onto you. But that he experienced something like that to the same degree.

[58:17] Michael: Yeah. It's so baffling. The idea. Keep kind of hitting against. Is that the same sort of axiom that I find in all of us is that I know who I am and also don't know who I am, and that Jesus also experienced that same thing. However, the I don't know who I am and that I know who I am, like, is rooted in the Father, God. And there's something about that that starts like saying, you see this sort of acknowledging something outside of myself that defines who I am. And the only way that I can know who I am is being in a relationship with it. And I think that's the part. I mean, it's like something you and I have talked a lot about is sort of like, how do I know who I am? It's like, well, part of how I know who I am is being in relationship with you, being in a relationship with Allison. You know, it's like, you guys reflect back to me who I am, and in a perfect way. But, like, I learn about myself, oh, shoot, I shouldn't have done that. You know, like. Like, you know, or with my kids, it's like. It's like they start showing you and reflecting back to you who you are. And so, like, there's something about that, like, well, who's. Who's the. What's the thing to be in relationship with that can reflect back to you who you are most precisely? And that would be God. And Jesus demonstrates that, as you see in the Gospels, he's always talking about the Father. I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. And there's something in that that is so essential for knowing who you are, because there's a lot about ourselves that we don't know. We don't understand. But, like, you know, your parents, when you're young, you look to them as. As you would look to God. It's sort of like. Like, who am I? You know, your kids are always looking to you, and they don't even know they're asking that question, but they're looking to you, like, who am I? And we guide them into who they are, you know, and, and or at least a very big part of that. And I think that's also demonstrated, you know, with Jesus. And the Father is like the Father guided Jesus into who he was, which he claimed him to be his son. And so there's something very powerful about that that's kind of beyond my, my comprehension or something that I'm really struggling to kind of like to see. But it makes a lot of sense to me. Like, like if something outside were to come in and take human form, it would have to have the same parameters that you and I have.

[61:19] Matt: Otherwise it wouldn't be human form.

[61:21] Michael: It wouldn't be human form.

[61:21] Matt: Yeah, right. I think you've been talking around this idea for a number of weeks and you recounted to me something that I kind of came to understand through the death of my own father, Which I had this feeling when he died that I lost part of, I lost access to part of myself because of this very strange idea that, you know, we all have this question, who, who am I? And the answer is often found in other people, who I am. I can find that in you because, well, we have a long history together and you love me and you care about me and so when I talk to you, I can sort of reconnect with who I am, which is such a strange thing to say. But I think that was especially true of my dad because, you know, he knew me longer than anyone else except for my mother. And in severe times of confusion or disorientation especially, I could always, I could find myself in him. And sometimes you might say, well, he gave good advice, or he was a good listener, or he was wise, well read. He really cared about you, all those things. Yes. But what I'm talking about is something somehow stranger and deeper. It is that there's a part of my father, There's a part of me in my father, which I experienced this viscerally when he died. I felt like there's a part of myself I can no longer access. It went down with that ship. It does not come back. And it's interesting to me that Jesus talks that way using that same language. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. And the idea that you've been trying to connect all that to is that there is something that, you know, the axiom that you repeat all the time. I, I know myself and I don't know myself. It is in the Father that that self is held. I'm trying to put words on something. You've Been saying totally.

[64:07] Michael: No, I mean, this is really great. I mean, this whole idea of, like, I am in the father and the father is in me. And it's interesting because you do see that in a relationship with, like, like, you are in your father and your father is also in you. And I know as you and I get older, we're like, oh, my gosh, I see my father in me. And it's like, whoa, that's so crazy.

[64:31] Matt: And it's weird because it's not just genetics.

[64:33] Michael: No.

[64:34] Matt: Because it also happens in non genetically linked or familially linked people. Like, I've had conversations since my dad died with people that he was close to, and I felt like there was something of him in them.

[64:50] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[64:52] Matt: That I was like, that's my dad. I'm so happy that this. This whole thing I'm talking about here with the part of me that went down with the ship, this was not a one way street, because it works the other way. There was. There was a part of my father in me still is actually. It's still alive, and it's alive in these other people as well. And this ultimately was the whole point of my eulogy that I read for him in his memorial was like. And I ended it with saying, like, talk to one another. Get to know the part of my father in you, in each other, that you didn't get to know while he was here.

[65:34] Michael: God. So cool.

[65:35] Matt: Because it's in there.

[65:36] Michael: Yeah.

[65:37] Matt: In each of us. That's why we're here. That's why all of us showed up here. Because something of him, we carry some part of him in us. And I think I just. That feels very profound to me and even more profound to connect it with the idea that. Well, I never will. I never could know my father fully. I never will know you fully.

[66:06] Michael: Yeah.

[66:06] Matt: Or anyone else. And I will never be known fully by you or anyone else made of flesh and blood. But there is someone who does currently. And if I want to know who I am, I can go to him and I can ask him and I can find that part of me that I. That I don't know. And it's. It's not in this world. It's out of it. It's. It lies somewhere in the object of that deep desire that I. That I have, that we all have.

[66:49] Michael: Which is so fascinating because I know whenever you and Alice and I are together, it's like I get to know. Get to know a part of you that Allison holds and that you and her talk differently than how you and I talk. Yeah. And so it's like, I'm like. It's like I'm almost like, oh, look at that, Matt.

[67:08] Matt: You know, look at him go.

[67:11] Michael: But it is super fascinating. Watch this. It's just super fascinating how, like, you know, different people reveal an aspect of a person that you don't see yourself. Like, you're talking about your father. It's like it being in all these other people, and as they're recounting it, it's like you're actually meeting your father for the first time again. And so then you start taking this in a more abstract and real way. Like, what Jesus was trying to do was reveal the Father, and he's like, hey, I know the Father. The Father is in me and I am in you. He's like, no, there's a connection here. You just. You just have to, like, connect with it, reach out.

[67:55] Matt: Yeah.

[67:56] Michael: And. And then you get to know the Father. And I think there's something about that is like, you know, even other people who follow Jesus, you know, it's like you. You meet a different part or aspect of the Father and Jesus, you know, through them. You know, it's like. It's like, you know, you and I, all the hundreds of thousands of conversations that we've had, it's like sometimes I think for you and I, it's hard decipher, like, what you said and what I've said, but it's like we. We kind of like meet this sort of like, we see this. This father that Jesus talks about, and we're like, whoa, I want more of that. I don't understand it, but I want more of that. You know, it's like, just like hearing your experience, like, helps me to see something that I don't. I don't see myself. You know,

[69:04] Matt: I don't know where exactly this fits in, but I couldn't remember the definition of the term synoptic. Like, there are the synoptic Gospels, which. So I looked it up. I'm going to give you the answer now.

[69:20] Michael: Let me prepare.

[69:21] Matt: Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered the synoptic gospels. And the word synoptic, like the root of it in Greek, means to see together. And it's interesting because those three Gospels are basically retellings of the same stories. And some, you know, don't include all the stories that the others include. But ultimately, it's just like an account from three different people of the same story. And that's an interesting inclusion into the canon of the Bible, because why wouldn't it be enough to just tell the story? Yeah. This is the word of God we're talking about, right?

[70:00] Michael: Put them together and weed out all this.

[70:02] Matt: Yeah, sure, yeah, it's a story. Just tell the story. But, man, if we've learned anything from the last, you know, let's just say 10 years of living in this Panopticon of everyone having cameras everywhere all the time, there is no such thing as the story. There is everyone's perspective of the story, and everyone's perspective is different. And everyone's perspective is. Can change things wildly. You know, just like we were talking about Lindsey Clancy, you're like, well, there's some more information. You know, we want to know exactly what the story was. And the more we think we know what it was, the more we turn out to be fools. Because, you know, it's kind of like, rewind to George Floyd. And it's like once the body cam footage came out from the cops, we were all so sure about what the story was that no one cared to watch that shit. And I went and watched it and I was like, oh, fuck. We didn't know what the story was.

[71:01] Michael: Totally. We missed it completely.

[71:03] Matt: So to include those three Gospels and to say whatever it is that we're trying to see here, we have to come at it by way of different perspectives. And then it's interesting because John, which is considered the fourth of the Gospels, is written very differently. And then you go on to read Paul, and that's written even much differently. Like you read Paul. And Paul talks like a. A modern. Kind of a modern intellect who's trying to convince you of something, whereas John is just sort of like almost like T.S. eliot. He's sort of like, you're reading him and you're like, what are you on about? What are you trying to say here? And then Matthew, Mark, and Luke are a little bit more like, this happened and then this happened, and then this happened, and then they went and this happened. And there's no analysis. There's no unpacking. It's just literally an account of what happened. And then Paul comes along and he's like, I'm going to analyze this shit totally. And I love reading Paul because I love G.K. chesterton and C.S. lewis and the way that they write and the way that they unpack and analyze ideas and pull them apart or

[72:16] Michael: apply it to specific situations.

[72:19] Matt: I think it's so interesting to me that. That the Bible itself, and I'm just talking about the New Testament here, I think this is true of the Old Testament as well. It's full of writings in one sense, like you might expect from a varied group of people who experience things differently and want to talk about them differently. And in some sense, that's kind of a blessing for someone trying to understand the Bible, because, you know, I have a really hard time with Wordsworth, for example. He's the hardest poetry for me to read. I have less of a hard time with T.S. eliot, and then similar things, like,

[73:03] Michael: I

[73:03] Matt: have a very hard time with Nietzsche. He's hard for me to read.

[73:06] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[73:08] Matt: But there's other philosophers that are easier for me to read. And it's by taking the corpus together, finding the entry points that matter to me or that speak to me, that I can actually be opened up into those others, you know, and I can read someone like Carl Truman and understand even more about those writers. And so when you. You kind of find that same milieu within the New Testament is so fascinating to me.

[73:37] Michael: Yeah, it really is. I mean, I think that's also the beauty about the New Testament also. Just having that not being afraid to allow differences, you know, as far as, like. Like Luke, who wrote AX and Luke, it was kind of more. He's. He was a doctor, from what I understand, and is very like, Luke, who wrote Luke. But he was kind of a lot more. He was kind of very interested in chronological. Like, you know, this is what happened, you know.

[74:14] Matt: Yeah.

[74:15] Michael: And then Matthew has variable. It's a genealogy and stuff like that. And. But, yeah, I mean, it's. Again, it's like, kind of like you made me think of, like, the car wreck, you know, it's like, what happened? Well, I saw this red car. Well, I saw this blue car over here, and it's like, I saw this person over there, and it's like, right, okay, let's, like, look at all the things that happened, and, like, what is this telling us? And I think that the Bible, like, does a really great job of that. Sort of like, who is God? It's like, oh, man. Who do you want to start with? It's like Samuel's experience, David's experience, you know, Ezekiel, you know, it's like. But the thing is, it starts building this picture of, like, oh, wow, okay, this is the God of the universe. It starts building this picture of, like, that you can actually get to know. But then it also retains the mystery of who is this person? You know, it's like, who is this thing? You know, I don't know. To me, it's just it. It seems so logical as Far as, like, coming back to, like, I know who I am, and I also don't know who I am. It's like, you can know God. And you know what? You also don't know God. And I feel like the Bible does a great job of keeping that paradox consistent and alive. Like, there's a lot of things you're going to struggle with. Like, even, like you were saying, like, with TSL is like, I felt like he was, like, violating my intellect. It's like, that's great. Why? You know. Yeah, dive into it. You know,

[75:51] Matt: he's like, what you don't realize is we've already dived. We're in it. I've brought you down.

[76:02] Michael: But so I think that's our thing is like, I think a lot of people, including myself, is like. And the problem that had people with. And the disciples also, like, in John, you know, 14. And, you know, they're just like, you know, jesus, just show us the Father, you know? And like, it's like. It's like. It's like, I've been with you this whole time, you know? Don't you see? And I think that's. That's the hard. It's like we just want the simple answer. Just show me the Father. Yeah, just show me God.

[76:35] Matt: Just show me what the story was. Tell me what the facts are.

[76:37] Michael: Yeah, Prove God's existence. It's like, it's not about proving it's a relationship. It's like, how can I prove Matt? It's like, I can't prove Matt. It's like, it's like, not only is Matt, there's things that I can know about Matt, but there's things I don't know about. And then there's things I experience about Matt that I don't know. I just experience them, and it's like, so I can't prove Matt.

[77:02] Matt: That's so interesting. Prove Matt. Like, because people talk all the time, like, prove God. Prove the existence of God. You know, if you were out of town for a month in Europe on vacation with your family. Oh, that sounds nice. Yeah. You know, I met a new person, and I was just going on and on about my best friend Michael and this, that, and the other, and they start thinking I'm a little nutty. They might. Okay, does Michael exist?

[77:30] Michael: I know.

[77:30] Matt: He was like, I could take you to Medici and show you. This is Michael's shop. Well, where's Michael? Well, he's out of town. We'll call him. Okay. I call you. Ring, ring, ring. Answering machine. That's his answering machine. That could be anybody. How would I prove that you exist? That's a really funny kind of question to answer. But we play the same game with God, don't we? Like, prove God exists. Well, look around you. This is his creation. But I don't see him anywhere. Maybe somebody else set this up. Maybe this is an act of just random, aimless evolution. You know, you can't. You know, unless I see God come into the world, unless I see Michael walk into Medici and shake my hand, then I. You know, maybe I'm a fool to believe what you're telling me about him, you know, and then you show up in Medici, and I introduce you, and that person hangs you up on a cross and kills you. He claimed to be the owner of Medici.

[78:35] Michael: That's awesome. But I love that idea of, like, just, like, how can I prove Matt? Even if they met you, it's like. It's like, okay, maybe I could prove that you exist, but I can't prove, like, what is Matt?

[78:53] Matt: It's like, what is madness? Madness?

[78:57] Michael: It's like. Because even, like, you were, like, you're saying, like, you know, like, no, there is a guy. Like, look around you. Look at the order. Look at the, like, where did we come from? Like. Like, produces, like. And, you know, it's like, okay, well, I can't put my finger on it. And it's like. It's like. It's like, okay, well, I can't put my finger on, like, who is Matt? It's like, okay, he's this sack of, you know,

[79:25] Matt: sack of matte molecules.

[79:26] Michael: Yeah, but, like. But you're not your. You're not your sack of flesh and blood. And, you know, it's like, that's not who Matt is. Yeah, it's like, there's something. There's something beyond that. And I think that's. That's the part that it's really hard to, I guess, grasp, which is hard for me because it just seems so logical, You know, because of the limitations of it, too. Is sort of like. Like, there's so many things around us that are. That are communicating to us. It's like almost like everything is like, I want to be known. And, like, humans are the only ones that are, like, interested in knowing. And it's like, okay, well, there's got to be something to be known. And, you know, you just start scratching on the surface, and things start to reveal itself. And it's like, where did that originate from? It's like, well, it didn't originate in us. It's like something outside of us is communicating to us. And I think that's. That seems so obvious to me.

[80:40] Matt: Yeah,

[80:43] Michael: I mean, maybe God is not obvious. I don't know. I just feel like whenever. Whenever not wanting to. Well, I mean, I see it myself, too, so I'm not. I'm not actually not. I can't relieve myself from this guilt, too. It's like I want things to be the way that I want things to be. I feel like I just have been proven wrong so many times that I have to continue to be like, okay, what is actually there? And I think God is the only thing that's ever really fulfilled or filled that void because I've tried to make things to be the way that I want them to be, and it doesn't. It does not work.

[81:36] Matt: In other words, you have tried to be God and failed.

[81:39] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[81:40] Matt: Yeah.

[81:41] Michael: And so, like, I know that I'm not God.

[81:43] Matt: Right.

[81:44] Michael: Shucks.

[81:46] Matt: Damn it.

[81:47] Michael: Damn it. I was hoping that it's probably better for everybody. Yeah, Well, maybe we should circle back to, like, the, like, what is it through all of, like, what we've talked about, like, what does it mean to be able to sit in the darkness? Has that. Has that changed, like, our conversation? Has that changed anything for us? Like. Like, how does he say that again, though, the hope and the love part?

[82:31] Matt: He says, I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. Then he also says up earlier, I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. Well, I think my answer to that question is like, how do you wait in the darkness? Not well. It's like. Which I think is why he's violating my intellect a little bit. It's like, what is it that you're telling me to do? To let go, I guess, to, you know, I'm in the darkness and I don't understand. God's telling me that's where you should be. Wait, what though? Like, everyone is going to hate me because I'm going to fail on this, that and the other metric and KPI and responsibility and all of these things. And then I'm like, yeah, but God also said that everyone's going to hate you on account of me. Does that mean I'm in the right place? I don't know. But I also don't want to be a man that does not keep his word, for example, or does not Support his family. I don't know. I don't know what to do with that. And so when I do find myself in the darkness, I don't handle it well. I think I shouldn't be here. I should be a man of understanding, a man of wisdom, a man of means, Right? Like, there's. I want to be. You know, I hope my kids, if they at any point in their life, are struggling with something that one would recommend to the other. Go ask dad. He'll know what to do. He'll have the solution. He'll take care of it. I want that. But then there's a part of this, both in what Eliot is talking about, but I also find this throughout the Bible. It's like, yeah, but you can't. You don't know all the answers. You can't take care of everything. And I don't know how to disentangle the idea that I want. You know, in a sense, that is me wanting to be God, right? It's me saying, for my children, at least, I want to be the quick solution to every problem in their life.

[85:12] Michael: Totally.

[85:13] Matt: That's wanting to be God. And then I go to God and I ask for him to be the quick solution to everything in my life. And he goes, soon. Wait. Yeah, soon. He basically says, no.

[85:26] Michael: Yeah.

[85:27] Matt: And then I go. And I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense. I mean, if God loved me, then he would solve this problem for me right now, because that's what I want to do for my kids. And then I go read the Bible, and it's just like over and over and over and over again. God is slow to move, man. And especially in some of the best

[85:49] Michael: stories, it's like, slowly, then suddenly.

[85:51] Matt: Yeah. So I'm like, well, I come back to your kind of question at the beginning. It's like, well, what is it that I want? What is the example that I'm saying? I want that. And then I struggle because I struggle to find it here in this world, and I struggle to find it even in the stories of the Bible. And I read like, I read David's life. Is that what you want, Matt? I'm like, not really. That seems pretty shitty. Read the story of Joseph. He became king of Egypt. Is that what you want, Matt? Well, yeah, but he had to be thrown in a pit and left for dead, and then betrayed by this woman who claimed that he raped her. And then he went to prison for years. And then he actually did a favor for somebody that got them out. And he said, when you get out. Remember me. And then that guy didn't remember him, and he had to stay for another two. Over and over and over and over. I don't know if I want that.

[86:50] Michael: Totally.

[86:52] Matt: And I read the New Testament, Paul. I really respect Paul a lot. I love reading Paul. You want to be Paul? Shipwrecked, abandoned, put in prison, stoned multiple times.

[87:07] Michael: Yeah.

[87:08] Matt: Ultimately beheaded. So it's hard for me to find where my. You know, where are the examples?

[87:18] Michael: Well, it's like, you're like, I want the easy life.

[87:21] Matt: It is. I think, what I'm saying. I want the easy life, and I want to be honored and respected and loved by everyone around me. And it's like, oh, my God. And I find myself there realizing that, and I go, I'm a child. I'm a child with fairy tales. And you know what? Maybe T.S. eliot. You're right. I need to stop it with my sort of hoping and loving and all of this, and just kind of take a time out and sit in the dark and be like, I'm in God's dark. This is God's dark. I don't know. I don't even know what to hope for. I don't know even how to. It's like we were talking about last week. All right, what is it that I look at then? And the answer seems to be, well, fix your eyes on the cross on the dead God, and there's an answer there. And I'm like, that makes no sense to me. I don't know what that's about. But I find my own logic just crashed and splintered like a boat against a rock in every other direction. That's the one I haven't been able to crack yet. And so that, to me, must. The answer to what to do in the dark must be there somehow,

[88:42] Michael: which I love. Like, there's another part where TSLA talks about being still and still moving.

[88:48] Matt: I love that.

[88:49] Michael: Jeez, it's so good.

[88:50] Matt: That's from East Cocker.

[88:53] Michael: Five. Yeah. He's got five.

[88:54] Matt: Yeah.

[88:55] Michael: Just like. It's just the paradox and the contradiction of that statement. You know, be still and still moving. It's like, what does that even mean? Yet I also do know what it means. It's like. It's like, how do you be still? But you're still moving in that imperfection. And that's something for me right now. Like, Jesus has really, like, just baffled me. Like. Like, I feel I'm saying this in a very. It doesn't matter. He's like, making so much Sense to me in a way that I don't understand. It's like this whole part of, like. Like being patient. And I see him with the capability of sitting in the darkness. You know, he even confesses to the disciples. It's like, I don't know. The times, I don't know. Like, he grew in wisdom and stature. Like, there's this part where he's. He doesn't know things, and like, he just. He waits on them, you know? And I think that the chosen's done a great job of. This is why we talk about soon, you know, it's like. It's like, how can we. Or even knowing to like, you know, you walk into a place and like, Jesus heals one person out of 50, you know, and it's like. Like, it's like, can you. I think that's about being in the dark place is like, I'm going to do what the Father shows me. And at the end of his life, it's like, I accomplish everything that you gave me. Nothing more and nothing less. Was there more that Jesus could have done? Yes, but he did what the Father told him or showed him. And I think there's something in that is like. I think it's about learning to be in that. The dark place and to learn to know where to put your hope and your love. And that continually needs to be refined. And that's just the reality. You can't walk away from that if you're not willing to sit in the dark place. I feel like you're going to build. You're going to build your own Babylon, your own prison, because you're going to put your hope and your love in the wrong place. Like, that's. I think that's just inevitable. If you're not willing to sit in that space with God. I feel like. I mean, I've. I know this, and I experienced it just personally, you know, it's like. But I think that's the thing. I've. I. That's one reason why I can never really, or hopefully never walk away from this is because it's like. It's the only thing that's actually answered that question for me. And a part of that answer is, you don't know all that I have for you. You will never understand me completely. And I'm like, really? Are you sure? There's got to be a formula here somewhere.

[92:02] Matt: Yeah.

[92:04] Michael: Anyways, this is good.

[92:06] Matt: All right. I'll leave it there.

[92:09] Michael: To the deep shores.

[92:10] Matt: To the deep shores.

[92:12] Michael: Love you guys.

[92:13] Matt: Love you out there. Thanks for being with us.

[92:19] Michael: Oh, dude. I feel like we just opened up so many. Like, I feel like we painted this picture very incompletely, but, yeah, I want that. Whatever that is, whatever the picture we just painted, I want that.

[92:44] Matt: I don't know what it is.