Both this & the follow-up episode are, quite specifically, an answer to this rhetorical question.

We will answer this question!

Perhaps we should begin addressing the culture by addressing in inner person. The center of the individual is not the rational brains but the spiritual intellect of the heart. One word that summarizes our spiritual diagnosis is “death,” not death as a final destination, but rather a continuing experience. The heart is darkened and full of “passions,” which are unnatural movements of the soul that lead to suffering and deepen the experience of death. The passions are often described as animals. To live according to passion is to live like a lower animal, following inclinations and instincts, rather than living according to reason guided by the experience of God in the heart. Lust is a passion. Like gluttony, it is connected to the pleasure of the body. The spiritual life of the Orthodox Church is a path toward eliminating the passions or, to say the same thing in a different way, to heal the passions. We are taught how to live in a therapeutic way so that the passions do not control us. We learn that our tempting thoughts are not an identity but like an arrow that can be deflected. Much of the spiritual life is just bringing ourselves into a disposition in which God’s presence heals us. So, this requires us to freely offer self effort, yet self effort doesn’t heal, but God’s Grace - His Presence - transforms. Knowledge of this is not widely grasped in our culture. We focus on the body and the brain with the rational mind, but the heart is not known as a spiritual organ associated with the spiritual mind. We do not know our diagnosis, nor a treatment, nor a vision of what a perfect, healed human person looks like. The ultimate reason our culture is as it is lies in the fact that God is not known and what it means to be in His image isn’t known. People try to philosophize about it and imagine, but philosophy and imagination can’t take us to the experience of God. Without walking the path toward purification of the heart, we rely on our rational minds, affected by the passion of lust and the other passions. We even confuse the passion of lust with identity. This is not new to 21st century Western culture. It is ancient. But, the answer is found in God, who loves us so much He backs one of us, without any change to His nature as God, to teach us, show us the Way of Life, and to open the gates for us. To gather all people into His Church, the hospital for the healing of the passion and transformation of the person, is our ministry to the world. God has done everything to destroy the power of death, but we each have the choice whether or not to dive into the waters of Life. To experience the One who is Life is to receive a new mind and new eyes for the seeing everything with a spiritual perspective, a lens that encompasses a healthy vision of the unity of soul and body, both of which are part of the spiritual life.

@@paradosispavilion9555 Thank you for taking the time to write this thoughtful answer. I read recently that only 1 in 4 people have an inner life or inner dialogue. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but the idea that so many people are out in the wild operating purely on their impulses without any self reflection coincides a bit with what you’re saying here, if I’m understanding you correctly. It seems that in this age of information the whole world is intent on delivering these arrows of passion. Too many to deflect perhaps. How does a person walk the path toward purification of the heart? It sounds like a destination, but in practice it’s never ending, no?

A person's "inner dialogue" in the psychological sense (AKA "self talk") is distinct from what our tradition means when we talk about the inner life. So there's no issue with some persons not being able to go on this journey - although you are quite correct most people are ignoring all of this to their (& everyone else's) peril. Yes, the journey toward the likeness of Christ is never ending - even after we depart this life & enter the next! The whole focus of our show is exploring how we walk this path. We would encourage you to keep listening, but more importantly, we would encourage you to find an Orthodox parish & engage with the priest there so you can actually start doing the walk rather than merely reading about it or listening to us talk about it. 🤗

Thanks be to God & thank you!

We're so grateful you listen & we're so glad you found it edifying. Glory to God in all things!

Thanks be to God! 🙏🏽

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed the clip, please check out the full length episode.

This video is a very odd place to begin a crusade against the ancient tradition of The Trinity.

Firstly, Galatians 4:21-31 doesn't mention Jacob at all. It speaks of his grandfather Abraham, his father, Isaac, his uncle Ish′mael, his grandmother Sarai & his great aunt Hagar. Secondly, for something to be allegorical, it must first exist. To be an allegory is to have an invisible reality beyond the material reality. It is a mistake to think allegorical things don't exist in a material sense. St Paul is absolutely not saying "none of those people existed, historically". He is saying their historic reality has a deeper, noetic meaning. Thirdly, he says nothing about this noetic meaning having anything to do with "state of mind" or stars. He is speaking about the reality Christians have been freed from their slavery to Sin. Fourthly, how is any of this relevant to this video? It is not at all clear what point you're trying to make.

Yes. Look for "Christian Saints Podcast" on your favorite podcast broadcasting app or find our episodes here: christiansaints (dot) buzzsprout (dot) com

All of humanity struggles with error. Always has, always will. This isn't a problem with our faith, it's a problem with people. We have two options: nihilism, or struggle against the delusion in an effort for something better. We know very few people brave enough to genuinely choose nihilism. We know the so-called Enlightenment & Modernity are deeply flawed & so the dream of human unity under reason/rationality is stillborn. We opt to follow a two millennium old path which has shown its value by producing persons steeped in virtue. Sure, the history of the church is not all saints all the time (particularly in The West, which is why our focus is on The East). It doesn't seem reasonable to expect it to be. The goal of our program is to take the history of the church, the documented success stories, & make them available to those 100 Christians with 100 incompatible ideas in the hope, with God's help, we can all move closer to something better. Placing the veracity of the faith on a collection of books is an exclusively Protestant problem. But we would clarify what you said, slightly, anyway. The _provenance_ of the texts is actually quite clear. Clearer than almost any other ancient documents. Their _authorship_ may be in question (although this issue is largely blown out of proportion by academics who earn a living by publishing opinions which disagree with the status quo), but their authority comes from their acceptance by the church, not by their author's bona fides. It is only for those who have made the mistake of adopting the "sola scriptura" approach to the texts who have difficulties as a consequence of these questions. Thank you for commenting & best of luck with whatever it is you're trying to do by making comments like this one, here.

@@ChristianSaintsPodcast An absence of religious faith is not nihilism. I guess you're suggesting that life is meaningless absent your beliefs - if that's what you're intending to say (because I think that's what you're implying, although it's not entirely clear). That's a wildly subjective view, and, therefore not true - that is not a fact, at all. You're describing your own, personal view of things. I am not a nihilist. Duh.

​@@guymerritt4860 We didn't say an absence of faith is nihilism. We said nihilism was one of a limited set of possible responses to the immutable reality of human fallibility. We explicitly said one possible alternative to nihilism was the Enlightenment/Modernist belief humanity can be united by reason/rationality (we reject it as infeasible, based on all our own studies, but it is an alternative). So we don't see how an honest interpretation of our comment could conclude we're soft peddling the assertion anyone who isn't religious is a nihilist. As for something subjective being de facto not true, insofar as humanity only has access to subjectivity, not objectivity, if everything subjective is untrue that _is_ nihilism. Be well.

Thank you for commenting. We would encourage you to find the full episode on your favorite podcasting platform & listen to the historic perspective we are seeking to provide on this question. We spoke for almost an hour & a half and didn't even cover all the material we intended, so there will be at least a part two sometime soon.

THANK YOU for the feedback! Glad you're enjoying the music! We are so happy to be living here. Our previous location was soul crushing. Episode on Saturday morning, St Gregory the Theologian!