Why Did Peter Sink?

After the last two inversions, things may seem a bit bleak. But the fall of one-third of the angels should not bring despair, despite the fact that God gives them leash to harass us - but just enough. (We should take note that they have been defeated already, yet the end must play out.) The existence of spirits and angelic beings (even fallen ones) does nothing to change the fact that the radically transcendent God created wholly out of love. And how do we know this? Because God praises all of his creation as “good.” When God said “Fiat lux” he was pleased. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.Notice that he did not say, “Let there be dark,” for nothing is the darkness. But the light is good, and light is also true and beautiful. Seven times in the first chapter of Genesis we read “And God saw that it was good.” In the last mention, a strong adverb is added:God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.Note that God says “it was good” even after creating humans, in our pre-fallen state. Note that this declaration of humans being “good” is prior to the moment when he breathes a rational soul into humankind, but even after the Fall we are good, but compromised. We are bent but not broken. Even when our ejection from the Garden happens, the ground is cursed, not us. This is an important point to notice. Goodness in creation brings with it the language of hope, second chances, forgiveness, because all of us spiritually crippled and broken things are worth saving. In Japan, an art form called Kintsugi takes broken pottery and mends it with a golden filler or powder so that the item becomes serviceable again while maintaining its scars. After the restoration, the pottery looks more beautiful and even becomes more valuable than the original pot. The original pot was good, but the healed pot is better. Shattered, it seemed destined for the garbage heap. However, with this art form, what was perceived as garbage or as a lost-cause is mended and brought back to life, in a resurrection of sorts. What was originally good is glorified in the restoration. That is the plan of salvation. Don't let the Fall get you down, because the plan is greater than we understand. And that brings us to the inversion regarding goodness: all that God made is good. This is why sin is ridiculous. It destroys the good. Yet the good remains and will be restored if we understand this inversion. Cast out your cynicism and your glass-half-full thinking. Reject the notion that this world is intrinsically evil, for it was not made that way. By our sin, the pottery was shattered. Through the Paschal mystery we are repaired with golden seams. But in the meantime…Because we have the reality of sin, we look for answers outside of the most obvious place. And this causes us to forget: that all matter and spirit created by God was good from the start. It is only by turning away that we crack up and need restoration. Yet there is much hope in that restoration, too, for in the healing, our wounds will remain but be more glorious. Many errors about the goodness of creation has led both the Israelites and Christians and non-believers away from the right path. This often falls under an umbrella of “matter is bad” or “spirits are bad.” The error is simple. All of God's creation exudes goodness. It is sin that is bad, because it deforms and disorders that goodness. The one thing that God creates that he deems “not good” is when the man is alone, and therefore he creates woman. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.'” Thus, the only thing that God created that was not good - human loneliness - was promptly addressed with the most wonderful creation of all: woman, and with her, he created another amazing gift called marriage. The Fall marred that relationship as well, for as we turned from God, we turned away from each other. Since the Fall, we have been looking for something to blame for the state we are in, and the list of errors in what to blame grows long. If we don't blame God, we blame something created. I would personally like to blame mosquitoes, but in the grand order of things, without mosquitoes many birds and bats would starve, and I like birds and bats. Even though mosquitoes ruin many summer evenings, they were created as good, because God said so. Many stand-ins for mosquitoes have been tried. With Pandora's Box the Greeks blamed the gods and woman for introducing evil. With the Manichaeans, matter was evil. In Christian history, there are thirty-one flavors of Gnostic heresies, with popular movements like Marcionism, Catharism, and Paulicianism. Most recently, the Woke movement of recent years has come up with a remarkably parallel set of doctrines to the Cathars, to the point that they seem somehow separated at birth despite being hundreds of years apart. All of these gnostic groups die an ugly death, because they are errors and forget that God is good, and creation is good. With all untruth, it eventually turns on itself, killing off the host. The “light versus dark” idea is not new. This mistake is ancient. The light/dark battle royale is called dualism, and here is the mistake: dualism declares that there are two equal forces in the universe in contention for power, and only those on the “right side of history” are the “good.” If you find Catholicism odd, look into the gnostic and dualist movements. You will find many strange ideas and no coherency, but a general theme of “matter is bad,” and that is not what God says. He says the opposite. He says matter is good, repeating it seven different times. In much of the “light vs. dark” errors, there is a misconception of God and the “war in heaven” idea included God himself. But there is no competitor with God, who is the highest good and source of all that is good. Any war in heaven that happened among the angels occurred as part of God's plan of salvation. Again, God is transcendent of all created things, even the angels. Thus, evil cannot touch God, because evil only happens in creation, which includes the created heavens. To use a metaphor, if an architect built a beautiful cathedral, and later a visitor entered the cathedral and spray painted the walls, that is not the architect's work. The graffiti vandal represents disorder from the goodness of the creation, but the spray paint came from the creature who used creation unwisely. Back to dualism: this idea often grows out of an imbalance in the world due to people causing disorder. We naturally fall into this state, and its called paganism. Paganism and modern political religion falls into this zero-sum game trap. The idea of competition comes from dualism, which is fundamentally a distrust in God and his plan for salvation. Here is something we don't like to admit: most Americans today are not Christians; they are gnostics and dualists without knowing it. We lionize competition and achievement, where failure is darkness. In other words, the Fall pushes us into continual competition, so that we do not cooperate with God's grace or each other for the common good. After all, God created all things and saw that it was good. No, it was very good. We forget this every day. It's good, yet something is off in creation, so we need to fix it. What could it be? What could be off? What is it that is un-good? That thing is called “me” but that's hard to look at. Blaming something else is the path of least resistance, but wide is the way that leads to destruction and many are those who follow it. This leads to a variety of conclusions about what is bad, or what went wrong, and so often the conclusion leads to something called “gnosis,” or secret knowledge. This secret knowledge tends to elevate the self over other people or groups. This secret knowledge pins the tail on a donkey to blame for all suffering. Gnosis behaves like a cancer cell, because gnosis takes many forms, and whatever group catches this disease always dies off in the end and becomes an obituary in history books. This is inevitable because the truth always bubbles up and continues on, like a cork in a stormy sea - no matter the weather or the waves, the truth cannot be sunk. For some of these errors, the secret knowledge looks at matter as the source of evil, sometimes all matter. Leaps of logic are made, such as: Life is pain, ergo “bodies are bad.” An extension of that is “sex is bad” which was the cry of the Puritans and Cathars. (FYI: Puritanism is an error, as is all of Calvinism). Often specific matter or bodies are the target, like women or men, or black people or white people. Sound absurd? That's because it is absurd. Sometimes there are specific groups, like Republicans or Democrats, capitalists or communists, that mark off the light versus dark and the group is responsible for all evil (depends on which side you are on). This blame and zero-sum game leads to a world lacking forgiveness. Conversely, the idea that all creation is good, but we are compromised, this leads to a world of forgiveness and redemptive suffering, which we'll discuss in a later inversion.When any cult of dualism arises - and it always does - there is an enemy that must be destroyed, for that is the root of darkness. Killing all the Jews and Catholic priests has been tried multiple times and didn't solve the problem of evil. Caesar killed a million Gauls and that didn't cure Rome. Currently, in the 21st century, one set of gnostic dualists say that the the enemies are whiteness, the patriarchy, pro-life groups, traditional Christians, and (the perennial pick) practicing Jews. Another set blames foreigners, economics, academic elites, and the progressive lobby. Unsurprisingly, the enemy of the dualists never takes the name of “my personal sin” or “the Fall” because the source of all evil is elsewhere. For dualists and gnostics, the evil comes externally, not from the human heart that resides in each of us. We were created good, but like a broken pot, we are scattered into pieces. Yet there is a way to be mended, and it is by the savior that heals, the great Konsugi artist named Jesus. We all seem to know there was an Eden, a perfect state, a heavenly existence, and we want to return to it. We can feel that creation's goodness is real without having ever been to the eternal paradise. Our confusion swirls around how to get back to the Garden. When we turn from God's goodness, we tend to believe that it is us who will restore the Garden, and somehow by our efforts we will get past the cherubim and the spinning fiery sword that blocks the way. To do so, we need to remove the un-good ideas or people or material that blocks the path. This attempt to boost our own way to heaven is flammable and the devil loves watching it happen, since the father of lies caused the Fall in the first place. Socialism and capitalism claimed to have the way to paradise, and both have created versions of hell on earth. The darkness in the human heart can be hard to admit, so we project it onto other created things, or the Creator himself if we have a poor understanding of God. St. Augustine and others did much battle to knock-down the Manichean dualist claim that all matter was bad. Many others throughout the centuries have had to defend God's holy name against a variety of similar heresies. The gnostics and dualists always come back, always with bad ideas, slightly different than before, which again makes them much like a mutating cancer cell that winds through time. However, this inversion is not about who is to blame. It is about goodness, truth, and light. First and foremost, we must understand that all matter and spirit was created good because it came from God's love. Another way to say it is that creation is ordered. Creation has a wisdom of its own, far beyond ours. The Catechism states:Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered …Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of his creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and his work. Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness - "And God saw that it was good. . . very good”- for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world. (CCC 299)This should not come as a shock for anyone that has witnessed a sunset, or watched seeds grow, or watched puppies play, or observed a baby being born, or caught sight of a red fox in the winter snow, or watched a monarch caterpillar emerge from its cocoon as a monarch butterfly. This should not come as a shock to anyone who has pondered the mathematical miracle of a shell on a beach, or felt the might of ocean waves against their legs on shifting sands, or visited a glacier, or hiked a mountain. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has caught a fish, or harvested apples, or has felt the sting after being too late in slapping a mosquito before the bite. There is order in creation. All modern science rests upon that assumption. Perhaps we've taken this for granted for too long. We need to recognize this wonder of intelligibility. Saint John Paul II said, “It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend.” (Fides et Ratio, 34)God created the integers and the angels, as well as the basic Legos we call carbon and hydrogen and helium - and all of this was good. Why was it good? Because it is reasonable. It is order out of nothing, out of emptiness, out of chaos. The watery void or the Big Empty is uninteresting, whereas the music of the spheres in the heavens makes sense. The soil cycle and weather cycle and Krebs cycle and tricycle: all of these make sense. As Einstein said, “The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”In other words, nature is ordered by a wisdom far greater than our own, yet we can study it. Better still, because we are part of that good creation. God is the only thing not part of creation, because he is the sheer act of Being Itself. Thus, we should never worship creation or anything in it, because creatures are not the Creator. That means we should not worship the earth or the stars or celebrities or mascots or nations or corporations or ideas. On this ordered “goodness” the first universities were founded, as all truth leads to God, who created all things. The foundation of order in the universe coming from the Unmoved Mover provides the bedrock for all inquiry, and we are free to arrive at our own conclusions. In the Catholic manner of thinking, inquiry into the truth is right and just, and is based on the observed order of God's good work. The Catholic intellectual tradition and the contemporary university share two underlying convictions: that to be human is to desire to discover truth, and that the quest for truth is sparked by the expectation that the universe is intelligible. In the Catholic view, these convictions arise from belief in the union of the divine and human in Jesus Christ and the unity of all things in God. From this theological perspective, the Catholic intellectual tradition is based on two fundamental principles: first, that the search for truth in all aspects of life extends to the ultimate search for truth that animates faith; and, second, that faith is a catalyst for inquiry, as faith seeks to understand itself and its relationship to every dimension of life. Thus, the most probing questions in every discipline are never deemed to be in opposition to faith but are welcomed into the conversation on the conviction that ongoing discovery of the intelligibility of the universe will reveal more of the truth about God. The Catholic intellectual tradition can thrive only with the participation of all who seek the truth, including those whose inquiry leads them to question whether the search reveals purpose, meaning, or God, or to conclude that it does not. (from The Catholic Intellectual Tradition: A Conversation at Boston College)The ultimate truth is God, so all honest inquiry leads back to God. Hence, if we are to truly, honestly “follow the science,” it will lead us to God. But much of modern science leads away from God and every thirty years those erroneous papers are scuttled, because “the science” was actually disguised ideology, often with motives not unlike the gnostics and dualists. St. Paul tells us that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” which explains the confusion. Drawn to artificial light, we stray from the true God. This happens in our own moral behavior, in our pursuit of happiness, and even across entire nations. The intelligibility of creation, which is good, comes from God, who is love. He created out of love, not because he had to, or needed to. God does not compete with anything in creation, as he is the Creator. Just as Shakespeare cannot compete with Macbeth, God has no competitor that can even approach or fathom his glory. The closest beings to him, as handed down by tradition, are the Seraphim, the angels of the highest order (or choir), and yet there is zero chance of them overtaking God. In our much lower place, we can conclude that we know better than God, and that we can make his creation operate properly, when it is exactly our sin that disorders creation. This is the opposite of humility. Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si, or Care for our Common Home, which delved into details about the goodness of creation, rejecting all dualism and gnosticism, and putting it into terms of how the creation in Genesis and the Gospels clearly dovetail, particularly in the life of Jesus. Closing out this inversion, here are six paragraphs from Laudato Si. 84. Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good. Anyone who has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in the neighbourhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true selves.85. God has written a precious book, “whose letters are the multitude of created things present in the universe”.[54] The Canadian bishops rightly pointed out that no creature is excluded from this manifestation of God: “From panoramic vistas to the tiniest living form, nature is a constant source of wonder and awe. It is also a continuing revelation of the divine”.[55] The bishops of Japan, for their part, made a thought-provoking observation: “To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God's love and hope”.[56] This contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us, since “for the believer, to contemplate creation is to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice”.[57] We can say that “alongside revelation properly so-called, contained in sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the blaze of the sun and the fall of night”.[58] Paying attention to this manifestation, we learn to see ourselves in relation to all other creatures: “I express myself in expressing the world; in my effort to decipher the sacredness of the world, I explore my own”.[59]86. The universe as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, shows forth the inexhaustible riches of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas wisely noted that multiplicity and variety “come from the intention of the first agent” who willed that “what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another”,[60] inasmuch as God's goodness “could not be represented fittingly by any one creature”.[61] Hence we need to grasp the variety of things in their multiple relationships.[62] We understand better the importance and meaning of each creature if we contemplate it within the entirety of God's plan. As the Catechism teaches: “God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other”.[63]…98. Jesus lived in full harmony with creation, and others were amazed: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt 8:27). His appearance was not that of an ascetic set apart from the world, nor of an enemy to the pleasant things of life. Of himself he said: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard!'” (Mt 11:19). He was far removed from philosophies which despised the body, matter and the things of the world. Such unhealthy dualisms, nonetheless, left a mark on certain Christian thinkers in the course of history and disfigured the Gospel. Jesus worked with his hands, in daily contact with the matter created by God, to which he gave form by his craftsmanship. It is striking that most of his life was dedicated to this task in a simple life which awakened no admiration at all: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mk 6:3). In this way he sanctified human labour and endowed it with a special significance for our development. As Saint John Paul II taught, “by enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity”.[79]99. In the Christian understanding of the world, the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning: “All things have been created though him and for him” (Col 1:16).[80] The prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18) reveals Christ's creative work as the Divine Word (Logos). But then, unexpectedly, the prologue goes on to say that this same Word “became flesh” (Jn 1:14). One Person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross. From the beginning of the world, but particularly through the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy.100. The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.And that includes the mosquitoes. Hard as it is for me to say, God bless the mosquito. Further reading:Why death and violence in God's good creation?Why God createsUCCSB's Care for CreationPope Francis: Laudato Si (Care for Our Common Home) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Building off the prior inversion, to declare that the “heavens” are real does not imply superstitious beliefs. Rather, it implies something exists beyond just clouds, stars, feelings, minds, integers, and imagination. “Heaven” implies something unseen, yet knowable in a strange way. We have knowledge of integers, yet no human has ever seen one, and no human ever will. No matter how powerful a microscope or how clever the experiment, an integer will never pop out at us. Yet integers exist. Likewise with angelic beings, we know of them without sensing them. The “third heaven” of a previous inversion is where these immaterial beings live, while mysteriously interacting with us here. Genesis declares this upper floor of this great house called Creation to be real - very real. And angels somehow occupy this house; so too demons, also known as fallen angels. The word angel means messenger, and if you pay attention during your day, you will notice messages that come from something other than your phone. This inversion is about thoughts, which lead to actions. We should consider each thought, wondering where it comes from, and what to do about it. Throughout each day, perhaps you will notice that some messages are good, and some are not. When you think, “I'd like to see some nudes on my phone,” that is a message, which is a very different message from the message, “I should call my mother.” I'll leave it to you to ponder which type of spirit delivers those two different messages. But it is not the demon who places the thoughts, from what I understand, as Jesus himself says in Matthew 15 that “…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Because of this, we cannot blame our thoughts on the demons, nor our actions. We must cooperate with God, not the accuser or tempter. This makes sin our personal responsibility, which is why we must own up to it in Confession for healing. St. Paul says to “put on the mind of Christ” and to “pray constantly.” There is solid reason for this, because when your mind is full of God and good things, there is not space for demons. But if you do not believe in the idea of heaven or God, you will be opening messages without even knowing it, and a moving truck of demons may have arrived long ago. Anyone who has dealt with squatters' rights knows: it's hard to get unwanted guests to depart. Even in real-estate court, sometimes it takes a miracle. Since these beings have no bodies, they can move like mathematical points on a graph - that is to say, they move instantly. Thus, when Jesus drives out thousands of demons from one man, and the demons rush into the pigs that drown themselves in the sea, this is not surprising. Like points on a graph, bodiless spirits can be set to the same coordinates, and if those coordinates happen to be your head and heart, then you could be teeming with a legion of spirits as well. If you ever took Algebra II, this concept should be familiar, as a point in space can be moved with the negation or multiplication of a number. Students learn about translation, reflection, and rotation as ways to move points on a graph. Numbers are not physical, they are immaterial. As Stephen Hawking said, “God created the integers,” and like the integers, spirits have no bodies. Without the weight of matter holding them in space and time, spirits can reflect, translate, and rotate their position from one place to another, a million miles away, without so much as a bus pass. Perhaps you thought Algebra II would never come in handy, but for understanding how angels and demons can “move” it helps for illustration. Pure intellect can move instantaneously, just like the math concepts of translation, rotation, and reflection can move a point in space any distance with the toggling of a number. Consider this the next time your guard is down and temptation arises. You need only a nudge, and plenty of spirits are waiting for the gap in your spiritual defenses to drop in and say “Hello.” A spirit can - and does - translate to your location to offer a nudge. No airfare needed, it is immediate. In the St. Michael the Archangel prayer, a warning is mentioned about these spirits who seek your destruction: “…the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Because they can arrive instantly, you must pray constantly. The good news is that your guardian angel, St. Michael, and others are there to help. Spiritual combat is real. In any war, successful attacks come swift and unannounced. Like a cyberattack faster than fiber optic speeds, you will be overtaken if unprepared. You are always being watched and studied, steered into moments of temptation. If you are reading this, they are reading it with you and observing your reaction. Demons will translate, rotate, and reflect into your location to suggest doubt in God. Prayer is the weapon, humility is the tactic.This is something to consider the next time you make a decision quickly without discernment. Even as I make progress toward God, sometimes impulsive decisions occur, after which I wonder how it happened. The suggestions to take an action come in an instant, and this is often alarming. It's almost like someone or something is guiding me, or waiting to suggest something at exactly the right moment. This means that when the notion comes to scroll a certain website or tell a lie, a demon is pleased to nudge the temptation forward. It cannot force you, but it can suggest things. In fact, you should start considering where your thoughts come from altogether, because no one can “make” a thought. Thoughts will appear before your left brain has time to reason with your right brain that this was a bad idea. After all, demons are smarter than us, and move even more efficiently than the crow flies. They are like a really good TV lawyer, like Columbo or CSI investigators or Sherlock Holmes, always one step ahead. Surely, many brilliant people are in hell for believing in the delusion that they knew more than spirits. Human brilliance is like a dog thinking it knows more than a human, or a toddler playing hide and seek with a teenager. In a battle of wits with angels and demons, you lose. Spirits are pure intellect and it is folly to think we can outwit them. Prayer and the Sacraments are what you need to know for the spiritual combat. It's not terribly complicated or dramatic. Mostly the warfare means knowing when to kneel and pray. Literally, wherever you are when the temptation arises, you must kneel and ask for help. That is the only way to “win”. Surrender in spiritual matters brings aid. Prayer summons the heroes you need. It is knowing who, when, and how to ask for help, so that the right messenger, your guardian angel, appears and gets rid of the other spirit, the demon. This is why the Surrender Novena prayer is becoming widespread in usage again today, as people realize that spiritual combat means surrendering to God. Because these beings of pure intellect can move about instantly, they can be around us constantly or whenever they like. They move at the speed of thought, far faster than the speed of light. As pure intellect, they are smarter than we are, by a thousand times, because while we are the highest animal, we are the lowest spirit. A brilliant person is a cute case of delusion to angels and demons, like a third grade basketball player who believes he could beat Lebron James in a one-on-one game. This is where “smart” people stumble and the religious “fools” succeed: because the pride of worldly knowledge hoodwinks us. While angels will warn us to back away from that error, demons will stoke the engine of pride, vanity, and sensuality with continuous fuel. Worth noting: knowledge does not equal wisdom. Piles of data do not produce humility; rather, data tends to produce unwarranted pride and a sense of control. We are but one giant solar flare from every data center in the world being formatted to a blank state, thus whatever expertise and security we have today must be received with gratitude instead of hubris. There are higher spiritual beings than our own rational souls, and we cannot sense these beings. We cannot see them but they can see us. On occasion they are visible, such as what we know from the scripture regarding Abraham and Mary. They may appear to us. They very likely do. We walk among them unaware at times and even interact with them. Hence, “love others” is wise at all times. There are also lower vegetative souls in plants, and sensitive souls in animals. Consider how we feel superior in our ability to outwit a mindless flower or fish. Yet this is how angels and demons feel about us. We are like a flower or fish to them - certainly simple, perhaps silly…perhaps beautiful. The best scriptural example of this is at the battle of Jericho when Joshua and his army are prepping to fight and the angel of the Lord appears. I get the feeling that the angel is looking at Joshua like I look at my dog. …when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither.” (Joshua 5:13-15)Whether this is an angel or God himself, this angelic being in Joshua's vision seems somewhat uninterested in Joshua and his question. He is there as commander of the Lord's army, and Joshua appears to be suddenly demoted. This is important for understanding our place in the spiritual order, in the whole order of creation, and should encourage humility, as Joshua learned in that moment. We are not that high on the ladder, but we could be in the end. Jesus, who was fully human, is the second person of the Trinity. St. Athanasius famously said that “God became man that we might become God.” That is powerful stuff. Consider as well that Mary is the queen of heaven. She is above all angelic beings, which is quite remarkable, and it is said that this really bothers the demons, who consider humans to be lowly worms. This inversion is like the others. It is not for trivia night or light conversation: it is for your mental health. Reality includes spirits, which means angels and demons. You have a soul. Your soul has a body. You have a guardian angel. Demons may be allowed to bother you, by God, to draw you closer to God. There is a cherub with a flaming sword guarding the way back to Eden, and we can only return there by persevering in these tests. Heaven is the place of the the unseen, the invisible, the enchanted world. Even in our imagination we park many things in other dimensions kind of like heaven, like ideas or Platonic forms or fairies. The end-game is Eden, heaven, and the tests that we experience here have supernatural interactions. In our daily lives, we are engaged in supernatural events, which is a reality that we have deadened under the influence of illusory power and knowledge. A fun historical fact is that in the ancient world, stars were often seen as gods. Even in the Bible, angels and stars go together. A star led the Magi to a little town of Bethlehem, and the star was not Alpha Centauri - it moved to sit right over the place where Christ was born. In other words, this star was an angel, a messenger. If this seems too abstract, then on the next Christmas tree you see, look to see what is on top of it: it will be either a star or an angel. Stars and angels have been used together for a long time. In the ancient world, stars were seen as living beings. They can symbolically be angelic beings, because we need stories to understand the supernatural. Angels are messengers of the one true God. They are not matter, as stars are. They do not twinkle, and they are not magical astrological superstitious objects for use in New Age incantations. But the use of metaphor can help us articulate the supernatural, but we must stop in wonder and not name the stars as angels. Your soul has a purpose. That purpose is to return to God. The angels will help you get there. The demons, not so much…but they will be granted enough leash to trouble you, giving the exact trials you need to find your way home. All trials are a gift. This is hard to accept. If you wonder why God might do such a thing, find a quiet place and look to the crucifix for the answer.Some have said these angelic beings cannot know our most inner thoughts, but that they can observe all that we see and hear. Others have suggested that our thoughts are placed into us by angels, or demons. Whichever is the case, the answer to it is that every thought must be captured to Christ. If we “put on the mind of Christ” then Jesus filters and corrects every thought. Thus when we loathe our enemy and have evil thoughts, that is precisely when the thought must be captured and handed over to Christ, or sent to the foot of the cross. The power of suggestion and placing thoughts into our heads via whispers in our ears, is exactly what the devil does in the Garden to Eve. He suggests that God is lying. “Did God really say that?” He places doubt. “You will become like gods,” he lies. The error of Adam and Eve is to cooperate with the serpent's lies. These whispers we all hear in our mind and heart is the result of the fall. Thus, influence can come from outside, which is usually called the world, the flesh, and the devil. But we can never just say “The devil made me do it,” as if we have no agency, free-will, or personal responsibility. Jesus states rather plainly: “…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” Because of these influences, we must stand like archers on the walls of the castle, shooting down that which may not enter, otherwise we will be overcome, and it takes much work to eject the enemies that have already taken occupation inside the castle. This is why every thought must be captured to Christ. Thinking is where much of the battleground happens between light and dark, because it precedes the act of the will. The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli is a book to be read and re-read in our age of materialism, because we have been inverted into a worldview where angels and demons do not exist, which is the exact goal of the demons: to be laughed off as unreal. The Screwtape Letters is another fine source to help understand what is happening when we doubt that angels and demons exist. But they most certainly do, and we would do well to meditate on the Fall in the Garden, Jesus' temptations in the desert, and Jesus' endurance through prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, for all three have answers regarding how spiritual beings can influence us and how to respond. The word angel means “messenger,” and this is the whisper. We need our mailbox open to receive the good angel's messages, and the demons' mail should go directly to the spam folder. Again, this should scare you, but should also give hope, for the way to win is by trusting in God. This is the inversion of what we tend toward since the Fall, which is to trust in the self. That was the error in the Garden of Eden, and Jesus in the Garden on the night before his death does the opposite. Like his mother at the Annunciation, he says “Thy will be done.” He trusts in God. As for us, capturing every thought to Christ is critical. Alone with our own imagination is a dangerous place to loiter, and while we may consider that we generate all our own thoughts, an inversion of this modern way of thinking is to consider that the world, the flesh, and the devil all play a part. Go to God, and talk often to other people who are striving for salvation, and you will discern which messages are worth keeping and which messengers should be put on the “cease and desist” and “do not call” list. Keep in mind the shape of the cross, which has a vertical and horizontal beam. Vertically we must speak and look up to God for help, and horizontally on the ground here we must speak to others. Getting out of our head opens up the heart to God and others. Further reading:How does a guardian angel work?Can demons put thoughts in our minds?Can the devil read your thoughts? (start at 22:14)Can The Devil Know Our Thoughts And Hear What We SayGuardian Angels in Catholic Theology (video, Jimmy Akin)Do a consecration to your guardian angel (and the theology of such a thing) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

The mention of “heavens” carries a massive piece of luggage with it labelled Spirits, and not the liquor variety. The idea of spirits may not have shocked ancient readers, but modern readers may laugh and shrug at the idea of immaterial beings, yet are still afraid to descend the stairs into a dark basement. Ancient people believed in spirits, but today we feel that we know better. “The age of magic is over,” we say, and then spend millions on New Age crystals and cards. “The age of superstition is dead,” we say, and then we proceed to ask for help from AI software treating it like the oracle at Delphi. “Prayers are useless” we say and then pray for the field goal to clear the uprights. Today, the “spiritual but not religious” crowd grows in numbers, without any understanding exactly which spirits they have opened themselves up to. The spirits are real and ever eager to locate the indifferent. The inversion here is the one that may scare you. Really, it should produce awe and wonder. Like a healthy fear of swimming in the ocean, this can keep panic at bay and thereby help you breathe. The culture's suppression of supernatural things has smothered the unseen realm. Images of cartoon devils in tights, wall-art of chubby baby cherubs smoking cigarettes, platitudes at funerals about uncle Joe getting his wings, and the reduction of all demons to psychological issues - all of this misdirection has had a blinding impact on us to what is real. But angels exist, and they are present now. They are reading or listening to this with you. Over your shoulder, whispering messages, they are present. If we accept the inversion that angels are real, we should spend some time considering what they are, while not obsessing over it, because we must be aware of this reality, without seeking to fly too close to the sun. What are angels then? Let's use a list of 12 things to know on angels from Peter Kreeft:* They really exist. Not just in our minds, or our myths, or our symbols, or our culture. They are as real as your dog, or your sister, or electricity.* They're present, right here, right now, right next to you, reading these words with you.* They're not cute, cuddly, comfortable, chummy, or “cool”. They are fearsome and formidable. They are huge. They are warriors.* They are the real “extra-terrestrials”, the real “Super-men”, the ultimate aliens. Their powers are far beyond those of all fictional creatures.* They are more brilliant minds than Einstein.* They can literally move the heavens and the earth if God permits them.* There are also evil angels, fallen angels, demons, or devils. These too are not myths. Demon possessions, and exorcisms, are real.* Angels are aware of you, even though you can't usually see or hear them. But you can communicate with them. You can talk to them without even speaking.* You really do have your very own “guardian angel”. Everybody does.* Angels often come disguised. “Do not neglect hospitality, for some have entertained angels unawares”—that's a warning from life's oldest and best instruction manual.* We are on a protected part of a great battlefield between angels and devils, extending to eternity.* Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death. They work especially at moments of crisis, at the brink of disaster—for bodies, for souls, and for nations.Accepting they are real may require a willingness that is difficult, yet it is essential to this inversion, to see the world right-side-up instead of upside down. One stumbling block comes from the Bible itself, because they are not explicitly mentioned as being created in the six days. The lack of mention about the creation of angels and demons stands out in Genesis. Did Moses just forget to write that down in the Torah? Where are the ghosts, Moses? On which day were the watchers, archangels, and guardians created? If the writers of sacred scripture were inspired by God, or literary geniuses, how could they possibly have missed mentioning the timing of the creation of angels and the fall of the demons? This seems a gaping hole in the creation story. Surely it seems impossible that this could be missed…unless it is omitted on purpose or for quiet reasons. There is much here to consider. This omission is one of the great conversation starters about the opening book of the Bible, because we often talk so much about what is there, but in this case we must discuss what is not there. The standard answer is that when God created the heavens, he created the angels, and a third of the angels fell with Satan when they turned their will against God. This is alluded to in places, particularly in the last book of the Bible, in Revelation, and in Daniel. In terms of timing on when they were created, we have a short answer from the Catechism stating that angels were created before human beings. The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body." (CCC 327)Now, if you are Catholic, like I am, this answer to “when were angels created” is sufficient. ‘Tis enough. The faith provides an answer, which satisfies my curiosity and saves me from tilting at windmills in long thought-quests of “which came first, the spirits or the atoms?” The spirits and the stuff were created at once, out of nothing, and we came after. Was it a day, an age, an eon, a billion years? It really doesn't matter. But truly, even in light of modern science, this is hardly a shocking concept, as even our scientific models has all matter and energy there at the beginning, and we come long afterward. Angels and demons are created, therefore God created them, and it happened before he breathed a soul into Adam. The details are not terribly important for my wrestling with faith on how to live for God and others today. In fact, thinking about such things too much detracts from exactly those two commandments of Christ, to love God and to love others. He didn't command us to spend a lifetime contemplating the exact construction of time, space, matter, and angels. Accepting the mystery of this is liberating. As for the fall of the angels, or how they became demons, we know it happened. How do we know that? Because Jesus said he witnessed “Satan fall like lightning.” If you have a first principle of believing that Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity, and that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life…then it follows that all that he says is true. Then he means exactly what he said: “I saw Satan fall like lightning.” Conversely, if you don't believe that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, then nothing that he says would matter anyway, because he would then be lying. This is why the first principles of belief matter so much, as every line of the Apostles' Creed then forms the foundation of all that you do, say, and believe. So if you believe in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, this is a statement from Jesus that should make our jaw hit the floor, because if Jesus saw “Satan fall like lightning” then he can only be declaring himself to be the Creator, a.k.a. God. This also means he has always existed, before all ages, and that through him all things were created. This declaration of seeing Satan's fall is as wild and radical as when Jesus forgives the paralytic's sins, because only God can do that. (No wonder his contemporaries hated him. Imagine a neighbor making such a claim. But then your neighbor can't walk on water or multiply bread, so it's a bit different.) This fall of Satan seems to happen instantly, abruptly, and all at once, without any kind of grand battle. Lightning is instant, perhaps the most instant thing we can imagine as humans, as anything beyond the speed of light becomes difficult to fathom. Thus, it seems that upon creation, Satan fell immediately in rejecting God, and it doesn't sound glamorous or valorous, it sounds kind of pathetic, like he got drunk and drove off a cliff after closing time at the local bar. Angels are said to be locked into their choice without the ability to repent, thus upon creation perhaps he fell immediately. But we don't know that, nor do we need to know. The whole idea of “when” only makes sense to us living in time, whereas God is eternal, and the concept of time in aeveternity (angel time) is a mystery beyond our understanding. So we know that Satan fell, and hard. He goes by other names, such as the ancient dragon, the serpent, Lucifer, the Devil, et al. But whatever the name he began as an angel. He fell and then we fell because he planted the temptation to question God in our first parents. We fell for it. One fall leads to another. In that fall of the angels, we have much speculation on how and why it happened. Unfortunately, we have John Milton's Paradise Lost which skews the fall of Satan and paints the devil as a mafia boss. Milton made an error, it seems, in his Puritan gnosticism of light versus dark. It seems that Milton started us on the path to this cartoon devil idea that we have today, and while the poem might be interesting, it misleads. We are better off with Dante and the medieval view, which has sadly been replaced by so much Protestant shedding of sacraments, angels, and saints, and more recently from the Enlightenment and scientific materialism. In Dante's Inferno, the devil is miserable and encased in ice at the bottom of hell. His existence truly blows - literally, it blows because he's flapping his wings in angry desperation forever, causing the very ice that forms around his torso. Cold, isolated, miserable, alone. That's hell. Neither of these books are considered sacred scripture, but Dante's worldview makes far more sense than Milton's, for if you reject the Highest Good, which is God, the result is a miserable hell. And hell is not a good time where any ruling happens, it's a lonely place of death in the abyss. After the death on the cross, Jesus descended into hell and not all souls were brought out of it, only some. Yet the devil remains. Why? Why didn't the paschal mystery of the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension finish off the devil and fallen angels once and for all? This too is a mystery. The cliffhanger continues until the Second Coming. In the meantime, the devil is permitted by God to operate in the world to guide men toward salvation and to carry salvation history forward. But the fallen ones are not in any sense enjoying the experience. Jesus showed the way to life; it is through trials that we find it, and trials come in the form of crosses, but if we carry them, they become gifts. This is a hard thing to accept. Yet we must. The book of Job is the graduate level class on the idea that God allows suffering to bring about a greater good. In Egypt, Joseph states the answer of why evil is allowed by God: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” One verse that has stood up on the page for me is the moment that God sends an evil spirit to put Saul into a state of depression and self-loathing. God seems to push it onto Saul. Read this verse slowly:“Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.” (1 Samuel 16:14)To me, this is another jaw-dropping moment, because the good spirit leaves and God sends an evil one to Saul. This is God sending the evil spirit to Saul, the first king of the chosen people. What does this mean? Does this mean that God is evil? No, it means that God uses the evil spirits to bring about salvation history. He uses all of creation to bring about his will. This is why we must wrestle with God, like Jacob. This is why he wrestles with us, each of us. God is teaching us with life, with trials, and hopefully we realize, like Jacob, that the angel of the Lord is stronger and we eventually must submit (but like Jacob we should also ask for his blessing once our hip socket gives out and we accept surrender). If this sending of an evil spirit happened to Saul, there is no reason to think we may not also be given this kind of treatment. But the difference is how we respond to it. Do we react like Job, or like Joseph in Genesis, accepting our struggle? Or do we act like Saul, and seek out the witch of Endor? Do we try to take control by other means, or do we surrender to his will? Obviously the ultimate instance of the trial is described in Jesus' fasting in the desert, where after his baptism he goes into the wilderness for forty days. At the end, at his weakest moment, the devil tempts him. This of all things should help us see that we are in for a test, or multiple tests, as the fully human and fully divine Jesus showed us how to suffer and serve. It is this full dying to self that we see in Christ's life. After all, hell is choosing the self over God, the ego over the Creator. Thus, the fallen demons are lost, wailing and gnashing their teeth forever in the nothingness and “fires” of hell. This “fire” of hell may be a freezing place, where fire is so hot that it feels like ice. Anyone who has had to jumpstart a car in a Minnesota winter, fiddling with battery posts and cables at minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, knows well how cold can feel like burning fire. Whatever the fire, the takeaway here must be only this: that it is awful. Thus, the idea that Milton's Satan said, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” is absurd, because he is in hell. There is no enjoyment there. It is a constant jumpstarting of a car in a poorly lit parking lot at minus 35 five degrees Fahrenheit during a blizzard - but much worse. Reading the Gospel without acknowledging the glaring fact that Jesus considers demons and angels to be real will make for a disappointing read. Worse, dismissing angels and demons without serious reflection will make for a disappointing eternity. Yet the intro of Genesis lacks this seemingly all-important element. But why? We first meet the serpent in Genesis 3, and the cherubim with the flaming sword who guards eden comes shortly after that. So the angels are mentioned early on, but the details are light. How can this be? There's no mention of the creation of the serpent-demon, but suddenly he's there. God created all “out of nothing” so clearly the serpent-demon was created. It seems this is not mentioned so as not to lead us astray. There are several inversions needed here to get us focused on what is important.First, there are books that are not in the Bible that go into the fall of the angels, such as the book of Enoch, and much ado is made of that online today. Many strange religions have a fixation on the book of Enoch, and the book of Enoch is truly fascinating. Yet it was not selected by the Israelites as part of sacred scripture. It is not in the Septuagint, the first Greek version of the canon. Genesis would have been the most logical place to write about the creation of angelic beings, yet it was left out, or covered under the umbrella of “God created the heavens…” which includes all things that exist in the heavens. Allusions to the book of Enoch appear in a few places, so why wasn't it included? We are not forbidden to read it, but it is clearly not critical for our salvation, otherwise it would have been included in the canon. Sacred scripture provides only what we need for salvation, not all the gory and exciting details we would like to know. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine listed good reasons why the creation of angels is not covered in detail. Resting in the mystery is one answer, but perhaps this angelic creation story was not made clear to Moses and therefore was not written. But Aquinas' most convincing argument is that when humans focus too much on angelic beings, they are prone to falling into worshipping them, a.k.a. idolatry. In fact, Hollywood has little interest in Abraham or David or the Eucharist or the Mass, but throws gobs of money at making movies about demons. This alone is telling. Those who spend too much time thinking about angels and demons forget the purpose of sacred scripture, which is to help us live as humans, not anywhere above our place in the hierarchy of created beings. This would be like a rabbit attempting to ponder Plato instead of foraging. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the angelic doctor, has this sensible reason as to why Genesis begins the way it does. Although Thomas believes that angels, like everything else in creation, actually do contribute to the greater glorification of God, he does recognize some dangers. In Ia 61, 1 ad 1 he responds to the objection that, because angels are not mentioned in the Biblical account of creation, God did not create them. He says God created everything that exists, and the fact that angels are not mentioned in Genesis 1 is no indication that God did not create them. Aquinas attributes their omission to the danger posed by knowing about them and too much attention being paid to them. Indeed, it seems as though the Israelites in the Old Testament were in constant danger of worshiping something other than God as God. So rather than mention them, Aquinas says that Moses sought to remove an occasion of idolatry from the people. This shows that there is a danger in focusing too much on angels as opposed to God without whom they would not exist, and without whom their existence is unintelligible. Angels are, after all, messengers, and one ought not attend too much to the messenger while neglecting the message, which is God's Word. (Dr. Joseph Magee, from AquinasOnline.com)We must not become too focused on angels and demons, lest we take our eyes off of God. St. Paul said in Colossians, “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.”What an interesting comment. Paul says that to be interested in angels to the point of worship is to be unspiritual. This feels like an indictment on Hollywood and the YouTubers obsessed with exorcisms. As it turns out, the spiritual combat is really a steady prayer life, keeping the commandments, wrestling with God and then surrendering your will and intellect to Jesus and his established visible Church, and putting all your trust in God. What are we not to do? Obsess over angels and demons. The Divine Mercy quote of “Jesus, I trust in you” kind of sums it up. More than a few people become obsessed with the messengers, the angels, instead of the Trinity. Entire denominations go astray and conflate angels with God or Jesus (Jehovah's Witnesses, LDS, a thousand New Age cults). The “worship of angels” is fool's gold. Thus, consider only Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael, the sainted archangels of scripture, who are highest in rank for our concern, that is, of human concern. Praying the “St. Michael the Archangel” prayer is far more important than the Pledge of Allegiance, as the nation will pass away but God will not, nor will his Church, the new Israel.As for your personal concern, the guardian angel assigned to you is enough, but do not name the guardian, just let it be “my guardian angel.” The Angel of God prayer can and should be said daily as a basic devotion. This is like brushing your teeth. It's for your health, too, your eternal health. Focusing too much on angels and demons instead of God leads to irrational fears and concerns, to the point that you have more of a relationship with the demons than if you didn't believe in them in the first place. The atheist living by “reason alone” is shielded against errors like this one (even while making the worst possible error, which is the total rejection of God). But they are real. To comfort our modern sense of security, we assume all that old chatter about demons was mere superstition and mental illness. Right? But it scares us to think of it. When we feel scared, we have our coping strategies. Perhaps we sign in to our 401K account to check the balance and sigh in relief. Or we check our security system and insurance policy. Another reaction to the terror of angelic beings is to start cleaning the house, or to scold someone online, or to scroll porn and news, or space out on a video game. We find some worldly thing to control (like writing/pontificating on a blog, as I do, or judging others, as I do). What we should do is kneel to pray and invoke the name of Jesus and the Trinity, and pray for the intercession of the saints and angels, trusting in God's will in humility. Call to mind our own sins and recognize our weaknesses and need for a Savior. The most important prayer that we do, of all prayers, is the one we do without even knowing it's a prayer: that prayer is called The Sign of the Cross. The idea of demons has been made comical by horror films and Halloween costumes, which is what the devil would like us to believe. As for angels, they have been wall art and figurines for so long that we assume at everyone's funeral that a human turns into an angel at death, automatically. This universal salvation is mentioned nowhere by Jesus, nor is there any mention of giving of angel wings to humans. Humans are embodied souls, without wings. Both angels and demons have become cartoons to us. But the meaning of the word “angel” is messenger. Your mailbox might receive a message sometime in the night, in the small hours, when the eyes open and the radar of conscience pings a spiritual presence. We can ignore or acknowledge it. Truly, it should terrify you a bit because if you are not on the right side of the battle, you will ultimately lose. The great trick of spirits is to guide your actions with suggestion and misdirection, and if you live unaware of their influence, you are a sitting duck. Rather, you are already on the side of demons if you don't think they exist. But to know they exist is one thing, and to think about them is another. Keep your mind clean by turning your thoughts to God, always back to one of the persons of the Trinity. Your guardian angel is always ready to help. For many, the person most accessible is the person of Jesus, which makes sense, because like us he was fully human, and unlike us, he was fully divine. The assertion of scripture, tradition, and the teaching of the Church is that spirits matter for your life, death, and judgment. Spirits are real. What is not real (or healthy or useful) is the denial of spirits. Worse yet is obsessing over them. New Age religions dabbling in spirit invitations is directly problematic, because summoning, channeling, manifesting, and opening ourselves to spirits comes with consequences. Plenty of spirits are happy to join in, and they will devour you. Spirits will indeed take you up on an invitation to enter you, but it won't work out the way you expected. If a demon enters you, perhaps you will perceive a benefit, similar to how taking supplements allows you greater gains in the weight room. But whatever “gain” you receive, the fallout of possibly dying in a state of mortal sin far outweighs the trifling, short-term benefit you gain here. This is serious business, not a game. You are a low-ranking participant in the spiritual war, not a captain or admiral. To assume a higher rank is to fly too close to the sun, and much of life is discovering where you fit in this world and the next (Hint: for a kickstart, start discerning like St. Therese of Lisieux).Any spirit you invite into your life will be real, so it's extremely important to consider what you are engaging in when dallying around with the unseen realm. In fact, the only spirit you should ever ask into your life is the Holy Spirit, and you do so with a three-word prayer. “Come Holy Spirit.” Say it now. Say it three times, but just say it. There is no magic in it. This is simply the one spirit that you need to align your will with God's will, because the Holy Spirit is God Most High. Actions matter. Speaking matters. Prayer matters. Doing a thing with your body and soul is a natural and supernatural interaction. So if you channel demons on a Ouija board, you have done an action invoking demons with your body and soul. If you say, “Come Holy Spirit” you are turned toward God. Turning is repenting. Turning to God is what all of the inversions are about, and belief in the Holy Spirit and the angels of heaven is part of submitting your will and intellect to the maker of all things. Further reading:Peter Kreeft on AngelsSt. John Damascene's De Fide Orthadoxa, book II. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith)St Thomas Aquinas and AngelsAquinas 101: Angels and DemonsCatechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 325-336, 390-395 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

The six days of creation provide a unique inversion to us today, because initially the order of the objects doesn't appear to make sense. After all, the sun appears on the fourth day, after the land and oceans were created. Every middle schooler who reaches the fourth day of creation can see a problem here, because the sun surely preceded the earth in terms of formation. Did we not just read in the opening verse of the Bible that “God created the heavens and the earth”? Is Genesis already switching the order and putting the sun, which is part of the “heavens,” after the earth? Did we just go from “Heavens First” to “Earth First”?This is where we apply our modern science to the book of Genesis, and in doing so we lose the wonder. But it's ok, there is an inversion waiting for us here, too. The sacred writer of Genesis did not know that the earth was round. Or maybe he did know. Or perhaps he thought it was shaped like a sausage. The point here is that it doesn't matter. I realize that saying “The shape of the universe doesn't matter” is blasphemy to a materialist who thinks that truth can only come through scientific proof. But this is the reason why materialists tend to get nothing out of the Bible, particularly the creation story. The spiritual reading is lost entirely unless you are willing to believe in spiritual things. And the first thing that you must be willing to believe in…is God. If this first principle is not in place, the Bible will be a strange read throughout and you will be sneering the entire time. If you approach it with doubt, you will get nothing from it. If you approach it with the eyes of faith, you will get the whole universe and the heavens, too. The key piece of being “willing” does not mean abandoning reason. Rather, it means using reason with faith, because they go together. One of the greatest documents from a Pope ever written is about Faith and Reason (in Latin, Fides et Ratio). It begins like this: Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. Thus, if you approach the Bible like a half-formed ghoul, with only reason, or only faith, or only your body, or only your soul, you will miss the point, to your detriment. If you come with only faith, you will be a Fundamentalist. If you come with only reason, you will be a cold atheist. Why be either one? Be whole. Be your whole self, as God intends us to be. (Hint: These inversions are really about becoming a whole person, body and soul, with faith and reason.) When we express belief that the Bible is “inerrant” we mean in terms of faith and morals, not mathematical truths. But if you consider “reason” to only cover provable concepts and material things, then you will be a one-trick pony who has to play dumb when considering art and beauty. No scientific answers come for the great questions, or even basic ones like “Why is a sunset beautiful?” or “Why do children bring such tears and joy?” or “How did that song change my life?” or “Why do I feel the Presence of God in a silent adoration chapel?”Beauty is a great lead-in to God, but Biblical inerrancy is a hard sell today. Thus, we should stop trying to sell it at all. I am tired of being sold. Who is not tired of being sold, when all we see is marketing from dusk ‘til dawn? I don't want a product or an experience, I would like authenticity and truth, and there is not even an atheist that I know who doesn't see both of those things in Jesus Christ. And if you don't see the supernatural in Christ, then you cannot fully see His authentic truth, as He is the way, the life, and the truth. This requires no song and dance, just as Jesus did not dance for us. We must remember the purpose of sacred scripture is not to give us the Pythagorean theorem, but rather to give us spiritual truths. When we read Genesis, at certain points we may be reading the “science” of the day when it was written, or we may not be. Just as the science of Ptolemy's day put earth at the center of the universe (and was wrong), so was the science of the day of Moses wrong about the shape of the earth. Funny, then, that “the science” can change but God does not. This is why the phrase “Follow the science” is so slippery and fraught with missteps. Truly, our model of the universe we have today will likely be quaint and silly in a century. The beauty of sacred scripture is that it opens a conversation, rather than delivering a hard answer, as we expect math to do. Here is where the idea of “mystery” bothers us modern people, but the mystery of scripture is directly caught up in the ultimate mystery of God, who created all things out of nothing, who is the “sheer act of being itself,” who formed us out of clay (or atoms if you like). What could be more fun than this escape room outside of the Garden, where at the end we can be with the God Most High, who transcends all? We love mysteries. Why shouldn't we love the conversation with the greatest mystery of all? I urge you: set your Google-brain aside, and embrace the mystery. And the first part of that mystery and conversation that gets us spun around and walking away is the six days of creation and the shape of the universe. However, this is exactly the place where if you come back to it with faith and reason, it can open up a story that transcends what happens in NASA's images of outer space. The pictures of the Crab Nebula are beautiful, but there is another view of the universe beyond the stars. The shape of things, as seen by Moses, in the spiritual view is like a house. There is an upper, middle, and lower section. You might call this the heavens, earth, and hell worldview. This is much like a house. But this is not to address anything related to science, it is about addressing the physical and spiritual reality that we occupy. Now, here we must briefly pause for the Galileo affair, the most misunderstood event in modern history. If you have not read a history of what really happened with Galileo, I recommend you read Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context, because a fascinating tale it truly is. The story you may have heard has been massaged by propaganda writers who really dislike the Church. In fact, one of the best summaries of the Galileo affair is from an episode of the History for Atheists podcast. We live in strange times. The God-deniers first stoked the myth of the Galileo story, and now various God-deniers are looking back and de-bunking the propaganda of God-deniers.Let's get to the point: the geocentric model of the universe was not devised by the Church. In fact, the model of Ptolemy came from the science of Egypt long ago. Long before that were other models, like the “Firmament” idea we find in Genesis, which many find funny today. Any beefs that we have with the shape of the physical universe is an academic discussion, not a spiritual one. Too much time and energy has been spent away from the spiritual life, and it seems that the model where the earth or humans are at the center is always a bad model. We think too highly of ourselves. (Note: we can think highly of ourselves as we are made in the image and likeness of God, but with humility in knowing that we are not God). In Genesis, the model is simple. It is speaking to our human reality. As a human being, I can look up, I can look at eye-level, and I can look down. I know there is something higher and something beneath. Here on dry land, I live on the “main floor.” The spiritual upper and lower rooms have deeper meanings. I can't go to those floors right now, but I know they are present. The error we can make is to think that our eye, on the main floor, is at the center of the universe. This is perhaps the ultimate error. The de-centering of mankind is essential to humility, and if anything, we should be grateful to science for doing just that. To be de-centered is humbling, and wonderful. Thus the simple vertical world of up/heaven, middle/earth, and down/hell in Genesis should not cause us any alarm, because if we live long enough, we will get to see this same de-centering of our own settled science. It will be proven wrong. Yes, the science we are certain of today will be modified, perhaps wildly modified, by future findings. How do I know that? First, because scientists are nowhere near the full understanding God's universe. Second, because science cannot test and verify spiritual things, as science cannot test for God. It's a ludicrous idea, like 2 + 2 = 5. Hopefully this does not shock you: our current model of the universe is wrong. Yes, it's accurate enough to build houses and space stations, but wrong in ways we don't know about yet. But that's good: it gives graduate students something to do. If the puzzle were complete, we would become bored and go crazy (mainly because we fail to realize that boredom can actually lead to serenity, but a discussion on concupiscence will come later). An inversion sits here in this space, because this is where our approach to scripture must step into the spotlight. Now, I could say this inversion is about reading the Bible in the four senses of scripture, which is critical, because these ways will expand the text for believers and unbelievers. The literal, allegorical, moral, and “how it relates to Christ” readings are all important. But there is a more subtle inversion for us. The inversion here is that we assume that all we know today is the same that we will know tomorrow, and many 19th-century Germans who thought themselves clever are beginning to look more foolish with each passing decade. The same is happening for 20th-century academics, such as those involved in the “Quest for the Historical Jesus,” as if they were Lancelot and Percival. However, in this relentless dissecting of the Bible as a dead body, scholars took the historical-critical method to its logical end. Now we have some good data and a bit of useful information from that quest. Better yet, now we can use that data to further our understanding of God. The rest we can throw away. As St. Paul said, “Test everything; hold fast what is good.” This is great advice because all of the Bible scholars who tried to turn Jesus into a common teacher of ethics or tried to reduce Moses into a mere model of the will-to-power, are now gone and so are their anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic theories. We can keep what is useful, and toss out the rest. (Julius Wellhausen, Rudolf Bultmann, Bart Ehrmann, et al: goodnight, gentlemen - thank you for the data, as we can now use it to increase our faith.)For a long time, Biblical scholars have been doing violence to the Bible because they see it as a work of literature rather than a sacred text. The era of “Comparative Religion” courses at universities is waning, as is the dogmatic absurdity of the “Q source” Gospel, a hypothetical document that does not exist. (And if anything it would be an early version of Matthew in Hebrew, written by the apostle named Matthew.) In another twenty years, a vast swath Biblical scholarship will be swept aside and flung into oblivion, as artifacts of an era riddled with excess curiositas and too little humilitas. However, we are living in a long hangover from attacks on scripture, and need some fasting (not Taco Bell) to cure this hangover. The old German doubters' and comparative literature ideas are still ringing in lecture halls, killing off one student's faith at a time. Professors of Bible scholarship can't get hired if they disagree with a secular dogma of a Bible that doesn't believe in miracles, spirits, or even God. This begs many questions that we'll avoid for now. For the past two centuries, academics have been approaching the Word of God with “reason alone” and using suspicion as their interpretive key, but the key has worn out, or God has replaced the locks. When we hear that Jesus' miracle of multiplying the loaves and fishes was just people sharing the bread that they had brought, we should laugh out loud. This miracle is one of the few that all four Gospel writers recorded. “Sharing” is not a miracle. Sharing is great, but it's not mind-blowing or life-changing. The apostles did not get bludgeoned, burned, and buried to proclaim the good news of “sharing.” Sharing is nice, but we know all about sharing without God becoming incarnate and dying on a cross to defeat the world, the flesh, and the devil.So we come to the inversion of how we should approach the Word of God. Even before you open the book, this approach decides what you will receive from the text. In the introduction to the Navarre Bible, a quote sums up the way we should approach the Bible, which inverts the way modern scholars read:“…the interpretations of Scripture should never be approached as a research exercise dependent on the researcher's technical skills. It is, rather, an encounter with the Word of God in the living Tradition of the Church…” (Pentateuch, p 16.)For several centuries now, we have been poking at the Bible like a dead trout washed up on the riverbank. But the Bible is much more like a giant whale that cannot be caught…yes, like Moby Dick. We have stopped reading the Word as sacred and started reading it like a biology book, where nothing supernatural or exciting ever occurs. We need to read it like it has the answers to the Biggest Questions, because it does.The death of many people's faith began in the era of the Renaissance and Reformation, as we began to discover new places and models of the universe. I do believe that this was all part of God's plan. Of course it was; everything is part of God's plan. Likewise, God's truth about the universe will lead to the death of our modern idols, too. It is inevitable. In the thousands of years from the first Passover to the Paschal Mystery to today, many great saints lived alongside many sinners, and many saints started out as great sinners. This exit and return from God, back to God is indeed the road home, as the parable of the Prodigal Son said (and so say we all!). The parable of the weeds and wheat applies in history and today, and it applies within each one of us. And like King Josiah had to smash to the idolatrous “high places” in the book of 2 Kings, so must we, and today the main idol that is a stumbling block for faith is not a golden statue or stone pillar, but ideologies and the idol of the “self.” Idols always need smashing. We are in yet another era of strange idols, so let's get to smashing (don't smash yourself, just the false image of the “self” as idol.) If you think God is not working to do the same things now to the idols of modernity as he did to past idols, your assumption of final knowledge will eventually come for you, or even burn you, just like it did to so many 19th century Germans' grandchildren in the 20th century. As for those who believed in such silly things as a flat earth and six day creation, those people were not as simple as we think. Rather, we too will seem simple in a hundred years, let alone a thousand, if the Lord does not return before then. Remember that Genesis is not teaching science or the shape of the universe - that is the task of the scientists and scribes of each age. What sacred scripture teaches is humility before God. If we approach scripture with humility, we will see the forest instead of the tree. If we approach the Word of God in wonder, we will choose the tree of life, rather than the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree of knowledge is the one that says, “I know better than God.” In defense of those ancient scientists and scribes, let's imagine for a minute what the world looked like to them:When we live purely by the senses, without the aid of telescopes and books and knowledge handed down, the world does appear to be flat. While I am not a “flat earther,” most of the time the world is actually flat. Most of the time, I am not pondering the sphere I am standing on. I am getting groceries or walking the dog, and everywhere I go is flat in this Minnesota prairie land. Thus, it's reasonable that people believe in a flat earth because we cannot see the sphere. However, we have come to know better through reason, which is a great gift from God to us. With reason, we can use induction and deduction to arrive at conclusions. We can even make proofs about the roundness of the world. What we “know” by the senses alone is not always accurate. Our senses can fool us. This is why seductive beauty can be so deadly, but also life-giving. Beauty is like water or fire in this way, where it can aid life or destroy it. However, the same applies to reason, and by reason alone we can only get so far. By reason alone, we cannot reach the spiritual unseen realm, but we can know it dimly by logic and science. Yet there is more. By art, music, and literature, we can know of spiritual realities. Just as we can measure the earth by reason, we can at least open the door a crack to spiritual realities by art. Everyone has a song or lyric that brings tears to their eyes, a feeling that touches on something deeper than they can articulate. But to fully open the door to faith beyond this world and life requires a “willingness” to be willing, and the act of faith by our will invites our intellect into a broad new expanse that is beyond all sense and calculation. Observation and reason can take us to the door, but faith must place the key in the lock and turn it to walk into that panoramic spiritual valley. Since I cannot see all things at once, I take it on faith, from science, that the earth travels around the sun, not the other way around. I really have no means (or motivation) to prove it, which is why it makes sense to me that, prior to Copernicus, the prevailing wisdom and mathematical models did not have the sun at the center of the solar system but rather the earth. My eyes can see that the sun travels over the sky - yet the senses can deceive us. I myself have not empirically proven that the sun is at the center of the solar system, but it's wonderful that mathematicians and scientists managed to prove it. But contrary to popular belief, this dance of the sun and earth does no damage to the religious truth presented in Genesis. None whatsoever, because the two things are related yet separate. Here is something important to pause on: for people who lost their faith because the earth was no longer at the center of the solar system - they were inverted the wrong way. They were not seeing God correctly. Their God was too small. Likewise, when the “New World” was discovered, a falling away from faith occurred in Europe. Enlightenment writers said that that “man was decentered” by science; man was knocked off a pedestal by the findings of Galileo and Darwin and others. Also, geology and the discovery of dinosaur bones put man into a tiny sliver of time, making him question his centrality in the order of the universe. When I was young, this all seemed to point to religion as the enemy of the truth. Having been raised in the cult of Protestant liberalism (also called the United States of America), this made for a very strange childhood experience. We were like the mythical Pushmi-Pullyu animal of Dr. Doolittle, getting yanked in two directions by two heads. On the one end, all the history books and literature showed that science had dethroned man as the measure of all things. Then on the other end, the cults of liberalism and humanism preached freedom, self-esteem. So at the same time: I was being showered with praise for my uniqueness and specialness while scientific proofs declared me smaller and smaller. Is it any wonder that we are now confused? These two things don't flow together well. If man is not central, but is merely matter, then what ruse are the humanists trying to play with the endless plug of uniqueness? This raises a larger question, however. If man is not special, and is instead like any other species, to what do owe our “self-esteem”? If there is no soul, as public school and modern media taught us, then meaning is only what we make for ourselves, is it not? This is a tall order for each person to determine, since we must all start from scratch. But the truth is: we don't need to do any of that, if we submit our intellect and will to God. The question is already answered, if we are only willing to set pride and vanity aside for peace and hope. Truly, none of this can make sense without God as the beginning and end of all things. Thus the phrase, “made in the image and likeness of God” is so powerful, because it puts us into a relationship with His transcendence, into a nearby friendship that resolves both our smallness and our uniqueness. He is not so far that we cannot know him, nor so close that we are him. We are not God, but we are his friends. The contradiction here is that the Enlightenment spilled much ink, and even more blood, in attempts at making meaning. When the various revolutions of liberalism and communism and capitalism failed to bring the cure for sin, the humanists took up the standard and attempted to shock us to life with a foundationless hype regarding self-worth. But without God, it falls flat. Now: the problem is as follows. Placing man or the self at the center is an error. Genesis and the order of creation de-centers us. We are more valuable than many sparrows, yes, but we are not more valuable than God, or even the angels. Knowing our placement in creation brings freedom, because it allows us to willingly bend the knee to God for his grace and glory. From our proper place we can love and serve. Some people believe that the dinosaurs bones were sown into the earth to test our faith. While I find this to be absurd, it's not exactly wrong. Because if the existence of giant reptiles from a period long ago causes us to lose belief in God, then we had an error-ridden faith to begin with. If the concept of evolution upsets our ability to kneel and pray, perhaps we have never really kneeled and prayed. If anything upsets our trust in God, then we may be projecting what we want to be God, rather than receiving in humility what is God's truth. This is not a defense of creationism or darwinism or liberalism or any other “ism”: this is a goodbye to human pride masquerading as faith in God. The truth is that we are not the central item of all creation, we are a part of all creation, and a very important part. We are loved by God, more than the rest of creation. We are different from all other creatures. We are special, but not more special than God. Coming to trust in God's will means to follow Jesus' advice to “consider the lilies of the field” who do God's will without toiling or spinning. They do not worry, they do not fear - they reach up their petals to heaven, glorifying his creation. What I am getting at goes all the way back to Christ on the Cross. Upon the Cross you have the summary of all necessary first principles. On the Cross, the strangest experience in all history happened. The theory of evolution should not disturb you. The Christian story of the Creator of the universe being born into this world by a woman named Mary, living among us, performing miracles, and then being crucified by us - that is what should disturb you if you fully come to understand what it means. Dinosaur bones? The beak of the finch? A new continent across the Atlantic? The sun's position in the sky? Those are the things that made us stop believing? Those are the things that led us away from God and into the dead arms of modern idols? We trade our inheritance far too cheaply. What this means is something troubling. Most of us believers are not that serious. Most of us are just in it for Donut Sunday and cultural benefits. We may say, “Jesus, I trust in you,” but not really mean it like St. Faustina did. We were warned by Jesus about Donut Sunday faith. He said “…there are many who will say, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'” And in hell, of one thing I am certain: there are no donuts on Sunday or any other day of the week.No wonder our faith was sunk. Our trust is really in ourselves. We say we trust and believe, but we don't. We don't go out into the world and take action like Abraham did. We don't comply with God's will like Moses did, when he insanely walked into Egypt to scold Pharoah, the most powerful man in the world. More than words or going through the motions, real trust in God means doing, partaking of the Sacraments, and even praying for your enemies. When geocentrism or evolution causes us to stop believing, we are like Peter walking on water who focuses on the wind. As the Lord said to Peter as he fell into the water, “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?” No finding or discovery should shake our faith. If anything, it is only a test to find out if we trusted God in the first place. As the Lord said to the Apostles, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, for I have conquered the world.” We are too afraid to fully trust. St. John Henry Newman said, “Ten thousand difficulties make not one doubt,” and here I've only listed four: dinosaur bones, beaks, the discovery of the Americas, and the position of the sun. That leaves 9,996 difficulties yet to go before a single doubt should even be entertained. If Darwin or Columbus or Copernicus or Diplodocus caused our faith to die, then our faith was not sailing free and fully trusting God, but was moored to the dock of the self long before we arrived at our current wacky age of postmodernism. The key to understanding where we sit in the order of creation is to know that God is far beyond our understanding, yet is simple, true, good, beautiful, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The key to the good life is knowing that God is at the center, not me. If a discovery here on earth is made, nothing about God changes. New findings should not rattle faith if the right ordering and principles are in place, because truth cannot contradict truth. And none of the revelations of science in the last five hundred years have done anything to displace the truth of “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”Where the earth sits in the universe, where mankind sits in time and space, how our thumbs may have developed, or what land is discovered, what formulas are yet to be discovered - none of these things disrupt or shake the Creator of all, from whom all Being extends. If any of these things shattered faith, or embarrassed believers, then the faith was not built upon a rock but was actually sitting on sand. Evolution or heliocentrism changes nothing about faith and morals, beginnings and endings, bodies and souls. It just changes the map of the heavens, or the timeline of salvation. But God is always up, and hell is always down. As for God, these revelations are like me throwing a pebble at the moon from my driveway. Not only can the pebble not reach the moon, even if it could, it would have no impact. To me, the findings of evolution are interesting but not that important for the Biggest Questions, because humility before God has precedence. If his creation developed, it seems all the more amazing. However we came to the day of the Fall, the Fall happened, and it happened with the first two people from which we all inherit our concupiscence. The topic of how my body or brain may have developed is interesting, but not necessary for salvation. If the Fall happened 6,000 years ago or 60 billion - it makes no difference. I must live today and keep God's commandments, not because I have to but because I want to. The Fall happened, and that's what matters, and I can prove it by own penchant for sin, and I can only overcome it through the work of Jesus' redemptive suffering. If tomorrow aliens arrive, a believer should not be alarmed. The best thing to do would be to invite Gleep-Glorp to Holy Mass. If tomorrow the physicists do indeed prove there are infinite universes or that we are living in a video game, this should have no impact on a faith that knows that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is the certainty in which you may sail uncharted waters, outlast storms, converse with aliens, navigate confusion, resist mutiny, endure war, suffer famine, persevere in poverty, ignore propaganda, and resist fear. The main thing to be wary of is those who preach against the spiritual truth of the creation, the fall, and the resurrection. Thinking about the cosmology of the universe is fascinating because it all leads to greater wonder in creation. But in my day-to-day life, I need to prepare food on the main floor of this “house.” In some respects, you might say that I offer up prayers to the top floor, while living on the main floor, and as for the basement - well, I don't want to go there. The house is haunted with spirits. There are spirits on every floor of the house. And the sooner you realize this, the less fearful you will be, because even now they are watching you. They are always watching you. I don't want to scare you at the end of this inversion, but as Nirvana said in its lyrics: Just because you're paranoidDon't mean they're not after you The next inversion is about angels and demons. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Everything outside of planet earth we call “space” or “outer space.” This inversion is about reclaiming wonder for “the heavens,” which has been lost during the onslaught of “The Enlightenment,” for which a better name would be “The Great Flattening,” “The Vanilla-ing,” or perhaps “The Vacuuming” since we have undergone three centuries of sucking the enchantment out of life, making heaven and all spiritual things prohibited from the public square. Instead of lying in the grass or on rooftops looking up in awe at the incredible depth of the heavens, we now are face down looking at Webb telescope pictures of space on our phones. What a buzzkill. The pictures are amazing, but the wonder is gone if we just see the pics as the images of a mechanical automation spun off by an absentee creator. Even the word space tastes like a saltine cracker compared to the triple-fudge sundae of the word heavens. Perhaps you noticed that the word is plural in some translations of the opening line of Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.” In some translations, heaven is singular, but most use the plural form. This requires some inspection because we tend to only think of heaven as where God is, but the bible uses this word to mean the sky, the stars, and where the angels and saints live. Before going too far in this inversion, let's set a stake in the ground as a marker. Whether we say “heavens” or “heaven” matters little in the end. What matters is enchantment. When you are re-enchanted to say “heavens” instead of “space,” heaven becomes larger and more inclusive than what the engineers and physicists have taught us to believe. Seeing the “heavens” opens creation back up to link the immaterial with the material. Much like the composite of our body and soul, so are the heavens of the angels and the stars and the saints and the sky. All of God's creation brings the believer a collective wonder. So how many heavens are there? Or how many levels? Dante had ten. But according to St. Paul, there are three. Let's stick with St. Paul. He said, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.” In the days of creation, we can also read of the three heavens: * Atmosphere or air, the place of birds and clouds.* The starry heaven, what we now call by more dull names, like space or the universe.* Highest heaven. The third heaven. The heaven closest to God. The unseen, invisible realm, is best described in the book of Revelation. Also known as paradise. We still use terms like this today when speaking of the heavens, but we mean different things when talking about heaven at a funeral versus talking about the heavens in astronomy class. The first answer everyone wishes to know is: what is this third heaven? Is it a place? Is it a dimension? We often use metaphors of mountains or clouds with our imaginations, but imagination is a bit dangerous. Popular ideas about heaven imagined by artists suggest that it's all harps and pearly gates. Seems kind of weak. This is likely why many people would rather rock out at a music festival than pursue heaven. Harps and golden gates lack appeal. Did it ever appeal to anyone? I think not. Please set those old artistic images aside and think of them no longer, because Jesus doesn't elaborate when he tells the apostles that he will go to make a place for them, making no mention of harps or gates. He only speaks of “dwelling places”:In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. (Jn 14:2-3)So it is a place, but a place we cannot fully know yet. It's a house of some kind. A good spiritual reading on heavenly places is The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila. Now there is a mystic that needs to be read by modern people. She embraced the mystery of the heavens and had the gift of articulation for this place that can never be fully articulated in human words. Mystics like Teresa of Avila can lead us toward God without giving us a formulaic answer. This is frustrating for us in the age of data because we want to know all the details, but Jesus says if we know him, we will know the way to this house - and that is sufficient for our salvation. We want all the data, but one of the most important steps toward humility before God is accepting that we cannot know all because we are not God. This concept of the “place” of heaven where the saints exist is a mystery, and the greatness of the act of faith, from the Trinity, to the Incarnation, to the Eucharist at Mass is enmeshing our whole minds, hearts, bodies, and souls into these mysteries in humble prayer. This “place” of heaven is yet another wonderful mystery, which is why meditating on the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary every Wednesday and Sunday is a great way to spend a holy hour. But like many mysteries, Jesus gives clues. “I go to make a place for you,” tells the apostles there would be a place for them to be after earthly death. The third heaven is that place. In other words, what we usually think of as heaven means the third heaven that St. Paul speaks of when his friend in Christ was “caught up” to the third heaven. This is powerful language. St. Paul, like his friend in Christ, is a saint, which means his soul is in the third heaven, even though the bodily resurrection has not yet happened. A few people have been “taken up” body and soul to heaven already. We know that Jesus' resurrected body and soul went to heaven on his own power, in the mystery of the Ascension. The only other human we know for certain was taken up body and soul into heaven is the Mother of God, Mary. She was assumed into heaven, as in pulled up body and soul. As for us regular humans who experienced the effects of the Fall, we know of three specific people in the bible who seem to have been pulled up to the third heaven. * Enoch in Genesis 5: “walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.” * Elijah goes up to the third heaven in a fiery chariot. * Moses' resting place is unknown and it is a traditional pious belief that he was taken up to heaven. This brings us to one of the strangest events in the Gospels, which is why you should pause on this mystery every Thursday during the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. I'm talking about the Transfiguration, which has much to do with heaven. Jesus takes three apostles to a mountaintop. Jesus turns into pure light. “There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.” Now, the light aspect of this event requires a whole chapter of its own, but for now, just consider who appears with Jesus. Moses and Elijah, two spiritual heavyweights, flank Jesus. Notably, these two men are believed to have gone straight up to heaven. Could it be a preview of the third heaven for the apostles? Could it be that Jesus is showing a glimpse of the unseen, invisible heaven? Yes. Of course it is. What are Moses and Elijah doing? They are talking with Jesus. Understand, please, that this is heaven. They are face-to-face and talking to God. To paraphrase another quote from St. Paul, he says that here on earth we see through a glass darkly but in heaven we will be face to face with God. What is happening at the Transfiguration? We see in heaven Moses and Elijah are face to face, speaking with God. That's what heaven is. No harp is needed. Consider the sixth Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Those who have been purified live in rest, in peace, with God, face to face.No wonder Peter is stunned and stammers some nonsense. He hasn't been purified yet for heaven. James and John also fall to the ground when God speaks. And what mere human wouldn't fall to his knees and stammer at this sight? That is actually the correct response. They see their infinite unequalness to God's glory. Seeing Jesus turn blindingly bright and talking to the long-deceased Moses and Elijah - that alone would bring jaw-dropping wonder. Enter in the booming, thunderous voice of God. Then add the glory cloud of the Holy Spirit. Peter, James, and John are alive in space and time, yet somehow amid the Holy Trinity and two of God's most holy chosen people who bore crosses for God to the end, who endured and gained their eternal souls. This would be enough to make us all fall to the ground. But that is the point. That is how we should experience the Trinity. After all, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom comes from humility before God. Peter repeatedly learns that God is not his equal or just some extra thing in his life, but that God is infinitely higher and utterly central to his life. Best of all, his preview of heaven in the Transfiguration was recorded by the apostle John so that we can all go there, to the mountain, again and again, and see the preview that Jesus offered. Contemplative prayer done on the mountain of Transfiguration is where the intellect, will, and even the dangerous imagination can seek a glimpse of heaven. We can see the sky and the stars, but we cannot see the third heaven without the help of scripture and prayer. The invisible realm is beyond reason and requires the submission of our intellect and will to see. Another example of a clue about heaven is when Jesus is dying on the cross. He tells St. Dismas, the Good Thief, that “today you will be with me in paradise.” He's not talking about Hawaii. He's talking about the third heaven. It is the place of everlasting worship of God, where everyone lives in obedience to God. And what is paradise? It's not likely what you think. Basically, paradise is where everyone just lives out the Ten Commandments. That is what heaven is: people living in joyous obedience to God and singing together, without trying to win or one-up God or each other. That is what the music of the birds and clouds and stars and planets and angels and saints is. Paradise is kind of like the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas where all the Whos in Whoville sing together out of joy even after all their consumer stuff is stolen. In fact, the Good Thief in his humiliation on the cross is being purged and purified for paradise right alongside God incarnate. He has a change, a repentance, a turning to Jesus. Obedience to God comes late to him, but the only thing that matters is this: it comes. It happens. Yes, perhaps he only labored in the field for an hour, but Jesus is generous and gives him the full day's wages. He's already singing God's praise while being tortured to death. St. Dismas now desires to be obedient, not out of fear, not for the promise of heaven, but out of the joy that comes from the forgiveness of a loving Father. He wants to follow the Commandments and live in harmony with God's will. And what happens when his turn is pure and true? He is granted entry into paradise by Christ. Jesus says that heaven is paradise. Again, no harps. In the end, the third heaven isn't that hard to understand, because it's just people living the commandments and embracing God's love by giving up their will and ego. What St. Dismas discovers in his last hours is what many of us never will, because our own will is in the way of God's will. Regarding this mysterious third heaven, the question of time arises. I spent a lot of time discussing the nature of time in the first inversion. But here we must consider the nature of time once more. This falls into mystery territory as well. Jesus is like a best friend who won't tell all the spoilers, he only tells us what we need to know to have ultimate enjoyment, or what is known as the beatific vision - pure happiness - upon reaching heaven. If we are talking about heaven as the sky and stars, then time certainly exists, as we can track asteroids and land rockets on Mars. We measure wind in terms of miles per hour. But if we mean the third heaven, empyrean - the highest heaven of the angels and saints - then I'm afraid that knowing the nature of time is beyond my pay grade. God is eternal, outside of time, because he created time. The Maker, the Prime Mover, the First Cause is most certainly outside of time, but can also be present in time, as the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the Incarnation of Christ prove. However, what of time in the heavens of the angels and saints? There is an idea from St. Thomas Aquinas and others called aeviternity, which is not quite the same as eternity. This is not much spoken of today, but I wish it were. Time may be different in St. Paul's “third heaven,” where the saints are. Does time exist in the highest heaven? What do we need to know about it, if anything? Jimmy Akin's “Hitchhiker's Guide to Heaven” can help us here. Connected with the question of whether heaven is a particular place is the issue of whether time exists in it.A popular conception is that it does not. The logic is fairly simple: God exists outside of time. God dwells in heaven. Therefore, there is no time in heaven.That's true enough when heaven is conceived of exclusively as the dwelling place of God, but it is not true when it is conceived of as a place that is occupied by angels and by humans after their deaths. In that case, a different sense of the word time is involved.The First Vatican Council taught that God “from the beginning of time brought into being from nothing the twofold created order, that is the spiritual and the bodily, the angelic and the earthly, and thereafter the human which is, in a way, common to both since it is composed of spirit and body.”This indicates that the spiritual realm is created and subject to time. Thus John Paul II taught that eternity, in the sense of being beyond time, “is here the element which essentially distinguishes God from the world. While the latter is subject to change and passes away, God remains beyond the passing of the world” (General Audience, Sept. 4, 1985). In short, time may exist in the highest heaven, or some form that we don't fully understand. But the good news - great news - is that if we partake in the Sacraments and die in a state of grace, we will learn the answer. As far as salvation goes, we need not know the details about the place Jesus prepares. This is difficult, but this is where the mysteries of the faith can be great sources of meditation and humility. God is first. The heavens are mentioned as his initial step in creation. Earth comes afterward. Worth noting here is that the heavens are created, as God created “out of nothing.” That is to say, the heavens did not exist before or concurrently with God. Like time, it was also created. Like the stars and the sky, the highest heaven is also created. The thrones, dominions, powers, and principalities - all are created by God who created all out of nothing. In this order of introduction regarding creation, heaven gets top billing over earth. This doesn't belittle earth, it simply makes an argument that the spiritual realm existed before matter. This is why spirit is higher than matter. This is why we should realize that our soul has a body, too, as the spirit gives life to the material realm. This order also places us in the proper posture of humility before God, because there is an order to creation and even beings within creation.Interestingly, this ordering fits with modern science, but I don't think that's the main point, since the sacred writer was making a point about religious truth, not modern physics. Genesis is not a math book or science book, but a book of higher truths. But still, it makes me pause to notice the accuracy: according to the Big Bang theory, the heavens were created first, if by the word “heavens” we mean the parts needed for making stars. Truly, heavens is a term worth much contemplation, because it can mean the stars and the sky, or it can mean the spiritual realm - or it can mean both - and it does. Just as we have both souls and bodies, so do the heavens. There is the spiritual heaven and the starry heaven. As it turns out, astrology is mostly nonsense, but they are correct about a couple of things: the position of Saturn and Jupiter and Alpha Centauri do matter to us, because like the planets and stars, we also have matter and all of these bodies have a gravitational effect on each other. But the effect of the stars and planets is not focused on us. That's the mistake of astrology. The music of the spheres in the heavens has the purpose of glorifying God, and that's all. Indeed, these heavenly bodies matter to us, because like all of creation, they matter to God. But they do not dictate our moods or beliefs, because all things created by God that didn't experience the Fall are still rightly aimed at God in their purpose. The birds and clouds in the nearest heaven are good, just as the harmonic motion of the starry night is good, but best of all is the highest heaven, where the angels continually sing God's praises. However, the angels are just doing what the stars and birds are, which is glorifying God. Like the birds, we should live our lives as a small humming in the great song of creation. Just as birds sing, we should make our own song of praise. Birds are fruitful and they multiply, working and singing, and so should we. The stars are in motion, dancing and giving light, and so should we. The saints give witness to the lights that we too can become through the humble offering of ourselves for the glory of God. No bird or star competes with God, rather, they are in concert with God. No bird or star attempts to make a name for itself, rather, they make a name for God. The birds, stars, and angels give us the same lesson that Christ did. The education of Christ surrounds us in the heavens, if only we would forget about ourselves to partake in the great play of creation. The goal of life is to reach heaven, yet as Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is among us.” “Repent and believe, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Forget honor and wealth; look upward to the heavens, as the birds and stars and angels do. The point here is to be inverted in your understanding of the heavens: all of creation glorifies God, from the birds to the stars to the seraphim. This is why the “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” is sung right before the Eucharistic prayer at Mass. The “Hosts” of this song are the seraphim, the cherubim, and the angels, in the highest heaven, the third heaven. Like any concert, there are lights raised in the audience, moving in unison, and to partake in the divine nature, we raise our light to play a part in this amazing show, so that while we are just one little light, we can see that we are part of a whole. Every anonymous star adds to the majesty of the night sky, despite getting no name or notice. Our little light of faith is part of the whole, and we can share in the joy because of the certainty that God is at the center of all things, not us. Next time at Mass, when you sing the following words, know that you are part of a choir that includes all of creation, from us on earth and upward to all three heavens. This is why the Mass is more than just an obligation, it is a gift: Holy, holy, holyLord God of Hosts.Heaven and earth are full of your glory.Hosanna in the highest.Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.Hosanna in the highest.Further reading:How many heavens are there?The Hitchhikers' Guide to HeavenHow not to think about heaven - Bishop BarronBlasting Holes Through the Buffered Self - Bishop BarronRe-Enchanting the Secular - Matthew Petrusek. Secularism is the predominate worldview in the West. However, it does not answer the deepest longing of the human heart. Did God Create Heaven?Is heaven a place or only a state of mind? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Finally, we come to the last words of the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”With these words comes an inversion that tips over ye olde pagan worldview and also the modern secular worldview. The order here is important. Ordering often has great importance in the Bible, especially once we get to the days of creation and the Commandments. Creation is an act of ordering, and we have a bad habit of disordering that creation. But I won't get ahead of my inversions - let's first look to the heavens. Notice that heavens is first. Earth is mentioned second. Consider how strange it sounds to reverse the order. Read this aloud:“In the beginning God created the earth and the heavens.” Just saying it that way feels strange. I have a bad taste in my mouth now. Yuck. The other creation stories are like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. Genesis asserts the reverse. The bible drinks the orange juice at breakfast before brushing with toothpaste. This is the proper order. This may appear inconsequential, but like all the inversions, it matters far beyond mere words in a book, because the right posture of humility before God requires it. In many creation stories, earth comes first. Genesis shoots that idea down like a clay pigeon in this opening line. In the Greek myths, Chaos and the Abyss are the first things, but then the Greeks go even farther in their wager. Earth (Gaia) pops into existence before the Sky God (Uranus). In other words, earth creates itself. Only after earth is born do the heavens arrive. This is incorrect. Heaven is God's first and essential act of creation, as opposed to the second creation of the visible world. God is first. Heaven is created first. Another way of saying this is: heaven is over and above and before earth. In some translations the word heaven is singular, but in most it is plural. (We'll get to this plural/singular question in the next inversion.) But plural or singular, one thing is always true: heaven comes before earth. Heaven was created before earth, by God, who existed before both. This is intentional. Just as there are no accidents in Hollywood, there are no accidents in Genesis. Genesis, in one single opening sentence, has set the entire Bible in opposition to every religious system that surrounds the people of Moses. A great deal of order can be derived from this first sentence of the Bible. This single line may pick a fight across the entire world, but that is not the intention. To argue with the ancient world is not the point. To refute our modern ideas is also not the aim. The aim of these words is to speak the truth aloud, despite the consequences. Once again, the purpose of scripture is not to set the world right-side-up, but to set our eyes right-side-up so that we can see reality properly. Everything is as God made it, only we are upside down or sideways most of the time. The ancient myths and the secular world today are trying to sell you a bad pair of glasses while holding you upside-down. They are offering orange juice after you have already brushed. Before Genesis was written, all the differing ideas about our origin story had already been told. Widely different origin stories existed then and today because we can arrive at different conclusions. Nothing is new under the sun. The sacred writer of Genesis was not the first person to think of “God created the heavens and the earth,” but the writer was the first one inspired by God to record it for the purpose of setting the truth in a form that could be passed on by scribbling, not solely by voice. All ideas that we think are new are old. No idea is original at this point. Ideas are just reintroduced, shined up like a dusty apple for the current generation to eat. Usually, in the reintroduction, the ideas are only made more confusing. Truly, before humans began writing, every idea of modern philosophy had already been told and tried. Every upside-down worldview has had its day, and the reason they never stick and stay is because it's hard to pretend the upside-down is the right way to be. The upside-down doesn't work in practice because it refutes reality. You may pretend that rocks are not real, only projections of the mind, but stub your toe on the rock and you will know that the only thing that wasn't real was your imagination. What's different about Genesis is that it is a book that lasts because it is the written word of God, which is to say, it is the truth. This is why people who have followed the wrong path return to the path of sacred scripture. This is the same reason why mathematical formulas stick around. The reason why Pythagoras' theorem lasts is because it is correct. The theorem cannot be modified to suit imagination. It is simple, beautiful, and true, and it can be applied to the real world. Basic math is a terrific illustration of spiritual truths because it cannot lie. Let's consider the Pythagorean theorem, which describes a triangle's sides. This upsets no one, because it is so easily shown as true, even with a simple diagram using squares on the sides of the triangle. a2 + b2 = c2You cannot write the theorem in another order, or it breaks. The order is critical, where c is the longest side of the triangle. In the image, side c must be at the end of the equation. The following re-arrangement would not produce a correct result. Anyone building a house or measuring distances would make a mess using this incorrect theorem, given the three sides shown in the image:a2 + c2 = b2 You cannot disorder the sides and get the correct triangle. For instance, if the shorter sides of the triangle are 3 and 4 inches long, the longest side of the triangle is 5 inches long. Correct: 32 + 42 = 52 Incorrect: 32 + 52 = 42 The incorrect equation is an absurdity. It fails in the mind and in the real world. When I was learning to program C++ in college, my favorite error message was the dramatic-sounding segmentation fault (core dumped). This would happen when a program I had written (poorly) attempted to access a memory address that didn't exist. The code I had written in the text editor was a representation of what I thought would work in practice. In other words, it was an idea in a text editor, not a physical reality in live memory. But once executed, the code came to life and quickly died, because what I had concocted on the screen was incorrect. A flaw in the design caused a devastating error that dumped the process. There were other errors that came from impossible attempts made in my code, like dividing by zero, but a segmentation fault broke the program in an abrupt fashion, like when mechanics say that an engine has “thrown a rod.” To “throw a rod” or hit a “segmentation fault” is to have violated certain truths of math and physics. The incorrect equation for a triangle is a violation of the truth of mathematics, and if used in the real world, it would “throw a rod” or hit a “segmentation fault (core dumped)” error. In essence, the opening line of Genesis, like the Pythagorean theorem, declares spiritual truth in the same way. Pythagoras is declaring a mathematical objective truth with his formula, and Genesis declares a spiritual truth.If you change the order of “God created the heavens and the earth” you end up with a segmentation fault or a thrown rod as well. At the very least, you move toward a misshapen worldview, just as an error in the theorem creates a misshaped triangle. It does not match reality. Likewise, you cannot square a circle, nor circle a square. This is even impossible for God. You may protest, “But all things are possible with God!” Yes, except for untruth. God is the Sheer Act of Being Itself and God is Truth. Like the Pythagorean theorem, God is also simple, good, and beautiful. A circle cannot be squared. Invalid memory addresses cannot be accessed. A brittle piston rod cannot withstand engine pressures. A triangle cannot have a shape that misfits the proper formula. And earth cannot come before heaven. Pythagoras found one of God's great tricks of geometry, and surely he was not the first, but he was the first to be famous for it, despite it actually being a truth from God, not Pythagoras. He was the first to be widely read, like the sacred author of Genesis, but the truth of “heavens over earth” was known before the age of writing arrived. Numbers (not the book of Numbers, but the numbers used in arithmetic) provide a wonderful method of thinking about God and immaterial things, like heaven. Numbers are not things I can pick up and move from my kitchen to my bedroom. I can pick up two cats, but I can't pick up the number two. We can contemplate the idea of “heavens” by using numbers because they are invisible, unseen things, but we know they are very real. These odd things called numbers have no bodies but have real applications and effects in our material world, where we do have bodies. We cannot use the wrong equation in immaterial numbers and then apply it to the real world because a material triangle will not comply with an incorrect representation of the triangle. In other words, objectively wrong ideas are not a thing - they are nothing. Let me try to explain. If an architect of the Flatiron building in New York City had drawn a blueprint but put the wrong dimensions on each side of his triangle building, the construction company could not have poured the footings to match the dimensions on the drawing. The physical world cannot fit with imagined falsehoods. This is why objective truth matters both in math and in spiritual physics. As long as people have lived, however, we have resisted ideas of objective truth. This is why Socrates and Jesus were both put to death - for not playing along with the imaginary truths of the Sophists, for not playing along with the subjective truth of Pilate and Caiaphas. To speak of objective truths in a world that resists them is to invite anger. If you fully adhere to objective truth, you will be hated. One thing is for sure: it is not the British who first had a stiff upper lip, it was surely Abraham and his descendants, particularly Moses and his court for writing these truths down, because to record and speak these things invited anger, just as it does today. This inversion may not seem relevant today, but like Pythagoras theorem, the order of “the heavens and the earth” is as relevant now as it was in Canaan or Greece. Moreover, if you scratch the fresh paint of modern sacred things with your fingernail, you can find that the old paint job of Gaia's primacy is just beneath the surface. But it is the wrong formula and does not work. “Earth First” has returned for many people. During the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, the chattering classes got high on an old philosophy that tossed out God, and many held that the heavens do not exist at all. Classical antiquity became all the rage for some, and Gaia, or Earth, made a comeback. This was most obvious in what we built in our cities, because when the West believed in “Heaven First,” the biggest building projects were cathedrals glorifying God. When we switched to the “Earth First” disorder, we began building skyscrapers, government buildings (that looked like cathedrals), and stadiums for sports. St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York was the last big project for God, which now sits under the shadow of so many towers, like the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center, the UN building, Madison Square Garden, and Yankee Stadium. However, it wasn't just the builders who shifted to “Earth First.” Truly, the intellectual class has relentlessly tried to invert Genesis and either cancel the idea of heaven altogether or tell us that we need not worry about this unseen realm. We are five hundred years into this process now. We have mostly forgotten about heaven, because we live as if it does not exist, yet at funerals we declare that every deceased person's soul is there. We are godless in how we live, acting as if heaven is not a concern, then suddenly universalists at funerals, where God is just a version of Oprah Winfrey (everyone gets a new car just for showing up). Yet, the upheaval of modernity's blessing of all sins is revealing to people which side of the chasm they want to be on when the collapse comes. As the chasm widens between right and wrong, truth and untruth, Jesus and Pilate, people are reacting and changing sides while they still can. To be on the side of the Pythagorean theorem is to be on the side of “Heaven First.” Some feel that a “Heaven First” view is finally coming back. If that's true, it's happening slowly, but then there are wonderful, wild conversion events like with “Our Lady of Guadalupe” where the efforts of missionaries and evangelists hardly move the needle, while God re-enters our lives with a lovely picture presented by a peasant like St. Juan Diego, and suddenly millions once again recognize that the “Heaven First” viewpoint is the truth. We are seeing the result today of a world that has rejected the spiritual mathematical formula of “God created the heavens and the earth.” Like the example of the architect drawing the Flatiron building triangle with invalid dimensions, a world built on bad math and untruth becomes visible. To use biblical terms, it bears “bad fruit.” We all know what bad fruit looks and tastes like. The error of “Earth First” is becoming more plain by the day. Look no further than the transgender craze to see modern Sophistry at work, yet even this craze is not new but has a history in the ancient cult of Cybele. If someone cries out, “The cult of Cybele was absurd,” that will not bring a mob to his house today. But for those who speak out against the mutilation fad of middle-schoolers invites active, living hatred. But as an advocate of both “Heavens First” and the Pythagorean theorem, it's impossible for me not to speak or write about both, because I think Cybele's followers were wrong just as I disagree with the living, modern version of Cybele's cult that mutilates children. Like Jeremiah, the prophet, I would like to stay silent to avoid the burning hatred of the world, but I cannot do that because to speak untruth feels dirty. It's like drinking orange juice after toothpaste every day, instead of the other way around. It's gross. Most of all, to speak untruth means I have abandoned God. I would rather abandon the Pythagorean theorem than God, but I can't abandon the theorem either, because it came from God. This causes a problem for believers in both the integers and God. Jeremiah, under persecution, wanted to stop talking about the truth of God to save himself some pain, but the burden of objective truth was too much and he had to speak or he would explode. He declares that he would like to stop talking about the truth of God to avoid the ridicule of others and save himself the headaches, but the fire burns within him to speak:“I will not mention him,    or speak any more in his name,”then within me there is something like a burning fire    shut up in my bones;I am weary with holding it in,    and I cannot.” (Jer 20:9)I can relate, although I am more cowardly than Jeremiah. Today, to argue against the media and professors, both of whom insist on a materialistic worldview, is to be a modern prophet. To be a prophet is not to predict the future, it is just to declare truth, like the Pythagorean theorem and God creating heaven before earth. Oddly enough, many atheists now sound like Jeremiah because they understand the implications of mathematics and objective truth. This has been a fascinating turn of events. I marvel as it unfolds, as atheists like James Lindsay and Jordan Peterson sound like devout Catholics. This is why I do appreciate atheists. God bless them. They cut away all the fluff that stands between the two options of 1.) God Most High or 2.) nothing. I feel that if most atheists properly understood the formula called “creation ex nihilo,” they would be suddenly re-attached to the tree of life and chugging God's grace like a bong at a college party. I pray they are all at the next Easter Vigil service where they can join their terrific sense of reason to a newfound faith that makes them whole. The prophets are not that strange after all, because they speak truth. The prophets arise at times of disorder because, like Jeremiah, it's impossible not to speak of the order of God's creation. These prophets are not the crazy ones, but the last remaining sane ones. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, must speak, despite wanting to hide like Jeremiah. He doesn't want to, but he does. Why is that? Because he can't avoid the truth. The prophets are like Socrates and Jesus, who are the most sane people in all of history, and both Socrates and Jesus were very much “Heavens First” in their theology. Plato's Timaeus has a Socrates that sounds an awful lot like Genesis 1:1. This is sanity. Reading the tales of mythology is wonderful entertainment, but nothing to take seriously - they are like Marvel movies: fun to watch, but unbelievable, and not aligned with reality. The reason Jeremiah may seem crazy is that he is speaking objective spiritual truth to a world of Sophists, to a world that worships the wrong “order,” like in the book of Judges that repeats the ominous line throughout: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” In an age of unbelief, however, it seems natural that people would be more concerned about the material world than the immaterial heaven. But this is only due to people not thinking deeply about their first principles, of which way is up (Hint: Heaven is up). They are flipped over because the advertisements spin them around. They are merely thinking about what they desire and calling it good. In other words, they have rejected God to do “what is right in their own eyes,” as the book of Judges repeats over and over. The naturalistic worldview, where God is not alive nor involved seeks all its answers in the chemical and biological, not in the spiritual. Yet not only the materialists do this - so do lukewarm spiritual people, where the desires of the flesh are projected onto God. Merely declaring “Heaven First” does not cure the error, but it is the first step on the path to wellness and sanity. Many people today complain about the politics of “America First” while in the next breath, they preach sermons of “Earth First.” But I am a keeper of the old code, of “Heaven First.” This is probably why my social life is limited. I reject both “America First” and “Earth First.” I definitely reject “Self First,” which is the most sacred belief of our age. The “Heaven First” view isn't a popular worldview today, but I grew up in the late 80's and early 90's. Listening to hundreds of hours of Nirvana's Nevermind album ingrained in me an ironclad belief that popularity is for sell-outs. The ancient religions are never far away. They don't actually die. In fact, ancient people didn't even know what the word “religion” meant, because the word was invented only a few hundred years ago. Religion is not where you go on Sunday for one hour, it's how you live every day. It's not just an add-on product or opinion or something done in private. We don't really know what religion is today because we've tried to cordon it off like a coat room, and while we point at religion in the coat room, we are actually living our true religion and calling it something else. Thus, with the myriad lifestyles and behaviors today, rest assured that everything from the Bronze Age is still here, but those ways and views have just taken on new names. While we may chuckle at stories about “Gaia” from the ancients, we do not chuckle about the chilling tales and dogmatic belief systems of climate change as handed down from those in lab coats and preached by the scribes of the laptop class. To challenge any assumptions about carbon credits (which are a parallel of what Protestants think Indulgences are in the Catholic faith) or sustainable planning is to invite a mob upon you. Attack the sacred things and you will be attacked. Why? Because the sacred things go back to the order of creation: who created what, when, and why. Thus if you subscribe to “Earth First” then you have a shield against spiritual things. Worse, you have an elevated sense of importance, also known as pride (as opposed to humility), and we will get to that nefarious inversion later. “Earth First” is alive and well. Books about Gaia have been all over the place in the past decade. Mother Earth is worshipped by millions, and while our earth is very good, it was not first. Genesis in its boldness says, “Heaven First.” However, this does not mean, “Earth is not important.” All of creation is important, as the whole is greater than the parts. This is true in geometry, bodies, families, marriages, communities, and God's whole creation. But there is an order of precedence, of how God created everything. If you error in this inversion, more errors will follow. This is why I'm writing this series on inversions, because the errors accumulate, where one wrong turn leads to another. The Catholic cosmology is not arbitrary or strange, it is just not understood or discussed because of the many layers of distractions that clutter our minds, due to centuries of misinformation about what the Church actually teaches, and what the truth really is. Moving on, let's look at the second inversion that comes with the words “the heavens and the earth.” Why is “heavens” plural? Further reading:On Earth as It Is in HeavenHeaven - Catholic EncyclopediaWhat is heaven?Catechism 1029-1029 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

“In the beginning God created…” Creation was covered in the last inversion with creation “out of nothing,” but there is more to be said about the verb “create” and how God creates. At this point, I will venture beyond the first verse of Genesis 1 (finally!). Here are the first three verses of Genesis, which are worth committing to memory:In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.The first thing to notice about this beginning, this creation, is that there is no battle or struggle. The maker here has no writer's block, no hand-cramping. He's not in a rush to complete the project. The painter doesn't run out of paint. He isn't interrupted by deliveries or doorbells or drop-ins. Neither is there any negotiation nor argument. No supply chain issues disrupt the critical path of keeping this building project on schedule. The flow of creation is gentle, as God simply states, “Let there be light.” No laser show or fireworks are needed. No soundtrack. No music video.God creates in peace. Most of all, we should notice that God is not attacked or killed or overthrown in any way. Why is that important? This inversion of a creation story flips the Greek, Sumerian, and other creation stories, which contain a battle, a struggle, or a war in which the victorious god “wins.” There is no struggle in Genesis. There is not even a competition of any kind. This is unlike the Sumerian, Norse, Greek, Minyong, Cherokee, and just about every other creation story. In other words, Genesis is about simple beauty, not struggle. Creation is an unfolding, not a mash-up. Consider the difference between humans constructing a building with metal, wood, cranes, and hard hats, versus a seed in soil receiving rain and growing into a flower. Jesus spoke of this when he compared Solomon's man-made opulence against a simple flower: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” All that we can make pales to one of God's wild lilies. In the gentle act of creation, God merely speaks. “Let there be light” makes all other creation stories violent and slightly ridiculous. The false gods seem to be trying too hard. Against the beauty of “Let there be light,” the Sumerian story of Marduk's conquering of the primordial god reads like a cheesy TV drama, like Game of Thrones, or like the aptly named HBO series Succession. This is the inversion: a “succession myth” is built into nearly every pagan creation story, where the primordial god or gods fight, and the first gods are overthrown. These other creation myths tell of a victory that never happened. Genesis declares that there was no fight whatsoever. There wasn't even an argument or a dirty look. That's because there is only one God, the God Most High, the Author, the Creator, the Artist. Once again, Genesis calmly calls all other mythologies absurd - because they are. They may entertain us, but so does a gladiator fight, which doesn't make it right. James Joyce, who rejected the very God who gave him his great talent to write, knew much about the creation of literary works. In The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce wrote about a version of God that seems quite right and quite wrong at the same time:“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” There is something wonderful about this quote and something false. The God who creates in Genesis does indeed remain within/behind/beyond/above his creation. Unlike human artists, he does not struggle in the act of creation, as it is a labor of love. When he completes the creation, he rests, like Joyce's image of the creator. I like the image of God seated in heaven “paring his fingernails,” even though he would not need to do so. Joyce is correct about God's presence and about his resting, but he makes an error in the middle where he says that God is “refined out of existence” and “indifferent.” In other words, Joyce's character is like Thomas Jefferson's view of God. He envisions God in the Deist view, like a clockmaker, who creates the heavens and earth and then moves on, not caring at all what happens to it. The God who creates in Genesis is not like that. He is not like the pagan gods who lust for power, nor is he like the Joyce version who creates and then drifts off distantly. This is indeed a central inversion to understanding the God of the Bible, in that when he speaks to create, he brings all things into being, and actively sustains the creation. While he could be “paring his fingernails” at rest, he is never indifferent or distant. He is an all-powerful creator who is also a loving Father, without being an overbearing one. Free will is granted to all, and free will often feels like a cross but is most assuredly a gift for those who read the Gospels to the end. In addition, the constraints of time and space, which seem a burden, are the teaching tools God uses to tame us after the Fall. The succession myths and science theories that throw out God only hurt us. God is fine whether we love him or ignore him. But when we do not conform our will to God's will, it is we who struggle, not God. In the Sumerian and Greek myths, the gods are paranoid about who will take their power. Even Zeus is sneaking around so Hera doesn't catch him. But the God of Genesis has no threats, no challengers, no contenders, no scolds, because God is like Joyce's all-powerful creator who is within/above/behind/beyond his creation. But he is not like Joyce's “meh” version of God who could care less about his work. This is the difference between human works of art versus human life - as in children. This is an important lesson for all those who dislike children but see their own lives as a work of art. The ultimate work of art is the generation of new life, and dying to self in favor of living to serve that life. To write a story is to create, but it is not new life. When I was young, I was obsessed with writing and publishing a novel. I succeeded. It sold about 4,000 copies. That was nice. But that creation now sits on a shelf and only comes to life if I open it, and I rarely do. Then I had children and realized that writing a novel is a dead letter compared to the work of a family. In other words, to see God as merely the writer of a story is to misunderstand the living and the dead. And James Joyce, who wrote a famous short story about “The Dead” was himself flatlined because he thought “to create” meant only writing, painting, and art alone. The greatest act of creation is life, and not just static art, but life that respirates and moves and sings and suffers. In other words, the greatest work of art respirates - it breathes - and creation comes through relationships we have with the living God and with one another. In particular, the total gift of self means handing over your whole life to God. In marriage that means being open to creating new life and serving others instead of the self. The Church is said to be the Bride of Christ, and he emptied himself to bring new life to all its members. God does the same through all creation, as life springs from his word. God calls us to life by speaking, not struggling. Jesus brought life to all the world starting with a small group of friends. They changed from ways of this world into saints by giving away their time and space to others, forgetting the struggle. With Jesus at the center, this shedding of struggle became possible. The only struggle in Jesus' earthly ministry happened when competition against God's will tried to insert itself: the Pharisees wanted control through rules, the Romans used brutal violence, James and John lobbied for top status in the kingdom, Peter was rebuked harshly when he tried to stop the path to the cross. Whenever anyone wants to make a name for himself, a struggle begins. This is a spiritual law, it seems, from the Tower of Babel to Pontius Pilate and Simon Magus. The opposite of serving is gaining a name for oneself, and those who gain fame by doing God's will tend to get new names, not from themselves but from God. Abram becomes Abraham, Jacob becomes Israel, and Simon becomes Peter. With their new name comes a mission of servitude, and status only comes with their dying to self. When Jesus says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force,” he is talking about the status-seekers and the power-hungry who rule this world. To serve is to take the lowest seat, not the highest, and we should consider this whenever we admire celebrities, the wealthy, or the proud. When the guards strike Jesus, he opens not his mouth. Not once does Jesus attempt to make a name for himself. He repeatedly tells others not to announce what he has done. Healing in private he seeks no fame. This is exactly how God creates: in peace, in quiet. “Let there be light” makes no sound, it just happens. Thus, when the proud loudly mock God or take his name in vain, God allows them, for he has already won, and he just hopes his persecutors eventually stop trying to make a name for themselves and come to rest in his infinite peace. Surely when he watches us struggle, it must look foolish, since he wants us to partake in his divine nature, which does not struggle. The creation of life that God gives to the universe and each human body and soul composite is an act of love. Mothers and fathers can know this to a depth that can never be understood by the childless. Dog owners often think they understand what parenthood means, but they do not, and they sound silly when they attempt to conflate dog ownership with actual parenthood. Artists will often talk of their work as like that of a mother's love for a child. But they are ignorant of the depth of the Father's love for his children, or a mother's love for her child. The images of the Holy Family endure because that is the greatest work of art - a living family. We have a living family both earthly and spiritual. For we not only have an imperfect earthly father, we have the perfect heavenly Father who created our earthly father. Better still, we have our imperfect earthly mother, and our spiritual Mother of God, Mary, who Jesus stated from the cross for all people, “There is your Mother.” The God who created all is not an absentee deadbeat dad, he is near. Nor is he angry and controlling, he is simply calling us to listen and be listened to. In other words, there is no struggle in this relationship except for what we introduce to it. We bring the struggle. Because we chafe against our containment in time and space, we want to escape it and control it. Struggle ensues exactly when we deny God's will and try to make our own will the authority and power. This is a fool's game, but since the expulsion from the Garden we never tire of playing it until the invasion of grace enters our lives. When Jesus steps into our boat, as he did with Peter and Andrew, the struggle can end, if we let it. The creator of a work of art struggles and can love his book, painting, song, or statue that they “bring to life.” But it can never be alive like a child. A book or painting cannot bind you in flesh and bone like another person that was generated by yourself and another person. And here is where the Trinity can first be discussed (but not too much yet), because when God the Father creates, the Spirit hovers over the waters. To create is the act of love, and that which is created and living will be loved by the creator. I can be indifferent to a story that I wrote, or to a woodworking project that I complete, even if I am pleased with the result. But I cannot be indifferent to a child that is alive who came from husband and wife. This is why many parents seem somewhat insane: they love so deeply. They love so deeply that they err in strange ways. This is why the saying, “You're only as happy as your most unhappy child” hits the nail on the head for many mothers and fathers. The living creation that is generated by parents, from their shared bodies, can never be separated in a child. Genesis and Jesus both repeat: “…and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.” In the same way, God loves us. The Trinity is a loving family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the peak of love, at a greater depth, with rightly ordered balance. God does not try to control us, but allows us to err, with the hope that we will recognize the way back home. And since we are all children of God, can't we imagine how he feels when we ignore him? (We can't fully, but we can get an idea.) This is why the other creation stories feel like entertainment rather than truth. They are accounts of struggle, whereas the true God never struggles. To read the “struggle stories” of creation in the ancient world is to see what they valued, which was power. We do the same today. In poker, the big bank takes the little bank. In geopolitics, big armies and big navies control the shipping lanes. In the office, the loudest voice drives the agenda. The proud and violent “win” here, and for it, we all lose. Disorder comes from struggle and squabbling over scraps from a zero-sum game that doesn't need to be played. None of the power games we play come from God, but rather from our disordered will. What we consider creation is often destruction. Fortunately, Jesus shows us God: he is a humble servant, a loving creator, a living act of love who takes the last seat at the table. Real power is to be at rest amid the storm, like when Jesus slept in the boat that was about to capsize. The seas and the wind obey him. So should we. In America, “wealth creation” is worshipped, and the creation of wealth is an endless struggle. Yet if Jesus returned tomorrow, he would not come forth saying, “We must get the economy back on track.” The only economy of concern to God is the economy of salvation for our souls. That is the plan, and to carry out that plan we must stop struggling. But we celebrate struggle. Everything seems to be built around it today. We seek it out. Activists calling for permanent revolution crave a struggle. Sports is an endless invented struggle of those rising and falling. Cities and nations clamor for influence. We think we love struggle, but we loathe it because it is a trap. It is a container that we crawl inside, pull the lid down over ourselves, and suffocate under. We hate this competition and we want to rest, but for most of us, the draw of struggle pulls us into our own bad creation stories. Glory days and power plays are what gets remembered, not the quiet servant, the mother who made all the meals. What we should do is notice who is not struggling. God is not struggling. He is seated. After creation he is seated, not struggling, but also he is not indifferent. When people come to know the living God, who created all things, a sense of active participation in that peace comes to them, which is why St. Augustine's memorable line rings forever true throughout the centuries: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”In case you ever wonder why people like to kneel and pray in adoration chapels, or in the pews, it is because they are talking to the one that gives life, meaning, and rest. Once you come to see that the only place without struggle is at the center, at the source, from whom all things are generated, then the attraction of the struggle in this world makes little sense. Aside from needing our daily bread, the struggles of our world have come from sin. To sin is to struggle. Once again, Jesus said, “Consider the lilies of the field who neither toil nor spin.” We have rational souls, yet we should look to the lily, or the ant, for models of living in our bodies, and for our spiritual example we must look to God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - for how not to struggle but to find peace. How is it that God does not struggle? He is without pride or fear. Only we who have fallen know pride, vanity, and sensuality, and that is the source of all struggle. Sin is the absence of God. When we sin we reject God in favor of our pride, vanity, or sensuality. In choosing to sin, we choose disorder and struggle. But we do not harm God when we turn away. There is nothing that can harm God or overtake him. He does not force us to love him, but he invites us to do so. God is not “containable.” The great error is thinking that he can be contained, tricked, or boxed in. God is uncontained. His creation is an unending relationship and conversation. He creates with a living, breathing, moving, open heart toward us all. He is uncontained because he's not in competition with anything, including us. When I was in high school, I was putting dishes away one day in cupboards and drawers, and it dawned on me that everything had a container. Forks go into a drawer, but within the drawer, there is an organizer. Within the drawer container, was another container for holding the forks. I began to look around and saw that everything I did was moving things from one container to another. The world seemed to one big Containment Management System, as I would wake up in the house container, go to the shower container (containing the water) and eat breakfast moving many containers to and fro, and then get in the car container to go to school, then go into the school container, in the classroom container, and with my backpack container, I would open up my books which contained words. In this theory of containment, I realized that if I go very close with a microscope, there are smaller and smaller containers, from cells to molecules to atoms to protons. And all of these contain smaller things. Likewise, if I back up from my containers and look up, there are more containers, like the earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. So as far as my finite mind could understand, the largest container was the universe, and beyond that wall, our material selves could not go. But then there were containers for immaterial things as well, like ideas, as we categorize things as Platonic forms or mathematical constants or schools of thought. There were numbers that had rules of containment from Euclid to Einstein. There were stories that had beginnings and endings, like virtual bookends. Even our imagination is contained by time and space. This fed into a period when I discounted all spiritual things, where anything immaterial was not real, like feelings or opinions. Only scientific evidence made for knowledge. Right around that time, I became very depressed as well, as I had rejected God's existence. But I did have one realization at that time when I was looking at forks and drawers and atoms and planets. A question came to me:What would it mean to be uncontained? I felt as if this was like Zen koan, a question like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” To be uncontained was to be free, completely elevated outside of time and space. And who could be like that? Who could always be in that place of no struggle? I know who it is. Whenever I thought of what that must feel like to be truly uncontained, without the aid of mood-altering things, I recalled a day when I was working on a farm one summer, leaning on a gate at the end of the day after making silage, watching the cattle toss the fresh, green food up in the air and onto their backs, almost joyfully, as the sun set in the big orange horizon beyond the silo silhouette. It was one of those moments where the body was tired but fulfilled and I knew that dinner would be good because I'd worked for my daily bread, and the music of the spheres, and the harmony of nature, all seemed to be flowing in concert, and I've never seen anything so true, good, and beautiful in my whole life. That day I felt uncontained basking in the beauty of creation. I had other moments like this, such as when my children were born, where the impossible occurred. There have been quite a few times like when I would be out on a long bike ride at dusk and stop for a drink of water near a cornfield, or when I would look at the stars on the hood of my car in high school with my friends, or when I hold my wife's hand, or when I listen to certain songs, or when I look at certain Caravaggio paintings like “The Conversion of St. Paul.” To be uncontained is impossible for me. I can not stay there. But I can be there from time to time. Like Mary Magdalene at the tomb, I can witness the glory, but cannot hold fast to it while I'm in this world. In these moments, I realized something that seemed profound (at the time):God is that which is uncontained. God is the only thing that is uncontainable. This is why God does not struggle. This is why he rests. Can we ever be uncontained? The answer is yes. We can partake of the divine nature. What the Eucharist means in the life of a Catholic is just this. For those who believe, receiving Communion is just what it means: we commune with God. We partake in the divine nature. In other words, we partake in the uncontained wonder and awe of the creator of the universe. Critical to the understanding of the Eucharist is that we are not God, but we are made in the image of God, and our life is entirely about moving back into his uncontainability. The key is to remember that I am not God - I am contained, but by partaking in his nature, I can be more like him, and in heaven I will be fully with him again, for we came from the uncontained and can return there - and someday we will return if we remain in his grace, for “by your endurance, you will gain your soul.” But like every original thought I've had, I found out later that my idea of uncontainment was not original at all. In St. Augustine's Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 3, the heading is: “Everywhere God wholly fills all things, but neither heaven nor earth contains Him.”Those who understand what the Catholic Church teaches have known about this notion of uncontainment for millennia. Sometimes I see Church Fathers use the term uncircumscribed, which is like saying uncontained. But most importantly for this inversion, this is why the God of the Bible is different from all the other gods. All of the gods of myth are within time and space. Even if they are in the heavens, they struggle. God does not struggle, he creates, even though he did not have to create. He chose to do so out of love, and it is only we, the fallen, who choose struggle. Because our pride, vanity, and sensuality fool us we believe that struggling against each other will gain us a higher place, but when we struggle we dig our graves. In making a name for ourselves, we will be forgotten by God on the last day. In struggling, we lose our peace and rest, because it takes our focus off of what is most good, what is the highest good, which is God, the uncontained creator who does not struggle, ever. Like the loving father in the parable of the Prodigal Son who runs out to meet his wayward son upon his return, he calls to us, he runs out to meet us, and when we return he fills us with a wealth beyond human understanding. And that is why we are here in this world as we are: we are not kicked out of the Garden as a punishment, we are kicked out for our own good, so that we may come to know God and return to him of our own free will. He invites us but never forces our hand. He calls, never coerces. He is beyond all things and sustains all things, which is why we cannot run from God. All that we create that is not living becomes rusted, corroded, and overtaken by time and nature. Every ancient temple and city dedicated to the false gods has turned to dust, just as every skyscraper, stadium, and data center today will turn to dust. Every mascot and corporate logo will be as powerless and meaningless as the eagle of Rome or the oracle at Delphi. We are passing by on our way to an eternity in one of two places. Like a bird flying by a window, our time is brief, our stay here is short, and all that we create will fade, no matter how we struggle to maintain a sense of security. The pages in books we write will turn yellow, the machines will fall into disrepair and sit like rocks. But the life we create can create more life, as the generations continue. This is why a child who plays a video game is disengaged, while a child who catches a fish is full of wonder. One is playing in the world that God created, and the other is playing in an artificial world that a programmer created. Likewise, this is why a reader of Joyce may experience something like transcendence, but a reader of the Bible (and especially the Gospels) experiences something alive. Joyce could write a book, but his book cannot generate life. But those who approach the Bible as the written word of the uncontained God who created all things and does not struggle will find life. Yes, it is a strange book that can bring a robotic modern person back to life. Interestingly, Joyce's most famous short story was called “The Dead” which referred to Jesus' saying, “Let the dead bury the dead.” This was a reference to spiritual death. When Jesus said that he is the vine, the bread of life, and the living water, he was telling us to plug into God. He was notifying us that struggling and floundering only happen when you desire something more than God. You will forever be searching and struggling until you come to realize that there is only one path to the end of struggle, and that is the path back home to God. Jesus reminds us: “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” He has created the world, overcome it, and rests, waiting for us to recognize his ever-present voice. When we find him, in those moments, we will want to stay there and never leave. In the Eucharist at Holy Mass we can partake in the uncontained. Jesus is there - truly present under the appearance of the bread and the wine. Again, Mary Magdalene at the tomb wants to stay with the risen Lord forever, but she cannot. She has to move forward, and moving forward she is full of life, she is changed. Her sadness is swept away upon seeing the risen Jesus. How can that be? Because she is no longer struggling, and her sorrow turns to joy. She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20:11-18)And then, once we meet him, after he surprises us, we know beyond our worldly containers what is true, good, and beautiful. He invites us into that peaceful present. Then our pain and sorrow become strangely redemptive. Coming to know how he does not struggle, we can do likewise. We can go to the chapel in the heart even when a church is nowhere near. As St. Paul said, we can pray constantly, and thus be with the one that is forever uncontained by time and space while we work and live here - for the kingdom of God is among us - in relationships, not in art or status or stuff. Once we recognize our relationship to God, we know the Father, and we know our mother Mary, and we become connected to the angels and saints - including Mary Magdalene, who will pray with you if you but ask for her intercession. Then like God, we do not have to struggle. For God alone is uncontained. And God alone satisfies. Further reading:* The Bible's Conflict-Free Creation Story* How God Redeems Pagan Imagination* St. Augustine and Cosmology* Creation in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the Ancient Near East: Order out of Disorder after Chaoskampf - “The background of the Genesis creation story has nothing to do with the so-called Chaoskampf'myth of the Mesopotamian type, as preserved in the Babylonian "creation" myth Enuma Elish. In Gen 1, there is no hint of struggle or battle between God and this tehom—water.”* Chaoskampf - Good overview of myth systems that assume a struggle, but the article misses the inversion of Genesis entirely. God does not struggle. He just creates. He orders. There is no rival. Even Leviathan is God's plaything or pet (Psalm 104). The ancient dragon, the devil, is cast down to earth like a swatted fly falling to the floor (Revelation 12:9). He was never a threat to God, never a contender, rather just a rebel and nuisance to the good of creation, as he still is for us today. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Here is where we come to the inversion known as ex nihilo, which means, “out of nothing.” If you are like most modern people, Latin phrases may make you uncomfortable, which is why they are probably good for you. They can jostle us out of our spiritual slumber. But this is one that you should know about for mental health reasons. Prior to God, there is nothing. This was discussed briefly in the previous inversion, but it is so important that it requires an extended look. What does this mean? Consider a woodworker who wishes to build a birdhouse. To do so, he needs wood, nails, perhaps glue, a saw, a tape measure, and a few other things. To create, we need material that already exists. God, on the other hand, does not. He creates from nothing. The book of Genesis states that God is the beginning of all things. Nothing is before God, not even chaos. There is a reference to a watery, formless void in the verse that follows, but God is prior to this amorphous blob. Also, this “formless void” does not get a proper noun like the Greeks give to “Chaos,” as if it were an American Gladiator. The formless void is just a watery meh. It's nothing. But good luck thinking of “nothing” because we cannot with our finite abilities. Nothing is incomprehensible to us. Ghostbusters did a nice job of showing that we cannot think of “nothing.” The monster tells the Ghostbusters to “Choose the form of ‘The Destructor.'” Venkman then tells his buddies: “Empty your heads! Don't think of anything!” But poor Ray can't think of nothing. He can only think of something. That's when he thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and says, “It just popped in there!” Then the Ghostbusters do battle with a giant marshmallow and make cinema history (and flatten spiritual things into the material realm, but I digress - that's for a later inversion). We cannot think of nothing. We can try to contemplate it, but we can't achieve it, because even if we believe we've found the nothing, we are either thinking of God or fooled, because nothing existed before God. He is first. The Buddhists aim their meditation at nothing and think of the self as god. Catholics do the opposite. Catholics focus prayer and meditation toward God, who created everything out of nothing, including us - and most importantly - perhaps the most critical thing of all to remember is this: we are not God. Repeat after me: “I am not God.” And this is why Buddhism and Christianity are incompatible at the very root; the first principles are in opposition. Buddhism rejects a creator and rejects creation ex nihilo.That's what this inversion is about, as are all the inversions. Not only does God's creation out of nothing disagree with Buddhist thought, but it also rejects Greek and Sumerian myth systems, as well as many modern pseudo-scientific theories where the universe was created from pre-existing parts. Today, some will claim that the atoms have always existed, but the Jew, Muslim, or Christian rebuts this by saying, “I know who made the atoms. They did not always exist.” In ancient times, if some would say that water was first, Abraham would say, “I know who made the water.” In the Sumerian creation mythology, water is first and the gods come later. It's not surprising that we might think of water, the sea, as a primordial source of life, since water supports life, but water alone cannot bring life. The substance of water can quench our thirst or destroy us with a flood. It is a healer and a destroyer. But water itself is not “Being”. Water cannot create life. Water cannot create planets. Water cannot create the protons and electrons is requires to be water. The old myths fail in light of modern science, but creation “out of nothing” does not. Ex nihilo outlasts even science, because God made all things that make science possible. He created science by creating. All of it depends on his being and his act of creation. A scientist has no paper to write without the atoms, just as a woodworker can build no house without the wood that God made. This idea of water is associated with Chaos in various myth models, and the modern arguments of “which came first” do not sound very different from the Sumerian and Greek disorder of where Being came from. Water is not Being, water is material. In other words, it is created by something prior to it. There is nothing before God in Genesis. Not water. Not time. Not a chaos monster. Not an island. Not a pie shop. Nothing. God is first. We cannot describe God, but we can know what he is not, and he is not merely water. To mention something as being prior to God is to misunderstand why God tells Moses his name is “I AM”. In other words, God is “Being Itself.” This first Being must precede everything, even chaos and formlessness. This is the road to mental health. Why modern psychiatry has not yet caught on to this is simultaneously sad and comical. Listening to the modern cures for mental health that exclude God is like watching a coach execute a play repeatedly that hits a brick wall of defensive lineman, when a simple bootleg would bring an easy touchdown. When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and when he says “I am the vine” and when he says “I am the bread of life,” he is saying, “I AM” just as God said to Moses at the burning bush. This “I AM” cannot be stressed enough, and if I fail in this series to fully hammer home the importance of understanding the first “Being” of God, then I too am like the quarterback running the failing dive play instead of the rollout bootleg for the touchdown. For this reason, I do believe Big Pharma fears a comeback of creation out of nothing, but really, I wish they would sell a sugar pill called “ex nihilo” and use their marketing prowess to sell it, because they truly would change people's lives with something better than the dubious SSRI pills they sell. But the more people I meet who believe in the idea of “ex nihilo” have astonishing sanity and positivity toward life. Please, if you're out there Pfizer, Merck, hear my plea: start selling ex nihilo, and make one of those ads where people are prancing about in clover fields, full of joy, but be sure to include a picture of them kneeling in humility before God, otherwise its just another snake oil. The same reason SSRIs fail to fix anything is the same reason that “whiskey ain't workin' anymore,” as the country singers say. Pills and booze are band-aids for a spiritual malady. The inversion of marketing with pills and booze is to pretend that something man-made can fill the void, the sense of nothing, when only one thing can do that, and it is God who created ex nihilo. The many forms of nihilism today extend directly from this rejection of God as the first being, because we often think that nothing existed before God. Modern philosophers and psychologists got stuck in neutral over this issue, with the big names all being atheists, like Heidegger and Sartre and Freud and Jung and Foucault. Is it any wonder that depression is at an all-time high, when the replacement for certainty in the rock of God is a watery void of endless therapy and “vibes”? Can anyone seriously struggle to understand why the “Self” is a crappy god to believe in, when one seasonal cold or inflamed elbow joint can render us weak? When we are unsure that God was first, and before him there was nothing, then we have a gap in our consciousness that nothing cannot fill. In particular, the Self cannot solve it, nor can serotonin. I call this giant, gaping void the “Big Empty” (shoutout to Stone Temple Pilots). And the Big Empty can only be filled by God. The inversion here is that God existed, has always existed, and will exist forever. Once again, the nature of time matters for sanity in knowing that there was a beginning, and being came from God, who preceded all things. That God created “out of nothing” means that you can stop worrying about everything, because quite literally “he has the whole world in his hands.” The children's song is not just a feel-good happy-clappy preschool ditty: it is the key to mental health - because God does indeed have the whole world, the wind and the rain, the little bitty baby, you and me brother/sister, and yes, even ev'rybody in his hands. Why? Because there was nothing before God, and so there is nothing without God. Thus, with God, who created all things, there is also nothing to fear, because he created all things and saw that it was good (more on that later). Because of this, even death is not something to fear, because he has the whole world in his hands. This is also important because when the devil tempts Jesus to make bread from stones, Jesus answers, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” Thus the Word of God feeds us, because it is the source of everything, the pipeline that nourishes all life. The tree of life is rooted in God. The tree of knowledge leads to death. A simple lesson in making choices is to choose the tree of life over the tree of knowledge. Knowledge is a like side hobby, whereas the tree of life is where the joy of connection to the source never ceases. There is nothing before God speaks all into existence. This should comfort you. This should give you focus, not anxiety. We cannot actually think of “nothing” so the closest thing is a formless void. This language is stunningly complex while using simple words, but “beginning,” “created,” “without form and void” - if only I could write so concisely and meaningfully, but I can't. So let's continue with the long-form non-academic journal style that a hack writer like myself loves to use. One way I try, rather pathetically, to imagine the pre-creation nothing is a painter's easel with a blank canvas on it. The canvas can be black or white to represent the absence of anything. But even then I'm not thinking of nothing, I'm thinking of a canvas. Or, I'm thinking of a space like that whitespace in which Neo trains against Morpheus in the movie The Matrix. Yet that is also not nothing, it is a three-dimensional empty space, which is something. I can dimly understand what it means to say “out of nothing, God created the heavens and the earth.” Ex nihilo is a powerful idea that gets brushed aside too easily today by those who believe that atoms always existed, or that there never was a time when the universe did not exist. The bible says that God “created” the numbers, atoms, time, three-dimensional space, and every possible thing that we can think of (or not think of). He created the heavens and the earth, which means a material and spiritual realm, thus even that which we can imagine comes from God. Angels and Elves and Orcs and Fairies and Furies are attempts by us to think of something to explain the spiritual realms, the “heavens,” and as St. Paul said, we only look through a glass darkly now, but will someday see God face to face. But we aren't prepared to do that now, not in our mortal state. To do so in this finite form would destroy us (more on that inversion to come). As created things, as creatures, we can only think in terms of time and space, we cannot think of nothing, nor can we comprehend the infinite. This is why so many people err in an understanding of God in the bible because they think of him like an idol, as something that exists in space and time. God is not like Zeus who lives in a mountain. God made the mountain and everything else out of nothing. He is the Author of all things who lives outside of his work of art, called “Creation.” Famous atheists like Bertrand Russell swing and miss on this when they compare God to objects within the universe. Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins make the same category error. God is outside of time and space, because he created time and space. Ideally, everyone would read the opening to the Catechism of the Catholic Church so we can get our terms straight, because like the word “Love” today, people mean very different things by it. We've flattened “Love” into one word when it can mean four different things - sex/passion, fraternal love, familial love, or agape (total self-giving). Few people say “Love” and clarify what kind. We do the same thing with God and “create.” We are speaking in babbling tongues to each other even when using the same language of English, hence the confusion. When we create, we use existing materials. When God created, he did not. He made the materials - including the materials that make us and allow us to create. He made the immaterial things, too. Stephen Hawking wrote a book called God Created the Integers. This is a terrific title. I almost tip over with joy, for Hawking is so close to faith in the source of Being, but he worshipped the nuts and bolts of the creation that he studied instead of the Creator. He was in hot pursuit of the truth, and was close, yet so far. In his quest for the holy grail of the origins of time and space, he was bringing the language of mathematics so near to theology that he almost wrote a love letter to God. Math is indeed one of the places where our finite minds can get close to this idea of ex nihilo. To say, “God created the integers” is to realize that when God first spoke, he did include the number “1” because before that there was zero - as in nothing. For God to create the number 1 is to create “out of nothing,” and without the number “1” there could never be such a thing as the number “2”, or “3”, or any number beyond. All numbers can only come from God who is infinite, and like the infinite, is comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time. Physics is not even far back enough in the chain, because its laws could be different than they are. But math basics cannot be different. God could have made the gravitational constant different and thus changed the universe. But the integers cannot lie, nor can God. 2+2 must always be 4, and that applies to both God and humans. Mathematics is one path to God, oddly enough. Who would have thought the nerds in math league could be mystics? With mathematics, to contemplate the Integers as a creation of God is to get close to the concept of ex nihilo - creation “out of nothing.” For even the Integers did not exist before God made them. Stephen Hawking, even if he didn't believe, had so many gifts, that it always seems worth sending up a prayer for his soul (and for the many other seekers who never came home) just in case Purgatory is his residence. He appeared to pass away with the same rejection of Bertrand Russell on his lips, saying, “Not enough evidence, God, sorry.” Perhaps he sealed his eternity by the rejection of God, by dismissing the first commandment, but surely there is hope in his turning in the last hour, to confirm his belief in who “Created the Integers.” This is why the danger of knowledge can lead to pride over humility, and pride is the false guide of so many souls. St. Dismas and St. Gertrude: pray for Stephen Hawking, and pray for us all. In short, we are finite - we are in a box called the universe, or space-time. Yet there is a spiritual reality that we can feel, know, sense, and even reach somehow in prayer. Because we are creatures, no amount of LSD or marijuana will allow us to escape our state of being, even though we know there is another dimension, or perhaps more than one. Although trippy drug experiences may seem transcendent, it can never grasp what it means to be God. Worse, drug experiences are all about pulling God toward the self, and not the reception of God's grace. We cannot bootstrap our way to God, we have to be silent to let the still, small voice enter our ears. This is why prayer works, because when you pray, you need to stop trying and just be. Because what is “Being”? It is a connection to God. When Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” he was telling us that “to be” is to connect to the source of all being. This is why Christians who are born again make no sense to unbelievers - they have a life in them that is inexplicable. In other creation stories, matter exists before creation, which seems odd until you hear modern people say that “the atoms have just always existed.” This is an echo of the Greek philosopher Democritus who felt that atoms and motion were eternal. Thus the writer of Genesis shouts, “No! Atoms did not exist before God. Before God was nothing, not atoms, not photons, not electrons, not strings, and not even the greatest invention of all, not even ice cream.” Again, we pass over this inversion with a yawn, despite the fact that like the first inversion, time, this inversion dumps a whole pantheon of gods and assumptions into the dumpster. Zeus? Get serious. Gaia? Take a number. All of the Canaanite, Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, and Roman gods are booted out of the Biblical worldview. And I say good riddance, because it is much more fun to read Ovid as literature anyway. However, the ancient writers of Genesis did not have the luxury of looking at Moloch or Zeus as literary figures that explained phenomena in the world. No, this was a deadly bet in the declaration of the creation story, because the people of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses did not go with the flow when it came to creation. They did not believe in the maxim, “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” (I realize that's an anachronism). To say, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is to elevate God, the one true God, over all the human-like gods of their surrounding peoples. To give an example of what this would be like today, consider how people react when someone takes a knee during the National Anthem during an NFL game. Or, you can test this today, simply by posting on social media: “Abortion kills a human life.” This upsets the worldview of others. Overzealous patriots worship the flag, and those who worship the self do not believe in the souls of certain people groups, especially the unborn. To speak of God as a reality today still invites anger. The twentieth century had more violence than any century in history and repeatedly the Jews and Catholics were killed for their association with belief in God. Right now in Nigeria or Nicaragua or Israel, your declaration of faith is a deadly statement. That is what Genesis is doing - it is giving a voice to that view, that opinion. It is inverting the idea of what God is. It is asserting a concept of God that makes all the king's horses and all the king's men look foolish for offering sacrifices up to absurd idols. Our current idols and religions are really not that different from Moloch or Zeus. What is most important in this inversion is that it tips over the canoe in which Zeus, Protagoras, and Richard Dawkins were all riding in, paddling backward in their fictions. Why is this inversion so powerful? This is a threatening implication because creation out of nothing kicks the stool out from faulty origin stories and causes them to tumble. Most myths, including ones from modern science, are attempts to invert the worldview of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. They claim that water or atoms or a turtle was first. The Jewish and Christian origin story says that there was no-thing, not one thing, before Being Itself, and that Being is more commonly known as God. And how mighty a being he must be to craft such delights, like integers, atoms, time, gravity, the nuclear forces, light, water, earth, fire, wind, and (much later) pie shops - all out of nothing. That is a creator before whom we must kneel in awe and wonder and love and a healthy fear. Poets like William Blake understood this wonder. When he wrote about the fierce beauty of a tiger with its stripes, we can get a sense of the power, depth, and stunning awesomeness of God's ability to make things:Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?He is asking: “Who or what could possibly create such a thing as a tiger?” The answer is God. Once this is understood, we can also begin to know why the Proverb says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” For it is only infinite power and glory that can do such a thing as creation ex nihilo.Further reading: Isn't Creation Ex Nihilo Logically Impossible?The Case for Creation from NothingChurch fathers comments on ex nihilo This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

With the fourth word of Genesis, the second inversion arrives. At this rate, I may not get far, because here a long pause is required on this word. “In the beginning, God…” There is no word more argued about, discussed, twisted, bargained over, or rejected than the word God. We all have some idea what it means. But more importantly, what we believe at this top level affects the heart and mind. What we believe about this fourth word of the bible ultimately directs how we live. This acceptance or rejection of God, and what that word means, acts like a compass along the journey of life. Where we end up depends on the compass we use as well. We can have wildly different understandings of it, but let me stop here to address the most common errors: the word God means neither cop nor genie. Many bad understandings regarding God fall into either the cop or the genie category. For some, he is both a genie and a cop. But this inversion suggests to you that he is neither. He is several things that can be asserted with confidence, that is, with faith, which is what the word confidence means:* He is one. He exists. He is first.* He is the sheer act of “being” itself.* He is an all-powerful Creator. * He is a loving father, not a bully, who desires your return.* He is true, good, and beautiful. That is all you need to know for your mental health regarding this inversion. Good night! The end. But clearly more must be said, even though we could (and should) just contemplate all of these in silence. There is much to be said, so starting from the top, this inversion will focus on the oneness of God.He is not many. He is not none. He is one. (Truly, he is three-in-one, but even then he is one. Later inversions will discuss the Trinity.) Genesis is not a shouting match, but it is quietly entering a deadly serious argument at this point. Genesis is in dispute with every other culture and myth in the world. By this fourth word, the first book of Moses sets his belief apart from every culture - literally, every culture - that surrounds him. Before Moses, Abraham believed the same, but Moses and his scribes wrote it down. This is important, because had he not written it down, Jesus would not have said so often, “It is written…” Jesus invokes the written word of Moses and the Prophets rather often, especially to rebuke the devil during the temptations in the wilderness. If you believe Jesus is God, and Jesus quotes what is “written” by Moses and the Prophets, then these words have weight - infinite weight - in how to view the world and, by extension, how we should live our lives. Thus, what we think of God matters greatly in how we view scripture, the world, and the spiritual life. If Jesus is God, and Jesus quotes scripture, and God inspired scripture, then God used human authors to convey his eternal word. This makes for a simple waterfall set of conditions that fall like gravity into place:If Jesus is God… And Jesus quotes scripture as the word of God… Then Jesus inspired the sacred writers… Meaning Jesus authored the scriptures.That was mighty kind of God, in my opinion, to give us the scriptures. Even more kind, he came down to us in the form of man to go ahead and make things more clear to the apostles so they could pass on the tradition and teach us. But this should give you some idea about why we all like to argue about scripture. We argue because we disagree about who or what is God. Further, we argue about how he reveals himself, and to whom. But most of all, we argue because we dislike authority and the Catholic Church believes it has the teaching authority. This is why we argue. Even atheists love to argue about all of this, but they come at scripture wearing a bent pair of glasses, because the word God means something very different if you reject the idea of God. Likewise, you cannot understand the cross of Christ and the resurrection without at least getting the foundational idea of God in place first, not to mention the idea of an ultimate authority in heaven and on earth. Thus, it's no surprise that the “word of God” only makes sense if you believe in the supernatural existence of God. Truly, reading the bible without belief in God is like reading a bike repair manual without believing in bikes. Even if you believe in God, the perception of it leads to wildly different conclusions, which is why we have such wide-ranging belief systems as Islam and Jehovah's Witnesses and thirty-one flavors of Protestant churches. The bible is a difficult read, and this is why the “bible alone” is insufficient as a teaching authority, because we can see with our own eyes how different each group uses that teaching authority.Where we are at in this opening line of the bible is the origin story of all creation. Every culture needs a creation story. Every culture has one, and even atheists have a faith-based creation story. We certainly have our stories about the creation of America, just as the Soviets did (or tried to), or the Italians, or the English, so this should not seem odd to anyone. Comic books have an origin issue. Businesses have foundation narratives. My favorite pie shop, Betty's Pies (“The Best Pies in Minnesota”) has a founding story about Betty. Without a story, we are left stuck in a no-man's-land. We're like the orphan Annie who runs away from Miss Hannigan in search of her real parents. As it turns out, the beginnings of things need a cause, a character, a maker, or doer, or a force. The choices for who lifted the curtain on this grand play called “Creation” come in three sizes: many, one, or none. Also, you cannot mix these - you must pick one, and only one. Genesis declares that the answer is one. And if you think you don't have to choose, you are incorrect. Really, you have already chosen. You may think you have chosen in your mind, but you choose by how you live today and every day. Actions reveal the choice, as Jesus described in the great Parable of the Two Sons. Actions speak louder than words. Every seeker must accept or reject God's oneness. For the seeker, the treasure to be found is the truth, but only one choice is not fool's gold. Every angsty teen, every doubting Thomas, every physicist, every Greek mythologist, every internet atheist, every Christian and Muslim - truly, anyone who is seeking truth must venture into the test of oneness. Genesis is inverting the worldview that accepts the “many gods” and the “no gods” hypotheses. Genesis states that there is one God.This may seem trivial but it's not. Genesis declares a truth that many do not want to be true. And even those who say “Amen” often do not fully understand the implications of what this “oneness” means. Greek myth has a story of creation. The old mythology is a search for the truth, just as astronomy, psychology, and chemistry are also deep investigations into aspects of truth. And we all want the truth, more than anything, except for when we want to do something that requires a different truth. But what is truth? Ah, that is the question. Now we are getting warmer. Hamlet asked the great question of “To be or not to be,” and Hamlet was right. That is indeed the question. He was close to the answer just by using the word “being.” What does it mean “to be”? We are getting warmer still. Pontius Pilate, long before the fictional Hamlet, said it even better when he asked Jesus straight up: “What is truth?” This question of “What is truth?” and “What does it mean to be?” are related. When Moses asks for God's name at the burning bush, God tells him that his name is “I AM”. I found this rather confusing as a child. But just consider what “I AM” means. This is the verb for “to be.” God might have said it another way, as in “I BE.” In fact, that phrase sounds like it could be the name of a modern pop song. “To be” is to have come from God. Being comes from God. Being and truth both come from the simple, beautiful, transcendent oneness of God. God is to be. John Keats said “Beauty is truth,” but God's being and truth go together with beauty. Descartes said “I think, therefore I am,” but thinking is not being. No, God is “to be” and he created us, giving us our being. In any case, it's worth pointing out that Zeus is none of these things: he is not good, true, or beautiful. Zeus is an ugly power-hungry shape-shifting rapist. That is not the God of the bible. This inversion is easy to spot if living in the ancient world. Today, we have different versions of the pagan gods, but they are still around. They have moved into other forms, such as honor, wealth, pleasure, and power - but rest assured, for every god of the ancients, we worship strange versions of it now. More important, however, is the subtle inversion regarding Zeus and every other contender god. None of the other gods are the act of “being.” Again, God's name is “I AM.” In most stories about Zeus, he shifts into the shape of a swan or a bull, so he could say the opposite: “I am who I am not.” This is exactly what the shape-shifting devil presents to Eve: a lie. Once again, like in the first inversion, regarding the nature of time having a beginning, a middle, and an end, there is one Creator, one “sheer act of Being,” and one source of all truth. This, once again, is an inversion upon which you can rest your head, where your finite mind can focus. One true God is much better to aim your meditation toward than nothingness, and much more sane than thinking about the pantheon of Greek and Sumerian gods. However, when in prayer, you can easily find out which gods you worship, because your distractions will lead you there. The distractions reveal your fragmented understanding of God, as they pull you away from the oneness of God. Knowing that God is one is an act of faith, because no amount of proof can sway the mind alone to accept it. But it is an act of faith anchored in reason. And reason can take you to the doorstep that there is one Creator, but faith is needed to knock on the door. As St. John Paul II wrote, faith and reason are the two wings that make us fly. St. Anselm and St.Thomas Aquinas presented rational arguments of the “ways” to know that God is one, and that God is logical, and that God is beautiful. People can and will argue until the end of time over God's existence - and this is a good thing because skeptics often come to believe in the oneness of God in a most profound way, such as Augustine, Dostoyevsky, or Antony Flew. To doubt the oneness of God is not a defect, it is part of the journey back to God. However, argument will only take you to the door. You still have to knock, enter, kneel, and pray. This is a mystery and it is wonderful. God seems to have designed it this way for our own good. The most common doubt today is about God's existence. But there is no existence at all without God, who is the act of being itself. When we doubt God's existence, we are much like the “self-made” billionaire who thinks his fortune came entirely from himself instead of the complex set of circumstances that were needed to allow for his success. In his self-satisfaction, the billionaire ignores the whole and only sees himself. Sure, he may have worked hard, but he didn't create the infrastructure, culture, opportunities, timing, talent, and need that led to his wealth. He did not educate himself or feed himself as a child. In other words, he sees everything in terms of the self. (Hint: we are all the billionaires in this metaphor).The pursuit of wealth is a search for meaning, as are the pursuits of pleasure, honor, and power. But the real search is for the origin story, the place of rest, the giver of life - we are searching for home - but we confuse where that place is at. Seekers who are burdened with the burning need to find the truth will undoubtedly try on the differing hypotheses of “many gods” and “zero gods” before they really look into the possibility of “one God.” With the Zero hypothesis, this leaves only the self and the void to find answers - there is no soul to save. With the Many hypothesis, it leads to a flattening and scattering, a divided mind and separated body and soul, a rudderless chase. With the One hypothesis, there is no confusion. There is a body and a soul, and one source, one origin, one beginning, one ending. This puts solid ground underfoot and a proper heaven overhead. It almost seems too simple of an answer, because there is no struggle. Mythology seems more exciting, more dramatic (but that is the next inversion after this one to discuss). The One hypothesis of Genesis also shrugs off the coercive policemen concept, as God creates out of his goodness. He is the Artist who creates because he can create. Moreover, God creates and does not engage in transactions with his creation, but rather made everything for its beauty. He is a great artist who creates out of love and calls all of this creation to himself. St. Anselm called the Christian search a way of “faith seeking understanding.” You might say that those who believe in Greek myth or pure materialism also have a faith seeking understanding. Even the atheist is a believer in no gods, and that a faith in nothing must seek understanding through reason alone. With all texts, with all searches, we must take something on faith to find the truth. This is unavoidable. To compare a creation story from Greek myth, from Hesiod, against Genesis, let's take just the opening lines:Here's the opening from Hesiod's creation story (after he finishes praising the Muses):In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss, but then Gaia, the Earth, came into being…With that one line, we have a whole cast of characters to consider, and it only expands from there. With Hesiod, we don't just have to bother with the Muses, now we have three more beings, and soon there are about fifty. Genesis starts much cleaner, simpler. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.Done. The writer of Genesis starts out with a roundhouse. He says, “Let's cut the nonsense: God was first and created everything.” So much is said in so few words. The first line of Genesis is a masterful sentence that never stops speaking. But what else is the fourth word of the bible saying? What is God? We know there are basically three options: no gods, many gods, or one God. If the bible is declaring one God, which it is, what does that mean for us? Our idea of God has everything to do with where we came from and where we think we are going. I'm not yet talking about the big “why,” but just the where for now: where did we come from and where are we going? I often think of the analogy of trying to fly a rocket to the moon. First, the rocket must be pointed upward, not toward the earth. The Zero gods hypothesis aims the rocket at the ground. That rocket is going nowhere. The One hypothesis and the Many hypothesis is aiming the rocket upward. But clearly, that is not enough, for even a rocket aimed upward must have precise calculations to reach its target. Missing by a single degree will leave the crew lost in outer space. This inversion is about calibrating and setting the sights on the right target, charting the destination. Declaring that there is one God, not many, and not zero, will get you going in the right direction (and later inversions will fine-tune the landing). With this inversion coming so soon in sacred scripture, this sets apart the people of Moses from all surrounding families and nations. The Canaanites and Egyptians of Biblical fame did not have one God, they had many. Abraham must have seemed a strange man in the ancient world and even had to leave his home in order to follow the one God. His city likely worshipped a moon god, meaning their rocket was aimed at the wrong heavenly body. Abraham must depart because he knows that will end in disaster. His faith in God Most High is not the norm. It's not popular. But he knows it is the truth. Even today, Abraham would have to leave home, because we still have many gods. We have believers in no gods and believers in many gods, and then we have believers in the one God. Mythology as we know it today is what we refer to when we want to talk about dead religions. When the Sumerians were worshipping moon gods or the Greeks were rocking out at a Dionysus fest, they were not saying, “Man, I love our mythology!” No, those gods and goddesses were real to them, or at least some of them. The household gods of Romans, which taught men and women to live virtuously, were not like Calico Critter figurines that didn't mean anything to them. These were meaningful objects, symbols of unseen realities. Genesis, in its quiet boldness, states out loud that all of these little gods are ugly babies. Really, the sacred writer just cannot pretend any longer - these are false gods. Thus, these are fighting words for people and nations who have entire lives, rituals, and power structures built around these gods. Every domain of life, from hearth and home to war and sex, all had a god or goddess. Genesis rejects all of them. We have them today too, which we will get to later. Again, we have lived with the idea of one God so long that we cannot comprehend how hard it was for Abraham and Moses to say, “All of your gods are fake. Only one is real.” This is the inversion that brings much hatred against Jews and Catholics to this day. Yet while we nod along about the idea of one God, we often live as if there were Many or Zero. But why? Why is it so irritating to believers in the Zero or Many hypotheses? Why does saying, “There is only one God” irritate us? Why does saying, “There are no gods” bother people? Why does saying “There are many gods” make us do a double-take? The reason is that it matters immensely, because like our view of time, our sanity and cosmology rests upon: 1.) Does God exist? And if the answer is yes, then: 2.) What is the nature of that being (or beings)? The question of whether or not God exists is fundamental to how your life is lived, how your family eats, and how your government operates. This is where we build our lives. Like it or not, upon this rock we stack up all other things. And this choice always requires an act of faith. Even if we select the Zero hypothesis, that is an act of faith. The internet atheists make an act of faith when they say, “There are no gods or God” just as much as when a Catholic says, “Credo in unum Deum” (I believe in one God). The “unbelievers” actually are believers, they just subscribe to the belief that there is only matter and energy. That is a creed, also. There is no proof for either side that can be used to win the other over by pure argument or technique. It is not pure geometry. Nor are feelings enough to prove anything. There is only an act of faith in the end. The act of faith in One God, Many gods, or Zero gods comes down to an act of the will, where we submit our will and intellect to a choice. When I felt there were no gods, never once did I say, “God help me be willing to be willing to believe no gods exist.” Why not? Because I didn't want to believe in God or gods. I wanted to mock the idea that God existed, crown Jesus with thorns, and be unburdened by the consequences of what it means to say “God exists.” Because if you say those words, then it follows that God is not just matter. Then it follows that God matters. Then it matters in how you live your life. But wait - the bible just says “God” in Genesis 1:1, it doesn't give any details. What kind of God is this one God? Is this the clockmaker God of the Deists? Is it a vindictive God? Is it a God merely made in our likeness? Is this an invented God to control people? Is this a God of convenience for power? Is this a God you can barter with? Is this a God who built the universe and then departed, or is he watching us with his many eyeballs right now? These are the questions that the rest of the bible answers. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church has a nice little paragraph to help us here.Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God--"the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"--with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God. (CCC 40-42) In this inversion, we can start small, without diving into the nature of God too far. It's often easier to say what God is not than to say what God is, because being bound in time and space does not allow us the language to describe God, but it allows us to know there is a God. Once again, we are given all that we need for salvation and sanity, not every last detail that we want out of curiosity. Just as hunger goes with our craving for food, and our thirst matches our need for water, so does our spiritual longing pair nicely with the God that created all things. Our hearts seek God, and God is all that can quench that seeking thirst. But mostly, in this inversion, what Genesis is saying is:* God exists.* God is one.* God was first.* God created. This inversion marks a departure from all other creation stories. It casts out all myth systems and modern atheism. In the Greek creation story, Chaos gets first billing and then mother Earth just pops into being, as if birthed by itself. The point that Genesis makes is that the first mention of any “being” is God, who is “Being Itself.” Chaos is not first. Earth is not first. Nothing is first. But God precedes that nothing. Surely it is proper for the first character of the bible to be God, from whom all being is sustained. “It is right and just,” as we say at the Catholic Mass. This is also why Genesis is so memorable. It's simple. It's beautiful. It's good. No one memorizes Hesiod, not just because it's longer, but because it's not as good, not as simple. We don't memorize Hesiod because it's false. It lacks the three transcendentals of goodness, truth, and beauty. Many people know the opening line of the bible because it is terrific writing and speaks a truth that makes sense, even if many wish it wasn't so. We can't look away from Genesis for a reason: it is a masterpiece, and masterpieces do something to us. The first eleven chapters of Genesis cover massive territory, but there is nothing that says quite so much as the very first line. This is much like the Apostles' Creed, with the opening line of “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.” A lifetime can be spent meditating on that alone. To meditate on Chaos and the Abyss does not satisfy in the same way. In fact, Chaos and Abyss in capitalized letters sound like a couple of rollercoasters at Six Flags or Cedar Point. (What a strange time to be alive, when we name our fun distractions after the things that terrify us - Leviathan, Behemoth, Goliath, Medusa…I suspect an amusement park will just go all in and soon name a rollercoaster “Satan, the Accuser,” but let's not get ahead of future inversions to be discussed.)I realize that there are many differing accounts of the Greek, Sumerian, and Roman creation stories, so Hesiod's writing is not the only version. However, all of them start with something other than one God. This is why the inversion of Genesis is so stark in contrast. This inversion, of coming to know that there is one God, is not like the fleeting thrill of reading about Chaos and Gaia. This is no cheap Double-Bubble parade gum that grows stale after a short time, but rather it is endless food for the mind and the soul. The idea of one God, on its face, does not seem as interesting as a tale that begins with Chaos, the Abyss, and Gaia's spontaneous generation. If I had two movie choices to select from, I would choose the one starring Chaos in the leading role. But Genesis is not a movie. It is not about entertainment. Genesis is going higher and deeper than what Hollywood or Greek myth does. Genesis does not set out to titillate and persuade. So while Chaos may be more exciting in the short term, it makes far more sense logically and spiritually that before all things were, God is. And merely four words into Genesis, the sacred writer has inverted the nature of time, and asserted the existence of one God, and declared the number of God is One. This is why, as these inversions gather together, it becomes increasingly clear why the tribes of Jacob cannot help but be called “the chosen people,” because these differences are not small, not subtle, but glaring and sharp, like a knife that carves them out from a world of very different expressions of faith. In closing, the mention of God in Genesis upends other worldviews. We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance. God creates freely "out of nothing":If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants. (CCC 296)God exists. God is one. God is first. Many people have gotten caught up in an academic distraction about the word Elohim being used in various lines of the bible. This is where personal interpretation of the bible can go wild, like college students on spring break. This is where deep dives into Giants and extra-biblical texts like the Book of Enoch and the Divine Council become unhealthy distractions. Interpretation of the bible should never be approached as a research exercise, but as an encounter with God, in a living tradition. If there are two books to keep on your shelf, or to take along to a desert island, to keep from getting lost or going insane, it is these: The Bible and The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Many heresies start when the idea of the oneness of God is discarded or doubted. Rest assured, however, that God is one, even if he is three-in-one. The many and none hypotheses are upside-down worlds. The oneness of the Trinity has fingerprints all over the bible, even in the opening line. The Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is still one God. Yes, there are other created spirits, like angels, but there is no other God than the one true God, also known as God Most High. The Trinity is beyond full comprehension, and this is a wonderful mystery to pray on. As always, prayer is the key, as it pleases God and is offered like heavenly incense to Him. To embrace the certainty of God while letting go of the desire for all divine data is a liberating act for your mind, body, and soul. The certainty and mystery of God's oneness is glorious. With that, let's move to the next inversion, which happens in the fifth word of the bible, which is the word “created.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

When we read “In the beginning…” we must stop right there to contemplate the first inversion. The bible begins with these three words and tips over an apple-cart of worldviews. This idea of time having a beginning upsets various ancient and modern philosophies by saying, “I respectfully disagree: time had a beginning.” Many people then and now will claim that time has always existed, that there was no beginning. The bible inverts this idea. Why is this radical? It depends on where you live and what worldview you have been taught. Many in the ancient world believed that time was a flat circle, or that time always existed, or that time is an illusion. Many people today also believe those same ideas, and have added more variations, such as that time is a social construct. Most people today accept the Big Bang theory, which mostly aligns with the opening phrase of the bible, but not everyone accepts it.None of the ideas of “circular” or “cyclic” time fit with the Jewish and Christian view of time. The circular time models are kind of like the Ouroboros of a snake-eating its own tail. This image is a good metaphor for the view of time that many hold, such as believers in karma or reincarnation or Stoicism or The Matrix or Groundhog Day. “In the beginning” swings an axe to the root of these beliefs and philosophies. For instance, Hindus and Buddhists are on the outside looking in just from these three little words. Beliefs about “eternal return” and reincarnation suggest an infinite loop. Stoics, too, did not believe in “a beginning” but rather the idea of eternal return. Genesis may have been written down before the Stoics or the Pythagoreans wrote down their ideas, but the idea of circular time was around long before the Greeks or Moses spilled ink on the topic. But the message of scripture is that Genesis clearly disagrees with the “eternal return” time loop. “In the beginning” takes this declaration even further when we get to the creation story, because time itself was created. Another way of saying this is that time is a creature. Time was created just like planets and people. The same goes for energy or gravity. There is a beginning, and that beginning was created by God. What the bible does not say is that there are multiple beginnings. Genesis does not start with “In this beginning…” or “In the current beginning…” or “In the 999th beginning…” There are not multiple beginnings, there is one beginning. This time and space that we are living in had one beginning. Now if the Creator wanted to have more than one version of the universe, he could do that. Moreover, there may have been other beginnings, but we don't know - nor do we need to know for our salvation. And here is a critical point of this inversion and all that follow: The books of the bible tell us exactly what we need to know for our salvation - and no more. What sacred scripture gives us is all that we will ever need to do good works and seek the highest good, which is God. Worth noting here as well is that the word “salvation” is based on the word “salve,” as in healing medicine. The sacred books administer to us all that we need for our healing. This is hard to accept for modern people. We want more data, more information. We want certainty. But the bible opens with one of the greatest mysteries of all, which is time. These mysteries, if you come to understand the inversions, are wonderful things to ponder without ever knowing the answer. This is what St. Paul meant when he spoke of seeing through a glass darkly: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” So it goes with our understanding of time. What the bible says (without saying so) is what we partially know by instinct: if there are other time-space continuums, we cannot fully know it - not yet - because we can only know the time and space we live within now. Multiple universes? Yes, there could be, but it doesn't really matter for our salvation. Could there have been a million beginnings before this one? Yes, but it doesn't matter for our salvation. Once we know this, we can call our mothers or invite a neighbor over for a pop. Once time is accepted as having one beginning, we can move on and live happily without worrying about all of the possible other beginnings and endings. This universe is the only time and space where we eat, sleep, marry, raise children, and die. This is simple to understand and allows us to go ahead and get started doing just those things. Time is a gift to us - it is not a curse, but a cure. In the time we have, God gives us all sufficient grace to understand our purpose and place in time. All of creation is something like a book that has a first page, or a movie with its opening scene. Consider a play like Macbeth, where the opening line is the First Witch in a deserted place saying: “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” Surely, within Shakespeare's pile of manuscripts, there could have been an alternative opening line. Perhaps in alternate manuscripts the witches would have decided to meet at the mall or in a nightclub. But in the book we have, they intend to meet again “In thunder, lightning, or in rain.” There could have been infinite other manuscripts, with infinite other opening lines, with wild versions like one where Macbeth makes balloon animals for Duncan, or where Lady MacBeth starts a food drive - but we will never know, and none of those other manuscripts are relevant for our understanding of the play Macbeth. In the play that exists, the one that we read, Macbeth is forever going to slay Duncan and Lady Macbeth always will be power-hungry. Whether or not Shakespeare wrote other versions, the version we have is what is. It has a beginning and an ending. As for the ending, Jesus mentions a cliffhanger about the “age to come” without great detail, telling people that it is only for the Father to know when the world will end, and not for him to reveal it. He came to tell us what we need to know, not what we want to know. This confirms that sacred scripture gives us only what we need, and no more. Our curiosity is the cause of so much of our trouble and Jesus, who is fully human and fully divine, is all too aware of our catlike ways. Rather than give away the ending, Jesus is that good friend who already saw the movie but doesn't spill the spoiler. The end is not to be announced, otherwise it wouldn't be much of a climax. A natural question for our intellect is: “What is the nature of time?” Who does not look into the night sky and ponder time? Who does not look at a fading photograph of past memories and consider the march of hours? Who has not been at a funeral of a loved one and wondered where did all the time go? But in this question, “What is the nature of time?” we can get lost. This question alone is enough to take us into a wilderness of intellectual drift. To simplify it, consider the two basic answers: Time is circular, or time is linear. The inversion states that the answer is a both/and. Time is linear, with cycles of events within time that appear to repeat but are unique. As a whole, what is needed for our understanding there is a beginning and an ending. Physicists speak of “the arrow of time,” which actually matches the idea of biblical time and salvation history. It is linear, not an endless loop. Yet there are loops within the arrow. We have lives that begin and end, like circles moving along the arrow. If you look at the shape of a nautilus shell or a galaxy or a hurricane, you may get a sense of this arrow of time and the patterns within it. There are loops within time of beginnings and endings. We cannot think of anything without time and space invading our ideas, but God can because he created space and time. God is eternal. Eternal means “outside of time.” We, on the other hand, are not outside of time - we are temporal. God does not experience time like we do. Thus, he already knows the beginning and the ending. But we do not. Now, this can spin us round and round until we fall down over the concepts of fate and free-will, but rest assured, both are true. God knows our fate, yet we have free-will. This is a wonderful paradox to embrace, not something to despair over. In fact, this makes reading a play like Macbeth, where fate and free-will are a heavy theme, much more enjoyable. Thus, this first inversion of the bible about time prunes away many alternative worldviews. Socrates and Greek mythology are some of the last ideas standing after a mere three words. Reincarnation is out. Karma is out. Stoicism is out. The Matrix is out. Groundhog Day is out. Before we even reach the fourth word of the bible, every circular and illusory view of time is set aside as error. The worldview of Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David, Elijah, Mary, and Jesus declares a beginning, which means there will also be an end. To say that “time began” is a declaration. It is a rudder for living in troubled waters and windy seas, for the journey's destination has a purpose beyond power, money, wealth, or pleasure. Moreover, it assures one in difficulty that “This too shall pass.” Atheists ask, “If time was created, what was God doing before that?” But the answer is simple: the question makes no sense to the Christian view of time. They don't understand what they are asking, because before creation, time did not exist. “In the beginning…” is before time. Only God was, because God is. He is Being Itself. This is why when Moses asks for God's name, the answer is “I am.” This is mind-bending but worth pondering, for there is nothing without the Being of God's Being. (More on this in upcoming inversions.) When we misunderstand time and who created it, we can get in trouble as to who will conclude time and how it will happen. What we need to know is only this:Time began. Time was created. Time will end. As for “the end,” it is coming. The end will arrive when God's will is done, not ours. When the end comes, there will be no time to modify our behavior or turn back, “for as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Thus, there is no need to be concerned with when time as we know it will end, just as we need not worry about exactly when time began. Sufficient for our salvation and sanity is to know: time began; time will end. The best answer to this mystery of time is exactly as Job concluded about other gifts of creation: “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” To experiment in the belief of eternal return, or circular time, is to go dancing on slippery rocks that may lead to a concussion and mental instability. The only answers on the circular loop of those slippery rocks is nihilism or the will-to-power. Why? Because when time is just a loop, God is not the one that gives life. If all will fade away and return over and over, self-destruction or self-salvation is the only means to get off the spinning wheel. Oblivion or victory: choose your escape. For physicists and philosophers, it is an enjoyable task to argue over the nature of time, or string theory, or the multiverse, or other speculations, but for those who have to get kids to school and laundry to fold, “In the beginning…” is enough. Truly, a lifetime can be spent pondering the nature of time and its many theories. This is wonderful for those who can afford such a lifestyle, but not practical for most. And here's the funny thing: this idea of “In the beginning…” is where the greatest philosophers and scientists have ended up anyway, such as Plato, Aquinas, and most recently Stephen Hawking. The conclusion that came to both St. Augustine and Albert Einstein, after spending years pondering time, was Genesis 1:1. They both said, yes, it's true: “In the beginning” is correct. But we do not need to be Stephen Hawking or St. Augustine to understand this, as the Word of God has the answer you need in the first three words. A child or adult can sleep peacefully knowing that “In the beginning” is the correct understanding of the nature of time. Time began. Time will end. For those who have to live in the world, the declaration of “In the beginning” fits with reality, where we see beginnings and endings everywhere: of days, of meals, of classes, of jobs, of friendships, of automobiles, of diets, of seasons, of wars, of affections, of plants, of pets. Within the arrow of time we observe little beginnings and endings, and they are not purely circular and going nowhere or repeating without meaning; they are the same, yet unique, like every human life or nautilus shell. They may look the same, but they are all going somewhere and they cannot be repeated in the same way again, ever. Thus our time in creation is our one chance. This is not just a read-through or simulation or a scrimmage: this is the real thing. The next inversion we will look at is the very next word that follows “In the beginning…” That word is God.Further reading: Horn, Trent. “Thinking Deeply About the Nature of Time.” Catholic Answers. 23 July. 2020. https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/thinking-deeply-about-the-nature-of-timeBarr, Stephen. “St. Augustine's Relativistic Theory of Time.” Church Life Journal, 7 Feb. 2020, https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/augustines-push-against-the-limits-of-time/.Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Penguin, 2008. Book 11. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

There is a reason that the Christian message and the bible have such staying power. There is a reason why the books of Moses are so radical and different from all other texts. There is a reason why the tradition of the people of Abraham is so strange to outsiders, and even angering, and why it makes perfect sense to insiders. Most importantly, there is a reason why everyone cannot stop talking about Jesus. There is a reason why and it is this: the message of Christianity tips everything we think we know upside down. But it is actually right-side-up. The bible is full of inversions that disrupt our assumptions. Rather, it is a series of inversions, one after another. An unfolding of paradoxes and mysteries reveals how and why these inversions matter, including when and where and by whom. Some of the inversions will upset us, while others we may accept without bother. We will have certain inversions that rankle us more than others, and those are the best inversions to meditate upon. The books of Moses invert the teachings and worldviews of the old Sumerian, Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Roman thinking. The books of the prophets continue the inversions. Christ completes it. But this is not only applicable to the ancient world. It is equally relevant now, or even more so, as a flip to the old ways seems to be happening. For a long time, we understood the inversions and assumed these ideas were common sense, but as familiarity breeds contempt, we took standing on our feet for granted. But for about five hundred years now, we have been gradually reverting to standing on our heads. To get right-side up again, we only need to consider the inversions again, with fresh eyes. The old language may feel difficult to understand, too time-consuming, too distant in the past; but none of that is really true. If we make even the slightest effort to read the bible, we can see these inversions playing out clearly in our own lives. Further, we can observe these inversions right now in our institutions, assumptions, societies, and families. The language of the old books may seem difficult, but with a small effort, it can be understood. Many cast out the book without serious review, calling the writings “Bronze Age myths.” The implication here is that those of us who own smartphones are surely more rich in wisdom than the old shepherds of the Middle East. But this is close-minded. The wisdom of the old books goes deep into the heart, and that is a place where we often do not wish to look. Yet if we are open-minded, we will do just that. Modern ideas may have muddied the water, but it can be made clear again with patience, if we simply stop thrashing about and let the words speak. The reason Jewish, Islamic, or Catholic thought either makes total sense to you or looks completely upside down depends on whether you are standing on your feet or your head. And even if you are standing on your feet, the eyes and ears can still fool you into hearing what you want to hear, and seeing what you want to see. But the real benefit of coming to recognize these inversions is not about being right or wrong, it is about sanity. We speak constantly of mental health. If you live in this world and you sense that there is something “off about it,” then you are likely sensing that something is upside-down. And there is a reason why the message of Christ calls people from every generation - it is because people always sense the upside-down and wish to be right-side-up. In the end, every person chooses whether to stand on their feet or their head. Some come to recognize these inversions and afterward can never again view the world the same. They have a secret that nothing can touch. No matter your genetics, culture, or experience, you can benefit by pausing to consider the inversions presented by the Jewish and Christian traditions. You have nothing to lose in doing so, and perhaps much to gain. As for me in writing this, I pray that I lead no one astray, but only present that which can help unfold the wonders of this confusing book and worldview. I am not qualified to write this. I have no abbreviations to add after my name, no prior published works to present, and no status as a great thinker. I'm an IT troubleshooter, a hack writer, and often a maker of poor decisions. I admit these shortcomings to make a point: if I can see these inversions, so can anyone else. From here, I proceed with fear and trembling that I may teach errors, but having been brought back to life, to keep this all to myself seems a bit selfish. I have to share it and I will pray for forgiveness if I mislead anyone. I hope to share these inversions with charity and love for all who read them. Most of all, because I can't paint or sing all that well, I try to write. When my kids were young, they would trace their hand and draw a picture to give to me as a gift, and I would cherish it because they made it out of love. So I write this for God. This is my scribbling way of thanking God for helping me find true north again. It's not Dante or Michelangelo, but since God is a loving father, I offer this to him, along with all of myself - out of obedience, awe, gratitude, and trust - hoping that he might magnet it on his celestial refrigerator for a day or two. So let us begin. With the many inversions ahead of us, there's no time to dawdle. And time itself is where we must begin, because that is the initial inversion. This may be the most important inversion of all, but then every inversion is the most important. That is because they all go together. Individually, these inversions may seem odd, but together the inversions reveal a whole. If you come to understand what these inversions mean, there is a solid chance that you will not only be inverted to right-side-up, but you may be healed and made whole as well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

If Christianity ever stops being weird, it will no longer change lives. So let's get weird.I knew that the childhood mantra of “Believe in yourself” had failed in the crucible of reality. That turned out to be a bad drug, like the brown acid that the 1960's burnouts spoke about. Work and career couldn't save me. Money couldn't either. The old trusty sidekick, liquor, was as worthless as ever now. These were all bad drugs. While I had flung beer bottles at religious people for using God as a crutch, I was leaning on various crutches, and when those crutches failed, anti-depressants became the crutch. At this point, I still had no idea that I was soul-sick far more than physically or mentally impaired. On particularly blue days, or “Black Dog” days as Winston Churchill called them, or the days when the “Noonday Demon” of acedia overtook me, I knew that something was missing. And after a few years working as an engineer, I realized that I needed to talk to a doctor. And the doctor had the cure. Then I heard the new pitch for the new drug. I needed a supplement to believe in myself. It was medicine, just like insulin. Surely a diabetic would not refuse the medicine that would save his life, so why would someone deficient in a neurotransmitter not trust that pharma solutions could save me? Here existed a scientific, peer-reviewed solution, and it came in the form of a pill that would simply re-balance the chemistry in my brain. Just eat this little dot once a day and like Dorothy I would be back in humanist Kansas. Never mind that humans had lived for tens of thousands of years without these pills - this was the only solution. The fix was merely a matter of dialing in the numbers, like getting the chemicals correct when balancing a pool PH level. It was easy! There were also techniques, from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its cousins like RET, and there was pseudo-spiritual self-affirmation options in Buddhist meditation (heavy on the self), and then there was the budding “science” of taking LSD. There was a pill plus technical methodologies to deal. I just needed an action plan for mind and body (no soul needed). Pills are goodSo the days of anti-depressants began. In a pill came the solution, and I convinced myself after a month it “seemed to be working” since I felt “not quite as irritable.” However, today I am certain that if the doctor had given me a magical bag of potato chips in a medical looking package, and had told me to eat one a day, it would have had the same effect. Because I wasn't feeling any different. The Black Dog days still arrived and struck hard. That was when I was told that the dosage just needed to be increased. More was better…you see…I needed two magical potato chips per day, not one. This is becoming more well known as people are beginning to realize that the modern SSRI pill solution is just another version of snake oil. What I discovered after about five years is that I could not stop taking these pills, because if I stopped, I became so dizzy that I could hardly stand. Getting off the anti-depressants now felt as hard as quitting tobacco had been. In the early years of taking anti-depressants, I was still drinking, which in hindsight is insane to me. But after I did quit drinking (a topic I covered at great length in the initial series of this site), I continued with the pills. After a few years of sobriety, I tried to stop taking the pills, and the dizziness gave me such fear that I worried about slipping into some suicidal despair, so I stayed on the pills. This certainly works in favor of the pharmaceutical companies. I continued on the pills, sober, believing that I needed them. Life without liquor started by asking God for help. Getting back to the basics of belief in God set me free from drinking, to my utter and complete surprise. The only way that I ever got sober was by doing the exact opposite of everything that I had learned in school. “Believe in myself” turned out to be the very thing that was destroying my liver and overall health. How many hundreds of times did I try to will myself to stay sober and it failed? Then suddenly, by simply asking God for strength and direction, I was making it through a day, and another day, then a week, then a month. But then I stopped praying for a long spell, not able to connect the dots. I stayed sober for a year before falling into the usual trap. “I got this now. I believe in myself.” Yes, that was the road back to ruin. I started with non-alcoholic beer then switched to regular beer and a year or two later I was worse off than before. Then a night in jail and the threat of more rehab got me back to the basics, of the need for God. But this time I knew that I needed God more than he needed me. But I still didn't need him that much. I had my pills.The pills carried me through some more years, but I was back in motion. In addition, fitness became an interest and continued until I'd run some eight or ten marathons and did an Ironman. I thought I'd fended off the emptiness forever. But it was after the Ironman in 2019 that it struck back, and harder than ever before. The depression arrived and I knew that I had cured nothing. I could not save myself. I could not manufacture self-esteem. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was a parlor game. The pills were doing nothing. The fitness had maxed out. I was still on the treadmill of self-esteem. Not even a long period of sobriety was a cure. There had to be something more. Body and SoulThat is when I understood the soul. For the first time in my life, I realized that we are body and soul. I had inklings about it, in times when I'd felt I'd lost something. In the deadness of my heart, I had always known something was off, ever since middle school. The comment from Jesus: “Let the dead bury their dead” always shocked me. But I knew what he meant. I knew that he meant the people who never came to know Him. Because until I learned to kneel and pray and ask for God's forgiveness, I never knew what redemptive suffering meant, and I never knew why he had to go through the cross to be resurrected. Even this process took time because I was so blind to my spiritual state, that I couldn't even see my sins and the wreckage of my life that had piled up in the wake of my jetboat named “Believe in yourself”. The next four years began a long process of spiritual awakening, in a way that I could never have understood or predicted. Even as it happened, I tried to resist it. Sneaking into back rows of churches, I was there for reasons I could hardly fathom. But I knew there was something needed, something desired. A Sunday morning watching Netflix no longer satisfied me. It had never satisfied me, I was just finally becoming aware of it. I started saying “Yes” to prayer, to fellowship, to volunteering, and to meet people who believed, and I mean really, actually believed in a spiritual life. The supernatural became revealed again through the witness of others, and I too started to tear down the walls of my materialism and unbelief. The propaganda of the Humanist Manifesto that had been drilled into my head scattered. The false foundations of my public school and media indoctrination started to erode and crumble like sand. And because the believers were living differently from everyone I had chosen to spend time with since middle school, I had to “come and see” what they were doing. It was so different. Their lives were different. Their thoughts are different. Most of them had less money than me, but they had something that I could never get. They had a sense of rest, of peace. And as I got to know them, I learned something interesting. They all spent time in prayer, every day. None were on anti-depressants. Not one of them “believed in themselves.” No, that was crazy. No, instead they all believed in God, and the Resurrection of Christ. I knew many other people who seemed to be living without God, but they were taking pills, or smoking weed, or drinking, or chasing a dollar, or obsessing with sex. But here was something different. Here was a free option, called grace. No pills needed. Then I read G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and the second chapter confirmed what I had known by experience but could never articulate. This is a book about the concept of “Believe in yourself.” The second chapter is called “The Maniac,” and the maniac is the man who “believes in himself.” Chesterton says, “Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief.” I straightened up in my reading chair, as so much of the era from the 1970s to 2020s that I had lived within began to make much more sense. When I was born, the humanists had overrun public schooling in precisely that era (and even ruled the progressive Churches), and the first rule of the humanists, in their manifesto, was that “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” Thus it was no wonder that my teachers had ruled out God as existing, as a living entity. My few hours a year in faith formation were trampled over and cast out at the first difficult question I raised about God. My understanding of anything about Catholicism or faith was a house of cards. To make matters worse, I had only attended Masses from the post-Vatican II, where it was more guitar and modern “hymns” than reverent prayer and silence. I am not joking when I tell this: the first time I saw a High Latin Mass, I thought I was on another planet. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew that every Mass I had attended as a kid was lacking seriousness. I didn't even receive Communion that day because I didn't know what the altar rail was for, or why people were kneeling to receive the Eucharist. Probably best I didn't, since I still hadn't understood the need for Confession and being in a state of Grace before receiving the Eucharist yet. I realized after this process had completed, after I had flushed my anti-depressants, that I had to knock down about ten walls of worldly indoctrination and self-deception that had been erected over thirty years, all the way back to Sesame Street with its early onset self-esteem program of indoctrination…and maybe even Tom and Jerry as I loved watching them beat the hell out of each other and figured that both and Tom and Jerry believed in themselves.First, I had to accept that God may exist. This meant overcoming the dogmas of academia, that had coached me into the negative position, and until I found Aquinas and Augustine and Pascal and Robert Barron, I had never heard of the compelling arguments for the affirmative. But it wasn't an argument that made me believe that God may exist - it was the first time I tried prayer and was able to not drink. And this will forever be perhaps the strangest education of my life. For nothing had worked before - no amount of knowledge, no technique, no bargaining, no rewards. Later, I used prayer to discontinue looking at any smut on my computer or phone, and lo and behold, repeatedly kneeling and asking God for help, once again, chased away the demon. This had a profound effect on me, as I realized that prayer did something strange, and it was real. Then there was politics, which is always the top idol in America. You can't bring up a news story in most circles without hitting an electric wire related to politics. The issue of abortion or prayer in schools was a trigger for me, as I had been coached well enough in school that liberty and freedom only meant doing whatever one wished. Luckily, over the years I had lived in neighborhoods with people of both parties, so I had close friends of both the left and the right, and I still do, and this is because I have the gift of knowing when to shut the hell up. My 10th-grade biology teacher once paid me a great compliment, telling me that I was a nuisance in class, but I knew when to quit. Now, for some, that may not sound like a compliment, but to me, it meant I had the slightest sense of knowing when to stop acting like an idiot. Perhaps being from Minnesota had something to do with it because we hold back our feelings to avoid offending others - or we did at one time. I think that has passed as greater America has infected the state through social media. However, when I began to believe in God, I began to set aside certain political issues, such as that unborn babies are “just a clump of cells,” which never made a lot of sense to me anyway. The problem was that if I had a soul, then so did everyone else. If I had a soul, so did my conservative and liberal neighbors - they both did. And if I had a soul, so did babies, and if babies had a soul, so did humans who had not yet popped out of the womb. Plus I had my own children and they were the greatest gift, along with my wife, that I could have ever asked for, and I hadn't asked for, yet had been given them. And all of these things began to work like a degreasing rust remover on my static and crusty ideas. The bolted-on beliefs from college and my twenties started looking less solid. That wall of politics may have been as thick as the wall of “Does God exist?”Then there was the approval of the world - a very thick wall - because to believe in God was to reject the secularization thesis that reigned in the last fifty years. Belief in God was a vestige of less sophisticated times. It was like the appendix on the body, or goosebumps - they were leftovers from a more primitive age. Joseph Campbell and many others assured us that Christianity was just like every other religion, every other myth, with just a wrinkle of difference here, a nuance there. I felt like the world was nudging me along, saying, “Nothing to see here, folks: Star Wars is sufficient for your spiritual needs.” Except it wasn't (and Disney's takeover of it has certainly proven that out as it degrades with every new release).To be Catholic, or really any non-”progressive” Christian, was to be a modern freak. It was not approved of by the educated and cool people. I liked reading Reddit, which was like the atheist training ground of the internet. On Reddit people could be anonymous and bash the church openly, and all of the veiled arguments against Christianity in the media and college were unleashed in their full anger online. Oh, and Islam was the true religion of peace - all of Christian history was to blame for every injustice in the modern world. No, I believed that. In hindsight, it's amazing how far your false teaching can take you, and it's no wonder to me now that the books of the Church Fathers are swept under a rug. To read Augustine's Confessions, or Origen's First Principles, or the story of the martyrs of Lyon, or hear about the Battle of Tours and the Battle of Lepanto, or read of the martyrs like St. Lawrence and St. Agnes, or to see the early church in the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch - all of this is more thrilling than any roller coaster at Six Flags. As I started to read the Gospels and read the writings of the Church Fathers and listen to Bishop Barron, as well as the Lord of Spirits podcast, Tim Keller, Father Mike Schmitz, and more - I knew that I had not been told anything about the history of Christianity. The education system, from kindergarten to college, had hidden a trove of books from us. Purposefully it had steered me away from millennia of wisdom. All spiritual things were kept away, all of the things that held Christendom together. Even the dichotomies were false ones: I had only ever heard of nature vs. nurture, as if all problems were merely questions of genetics or environment. As if only those two things could be the cause of human sin. They walled off “The Fall” as a non-possibility, and in walling it off proved in the 20th century experiments of communism, fascism, and liberalism that nature vs. nurture did not account for all problems. The longer you look into the abyss, the more you know The Fall happened. But the education system blamed other things. Never was it the world, the flesh, and the devil that prompted us to sin. Never was it the idea of concupiscence, a word that I didn't learn until my late thirties. Worse, there was a false war over faith vs. reason, and until digging deeply I learned that not only was this an invention of the Enlightenment, but the people beating the drum of that war were standing on the shoulders of the giants of faith who used their reason to discover the wonders of the natural world while still having full faith in God. There was no conflict between faith and reason. The fundamentalists and atheists may have had some odd war over those two things, but Catholics did not. The wisdom of the Saints was kept like dry goods in storage. But the great thing about it is that just when all the bad movies and boring bestsellers had lost their flair, I stumbled onto St. Augustine, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. John Damascene and realized that there is absolute dynamite in the word of God and the history of the church. I remember reading The Imitation of Christ on an airplane and thinking, “I should hide the cover or these people will think I'm a crazy Christian.” That was an odd thought. In fact, I now know who put that thought in my head. I had never once thought that I should “hide the cover” when I was reading Ovid or Virgil on a plane. I never thought that when reading Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. And so it occurred to me that the real rebel today is the one who reads The Imitation of Christ. The only books I was embarrassed to be seen with were the ones that felt like they inverted the whole world that I had come to accept. And the fact that invasive thoughts were suggesting that I stop reading it or hide it hinted to me that the nature of thoughts may not be purely material things. After all, thoughts are only in the intellect, and angels are pure intellect - as are demons. Oddly enough, this open reading of books written by early Christians felt like an act of revolt against the world. As a child of the 1980s and 1990s, I tend to like a revolt now and then, but this was the first revolt against the world instead of God. Now I was repenting, turning back. I think when we 90s kids were drinking like fish and head-banging, we were only doing so because we had never seen beauty or truth, never heard it, never understood it, never encountered it. We were raised with ugly buildings, ugly art, and ugly ideology. Given the choice today between listening to Metallica's “Master of Puppets” or “Jesu, Salvator Mundi” from the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles - ten out of ten times, I choose the nuns. (Sorry, Hetfield, you've been replaced. Those women need no distortion pedal or even guitars to outdo you. Thanks for all the metal, but I'm all good now.) Punk is done, rock is dulled: beauty, truth, and goodness is new again. Why? Because God makes all things new. Many of us who grew up in the late 20th century and early 21st century have never seen or heard such things. Irreverent Masses and the pop music hymns are all we were shown. We are so accustomed to ugliness that we don't even know it until we start digging in the past to see what “The Enlightenment” tried to bury. There is much more out there than the material world. There is new life in Christ. Life is not just biological or psychological, it is spiritual, it is Sacramental. “Something shook out of me”After I started seeking God, which came in incremental steps, there were two days when the world of ghosts and spirits became real to me in ways that I cannot account for. The first was an out-of-body experience I had in a doctor's office, when I was being told something and could no longer hear the doctor. For a brief period, I felt as if floating in the room, or absent from my body. This may have lasted only ten seconds, but in those ten seconds, I caught a glimpse of a reality outside of the body. Nothing dramatic happened, I just felt a separation from my body and recognized that the soul can live outside of the flesh. This made apparent the need for change, for the animating, the soul, seemed to be separating for the sole purpose of telling me, “Here I am. This is the self you thought was you. This is your soul, and your body is down there. You need to acknowledge me.” This startling experience rocked various assumptions I had about the material world. Already I had known that through prayer, somehow, someway, I could resist temptations like alcohol that otherwise drove me to madness, that I could never stop on my own. But the second experience showed me that the concept of possession is real. Again, I am at a loss for an explanation for this, but the day this happened is the day that I began to read the Bible and see it completely differently. I was at home. Because I had been learning about God and catching up on reading the books I had never been exposed to, I took a moment to watch a show about Catholicism, called Symbolon. Now, Edward Sri is not a speaker or teacher that I am drawn to, but it is he who changed my life by merely speaking words - not even to me, but in a recording - and what he said caused something to leave my body. Again, this is too strange for words, and whatever I make of it here, will fail to tell the ghostly nature of what occurred. I've written about this before but didn't mention the “shaking out” that happened with it. Something left my body, or my soul, or both. It was a word that changed me. Some say that books don't change people; paragraphs do. But for me, it was a single word that opened up the scripture. The word “literarily.” Edward Sri said there is a difference between reading the Bible “literally” and “literarily.” The literal was important, but the spiritual reading I had been ignoring. Reading the Word of God was more than a literal or literary exercise, but somehow the word literary awakened me to understanding that there was a literal and a spiritual way to read. Better still, within the spiritual sense were the moral, allegorical, and the Big Picture (of how it related to Jesus) senses. This was a moment of St. Anselm's “faith seeking understanding,” as the literal and spiritual senses of scripture suddenly flowered. I realized reading the Bible was not an academic exercise, it was a living encounter with the Word of God.It made all the difference in the world to me. When I heard that, something made my ears perk up. Edward Sri had only said this:The Catholic approach to Scripture is different from the fundamentalist view, which reads Scripture in a literalistic way. To discern the truth God put in Scripture, we must interpret the Bible literarily, remembering that God speaks to us in a human way, through the human writers of Scripture. That means that we examine the context and intent of the author for any given passage.-From Symbolon (session 3)This marked the death of fundamentalism, from both sides. The pure materialist science perspective was gone. Any creeping “faith alone” or fundamentalist Protestant reading was gone, too. The four senses of scripture roared from the book. I guess it like how LSD users describe their imaginary worlds coming to life when the hallucinations begin. But I wasn't using LSD. This was a stone sober revelation. This was an encounter. This was the Holy Spirit. I had rejected it for so long, the unforgivable sin, and somehow I now let it in. Or rather, I didn't do anything - God did something. How do I know that this moment in time changed something in me? Because I felt it. And because I've seen it happen to others. In AA meetings you will often hear someone say, “I felt something lifted off of me.” Whenever I hear this, I know that God is working miracles in this world just as he was when Jesus walked the earth, or when Moses heard God thunder on the mountain, or when a dazed Abraham made his covenant with God. There is another saying in AA, and it is, “Don't stop coming until the miracle happens.” Newbies don't know what that means and often find it confusing, if not irritating. But something happens and it cannot be explained in purely rational terms. Something happened. Something strange. Something wonderful.Years ago, when I knew the time to drink was nearing, I always felt a tingle in my forearms. It was like a creepy, crawly feeling - like a temptation or urge or compulsion. There was a sense of a force approaching that could not be satisfied. On that day when something happened, I had been sober for four years at this point, so the writhing feeling rarely ever happened. I was past that. But I was still white-knuckling life on many days. Some days I still live that way. But when I heard the words about how to read the Bible, my hands shook. It was not like an excess caffeine shake, nor was it like a nervous shaking, nor was it like a hunger shake, nor was it like the natural tremor that I have in my hands. Something shook out of my hands, something invisible. This was a violent shake. The shaking lasted perhaps one second. But when it happened, I said, “Yes, that's it.” And I knew. I knew then and there that the reason I had been unable to read the Bible was because I had blinders on from Protestant fundamentalists and atheist scientists who had presented a false dichotomy. There was no war between faith and reason. There was another invisible realm beyond nature vs. nurture. There was a way to read Genesis that made sense. There was a way to know Christ as the eternally begotten Son of God, fully human and fully divine. The world and scripture opened up, spiritual and physical. When it shook out of me I knew what the demoniacs had felt in the Gospels, what Mary Magdalene had felt. Further, I knew what Jesus meant when he said that we must ask, seek, and knock and God will answer, because even though I didn't know what was drawing me, I was no longer seeking myself, I was seeking God. This was a casting out. The shaking that occurred that day altered the course of my life. Many little walls had to come down before that, but that day did something that no book or life experience could ever do. Were it not for the shaking out of something from my forearms and hands, no senses would have caught the departure of this presence that had been over me. Suddenly I could say, “Something was lifted off of me,” but for me it was, “Something shook out of me.” And it was that day that I knew: I no longer needed anti-depressants. I needed prayer, fellowship, scripture, and the Sacraments. I needed God, in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I still needed “me” because I knew that I was made for God, and my heart had been restless until it rested in Him. But I also knew that I needed Reconciliation and the Eucharist far more than Lexapro or Wellbutrin. I knew that every misguided search and difficulty had been leading me to that moment. And after that, the moments kept coming where I saw more clearly, such as when I first attended a High Mass in Latin, where I saw how powerful liturgy could be, or when I continued to meet people of faith, or when I kneeled to pray, or read spiritual books, or volunteered for things that I didn't necessarily like to do. A few weeks after that day when “something shook out of me,” I dumped the last of the pills down the toilet. Whatever had shaken out of me seemed to stir the Holy Spirit in me. I felt as if the Baptismal and Confirmation graces were set free. Whatever had been “over me” had departed, and I knew it. And I knew how to keep it that way, through the name of Christ, through prayer and obedience, submission to God. Not through effort, but by surrender. The old “surrender to win” attitude worked. The cure had been to unlearn all that I had ever learned, because once I stopped believing in myself, I believed in God. I knew that the devil was real, and he certainly believed in himself. I knew that sin was real and it was some relative wishy-washy opinion. No longer was I on top. I was in the lowest place, because I knew that spiritually I had long been a sitting duck when I thought I knew more that spirits of pure intellect. No longer did my ideas come first, but I submitted to the teachings of the Church. These rules were not for oppressing but for freedom, the right kind of freedom. Most of all, I knew Who was greater than both the devil and myself. In a great mystery, our trials and tribulations are permitted, because they allow growth to happen. But there is no growth without struggle, and action and humility must be settled into a union. Scripture is alive. God is alive. He is risen. These are all mysteries to embrace. “Surrender to win” must be the way, as the Lord showed us. In the strangest story of all, God became man, was crucified, died, and rose again. At long last, I am alive and no longer looking for the answer in myself, because I no longer believe in myself. I believe in God. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

There is more backstory to tell before I get to the day that I flushed my anti-depressants. I had never hear of Father Garrigou-Lagrange and the idea of a “predominant fault,” also called a root sin, until a few years ago. Everyone has a predominant fault, and it is one of three things: pride, vanity, or sensuality. Sensuality seems to be my taproot, because in pleasure I find the sensual escape from all struggle. A slice of pumpkin pie is not unlike a shot of whiskey for me. But pride and vanity are ever ready to take the lead as well as my predominant fault. The more I reflected on it, I came to see that I have all three of these faults. And the more I reflected on everyone else I know, I came to realize that every human being suffers from all three of these in different ways. Pride is unavoidable. I came to reject authority, since that is the American way, and pride is the fault in every case. The problem is that we lionize pride today. Individual pride, national pride, school pride, family pride, town pride, gay pride - it's everywhere. We have all forgotten that pride is what caused the Fall because we dropped humility long ago. Vanity too is praised. Looking fit, being cool, seeking approval, receiving honors, gaining esteem - all of these are valued today. And as for the old morality around sensuality, around sex and food, gluttony and lust? The old “prudish” ways didn't seem to have any answers either. Pride, vanity, and sensuality were littered all over in the lyrics and scripts of American culture. After all, celebrities and singers believe in themselves, and usually in interviews when asked to give advice to aspiring fans, they say, “Never give up. Always believe in yourself.” The messages about marriage and sex and morality in general were unanimous on the radio and TV: humans could only flourish if they were free to sleep with random partners at will, unrestrained from the old Church rules. Also, getting high was good. Also, sex was meaningless and masturbation was self-care. Also, honoring your parents was for suckers. Also, the pursuit of wealth was not a trap, but the good life. Also, Sundays were not for worshipping Jesus, honoring Mary, and communing with the Saints, they were for sleeping off a hangover, drinking Bloody Marys, and watching the New Orleans Saints play football. And as for God? Get serious - that was just an adult Santa story. Rage Against the Machine summed up the 1990s best with their lyrics: “F*** you, I won't do what you tell me,” screamed at high decibels. Like in the old Maxell cassette ad, this song screamed what we felt inside. It's comical to listen to Rage Against the Machine songs now, but it's solid evidence of what a screwed up era it was, particularly when we were living an age of wealth and privilege. Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg took care of glorifying violence, meaningless sex, and open disrespect of women. The culmination of it all came with Limp Bizkit screaming, “Give me something to break” in stadiums full of wrecked people smashing into each other like the harpies in hell. We were like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, where all the cosmetic gauges and lights in the control room looked great as the reactor core, the heart, was in the throes of violent meltdown. The good thing was, all of this could fit in just fine with the “Believe in yourself” mantra. The important thing was that you kept up the facade of self-esteem. The first principle of “believe in yourself” is that perception is reality: Whatever I think is right, is right because…I believe in myself. I am the authority. The Sophists that Socrates argued against have been let out of their cage all over again. Having grown up around a fair amount of lukewarm Christians of all stripes, it seemed that the call to chastity and claim to holiness was a wink. Some were living their lives as if Christ had risen from the grave, but not many. Following suit, I loosely clung to the Church for a badge of identity for a while, until the school system fully applied the wedge between belief in Self versus belief in God. I was mostly eager to let it happen. After all, most TV shows mocked the Church in one way or another. I'd seen George Carlin's HBO-special tirades against faith that made atheism seem cool. Most of all, teachers and college professors seemed to be on a subtle crusade against all things supernatural. Here is one example (of many possible examples) of the programming I received: In my junior year of high school, in chemistry class, the teacher showed us a video that explained what really happened at the Wedding Feast at Cana. We were told by the Bible and at Church that Jesus had miraculously turned water into wine. This was a mystery to be pondered and wondered about in awe. But my teacher shared a hypothesis that it could have been accomplished by a chemistry trick. Jesus was most likely a magician, or a scientist (Occam's Razor, right?) - and therefore he was a charlatan. The laws of physics could never be broken, you see, because we lived in a purely material universe. The teacher showed us a video and was very pleased with it. (This really did happen in class, and there really is a video about this, although I cannot find it now.) Jesus had just used an acid-to-base additive to cause the color of the water to change. The people in Cana were so drunk that they couldn't tell. (Of course, this disregards the line that this was the “best wine” of all from the actual Wedding Feast at Cana story - and it is the sober host that tastes it and announces the quality of the wine - but I digress.) To me, this event marks the logical conclusion of the long watering-down of Biblical scholarship. The wine at Cana was now just colored water. This fit well with the modern scholarly view that when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes that the people just shared what they had been hiding. All the miracles were being explained away in purely rational, natural, material methods. The message was clear: science was the only way of knowing; no such thing as miracles existed. A university New Testament class took it even further with mentioning a funny “swoon theory” to explain away the Resurrection. Comparative literature professors turned the Bible into the equivalent of Greek myth. The 19th century Germans had dissected the Bible, the 20th century atheist academics then had the body drawn and quartered, and now it was scientists themselves doing the autopsy. That my public school teacher (who was really just echoing the very old Ebionite heresy) was now evangelizing kids into the “cool teacher/magician” version of Jesus illustrated how far the Word of God had fallen in Christendom. This anti-religious intrusion into science class surprised me, although I don't know why it did. God-talk had long been forbidden at school. Religious mockery, however, was not prohibited, even by teachers, and this was specifically true for Christianity, while Islam and Jewish talk had a hall pass. This speech code had been established in fifth and sixth grade already. God-talk had been banished from music and language arts. But now I had an authority from the science department pitching the idea that the Biblical miracles were a magic act, a facade, a sham. This was going above and beyond the typical curriculum of “believe in yourself” to openly plant doubts about the idea of a Creator, the Incarnation, miracles, and faith in general. Besides my one hour of Mass a week as a child, with its three readings and a seven-minute Homily, I had no spiritual direction. School and TV sitcoms were the closest thing to spiritual direction. Teachers and TV dads gave the life talks. The idea that the public school is “non-religious” has become less and less tenable, because the consistent messaging from age six onward was a dead match for the beliefs of religious humanism. And of course, there was always the obsession with shape-shifting Liberty, as liberalism has its goddess on an island off of New York City. But what the goddess of liberty means can be whatever you like, since individualism goes really well with “believe in yourself.” Unfortunately, all of this takes a very long time for a kid to figure out, and that is the point; most will never figure it out. As for me, I was a house of cards, with no real strength in my belief. No foundation, no understanding. Had life events not guided me to another path, I would never have uprooted what had been planted in the soil tended by my public school gardeners. Now when I think of the teachers I had, they were so clearly humanist in their approach. For three years in particular, the humanist message was like an air-horn in the classroom. I don't think it was anything evil. These teachers had just bought a bad batch, thinking they were planting oak trees but it was just thorns and thistles. They acted as the apostles of John Dewey, not Jesus Christ. I suppose they even thought it was working. Having been around enough sales people, a pitch becomes contagious when it appears to be working. As long as people are buying, they will use the pitch. This also happens with fishermen, where if one guy catches a big fish, everyone cuts their bait and starts using the same bait that the lucky guy was using. We just can't help ourselves but get on the bandwagon. But as soon as the product proves a failure and the pitch can no longer sell product, they drop it like garbage and chase the new thing. Fishermen do the same. That is what has happened now, as the humanism of the 20th century has proven to be a failure, and new shiny pitches were taken up for testing. These too will fail within a generation. The problem is that these ideas are all coming from “The Enlightenment,” which was never the candle in the dark it claimed to be. If there was any light, it was from a dumpster fire of half-truths. It ignored the soul and God, the key things needed for sanity and mental health. My teachers of the humanist dogma were doing what they thought was best for kids because the cult of self-esteem had been sold to them first. When you buy a bad product, it's hard to admit. It's embarrassing. It was like the many monorails that were sold to cities across America, or like Olympic villages with their unused, mossed-over bobsled tracks. The problem is that much time is required to pay the piper for leading people into error, and it takes generations to correct. This is why the modern dogma of “Believe in yourself” is so lame. We are just so small in the grand scheme of all that God has created in time and space, and when we elevate our importance to the highest place of belief, it's absurd. It's boring. We're so limited, but God can do anything. To quote Pink Floyd, I'd rather have a walk-on part in the war, than a lead role in a cage. (And we are living in a spiritual war.)Thus it becomes a manner of assenting to a set of foundational ideas and the proof is in how you live. Because it's one thing to say “I believe in one God” and then live for the sacred Self. And now I know, this is why I needed to ask my doctor about Lexapro. This division within from childhood had cleaved me apart, leaving me as only a body. Because I could say the Creed at Church but not believe it, and I certainly wasn't living it. Around age eighteen, I started only mouthing certain lines of the Nicene Creed, if I happened to attend Mass. But in reality, I was just finally in such a state of mortal sin that I could no longer even fake the words. And this is how the devil gets you. What must never be forgotten is that angels are pure intellect, and the devil is a fallen angel. Hence, if we assume our intelligence is high, the angels shake their virtual heads and the devils rub their virtual hands. While I was mouthing the words of the Creed but living a humanist or agnostic life, the devil's work was already done. Voltaire, the writer who made a living attacking the Catholic Church so long ago, once advised a person who wanted to leave the Church on how he could stop believing that the Eucharist was the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Voltaire told him to continue committing sins and receiving the Eucharist until it blunted his faith so badly that the Eucharist became just a wafer, just a piece of bread. As it turns out, Voltaire understood spiritual warfare extremely well, because he articulated exactly what has happened to millions of “faithful” Catholics. This is exactly how faith dies, because saying the Creed and receiving the Eucharist does nothing without Confession and conversion of the heart and kneeling and asking God for help. Once disobedience in living for God has taken root, the outward actions of faith become false. The entire idea of “believe in yourself” casts God out immediately, but of course, when we turn from God we only cast ourselves out. Either a Creator made the world, or it has always existed. This was the presented options from Church and from public school. Today, for me, it takes far less faith to believe that time and space came from a Creator God who made it “out of nothing” than for time and space to have been created by…nothing. How much faith you need to believe that the universe is “self-existing”?! Far more than I can muster. But the public schooling and media propped up this absurdity for a long time simply by repeating this first principle of humanism in subtle and sundry ways. Is it any wonder people today are scattered and confused? If you have two opposed worldviews battling and rattling around in your head for power and control, chaos and disorder are the result. How could it not be? If I told you that up is down one minute, and down is up the next, it would be confusing. As Jesus said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Humanism, it turns out, is a crusade against standard Christian ideas like God, sin, the Fall, the need for redemption, eternal life, and so on. The summary statement of the humanist manifesto says something very old, in a kind of triumphant reiteration of the sophist Protagoras who said, “Man is the measure of all things” but with more words. The humanists even sum up their own manifesto with a flourish arguing that the fruit from the tree of Knowledge tastes better than that from the tree of Life:Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.Ah, the good life! Sounds good. And yes, “he alone” will bring the dream, the utopia! God need not apply. But really, all of this could be summed up more concisely, had they just said what my second-grade teacher had said, which was: “Believe in yourself.”This is what the architects of the public school system believed. Is it any wonder then that I became a humanist, when I had to sit in rooms for forty hours a week through the late 1980s and entire 1990s and early 2000s and listen to humanist sermons from humanist teachers? When you are feeling strong…and when it comes to an endWhile I was spinning in motion, on fast-forward all through the public school years, I could keep up the energy to believe in myself, so long as I achieved, believed, and had plenty of strength. This was a period of strength and motion, such that I could keep the illusion alive that I could will my destiny. I could have a good-looking girlfriend, win the game, ease the pain with a gallon of beer, work like a dog, get the grades, and fudge my way through life with a smile while my flaws were excused. Because one thing was clear: outside of the Church, the idea of sin only existed in getting caught. If all the right things were done, self-actualization would come. This is a lie. In Leo Tolstoy's short story, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” the dying man has lived a successful life. He's done all the right things. He's punched his ticket at every proper stop on the secular journey of life. But in his last days, nearing the edge, he peers into the nothingness. Looking back on his life of “right” choices that made him a respected person with a good career, he wonders about the point of his life and career. The gaping mouth of the Big Empty is looking at Ivan when he muses: "Then what does it mean? Why? It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!"Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done," it suddenly occurred to him. "But how could that be, when I did everything properly?" he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.Oh, it's unfair, cries Ivan! Like a Pharisee, he had done all the external actions needed to be whole, to be self-actualized, and to be at peace. Yet he is not at peace in his heart - he is at terror. Why? Because he didn't choose the right things. He chose the wrong things. Career and success are good things, but they are lesser things. Ivan Ilyich is at a loss because he chose the things that the culture valued, not what his heart and God value. A life of fear chases things, and I know it well. But Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”When I was living like Ivan Ilyich, as all body, achievement, and reputation, I had no concern for the soul or God. Then the illusion of strength and accomplishment painted me into a corner. Ivan's second chance comes in the weeks of his death, when he is weak. I was feeling strong, most of the time, and in those days I could indeed “Believe in myself.” But when the down periods came and the tank was empty, the great sadness came with it. A lesson in life was being taught that, when I am feeling strong, I have grand ideas about life, justice, and mercy. But when I am weak, those feelings change. Weakness is never far away either, as a simple cold or flu can collapse the whole facade. Any crack in the armor can cause the rust to begin, and we become brittle. Aging is a great teacher, as Ivan Ilyich learned. On some of the darkest days, even after winning a game, or getting a grade, or getting a raise at work, I could not hold back the swell of emotion that made me think of ending my life. This glorious, gifted, unique, special, life - where I “believed in myself” and “followed my heart” and “was perfect just the way I was” - I could not explain why I was so lost. On those days I thought of veering into a semi-truck. And even if a girlfriend or my mom asked me, “What's wrong?” I had no words. None whatsoever. There was nothing that I could tell them, because I myself had no idea what was wrong. For someone to have everything, and yet be utterly empty, made no sense to me. This is why for a long time I assumed I needed anti-depression medication. I needed a button to push, a technique, a material solution. I didn't understand that the entire problem was spiritual. When the booze stopped working, the pills took main stage. And when the pills stopped working, I knew that I'd been trying to turn on a light using the wrong switch. The pyramid of self-actualization was not wired to anything but myself, and I had lost the ability to believe in myself any longer. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

As long as I kept moving and doing and performing, it seemed that these “Black Dog” days of depression could be kept at bay. To be busy became a virtue, rather than a vice. For about thirty years I believed sloth was just lying around and didn't understand that the other half of sloth is the constant busybody who cannot stop working. Thus it seems that sloth is more of a national pastime than baseball. Funny that I had never been told the word, “acedia,” also known as the Noonday Devil, in any of my schooling. The old American ethic of hard work starts early and sets deep in the bones. Oddly enough, we call this the “Protestant work ethic,” which is ironic because Protestants reject “faith and works” in favor of “faith alone.” But they certainly understand work, or like so many of us, we speak about our hard work to express our virtue. I like to do that and then spend far too much time surfing the internet or reading books. This obsession with busy efficiency even filters into leisure time, where so often a vacation or weekend is jam-packed with busy events, to the point that after the leisure time, I need leisure time to recover from the leisure time. But of course, there is no time for that - it's back to work. As long as I never sat still for too long, and always had something to do, I would never have to look into the Big Empty. Everyone seemed to have this same malady of filling the time with must-haves which were nice-to-haves or not-really-needed-at-all. Through some good fortune, I had the opportunity to spend weekends as a child on farms, where the flow of life centered around the animals and the crops, and the mania of the suburbs didn't infect me there. I also had the good fortune of a grandmother who would chase us away from the television and disallow it except for a short hour at night, so that we had to find outside, pastoral activities, like climbing apple trees, or chopping thistles around fences, or marveling at giant garden spiders with their webs in the tall grass, or catching elusive butterflies, or helping with a new calf, or playing with cats (or finding a dead one occasionally). There was no rush to get somewhere or be anywhere because the dairy cows owned the clock. I was in that world for many years of my early life, and seemed to have forgotten it entirely once sports and school was lifted up as the way. Because when the world came calling, I left that behind. The culture insisted, and I believed it, that the ways of the country swain were plain and dull. Music and movies went out of their way to persuade that the hicks were all ignorant. Hillbillys, hayseeds, and yokels were portrayed as white, male, abusive, ignorant, alcoholic, and oppressive, but from my own experience I knew better (or I should have). I remember the first time I heard someone actually use the term “flyover states” in derision on a business flight and how I laughed but secretly winced, knowing the goodness of the people in those lands that appear so empty from a tin can 30,000 feet up in the air. The farm was gone from my life, and many of the actual farms themselves just disappeated. Like so many other little farms in the name of progress and solvency, nearly every one I had worked on had been sold to a larger concern. This land crash was the source of many songs and things like Farm AID in the 1980s. All of the conventional wisdom steered me away from the simple farm life anyway. “There is no future in farming.” “There is no money in it.” “There is so much more to experience in the city, in traveling, in retiring on a beach somewhere.” The reduction of farm populations has been happening for centuries, I just happened to be in the last gasps. Agriculture had long been going the way of Walmart like every other industry, where brutal efficiency and economies of scale became the only way to remain a going concern. Thus, the path forward was through schooling, sports, and especially STEM. Mostly, the way to rest was to be busy, not sitting in rocking chairs in the yard watching the sun go down. Plucking potato bugs out of mom's or grandma's giant garden, or bottle-feeding those hungry calves; no, these tasks were now best done by pesticides and (increasingly) immigrant workers. That way of life was coming to an end, visibly, as the roads I knew where many little farms had been in operation, dwindled to a few, and the few that were left no longer gave names to cows. Those cows with personal names like Pearl and Loretta now had serial numbers in a database. My point from that long story is this: I've never felt more whole than when working on a farm, in the slow days, where time rolled with the lives of animals, crops, families, and the ever-present community that found a centerpoint under a Church steeple. Never once in that world did I hear anyone say the mantra, “Believe in yourself.” Now: before I go on, let me put a damper on this rose-colored glass view of the “country life.” I'm aware of the oozing, reductive nostalgia. Ample struggles occur in the rural life. The people are sinners in many ways, like anywhere else. But clearly I'm not alone in lamenting our collective departure from the agrarian life and nature. The Romantics made a genre of it as a backlash against industrialization, against the mechanized worldview, and the rural life is now fully mechanized. Looking back to days in the country is a literary staple. Virgil was doing the same before Christ in his idyllic Georgics. In the Nativity story it is the shepherds, the lowly country people, most disposed to receive the good news. They were not making a name for themselves, they were living quietly like the lambs that they tended. This is a theme even in the Old Testament. When Lot and Abraham go separate ways, Lot chooses to go to the city. Lot chose poorly because he strays from God. Abraham stays in the land with the flocks and remains faithful to God. David begins as a shepherd, innocent and naive, and only falls into sin once his name becomes great. The lesson of living the simple life is not in literature by mistake, it is from actual life experiences. Whether from Genesis, Luke, Virgil, or John Keats, this loss of innocence after leaving the farm is a common theme. In my own experience, those nearest to nature or farming, who are not just weekend suburban tourists punching their nature tickets, who live quietly outside of cities and society, seem to commune with the divine more readily. They certainly seem more prone to prayer. They give glory to the highest good, God, not the precious Self. And the cult of self-esteem had no time for that kind of cow-eyed view of life. Kneeling and silence and simplicity were never a part of my life in school or sports or career pursuits - and so as I was indoctrinated, such “useless” things came to seem like a waste of time. Sport and SchoolTo be playing a sport, or studying, or watching a sitcom, or eating or drinking was to be happy. No, that's not it. No, to be doing those things was to be busy. And to be busy was to be useful. Even watching TV had a cultural currency of being able to speak the lingo of the week. To have watched the latest Seinfeld or Sopranos episode became applicable knowledge at the water cooler and at happy hour. From the age of twelve onward, I was always busy with something, and if not busy, I was taking in multiple streams of noise, doing homework during American Top 40 or carving out time for appointment TV, like Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons. TV filled the gaps between homework and sports until I finally learned to enjoy reading. The goals of life were fairly straightforward: what was valued was youth, strength, knowledge, career, fun, and victory. Especially victory. In sports, the lesson was rivalry and competition. The self-esteem train continued through it all. The aim of life was to make a name for oneself, just like the builders at Babel intended. Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song should have been the school fight song. Victory, youth, vigor, success, wealth, fun, and who can forget sex? Valhalla, I am coming. Arriving at the “age of reason” means the end of childhood. When it arrives, the seeds planted by those guiding the child begin to sprout. As to when I reached the age of reason, it's hard to say. But when it did, what grew from the seeds of esteem did not flower as my teachers imagined. Of course, the answer to all modern existential problems was to stay busy, to assuage the horror of looking into the void. To accomplish this we kept every hour of every day booked with running hither and thither, because experiences meant fulfillment. Fun meant life. Accomplishment brought esteem. A student-athlete's life is a constant blitz of must-do lists. I think that student-athletes understand the pressures of a quarterly sales world long before they should. The market's “tyranny of the quarter” probably came to be from Anglo-Saxon student-athletes (scribe-knights?) who couldn't kick the addiction. While salespeople live by “the number,” that monetary target they must hit, student-athletes go from one pressure situation to the next, and it's never about what they accomplished the week before. It's more like Glengarry Glen Ross. The question of coaches and adults is unspoken, but it is the same as a sales manager: “What have you done for me lately?” Oh, you won last night? There's another game tomorrow. Your body is sore? Suck it up. You have a math test? You'll have time on the bus. Do you even care? A season ends and the next begins. Are you even trying? I believe this is why Army basic training felt disappointing to me. I was expecting more of a challenge. After years of the student-athlete grind, the co-ed Army training didn't really pack the punch I expected. Somewhere around 10th or 11th grade the crackup started. I made it through several of these and I suppose each one makes you stronger, for a while. When the crack up starts, the load becomes visibly heavy. The solution of being busy stops working, and people notice. Then someone would play the good cop, and march out the old mantras: “You're doing great. You're very capable. You just need to believe in yourself.” This was like a kind of repetitive prayer for the self, but without any actual healing. “Yeah, yeah, you're right, I should have practiced more.” “Yes, I should have studied more.” “I'm such an idiot - I just need to believe in myself.” Even Sundays were not for sitting. The day of rest was eroding rapidly into a day for shopping and sports. I remember when people would not work, when stores were closed, when farmers would not even plow a field on Sunday. It was not long ago that the Third Commandment was taken seriously (which gives me hope that one day it will be again). The years of middle school and high school rushed by - an absolute blur. School and sports provided the meaning of life, with a mystical career ahead. Without ever having read Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning I understood the basics of his logotherapy, which was that I needed a purpose, a goal, something to shoot for. Like many student-athletes it became a kind of religion. I think it's fair to call it an idol. More accurately, we had a whole set of idols, like the Greeks had for gods of different domains of life. In those early years when the mania of sports and school took over, I was certain that I would never use drugs or alcohol. That would be insane. How could I consider such a thing? How could I jeopardize sports glory for the pride of the town, the team, and my personal status? Even in eighth grade, I wondered why or how anyone would risk their athletic eligibility by drinking on the weekend. What kind of lunatic would do that? To Valhalla, through sports! Sports provided the most transcendent activity available, I thought, so how could anyone trade the beauty and goodness of dropping a three-pointer, or hitting a running back so hard that a snot bubble emerged from his nose? Did those teen drinkers not understand that they exchanged honor and glory for something as smelly and nasty as beer? That was before I ever felt a buzz. I realized that the transcendence of a buzz exceeded the glory of hard hits on the field or the sound of a swishing net. In that moment of the first buzz, I learned that the concept of self-belief was malleable to whatever I wanted it to be, because I was sole decision maker over what was good, true, and beautiful. Sports was out; the buzz was in. Without a doubt, I began to lose the nerve in competition once alcohol blunted the edge. Where there had been a yearning to take the last shot, I now wanted to drink a shot. I no longer wanted the pressure. I wanted out. I wanted to move on, to post-high school, to escape - anywhere - to the military, or an adventure, or a trade. Race car drivers can “lose the edge” and be forced to retire, and I know exactly what that means, despite never having driven a race car. Once the inner burning fire of “rage to master” a sport is dwindled to a pilot light, the desire can only be faked. What was good, true, and beautiful suddenly came in a can or a bottle, because that was instant escape. When the first shots of sloe gin had tucked me into an envelope of drunkenness, I felt more alive than in anything else before it. No, not alive - I felt dead to all concerns. I was removed from all other goals. The pressure of math and sports and needing approval suddenly and totally vanished, at least until morning. The warmth and tingle of the liquor took away all expectations, all resentments. However, a warning sign appeared the very first night, as I punted a football at my friend's house and broke a window. But that didn't register as a signal from above to reconsider my choice, because I believed in myself. The broken window happened by chance. That was just bad luck, you see, not a lesson in free will. In the first years of drinking, while sports and school still weighed heavily, days of utter despair would come and I had no answers why. There was no answer to, “What's wrong?” Something was deeply wrong but I had nothing to blame but myself. Life and meaning were based on the self. So when the hours yawned, when I wasn't busy, the edge of the Big Empty showed up. To escape its gaze was to jump into it. I could avoid it by achieving, or just fall into the Empty. Depending on the day or the hour, I would either believe in myself or be trying to destroy myself. Sports had become a burden and I wanted out by my senior year. I'd had enough of the screaming coaches and insanity. I wanted oblivion and escape. I wanted to be in the Big Empty. I'd had a decent share of minor sports glory and was ready to move on - it wasn't the high I was looking for, because it wasn't high enough. I wanted to play basketball just for fun, but that was impossible. In the machine of year-round high school sports, it's a job. It's far more like a job, but you don't learn anything new and there is no life application for knowing how to beat a zone press. Win or lose, you get screamed at. Then in the huddle someone yells, “C'mon guys, we gotta believe in ourselves!” Yeah, that's what we needed. More self. Years later, after a few ACL tears and knee surgeries in college, my physical strength had waned and sports departed from my life. Drinking and reading surged ahead, as I would work, drink, read, and repeat. But after graduating from college and having no purpose other than to get a job and make money, the void began to stare back at me. No, it came looking for me, and drinking to avoid the void no longer worked. A repeating pattern like the movie Groundhog day is fun, but before long becomes a living hell. Signs appeared. I ignored them. Literally, like when I put my face through a windshield, having rammed my Jeep into a tree. Or when I missed work, or when I soured relationships speaking in slurred cursive. The isolation started. Those things were unfortunate, but really, I rationalized, they could have happened to anyone, I thought…or well, anyone that chose to drink to oblivion. The world was wrong, all wrong. I was right. By age nineteen, I had already known the falsity of the joy of alcohol, and had tried quitting many times, even taking a whole summer off, and what a glorious summer it was, working on a farm. Yes, once again, after a year of internship in a cube in front of a laptop, I had one last hurrah working on a farm. Once again, I felt whole. But by autumn the liquor and college bars resumed. In a few short years of drinking, I already could see the problem but could see no way out of it because to be rowdy and reckless felt like life. Life in the suburbs lay ahead and thought I did not want to go there, I was drawn toward it like a lodestone rock. It repulsed me, yet I was going to be there someday, and I wondered how could I possibly become one of those yuppies who pet their grass and check their 401k statements. How strange it seems now, that the joy I once had from sports and school was gone, and I pretended that I was getting my meaning from drinking. Work was just something to be done between wild weekends. Honor and glory seemed less interesting than self-destruction. But then this was the 1990s, when bands like Nirvana and films like Fight Club drew so many young men. If you didn't believe in anything, you could choose self-improvement or self-destruction. Like many others I knew, I tried to have both. And like every drinker who cannot quit, forgiveness of the self was granted weekly - because I needed to drink again for that brief escape. The cult of self-esteem still had me, and what it led to was a cycle of self-salvation and self-hatred. I came to a bitter understanding of what St. Paul meant when we said in Romans, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” And I knew that I wanted to quit, so badly sometimes, and I would swear it off, only to fail shortly thereafter. But truly I did not want to be healed, and here I came to understand St. Augustine's struggle with sex addiction when he said, “Lord let me be chaste - but not yet.” It makes me shudder to think of it now because I missed so many signs and chose so poorly in those years. They are terrific reminders for me, like the four stupid tattoos on my arm; these are forever reminders of the lost years, because they have no meaning, other than to do something to stay busy. I would love to stop here and tell you that alcohol was the whole problem. But when I quit drinking a decade ago, I found that I still “needed” anti-depressants. Alcohol was not the problem at all, it was only a mask, a symptom. Four years into that sobriety, I completed an Ironman triathlon and had achieved what I thought would cure me of all maladies, only to find that I was quite possibly as blue and lost when I was sober and accomplished as I had ever been drunk and insane. I was chasing banners, flags, mascots - I was an escapist - like the mobs of people in Dante's outermost circle of hell. I was stuck in the modern infinite loop of acedia. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

For about fifteen years, I took anti-depressants. Three years ago, I flushed them down the toilet. It was the same day that I stopped believing in myself. I haven't looked back. For much of my adult life, I assumed that a diagnosis of “Major Depression” would plague me forever, because it was simply a case of biochemistry that wasn't working properly. It was a mechanistic problem, like a bent axle that needed to be bent back into shape (constantly), or like a lawn that needed continuous watering to remain green and lush. It was a disease, you see - not my fault. And it wasn't bad, but it needed modern treatment, like diabetes. Also, it needed techniques to manage it, an exercise of a sort, that required appointments with professionals. Without pills, data, techniques, and plenty of money, there was just no cure. Depression was a biological and psychological problem, requiring manipulation of receptors and a program of self-talk. Some backstory is needed here, and since I can get lost in long asides in my storytelling, I will try to do my best to stay on track. Oh, who am I kidding, let's go get lost. The problem of other minds and the cult of self-esteemI have come to know that deprogramming from the cult of self-esteem is a long journey. Long ago, in a childhood far, far away, I pondered whether the world was some kind of Truman Show. I recall hiding under a bed at a sleepover, wondering why the world seemed to be a grand conspiracy against me. Were they all actors? Were they even real? This notion came to me way before the movie The Truman Show or The Matrix existed, and I've come to learn that the idea of solipsism is about as original as the wheel or marriage in human history. The great thing about being a reader is that you always come to discover that every “original” idea that comes to mind proves to be quite unoriginal and has been discussed and beaten to death already by thinkers above my pay grade. What's strange to me is that the idea of the Truman Show doesn't occur to little children, who understand reality, but mostly this “fake world” problem only occurs to emo teenagers, narcissists, and doctors of philosophy. I seem to fit that crowd all too well, if unevenly. This Truman Show idea happened in the same period when the public school I attended drummed to the heavy beat of uniqueness and self-esteem. Elementary students became the test tube for a variety of academic ideas from Abraham Maslow, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, John Dewey, and a laundry list of other modern tinkerers. Of course, our parents were clueless about this in rural and small-town America, which made it the perfect proving ground for new ideas. The most fascinating thing about growing up in the 1980s and 1990s is that in looking back, we were treated like lab rats in massive experimentations of humanism and liberalism and a few other “isms” favored in the scholarly world.Much like today, the mind-body problem was being attacked from all sides. The problem of pain has long been the enemy of the Enlightenment and the idea of modern progress. Death is the abomination that must be ignored, re-evaluated, and eventually conquered. This blitz from the sciences on solving human suffering has been sending academic linebackers at the elusive quarterback called “consciousness” for several centuries. By dumb luck, I just happened to be born in the generation where the culmination of the academic experts had “the solution,” and they were granted the authority to carry out those experiments by the US Government and the State of Minnesota. Had I been born in Caesar's time, I would have simply learned the family trade, since I was not born in the Patrician class. The plebes learned to work and to praise the gods. The American plebes born before the 1960s followed a similar path, but somewhere after education became an activist's laboratory, the plebes became interesting to the experimenters, and the public school turned into a place of strange evangelization. Far more dogmas came to me in class than in Church. And what was the program being sold? Really, at the bottom, it was the same cure as the Church promised to fix. It was healing. We all want to be healed. But the solution for healing is wildly different depending on the foundational things that a worldview is built upon. A great healing was coming for the kids, and for the grown-ups, and it was a psycho, social, and somatic cure. The mind could be soothed with happy thoughts, the body tamed with exercise. The shackles of tradition needed to be tossed off, like ropes from a ship at dock, so that the mind and body could sail away into peaceful-yet-fun waters. Fun - that was the cure. Smile! Now that I think of it all, the world's guidance reminds me of a water ride at an amusement park, where artificial rocks and walls are built and a rugged-looking raft floats “dangerously” through a false “wildness” built for our entertainment. Yes, the world portrayed by the Church was one where the devil prowls about looking for the ruin of souls. The world portrayed by the Church was like the movie The River Wild, where massive rapids or thieves could and would kill you. The world portrayed at public school was more like your standard “river rapids ride” at Six Flags where nothing could hurt you - where you just needed to loosen up, laugh, and throw up your hands in the air in praise of fun. Death was to be avoided, and not even talked about. We were sold a story: most of all, what we lacked was self-esteem. If there is one word that dominated my early years it has to be self-esteem, with unique and special taking the silver and bronze medals. Self-esteem is defined as “a confidence and satisfaction in oneself.” Confidence has root words of “with faith” con - fide, or “faith in oneself.” This was the theme of elementary school. Self-esteem, I was promised, brought healing. If I had to invert one Biblical phrase to show the difference between what Jesus said and what my grade school, high school, college instructors, and even my employer's human resources said, it would be the antithesis of Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus said to come to him. The education system said, “Come to me,” meaning myself. Here's the anti-Matthew:“Come to me, me that is weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and me will give me rest. Take me yoke upon me, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and me will find rest for me soul. For me yoke is easy, and me burden is light.”I just had to believe in myself. To hear it often too - you are unique - you are special. You are gifted (which always made it odd for kids that didn't get that label, since it seemed to indicate that they were “not-gifted”?…but that's another topic). These ideas of uniqueness and specialness are indeed true for all people, but without something more, these words are terrible burdens and lead to strange endings, because they put a rubber stamp on our choices as endorsed, no matter how bad. Whatever hobby, addiction, idea, or obsession I had was just a confirmation of my unique and special self. The lesson was basic, teaching me that I didn't need some made-up deity to help me pull through this thing called life. No, I could do it all alone, so long as I relied ever more on myself. And whatever I decided was true, was right. Sounds great, but this false power is more of a curse and is visible in millions of people's lives now. In school and on TV, in sports, it seemed that so many people had the solution of self-actualization and self-esteem that they were tripping over each other to tell it and sell it. In elementary school, it was a technique. In college, I learned the “Hierarchy of Needs” from Abraham Maslow taught in three different classes - psychology, marketing, and political science. It was like a humanist parade where Maslow candy was being tossed out everywhere, and looking back I could see the same parade from second grade onward (and probably earlier if I could remember). Maslow was like a Moses of the second half of the 20th century, who came down from the mountain with his pyramid etched on a tablet. In the years when the onslaught of uniqueness and self-esteem was happening, I recall being pulled out of class for “gifted” meetings. I'm surprised we didn't all end up with identical tattoos that said “UNIQUE” with a serial number after it. And now I've gone too far. I apologize. Let's continue. But my point is that my Truman Show problem (otherwise known as “the problem of other minds” or solipsism) fed right into the uniqueness and self-esteem worldview that was quite literally being rammed down my throat, or rather, hung around my neck. Let's talk about the great IALAC sign experiment that millions of American children had to partake in. The IALAC Sign IncidentBut one incident, in particular, has never left my mind, and that was the second-grade project that was given to our entire class, known as the “IALAC Sign” experiment, an idea invented by the humanist Sidney Simon. The IALAC sign was a piece of paper that we wore around our necks with the letters I.A.L.A.C. which stood for, “I am lovable and capable.” We also did “Me-Me” time during this year of class, which was all about, “Me!” But the IALAC experiment was a self-esteem-building exercise intended to teach children the all-important humanist mantra: “Believe in yourself!” And so I did. I did enjoy causing trouble, but I always knew to follow orders when the time came to be serious. I knew when to quit, and how to follow orders. So I did what was asked. I believed in myself. With the IALAC sign, I recall gathering in the gym, sitting on the floor, and listening to the speaker and one particularly enthusiastic teacher, who I came to realize long after the fact was a hard-core humanist. The speech about the signs we wore around our necks went like this: “Every day you get a new IALAC sign. When someone insults you, a piece of your sign gets torn off. When someone compliments you, a piece can be restored.” So we practiced saying put-downs and compliments, as part of the exercise, and we would tear off parts of the paper. This was great fun because my friends and I would feign devastation and tear off a large piece. “You smell.” “You suck.” So we'd laugh and rip off a piece of the sign. We'd even tear it in half so that it dangled in pieces, then go get some tape and “heal” the IALAC signs with compliments. Then the speaker became serious. He informed us of something ominous. “When you turn eighteen, you no longer get a fresh sign each morning. You get one sign for the rest of your life, and when it gets torn, your sign can keep getting smaller. And for some people, it disappears entirely. So you need to build your self-esteem.” This seemed the secular equivalent of what Jesus said about being “…thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 8:12) If that last IALAC sign is insulted down to nothing, it seemed we could be in a kind of living hell. But the speaker assured us, so long as we “believed in ourselves,” that could never happen. I have many more anecdotes about the “believe in yourself” mantra, from teachers to coaches to TV shows to music, but I feel that anyone living today understands this already. The people alive today in the general culture have heard little else than “follow your heart” and “be yourself” and “let you be you” and even “God loves you just the way you are” since we left the womb. One shining light: The “Great Books” programThere was one shining light in elementary school that I recall where we weren't preached at with the ethos of humanism, and it was a Junior Great Books program that I got pulled into somehow. This was something very, very different from all of the other lessons in class. A few kids got to attend. We would read good stories like “The Ugly Duckling” and examine them, doing close readings, and the moderator of that little program didn't preach the “Be yourself” message. I really can't thank that fellow enough for running that program, because it was the only element of my public schooling that seemed to have any depth to it. The evangelization of uniqueness felt like a firehose to the face for years, and the Junior Great Books hour was like drinking from a cool fountain. “Then they came for the humanists…”Now, in recent years it's becoming en vogue to raise the alarm about the “cult of self-esteem,” which is refreshing because it's so overdue. The media and education system sold and force-fed a dogma to several generations of people. The well-meaning humanists like Maslow, Sidney Simon, and Carl Sagan are no longer cool, they are old, or even deceased, and thus the target of modern healers. Psychiatry can finally get some perspective on itself, too, since it's about as old as cinema, and the newcomers can bash the experts of yesterday. But since these experts of past days were neither people of the book, nor people of tradition, but rather “people of science,” their experiments should be reviewed. The results should be examined. The old experts did this to their ancestors, and now it shall be done to them. And while they threw out religion and all things spiritual, which they deemed to be a failure and relics of a long, silly era of human history, the corpse of the twentieth century should be laid out on a table for examination. Since the experts felt that the many, many centuries of human history where religion held the center and provided meaning, not to mention answers, it's only fair to look at how well human happiness and satisfaction fared in the purely material realm of governments, schools, and media that blocked all spiritual things from children and adults. So how did it work out? Today one out of three people in America admits being depressed. Before this experiment, people reported more satisfaction with life. The experiment performed on children of the second half of the twentieth century is just now being exposed, scrutinized, and put under the magnifying glass. Because of what happened when the lesson of self-esteem played out, the receivers of this obsession with “the self” discovered by experience that “confidence and satisfaction in oneself” is incredibly reductionist and provides no meaning for living. The self gets lonely. The self cannot provide meaning. It needs something outside of the self. What came with the message of “love thyself” was a cocktail of lukewarm American civil religion, from the old Protestant work ethic, where presidents tip their hat to God and wink. Add to that the old Anglo-Saxon values of kicking ass and taking names, and we get the “work hard, play hard” attitude. Mix that with “You are perfect just the way you are” and you have a dangerous self-righteousness and a gaping hole where the soul once sat. The only solution was to keep smiling and rushing around like chickens with our spiritual heads cut off. And that is what was missing from all of the educational, academic, and government attempts to make us whole. The soul. I promise you will never hear the word “soul” mentioned by these troubleshooters, unless they are referring to a mood, or a vibe, or a feeling. But the soul is not any of those things. The soul is the immortal part of our existence that animates our body, a rational soul that requires no matter whatsoever, as it is immaterial, and lives past our final breath, because it is not dependent on a set of lungs and a pumping heart and a brain. Our soul is what awaits the resurrection of the body. These attempts to heal, from the IALAC sign, to ABC's TGIF sitcoms like Full House, to Sesame Street, to “free health care,” to DEI, to whatever we got coming in the pipeline, are all bound to fail because they ignore the most important thing of all: the soul. We live in a worldview that sees the body as a material thing that must be saved at all costs. The mind too is material. This flattened view of the mind has bumped the soul from all public discussion, because, well, science has all the answers. But it can never have the full answer because it doesn't account for the whole person. Health of the body and mind is seen as a principal goal, but the health of the soul is set off in the land of fairy tales, not to be spoken of in the public square. Therein lies the problem. The key problem is this: we see the body as the principal thing, but it is the soul. Don't worry - I am not going light/dark Gnostic here. The body is good, but we think of the body as having a soul. But if you shift your thinking, you may change your whole worldview: the soul has a body. This shift from saying, “My body has a soul” to “My soul has a body” could rattle your world, so be careful: say it slowly. Most likely this idea has probably never been mentioned in your earshot. When you were created, matter from your mother and father joined and your soul was created. Your soul then gained a body, as cell division began, and the same soul has had your body from the time you looked like a seahorse in the womb to today. What do you see in the mirror? Your soul has that body. And the body is good because God made it just for you. Bodies are not perfect, but the soul is immortal, and God loves your soul and your body and will re-unite them in a risen and glorified way that exceeds understanding on the last day. Just as no one could describe exactly what or how Jesus existed in the Resurrection, so shall we be. It is the soul that will be with God first, and when the body joins it in heaven, the joy of being with him will overflow to the body in a reunion. Filling the Big EmptyFor many years I was in this state of isolation, where the body and mind drift alone in time and space, and I gave not one thought to the idea of a soul. Armed with the sword of self-esteem and shield of physical strength, plus a basic aptitude for schoolwork, I did not need the soul. Except for whenever I came to the gaping maw of the cliff, on the edge of the abyss of emptiness I felt inside. Yes, then there was a real problem. The Big Empty - it was like a sensory deprivation tank that only offered madness, isolation, and the circular hell of racing thoughts. Once the problem of sadness bordering on madness started hitting hard, the need to firefight the problem became paramount. But no matter what I threw into the cavern of the Big Empty, it could not be filled. Booze, food, movies, accomplishments, sex, adventures, travel, competition, entertainment - it was always yawning and I could not look into the gaping void for long without trying something else, lest I might just jump into the pit. And belief in myself could not con my way out of it. The word confidence means “with faith” and what was odd was that the faith was to be placed in me, but myself was the problem, so when I refer to circular hell, this is the crux of the issue. Self-esteem requires trust in the self, but it is the self that cannot cure the self. This is how circular arguments blow up just like machines that spin out of control. Thus, getting good grades or winning in sports became the obvious outlet for many years. It was an outlet. Hitting the free throw at the end of a game was an elevator for self-esteem. But missing it, on the other hand, resulted in a different ending. Self-esteem didn't always put the ball in the net. You might say I reached “peak esteem” around 1989, right around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and like the Soviet Union it began to collapse after that. Unsurprisingly, the top-down lies of the Soviets began to be exposed around that time in full display, and so did my elementary school infusion of confidence. I still recall the day. I got off the bus on a dusty afternoon in May, and I grabbed the newspaper. The cover of the local newspaper showed a Soviet tank retreating from Afghanistan, the great graveyard of empires. For some reason that image impacts me to this day because something started to change around that time, unrelated to the unraveling of the Soviet Union. The “coming of age” was coming in a negative way. And I wasn't the only one noticing a problem. “For whatever reason,” said Dr. Jean Twenge, “…if you look at what was going on back then, the early 1990s were not a good time, particularly for young people.”No it was not. Maybe we needed the IALAC signs drug out again to hang around our necks, like paper millstones. Maybe we needed another trophy. Maybe we needed more one-on-one time. Maybe we needed to be more free to express ourselves and be more creative. Maybe we needed more reassurance and less discipline. Maybe we needed more field trips. Why weren't we happy? We had constant and endless fun! So much fun - always happy things, happy faces, smiles, positive vibes, feel-good shows, amusement parks, upbeat music. So why did the whole generation rush to the booze, weed, gangsta rap, and the grunge scene where self-destruction was the message? Could it be that getting wasted and wrecking “the precious” uniqueness became the only escape from the cult of self-esteem? I don't know. But that's what I did. Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, a liter of Jack, and a pack of Marlboros were the yang to the yin of self-esteem. I think what happened is a law of spiritual physics was broken. We were pumped so full of worldly self-esteem that we popped. On certain days, I recall my mom being able to read my face and know something was deeply wrong, despite my best efforts to hide it. And it was in that same year, 1989, that I started to doubt God and wonder how I could ever believe in the miracles that I had accepted just a few years before. And it was in that same year that I stopped looking for answers in heaven and focused more on science. And it was in that same year that I stopped saying my prayers at bedtime. There seemed only two ways out of the cult of self-esteem, and one way was to believe in myself to the end, to the extreme, and the other was to destroy myself so that I didn't have to think about it any longer. This is the danger of the fundamentalism of “believe in yourself.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

When I was fallen away, I thought Richard Dawkins was interesting. I recall the time I saw Dawkins speak at a bookstore (Powell's in Portland, long ago). At the time I thought he was cool. I liked how he was undermining the new “Pharisees” of the modern age and sowing discord among the “Christian hypocrites” as I had yet to realize that we're all sinners. But in watching and listening to Dawkins it dawned on me after only about ten minutes how miserable he seemed, even in his arguments. The smugness filled the room. In contrast I thought of my grandmother with her rosary and the joy in her that she brought to her family. I thought of the billions of people who found hope in faith. His uninspiring message made me leave that talk feeling empty, the opposite of how I felt around my grandmother and other Christians. I entered as a Dawkins fan, only to leave repulsed by his message.Now, with that said I am somewhat grateful for Dawkins because without pure materialists like him, I may never have come back to the faith. It was like a prescribed burn in a field clearing the weeds so that the new life could spring forth. I do believe that is what's happening today in the wider world.Dawkins is the only one who really puts all his chips in the middle and lays his cards on the table. Atheists don't buy the bluff that much of postmodernism is selling. He would reject transgenderism and Baal the storm god in the same breath — as would Catholics. Dawkins even knows that deists are just hedging their bets on a bad hand. The only card player left for atheists to play against is those who believe in the one God, the God Most High. The interesting thing about atheists is that they are closer to coming back to belief in the one God than they ever realize, or would ever care to admit, because they've seen through all the smoke and mirrors of the meaningless and dead gods. They actually are closer to understanding the God who sits outside of time and space — who created time and space — than they realize because they reject all of the nonsense and cling ultimately to mathematics.However, I see this as a long process of preparing the seedbed for faith. Because I don't think many modern atheists have read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or a study Bible like that of Ignatius Press or Word on Fire. Few people have read St. Augustine's Confessions or the Imitation of Christ outside of Catholic circles. And they certainly have not read Veritatis Splendor or Fides et Ratio or Dignitatus Humanae. But if they ever did, they would find that the God we believe in in the Catholic faith is logical, beautiful, and bigger than anything we can ever imagine in creation. But of course, that revelation of a living God comes only by cooperation with God's grace, which is always ready and waiting on a no-interest loan for those who simply ask, seek, and knock. The beauty of the Church is that you get to keep your reason, all of it, and faith makes it soar higher.Dawkins just says what many have been thinking all along, which is this: God doesn't matter. Thomas Jefferson went halfway, but Dawkins just comes out as openly apostate. He is saying that the Emperor has no clothes. He is also like the Emperor Napoleon, when an officer suggested that “God willing” they would take Brussels in the morning. Napoleon allegedly said, “God? God has nothing to do with it.” That's the same answer Dawkins gives. To Dawkins, there is no God, or gods, living or otherwise, outside of our brains. Hence, he's razed the weeds and prepped the soil for coming back to what Abraham and the Apostles and St. Agnes meant by “God.”Of course, Dawkins' grand bet on the selfish gene goes too far. He's all in with all the answers, but he left out of the equation an important variable. He fails to solve for Y, as in “Y are we here?” That is the problem with this worldview, because in a world without meaning, you have to live in that world. So does everyone else, and everyone else is not necessarily an educated PhD who can spend a lifetime inspecting in all corners of science and history. Everyone else lacks the funds and leisure time to find meaning. Everyone else, for the most part, in the end, has to rely on what someone says is true. I take it on faith that germs cause disease and not fairies, even though I have never actually saw either of them infect a person. Dawkins and company can win arguments about how the world works, but what they cannot win an argument about is why a sunset is beautiful. When there is no satisfactory ultimate why, people spend a lifetime searching for that variable. In the end, what the world without a living God results in is someone else taking control by force and dictating that the value of Y must be what they say it is, simply because they said so.So even though I'm not a Dawkins fan, at least he isn't hedging his bets. He's all in, and I actually think deniers like him are closer to finding God than the builders of Babel or the deists like Ben Franklin ever were. Having the door half-open to God is like letting the heat out of the house in winter. At some point, you have to make up your mind to go outside or stay inside. This makes me realize, truly, that we should pray for Richard Dawkins. He may end up bringing more people back to faith in God than we could have ever realized. He is almost at the top of the circle, since when we run away from God, we often find ourselves running right into the arms of God.Today, we are witnessing the outcome of what happens when the ideas of Dawkins are taken to its logical end. The reason Dawkins is wrong is that he doesn't understand what the builders at Babel and the deists like Ben Franklin understood well. The ancient emperors from history and American Founders knew that people needed religion, and to pull that rug out from society would cause the city itself to collapse. Now we are seeing funny religions pop up, because we pretend we don't need one.The root problem for Dawkins is that he has a middle-school concept of God that he never outgrew. He's also operating as an autonomous speaker of “his truth” without a plan or concept of how to organize a world. He doesn't have employees or mouths to feed or an economy to plan. In the walled-in academic world where the idea of “no souls” exists, Dawkins fails to realize something rather large. His theory of the “Selfish Gene” starts from the bottom, instead of the top, and therefore he cannot describe the whole. His answer of “Because of genes!” is too simple. A toe does not describe the wholeness of a person any more than a gene does, and genes cannot explain the totality of human nature. Dawkins is so smart, but he can't understand what simple farmers and mothers and the poor with no education understand perfectly well. You would think an evolutionary biologist would be very equipped to understand the parable of the grain of wheat, but somehow he misses it completely. I find this to be marvelous irony.We need religion. People need religion. Or they will find one. And it won't be what you expect. In the clean, childless world of our universities, ideas sound good that lack depth. Dawkins' answer is from the atomic layer, and he emerges from a quiet library to tell us that we are nothing but atoms. Meanwhile the bustle of the street doesn't hear a word he's said, because life is happening far beyond the atomic layer. When Dawkins' burst forth from his library, he was telling a very different message from what the apostles told when they emerged from the Upper Room at Pentecost, after having received the breath of life, touched by tongues of fire. No, when Dawkins and his disciples emerged in their lab coats to tell us the good news, their message was that respiration is a selfish act to propagate our genes and that there is no meaning to any of it. The apostles had a message of eternal life, while Dawkins made us ponder suicide.So while I commend Dawkins for his honesty, he is actually more foolish than the leaders of Babel or Jefferson. At least the leaders at Babel and Jefferson were offering something to believe in: “Look, here's a tower. It's a Gate to God. See?” And Jefferson and Franklin offer something, too: “Look, here's a sacred document, a Constitution, where we make a nod to God — and also — over there — see the Statue of Liberty?”Dawkins only offers the abyss. And our brains revolt at the idea. We all know the Big Empty is there, but we don't really want to stand on the edge and look into it. We can't. Not for long. The temptation to believe that Dawkins is right draws us all, as doubt is more natural to us than faith. So even if we dabble in disbelief, most move away from the edge in search of a Higher Power of some kind. The search for God, when thwarted or stifled or silenced, erupts like boils, in strange places and in uncomfortable ways. We are already seeing strange religions being born in America now, almost more strange than that of the pagan gods of Babel or America's traditional worship of the rule of law, wealth, and the slippery thing called “Liberty.”The Tower of Babel or the Constitution may be an elaborate way to justify power, but it is a better attempt at meaning than what Dawkins offers the masses. But again, Dawkins is the only honest one, which is also why his idea is the most dangerous. He's the anti-Jesus (I don't want to call him the anti-Christ, because he lacks the charisma needed for that). Dawkins tells us that we are purely material beings without souls. He goes all the way.Most people hold back and speak the old common language that dances around this fact, finding idols and obsessions to occupy or fence off the Big Empty. Dawkins has spent his life shouting this message and now we are seeing what fruit it bears, where we are in fact atomized, solitary beings (kind of like his selfish gene!). When we are just chemical machines, we do indeed act like the “selfish gene” writ large. Again, not only is this message the polar opposite of Christ, but it's brings the polar opposite result. Where people know Christ, they form communities, families, and fellowship. There is warmth amid the struggle. It's not perfect. But when suffering comes, there is a prayer, and a church, and a people, and the Body of Christ. Dawkins inability to get past a small understanding of God leaves him on the playground all alone. As we watch millions of community organizations and church groups fading away in America, we are clearly becoming more atomized, as people sit at home watching TV alone instead of joining the Lions' Club or a bowling team. What is worrisome about this is that Hannah Arendt, who dissected the rise of 1930's totalitarianism, said that loneliness, a.k.a atomization, is a first step toward totalitarianism, because isolated people without purpose or faith are attracted to a powerful ideology that delivers some kind of meaning. Hence, the transgender craze we are seeing is not surprising at all. Those people are seeking God, but it's a long way home. I sympathize because I did the same thing, but with liquor. That's also a long way home.To me, in the end, Dawkins' worldview makes Kurt Cobain or Morrissey seem light-hearted. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

I was in a state known as “fallen away” for about 15 years, because I had never experienced what is known as interior conversion. I was going through the motions and so the purpose of religion and church felt like fishing with no hook and no bait. I wasn't catching anything, and wasn't learning how or why, and I didn't know how it was supposed to work. So I stopped fishing and moved on, which I've come to realize was the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.I fell away for similar reasons to most people. I felt it was a lot of rules, and I saw bad representatives around me with a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude. With that, it became easier to deny the idea of sin, which is precisely how I came to reject God. This is where I stayed for a long time, because once you turn away it takes a “compelling event” to be re-awakened to turn back. And from my experience, you cannot get to the resurrection unless you get to belief in God first. That has to be restored before you start asking for God's help. To me the proofs for God must be shown or come to a person that has turned away before you can dive into the mysteries like the incarnation, resurrection, and ascension. Fortunately, an addiction provided the “compelling event” for me where I wake up in jail and did rehab and turned back to God. But not everyone is as lucky as me. The gaze of our culture is toward earth, not heaven. There is an ambivalence and uncertainty about whether we have souls at all. We are conditioned that way now. A lack of depth in religious education and exposure for young people, at least where I grew up, didn't help. Public school seemed to make an effort to steer around any idea of a spiritual life. I recall campaigns in school to build up our dignity and self-worth, but it was all body and mind, but certainly not soul-oriented. My idea around the soul was dead on arrival in high-school, indoctrinated to the public school's dance around the spiritual. All things were taught as materialism. Worse, I felt that I couldn't ask questions about faith as a child, whereas in school I was encouraged to dig into every topic. Religious teachers from middle-school through college, take note: students want depth, not coloring books. They want a challenge, not busy work. It took me a very long time to realize the intellectual depth of Christianity. I had never come across or been introduced to St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas. Reading Augustine's Confessions blasted at my assumptions, as did Word on Fire materials, from the podcast to the books. The wall of earthbound explanations became like Plato's cave, where I was only seeing shadows on the wall while the real story, or the other half of the story, was in the spiritual life. But someone who is turned away from God has that wall up and they will not be receiving messages that are transmitted to them, because they have scrambler for anything that hints at God. That is why you have to get to reasons to believe in God first. Misunderstanding how to read the Bible is an enormous blocker, and I don't think the “Catholic” way to read the Bible is that well known. “How to Read the Bible” from the WOF Bible was eye-opening, as I'd lumped Catholics with Fundamentalist readings, which ruined how I understood it. I hated reading Genesis when I was in the scientism and literalism mindset. I could only read it like Carl Sagan on one hand, or like Ken Ham on the other hand. You can't read Scripture like a science book, because it's not a science book. It's about the soul, not cells. Moreover, you can't go deep in science classes and then come back and try to read it like a fundamentalist. That doesn't work for people who take advanced science classes. You can't tell someone who took literature classes that there is no figurative elements, because we know how to read. This isn't elementary school where you could convince a child that Aesop's fable of the “Ant and the Grasshopper” is just about insect life. We know there is allegory, we know there is interpretation. So we can't read it literally or scientifically, but we need to use our whole mind to read it. Any one-dimensional reading of the Bible will fail, but you can read it in each dimension and then see how they relate. It's not like other books. Most interesting to me now, is that I've realized that you can go very deep on science and read the Bible like Catholics do. You can learn about evolution and still find that Genesis makes complete sense. In fact, I think the deeper you go on science, the more that Genesis and the Gospels make sense, but I'm biased the other way now. Once you start looking for the historical, allegorical, moral, and religious truth of what the Bible teaches, that is a game changer. But again you have to want to believe in God first. If you approach the Bible as fiction from the start, you will read it as fiction. If you start with doubt, you will be scoffing by the third day of creation and wonder how God said, “Let there be light” before he created the sun. I know because I scoffed. I didn't understand that the “light” was faith, or the idea to create, or the power of God to make something out of nothing. Once you allow that light in, however, you can read the Bible and not get stalled on difficult passages. The catechism teaches that Genesis uses figurative language in places, and I came to realize that how Catholics read the Bible is deep, not shallow. Eventually you get to the point that you can read Genesis literally, figuratively, allegorically, morally, and how it relates to Jesus and the end of time. Even historically. Heck, even scientifically and it still works. I'm not kidding. If you think it's just some old myth, you aren't reading it deep enough. One thing that helped me return is the example of faithful Christians I know – Catholic, Protestant – I saw their lives, lived in devotion and that probably did more for me than anything. It made me want to have what they have, because when you turn away you live in a restlessness. Experience is a pre-requisite for some of us to realize that “our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” You may not know you are restless until one night you become fully aware of how lost you became in all that searching in wrong places. But when we are looking earthward instead of the heavens, we think the world has the answers instead of God who created the world. Somehow the flip has to happen, to turn your head upward. Refusing to pray or ask for help is rejection of God. But like the Bible says, we are stiff-necked, which I learned was an idiom about oxen that would not turn when poked by the farmer. The thing is we have to want to turn in the end, we have to want to receive God's grace. Desiring God is where the flip happens but like St. Paul and St. Augustine, it's often not a voluntary thing, it's a gift. For Paul it happened all at once. For Augustine it was a slow-burning eight season HBO adult series. Either way, the result was the same because they ended up on fire for God. They were never the same again. What you can do for someone who has fallen away? You can call. Send a text. Be a friend. Listen. But have faith and keep building yours up. I think those actions alone can be the compelling event, because seeing someone pass through life with faith is a powerful argument even without words. Praying a 54 day Rosary novena won't hurt either. I'm not even kidding, since both of you will benefit. You have to love them and just pray for God's will and recall that we need God, he doesn't need us. He loves us and wants us to return, but only we are harmed in turning away. Prayer is powerful, more than I ever realized. For me it took arguments for God, experience, the silent witness of others, and my own foolishness to want to know God. I suspect a few people were praying for me. In the end, you have to realize that you can't save yourself. When you feel strong, there's no need for a savior. Realizing how weak and helpless I was gave me the nudge I needed, and a life of worshipping the self and the world is depressing. Wealth, pleasure, honor, and power become boring. My generation grew up dreaming about rocking out with Snoop Dogg and the Victoria's Secret angels on our own private yachts after winning the Superbowl. We wanted all the world had to offer, all these fruits and experiences that seemed to be liberating, but they ended up bringing spiritual death. None of that brings true happiness. Spiritual things come back to life once you become willing to ask for help. While science may have some cures, it doesn't have THE cure. Pills and therapy can go part of the way, but not all the way, because the last part of the journey doesn't come from a pharmacy or from a technique. The last leap has to come by faith. People who turn away from God (which is everyone, unless you are Jesus, who is God, and if you are him, please contact me I'd like to meet for coffee ASAP)…let's start this sentence over. People who turn away from God imagine they have found freedom because they only see the rules of religion as oppressive, but that's because they don't understand the interior conversion of the heart is what transforms. That's the whole point of cathedrals and hymnals and candles and long Saturday night Easter Vigil Mass and stations of the cross and ashes on our foreheads and all the kneeling and standing. To give glory to God, once turned, makes total sense, because that's all we can do to even try to give thanks for what God has done for us. Seeking humility before God means offering up our prayers, our money, our songs, our hearts - all of those things. If you haven't turned back, it won't make sense because it cannot make sense. You'll see religion as a modern kind of Pharisee, all justice and no mercy and full of hypocrisy. You'll see the sinners fall and point out that we are hypocrites, which is true. But we are trying. That's the goal, to love God, to love others, and to keep his commandments. To do God's will and give him glory is the game. What you have to show someone who is turned away is that the “rules” are not the endgame. The interior conversion is why everyone who comes to drink from this vine never leaves the party. If it were only about rules, Napoleon or Julius Caesar or Genghis Kahn would be the object of our worship, because they were very good about enforcing the law. Love of God goes way, way beyond the rules, but because of that love, the rules must be followed. People who turn away do not like those rules, because they think what the rules outlaw are what is enjoyable. Unfortunately, it will never make sense to them when you try to explain that getting drunk and having sex is not what they really want. That message is scrambled because they can't get first to God, and second to the interior conversion. There is a joy that the fallen away are oblivious to. They have no idea it exists and think those who claim it's true are liars. They think it's boring and enslaving but it's the ultimate liberation. And if you like excitement, if you like a good fight, spiritual combat is a sport that never stops. How to read the Bible: https://www.wordonfire.org/videos/bishop-barrons-commentaries/how-to-read-the-bible/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

In some of the shortest parables, Jesus delivers the deepest of messages regarding faith and meaning to believers and seekers. Take for instance the parable of the Merchant and the Pearl, where in two sentences Jesus explains the priceless reward we receive through him. The Merchant, having found this one Pearl, sells all that he owns to have it because nothing else, nothing in this world, even comes close to the value of it.The Pearl is like what many of the Saints find when they realize the reward and consolation that Jesus grants us through his death and resurrection. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Thomas Aquinas said, “God alone satisfies.” Teresa of Avila said, “God alone is enough.” Repeatedly, we see this peace settle onto those with faith. They undergo drastic change by their belief in God. This is not the superficial change that comes from other pursuits, like money or vanity. This is true change. With faith comes a gift of joy, but the world wants to suppress it and smother it. If faith isn't giving me joy, then I'm not understanding it correctly. Those that profess their peace in Christ will have their joy tested daily, because just as his life and teachings threatened the Roman order, so does it threaten the modern empire of the Self. Those who worship the self find Christian faith childish and openly laugh at it. I certainly did. I mocked the faithful while I was fallen away from belief. But Christians can celebrate being mocked. It is perfectly fine to be laughed at, and almost an achievement in itself. Jesus prepared me for these moments:“You will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” Mk 13:13I should not be deterred by this, for I do not need others approval; the only approval I should consider is God's. So I must return daily to my faith, like a child. If I recall how I lost my faith in the first place, it was because I grew cynical in adolescence and early adulthood. I thought there were no more mysteries in life, and no God except the Watchmaker kind. But having regained my faith, I don't want to lose it again. What I realize now is that my faith as a child made more logical sense than my doubt in adulthood. “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Mt 18-19Thus when people smirk at these words, or openly jeer belief, this is actually a time to be glad. That alone is a clear indication that I am oriented in the right direction, toward God. To endure whatever comes, be it mockery, condescension, indifference, opposition, or even violence - can I remain humble and peaceful? Keeping the faith, like a child, is the correct path. The reward of eternal life through Jesus' death and resurrection cancels any earthly insult. Nothing else on offer in this world can fulfill my heart and soul in the same manner. I have already tried all of the other options. They all disappoint in the end. They come up short. Why? Because they are not God, which is what I was really hungering for. I don't put myself into the Gospel scenes enough. I need to feel the emotion of Christ in the words. I don't put myself into the scene of his Passion, but I need to start doing it more. How would I act in those trials and struggles? Would I fold up like a chair and crumble? Can I hear the people around me? Do I sense the tension, struggle, and pain in the words and actions? Would I even be among the crowd around Jesus, or shaking my head at them? I bet I would be, because the Romans and Jews and people of all nations who gathered to crucify him were the same as us today, they just happened to live before us. I often find confusion in the readings. I used to give up and assume it was primitive fairy tales, but now I know I must speak to wiser believers about it, or read the writings of the early Church. Every rebuttal and question that I can think of has already been asked, pondered, argued, even fought over. Ask, seek, knock: if I shutter my mind when I come up against something difficult, then I have despaired and turned away. When I'm confused, this is precisely the time to discuss the words with other members of the faith. Find real people to talk to about it, and avoid online comment pits of conversation on social media. There is little or nothing to learn on social media. I must speak with people of faith, as “iron sharpens iron.” Far wiser people than I have gone over these words and remained solid in their belief.Jesus and his teachings are what my soul wants. I am the Merchant and Jesus is the Pearl. If I return to my treasure daily, as the Saints did, and read deeply, and yearn for the spirit of Christ, he will guide my day, and ultimately my life.“God alone satisfies.” CCC 1718-1722 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Doing a root cause analysis of all rejection of God reveals the same underlying bug. The fatal flaw of every Goliath, no matter how large, is the same. It is pride. And the fig leaf of pride is covering up an inner fear. But for those who abandon all comfort to God, fear withers because there is more than just this life. The truth is the living God, maker of all things visible and invisible. There is a lesson here, however, about fear, for which David and Goliath can provide the example. This lesson is as timeless as it is obvious, for David was instructed to be silent by his brothers, by his fellow countrymen, who were all trembling in fear of this large bully that seemed undefeatable. But David refused to be silenced. He knew what was true, what was good, and he would not be quieted by muscle, shouting, or argument, because that is what the human heart must do when the Truth is being stifled. This is when the humble and simple turn bold just by standing up for what is beautiful and offering up all their worldly reputations, possessions, and lives for the glory of God. “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” A thorough understanding of that verse must be made in order to set your face like flint against what is popular and powerful. Because when faced with death or the loss of a job, some men and women will understand that those things mean nothing, zero, compared to the Truth, and they will willingly stand, even if they are the last, single, solitary voice on earth, to declare the Truth and go out naked and alone to fight the giant with nothing more than the Truth at their side. I would like to believe I could do that, but my fear is that I will be like Peter who was bold in the boat but timid on the water and started to sink as soon as the wind came up. Why did Peter sink? Because of fear. Because he didn't trust in God like David did. Keep in mind that Goliath came to the camp every day for forty days, challenging the whole army, and no soldier would stand, until the youthful David said, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” Did you catch that? Not the insult about the circumcision, but the last part: the living God. He is alive. He was alive then, he is alive now. And David knew that he could be trusted, because he is the Creator, the Maker, the Artist, the Author. He is Being Itself. And his brothers tried to silence him, because they were afraid of Goliath, afraid of fighting for the Truth. His brothers said:“Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption, and the evil of your heart; for you have come down to see the battle.” And David said, “What have I done now? Was it not but a word?” And he turned away from him toward another, and spoke in the same way; and the people answered him again as before.David was not content to hear their defeatism, so he went straight to the leadership and asked them, and there too he was shut down and told not to speak. When the words which David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul; and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, “Let no man's heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” So he was told “No” once again, and what was his weapon? It was not yet the slingshot, but his voice, his words, for he knew what he was, what he was capable of, and most of all he knew what it meant to fully trust and abandon himself to God. But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” By speaking, by asking, seeking, knocking; by speaking, he was given the right to go fight, and it's obvious that if he needed to ask again, or a hundred more times, he would have kept thrashing about the camp until someone listened to him and was awakened to the fight. But he would go it alone. And Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!”  So because they were thinking like men and not like God, they dressed up the boy in a man's armor, too heavy to move around in, so that he would be “safe,” and in that safety David knew he would lose the fight. He needed to be naked and fearless in front of God in order to defeat Goliath.Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword over his armor, and he tried in vain to go, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, “I cannot go with these; for I am not used to them.” And David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in his shepherd's bag or wallet; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.With basic tools, unexpected trust, and wild abandon in his faith, he went forth, to be mocked and derided, surely even by his own army. And the Philistine came on and drew near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. And when the Philistine looked, and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, ruddy and comely in appearance. And the Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.” David did not need more. He did not need armor, nor sword, nor clothing, nor shield. He had all of these things on his side, as he invoked God, just as St. George before he slayed the dragon, just as Jesus rebuked Satan in the desert. You cannot go to war with evil alone, and you cannot go to war half-hearted. This battle is in the realm of spiritual combat. The battle for Truth, the one Truth, is always spiritual. Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down, and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand.”The battle is the Lord's. It is always so. When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground.So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine, and killed him; there was no sword in the hand of David. Then David ran and stood over the Philistine, and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath, and killed him, and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath… (1 Samuel 17)Faith and works. Body and soul. Ask, seek, knock. If you must speak out, do it with charity. Remember that you are fighting with something beyond the humans who appear to be the enemy. They are not the enemy, they are just behind enemy lines. This is a spiritual war. For this a sword is not needed but rather faith, hope, and charity. By your endurance you will gain your soul. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

We've all been raised on heroes and politicians and athletes that feign perfection. But in the Old Testament, the characters are all flawed. They are also all limited, because they are human, not divine. Some do awful things. In fact, they are just like real people. Thus, we all have our limitations, in that the specs of our design cannot exceed various parameters. We may feel ten feet tall but no one has ever been near that height. We may feel bulletproof but every king who has ever lived has passed away into death. This is going to take me a while to get to it, but we are like NASCAR, in that we have predictable speeds and power. We all seek power, but because of our limited dimensions and parameters, dictators and bullies end up like stock cars passing by, with the same engines and spoilers, but with different decals on the exterior to pretend they are unique. Each car is different, while each is the same. This is a both/and scenario. You can see this positively or negatively, but the end goal of each makes all the difference. What are you racing toward? That is the only question that matters in the end. If it's not toward the highest good, then even if you finish in first place, you lose. The Bible also shows our limitations as a group, such as the scapegoating mechanism and tribalism. Biblical characters would be cancelled today in our unforgiving modern era (depending on what party they belonged to). We live in a similar time of scapegoating as the Israelites did. This is because the law of Moses actually understood the problem with scapegoats and had a day of Atonement for sin management. You could call this an SMS - a Sin Management System, to use modern IT language. But today…we just have sin. We don't manage it, because we don't believe in it. We sweep it under the rug and pretend it isn't there. Sin is old-fashioned, so we think. To follow the stock car analogy, this is like ignoring wires showing on tires, where a blowout is imminent. But to use a different metaphor for a moment: sin is best likened to a disease like cancer, where our past unconfessed sins remain with us and grow to enormous proportions. When we read a medical article about someone who had a fifty pound tumor, we all say, “How could someone not know they had a fifty pound tumor?” The articles usually have a picture of the person with the glaringly obvious medical problem. It's baffling to us how someone would not realize something was awry. But most of us walk around carrying fifty pound spiritual tumors, from sins never repented. The sins from one-night stands, burned bridges, anger, hatred, and self-loathing all continue to grow on our souls, and will continue to do so, until the disease is loosed in confession. If only we could see each other's souls. Interestingly, others usually can see our sins better than ourselves, as it's so easy to know why someone else is spiritually ill, but we cannot see our own spiritual tumors. And so much of our sin is about power, or gaining an edge over someone, or protecting our little grove that we consider the self to be the king of. We all have a grove, even if it's only our social media profile, where we feel like the king. But we're not the king. I'm not the king, and realizing that is the greatest relief I've ever had. Knowing I'm a sinner allows me to stop pretending, stop fighting, stop squabbling over the scraps. There is a king, and it's not me, and surrendering to the loving, living God is like having the massive tumor cut away, and all that ugly growth from many years of power-seeking behavior can be put aside. This is why I like the Old Testament. We can see the diseased state of sinful lives. It's so obvious. The supernatural reading of the Old Testament changes everything. (Michael Heiser, who recently passed away, has a documentary for helping you get started in this. Unless you believe in God, and the devil, you will read the Bible like a 21st century American and miss the whole point.) Whenever someone points out the shortcomings of the Old Testament patriarchs or prophets, I want to remind them that, yes, exactly, you are catching on: sin is narrated in the Old Testament for a reason, and that reason is that these people were not the incarnation of God, like Jesus was, but were struggling in the world to work toward his grace, but failing and often choosing sin. The Old Testament, unlike other mythology systems, shows the ugly side of humanity, and if you disagree, go read about Samson again in Judges and see if you still think he was a model for living. If you think of Samson as a saint, please stop and re-read his story. St. Augustine famously said, “It is narrated, not praised,” to help us understand a guy like Samson. But rest assured, Samson is in there for a reason. In fact, the Good Thief who repents on the Cross next to Jesus in his last minute is in there for a reason, a very good reason. His name is St. Dismas, and wouldn't we all be so lucky to turn and see Christ in our last hour, in our last breath? (St. Dismas, pray for us.)There is much to learn from the story of Samson, it's just not that he was a good guy who could do whatever he wanted because God said so. If you read the Bible in that way, such that anyone under the banner of the Chosen people is flawless, then you have spiritually drawn the Monopoly card that reads: “Return to Go, do not collect $200.” You need to start again. If you read about Samson and say, “Well, clearly he was predestined and chosen, so he could do whatever he want.” Just stop. Think about what you are saying. Does it make any sense at all? Samson was supposed to be a monk consecrated to God (a Nazirite) who doesn't sleep around, drink, touch dead things, or cut his hair. And what is his story? It's doing all of those things, and even when he destroys the Philistines, he's not doing it for the glory of God, he literally asks for strength to get revenge. If anything, Samson proves the old adage of “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” and the reason the story of Samson is important is because we see the strangeness of history, of sin, of leaders, of salvation history. When you go to read the Old Testament with “Chosen People” blinders on, you miss the richness of the narrative. As I said, the “white hat/black hat” Cowboy story that Americans want to find - it ain't in the Old Testament. But perhaps Samson did repent in his last hour. Perhaps God used him in ways radically beyond our finite minds. God takes care of the particular judgement for each person, not us. Sacred scripture illustrates lives and the arc of salvation history, and we are like ants catching a glimpse of something so far beyond our understanding, like a rocket, or a surgery, that we must stand in awe of creation and continue on in our faith and work without full knowledge. And that is the mystery of faith - though we can never know all things, we can know some things, and catch glimpses of God's glory and learn the repeated lessons of redemptive suffering, with the Crucifix showing us over and over, that there is no way to heaven but through the Cross. And even Samson can show us that story. Trent Horn wrote, “The Bible is not a sterile collection of perfect people who always follow God's will. It is instead a drama about how God redeemed imperfect people and used them, in spite of their flaws, to accomplish his sovereign and holy will for mankind.”And thank God for that, because a story of perfect robots is not a human story, and is not interesting unless you are under ten years old. The Great Story of Israel has much more going on than Wyatt Earp's showdown. There is indeed a good guy and a bad guy, with God reclaiming the world from the fallen angels, but that is what we forget while we zero in on the individual character or verse. Not only are there fallen angels, there are fallen people, but here's the point: those people are redeemable. Arguably, even the Pharaoh of Exodus is redeemable. Thus, when people get fired up over the violence in Joshua, or 2 Peter calling Lot “righteous” after he offers up his daughters for rape, they are reading it in a way that we don't read or watch anything else. Why are we so dense at reading the Old Testament when we can follow intricate narratives in a ten-season TV shows that shows the depth and nuance of individual characters in a slow-burning plot? Why do we choose to read it like children? It's simple. Most of us haven't really read it. If we have, we have not since we were children, so we got the white hat/black hat version of it, which is fine…until you are no longer a child. We haven't even had a tour of the adult version, which is a much more serious and dark version. The flood story alone goes from being a happy pack of animals on a ship to an utterly terrifying world-ending mayhem. Another possibility is that we received a dumbed-down fundamentalist reading of it, which is great for becoming familiar, but not for depth and nuance. And when I say fundamentalist, I mean both the Fundamentalists and the New Atheists, because both read the Bible in a way that gets little or nothing out of it. I can't stress this enough: reading the Bible using the four senses of scripture is how it opens up into a four-dimensional trip. So many people charge in and say, “I'm going to read the Bible in a year” and they get to Leviticus or Numbers and stop because it's boring and appears to be unrelated to the modern world, when in reality, all of it is central to the experience we are living in right now. If you are going to read the Bible in a year, follow the Bible in a Year tour guide, Father Mike Schmitz, and it will go far, far better than doing it on your own. But the main reason why adults read the Bible like cowboy stories is this:We read the Old Testament like ten year old pro-wrestling fans because we don't understand that we are living in a spiritual war. In our modern assumptions about the world, we forget that ghosts are real. We use the word soul but laugh at the idea of ghosts. But the word is the same. We just have a cartoon version of “ghost” now due to TV shows like Scooby-Doo and Caspar, but we still know that we have souls in the quiet places of our hearts and minds. Our adult, data-driven minds forget that there is more types of knowledge than what can be graphed or measured. We don't accept that there is more than just matter, but also spirit. Admitting that angels and demons are real does not often come from college educated lips. Why? Because we think we know better. Frankly, we don't read the Bible believing that God is real. Thus, we don't understand the overarching story that leads to Christ's defeat of the devil, and thereby miss the entire point of the entire library known as the Bible. If you don't believe in the devil, then you probably don't believe in God. If you don't believe in God, you probably don't believe in souls. If you don't believe in souls, you don't believe that you could spend eternity in either heaven or hell. But you can. And you will. This is the root problem for many of our social and mental maladies as well. We have numbed the part of our brain that allows for belief in the supernatural. We have flattened God into “all religions are the same” when they are anything but the same. This is why whenever I read about an academic paper that suggests “all prehistoric peoples were egalitarian” I know immediately that I am reading modern propaganda, because not only do we not know that, but the authors of such things also have an agenda and bias, usually one that matches either liberalism, utilitarianism, postmodernism, post-colonialism, or (most often) socialism and communism. In short, an anti-Christian bias. And if you don't think that is true, enroll in a modern University and test this hypothesis. Attend any class in the departments of anthropology, history, English, or really any of the humanities, and listen for commentary on organized religion or belief in the supernatural. Anything that poses as science denies the supernatural, as it should. But, many things that pose as science are not actually science. There is an ideology creeping in everywhere, and the goal of any ideology is power. Universities have a spiritual nature, too, but the spirit is not from God. And in denying God, they fear language that speaks of God. A bias against Christianity is dogma today in nearly every school, public or private. The only lens you as a student can choose is the tinted goggles of modern scholarship. The creeds of modernism demand a denial of the supernatural, which is odd, because in the end, the supernatural will deny the modern man and woman who doesn't cooperate with the free offer of grace. If a history professor in his hiring interview suggested that Israel was a chosen people by God selected to bring about the Savior of souls, it's difficult to imagine a callback happening for a second interview. That alone would be immediate cause for moving on to the next candidate to find someone who assented to the belief that all cultures were equally un-chosen. In higher education, the era of Christendom is treated like a child, one that never matured, but now we know better. It almost seems like the academic world has tried to put Catholicism into a group home for the elderly, so that it could be ignored. But the primary reason it's not talked about is not that Catholicism isn't true, it's that Catholicism is a constant thorn in the side of the polite power grab, and power requires its enemies to be silent. The creed of today is more aligned with the religion of humanism or socialism than Catholicism, but it is every bit as religious in nature. Because of this, universities have become a self-congratulating, backslapping loops of nonbelievers, where the jockeys in the horse race for tenure require adhering to specific speech codes, and shutting out all comers. We are in the Grove. The nonbelievers have a standing army, and whoever comes to slay the slayer will be the next priest-king. But the thing about power is that it's all the same. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss. It's like NASCAR (back to the main metaphor). Every power seeker is ultimately the same. It is only the king who is the Suffering Servant that is different. Every single other power-seeker preaches the opposite of the Beatitudes. Like race cars, ideology that seeks power is trying to win a race. What is the race for power? It's the idea that there is a solution to all the world's ills through a set of ideas, rather than through God. In NASCAR, cars must be built a certain way. Mechanics and engineers can only massage and tweak the strict engine and chassis requirements so much before the speed tops out, as by physics there is a limit to what can be done. There's a blocker on what can be done with these cars. It's the same with ideology, because like stock cars, ideas cannot exceed their worldly dimensions. Materialism, in all its forms, can only use the things of this world. Thus liberalism, capitalism, socialism, scientism, techno-utopia, postmodernism, utilitarianism, and the rest all have “the solution” to win the race, to stave off pain, to bring worldly victory, to bring heaven to earth. But if there is one thing Jesus showed us is that suffering is part of our lives here. Even he who cured diseases and cast out illnesses still had to suffer, and suffer greatly because of sin in the world. The cause of all suffering is personal sin, not external enemies, and until everyone realizes that we will indeed have oppression and suffering. The remedy is to follow both Commandments, to love God first, and then to love others as Jesus loved us. This is the lesson: that we must first seek the kingdom of God, and accept what suffering may come. When God is ready he will bring heaven to earth, and not before. The stock cars of auto racing are like the stock beliefs of ideology that block the supernatural from our lives. I do believe that there is half of us that love God (or think we do) and another half that loves others (or pretend we do), and both are firing on only three cylinders instead of all six. You must put God's love and love of others together to exceed the restrictions of this world's physics, and yet - and yet, like NASCAR, there are still rules to follow while doing it, called the Commandments, and the way to do so is spelled out in detail in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.But our modern gods of culture is limited by the constraints of unbelief. Unbelief in corporations, academia, and the media means we must assent to belief that we are alone, that God is not alive. So obviously, our efforts try to solve all suffering with ideas, and to break the physical and spiritual laws using ideology, which always ends up breaking all rules because it turns into a religion. This is why we can all laugh (and cry) at the line: “In capitalism, man oppresses man. In communism, it's just the opposite.” Power that defers to no Higher Power cannot accomplish what it sets out to do, which is to create heaven on earth. All of the kings of this world are the same people. What Democrats and Republicans in America often do not understand is that they are the same people, just as the Nazis and Communists were. It's like any NASCAR feud. Take the skirmishes between Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick at Bristol, for instance. Two drivers nearly duked it out over a race, while the crowd cheered it on. What are the drivers after? The Cup. The championship. The power. What does the mob want? They want whichever car they cheer for to get power, so by proxy they can feel powerful. That's what fandom is, just like world politics. We only wave flags because we want our side to win, because our side, we believe, has the ideology that deserves to win. But whoever wins the power only matters in how they wield the power and to whom they give glory toward. To follow this through a bit more: both drivers are pretty much interchangeable, just like the cars they drive. They have both been blessed to be in racing families and God-given talent and surely a convenient sets of fortunate happenings to get them into the elite and small field of NASCAR racing. They have, in a sense, hit the lottery of gifts in terms of auto racing. Now, if Kevin Harvick's soul was swapped into Chase Elliott and vice versa, it's likely the drama would be the same, because they would still be driven to win the Cup. But it would also make a good Freaky Friday style of movie, as after the swap, Kevin Harvick would realize that Chase Elliott and his mechanics are probably decent guys in the same pursuit of the Cup. Perhaps he might return to his own body full of love for his enemy and a new appreciation of the sport of racing. Better yet, a terrific ending would be when both resume racing for the greater glory of God, like the dude in Chariots of Fire, who ran for love of the game, not the trophy, as his angry opponent did). The reason Jesus is so interesting to every generation is because he's obviously different from every other power seeker in human history. Why is he so different? Because he's not seeking power. He already has it. All of it. And so he's giving it all away, all the time, and serving us all, who really don't deserve it. He's like the lowest guy in the Pit Crew who hands the lead mechanic the wrench and gets yelled at for doing it too slow, and then doesn't object or complain despite being the inventor of the automobile and greatest mechanic in the universe, the Creator of all things. Thus, reading the Bible in the light of power is illuminating, because we are living in a time where the West, that has been under the power of classical liberalism and humanism, is turning toward atheism and strange brands of Gnosticism, and quite literally every heresy since the Resurrection. For those who win power on earth, they will have their prize. They will gain the “Commanding Heights” of economies and governments - for awhile. Then when we tire of that driver, another stock car will come along, with a new ideology and flag, and will replace it. And whoever wins the Cup, inherits the fear of losing it. The shame and honor culture is ballooning now, and will continue to do so, and when power is lost, or perceived to be threatened, the scapegoats will be trotted out, as usual. Power games are so predictable that it looks no different than the Daytona 500, except the Daytona 500 brings more joy to people, because the winner of a car race doesn't promise heaven. As soon as the winners in society get what they want, and believe they have saved the world (if only everyone would fall into line with their plan), they begin to oppress the world in a new way. Some winners are better than others, and those are the ones that - at least nominally, like Thomas Jefferson - tip the hat to God for what they have been given here on earth. But the tip-o-the-hat to God can be used as a smokescreen for blatant power grabs, too. All ideas and movements that promise to bring heaven on earth are false. Because only God will do that, and he will do that in the last day, when Jesus returns. (Also, pro-tip: the “Rapture” as you may understand it was invented some 1800 years after Jesus. As I advise friends out of love, stop reading fiction by Dan Brown, and do the same for Tim LaHaye.) When the Bible is read as it is not intended to be read, it becomes a dead letter. When it is read through the lens of NASCAR, you can easily see what the Assyrians, Babylonians, Herodians, and even what the Israelites are doing. But the lesson is this: no power is given here on earth except what has come from God above. This is what Jesus tells Pontius Pilate, who thinks his hard work and pluck has made him governor of Judea. This is incorrect, according to Jesus. This also explains the violence in the Old Testament, and how a tiny army could overrun Canaan, or how Abraham with three hundred men could overrun the Five Kings who capture Lot. Just as the nation of Israel gets its power from God, it is also taken away by God, through other people. Other nations appear to “take” the power, but God's plan is somehow always working within this world, especially when we cannot understand it. In many ways, we are like a dog staring at a stock car race, having no idea why cars are going in a circle. All power here in this world is given by God, and we should serve in humble gratitude if it comes to us, as we have free-will to reject or cooperate with God's grace. He gives us all sufficient grace to use our intellect and will to realize that we need a savior, and no one in the end can say, “I didn't have enough evidence to believe,” as Bertrand Russell famously imagined he would tell God after he died. Any political power or NASCAR champion must understand: the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. And the answer in both cases, winning or losing, is to become humble before God and to keep his Commandments. When Israel conquers Canaan, people fail to understand that God is granting power to Israel, and when the nation later sins terribly, and repeatedly, God takes away what was given. This is not Prosperity Gospel interpretation, this is Humility Gospel. In the book of Job, after he loses his family and wealth, his buddies say, “Perhaps you just weren't holy enough, and that's why all this suffering has come your way.” That's the Prosperity Gospel in one line. “You just weren't holy enough to be rich.” To which I would say: who is more holy than Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate? And what happened to him? He suffered. Even if you serve God, you may suffer in this life, and still the answer, as Jesus showed us, is to pray and bless the name of the LORD. Even in his agony, Jesus cried out to God, quoting the 22nd Psalm, which many people are confused about. I was confused. “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'” As a child I thought, “How could Jesus seem to think God left him if he is God?” The problem was that I had no idea that he was quoting the first line of a Psalm, which is a beautiful prayer for times of suffering. He was praying from the Cross, and even in his final words, he offered his spirit to God, and when he appears most defeated, most powerless, he is about to show what real power is on the third day when the women come to the empty tomb. Jesus doesn't need power over the Romans, because he has power over what the Romans fear most, which is death. Seriously, I urge you: get a good study Bible and read using the four senses of scripture. If we only read it as “Bible as Literature” or as breadcrumbs for cultural or archaeological or historical events (and we now define “history” much different than the sacred authors did), then it's no wonder that confusion around the truth is making such a comeback. At least the fantasy of Norse gods addresses a need for the supernatural in people. People need religion, one that transcends this world. And if they don't follow a religion, they will find one or invent one, and what it leads to is ideology, and always in the end, the will to power. This is exactly what Jesus came to destroy. Because that kind of “power based” thinking is from the accuser, the divider, the father of lies. If we see the world as a power struggle, then we cannot yet say, “I was blind, but now I see.” The Christian way of seeing the world is not the same as Nietzsche or Marx or or Hitler or Stalin or Foucault or Kendi. You must put on the mind of Christ to step out of the circular “head that eats the tail” model of the world. If you forget this, and think power is the narrow gate to heaven, you won't see the big picture. You will forget that God exists. To forget this is folly. To forget God is the same as rejecting God. Because you will lose the context, and perhaps much else. If you are looking for single verses to mock, you may become more focused on the body than the soul, and though the body is important, it is not the only thing to be concerned with. When you lose awe, wonder, and reverence for the real power that created all things, you may forget the most important thing, which is the Creator. The danger then is to think that this world and your body is all that there is. Once that happens, you will be distracted, which is what the devil prefers. Jesus gave us clear instructions. He said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” If you think Jesus was just some nice guy, some dude who came to permit everything, you might want to re-read the Gospels carefully. We are not meant to be the king or the judge, we are asked to follow, in servant mode, as Jesus did. He is the one who can give us the rest and peace that we are really looking for, rather than the false power we imagine will bring us happiness. Don't waste your life chasing the little kingdoms and title belts of this world, unless you are doing it for the greater glory of God, and even then, should you somehow be granted power, of any kind, remember gratitude to the real power. Because it didn't come from you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

For science-minded people, I think a good way to think of salvation history in the Bible is to consider it in the light of protein folding, where the same protein in “primary structure” is very different than that of “quaternary structure.” The same protein becomes something completely different in each stage, and until the “fullness of time” arrives for the Incarnation through Mary, the protein has not reached its highest state. Until a protein folds into a certain shape, it cannot perform its full function. This is a marvelous thing to study in science, and I have a hard time believing that people don't recognize the genius of God in this amazingly simple yet incredibly complex topic of protein folding. But then I can look at a blade of grass and see the wonder and awe of God in it, so maybe I'm strange. But it is truly mind blowing that the same peptide chains can configure into different shapes that have wildly different purposes and usages. This same unfolding and folding happens in individual lives. If you ever have the joy of watching someone in addiction come to believe and receive new life, this can happen before your eyes instead of over thousands of years. I realize this is quite a leap from reading the Bible in the light of professional wrestling, but protein folding may help us see that the world of Adam and Cain is different from that of Noah, and that of Abraham, and that of Moses, and that of Jesus. Each covenant is a “fold” toward the “fullness of time” that Jesus speaks of when he arrives. I once heard a person describe his awakening from addiction this way: throughout his life he felt as if he was holding a piece of construction paper in front of his face, and was never able to see much. Somewhere on this sheet of construction paper were two eye-holes, and now and then, he would shift the paper so that the eye-holes lined up with his eyes for a bit. And he could see. Once he began to pray and work toward a relationship with God, he could see more often, and now he can see, because he is in the right position. But really, he says that his sight was positioned for him. Something higher shifted him and the paper to allow the light. This is similar to how this protein folding metaphor works. The same chemical compound is present, but in order to become useful in a new way, a shift must happen. Although it is the exact same protein, it is not the same shape after the folding, and can suddenly do new things. It's the equivalent of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Once we are turned into the right shape we unlock the next phase, or level-up, as gamers would say. We can see this folding and changing in the sacred texts. If Adam is the primary structure of a protein, Moses seems to be quaternary structure in this metaphor. He unlocks new meaning in salvation history. Both are men, but they reach new heights as salvation history unfolds. And Jesus is infinitely beyond Moses, because it is he, God incarnate, who took on our human shape, but also made the atoms that form all proteins in the first place. He's the second person of the three-in-one, the Trinity, who holds the gravitational constant in perfect position to allow such miracles of physics to happen repeatedly. Occasionally he even pokes his finger into the laws of nature to, say, walk on water or just walk with us in our trials, and we call these moments miracles. In God's plan, somehow the descendants of Cain helped lead to this fourth folding, and now we await the final folding when the marriage of heaven and earth happen. Of course we don't understand it fully because we are not God, we are like dogs looking at humans and pondering their behavior, or like me observing the goose on the exit ramp and wondering why there are cars. Goose, dog, me - none are God, but the two animals in that list are living more in alignment with God's will than I am. Somehow, someway, cities and weapons and family breakdown is all allowed in God's plan. Geese getting hit on the exit ramp is part of the plan. Our history from Cain onward of scarring and ripping God's plentiful earth is part of the plan. The Chosen people, the Israelites attacked and killed the giant clans as part of the plan. Then they themselves were slaughtered by the Assyrians and Babylonians as part of the plan. Caesar killed a few million people in the Gallic wars as part of God's plan that preceded the fullness of time when Jesus arrived. Since the Resurrection we've had ever larger wars and plagues and famines. Personally, I can't understand it all without the ideas of free will and redemptive suffering. I wish you luck if you are going to spend a life trying to reconcile suicide, addiction, murder, poverty, starvation, and rampant sexual sin without free will and a living God that allows us to sin out of love but yearns for us to return and repent like Prodigal Sons. It is quite clear that sin is the cause of all suffering. Yet a little voice is calling to us all, if we will pause to listen for it, and only when we do can we “fold” into the next phase, as a more spiritually mature structure, when we allow God to take control, and his will to be done for our lives. It is always the Cains of this world that create a living hell in trying to create heaven through power and increasing technology. It seems obvious at this point that the next serious famine will come when our machines stop working, or electricity fails, or we poison the water. Yet we look back at those who lived sustainably in the middle ages and “dark ages” as ignorant fools, even though they lived in harmony with nature and in small communities, like the goose family on the exit ramp (from the prior post). We rush in our cars on massive highways and if we happen to run over the goose, we don't even stop. As William Blake said in the Proverbs of Hell, “The cut worm forgives the plow,” and also, “The busy bee has no time for sorrow.” These are not compliments, but highways to hell, and we willingly choose those paths. We assume the march of progress will save us but like Lamech and Cain, the wise of this age will be made fools. St. Paul was aware of this, as his own wisdom revealed itself as foolish. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor 1:18-21)Cain never folded past his primary structure, but in the Saints you see the change, the shift, the turning, the folding - from primary to secondary to tertiary to quaternary. This is how and why people change once they fully see Christ as God himself. What seemed wise before becomes foolish once the light of faith alters the meaning of every moment and interaction, because the base fear of death is removed completely, and when that happens the kingdom of God is already among us. It's suddenly visible even amid the suffering. This protein folding metaphor can work on a social level or personal, because it seems that if we are stuck in sin, we have not leveled-up from primary structure. Or, if we have folded into an advanced structure, but then fall back we have gone through some “denaturing” process and need to surrender to God once again to level-up. (And of course, in the spiritual life we level-up by going down, like Dante going down into hell - by kneeling, we let go and let God fold us into the shape he wants, and prayer is the catalyst.) As for the mark of Cain, which protects him, it's disturbing to many that he is not killed. But the death penalty comes about when Noah's covenant is announced, and again in the Mosaic law. The world is still in primary structure when Cain commits sin and allows it into the world. (Worth noting here is that in the book of Numbers, the Israelite law requires “cities of refuge” for accidental death (manslaughter) and wandering exiles, so God's law shows mercy to those who haven't committed murder in malice.)But Cain then wanders as an exile, lost, in psychological torture apparently, turned away from God, it seems. Or perhaps he is saved? We cannot know, just as we cannot know who is saved or not, as the particular judgement of any person, besides the canonized saints, is known but to God alone. So Cain's descendants accomplish much, and seize power and wealth and pleasure. But there's a problem with those pursuits. Power lives in perpetual fear of losing power. Wealth lives in perpetual fear of losing wealth. Pleasure lives in…ok you get the point. We have a role to play in a much larger plan, and to play it properly our highest loyalty must be to Christ, not to a nation, not to a president, and not to an ideology. If you need a key to understanding the Old Testament, it is this: people sin, and things go badly, but it calls them to change, to fold into the next structure that leads them to their ultimate purpose. This is the password to unlocking the mysteries. Everyone sins. Everyone falls. But that is where the “folding” happens to allow us to fit into the puzzle of higher purpose. Abraham sins by taking two wives, and he even gives his wife Sarah to save his skin when he is fearful. He suffers for it. Moses sins, multiple times. He suffers for it. David sins so badly that even small children understand that his move to kill Uriah is an incredibly dirty mafia hit. For goodness sakes, Samson…we'll get to Samson later, in some other series. When the folding happens to us, where life and experience and time and age re-shape us, we can either become static in a unending prideful pity-party…or we can seek faith, hope, and charity. Even a protein like hemoglobin knows that when change happens, it works toward the purpose for which God created it, which is to carry oxygen to our cells. When it is disordered, you have sickle cell anemia and other maladies. And some proteins malfunction, just as some acorns never become oak trees. Such is God's will. God's way is beyond our pay grade of knowing, and even what we can know, we cannot fully understand. However, even a protein that malfunctions or an acorn that never germinates still is ready to attempt to live out its purpose. Even if deformed or broken, these “mindless” proteins and seeds know that to carry oxygen or to sprout a sapling is what they must do if the conditions are right. We are no different. Our primary structure is the joining of two cells, and then we fold into a process of mitosis in our mothers' wombs, then we fold into the light, then we fold into childhood, fold into adolescence, fold into adulthood, parenthood, and old age. From the first cell all the way to the grave, we have the same soul. The protein in its folding does not change, but becomes capable in different ways. We are made to be human, with a body and soul, and we are made by God and for God, thus our ultimate purpose is not to make money or win honor, it is to return to eternal life with God, who is the only being that can satisfy our souls. The hunger we have for meaning is the same as our cells for oxygen. Our bellies cry out for food, and we know food exists, so we eat. Our tongue notifies us that water is needed, and water exists. And our heart yearns to have a relationship with God, with a holy family, and it too exists. When all of these other hungers, thirsts, and yearnings have corresponding solutions, so does the greatest desire of all, which is to be loved and to seek supreme happiness, which can be had, in this life and the next. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Over the centuries an idea keeps popping back up to convince us that Jesus was just like any other teacher, that he was not divine, not supernatural, and that this myth is like any other old myth. It's just the “dominant narrative,” so we are told, because it served the power structures of the West. But that tale doesn't tell us much, because if it were only a story, then why didn't any of the other myths come to “dominate” the landscape? After all, it's just a story…right? There was a famous book that killed the faith of many called The Golden Bough, which is a study on ancient religious rituals. C.S. Lewis writes about the impact it had on his dive into atheism in his own re-conversion story called Surprised by Joy. Lewis's atheism gained intellectual grounding when, at age 16, he came under the influence of a private tutor, W.T. Kirkpatrick, who was much enamored of a new work by Sir James Frazer called The Golden Bough.The Golden Bough was the product of Frazer's monumental survey of all the world religions and mythologies he could lay his hands on. In general, Frazer regarded religion as a human effort to make sense of the frightening and incomprehensible: thunder, pestilence, famine, death, and so on. In particular, Frazer found in human cultures a recurring story of a dying and resurrected god. This god usually was associated with agriculture and fertility—just as in the cycle of nature the plant is broken, the seed enters the ground, and life springs up, so is the god broken, buried, and restored. (From The Spiritual Odyssey of C.S. Lewis) If there is one takeaway from Frazer's Golden Bough book on ancient grain gods, it's that he's right: all religions are the same. Except for one. Just as C.S. Lewis discovered, there is one single religion that doesn't fit the mold. Yes, they are all the same, except for the one, because there is only one true God. There are many grains of truth in most religions, but they all have a fatal flaw (or two, or five). Christ is the polar opposite of every other kingly sacrifice or grain sacrifice in human history. If I may, briefly, take a short aside: The Golden Bough is a book that influenced many flatteners of faith, and it takes the “all religions are the same” approach to history and culture. And it's very interesting to read. But the centerpiece of James C. Frazer's myth argument is wrong. He is selling the very same story as the succession myth of Baal or Zeus, where the old god is slain by the new god. But if you attempt to throw Christianity into this melting pot, Jesus just climbs back out of the pot. He's nothing like the rest of the religions, whether they are from ancient times or from our own modern cults that we pretend are not religious. In The Golden Bough, there is a myth called “The King of the Grove” (or Rex Nemorensis) which is about a king who must be ever vigilant in fear of losing his power, because he will be killed. Someday, someone will come to the grove and take his power and his life. This should pique your interest, because national politics or office politics is the exact same thing as this ancient king of the grove, without the sword. The ruler of the coffee pot or refrigerator is the same as the ruler of a nation, just on a smaller scale. Winners must maintain a grip on power, or someone else will take it. And of course, no matter how long you hold onto power over the coffee pot or fridge, memento mori - “remember one day you will die” - and a new power will arise. Thus, to protect power beyond your own lifespan, you need more money, land, influence, supporters, cheerleaders, bullets, etc. In other words, you need to take and keep possession, and possession is the meaning of name Cain. A few decades ago, after watching Apocalypse Now, I spent some days thinking about the myth that the movie is based on, which ties into Frazer's myth around the king of the grove. The movie plays on this myth, even panning over a stack of books in one scene to shows what Colonel Kurtz has been reading, which contains The Golden Bough. Now, when a movie shows a book in the background, it is a signal to watchers, with giant red flashing lights, to inform us, “This movie is somehow related to the themes of the book you see that is not so subtly displaying in the background.” There are no accidents in Hollywood. Apocalypse Now was based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, but also on Frazer and the King of the Grove myth. Ancient kings were also priests, so the words go together in this context, because in the pagan world, religion and power go together. They still do, we just pretend we don't have religion today. And Jesus came to shatter that illusion. Even the Israelites found out how lust for power plays out when there is an attempt to make it a religion. The king of the grove holds power only because he has killed the prior king. This took a bit to wrap my head around at first, but here's the verse from the myth that I sums up the problem of worldly kingship and possession of power: Those trees in whose dim shadowThe ghastly priest doth reignThe priest who slew the slayer,And shall himself be slain.Who does this sound like in the Bible? It sounds like Cain, or Lamech. It does not sound like Seth, who invokes the name of God. It does not sound like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who bore our infirmities. It does not sound like Jesus, who died on the Cross, conquered death, defeated the devil, and transformed our suffering. The last will be first. Jesus possessed nothing, and gave everything. He is a king unlike any other that has ever been conceived in myth. Let's break this apart. The priest-king of the grove who rules, is the murderer of the former king. In taking the grove, he had to kill the former priest-king, and now he is a “ghastly” murderer. And, this current ghastly priest-king will be killed by the next priest-king. In other words, it's a vicious circle. When I was growing up, the “rat race” referred to people who were racing up the corporate ladder. You can see this same “king of the grove” or “king of the hill” in those pursuing the position of vice president at a company, or control of the local youth baseball board. But really, if you back up enough, this is pro wrestling in a nutshell. But it is also the story of politics, over and over and over, around the world, since Cain and his line to Lamech to Caesar to Trump and Biden. The King of the Grove is much like King Woods of pro wrestling, and like King Woods, he was the ruler of a pathetic little fiefdom. (Interesting that “Woods” and “Grove” are kind of the same thing. Surely just a lucky coincidence.) King Woods, the wrestler, did not need to murder to become the championship belt holder in wrestling, so he is less ghastly than the King of the Grove. However, in most wrestling matches there is some kind of cheating, so reaching the top and gaining power almost always requires moral flexibility. This is true in business, where a “being a good businessman” does not necessarily mean he is without mortal sin or good in any other way; it just means he's good at chasing mammon. In most cases, gaining worldly power requires bending of the rules, or, in other words selling your soul. This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Mt 16:26) Why is the King of the Grove “ghastly”? It's because he has lost his soul in gaining the grove. The base word of ghastly, appropriately, is ghost, and ghost means spirit. The bad spirit has taken over the soul of this murderer who won the grove. Those who seek and wield power in this world paint themselves into a corner. And unless those souls experience the metanoia of turning to Christ, they are lost forever. Metanoia means “beyond the mind” or “change of mind.” To escape the pursuit of power, you have to see the world differently, and to see it differently you have to put on the mind of Christ, as St. Paul says. Whether your power is in the WWE title belt, the NBA Finals, the United States of America, the TV remote control, or a clump of trees, the game is the same. The king of the grove has killed the prior king, and the king himself will be overthrown, unless he can slay all comers. But truly, even if he keeps his grip on the grove or the title belt, eventually a new king will slay him. This is the world of power that strives to reach the top. But getting to the top brings immense fear, unless abandonment to God is made and that power is offered up to the Creator. For the king who says, “Come at me, bro,” he has gained the whole world but lost his soul. The ghastly king can never stop striving. Even moreso, those in power must seek and sniff out enemies constantly rather than wait for them to come, because being king gives an acute sense of smell for anything that threatens the power over the grove. (If you don't see this in America, then you need to ask yourself why do we have a massive standing army at the ready at all times, if not to maintain worldly power. Our grove is just larger, “from sea to shining sea.” We even have many songs about our grove and rules and movies and titles and flags, and ultimately we have a king, a kind of spirit, which we call a Republic, of which the current president embodies before passing it on to the next King of the Grove.) Jesus is not this kind of king. He's the opposite kind of king, because he is the Creator of all things. He warns us, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” But we don't listen. We want power over others, over nature, over God, and the addiction to fear grabs us by the chest like a monster.Jesus is the king who simply allowed the enemies all to come, all at once, to slay him, but much to everyone's surprise, the slayer did not become king. In fact, the slayers were all defeated. In Apocalypse Now, the dead Colonel Kurtz does not rise after death. He wasn't a savior. He was just the current King of the Grove, or the King Woods of the WWE. But Jesus does rise. This makes all the difference. This is the difference between him and all other religions. Yet, wait, there is one more utterly important step in understanding why he is different than all other power plays. Jesus doesn't “slay the slayer.” He forgives the slayer. He forgives his enemies. And when the slayer comes again and attempts to kill Jesus, he rises and forgives again. And again. Every generation, the enemy whispers evil into the hearts of men, and they try to slay Jesus, the one true Priest-King, yet he cannot die. The slayers keep coming, but the true God, the living God, is never replaced. There is no succession myth. All of the kings who claim succession, or pretend at it, all of the gods of old, and all of the ideologies of today that claim to have killed god, are false. So yes indeed, all religions are the same, except for one. They are fooling themselves. Thus, the selling must go on, the crafting of stories must happen, because God is not dead. If you want followers of your power, you need to tell people constantly in overt and subtle ways that God is dead, in ever-new messaging. Because if you stop convincing or coercing people for but a moment, they will instead listen to the law and love in their heart, and they will know that Christ is King and he is risen. Then they will follow Him instead of some Caesar. Ok - let me leave that aside now. But my point is this: Jesus doesn't play power games like the King of the Grove myth. He's the anti-myth because he's real, he lived, and he is risen. So for our lives here in this world, where we are given a chance to re-unite with God, where we can purge our sins and pray for illumination with the light of faith, there is a greater concern than politics. There is a greater plan in the works. So to tie this back to the goose on the side of the highway. What is out of place, and in disharmony, in the world is the difference between the brothers Cain and Seth. Cain strives to shape nature into his image, and Seth lives humbly, invoking the name of the Lord. We live in a world of Cain's values, not Seth's. As we have all been pulled into cities, and live in nations with weapons aimed at one another, in constant fear, we are living in a world made by Cain and his progeny. We live in the City of Man, not the City of God, which St. Augustine spent a thousand pages describing. The difference is striking, as the goose family lives like Adam and Eve did before the Fall. The reason animals are not fallen, even if they are living in what Thomas Hobbes would call a world that is “red in tooth and claw,” the animals fulfill their duties of raising a family and seeking their daily bread (or bug). They do not have an intellect and will that lead to murder over envy and pride, as Cain did. They do not build weapons. They do not build highways and overpasses and retention ponds. Seth seems to live like the goose. He prays, and presumably, works. Cain shows no sign of kneeling. In fact, when Jesus says “the ruler of this world” is coming, he's referring to the devil, but he also means the Roman guards who will arrest and kill him. And the Romans, just like Americans today, truly have a lot more in common with Cain than they do with Seth. The leaders and business people and celebrities that we admire have more in common with “the ruler of this world” than with Jesus. Which brings up perhaps the greatest question in Genesis 4, of why God protected Cain with the “mark” after he had committed murder. But the answer, I believe is simple, and it's that God still loves Cain because he is worth saving. Cain has also created his own hell in separation from God, because he is a wanderer, an exile, and God's protection is a penance. Furthermore, to show how God differs from much of our honor/shame ideas of justice, not only does he protect Cain, but he clearly uses him for a greater plan, as cities and technology come from Cain's family. The punishment of being exiled to wander ruined Cain's livelihood of farming, making it a lifelong punishment. His punishment is fitting and clearly agonizing to Cain, as he is terrorized by fear and stripped of his occupation. Most importantly, when reading Genesis there is an unfolding of events, an order, and people often look at Christ and say, “Why didn't God act like Jesus in the Old Testament?” We'll talk about this folding and unfolding in the next post. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Recently, I was driving and took the exit ramp. In the grass on the left was a family of geese, a mother and her baby geese, who apparently had a home in the little retention pond at the center of the concrete jungle. The goose and its babies stood near the road of rushing traffic, and I thought, “Wow, that goose is really out of place standing there.” Then it struck me that the goose was not out of place. The goose was the only thing in the right place. What was out of place was the massive highway and the car I was in, since the overpass had only existed for about twenty years. Cars alone have only been around for about a century. The goose was right where it was supposed to be, which was near a body of water, with grass around it, so that she could find bugs and weeds to feed to her babies. Everything but the goose was out of place. And to explain why all of the highways and cars and trucks exist is much harder than explaining the goose. What has been a fascinating exploration for me is to go back and read Genesis regarding the expansion of technology in the world, and from who it comes from. Interestingly, it comes from Cain's line, and Cain's name means “possession.” This little story about Cain after the murder of Abel is one of those paragraphs in Genesis that you may feel it's worth skipping because of the “begat, begat, begat” genealogy, but it so important to slow down or you'll miss the bus into the next dimension of scripture. Because from Cain's line comes cities and highways and cars and music and polygamy and swords and bullets. After Cain bashes Abel's head in, he wanders restlessly in a land called Nod and starts his own family. On the face of it, Cain's descendants have incredible accomplishments. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech. Lamech took two wives; the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. (Genesis 4:17-22)This little section of Genesis 4 is anything but a yawner, because much else comes from Cain's line down the road. The boring genealogies that we skip have treasures in them if you follow who begat who in the Bible. Furthermore, the names themselves have great meaning, as they are more than just some username chosen at random. I will consciously avoid diving into Genesis 6 here where the giant clans come from, because that will lead me astray. But let's just explore Cain's line a bit. In terms of what we value today, Cain's family accomplishments fit exactly what modern parents brag about to one another. From Cain's line we get the first city, permanent housing (single-family tent homes), and domesticated animals. That alone is amazing. But then we get music, too: the arts come from Cain's line. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, from Tubal-Cain, we get bronze and iron, which means blacksmithing for building tools and, more ominously, weapons. In other words, Cain's line is where technology comes from, which most of us worship today. Oh, and we get the first instance of a bad marriage with Lamech, who has two wives. So polygamy enters the Bible initially here, without much fanfare. People often make the mistake in the Old Testament of seeing polygamy and thinking it's a free pass, that it's acceptable, and of course it never says that. In fact, it's always a disaster. Whoever has more than one wife suffers disorder in their house, from Abraham to Jacob to David to Solomon. Never, anywhere, does it suggest that multiple wives leads to anything good. In fact, Isaac has the one model marriage of the patriarchs, and his story is quite happy (aside from the whole trick on Esau by Jacob and Rebekah). But the first polygamist? Lamech? Well, Lamech is a straight-up lunatic sociopath. More on him in a bit. (Note: there is another Lamech in Seth's line, who we know nothing about. Maybe it was the good version of Lamech.)Now, you can pass this by and say, “How ridiculous - one family line could not create all of these things.” And in saying so, you will miss the whole point because you're reading it like a science book instead of a soul book. This is what happens when you don't stop and think: “What is this book trying to say here?” Because everything in chapter 4 of Genesis has many layers of meaning. In fact, every chapter of Genesis does. (I think what surprises me most today is that the same person who can see four layers of meaning in something like Squid Game cannot see past the surface level literal layer in Genesis. It's like they can't apply deep reading if its scripture, but can go full Jacques Derrida on rottentomatoes.com. But I digress.) Let's resume. After Cain and Abel, Adam has another son named Seth, which is the line that leads to Abraham, and eventually Mary and Jesus. After Seth is born, religion becomes a thing. Notice that religion did not come from the line of Cain. This is important. All we learn about Seth is that after his birth “…people began to invoke the name of the Lord.” (Gen 4:26) How interesting. Like so many things in Genesis a single phrase is freighted with meaning. Recall that all of these stories had to come down in oral tradition, so they couldn't be as verbose as I am in posts like this that are way too wordy. So from one branch from Adam we have technology, art, cities, polygamy, murder, and from the other we get…faith. Basically, we get humility before God in the line of Seth. That's his only “accomplishment,” if we want to call it that. Worth noting is that farming seems to be assigned to Adam, as he had to get his bread from the sweat of his brow. In the story of Cain and Abel we hear about farming of both animals and plants, because the thing that made Cain angry was Abel's offering of an animal from his flock, which was chosen over Cain's fruit “from the ground,” meaning some kind of grain. After Eden, we seem to have an semi-idyllic period of farming. Then comes the murder of Abel, and all hell breaks loose. Like, literally. After the murder comes the march of progress and technology. You could say that Cain is a real go-getter from the start and there doesn't seem to be much happening in his family around invoking the name of the Lord. He and his children are busy. They seem to have a lot of goals and they hit their goals. In so many ways, Cain's family line is a model and ideal of all that modern high achievers seek for their offspring. If you were talking to a modern Cain, you would likely say, “Cain, you must be proud of your children and grandchildren.” I suspect he would agree. He would be very proud. Don't we all say that today? “I'm proud of you, son.” We are always talking about our pride over accomplishments. “I'm proud of you for working hard.” “Congratulations on landing on the moon, Neil, the whole nation is proud of you.” Or, “Mr. Oppenheimer, we at the U.S. Army are real proud of all you've done in helping us build the first atomic bomb.” And being “proud” is the problem, because pride really, really likes power. This is one of the words that we mistake as a good thing. One thing that always gave me a weird spidey-sense in the Gospels is when God says he is “well pleased” over his son, Jesus. At Jesus' Baptism, God the Father uses this term. Then again at the Transfiguration, God the Father says “well pleased.” He does not say “proud”. Because seriously, the word I expect in this sentence is “proud,” not “well pleased.” At his Baptism:And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:16-17)At the Transfiguration:While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” (Mt 17:5-7)Why does God say “well pleased” instead of “proud”? Is this an accident?It's obvious that this wording is specifically avoiding the language we would normally use for a child that we are excited about. There is a very careful wording here to avoid using the word proud. We should have a word in English, without the space, “wellpleased”, because then we could tell our children that and avoid the horrors of pride.I could always feel in these events that there is something different about being well pleased versus being proud. And it seems rather obvious once you realize that the root sin of everything is pride that it is far better to be pleased about a person, than proud about them. The difference of being pleased about your team winning the Super Bowl instead of being proud is that in the first case, you're content with the beauty of the game, perhaps satisfied with seeing a great game that happened of athletes glorifying God through their physical gifts. In the second case, with pride over winning, you feel superior for your team. This is subtle but enormous in consequence. Are you wellpleased or proud? Because pride is what Cain has. He's dripping wet with pride. When sin was “crouching at his door,” he did not master it by humbling himself, he opened the door and let sin inside. His prideful ego led him to wrath, and wrath, in turn, puts him into a holy terror. Cain also has a terror in him because after the murder of Abel, he feels cursed by God and expects to be murdered himself:“Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. (Gen 4:14-15)His terror is softened by God's mercy. With God's mark upon him, Cain is protected, but he's not free of his sin, nor does he seem to be changed. There is no reference to repentance of any kind. Rather than repent and kneel, Cain's descendants seem to show no humility for this gift of grace. Lamech, his great-great-great grandson, takes this exemption as a a license to kill. Because he brags about killing two men. Without remorse, Lamech says:I have killed a man for wounding me,    a young man for striking me.If Cain is avenged sevenfold,    truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (Gen 4:23-24)Thus you have the full-blown sociopath in Lamech, who feels immune from morality altogether. He's got multiple murders and multiple wives. Incidentally, this is what I see as the fundamental problem of “Once saved, always saved,” because if you are saved and need no further corrections to your behavior, then you can be Lamech. And by the way, Lamech is a perfect example of a Biblical character showing us exactly how not to act. If we need to have our villain wear a black cowboy hat, Lamech is one of those characters. Once you go back and read about the Fall in Genesis, and follow the line of Cain, who first sought power by murder due to his wounded pride, a picture of a world full of pride, sin, sex, and violence begin to take shape. His descendants have an increasing urge to control nature via technology and knowledge. There is strong economic drive in the line of Cain to gain wealth and influence. Thus, eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is passed on to us all through some kind of cosmic inheritance, and yet anyone can reject evil. We are fallen yet not ruined. We are damaged but not beyond hope, because we see Seth on the other side of Adam's line taking a very different approach to life: he is not hammering the world to his will, he is invoking the name of God. So why does Cain's line feel so compelled to invent, explore, study, seek, as opposed to say, kneeling to pray? Why do cities and highways and guns come from Cain but not Seth? It's because of pride and the fear that stems from it. There is fear of the Lord, also known as awe and wonder, and then there is fear of losing what we have “won” here in this life. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because it will bring you to kneel and pray. Fear of others, fear of losing what you have, is the beginning of a vicious circle, the rat race, and it is the gateway to sin. Cain has “won” a license to sin, and his family uses this badge of honor to reject God altogether. But then his descendants attempt to “gain the whole world,” which Jesus warns us against, because it's a trap. Whatever you gain you can then lose to another, and in the process you will lose your soul. Whoever has much is fearful of losing it, and thus needs more power to push the fear away. Lamech laughs at God, saying that he will be avenged seventy-seven times by God if anyone tries to hurt him. Lamech's comment is even referred to by Jesus later on in the Gospels. Jesus references this same number. It's not a coincidence. Because in way, Lamech is right. God will forgive him seventy-seven times. God will forgive us all that many times. That's exactly what Jesus tells Peter. But the whole point is that it shouldn't take us seventy-seven times to wise up and stop committing the same sins. Imagine how depressing this must have been for Peter to hear:  Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Mt 18:21-22)Unlike Lamech, Jesus tells Peter that he must constantly take the lowest seat, the humble place, and forgive. This is difficult to do. Why? Because of pride. Because we want to be Lamech or Tony Soprano, in our own way. We want to win. And you see this play out in the wider world, far beyond the individual. Fear is why the wealthy nations must keep their foot on the head of weaker nations and peoples. Really, this explains any sin, from racism to theft to adultery to sodomy to murder. All sin is a lack of trust in God. All sin is a rejection of God for the pride of the self and fear of not getting what we think we want. But Christ is the king who trusts, rather than fears. So for everyone in the last century who wanted to flatten Christianity into “just another religion”, like Joseph Campbell or James C. Frazer or the New Atheists, they are missing the whole point. This is why Jesus is different. This is why Christianity is different from every other religion. This is why God does not act like a professional wrestler or politician. To say that all ancient religions are all just a replay of the myth of “the hero with a thousand faces,” or that ancient agricultural sacrifice was the same thing as Christ on the cross, is to miss the whole purpose. They cannot see yet because they haven't asked Christ to rub the healing mud into their eyes so that they see what and who he really is. Christ rules in love, not in fear. If you are being told that you must believe or else you'll go to hell, you are hearing the completely wrong motive to believe. Because fear is not the reason to believe, it's the thing that gets conquered when you come to believe. Fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom, but love of God leads to eternal life, and that joyful life can begin today. And this doesn't make sense until you have the experience of blind Bartimaeus, who only knows one thing, and one thing only, and that is that Jesus healed his sight and his soul. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (Jn 9:13-25) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

Do you know what I really like about the Old Testament? It's what a lot of people hate about it. But I think most people hate it because they don't read it with the four senses of scripture. Instead, they pluck out one-line and hold it up like a dead rat, and say, “Look what I found! Look at how awful this book is! Can you see this thing?” I liked doing this, too, when I was dead, before the change happened.But readers do this plucking of the rat without understanding the larger structure, because rats exist even in the most beautiful buildings. The Chrysler building surely has some rats in it, but we don't go to New York to see the rodents. What I like about the Old Testament is that the characters are not portrayed as perfect. They all sin. Every one of them. In fact, they are portrayed as human, very human. This is why I think so many people stumble while reading the Old Testament. They are expecting spotless heroes, just like we expect in our politicians now. In the growing honor/shame culture of America, we forgot how to read. We forgot nuance. We are like children who need one cowboy in a white hat and one in a black hat so we know who is good and bad in the Bible. But the Bible is more like Shakespeare than your average network TV drama. Grey's Anatomy and Chicago Fire have the depth of a baby pool, but the Bible goes down into the Mariana Trench in our souls. This is why I see professional wrestling everywhere today. Every news organization has its saints and villains, just as the WWE does with its characters, such as the clean-cut John Cena versus the greasy Undertaker. This is also why I think of pro wrestling as a more serious endeavor than modern news and politics. Because wrestling doesn't pretend to be what it's not. It doesn't pretend at any other motive than entertainment, and is a satire on our own prideful lust for power. Thus, it is pure. It's pure in its absurdity. It's ridiculous. I don't watch it regularly, but I find it more authentic than what our media and politicians are pretending at. Pro wrestling is the Days of Our Lives soap opera for boys, and some men. Like me. Maybe there is the fifth sense of reading scripture, in that you must read in terms of power. More specifically, you have to read it under the light of living in fear vs. living in trust. I'll use pro-wrestling here to describe what I mean, but you could use whatever sport you like. Use Battlebots or professional pickleball instead, if that's your thing. But when your last day arrives, there is as much at stake in the outcome of presidential politics as there was when the wrestler King Woods (my personal favorite) lost his crown to the evil Roman Reigns. I know this sounds extreme, but hear me out. Modern geopolitics is every bit as much smoke and mirrors as Monday Night Raw or Friday Night Smackdown. No. Correction: geopolitics must use far more smoke and mirrors, since wrestling's kingdom is in a patchwork of rented arenas around the country, and the TV broadcast uses very focused camera shots on small crowds assembled tightly so that it appears to be large. The illusion of importance is key.This is a modern sacrilege to say, because I don't venerate politicians. To say that politics is not that important will trigger people, because it is perhaps the most worshipped idol of the 21st century. But let me be the first in line to disrespect modernity's sacred cows. If there is a list to be on for sedition against the current ideologies, I'd like to have a row in that database. I don't worship politicians, celebrities, or movements that reject right worship and non-heretical faith in Christ. I may be many things, and have committed many sins, but I don't intend to take my last breath as an apostate to the one true King. When America goes the way of Sumeria and Rome and the Mayans and Imperial Spain, nothing will change in terms of who is the real power over us all, for there is only one. If the fifty states are balkanized and dis-united into fifty nations, the same King will remain. Division is ugly, but it will happen at some point, because we've already allowed the accuser and deceiver into our nations, cities, houses, and hearts. The spirit of a nation can obey God or reject God. Nations choose their course just like individual people choose their actions. Free-will is the gift God grants for us to choose our own ending. In either case, for a person or a nation, the choice to turn to God must be made, and of course it all starts on the personal level. The more citizens who turn away from God, the more a nation will turn away. Thus, whether it is President Biden or President Trump (or whoever), they will have my respect as the manager of America, because I learned long ago to give respect to rank rather than the person wearing the rank. But no president is the ultimate authority. I can render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but I don't care who Caesar is if he rejects God. If he or she leads us into temptation and delivers us unto evil, there we must part. A Caesar who thinks power is God or denies the existence of a living God cannot be followed when it comes to decision time, because the ultimate decision that we must make is not about this life, but eternal life. If our social managers turn away from God, then believers cannot play the game of “follow the leader” any longer, for there is only one leader of all earthly leaders, and that is God. Jesus said, “Follow me.” This implies a choice, not a forced march. This has been established as the way, as Jesus said we must follow him, and not earthly power. The Bible is full of examples on how to do this as well when the times comes. From the three stubborn boys that Nebuchadnezzar threw in the furnace, to the Maccabee brothers, to every Apostle and martyr in Church history. We have many examples to review and emulate in the martyrology of the Church. Most obviously, Jesus himself showed the way. Peter, too, even spells it out in Acts 5 when they were arrested for violating the speech codes and thoughtcrime of first century Jerusalem. You should immediately see parallels of this today, as we are once again instructed not to “teach in this name” of Jesus, as it is said to be a micro-aggression or colonialist or offensive. Peter says, “Sorry, not sorry. We have a higher authority than human resources or the online mob.” And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:27-32)Understanding where the real power lies is critical. It is not in pro wrestling. It is not in presidents. It's not even in the nation with the most naval destroyers and nuclear warheads. This is where a disconnect happens for people, in misunderstanding how to read the Bible. There is a disconnect between those who worship the government and those who worship God. How you rank power structures changes everything in how you view the world, and for everyone who preaches on “power differentials” today, they almost always have their ranking out of order, because God is never mentioned in their ranking, the absence of which makes their entire preaching moot and empty of meaning. This is why every ideology fails in the end when it tries to assume authority and dictate its version of morality: it has no authority, nothing solid as a foundation. Oddly, we cannot know God fully or comprehend the idea of God, and we can't fully know his ways, yet God still gives bedrock to our lives here in the material world. This is because we can know that he is infinitely greater than us and all his creation, yet we also know that he is wired right into our bodies and minds and souls. What the idea of God does for us is stop the nightmare of “infinite regress” where we keep asking, “What came before the earth? What came before the universe? What came before God?” It stops at God, the Creator. Interestingly, the band AC/DC had a pair of songs that I think illustrate this point. “Highway to Hell” and “Who Made Who?” are related, because as soon as you start to question the Creator of all things and who made you, then you will be on the highway to hell, which is just separation from God. I truly cannot stress enough how important the concept of God being the first thing is for your mental health. God created the world “out of nothing” (ex nihilo). If you've heard the saying, “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” it's essential to know that fear in this context really refers to “wonder and awe,” which is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If you lose that wonder and come to believe that chaos was first, then fear sets in, and everything else that comes along with it, like depression and lust and greed, well, you know - all the rest of the deadly sins. But most importantly for this series, is the need for power. In our world, we think of power as rank in society. You cannot make it through basic training in the military without coming to know what “respecting the rank” means. “Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar,” as Jesus said. This sums up the idea well. We have a duty to obey the law. Paying taxes is right and just, so long as the nation is right and just. For a nation to be worthy of obedience, however, this duty only applies if the nation doesn't violate the real law, the Commandments, or ask us to reject Jesus' command to “Follow me.” You can even distill this down to natural law if you're not inclined to religion, and plenty of atheists believe in natural law because it can be arrived at by reason. Natural laws should be the basis for national laws. But if national laws demand abandonment of natural law, which comes from God, the first thing, then we have an uncrossable chasm. At that point our loyalty must be unequivocally pointing toward God and not a President or any founding document, no matter how yellowed and venerable it looks. Within any nation, there is a battle going on, just as there is within every heart. And this war is a spiritual one. As for the concerns of the day (from the Covid tales about a bat, to “Who blew up the Nordstream pipeline?”, to how we should react to the Russia-Ukraine war) these are all secondary concerns to the kingdom of God. This sounds insensitive, but it's actually the most sensitive thing you can do. Because all of the news of the day is not seeking the City of God, it's seeking the City of Man. The kingdom of God is among us, we are told. But are we looking for it? Are we living in it? The kingdom of God is here, but not yet. That's a hard concept to grasp (maybe harder than ex nihilo). The kingdom will come, yet it's here. What?Clearly the worldly things impact bodies and souls, but still Christ says the kingdom is among us. That's because HE is the kingdom, the way, the path, the gate, living water, the bread, the priest, the prophet, the king. One of the strangest things is to realize that the promised Messiah would bring a kingdom to earth, here among us, and for those who look around and say, “He must not have been the Messiah? Where is this Kingdom?” But the kingdom is here. It is the Church. The Body of Christ exists. The Church is in all nations, as promised, and as promised, the violent and fearful try to topple it. In every generation, the Church is attacked, but it rebounds, retreats, reforms, repeats. Christ said the kingdom is under attack. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. (Mt 11:12) The presidents and prime ministers and Caesars and educators can all take a number. Get in line. This is the kingdom of the counter-culture, of Christ, because his kingdom is built on a different foundation from that of all other kings and clubs and governments. This is the kingdom where trust is greater than fear, because at the root of all power politics is fear. At the root all all pride is fear. The idea of fig leaves should ring a bell here. This is the way that Jesus intends for us to see the world, in trust rather than fear, and any worldly king that doesn't recognize the real king and source of earthly power must reject God in favor of his power, which requires fear to maintain. And who should our trust be in? Not in worldly power. Not in promises from people or serpents. Ultimate trust must be in one thing, and one thing only, and that the creator who made us for him and to be loved by him. When we understand that we are created, then we know that our needs will be met by God if we trust in him. This is why Jesus needs so little. He says, “Consider the lilies of the field” who are adorned greater than King Solomon (or King Woods). The beauty of creation far exceeds our human fashion and pomp and circumstance. He reminds us that we only need to request “our daily bread,” which is Christ himself, the Bread of Life. Furthermore, he says, “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Yet does Jesus sound concerned about his lack of money or shelter? No. This is radical. It's extreme. And he's right. It's stunning for us to hear such a thing, especially for those of us who grew up in a time of plenty, and learned about Abraham Maslow's pyramid of self-actualization, or Tony Robbins' will-to-power, or Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy's argument that we can shape the universe into our own image and likeness. Jesus says, “No” to all of them. Jesus says, “Stop trying to create the world and trust in God who already created it.” But it's worth noting that the fox still has to dig out its den, and a bird must create its nest. Abandonment to Divine Providence does not mean that you need not do anything. It doesn't mean you can lay around all day so that you can be spiritual all the time. Rather, it means fulfilling the duties to your station in life and letting all other worries be offered up to God. It means living for God, like a fox or a bird glorifies creation by doing what is proper for them. A fox or bird has total trust in the Creator, yet these animals must still perform their work. A nest doesn't build itself. A den won't dig itself. Thus, work is good, as are the created things themselves, so long as they are used rightly. We are no different. This is at the heart of the teaching of the Church, based on what Jesus said to his followers. Bodies are not bad. Work is not bad. We are fallen and compromised, but can be redeemed, and all of us, every human being, has sufficient grace on offer - an open-ended gift - that can be the ladder we use to climb to heaven. Fear is not what foxes and birds rely on, they live freely, like children, and trust in their Creator. Only humans fear and prepare to fight in a zero-sum game, because of the Fall. We can prove our fears by simply turning on the news, and see the fingerprints of Original Sin everywhere. Fear is why we build highways and bombs and smart phones, because we don't think God will provide for us. If we cling to our lives instead of God, then we begin to be fearful, and that is when power becomes the game, and it is a game of total obsession once it begins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

I think the day the canary died in the coal mine was when, in 1994, Dr. Jocelyn Elders announced to the world that masturbation was a good thing, even necessary, telling one of the greatest lies in history. Every man in the listening world was nodding along, because if science said the old morality was dead, men were more than ready to agree. I was probably eating a Little Debbie Nutty Buddy when I heard it, or drinking a 32-ounce Big Buddy from the local mini-mart. Now, Dr. Elders lost her job for that after a big kerfuffle, but the word was out: chastity was a sin, not a virtue. The last, old fuddy-duddy rule that Christianity had lifted up regarding lust was being pulled down and paved into a parking lot. This commandment came from the tower of Washington D.C., from the anointed Surgeon General, who knocked down one of the last fences of morality. What Woodstock had not already opened the gate to, we had finally taken down the last blocker. (For anyone familiar with Chesterton's fence, you can see that this relates directly. And if you are familiar with Chesterton's fence and how we foolishly have removed all the fences because of our assumption of knowledge, then you may also see how the story of Chesterton's wall relates as well.) The fatal flaw of science is when it turns into a source of spiritual direction is the same flaw with every other ideology: it doesn't believe in God. I mean, of course it cannot, because pure science is a study of the natural world. Science is beautiful and good at finding the truth when it sticks to experimentation and data. But once the crossover is made into morality, it becomes dangerous, because to misunderstand that souls exist means missing half the person. The ideology of “scientism” happens whenever you hear morality lessons starting with the words “Studies show...” The devil attacks the body, and places thoughts in our heads, because that's all that he can affect. Without our defenses of prayer and fasting, we are sitting ducks. Science doesn't believe in God, and therefore doesn't understand the devil. But the devil understands science just like he can quote scripture. We all know the devil can quote scripture, so it follows that he can twist organic chemistry and molecular biology as well to his purposes. What we all forget is this: the devil is smarter than us. All of us. Angels and demons are pure intellect, and for us to think we “know better” is exactly what he wants. (Watch the movie Nefarious for an accurate portrayal of demonology.) He plants thoughts in our heads in order to deceive, distract, divide, and drive us to despair. And the best thought he can plant in our heads is that he does not exist, and neither does God, and neither does your eternal soul. This is like the reverse of the parable of the mustard seed. Instead of a seed being planted and growing into a great shrub that houses many birds, the devil just brings us the bird droppings. There is no growth, just death. Now, the devil is going to devil, since that's his job. God allows this, to give us temptations and trials, to make us choose. People don't like this idea, because why would a good God allow this? The only problem with a purely material world is that you have no explanation for evil, and so we pretend that wealth and education and sexual freedom will solve the problem, but as I've just gone on at length here about, the abundance of food and sex do not solve the problem of sin at all. And eventually, no matter how much you eat, whether it's sugar or protein, and no matter how much sex you have, the Big Empty God-shaped hole in your heart still needs filling. Free-will is the manner in which we choose grace or sin, and when you have a Surgeon General come out like Moses' on Capitol Hill to announce that sexual sin no longer exists, the people get the keg, the condoms, the Hustler mag, and the Golden Calf out of storage immediately. Once the gate is removed, the sheep wander, and wander we have. Jonah's jaunt to Nineveh could be done to any average midwestern American town at this point, but unlike the king of Nineveh, no one would respond by wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes. So food can't save us, and nor can sex. But like food, sex can be used for good purposes or bad ones, and the modern idea of sex as freedom has destroyed millions of marriages and families. Ask anyone who has had many partners if its true that sex has brought fulfillment. Has lots of sex brought them peace? The answer is no. We all know these people. They are everywhere. The constant pursuit of the next partner makes for a life of lying and surface relationships. Sex by itself is basically as deep and meaningful as what the paint shaker at Home Depot experiences in its gyrations. I don't know many people that would watch a video of the paint shaker at Home Depot, but that is essentially what pornography is. The same goes for one night stands and quickies with strangers. In other words, sex is removed from its actual purpose of making children. It's really wild that this declaration, so obvious, is wrongthink today, but the purpose of sex is obviously reproduction, and it is pleasurable in order that we reproduce. Try as you might to explain it away, the purpose of sex is reproduction. Pleasure is not the primary purpose. This is hard to accept today, but realize that you would not ever be reading this if pleasure was the only purpose. Immense amounts of money go toward papering over this fact, but every day, babies are born, popping out and wailing to prove the purpose of the act. “It's me,” they cry. “I'm the reason you're horny. Surprise!” The intention is to unite a husband and a wife, and to make babies. It's funny that penguins understand this but people with smart phones do not. In fact, anyone who continues this charade of trying to trade sex for meaning like it was a stock market finds themselves more lost than drug addicts in the end. The wreckages that follows a life of random sex is as bad as that of alcohol, and so often they go together. Surely we all know porn addicts and incurable strip joint patrons. Watching their efforts to find another partner is like Dexter, the serial killer, searching for his next victim. But the constant pursuit of sex makes for a pathetic chase scene, not that different from scenes in The Walking Dead where zombies pursue Michonne or Maggie. It's just all so shallow that watching it makes you sad. It makes you sad for the both the pursued and the the pursuer when you know that the lies used in the wooing will all fall flat in the end. How many country songs cover this state? Loneliness, it's really something. There's such different kinds of sadness. I mean, Old Yeller is sad, but not nearly as sad as loneliness that leads to sin. Requiem for a Dream is a drug movie that follows this arc of desperation for euphoria, but unlike Old Yeller, where you are sad about the wholesome doggy whose goodness felt nearly transcendent, you feel shattered and destroyed in the sadness of a life drugs and sex that walk the characters into a living hell, and ends with Jennifer Connelly reduced to a stage dog dancing for more drugs. Sex becomes a closet pursuit for the addicted, really, worse than many drugs. It may excite the flesh for a bit, but sooner or later, like any fix, you need more, and the more you need, the more vicious the cycle gets, until it becomes a circular hell (which I'm certain is why Dante made the rings of hell circles, because we all choose the vicious circle that we occupy). After a while, the pursuit gets weird and strange as what formerly satisfied no longer delivers the punch that the lust requires to get off again. This obsession is the secret addiction of millions of American men, who should all proceed en masse to join an Exodus 90 group or a Strive 21 program to break these poisonous soul ties. Oh, and start saying Deliverance Prayers (for yourself and your immediate family - just don't start dabbling in delivering others…bad idea). Oh, you say you don't believe in the devil? That is all childish nonsense. Well, that's because he's already got you. If you don't believe in the devil, he's already bought your soul. His first tactic, number one, is to convince you that he doesn't exist. And while you do his bidding, he won't bother you. It's only once you start to fight it that you will begin to know that he is real, and so is God. This idea of freedom by way of sex is the shiny apple we're told to eat, with the promise that it will give us knowledge, make us like God. The reality is that we all find out that what we lost can never be restored, and sex is like a new car on the dealership lot, shined up and waxed. (It's interesting how shiny things always seem to fit so well with sin.) Within weeks, a new car is covered in salt and dirt from the highways. Before long it's like every other car on the street and we're still the same body and soul riding around in it, often eating fast food while we listen to songs about sex. So many are desperate to prove that sex can fulfill them, but like a man who buys a new pickup to turn heads, in a few years he will become disillusioned with that machine and need a newer, younger truck. Or if he can't afford the newer vehicle, he'll start adding aftermarket bolt-ons until it starts looking cartoonish. Or worse: from the start, the new car was a lemon, and it was never what he thought it would be, but now the debt is hanging around for years. This is why virginity in the ancient world was highly prized. They knew what we have forgotten. Sex sells, yes, but it's way oversold. There is more to life, and just as Plato and Socrates and Confucius and Marcus Aurelius and Jesus all told us, the higher pursuit of virtue far exceeds the desires of the flesh. Even the Epicureans taught that much. The shiny apple is always an illusion. Good things come from self-denial more often than they do from indulgence. But because of media and a bad notion of freedom, chastity has been given a bad name. What may shock you is to learn that people pursuing chastity have greater friendships than people who see themselves as raging balls of desire in constant need of sex. Virtuous friendship, in fact, requires it. Once lust is removed entirely, virtuous friendship can soar. But how can you remove lust? Let's go to the replay. In Genesis, once Joseph goes to Egypt, and after he gets out of prison for his sweet dream interpretation, he has a job. But the boss's wife wants him. In a predicament, she advances on him, and what does he do to thwart the advances of his boss's wife? He flees.Now for most sin, you pray and fight, as the Spiritual Combat demands us to do. But for lust? No, you flee. You turn away. Joseph illustrates the successful method of handling lust. In the Navarre Catholic Study Bible, there is a great comment about this story, from St. Caesarius of Arles, that is applicable today:"Joseph flees in order to escape...Learn, therefore, to flee if you want to win out against the attack made by lust. Do not be ashamed to flee if you want to attain chastity....Among all the fights a Christian has to engage in, the most difficult are those of chastity; here the struggle is a daily one, and victory is difficult. In this a Christian cannot but have daily acts of martyrdom." (Sermones 41, 1-3)Also, a note is shared on this same story from St. Josemaria Escriva, who is very much to the point: "Don't show the cowardice of being 'brave'; take to your heels!" (The Way, p. 132)Joseph didn't have a smart phone or a laptop, but the same tactic can apply and work for lust today. Turn off the device. Block the site or the person. Flee from it.Do you want to know a secret? People in monogamous relationships and single people practicing chastity have a secret. It's really simple. No, it's not that they are not tempted. Surely, they are tempted as much as anyone, or used to be. But the big secret is that they avert their eyes when lust arises, and this becomes a daily practice until it's not even a challenge. Hit your knees and pray. When temptation comes, pray. Always. It's the same for quitting drinking. Prayer works. Along with that, you can use St. Ignatius' 14 Rules of Discernment. They are the Swiss Army knife of learning and putting this spiritual fight into practice. When chastity is pursued, you stop sizing up everyone for sex. “Oh, look at her,” becomes, “Look to Christ.” Seriously, observe your horny friends. Do a little people watching. They are not at peace. The fruit of chastity appears un-shiny to the untrained eye. But once you put down the hash pipe of modern culture, with its sex obsession, and see people as made in the image and likeness of God, who deserve love and respect, the world looks different. Chastity, that old-fashioned idea, will free you in ways you never knew, because what you think you need is only something you want. The Buddhists understand what Lainey Wilson was saying in her country song, "Things a Man Oughta Know”:“If I can't have it, I can go without.”Exactly, Lainey. That's something George Costanza oughta know, and me as well. That is a thing we all oughta know. Learning to live this way in all things is true freedom, because you leave your personal Egypt, no longer a slave to the passions. If you can sit in a room and not “want” something you are beginning to understand what the pursuit of holiness is all about. The substitutes we use in place of God are never what we really want. They can be good things, but not if they are the highest thing, the highest desire for our life. The only thing you need is God. This is how you surrender to win. Sex? If it happens, great. If not, great. Job knows how this works:The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: Bless the name of the Lord. As some recovering alcoholics like to say, “It'll work out or…it'll work out.” In other words, you'll be fine either way. Recall Job as often as possible, as he summed up the proper humble mindset of a believer in the living God. Obviously, most of us learn this after eating the fruit. Much later, after eating from the tree of knowledge, we say, “Oh, I get it now. Yes, I should have listened to my mother or father or that old person who told me this earlier when I just wanted to ignore them.” The problem today is that the elders have gone off the rails. Most of the Baby Boomer and the following generations grew up in a time of unparalleled affluence, which is like the express line to hell. Money and comfort lead to these ideas. If you are seeking religious truth from the Bible, follow the money. Follow the power. Follow the comfort. The Israelites get rusty real fast as soon as they are exposed to these oxygen rich environments of wealth, power, and comfort. The indoctrination from schools and media assure us, even compel us, to believe that sex is the key to happiness, so that we act like the Bergens in the movie Trolls, who must eat a troll to be happy. The whole movie is about the Bergen prince unlearning the cultural lies he's been indoctrinated into. This is why we are at the point where the next St. Agnes will rock the world, because once teenage girls realize that the culture is lying, watch out. One Agnes can turn into a billion real fast. This, I believe, is God's plan with social media, because the mimetic desire of human instinct kicks in fast. Once kids realize that sex and identity politics is an empty cup, and after they spend another decade observing the results of their parents' moral failures in pursuing their false “freedom,” the pursuit of holiness will become radically appealing. But here's the thing that the Catholic Church teaches that no one wants to admit: the Church teaches that sex is good. In fact, it teaches that all of creation is good, but that we misuse it. The world, and matter, is not evil. Not at all. One of the most mangled ideas of ex-Catholics is this equation that sex = bad. That has never been the position of the Church. Ever. What an eye-opener it would be if men and women would turn off YouTube and Hulu for a moment to read Theology of the Body, but I won't hold my breath. It's far easier to believe that the Catholic church hates women and sex. But if you want to understand the Church's actual sexual teaching, and stop taking in the lies that people speak about the Church, it requires actual reading the sources rather than just assuming the lies. If I want to learn about a product, the last thing I would do is take the word of the competitor's salesman, but that is exactly what we choose to do. FUD is a an acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and it is a tactic of sales to grease the customer with these three things in order to squeeze a purchase order out of them. Nowhere is FUD used more than in portrayals of Church teaching on marriage, sex, and the body. I would challenge anyone to give an honest reading of Theology of the Body and then say (without lying) that the Church hates sex or is anti-sex. The Church opposes sin. It does not oppose sex. When we use our bodies in right relation to God, we find the good and the beautiful. This core concept of Christianity has been discarded in favor of our desire for the apple, a sugary snack that satisfies the body but not the soul. We've traded short-term arousal for drinking from the vine that gives life. The best advice I received was not to trust my emotions, but to follow the movements of my heart. The shelf-life of an emotion is brief, often just a few days. The movements of my heart, however, take me either away from or toward God, and that is where the discernment must happen. The longest trip we ever take is from our head to our heart, which seems to me another way of understanding that we must move away from the tree of knowledge and toward the tree of life. Luckily, we get another chance. Jesus doesn't shoot the wounded; no, he heals them, restores them, resuscitates them. We can eat from the tree of life if we unlock that door and let Jesus in, as he is the Bread of Life and the bringer of the Living Water. That's the buffet you want. Forget the Vegas spread. Throw out your beer bong. You really want to binge and chug? Jesus is the never-ending spring break in Cancun you always wanted, but without the hangover and the regret and the awkward walk home. In the end of the episode of Seinfeld, George gets greedy, and he says, “I flew too close to the sun on the wings of pastrami,” comparing himself to Icarus in the myth. What did he do that caused his pleasure wings to melt? He tried to add a third love into his sex life. Food and sex just wasn't quite enough anymore, so he brought a portable television under the sheets to have with his sandwich and girlfriend. He added technology and entertainment. In 1997, the internet was hardly used by most Americans, but we were well on our way to flying too close to the sun, with food, sex, and even though we had technology already, we were just getting our feet wet. We were on the verge of bringing the screen into every aspect of our lives, into every waking (and even sleeping) moment. George Costanza, it turns out, was a prophet of the 21st century. As anyone knows who has looked for happiness in those things, the reason George could never be happy was because he was treating people like things and things like people. His character is seeking joy, hope, and rest, but he's looking in all the wrong places. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

I always wondered why monks put fasting so high on the list of things to do, and St. Benedict, who saved civilization from returning to complete debauchery, had specific rules for his monastery about food. It was known that the monk who could not be disciplined on food would fall to pieces on virtue. I can confirm this. Having grown up on Kool-Aid and Little Debbie (and loving every Nutty Buddy minute of it), the era of cheap food has created a constant feast. The elderly people who grew up in the Depression understood food far better than their baby boomer children and grandchildren. They certainly understood it better than those of us who, in our post-Kool-Aid college era, could pound cheap cases of Natty Light beer and wash it down with a Nacho Bell Grande at 4 AM. (Lest anyone feel I lean too far right, let me remind you I live caught somewhere between hippy and redneck, and the hippies and tree-huggers were right about fast food and fertilizer. But, they missed the second part. While pointing a finger at food and greed, they accepted sin and the overall moral decay as “progressive.”) Here's my theory on Genesis as a mirror of the Green Revolution and the Sexual Revolution: No-fault divorce was caused by refrigeration. Nitrogen fertilizer led to mass-scale abortion. The combine harvester led to the current transgender fad. In short: just as food led to The Fall in the Garden, so did the food security of the last seventy years lead to the rejection of God all over again. In Iowa, a man named Norman Borlaug is praised for feeding a billion people with his scientific agricultural management principles, but in producing massive yields and cheap food, we ate from the tree of knowledge once again and made the same mistake. There is a reason that The Fall starts with food. Taking food for granted leads to sin, lots of it. Food and sex are intertwined. Notice, please, if you will, that the story in Genesis 3 of eating is followed by an obvious sexual fall where they know their nakedness. …the serpent said to the woman, “…when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” (Gen 3:4-7)Stop. Do you hear how the food was eaten in this secure food paradise? It was eaten without God. Adam and Eve rejected God. Neither of them paused to say “Grace” before eating the fig (or the apple, if you prefer). No, they ate just like we do today, like we do at Culver's or Applebee's, we just dive right in because the food is taken for granted. Occasionally you see some weird family praying in public, but it's rare. And right after Adam and Eve pig out on the fruit, they are naked, porning up the whole world. They are George Costanza. How we think about food matters immensely in the moral life, and it's no wonder that the mass rejection of God parallels the obvious fact that few people pause to say a prayer before eating today. As I fell away, I fell into free beer and fast food and the Age of Costanza swallowed me like the sea beast did Jonah, except I was in the belly for far more than three days. I was barfed out about fifteen years later.Notice, if you would, that the Lord's Prayer hinges in the center on the phrase: “Give us this day our daily bread,” signaling that food is important. In fact, food is so important in centering our lives around God, that the whole Lord's Prayer links this line about food between the beginning heavenly things to the latter earthly things. Food is a gift from God and we should be acknowledging that simple fact as a blessing. But we think the food came from our own ingenuity and cleverness.We assume that the Chipotle and the mutant-sized fruits at Costco all came from us, forgetting that the soil and water itself came from God. This is like someone entering a beautiful home, hanging their own 3x5 picture on a wall, and declaring, “I built this house.” The fact that we have mucked with some genes, figured out refrigeration, and spread NPK fertilizer around the earth in no way diminishes the reality that this created world is the foundation, the gift from God, from which every calorie we eat springs forth. In other words, we are foodless without God. The Great Hunger in 1800s Ireland was not that long ago, and for goodness sakes, Band-Aid and “We are the World” was a mere forty years ago when Ethiopia suffered from famine. The illusion of food security is strong because anyone alive in America today who remembers the Great Depression is now very likely in a nursing home, and those people tend to say a prayer before they eat. A culture flush with food and wealth quickly falls into sin. I don't know how, but the short and seemingly simple book of Genesis always has another layer to it. But then so does Exodus. In the prelude to the Golden Calf, what happens? A giant Texas barbecue, that's what. “…the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” (Ex 32:6)Food and booze are followed shortly thereafter by the most famous orgy in history, the scandal known as the Golden Calf incident. It makes Watergate or the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal look like a game of Go Fish. Furthermore, in Exodus, whenever the Israelites start complaining, they want to return to the “fleshpots” of Egypt where they were slaves, but you can see how strong food is, such that it goes hand in hand with the rejection of God. What they pine for is when they were slaves and “sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full.” Surely there were some hieroglyphic nudes involved as well, the ancient Egyptian version of Playboy or Penthouse. We've all seen the art - they had their porn on stone and papyrus instead of screens. The more I read the Bible, the more I see how much food and sex come up, and why the seemingly odd acts of sacrifice in the Pentateuch make increasing sense, because it was aligning the people's food toward God, and this is exactly what the Eucharist does in our lives at the Catholic Holy Mass. (Once again, two excellent books to help understand sacrifice and food in the Bible are Welcoming Gifts: Sacrifice in the Bible and Christian Life and Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.) Somehow, a kind of knowledge lies within our food, and it goes specifically with taking food for granted. There is something about being full, and having plenty of food, that leads to pride and the rejection of God. I think this is why Jesus says that it will be harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. Why? Because the rich man has plenty of food. He feels fully secure and therefore thinks he can live without God. He assumes he has no weakness because his belly is full and he cannot imagine missing a meal because his bank account is also full. All of this illuminates to me why so many of the saints fasted, and why the beatitudes elevate the poor, and why Jesus calls so many of his sheep from places where food security is unlike the American buffet. Those who appreciate food tend to appreciate God, because they know that God is the giver of food. “Give us this day our daily bread” is not a demand; it's a supplication to God and a request made with gratitude. Even today, wealth means food security, but we have so much food that even those in poverty are overweight, and statistics bear this out. Thus we have reached an odd point, where poverty does not mean hunger in many places. That's great that we have food, except when it leads to the rejection of God. So knowledge of good and evil, and the idea that we can be like God, comes after food abundance. It should come as no surprise that the modern “all-you-can-eat-buffet” started in Vegas in the 1940s in order to keep gamblers at the tables, as food and vice were married in true Vegas style. When we feel full, we assume a strength and power that we don't truly possess, and feeling strong, pride blooms and humility is trampled. Fertilizer brought the modern fruit in the garden but the fruit was Fast Food and cheap food, and we have eaten, and eaten, and eaten, like the Hungry Little Caterpillar. The only problem is, we're not caterpillars, so we don't turn into butterflies, we just become full and look for other things to do, like sinning. Sex is the most obvious one. Without food abundance, there would have been no Woodstock, because there would not have been a large population of idle college students of prime working age who could while away their youthful years on drugs and alcohol. Without food abundance and a sense of security in wealth, the Prodigal Son never leaves home and squanders his money on vice. I speak from experience, despite coming of age long after Woodstock, and millennia after the Prodigal Son. Once we are full, knowledge is the great, tantalizing dessert that we desire, always calling to us. It is like the pie in the old diners that sat in the revolving glass case, spinning around, on display like some kind of jewelry near the cash register. The pie sat behind glass like forbidden fruit, and we only order after being already full. But the appetite continues, wanting the pie. I remember looking at the pie and cake in those well-lit spinning cases and wondering, “What might the pie taste like? Will it fulfill me and finish off my meal? What if I could just have a bite?” I don't recall a serpent being there at all, but if serpent actually means “Shiny one” as I have read, then I know what the sacred writer of Genesis was referring to. St. Benedict knew something important. He knew that we cannot reach the wisdom through the mouth and stomach. The kind of knowledge that will satisfy our souls does not come through food, which is why Jesus tells the devil, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” It's not through pie or Kool-Aid or the constipation that accompanies 200 grams of protein a day that we will find the peace and rest we seek.. In a bizarre twist, we must pursue a different kind of knowing, sometimes called the Cloud of Unknowing, and it comes not through food, but through self-denial and prayer. The cloud of ecstasy, we're told by the culture today, must come by a different kind of relationship, usually sexual or experiential, and we completely forget about food. If we haven't fallen for the marketing of the sugar mafia, particularly Coca Cola, then we may fall for the fitness syndicate's promises. If we are not overeating, we then go to the other side of food insanity, where we must know the caloric content and nutrients of every morsel that passes over our teeth. But in both cases, gross abundance of food is present. The foodies and the gluttons have one thing in common: a food obsession with the abandonment of God. Hence, our current world of sexual immorality is a symptom of a prior fall, just as we really don't see the sexual fall in Genesis until chapter 6, with the infamous Nephilim, which come after the eating in the Garden. But one thing is certain. Wealth and abundance lead to the other sins of the body, the “warm sins” as they are sometimes called. And in my own lifetime, you could watch and observe this mood change about what is and what is not a sin, which almost coincided with the increased portions of food. The organic phenomenon is trying to correct the problem seeing food as the God, when food is in fact the gift from God, and so every crossfit and intermittent faster who is not measuring out their food-prep with God at the forefront has missed the point. Both the obese and the buff miss the purpose. It's no wonder we don't understand Leviticus, because it's almost entirely about food and getting into the right relationship to God via food. But we have moved on, thinking that the food abundance will last forever, and thus we've moved on to ever greater sins, knocking down walls and fences of morality and calling them old-fashioned. Why? Because we think this Garden was of our doing, and not God's. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whydidpetersink.substack.com

In an episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza tries to figure out a way where he can eat his favorite sandwich while he has sex. So he puts a “pastrami on rye with mustard” sandwich in the nightstand drawer, so that midway in the act with his girlfriend he can sneak a bite and thus enjoy his two favorite things simultaneously. The last seventy years of American history could be dubbed the Age of Costanza, because the sitcom character articulates the twin falls of our food abundance that led to the euphemism that we call today the “sexual revolution,” a term we use to describe our era of broken homes, drug abuse, sex toys, birth control, permanent adolescence, and endless soul searching. Really, what is the show Seinfeld about if not living a life of permanent adolescence? Jerry's apartment is stocked with children's cereal, they never cook anything, they eat at the diner, and the four main characters are childless, aging New Yorkers where lust and entertainment consume their lives. It's like a neverending sophomore year of high school. Jerry and the other three are all grains of wheat that never die, but let's set that parable aside for now.Here's what's interesting. George Costanza put food and sex together. Long ago, St. Benedict recognized the connection between food and sex as well, except St. Benedict realized that overstuffed bellies forget God and proceed directly to sin. His motto of Ora et labora (Pray and work) set the basic rule for life in the monastery, and when I read this a few years ago, something stood out to me because I had lived life in the Age of Costanza, in the age of “all-you-can-eat” buffets and ubiquitous porn. St. Benedict wrote:Above all things, however, over-indulgence must be avoided and a monk must never be overtaken by indigestion; for there is nothing so opposed to the Christian character as over-indulgence, according to Our Lord's words, “See to it that your hearts be not burdened with over-indulgence. (The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 39)As I've gone on at length in prior series about the decline and fall of how we read and understand the Bible, we have had a parallel decline in how we see and understand our food, of which I will go on at length about now. But I'm not going all Michael Pollan. I'm not going to ramble on about organic farming or paleo diets or whole foods or macros. I'm going to talk about food and sex as part of a spiritual reality. George Costanza was so far gone that he doubled-down, thinking that more would be better and lift his spirits, but it's a spiral to the bottom. His character was so blind, that while eating he also wanted sexual pleasure, and while making a great joke of his character's entire selfish lifestyle, he sums up the entire post-World War II era of massive food production and sex as a “pleasure alone” obsession. But St. Benedict figured out the problem. He put things together in the correct order. Food and sex go together, sort of like many of us 1990s bar patrons considered “beer and cigarettes” as a form of dark-side “bread and butter.” Recognizing this connection between the belly and lust, fasting in the Church has far more to do with virtue than it does with attaining six-pack abs. The modern saying of, “Abs are made in the kitchen” has the opposite purpose of the clean eating that happens in a monastery. In the life of a fasting monk, he probably has six-pack abs, but ideally, no one will ever witness them. For the monk with low body fat and sweet muscle definition, the goal is not vanity, or pride, or sensuality - it is humility. A monk that is successful in this would not even be aware that such a six-pack has been obtained, and would care even less if informed of such a useless, fleeting possession in this space-time called creation.Most intermittent fasters today seek six-pack abs to have more sex, or be desired for sex, so like George Costanza, they are controlling their food, and really obsessing over food, in order to have more sex, or to be more desirable for sex. In other words, adultery of all varieties is the goal. I have never heard anyone proclaim, “I'm working on getting six-pack abs for God.” But a monk is doing exactly that without even knowing it. Removing the variable of sex from all equations allows for virtuous motives to flourish. Here's the dirty little secret about the obesity epidemic and the fitness-craze in America: they are the same thing. They are the same problem. They are both a kind of gluttony. Fitness goals dabble in lust and vanity and pride, whereas the simple overeater is just sitting in the hot-tub of sloth. Both of these problems can only occur in a time of excess food, where the overeater fails to stop eating, and the fitness crazed person has so much food that they can pick and choose to only eat what fits their “macros.” Recently at the gym, I heard a man say, “I have a hard time eating 200 grams of protein a day.” I wanted to tell him: “That's because no one in history has ever needed that much protein a day.” Ok, maybe Andre the Giant. But rather than start an awkward discussion, instead I just pondered my own motive for attending the gym, and wondered: was I truly there to preserve and sustain my body, or if I want to look good for other people, that I might be admired? Because even if sex isn't the aim of exercise, to be desirable can be just a lusty, and Jesus was quite clear about how easy adultery is to commit. “But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:28) This phrase I keep on echo in my head, because how many men today understand that adultery, a mortal sin, is always just a thought away. This is exactly where the spiritual combat must be fought, and fought, and it is a worthy fight to take up because once you can turn your eyes away from lust, real freedom begins, not to mention truly virtuous friendships.The fitness dilemma, I won't go too deep into it here, since I covered it in an earlier series. But I will leave it by echoing St. Augustine, who I feel suggested the best reason for exercise, which is to reasonably care for the body, for what God created is good, with the full awareness that we not only a body. As a member of the laptop class, in a sedentary age, we in the privileged information technology world are increasingly separated from manual labor: Thus heeding St. Augustine, I need to “care for the body as though I was going to live forever, and care for my soul as if I were going to die tomorrow.” Love God, love others, then love the self. JOY is spelled: Jesus, Others, You.Back to the monks: a fasting monk aims toward chastity without a second thought of six-pack abdominal muscles. The fasting weightlifter aims toward adulation and maybe sex fantasies, or at the least, being desirable. No gym selfie has ever been posted on social media without the motive of getting laid or being coveted somewhere behind it. The monk aims toward God, and the other toward the self, or more particularly, the ego. The monk aims to tame the passions, while the other wants to inflame them by lighting a match and throwing gas on the tinder (and often using an app called Tinder). Much of the marketing will tell you that exercise is about body and mind, but will never mention the soul, making it yet another situation where we live out of wholeness, spiritually out of sync, in the amputated state of a body peeled apart from its soul. We tend to admire the fit, just as we do the wealthy. But we look at thin, poor monks with a side-eye. Perhaps today we'd call those chasing virtue “try-hards” rather than “Jesus freaks.” But how you treat your food is really, really indicative of how you live your entire life. I say this as a sugar monster with the full realization that much of this post is about my own history of dating Sara Lee, Betty Crocker, and dear old Aunt Jemima (may she rest in peace). I really need to get started renouncing soul ties to these high-fructose ladies. As a food monster, this has been one of the more eye-opening discoveries of my adult life. All of that Kool-Aid, it couldn't have helped. When I think of the Kool-Aid man now, I can't help but think of Bluto from Animal House, because like Bluto, Kool-Aid man barges into rooms, crashing through walls, overstuffed and ready to party. I was probably drinking Kool-Aid and watching Animal House at one point. I think I first saw the movie around age ten, which is one of the hundreds of movies that encouraged us all to drink the cultural Kool-Aid, and as I chugged sugar, Bluto chugged Jack Daniels and it was certainly cool. We all drank the Kool-Aid one way or another, since every 80's and 90's movie preached the Gospel of the self. The Mountain Dew, the Lucky Charms, my beloved Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Jimmy John's, and so much Taco Smell…is it any wonder that the era of “party ‘til you puke” was followed by the era of Spanx and Tinder and Drag Queen Story Hour? It is a literal echo of the Garden of Eden story, where immorality follows a bounty of food availability. The book of Proverbs specifically calls out the excess consumption of sugar as a danger!If you have found honey, eat only enough for you,    lest you be sated with it and vomit it. (Proverbs 29:16)Oh, we have found honey. We have found sugar. A book called Sweetness and Power covers the history of how Europeans took sugar by the sword, turning a luxury into a staple, and how it radically changed culture, diet, and even work. In other words, the Garden of Eden story, so concise in its telling in Genesis, has played out over the past 500 years in America since the fruit of the sugar-cane became an obsession. Somehow moving to “a land flowing with milk and honey” causes a falling away from God, in every case. The Biblical stories tell this repeatedly, as food abundance in Egypt leads to slavery, and food abundance in Canaan leads to worshipping other Gods. Without even knowing much about the Bible, we can see that Jesus was a thin man, who denied himself luxurious food, who didn't workout for muscle mass, and didn't desire sex, and didn't sin. As always, he shows us how to live. Even when he feeds the masses bread, he doesn't continue to do it daily, because he came to bring the living water and Bread of Life, which is the true food and drink that we seek. St. Benedict knew this “sweetness and power” problem long before Columbus sailed. He has some outstanding insight about how the monks who could not maintain a fast were like fodder for the devil. And oh, it hurts to read that because I know it to be true. It all makes sense. Peeling the onion of sin from a life results in many “Ah-ha!” moments, where we see through a glass darkly and then suddenly we see Jesus face to face and understand how and why the errors were made, but more importantly, how to remedy them through his healing atonement. Reading the early Church Fathers is always eye-opening, because we think of them as hicks and backwards, and then they prove in their wisdom that they knew the human heart better than billions of us do today. So is it any wonder that the Fall in Genesis centers around food followed by sex? The fruit of the tree attracts, the rejection of God happens and the loss of innocence results. Taking the easy food, from the forbidden tree, leads to sin. When I think of the Green Revolution from the 1940s onward, which flooded cheap food to the wealthy West, and the undeniable moral decay of America that has followed, it's difficult not to see the connection. In fact, of all the things that brought the West to a place of debauchery, I would not say it is the birth-control pill or no-fault divorce. No, I would say it is the combine harvester and nitrogen fertilizer. Hear me out. I realize you've stopped reading after that last sentence, but hold on a moment. The immense amount of cheap food that American ingenuity and efficiency has produced, and the sexual depravity that followed, does it not seem to follow, that this was the same course of tale told in the Garden of Eden? An abundance of food led to the elevation of our pride, bringing about the rejection of God, and soon after, the detonation of sin erupted like a bomb in our world? You don't get to the sexual fall without going through a story of cheap, easy, and accessible food. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

There's a movie called The Mission from 1986 with Robert De Niro, where two different approaches are taken to meet the natives and bring the message of Christ. In the first attempt, a priest played by De Niro tries the sales approach and in his heavy handed messaging, he irritates the people, gets tied to a cross, thrown into a river, and sent over a waterfall. Then the second man, Jeremy Irons, comes and plays his oboe. That's all he does. A beautiful song, simple in its melody, softly plays in the jungle - a song never heard by the people before. The music intrigues the people, and even though they smash his oboe, they don't smash his face. They take him into their village. The beauty of the song breaks down a wall. And suddenly there is an inroad to friendship, and more importantly, into the life of Christ, because it was beauty, not a sales pitch, that led to interest, and ultimately, a relationship. And beauty is how you bring the message of Jesus Christ to people. It is the beauty of the story, of the person and living God that he is, of who he is, what he is - that's what needs to be shared, and it can't be shared in a sales pitch. The feeling that a sales approach gives is this: “Oh, so I am just a project to you? A notch in your belt? A credit for your way to heaven?” It's the same feeling of the Verizon salesman pushing unwanted products when you just want your phone fixed. Evangelism that feels like a one-night stand only lasts as long as a one-nighter. There's no beauty, and there's no relationship. It's just a temporary feel-good, like eating pixie stix.This is what hurts more than saves: “Did you really just pretend to be friendly just to make me convert?” It feels dirty. It makes me want to run. Conversion can't be treated like the old Highlander TV show, where Duncan McLeod slays his enemy and then he takes on their power. There is no sales commission or power gained if you convert someone to understand that Jesus is God. We are to preach the Gospel and “heal the sick,” and much of healing comes from befriending people - as in real befriending. Becoming friends means having no ulterior motives, no commission, no bonus. Becoming friends does not mean hoping they will be baptized and then you move on. This has the relationship depth of a star football player at a college frat party ranging over the drunk and willing freshmen. Virtuous and real friendship requires the gift of self with no motives of a kickback. (Not coincidentally, this is exactly how we should approach God and the Mass.) An ulterior motive gets outed quickly if you are only becoming friends with the hopes of converting a person, and then it feels like one party got duped into that one-nighter. Flattery and a few free drinks might get someone laid, but it doesn't get them love. There's no substance to it. There's nothing underneath it. Conversion by trickery or strategy of any kind is not what God asks us to do. Did Jesus do any of that? I read the Gospel often and I don't see him tricking anyone. I see relationships forming and lasting, or if not lasting, an authentic experience happens where sin is outed and transformation begins. In fact, I always see that Jesus is non-competitive, non-gimmicky, but he challenges them at the same time - and that authentic challenge what attracts people to him. He's not acting like a salesman, asking about someone's mother just to establish rapport. Nor is he playing the game of the Romans, who go out and conquer people by the sword and then spin propaganda, crafting a message about how they brought “peace” to all that they threatened. Jesus doesn't play the stupid games that we do. He isn't a salesman. He's not a bully or a genie either. He's authentic. And that is what we are absolutely dying to find. Something real. Something beautiful that is just offered for his own sake. Something and someone who isn't selling is what we want. And we want more than just something free, like free beer, we want beauty that touches our soul. In America, our idols known of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” pretend to give us this, but in this pursuit, we turn everything being into a sale, from sports to healthcare to news. Even religion becomes a sale with the prosperity Gospel and therapeutic Deism. Loving Jesus doesn't need to be cool. It's not supposed to be, until you suddenly understand who he is. Then he's way cooler than anything you've ever known or seen. Which is why he is cool. He's cool because he's not trying to be cool, he just is a living witness of how beautiful life can be, even when sin makes it ugly. This is why the Woman at the Well story, and Peter's “drop the nets” moment, and saint stories like those of St. Augustine and St. Teresa of Avila (and all the rest) make us step back and look at our own lives. We wonder what happened when those people met Jesus as the living God. And until it happens to you, it will seem fishy, suspicious, and too good to be true, because we are accustomed to being sold and told lies. This is why attempts to make Christianity cool come off so badly to me. Most Christian music and evangelization feels forced. It's the Robert De Niro kind of forced-feeding versus Jeremy Irons playing the oboe. Recall that people didn't want to kill Jesus for being cool. No, he rejected all that the world considered cool. The world's fads of money and power bored Jesus. It was for this very fact that they hated him. He didn't want what everyone else thought gave their lives meaning. The real threat of Jesus to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Romans was not that he was becoming popular. It's that he inverted their whole world and made a mockery of their earthly wants and desires. Power, money, pleasure - he needed none of it. While everyone is trying so hard to be cool, Jesus is just praying and being friends with people. No concert needed, no TED style talks, no cultural hooks like hot-monogamy, no parades, nothing but being himself. Being a follower of Jesus is not meant to be cool. It's meant to make you conform your life to Christ, know you are a sinner, take up your cross, and very likely be reviled by the culture, and after all that still be joyful enough to give away money to the church and the poor. See, it doesn't make sense, does it? But it does make sense. Once you turn into the light, you can see all of it. The world is suddenly illuminated. It's not supposed to be cool. It's supposed to be beautiful.You want to follow him, because Truth is beautiful, and then you don't really care about how it looks to the world. However, the wrong kind of friendship, the salesperson kind, is not going to bring the sheep back to the fold. It's the same result as chasing sheep with a fiery torch. Hellfire scare tactics don't work, and nor do sugary friendships, nor does flirty bait-dating. People are dying to find something authentic. And here's the kicker: once they find Jesus to be authentic and follow him, they can no longer die. A religion that enters into competition has to sell itself to win, and the moment that begins, it's a product and no longer a way of life. The moment that selling begins, it is no longer Christianity. Evangelization is not about selling. It's about complete transformation. If selling is required, then it needs a story, and how tempting it can be to craft a story around a product, just a wee bit here and there, and then pretend that the product matches a story instead of the product matching reality. The extreme push of corporations to sell mindfulness products today has the same rank odor on it that the door-to-door Jehovah's Witnesses and beach evangelizers at spring break always had. I have walked into many customer-facing situations where the story told by the salesperson did not match the reality of what the product could do. When reality can't live up to a sales and marketing story, the jig is up. These are what you call “difficult conversations” where you have to explain, as nicely as possible, that the salesperson was lying, or at least committing certain sins of omission by not volunteering accurate information. However, a sales story that matches reality can be seen in the proof of the product. It can be seen in the continued used of the product. It can be heard in testimonies of those using the product. It can be seen in things built using the product. Proof of use and effectiveness can be seen and heard across the world for something that really works. Like for example, the Old and New Cathedrals of Salamanca, Notre Dame, St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Peter square, St. Paul's cathedral, and a million small churches. Like works of art and literature and songs and stories of saints. These are beautiful things, created in homage to a savior that heals. When I hear “Gentle Woman” and “Ave Maria” and “Immaculate Mary” every year in December on the holy day of Immaculate Conception, I have to sit in the back row because it brings tears to my eyes. It's just so beautiful. I can hardly take it. I recall this happening with other songs, where the beauty penetrates so deeply that I can hardly stand it, as if my heart could be broken and healed in three minutes. It has happened to me with “No Woman, No Cry” from Bob Marley and the Wailers. The same with Andrea Bocelli's “Con te Partiro.” Surely we all have songs that can cut us deeply and bring tears of sadness or joy. To hear the songs in Church, however, about Mary and Jesus, is still different because the Mother of God and God Incarnate are the ultimate healers. Every December, or whenever the Marian songs are sung, I can know the beauty and goodness of the Blessed Virgin Mary through song, through the glorious gift of music that God gave to some people. We all have gifts, but musicians have one of the most beautiful ones and they can share it with us to lift us up, just like the birds of the morning who call to one another from the trees, as if God is saying to the world through these amazing creatures, “Good morning.”Birds aren't selling their song. They are offering it up. They are giving their song to the world. They are using the gift that God gave them to reveal the beauty of all creation. In other words, Creation is a product I can believe in, because I can see it, and it's beautiful. An account manager with steady customers who believe in a product are a far more steady stream of income than customers that were tricked into purchase orders and contracts by a charismatic salesman. God isn't a salesman. The tricks we play on people aren't needed with real beauty. The cute smile, the witty rejoinder, the steak dinner, the sleek demo, the free stuff - shirts and pens and mouse pads and all the other crap salespeople unload on customers as if they were kids at parade - none of that sustains trust if the underlying product doesn't work or isn't authentic. A huge backlash is happening right now in the post-Vatican II liturgy that tried to “modernize” the Catholic Mass to keep up with the trendy ways of the world. This was a mistake that may slowly be corrected. It's become increasingly clear to all that the irreverent productions were attempts by Catholics to compete with Protestant services. But once your faith tries to be cool, it's dying. Who would want it, when it's entertainment, because like every show or product that needs a lot of marketing to keep it going, it's not really needed. Beauty doesn't need to compete. Faith cannot win in the space of entertainment, because it's more than entertainment. Because it is not made for that space. That space is the complete opposite of what faith and the Mass is about. We have football stadiums and rock shows and music festivals and strip joints and TED Talks and drive-in movie theaters. All of those are more “fun” than Catholic Mass, but they are all selling something completely different. And none of those things last, as sports leagues come and go, bands break up, music festivals peter out, strip joints get condemned, and TED Talks is on its last days. Drive in movie theaters are barely hanging on. There are a thousand and one options for entertainment which all come and go over the decades. Even Elvis, the King, and the Beatles, will be but a blip in a history book soon. They are completely in the rear-view mirror already. Given our short attention span that moves on from one form of entertainment to another, this makes the fact that a Church could be the dominant and lasting centerpiece of life for 2,000 years rather mind-blowing. True, there wasn't the option of NFL football games and music festivals and Burning Man. But those things that draw millions of worshippers today will be long gone before the Church is gone. Why? How did it hang on for so long? It's not like the Catholic Church was the only religion in existence. Why didn't one of the other “religions” of the ages before Christianity rise up to replace it? After all, if it was so obviously a bunch of false superstitions of fearful farmers, then why couldn't something other than Christianity have swept it away? This is a question that doesn't get asked out loud. The answer is they haven't replaced Christ because…they are not beautiful. Christ's music makes life sing. He is the way, the healer, the maker of all music, the one who makes the invisible be visible. The reason we love art and music and stories is the same reason we love Jesus, and the reason is because we see the beauty of all creation in him: Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the way and the truth and the life.No one comes to the Father except through me.If you know me, then you will also know my Father.From now on you do know him and have seen him." (Jn 14:6-14)Once you hear the music of the original reasons to believe, it begins to make sense. All of the clanging gongs and noise are trying to convert you by beating you over the head, and many Catholics have tried the approach of Robert De Niro in The Mission. For those approaches that used guilt and ugliness, the Church was thrown in the river and sent downstream. And now is the time where we can hear the oboe finally, now that we've heard enough of the noise, so that we can be curious enough to take a second look. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

As much as I tried to pretend there wasn't, there is a God-shaped hole in my heart. There simply is no answer that philosophy or theory or modern science or socialism or witchcraft or astrology or Buddhism or free beer can offer that fills this God-shaped hole in the heart. There is only a person that can fill that hole. The problem and the solution are both odd. In the last post, I talked about our need for certainty, and the “secret knowledge” that is often on offer for us. But most “secret knowledge” rejects God and the source of all pain and suffering, which is sin. The “problem of pain” is the all-time number one driver of sending people into the arms of ideologies offering solutions, but they are all fool's gold. They offer all the answers on paper, but when put into practice, cause far more issues than they solve. We don't need to make sense of every last thing once we come to rest in faith. We don't need every last answer. Continuing to pursue the goals of reason still go on, but we don't salivate and lust for the answers to come, to fill in the big picture and bring about an earthly utopia, because we already have the answer. Via the Holy Spirit, we already know the ending. We get certainty through God's will, not our own. The best part of this is that we don't have to know all the answers any longer, because God knows. What's odd about this whole “surrender to win” idea is that we get certainty by inheritance from God. While we don't know God's will, we know he is good and loving and alive in this world, and that in the end he wins. Even the progressives like to say, “Love wins,” and they are correct, but not in the way they think. Yes, love wins in the end because God is love, and God wins. And when you surrender to God, you win, because he wins. When you surrender, you are suddenly on the winning team and you just follow God's lead. You no longer feel angry about the rules because you bask in his love. Sure, surrender means imposing limits on the self, but paradoxically this brings ultimate freedom because you no longer have the bondage of self and the onslaught of desires to contend with. You hand over the desires to God, because those thoughts never brought peace, only problems. He takes all the problems away if you ask. When you offer yourself up to him, he blesses you, just as you bless God with your life and actions. When you fight against God, he wins. You might say that when you are disobedient, he kneels you. You cannot fight with God forever. You can certainly wrestle with him, but eventually it becomes exhausting. There is no idea or argument or award or pleasurable activity in this world that could provide what I was seeking. In the end, no intellectual pursuit came close to a solution, and it wasn't for lack of effort. The left and right side of politics do absolutely nothing to solve this problem. They just give us all an excuse to kick the can down the road, to avoid the biggest question. Neither side will solve the ultimate problems or bring about any lasting peace. They are mirrors of the same restless mania, trying to win in Washington just as professors and theologians and pundits are trying to win our hearts and minds by reason in universities. The reality of politics can be seen in the online hellscape of continuous wrath. The millions of people squabbling think that rooting for their side gives them a sense of control, while their interior lives and personal relationships are in disarray. This desire for certainty and control is rampant today, particularly because a society of people that have every physical need satisfied now looks to satisfy spiritual needs, but in the wrong places. Partisan politics is an escape from the self for those that cannot surrender to God and find peace. Because we want answers, we try to find it in competition, in politics and in sports. Like drinking and sex, politics and sports provide an escape for those who suspect they are lost but don't want to admit it. What I didn't see coming is that faith exceeds reason. We've spent hundreds of years trying to tell ourselves that reason exceeds faith, partially due to the great leaps of science but also because of the failures of those who profess faith to emulate Christ, but I am convinced that we must lead with faith. Yet it's difficult to tell anyone that today, unless they have made the turn themselves. All of the other ideas and sciences and ideologies fail simply because they cannot solve that problem. They are the wrong tool, the wrong material, the wrong instructions. What is not “born of the spirit” cannot fix spiritual problems. Ideas may guide us toward behavior and doing good actions in this world, but they cannot bring about the interior conversion of the heart that Jesus can bring. They may highlight our sins, as they should, and guide us toward God, but they cannot sustain us because they purposefully try to pretend God doesn't exist. Having tried and sampled these alternative worldviews, particularly the ones without God, I found that the Christian worldview is the only one that makes sense and the only one that works, for the same reasons that Dorothy Day discovered. I went down the other road, only to find Jesus at the end of it. But it's not only Dorothy Day that found faith in this unexpected way. G.K. Chesterton and St. Augustine are two others who had a gift for articulating this path. They too found what Dorothy Day did. They came to accept one truth that makes all other arguments moot, just as have billions of other people have done. The problem with Christianity, if you are doing battle with it in your mind and trying to knock it down, is not that it has the best argument. If you come to know Christ, it is the only argument that fills the God-shaped hole in your heart. Nothing else makes sense once Jesus enters your life, because somehow he makes complete and total sense of everything. This is extremely annoying to people who haven't experienced it. Christianity is the best argument of all for living real life, and it is a strange yet beautiful paradox. In order to appreciate the physical realities and emotional struggles of this world that seem to have explanation, you must assent to the spiritual mysteries beyond this universe that cannot be explained. Like any good convert, I now love looking for connections in the Old Testament. I enjoy spiritual reading and - why not - looking for references that lead to the Cross. But that alone is not the cause of belief. It is not the arguments made on paper in the end. I can't pile up enough evidence and suddenly turn on the light of faith. That's not how it works. I believe that Christianity is the best argument, but not because of the Gospels, or the surrounding Old Testament and letters of St. Paul, or the tradition of the church fathers, or the history of the saints. Sure, those provide compelling evidence, but they can also turn people away, depending on how you read them. All of those texts (aside from the Old Testament) did not exist when Jesus was first resurrected. Furthermore, very few people could even read, and if they were lucky they heard someone read from the scrolls from time to time. In my post-conversion life, I am all in on reading the Bible as God's Word, from cover to cover, but I didn't arrive at that belief through argument or decision alone. More importantly, none of the first Christians, not a single one, had anything beyond the Old Testament scriptures to base their belief in Christ upon. There was nothing written down in the form of a Gospel for some years. The letters of Paul possibly came first and we can see vibrant communities springing up all over. There were no New Testament scrolls to unravel and read, no cross referenced Bibles, no study guides, no Catechism, no recorded sermons. There was only word of mouth and the power of his name. The founder of the religion wrote nothing down. Something lit his followers on fire in a way that cannot be described. I would say that the event cannot be repeated, but that would be false; the same fire springs up daily all over the world. It has never stopped catching fire since that day in the upper room when the apostles were baptized by the tongues of fire some seven weeks after the death of Jesus.To get to God I arrived by reason and lived experience. But to get to the next level, I arrived by meeting Jesus Christ, the person. The fully human and fully divine person that walked the earth is what somehow reached me. The problem with Christ is that if this person calls you, life is never the same. That is how the argument keeps winning, by changing minds. Life cannot be the same once the fire starts because nothing looks, smells, tastes, or feels like it did before. This is not like stumbling across a good book that brings awareness to some fact of the world, some injustice, some unfairness. This is being jolted to life spiritually and having a new life infused into you. When your soul is brought back to life, it starts drinking from the vine of God, chugging grace like a college student at spring break. Warning: this rebirth can be painful initially, like physical birth. (Pace yourself, don't drink too fast. Drink one water for every one wine.) The reality of this power of Jesus, the person, is told by time itself. It cannot be ignored or denied. You may argue about Christians misusing his name, you can argue about the devil quoting scripture for his purposes, and I would agree with you in some of those arguments. But the fact is this: the Christian religion would have died long ago if it were only a good argument. There have been many “good” ideas throughout history, but we don't build cathedrals for those ideas. We build jaw-dropping churches that produce no economic output whatsoever so that we can worship a man, a poor man, one who died with nothing, naked on a cross! Putting the idea of “truth” aside for a moment, if an idea or argument doesn't win hearts and minds, it cannot last. So clearly there is a good argument in Christianity. If it was total nonsense, it could not have lasted. But there is something greater than just the words of an argument. There are many good books and models on how to live life. Marcus Aurelius wrote a great book on how to live life, but there is no one tithing to the Marcus Aurelius society today or handing out pamphlets at the airport about why you should give your life to Marcus Aurelius. Christianity is not just a series of arguments. Jesus is the argument. A quote in Acts of the Apostles from a rabbi named Gamaliel is telling, because this Jewish leader tells his fellows to let the Christian fad play out. Why? Because he's wise. He knows that a cause will die out on its own if it's not from God. Gamaliel refers to some long-forgotten movement started by a guy named Theudas, but this Theudas “…was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing.” He urges his peers to let this Christian novelty just play out, like how rolling your jeans or wearing Zubaz pants and Hypercolor shirts bloomed and faded in the 1990s. Zubaz pants and Hypercolor shirts were not from God, and so they both died out. Both were hideous actually. For something more recent, consider fidget spinners or Crocs or Heely shoes. Gamaliel said of these wacky Apostles of Jesus, “…if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:34-39) That is why it never dies. Because it's more than an argument. It's more than a feeling. It's more than a fad. It's not from this world. The Holy Spirit is not of human origin. The truth that Christ represents cannot be rebutted or refuted. Once the spirit turns a non-believer into a believer, there is no turning back on the second conversion, or the re-birth spoken of by Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3. This is why the apostle Peter states the famous line, saying what everyone knows who has come to put their entire life and trust in Jesus. Jesus asks if Peter and the apostles will leave him, and Peter replies, matter of factly: “To whom else would we go?”To whom else would I go? That is the billion dollar question. Peter is basically saying, “I've found what fits into this giant, gaping God-shaped hole in my heart, so I'm done looking.” Sometimes I wonder why I took so long to get to where Peter is. It's like I was wandering around the beauty of Creation and pouring liquor in my mouth, saying, “I wonder what could possibly fit this enormous void in my life?” How strange it all is in hindsight. When I'm hungry I eat food; when I'm thirsty, I drink water; but when I was yearning for God, I looked everywhere else. I tried it all. All of it. For the converted, the same answer applies. Once you land on the truth of Jesus, you realize that you are done searching. There is rest. There is peace. There is love. There is certainty. That is the answer to why faith overrides reason for believers. That is also the reason the religion does not die. Because those who believe know that there is nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, the actions of many believers can drive others away, but don't let it. Yes, there are crazy Christians, but there are crazy people in all walks of life and political parties and ideologies. Don't lock yourself out of trying just because your uncle or co-worker is a hypocrite. (Always recall that Jesus hated hypocrites worse than prostitutes and tax collectors!) This stubbornness of believers does produce a maddening state for those on the other side of the fence. Non-believers come with their wares, offering pleasure in this life, a life free from the guilt of sin. But whatever they are selling is second-best. It's day-old bread. Jesus is the bread of life, the fresh bread. There is no person or idea or argument that can replace him. The most difficult thing is making sense of this to other people who think you have lost your marbles, but they will never understand it unless they are turned by the spirit. The gift does not come to everyone. Peter knows that no other person or ideology can fill the void in him, so his answer speaks the full truth. He has already looked elsewhere. He may not know exactly how Jesus is God, but he knows that Jesus is God and that's all that matters. That alone is the entire argument. No powerpoint presentation needed, no notes, no talking points, no objection handling. The Apostles' Creed sums up the entirety of the Bible, the tradition, the beliefs, and the reasons why. Those words can't bring the spirit, but it's the best summary of what people believe. The followers of Nietzsche or Karl Marx or Michel Foucault or Richard Dawkins are the modern version of the followers of Theudas. In another hundred years there will be new names, new ideologies, new quirks, new fads, and who will be argued about alongside those new names? It will be the same name: Jesus. He will still be known by all. He will still baffle thinkers and anger intellectuals and bring joy to billions of simpletons like me. Everything else is a replay. We've seen these shows before. The new academic arguments are not new. The latest theories and ways of looking at the world have been tried already. Found wanting, they were discarded. But we will try them again, and again. We insist on it, because we must attempt to define our universe and destiny. Every generation yearns to be free of God, and every generation fails. The reality is this: these ideas have been dug out of the freezer and thawed out, then re-packaged ideas with new branding, kind of like what happened with consumer applesauce over the past twenty years. Applesauce manufacturers swapped out clumsy jars for single-serving squeeze packs. Consumer sales skyrocketed because the squeeze packs were fun for kids and perfect for school lunchboxes. But regardless of the delivery, when applesauce reaches your mouth, it's still just applesauce. Yes, the container has a Disney character or a QR code (with a chance to win!), but it's still only applesauce inside. The container doesn't change the substance. The payload is apple slurry-goo, the same as it was in the old jar. The same happens with the many repackaged rebellions against God. We can call it paganism or atheism or positivism or Epicureanism or Stoicism or Jainism or humanism or wokeism, but it's all the same applesauce in the end, because these ideas all reject the idea of one true God, a most high God, and that is why all of these things eventually grow tasteless. Worse, unlike applesauce, these rebellions contain nothing nourishing for the body or the soul. Each generation tries to convince itself that this time the idea is something different. The ancient people already saw all of the things we are seeing today, they just didn't have a TV or phone to watch it on. In our desperate efforts to be powerful or cool, we all become weak and lame. I learned the hard way that the boring way of life is not the pursuit of faith and holiness. The ultimately boring way of life is this constant searching for something, this constant rebellion against God. Life in Jesus just looks boring but it is the one source of true, authentic joy. He remains through all of these generations like a rock, a solid foundation of unending hope. He is unchanged and unphased, while the self-exalting educated classes of each generation lives and dies over and over again, falling over themselves, jockeying for position, like toddlers in an unsupervised daycare center. There is a different type of knowledge in Jesus that exceeds all of the learning of the great philosophers and political thinkers and military leaders and scientists of human history. Despite numerous attempts to crush the faith, it returns. This is not disputable. Faith in Jesus may die in one place, but it grows elsewhere, like magic, almost as if there were some kind of holy spirit bringing it to people around the world. Like dandelions in American yards, homeowners try in vain to kill this unwanted weed, but it cannot be killed, for even if you kill the local dandelions, or a million dandelions, the seeds have already spread far and wide, and the minute you stop killing the plants, within a year or two the dandelions will have returned in full. The idea cannot be killed. It can be stifled and those who have the idea can be murdered or silenced, but the idea of Jesus is something that cannot be contained or stopped. Communism and fascism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century. Many of those killed were Christians. Yet the life of Christ still inspires people and draws them back. Like St. Thérèse of Lisieux said to Jesus, quoting Song of Songs: “Draw me and we will run.” This rebirth in faith comes from something beyond our understanding. It brings a complete and sincere adherence to Christ out of joy, not by argument or coercion. God only needs to call his followers and they come. How? I don't know. But now I don't need to know every detail. The mysteries I place in God's hand. The Divine Mercy image has the quote, “Jesus, I trust in you.” That's the cure. I am more interested in the idea of “religious truth,” since that is what the Bible speaks most to me, and it's easy to forget that if I forget to trust in God. I'm more interested in the mystery of interior conversion, because that is the part of Christianity I missed when learning about faith. Based on how many people in recovery meetings for addiction talk about how they formerly understood God, a lot of people missed the whole idea of “interior conversion.” God doesn't need to make lengthy arguments or offer worldly incentives. Even those who don't believe can just utter the words, “Draw me, we will run,” or say, “Come Holy Spirit,” and the movement toward faith can begin. It's so simple that it seems absurd to those who don't believe. The seed of faith is planted where it is wanted and requested, and often it is planted where it is unwanted and unrequested. For some of us, we seem to have no choice in the matter (as was the case for myself). Other man-made ideas like feudalism or positivism or communism or humanism must be propped up with tremendous effort, but as soon as the driving force falters, the energy fades and the movement dies. But with Jesus, the energy continues, always sustained, because it does not come from man. The energy comes from God. He is the vine, the living water, the Bread of Life, the way, the truth, and the life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

In college, I wasn't aware for some time that various dogmas of the academic world were steering me. Wanting mostly to party and pass classes, I was easily walked into the secular dogma, to the point that I was converted to the progressive worldview. I recall English and History classes being full of new interpretations that turned nearly every literary or historical person into either an oppressed or oppressor class, (or queer/not queer). Groupings of people were very, very important, which flew in the face of my childhood clubbing of the idea that stereotyping by group was evil. Now it was good to group people. Of course, these were the correct interpretations, at long last! One professor insisted that Abraham Lincoln, King David, Jesus, Billy Budd, and Queequeg the harpooner were all gay. We spent considerable time on that topic, despite it having little or nothing to do with the class I thought I had signed up for. How did we know their sexual preference? Well, the evidence was right there in the text: these folks all had close friendships with other men, therefore, gay. Friendship between men, I learned, always implies sodomy is happening. This was the secret knowledge, the Gnostic gospel, of a professor. We just weren't mining what was being told between the lines, but with her magic reading goggles, we would be set free from the shackles of the Western Canon and sexual oppression. This professor, and other professors, gently nudged me toward ideas that undermined the worldview I thought I held. Critical Theory and Queer Theory were the latest things, so those worldviews were being evangelized to us students with nearly the same vigor as St. Paul telling about Christ in Ephesus. As a paying student, I provided a captive audience to the message. As I was receiving this instruction and the evidence was presented for these interpretations, I recalled that quote from Nietzsche, where he mocked Christian apologists and theologians for using the approach of “when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” He mocked Christians who found any stick of wood or twig in the Old Testament as a reference to the Cross. I know what Nietzsche meant, as the typology of linking Old Testament to New Testament does sometimes feel like a reach. But Christians are not alone in doing this. My professor obsessed with sexual preference was doing the same thing. From Sigmund Freud onwards, an obsession of finding sexual references in every possible shape, led to our modern priesthood of professors to seeing everything like a ten year old boy who had just discovered a Playboy magazine. Then there was Nietzsche himself, constantly finding his own thought as evidence for his own genius (his last published book was titled, Why I am So Wise). While I was taking these classes and receiving the transmissions of modern secular dogma, I began to realize that the close readings of texts were as strange and stretched as anything a Christian interpreter ever came up with. Actually, they are more than stretched, they are now completely broken. If Christians were finding the Cross in every stick of wood of the Old Testament, then the modern theorists were doing the same for sex and oppression. The problem is that there definitely are signals and references that exist regarding the Cross, but taken to the extreme they fall into a level of absurdity. But for my instructor that was looking for disordered sex in literature, any friendship, any handshake, any nod, squeeze of the hand, or look, or glance, any wink became undeniable evidence of a character's sexual intentions. The idea of friendship disappeared. There was only one type of love and that was the kind where people must sleep with one another. There was not a separation of types of love, which anyone in the real world understands. There is physical love (eros). There is friendship (philos). And there is the highest kind of love, which is sacrificial, unconditional love (agape). But in modern lit crit circles, there appears to be only the erotic. These interpretations are a one-trick pony and after a while, the trick gets to be routine and dull. A never-ending obsession with sex as our identity becomes as pathetic as the pursuit of crystal meth, because it's just one small part of life. In fact, the way we understand sex as an identity makes our bodies and lives so cheap, that it reminds me of the great quote from C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory.“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”Mud pies in the alley are fun as a child. But they lose their appeal, when the totality of life is so wonderful and awe-inspiring that to focus on one small aspect of existence is to miss the forest for a tree. The obsession with sex and oppression came off like a brain fever for two of my professors, because they could not speak for long without beginning to sound just like the overreaching Christian who grasped to link any wood object in the Old Testament to the Cross. The further the obsession became clear, the more thin the argument became. The linkages began to look like a crazy person's conspiracy wall, where every bit of art, literature, and history was connected by red yarn, to prove that Western Civilization was just a grand scheme to oppress and to stop people from the false heaven of “sexual freedom”. Instead, what I became convinced of is that the modern dogma is all one huge, ongoing protest to deny that sexual sin exists at all. The professors were doing exactly what every individual or group has done who doesn't like the existing rules against sin; they break the rule and form a new group that allows and argues for the sin. People really, really think they hate the Catholic church because it consistently sticks to a well-defined list of sins, and doesn't budge. But that is it's job, to preach and defend the faith and morals set forth by Christ, and carried forward by the Apostles, and by the Bishops ever after. Thus, they see the church as just a set of rules that is hateful. But the church doesn't hate anyone - they just won't affirm your sins. If you see the Church as a list of rules, you don't understand your sin. If you don't know your sin, you are still in darkness, because you don't know why you need a savior. And if you don't know your weakness and need for a savior, you will never know Christ. Period. When Jesus asks the apostles after washing their feet, “Do you understand what I have done for you?”, he is talking to you and I. To each of us, God asks, “Do you understand what I have done for you?” If you do, then you're life will radically change. Until you understand what the Creator has done for you, by coming here incarnate as a man - to forgive our sins, to transform our suffering, to defeat the devil, to regenerate our lives in water and spirit, and to raise us to eternal life - you won't understand who he is or what he has done for you. The main job of the Catholic Church is actually pretty simple: to speak truth, and speaking truth in love means saying no to sin. But even more so, it's job is to ask you, “Do you understand what Jesus has done for you?” And if you understand what he has done, your sin and need for a savior will be blindingly clear. Remember, Jesus wasn't killed for affirming the sins of others, he was killed for calling out their sins. Anyone who considers their sin to be a virtue, is on the wrong side of history, because God is outside of time and space - all of this time that we live in has happened for God. It's all done already. Thus, rejecting God and denying sin are the same thing. History is already done for God, and we have this glorious opportunity to cooperate or reject his grace right now. Accepting his grace doesn't just mean you go straight to euphoria, if means you recognize what he has done for you, and then you begin to see your flaws. You must go through the purgative way before you get to the illuminative and unitive way. Today, people want to jump straight to the unitive, but there is no pill or magic spell or transporter to skip the journey, as Dante showed us so well in the Divine Comedy. Five hundred years ago, protests against the rules formed new denominations, where our brothers in faith splintered into many groups that tweaked the rules to fit their desires for control and to allow some sins to be vindicated. But today, academics go to great lengths to go deeper to find that sin itself does not exist, that what we call sin is actually a feature of our DNA. Today, we don't go by “faith alone” but much of our non-spiritual direction uses “reason alone,” and reason alone in the wrong hands is a slippery as faith alone.A tendency toward alcoholism and same-sex attraction or gambling addiction are seen as genetic outcomes. But even if that's true (and it's very likely not true) the choice to drink to drunkenness or to have sex outside of marriage or gamble away the mortgage is still a choice. These are still actions beyond the temptation. “Lead us not into temptation,” is a prayer to ask for help in battling our concupiscence, also known as our urges to choose poorly. We all have our cross to bear. What we are tempted by does not require follow through in performance. We really want to deny something is a sin because we like the sin, and we go to great lengths to find cheerleaders that will confirm our desire. Interestingly, the sins that we want to deny, those related to alcohol or sex, we can pin to DNA, but no one does this for racism, which is also a sin. There is a sense that we can deny sin that “doesn't harm anyone but myself” but that's the problem. Sin always harms other people, even if the action happens alone or with another consenting person. There is no other result of sin but harm to oneself and to others, which is why Jesus and all of sacred scripture prohibits these actions. For fans of the show Breaking Bad, Walter White lives by “reason alone” and he always has reasons that make perfect sense to him and he portrays his actions externally as “doing it for the family,” while he destroys lives around him like a human volcano throwing lava everywhere. Chapter 7 of Mark shows a nice, short list that will save a lot of time, since people like to argue over what Jesus accepted and what he prohibited. He lists 13 things. It's not like he hid this list. It's right there. “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” (Mk 7:18-23)Drunkenness (licentiousness and folly), sex outside marriage between a man and a woman (adultery and unchastity), and racism (evil thoughts and malice and deceit and arrogance) are all covered here. It's all very simple really. Jesus says, “Here's the list: don't do these.” In fact, evil thoughts and unchastity are the very first two things he mentions, which apply directly to racism and sex outside of a valid marriage between a man and a woman. So cheer up, there's a little something in Mark 7 for both of our American political parties and foes to soak up. Every human being is guilty of one or more of these thirteen things. The only person who is not guilty is Jesus. The greatest sin of all is to forget this. As always, pride is the gateway to sin, since it infects the heart, and the heart is where all the rest of these thirteen things take root.But I have not come this far to merely complain about professors or excessive allegory in Christian thought. I get what is happening today. We don't want to admit our sin any more than Adam or Cain wanted to. We want to divert the blame. We are all arguing for our favored worldview and trying to recruit others to our side. We want to win. We want to feel righteous. No one wants to be wrong. This is all expected. This is what we like to do. This is not new. My point is not to mock German philosophers or Critical theorists or Christian interpreters. The whole game of the tree of knowledge is “reason alone.” It is to argue your case against the will of God. Sports team plan strategy and tactics to win games. So do intellectuals with arguments. This is also why so much ink is spilled in making the case for each side. We require reason to make arguments, and ideally the argument aligns with our experience and feelings, but this doesn't always happen. This is why people switch sides as the phases of life unfold. Given enough time and grace, the rebellious teenager becomes a gentle grandparent. Even in our own lives, the lion lays down with the lamb, but it may take about eighty years to find a comfortable place to settle. Life experience and age carry great weight in determining what we believe is true, and in each phase of life we consider our experience to be the right one, the truth, the accurate assessment. Based on our experiences, we can use reason to determine what is true and good. But there is a problem in relying solely on pure reason. The problem is that pure reason ignores that a spiritual side exists at all. As soon as we do this, we can reason sin right out of the picture, as if it was White-Out. But just like using White-Out, it doesn't remove the ink or pencil mark beneath it, it's only covered up. It's still there. We know it's still there, and the paper is sullied beyond repair, unless some supernatural favor can clean it up. Reason can argue and twist anything into what we want it to be. For Luther, he recognized that sin was still there, and like the White-Out metaphor, he said that Jesus' redemption made us like a “dung hill covered in snow.” So he reasoned that we were still a piece of crap, but had some White-Out on us. He also pretty much tossed out free-will, and whatever he didn't toss out, Calvin heaved out the window shortly thereafter. Both of these men were trained as lawyers and you can see how their “faith alone” argument stemmed very much from an underlying line of reasoning that laid the pavement for the truck of unbelief and bad interpretations of scripture to ram its way through Christendom for the past 500 years. Today, we have everyone arguing for “reason alone,” but this devolves quickly into a pursuit of power, because unless you are using reason like Socrates, subjective bias creeps in quickly. Thus, in my university classes, the “reasoned arguments” of my Critical Theory evangelist professor was unmoored from objectivity entirely so that every character with a friend in every book could be sniffed out and spoken of solely in terms of sexual identity. With reason alone, or faith alone, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is the problem with ideology, and Catholicism is the antidote and counter-culture that cures this hammer/nail problem. Reason alone assumes certainty can be had in everything, while living with “faith and reason” allows for the mystery and nuance, which is exactly what makes life with this body and soul interesting. If we only use argument to test our world, we cannot have a full game of life, because there is more to our body and soul than reason alone. There is a spiritual life. It's like playing tennis against a wall instead of against a real person. Eventually it becomes boring, because there are no surprises. The ball volleys back at the exact angle you expect. It's a game of Pong…forever. There is no spirit or life in the game. Also, you can never beat the wall, because it cannot fail to return the ball. You can never finish and shake hands with your opponent. When the spirit enters your life, then you can play a full game. Like Jacob: you can wrestle with God, but you can't wrestle with him unless you first admit he's there. Wrestling with yourself is even worse than playing tennis against a wall. In the end, to my surprise, the root problem that I was trying to solve wasn't an intellectual problem at all. There was a larger problem to solve. The problem I was trying to solve was spiritual, not material. It was not a mind problem, it was a soul problem. The soul surpasses the mind. For non-believers, soul and mind may seem like the same thing, but the soul transcends the mind. Collapsing the mind and soul into one thing kills the spiritual life. If you think of mind and soul as one and the same, then you have walled body away from soul. You have placed the mind solely on the body, in the material world. But the mind doesn't belong only with the body, nor does the soul disappear just because you built a wall. Souls can pass through walls. If you must wall off the concept of mind, better to place it with the soul rather than the body, since the mind is where prayer happens. If the mind can only serve the body, then your thoughts can never leave the ground, and you will be stuck with the pursuits that end in the Big Empty - wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. If there is only Mother Earth, then nature with all it's beauty is also the same nature that is red in tooth and claw. There is only competition. Better yet, tear down the wall, admit the soul, and embrace the mind as the intermediary. The mind links body into the soul. The denial of an immortal soul puts a limit on life, and a soulless mind makes the body a robot. The connection to God is in the soul. A mind that doubts the soul must invent meaning. Then come the strange gods, because they must. The gaping hole where the soul sits invites the odd gods to move in and take up space. They makes themselves at home and eventually will evict you if you don't evict them first. We can pretend the soul isn't in the room, but the elephant is still there. No matter how many blankets or tarps we use in trying to cover the elephant, it remains. Also, the elephant is too large to remove from the room, so it's there to stay. You may evict the unwanted housemates, but not the soul. The mind requires arguments as food for thought, but argument does not give life. Argument brings strife, not peace. To have peace, the mind needs certainty. To have life, the mind needs joy. This certainty and joy must come through the spirit, not from argument. The spirit is what animates and gives our body life. We think we need all the answers, but accepting that there is mystery beyond our knowledge can settle the unsettled mind. In the end, it wasn't an argument that won me over, just like it wasn't an argument that convinced the illiterate masses of people who followed Jesus before the Gospels were even written. Yes, the story of Jesus provides an argument, but it is more than merely an argument. As any doubting middle-school child knows, there are flaws in the argument. The resurrection stories alone sow doubt with the inconsistencies and contradictions, so clearly the argument of Jesus' story alone is not the only force in play. Something beyond argument changed the early Christians. Something beyond explanation changes people today. There was no book or argument that clinched the deal for the converted. There were no books at all to begin with. There was the story that people heard, of the victory of Jesus over death, but even that alone was not enough. We know that the story alone is not enough, because scholars who study for a lifetime struggle to reconcile the story of Jesus with the evidence. Doubt over the resurrection and his life in general makes writers and preachers talk about Jesus as much now as they did in the first century. Yet a person who cannot read at all can completely understand. People make radical life changes, as they are impacted so profoundly that it was clearly more than an argument that reached them. A poor person or a rich person can be equally affected. People from different nations and backgrounds can kneel beside one another as brothers and sisters, in complete unity on the basic facts laid out in the Apostles' Creed. The contradictions in the resurrection stories do not bother them one bit, to the great irritation of unbelievers. How is this possible? A touch of the spirit goes beyond reason. Something reaches down and turns the heart, sets it on fire. This cannot be explained except by the supernatural. I realize this sounds like UFO conspiracy theorists who seem to say, “When in doubt, it must be aliens.” This is bigger than aliens. The truth is that aliens would also be creatures of this universe, meaning they were created. This is bigger than any created creature and more strange as well. The difference between unbelievers and believers is where reason is placed in the order of things. For many people today, reason exceeds faith. If reason is the highest good, the world of spirits dies. Reason alone cannot tolerate mysteries. But for those who place faith higher than reason, there are mysteries and they are glorious mysteries. The odd thing about placing faith higher than reason is this: when we live purely in reason, we want certainty and no hocus pocus. But when we live in faith, we get certainty but can also keep reason. The Christian biologist can believe in the certainty of the resurrection while exploring the depths of the physical world. The Christian astronomer can believe in an immortal soul while studying the pillars of creation in the night sky. The atheist biologist or astronomer must find all the answers in the cells, atoms, and universe. For the believer, reason is still maintained, but it submits to faith. Something strange happened when I came to understand this hierarchy. I realized that there are different types of “knowing.” Those who have little worldly wisdom or factual knowledge can hear the name Jesus Christ and come to understand that he is God, while the wisest and wealthiest people cannot understand. Where the light of Christ shines, the problem is solved. This awakening changes lives, to the point that all prior experience becomes illuminated in a new way. All the problems are solved through the mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection. This world of chaos and order, of suffering, of pain, of joy, of peace, all suddenly make sense. The puzzle is solved. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

There is a saying that one man's hero is another man's traitor. In the battle of ideas, one man's apologist is another man's propagandist. But how can you tell the difference? In the world of ideas, what sounds good on paper may not work in practice. So the right interpretation of the world, both spiritual and physical, matters immensely in the pattern you choose for living, because action reveals the person, and action is often driven by belief. If the wrong ideas and interpretation is adopted, then the wrong compass for finding meaning is selected. Consider how important the compass is. A rocket headed to Mars that is off course even by one degree will miss the target and become space junk. At close range, the mistake of one degree won't seem to matter, but over a long distance, the error becomes more obvious. So the ideas you subscribe to are important, but even moreso, the hero you choose to follow matters most of all, especially if that hero is one that never misses the mark (because he created the mark and everything else). For example,The Communist Manifesto sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice, in the real world, we all witnessed a century of unthinkable slaughter over that little book. The degree of error may have appeared small, but from the revolution in Russia to the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was the undeniable bloodbath. I remember reading that little book in 1996 and thinking that it made a lot of sense. What shocks me about that is that I was reading the book after millions of people, possibly as many as 100 million, had been killed worldwide because of that book. Yet somehow it still sounded good on paper. The body count was still tallying up, but the words on paper made me forget the very bloody history that had occurred partially in my own lifetime. After I shook my brain awake from the spell, I realized that words on paper do not translate to real-world applications. Not all good ideas are good ideas. The interpretation game can be a dangerous one, especially today, and unless we act as gatekeepers of our thoughts, we allow others to steer us. Clearly, as children we take what our teachers and parents tell us to be a fact, for why on earth would they mislead a child? Today, media has unmatched power in entering our minds and conjuring thoughts, far more than parents or teachers. Unless you grew up in an Amish community, you have been blasted from birth by a continuous firehose from advertising and argument, all the way from Sesame Street to Stranger Things. This is not some conspiracy theory, this is what we are all aware of but accept as part of modern life. There is deliberate implantation of ideas in our brains, and for the most part we seem to enjoy it. We are passive to it, opening up our minds like house showings. Most families have multiple TVs, laptops, smartphones, radios, and home assistants listening and guiding on what to listen to or what to watch next. We certainly go along with it. There is minimal protest. (If you have four hours to kill, watch the old BBC Documentary called The Century of the Self. Be prepared to pause for reflection on how your life has played out, as past choices may appear under a different light.)A massive flood of inputs is aimed at our minds, making noise and distracting us. This is exactly the goal, because the noise keeps us gyrating and moving and distracted. In silence, the biggest questions roar back to life. When these real questions about meaning and purpose arise, that's bad for business. For me, the Covid lockdown opened up the silence, so I could hear, finally, those questions in full. We live by narratives and if we don't choose the narrative, the noise chooses for us. The interpretations that we assent to often become our real-world practices, and thereby have real-world consequences. But what we accept as our chosen interpretation is not always what is best for our lives. In our worldly minds, we feel wired for competition. Every sporting event and reality show and drama is presented as a contest. We love to take sides. In victory we can gloat, and in loss we can paint ourselves as a victim. Even when things are going well, we like to complain. If anyone doubts this, consider that America in 2023 is the most technologically advanced and wealthy country in human history, yet millions are depressed and worried about the future. To quote Junior Soprano, we are “…like the old woman with a Virginia ham under her arm, crying the blues cuz she has no bread.” The choice of which worldview to use in interpretative decoder ring for life is not my main focus here, but I wanted to mention it because our American academic and business leaders have shifted their worldview over the past century, moving away from ideas founded on Judeo-Christian thought toward liberalism, socialism, and utilitarianism while keeping the profit motive much intact. This has happened gradually but in recent decades has reached a tipping point where the old ideas of a living God are being sidelined, along with the related ideas of spirits and sins. All are being boxed up for long-term storage. In the coming decades, what this means is that the new radicals will be Christians, so Europe and America will have gone full circle. The pesky Christians will once again be marginalized, at least for a little while. Moving Christianity out of the public sphere has already led to a very different America. Perhaps being Christian had become too easy, because it was never meant to be. When Jesus talked about the narrow gate, it didn't sound like he meant taking the exit ramp to hit the McDonald's Drive-Thru. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Mt 7:13-14) Then later he deciphers it for us, saying, “I am the gate!” on John's Gospel and we all know what gate he had to go through for eternal life, which was abject suffering on the Cross. The term Christian has been too easy to throw around, and too easy to be abused. Wearing a cross is a fashion symbol while the commandments are optional. One of the main reasons I fell away was the hypocrisy that I saw, and the lack of conviction and contrition among believers. The salespeople who were selling this product called Christianity made it appear ridiculous. But over time, thanks be to God, I realized that everything that I thought was Christianity was just Protestantism and liberalism dressed up as “the Way” of Christ. The coming future will test the mettle of Christians because we will be living in a world similar to the day before Jesus was crucified. Christians will be outcasts and increasingly persecuted. Real persecution will happen again, and not the “persecutions” that we hear about annually like the marginalization of Christ and Christmas. This will be the kind where people lose their job for adhering to the statement of the Nicene Creed and declaring obvious truths, like saying that marriage is between one man and one woman. What is most interesting is that ideas that came from Christ are being used among all the competing ideologies. Ideas of equal dignity, social justice, charity, serving the poor, and loving one another have been co-opted by humanists, atheists, socialists, and modernists. The only difference is that Christ has been removed from the picture, as if he were just some rich uncle who passed away and left us his best stuff. This leads directly to the second main difference, which is that there is no longer such a thing as sin. There are just oppressed and oppressors. The only sin left is that of the ‘oppressor.' A trade has been made: Original Sin for Pandora's Box. With Original Sin, we pin the blame for society's ills on our own personal built-in flaws; with Pandora's Box we get to blame someone else. Not every Christian interpretation of the Bible is a good one. Fundamentalism and Young Earth Creationism may sound good on paper to some people, but anyone with even a mild understanding of science knows intuitively that the idea of a 6,000-year-old planet is flat-out silly. On the flip side, there are those who remove all spirits and miracles from the Bible, like Thomas Jefferson, and end up with nothing but Moral Therapeutic Deism. In both of these cases, too much is amputated, as one cuts out reason and the other cuts out the spirit. Then there is the justice vs. mercy spectrum. Some see God as the angry father who seems over-eager to punish us for every error. Others see a God that just affirms sin, or stranger still, a God that denies sin even exists. Wherever you see a Pride flag outside of a Church, you see a re-enactment of Henry VIII's re-invention of Christ happening, as sin is being formed to fit the sinner, not the sinner formed to Christ. In either case, these are definitely bad interpretations. There is justice and there is mercy. But there is never only justice or only mercy. There is one way back and that is to repent and believe the Gospel. It is Christ and his Church that must conform to my desires, it is I who must change and conform to Christ and his Church.As for me, I side with St. Augustine, who said, “Any interpretation of a biblical passage that militates against the love of God and neighbor is necessarily a bad interpretation.” (WOF Bible, 21) Love of God and neighbor is “the ultimate criterion for correct biblical reading.” But then I align with St. Augustine on most things, because he weaves justice and mercy, faith and reason, and in his world faith has a slight edge over reason that makes all the difference. This means that the interpretation of loving someone is where the interpreters have a field day, because most people today see love as simply affirming everyone's favorite sin. But Jesus never affirms anyone's sin. That's because he's against it. For all those who just see Jesus as a “nice teacher,” he sure talked about hell a lot, and even if he spent time with sinners, I don't see the sinners continuing to sin. They are converted, because they all repent and believe the Gospel. But how do we know who to listen to? Who can interpret? Who has the right to do so? How can we trust any interpretation? How can anyone know what is the right interpretation? How can anyone know anything? This leads right into the rabbit hole of that branch of philosophy known as epistemology, and as far as interpretation goes, and what to believe, you can really get lost, especially in someone else's thoughts. The reason we end up relying on ourselves and our own experiences as the final authority is because it seems like our head is the only fortress left, the last temple. This is true, but the problem with that is we've let too many spies into the fortress, and we've invited a circus into that holy place. The pursuit of truth becomes paralyzing. There are more subjects to study than flavors of ice cream. Philology and archaeology and history and philosophy and psychology, to name just a few. No one can understand all of these subjects, or not deeply, and especially not if you keep a job or have a family. We give up and open the gate. No wonder people flee from religion. The conflicting messages from the media and the faithful become too much. As for the Bible and Christianity, it's too hard to understand. Given that I have a day job and commitments, it's impossible to chase all of these things down. There is too much to sift through. Who can fully understand the Trinity or fathom the Virgin Birth? What about the resurrection of the body? Even among Christians, these mean vastly different things. There are too many arguments and ways of looking at these things. When every ideology and religion and denomination is trying to pull us in this or that direction, Netflix seems so much easier. Facebook and Hulu don't push anything on us, right? We just want to make it easy. Disney and the NFL make it easy, and fun, because they just provide entertainment for us. Then we don't have to think about all of this stuff. It's easier to just ignore it all. I just want to be entertained and passively watch the screens in front of me. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? Can't I just let someone else do all the interpreting? They aren't trying to shape me or change me. Right? Right? Wrong. Unfortunately, no. While there are many people and organizations who will gladly “volunteer” the right interpretation and the correct narrative of life for you, what is easiest is not best. What is best, what is true, cannot be passively received from a TV or phone. It requires some effort. Anyone who has tried to lose ten pounds or learn a foreign language or master a musical instrument the “easy way” knows that it doesn't work. Nearly everyone is willing to sell their worldview to you, if you let them. The best salesperson is the one who sells you something you don't need, and then you thank her for it. Likewise, the greatest evangelists are those who don't appear to be evangelizing at all. The more you sit back and let the images pass before your eyes, the more you are shaped and formed to an interpretation chosen by people who have plans for you, and they are most likely in an office building in New York or Los Angeles, and certainly not anywhere near an upper room in Jerusalem. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Bad ideas are like the many-headed hydra. When one head is cut off, two more spring up. Just when Arianism is getting cured, Nestorianism boils over, and when that pimple is taken care of, Monophysitism appears on the body of Christ, and when the ointment for that is applied, a side effect called Monothelitism develops. And even after resolving these things, they come back, but at least the Church has a cure on the shelf for each of these conditions. They come back in odd and interesting ways, and some heresies like Arianism or sola scriptura take many centuries to fade out. Sorry, did I say fade out? They never fully disappear. Arianism was addressed in 325 at the Council of Nicaea, and a modern version of it is visible in humanism. Sola scriptura was addressed in the Council of Trent in the 1500s, yet the circular logic of that idea keeps every dog chasing its tail. Today, a person could spend every waking minute refuting heresies because it's all over in the language of believers and non-believers. Arguing over these errors make little impact, since those who openly reject official Church teaching have adopted their own authority, either in scriptural interpretations, or in their own mind. The old errors are so commonly held and pronounced, that I can't listen to modern music for an hour without recognizing at least one heresy. I think Luke Bryan is the Pelagius of Country Music, but he is just one of many. A good series would be doing a close-reading of errors in Luke Bryan's greatest hits, because you can find so many heresies passed off as wisdom or truth in his lyrics. It's not just him, so I don't mean to single him out. But we live in an age of various common errors, most commonly, Protestantism, Gnosticism and Pelagianism, which are big words, but with basic problems when we examine them as practiced in the real world. This is why the word “Christian” is so smashed up, misused, and abused that it now looks like the car in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles at the end of the movie. If you think this is false, check out /r/Christianity on reddit.com. It is chaos. That subreddit should be changed to /r/tohu-wa-bohu, which is the Hebrew word for chaos before God created order in the universe. Pope Pius X famously called modernism “the synthesis of all heresies,” and the Protestants posting on social media does us the favor of proving it beyond the shadow of a doubt. You could play Heresy Bingo and have a winner before finishing the first post's comment section. Reddit's generic /r/Christianity feed is like a slop bucket. It's remarkable to read comments there from self-professed Christians, because few seem aware of the first fifteen centuries after Christ's death, and it's not clear they realize that there was a Church operating before the year 2020. So there are many bizarre versions of Christianity floating around, and I used to think that nothing could outdo the “snakes and orgies” crowd that 60 Minutes did a show on many years ago, but I've been proved wrong repeatedly in recent years, as the heresies have erupted in denominations that once seemed to have a reasonable grip on doctrine. But churches like the ELCA and Methodists and even the “cool” Catholic churches have been caught up in the spirit of the times, and thus they will die like dandelions when the autumn of this culture comes, which is always sooner than we think. You cannot get to liturgies featuring drag queens or celebrating the worst sin of Pride without first abandoning Christ and the faith of the apostles. However, the long labor of creating and carrying the church through the gauntlet of time has happened, and for the Church that sticks to those teachings, it will outlast this current chaotic summer, and in the autumn and into winter, the redwood will outlast them all once again and arrive in spring stronger still. So while this makes a lot of people feel worried and lost, or scared that the Catholic Church will fall into error, it should actually give much hope. Because the only Church that will last is the one which remains in full orthodoxy with Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. The only Church that is interesting or compelling is the one that keeps the Deposit of Faith and rejects all doctrinal errors from 33 A.D. until today, because it is the only Church led by the Holy Spirit. When the breathless apostles first came to Jesus and reported error being used in Jesus' name, he said, “It's ok.” Well, he actually said:John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. (Mark 9:38-41)To break that down a bit, Jesus was telling the apostles that the others may cast out demons in Jesus' name. That's wonderful. He didn't say, “Go out and club them until they stop.” The Church has occasionally errored in that. But Jesus also didn't say, “Terrific, bring in these outsiders as the new teachers.” They did not become apostles. Jesus didn't adapt his teaching to the outsiders. The thing about Jesus is that you don't get to tell him what to do (unless you are Mary), you come to him on his terms and surrender to him. Pride need not apply. Jesus didn't declare one of these other healers to be “the rock” on which he founded his church. He didn't make these others the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. He allowed other interpretations, but he didn't say they were correct. All directions and corrections are provided to the apostles, which is why they were the chosen ones and the leaders. Even when I was fallen away and considered myself atheist, I knew that if I ever returned it would only be to the Catholic Church (with Greek Orthodoxy as a dark horse in that race), because the only Church that made sense historically, logically, physically, or spiritually was the one that Jesus founded on the rock of Peter, because it was the only one that had fought and outlasted the intellectual, physical, and spiritual march of empires and ideas, and it was clearly different from all other Johnny-come-lately denominations. The non-Catholic denominations may heal people and cast out demons, and that is truly wonderful, but they are wildly prone to poor theology, teaching, and lack the all-important taproot of Tradition to the person of Jesus himself. The original, the real deal, actually still exists if you look for it. I was quite surprised to find holy people still striving for holiness. It may have been the biggest shock of my life when I returned. The first time I saw a grown man kneel for communion and receive it like his life depended on it, I knew I'd been missing the point. When I started meeting with people that studied and strived for holiness, I realized that the lukewarm representations that I had held as standard was a very low standard indeed. Like General Motors, modern Christianity built a lot of models that didn't last. We had spinoffs of spinoffs so that most of those claiming the label “Christian” today would confuse the heck out of Peter, Paul and the apostles. Dostoyevsky famously wrote in the Grand Inquisitor that if Jesus came back to life, the Catholic Church would kill him again to retain its power. But as the Church lacks the power today that Dostoyevsky imagined, the story has not aged well, despite being a terrific read. It's more likely that if Jesus returned as Dostoyevsky imagined (which didn't match anything that Jesus actually said), Jesus would see that most of Christianity outside of the Catholic Church has turned into Imagination Land from Disney's movie Inside Out, starring Bing Bong, the pink elephant, as the high priest. Fortunately, the original model is still in storage and is ready to roll. It has some dents in it, for sure, but it runs fine and those scratches can be repaired. The apostolic Church, the body of Christ, that has had plenty of fallen leaders and brokenness over the years, but the heart is alive. The deposit of faith remains, and as long as the head is Christ, it cannot bless sin, because he did not bless sin. He said to “Go and sin no more.” The faithful cannot elevate the self or feelings in replacement of God. The denial of sin is a no-go in the driver's manual on how to go to heaven. Embracing orthodox belief is how we answer the question, “What is truth?” It is also how communities and individuals get restored to health. From the Body of Christ, life springs forth, age after age. We will not find salvation in heresy any more than we will in our youth sports teams or in a Tinder tryst or in an online mob or in our endless entertainment options. Restoration and the path to salvation will come back from where it began, through the Real Presence in the Eucharist, in gatherings of prayer, in speakers witnessing their conversion stories, in Bible studies, in adoration chapels, in Mass, in retreats, in recovery meetings, and anything that forges community away from the false gods propped up by modernism. To be awakened, we need a massive Ezra moment of deprogramming and teaching, where someone breaks open the scrolls to remind the lost people of a past they know nothing about. In Nehemiah, the people hear the word and understand, and know their sins, and know how they fell into the state of sin, little by little, by departing from orthodoxy. Ezra opened the scroll so that all the people might see it, for he was standing higher than any of the people. When he opened it, all the people stood. Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people, their hands raised high, answered, “Amen, amen!” Then they knelt down and bowed before the LORD, their faces to the ground. (Neh 8:5-6)When the people bow their faces to the ground, they have surrendered. But we have not done so yet. We are still in full competition, both with one another, and even more so with God. And this is what every heresy in history does: it competes with God. Most heresies, from Simon Magus to Nestorius to Henry VIII, had a person with a large ego, often a king, who wanted to hammer the Church into his image and likeness, instead of making the Body of Christ in the image and likeness of God. How are we going to solve this competition problem? How can a culture built on competition, capitalism, winning, and getting whatever we want possibly break that addiction? How can we possibly turn away from serving our desires? That's the easy part. You win that game by not playing. You win in the same way Jesus won it the first time. You win by living in the culture while still being set apart from it. You win by being “called out” of the culture. You go to the desert. You pray, fast, and help the poor, like Jesus. You leave the place of idolatry, like Abraham. You exit the corruption, like St. Anthony to the desert. Like St. Benedict, you reset, apart from the world in the wilderness. Like St. Cyprian, like St. Augustine, like St. Ignatius, like St. Francis, like St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross - you swim against the current, because the current is taking you the wrong way. You reset and then re-enter the fray, washed anew in the blood of Christ.You win by accepting this sinful world as it is, and while still living in that world, but not being a player in its game. You win by entering into the suffering of others, with love, not affirming their sin, but by witnessing another way. Stop honoring and envying what other people hold as worthwhile. Money, houses, luxuries, sex, entertainment, food, alcohol, cars, boats, drugs, vacations. Stop wanting what the world wants. The entire problem is that you want the wrong things, and this is what leads to every error. How do you step out of this culture? How do you stop wanting garbage in favor of the Bread of Life? We follow the advice of the Truth himself. Jesus said, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off…And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” (Mk 9:42-47) The good news for us about this brutal metaphor is that we have something we can rid ourselves of without actual amputation. What causes our sin in most cases today is what sits between our hands and our eyes. The phone. Our culture is the phone, and envy, lust, pride, sloth, greed, and wrath all reach out to your throat through that device. We can cut off the source of at least half of our most common ways of straying with not a single drop of blood spilled. But few of us will choose this, because hugging our sin is the easier path. Narcissus dies by staring into the mirror, forever, in love with himself. The easier path is always the one that doesn't pay off with interest. The easy path is that chosen by Lot, it is the path chosen by those Israelites wanting to return to Egypt in the desert, it is the path chosen by Peter when he denies Jesus, the path chosen by Judas in betraying him, it is the path today of affirming sin rather than fighting it. It is the path chosen by Marcion and Arius and Nestorius and Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII and Joel Osteen. The easier path is always the road to ruin. And who wants to be part of a religion that demands nothing of us, that demands too little, when Jesus has given all to his bride, the Church? We must surrender to win. You certainly do not win by joining the side that appears to winning, or that you think will win, because even if you win, you are still stuck in the game. In fact, if you win, you may be more stuck in the game than before, like how the proverbial quicksand pulls you deeper the more you struggle. How many aspiring employees who climb to Vice President suddenly find that their wealth and prestige now “require” a bigger house and a finer car and better schools for their kids? How many French and Germans and Russians traded in the humble truths of Jesus Christ for the toxic truths of a political party? How many Democrats and Republicans are doing the same in America right now exactly as they were in Dante's Florence so many centuries ago, or in Rome during the glory days of Caesar, or in the last days when the collapse of the Bronze Age? All of these past peoples have turned to dust, but the living God remains, and the Holy Spirit carried the Church along in this final Messianic Age. You do not win by surrendering to the bulldozer of earthly power, on either side. You win by surrendering to the power of Jesus. He is the real ruler over all things. Your way of life will need to change. Your life itself may need to be given up in professing the Truth. But the only way to win at this most important thing is to surrender everything. Ego, pride, self-elevation. Let it go. Otherwise, if your game is here on this earth, whatever you win today, you will need to defend tomorrow, and someday in the future after long years of fighting, you will turn around and see that you have been defending a pile of rubble. When you reach that moment, know that the one Truth is waiting for you to turn your face all the way to look at his sacrifice on the Cross. Rather than dishearten you, this should ignite you. You have been wanting the wrong things. Desires that you had, items that you wanted to own, experiences that you sought to remember - these were the distractions from the real answer to the one test question. How strange I thought it was for Jesus to say, “Rejoice, for the kingdom is among you.” But it is here. It's here, but it's the opposite of the competitive nonsense and little trophies we have been seeking all our lives. This is an incredibly exciting time to be alive, because once again, the world has regressed into the same shape as in the first century, when the apostles lit the fuse for the dynamite of the Gospel. The fuse is once again just waiting to be lit with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom is here among us, and it is the Catholic Church, with all its flaws. The Church: founded on a rock called Peter, the sinner and the saint, the fallen one transformed into a bold healer. The same answer to “Why did Peter sink?” for an individual is the same answer for the Church founded on the rock called Peter: taking the focus off of Christ and the fullness of him is to sink. To look at him constantly in trust is to experience the unending miracle of walking with God. The kingdom is here, the Church - in the world but not of the world - defending the faith from errors until he comes again. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

The word “Christianity” may need to go away for a while, like on a desert retreat. It needs to go off to a sweatlodge with St. Anthony of Egypt again so it can figure out what Jesus intended. Few Protestant denominations remain that teach what “Christianity” really entails or demands. The familiarity of it has bred contempt and complacency, which has led to extremely watered-down versions. This is exactly why St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers exited the culture in the third century. Even back then it had been diluted into a cheap BBQ lighter fluid instead of the 100% explosive ethanol it was on Pentecost. Today, it can be restored to be highly flammable once again, but it won't be done by being “cool” in the culture or by flopping around speaking in tongues or doing fake healings or by affirming sin or denying that the devil exists. It will be restored to it's original strange potency by the same old proven methods: prayer, fasting, and charity. But once again, like in the time of the Desert Fathers, the errors that led people away from proper worship and correct doctrine must be re-visited, because they have been allowed back in. All of them. It almost as if a busload of old heresies showed up at the pool, and barged right in without checking their floaties, food, weapons, and drugs at the door. Many of them don't even bother to wear a swimsuit, as modesty and ideas about sin are old-fashioned. Now the pool is in mayhem. Only a few lifeguards (in red hats) are shouting while others have joined in the orgy. Fortunately, the party is almost over, since it has become a pool no one wants to swim in. The newcomers and families who would like to swim take one look at the chaos and decide to stay home - after all, they can setup their own pool - who needs the community pool? Thus we have many trying to claim the main pool, and millions of little pools where people isolate in their own anti-social backyard. The heresies have stunk up the water to the point that the “Christian” pool is more like a swamp lagoon. Now it will require a lockdown for cleaning. After draining, it needs a full sandblasting before a refill. The intense, long battle against errors about who Jesus was, what Jesus said, and what he taught, waged over centuries, needs to be waged all over again. Today, it's not even clear that people understand the word heresy. And to be fair, it is an ugly word. “Heretic” combines two sounds that make Minnesotans like me shiver: “hair” and “tick.” This sounds like a burrowing insect at the base of my hairline. Where I live, ticks raise goosebumps on people more than snakes. Whenever I've discovered one engorged on a dog's belly, or see one climbing my shirt after a walk in the woods, it gives me a case of the heebie-jeebies. But perhaps this strange association is apt. A tick buried in skin kind of fits well with what heresy does. Because a tiny corruption like that caused by a tick lodging in your skin is much like how a heretical idea poisons and corrupts individuals or entire nations. Heresy is not unlike Lyme disease in that it often has a subtle entry point but leads to an insidious devastation of the body as it spreads. The idea of heresy is something people don't even like to talk about, but I think it needs to be. I doubt that the average Joe Christian has ever heard of Marcionism, or Pelagianism, or any other heresy, but many certainly speak those heresies openly. Ideas long ago denounced as un-Christian are mentioned as if they were orthodox in casual conversation. But this isn't surprising, given the past few centuries of rejecting all authority. Almost everyone now is their own Pope, so even if I mentioned the basics of a heresy, my listener would respond, “Who made you the Pope?” To which I would answer, “Do you see a funny hat on me? Long ago, after a big todo, the Church declared…” And that's exactly where the conversation would end, because the appeal to authority beyond the “Self” would outrage the listener. “The Church has entered the chat.” When that happens, the modern American, Protestant, public school brain exits the chat. It's over. Authority? Are you claiming authority? Are you kidding me? We have hundreds of years of literature and philosophy and theology crammed between our ears, where the only authority is in national power and the self. America itself is a rejection of old-world “authority.” But this continual march of rejecting authority has put the West in an odd state. Because once the highest authority of God and his Church was thrown out, and the Pope put in his corner in Vatican City, the nations must act as the moral authority. They have been doing this for about three centuries now. Mentioning the Church's authority leads to an automatic response. Like a trained bear that can dance, the hearer waltzes off stage on cue. Or, more likely today than ever, this “tamed” bear attacks and mauls the trainer. What's most interesting today is that in our rejection of authority, so few today are called to the priesthood, but nearly everyone is called to the pontificate. Worth noting here is that “pontiff” means bridge-builder. But with a billion mini-popes in the world, we end up having a lot of bridges to nowhere, because all of the bridges lead directly back to the self. This isn't just an issue among Protestants or agnostics, it's rampant within the Catholic Church, too. So many people don't know what the teaching of the Church is that you can hear the echoes of ancient errors every day, even among bishops. Imagine: a bishop that doesn't understand errors that have existed for thousands of years. You don't have to imagine it. This is happening all over Europe and the United States. This is the equivalent of an NFL coach not knowing what is a “first down,” or what a “nickel defense” is used for. Could you imagine a coach who worked for thirty years to reach the top, and then have it be revealed that he thought the game was soccer? No. This seems almost impossible, unless somehow you have cronyism or ideology (or both) interfering with the proper promotion of educated and competent bishops. And this of course is exactly what we have. The creep of heresy gets in like a tic. It's like Soviet Science or modern American sociology, where ideology has replaced the goal of seeking the Truth, the highest Truth. And it replays over and over in history. It's Plato versus the Sophists. It's Athanasius versus Arius. It's Augustine versus Pelagius. It's Marx versus Pope Leo XIII. Heresy is ideology that bleeds into faith and skews the right understanding of God, the Trinity, Jesus, the Sacraments, and the whole Church. And it always starts with the rejection of God, in some form, and the elevation of what a person wants. “Blessed are the heretics,” said Stanley Hauerwas. What he meant by this was that without those pushing errors, we wouldn't see the Truth so clearly. So luckily we have Marcion and Pelagius and Nestorius to illustrate the errors. Their ideas act like bugs on a windshield, where you don't need to stop until it gets really bad, and then you must pull over at the nearest service station and squeegee like a maniac with elbow grease to get the encrusted scum off. Sin works this way; sin is not a big deal, until it is. Until your sin is going to cause a major accident and maybe even kill you, you don't take action to fix the disorder. When you hear a bishop defending an old heresy, often with new words, that was called a heresy long ago, it leads to confusion for the team. Trust in leadership is undermined, especially when the waterboy understands the game better than the coach. You cannot have the offensive coordinator telling the running backs they must run backward from now on. If that ever happened in the NFL, a firing would surely occur. Yet we are not seeing the firings despite wild errors in “coaching” from those in charge in the Church. This is likely because the Church moves slowly, which is good, since they operate like the Ents in Lord of the Rings. Anything worth saying is worth taking a long time to say it. This is one of the great features of the Church so that they don't jump to conclusions. There is something called “The Peter Principle,” which has nothing to do with St. Peter or the Church, but simply states that people will be promoted in their career to one level higher than they should be, right to the point where they are incompetent. This doesn't apply to all bishops, obviously, just a few, but whenever you hear a high-ranking person espouse an idea that was jettisoned as an error many centuries ago, you have to scratch your head and wonder how or why God is working through this. But rest assured that God is doing just that. Errors about Christianity are ever-present in both the culture and the Church, and I suspect this has been the case since Peter finished his first speech on Pentecost, as surely strange interpretations began immediately. There are many bishops sticking to doctrine and the Truth, with Bishop Barron doing a beautiful job of articulating the faith, following in a long line of great articulators, like Saints Cyril, Maximus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Damascene, Newman, Sheen, and many, many others. Teaching Wednesday night religion class recently, a kid raised his hand and told me, “My dad says that Jesus is the good God, and the God of the Old Testament was the one that would squash you.” “Kid,” I said, “Your dad is a heretic.” Just kidding. I didn't say that. “Kid,” I said, “Have you ever heard of Marcion?” Just kidding. I didn't say that either. How many adults today have heard of Marcion? Who has ever heard of Marcion, or Menander, or the Cathars? Few today have heard of these old names except for geeky Catholics who know about the ecumenical councils where the early Church had to settle these disputes. These old heresies argued for exactly what this kid's dad was teaching. This idea springs up repeatedly, and if we haven't heard of Marcion, we've certainly heard of Nazi Germany, which was rife with Marcionism as an offshoot of its hatred and ethnic cleansing of the Jews. (Tip: Marcionism always goes hand in hand with anti-Old Testament thinking and makes a beeline toward anti-Jewish thoughts and behavior.) Any time that Catholicism lacks respect for the Jews, it is in error, and this is why the document known as Nostra Aetate was sorely needed, as a reminder that the Church “recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people.” I also must add here, that if Jesus is God, and you believe that as I do, then he inspired the entire Old Testament, including the parts that are confusing, and Jesus was a devout Jew, as were Mary and Joseph. So for any Catholic to misunderstand the intensely deep meaning of the Jewish roots of Christianity is to be like the sower's seed on the rocky path. If Jesus is God, and if Scripture is inspired by God, and all of the prophecies of the Messiah were foretold by God, and the story of the chosen people is God winning back the world, then throwing out the Old Testament seems a bad idea. The kid's father who taught Marcionism was doing the same thing that a writer like Dan Brown does in his novels (as wildly inaccurate in history and logic as they are). He finds an old heresy and dusts it off as something fresh and new. Then it's presented as a fact, as a new “orthodoxy” and then believers have to spend lots of time re-arguing what has already been argued and ruled upon. But this is one of the strengths of the Church, actually, in that it has a structure that can do this. We can all see the Protestants lack this authority to rule, which leads to heresy proliferating like a cytokine storm. Truly, if there is one weakness in the Eastern Orthodox churches, it's that they cannot resolve disputes like the Catholic Church can, because the Bishop of Rome can speak from the Chair of Peter, as Christ gave Peter the keys, which is to say, the authority. What's old is new, but none of the heresies are actually new. You can go read St. Irenaeus who wrote Against Heresies in the second century, and most heresies today were already in play. Over time, new errors have come about, and over the centuries others have written books to define these errors, and why they are errors, like St. Alphonsus Liguori with the History of Heresies. There are many. St. Hippolytus of Rome. Denzinger. Belloc. Fortunately, we don't have to go read all of these, we can just read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It's the Reader's Digest condensed version of about a million pages and scrolls from Adam to Pope Francis. There's a reason these ideas come back to life, and it's because we default toward doubt, not faith. And faith is a gift. With the eyes of faith, the heresies are clear, as the scales fall away from our vision once we see Christ for who he really is, and that is God. Once you can see Jesus and hear the word of God, then it's clear why none of the heresies work in practice. This is why they don't stick. They come and go like an Old Navy shirt - sure, it feels good for a bit, but you can tell how cheap it is, and you'll throw it out after a few years. The heresies sound good when you first discover them. They seem to make sense. This is why it took me a while to figure out that everything that Dan Brown writes is actually a spoof comedy, not a drama. Because his send-ups of heresy as truth and adventures in bad history lessons made me re-arrange my video shelf so that The Da Vinci Code sits right next to Dumb and Dumber. When I need a light-hearted night to let loose, I can choose either movie. The reason heresy is declared and marked as incorrect is not about power and control. It's about what heresies do, and what they don't do. It's about how they misunderstand Jesus and salvation history. It's about a false way to know God. The reason heresies are declared is simple: they do not work. They do not work logically or spiritually. They do not work in the mind, in the soul, or in the body. This is the thing I've been saying in this entire series in talking about sales and practical application. There are many shiny things that seem real, but like advertising for bad products, those things wind up being a mirage in the desert. What works is not just that which sells. Consumers and voters may select bad choices. Mistakes play out over time, long after the sale was made. What becomes heresy is not based on popular opinion, but based on what happens when an error is chosen. There is perhaps nothing more vindicating in the Church's slowness than in its rejection of birth control and abortion, as both of these “cure-all” remedies of the techno-utopian evangelists have blown up spectacularly. What was supposed to solve divorce, unhappiness, and family issues has exploded in divorce, unhappiness, and family issues. What works is that which lasts and endures through the ages. What works isn't always what seems easy, but what works satisfies the intellect, the will, the body, and the soul. Virtue works. Chastity works. Humility works. Faith works. Hooking up with random sex partners and pretending it doesn't matter? That doesn't work. Shouting your abortion? That doesn't work. Believe in yourself instead of something higher? That doesn't work. Perception is reality? That doesn't work. All of these ideas run into the rock of life, the true test, where bad ideas run aground. But we forget this every generation, and we re-learn it in every generation. We forget the Truth because we want to be new and clever, but the bad ideas are always old and warmed-up leftovers. This is why someone like Jean-Paul Sartre can be celebrated for a hundred years for saying, “God is dead,” when he's just saying the same thing every middle-schooler has said since the beginning of time. But when you do so with a Ph.D. it seems to have weight, despite the long-winded argument being the result of never growing past high school rebellion. What happens then is that everyone else also stuck in that ninth-grade rejection of authority, claps their hands and says, “Brilliant!” because it satisfies their egos and excuses their sin. This is why the same heresies pop up and die over and over again because heresies are exactly like dandelions. Orthodoxy, however, is like a redwood tree. Hardwoods grow slowly, apparently weak as saplings, while the wild and fast-growing grasses spring up quickly. But what is apparently hale and hearty in spring dies in the autumn. The hardwoods always win in the end, because they are built to last through the seasons of life, and that includes the winter of suffering. To go back to the sports metaphor, Catholicism is a fourth-quarter faith. It's not for the first drive down the field, or for the halftime show. It's built for the last drive that wins the game. It's for the long haul, made to last, not for showing off and fading away. So, to bring this back to heresy and Marcion: you have to read about Marcion to understand why his idea of “the Old Testament God is not the same as the New Testament” is an error all by itself, and a very dangerous one at that because it twists scripture into a wildly different shape. In the early church, Tertullian and others took up the battle and won the argument, closing the door on Marcionism forever as an error in what the Church founded by Jesus believes. And it's not a “because I said so” argument and defense, it is well-reasoned and logical, and worth exploring. Many of the “Jesus as the dude” arguments are a form of Marcionism, just as much as anti-Semitism has a taproot in Marcionism. But if I don't stop here, this post will turn into a lengthy discussion on this particular heresy, so let's move forward. More to come in part 2. Perhaps a whole series on heresies is needed, but that may require a more focused mind than my own, like those who have already written books on it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

The wool has been pulled over our eyes for about seventy years now (or maybe 500 years), where we think that we have liberated women, but really we have walked into a trap. I'm not talking about women's sports or women having careers traditionally held by men here, I'm talking about the real things that separate men from women. Men have walked into the trap as well. We've all walked into the trap, each into our own separate trap, claiming freedom while the snare tightens around us in our solitary “liberty” cages. Yes, there is a well-known trap, called the “Two Income Trap,” but there is a worse trap, called the gaping maw of the underworld (better known as hell). The trap is that we think we can hammer morality into any shape we like, but we can't. The trap is that we think motherhood and fatherhood are not particularly important, and that men can be women and women can be men, but they can't. Some things are not changeable. When balancing a wheel, the more we try to hammer a wheel into the shape we'd like, the more unbalanced the wheel becomes. The more you hammer, the worse it gets and whole wheel eventually throws the bearing and destroys the machine. We've seen this movie before and Catholics are always the “jerks” that stand athwart certain truth claims made by voices in the culture. But Catholics are only jerks in this case because they must teach what was handed down. It's either abandon the faith and bow to the Golden Statue, or set your face like flint against the world, the flesh, and the devil and continue to preach what Christ and the Apostles taught. What is a sin has been defined since before Jesus taught the Apostles, and then Jesus clarified and refined it. It cannot be changed. When people get angry at the Church, it is solely because the Church repeats what Jesus said and the Apostles taught. This is why the church that Christ founded is the one with authority, which really makes people bristle. But the fact is this: morality cannot be legislated, it cannot be papered over, it cannot be coerced, and it cannot be softened to fit the mood of middle-schoolers, no matter what kind of emotional hostages they try to take. What is sin and what is not sin, is not up for debate. There are Cardinals in the Catholic Church today who do not understand this, and they certainly do not understand Matthew 5:17-19. But the teaching of the Apostles is as timeless as God in heaven. Our own consciences can inform us that the natural law is right if we could only sit in a room quietly and listen to that small voice without reaching and scrolling on the phone. Our smartphones today make us less wise than ancient people, who were more likely to understood their need for a savior far better than we can, because they understood suffering, and they knew what Jesus' redemption meant for their bodies and souls. Americans today don't like this idea of rules set in stone, such as Commandments, which is why we continually try to interpret the Bible on a personal basis, which twists all into destruction. Personal interpretation of the Bible is precisely how the devil re-crafts the bad sale from the beginning of human history to infect the Messianic Age that we are living in now. The devil has lost the war, but he can win some battles along the way and take souls, and he does this by twisting morality and re-naming sins as holy things. Throughout American history, from supporting slavery to selling consumerism to pushing the various evils of the Sexual Revolution, sola scriptura has been used to give sin a divine mandate, and thereby entrench it ever more securely in the culture. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, provides a solid foundation for doctrine and morality and has stood strong in the face of each attack. (from Don Johnson at Catholic Answers. For insight into our current fiasco of Biblical interpretation, read Don's book: Twisted into Destruction.)Without a doubt, men failed women before seventy years ago, but because of that failure that started in the 1960s with the lies of the sexual revolution, men have failed women even worse by allowing the current mania to thrash about so wildly. I realize that sin has been around since the Fall in the Garden, but the sixties gave it a boost, like a five-hour energy drink that lasted nearly a century. What's funny is that having received this unbridled, bursting sense of liberty, depression has hit an all-time high. But how can that be? I say it's funny, but it's not. It's sad, because we are sad. We are reliving these Garden stories, over and over. When Eve took the fruit, men followed, and both ended up sad as they were cast out of the garden, keeping God's image but losing his likeness. (For a good read on the fallout from the sexual revolution, read Adam and Eve After the Pill.)The initial lie from the devil led to a bad relationship. And the lie started with a false sense of food security, leading to curiosity for knowledge, working against trust in the Creator, all of which preceded the sexual fall and made the people believe that they no longer needed God, or each other (much more on this in an upcoming series on food and sex). Since the Fall, we just can't learn. Men refuse to love women properly, and the mess begins all over. The enmity between man and woman repeats, and it only is combatted by humility and submission of husband and wife to each other. The backlash against toxic masculinity is appropriate, because the cartoonish ignorant version of manliness that marketing departments preached to men was an absurdity, and it was the least Biblical idea in history. Trucks, sports, money, and sex do not make a man “manly.” A man driving a truck in a lift-kit doesn't look manly, he is just wearing a giant fig leaf. And a man who kowtows and removes himself from all responsibility to defer to women is pathetic. Healthy masculinity buys a truck if he needs to haul stuff around. Healthy masculinity doesn't buy extra horsepower just to bark his tires at a stoplight, he buys extra horsepower because his job is pulling heavy things. Material things, when presented as necessities to manliness, make him into a buffoon. Do you know what actually makes a man “manly”? This will come as a shock, because it's the same thing that can make a woman “womanly”.Acting like Jesus makes a man. Imitating Christ is how you become a father, a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, or a friend. Likewise, imitating Christ is how you become a better mother, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a cousin, or a friend. Dying to self makes a man manly. Dying to self makes a woman womanly. There is right masculinity, and Jesus exemplified it. He lives it. He did not take a wife, but he shows us how to live whether we are single or married, man or woman, rich or poor, Jew or non-Jew. And although he did not marry, he made it utterly plain that having a wife, one wife, through all the hard times, makes a man masculine. Gathering notches on your truckbed can only make a man into a fool and an enemy of God. But the backlash against the absurd form of macho manliness has swung the pendulum into what girls today are told is liberation, where they are essentially being taught to act like men and want the things that men want. I have not seen any ads teaching girls to desire a family and loving husband, but I have seen many holding up sports glory, money, and sex as the highest goods. The funny thing is that many boys are now realizing that sports glory and money will not bring happiness, and are pulling away from those pursuits. The false idols are showing their sandy bottoms. They are washing away and will continue to erode over the next generation. However, in telling girls they can be men, we declare they have been empowered, but have they? Mocking motherhood and marriage has not been empowering, and since women cannot actually be men, but can imitate them, they have shunned their nature for man's nature. And once again, due to this disorder, God will allow us to be taught by disorder, by our own choice. When the formless void that God created and filled is not filled in the way he designed, disorder erupts. But we have done more than mock motherhood and the family unit. We have spent the past forty years mocking fatherhood, with sitcoms fathers, particularly Homer Simpson, leading the charge. Now the latest fad is to replace fatherhood with the government, the State, and we'll learn that social workers make for an even worse husband than Homer Simpson in the long run. The Soviet Union discovered this and the fallout from that was worse than ten Chernobyl incidents. At least radiation poisoning only affects the body, not both the body and the soul. The United States has a long stretch of disunity ahead, and we have chosen it. C.S. Lewis once said that hell is always locked from the inside, and people who choose to live in hell, in sin, merely refuse to turn the lock, because they think sin will make them happy. This is especially true in a marriage that is viewed as a temporary contract rather than covenantal joining of two people into one flesh. If marriage is not a fully binding and joining of the flesh, then why bother? This is the same argument that we have for the Eucharist. If it's just a symbol and not the Body and Blood of Christ, then who cares? If marriage is just a symbol of the State, of a legal contract, then who wants it? We want the sacred, and that's what Sacraments are, and sacraments are the path to God, to uniting our will and lives and marriages to God. In marriage, a man submits to his wife and his wife submits to him. This is the least anti-woman idea in human history. If the Woman at the Well doesn't tell the story of an awakening by turning away from sexual sin, then I don't know what does. New life comes when the Woman at the Well rejects her personal sin and understands God's forgiveness. She realizes that men have used her as an object, and perhaps she has used men in the same way. Leaving the well, drunk on the living water, she knows that sex is a bad substitute for God in the temple of her heart. She is suddenly unshackled from her own past and the identity lies she has been led to believe. She is healed after meeting God. Coming to know God's will for her, her brokenness is suddenly made sense of. All is clear. She was blind but now can see. The vice that she pursued, her weakness, is the very thing that purifies her in the end into holiness. We are a world of individuals, sad and depressed like the Woman at the Well just gasping for thirst, to taste this living water and return to a life of virtue. The Apostles had a group of women in the center of Church formation. Mary, the Mother of God, and Mary Magdalene could not have more important roles in the founding of Christendom, and they still hold those roles. Martha, Joanna, Photini…there are hundreds upon hundreds of women saints that are venerated, with buildings and churches and feast days named after them. There is no Church without women, because without Mary, the Mother of God, we have no incarnation, and without Mary Magdalene and the other women, no one is at the tomb on Easter morning when they first discover that Jesus is risen. To this day, it is more likely women that hear the voice of the living God. They are the ones that often lead men to this glorious mystery. Go to any parish and take a look around. Who is leading the Rosary before Mass? Who is managing the office and records? Who is organizing faith formation? Who is prepping the altar for Mass? Who is leading the choir? Women are everywhere in the Church. They are valued far beyond what the secular world tells you, because the secular powers doesn't want you to know this, and they certainly do not want you setting foot inside a Parish, lest you might become a Catholic. That is why the drumbeat of oppression and “Dark Ages” talk never ceases. There is an old saying among lawyers: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table.” That is the game being played whenever you hear that the “Church hates women.” It is neither a fact nor a doctrine. It is a fabrication. Here's an excerpt from an article called “Does the Catholic Church Really Hate Women?”Apparently the justice of Christian morality offered a refreshing perspective to women in the ancient world accustomed to husbands who cheated and left at will. The number of women who converted to Christianity in the early centuries after Christ indicates that women were attracted to this new way of life. Indeed, they were among the most zealous converts and defenders of the faith:Christianity seems to have been especially successful among women. It was often through the wives that it penetrated the upper classes of society in the first instance. Christians believed in the equality of men and women before God and found in the New Testament commands that husbands should treat their wives with such consideration and love as Christ manifested for his Church. Christian teaching about the sanctity of marriage offered a powerful safeguard to married women (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Penguin, 58–59).In light of this history, does anyone seriously believe that the Assyrian or Greek or Roman or Mesoamerican world respected women more than followers of Christ did? Can people argue that position with a straight face? Does anyone really think that the long era before Christ, and further back, before Abraham, was a “better” time for women? Aside from Christianity, did any other religion take over the world in this way, where women and marriage sounded the battle cry into the culture? The answer is a simple but loud, “No.” This is exactly why marriage is the hill to die on for Catholics, and I'm referring to Sacramental marriage, not courthouse contractual marriage, as deemed to be marriage by the U.S. Government. Government marriage is as meaningful as an Apple end user license agreement. It does nothing spiritual, it's only legal. Unjust laws do not change God.And frankly, why would anyone care what a government thinks of marriage? Every government in history falls into the abyss of after a few hundred years. Is that really the arbiter of truth? Jeffersonian Democracy will not outlast God, so whatever is decreed from Congress is utterly useless for eternal life, which is what the concerns of the body and soul need to be aimed toward. What is the point of religion? It's eternal life. It's rebirth here and being raised to heaven hereafter. It's not getting a legal document. It's not winning power from a Supreme Court that will be a rusted out ruin, a weathered artifact, or a tourist stop in a hundred or a thousand years. The only marriage that matters is that which is eternal in the eyes of God, in which two people become one flesh. All others are just certificates of participation and “pieces of paper,” as modern people like to call it. Marriage defined by government is meaningless, because government is not God. Men today will say, “Why do I need a piece of paper to prove my love?” The answer is: “You don't.” The piece of paper isn't a Sacrament. The Sacrament is the Sacrament. For this reason, whenever someone says, “I don't need a piece of paper to prove I love you,” they are right, because a government piece of paper not only proves nothing, it does nothing. It should be called Garriage, for “Government marriage.” Or Narriage, for “Not Marriage.” Sacramental Marriage changes two people into one. Two bodies become one, and two souls are bonded, which are only parted at death, as Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Mark 12:25).You can hold this belief that the Church hates women only if you choose to completely ignore the actual facts of pre-Christian society and the incredible spread and long-lasting nature of Christ's message and his Church. Christian marriage has outlasted empires, fads, intellectual movements, cosmic models of the universe, and it will outlast all versions of “government marriage” we currently pretend are real. After all of the current fads of open marriage and same sex marriage and polygamy fail, as they always have failed, the value of Sacramental Marriage will still be with us. It is not by accident that the Commandments are what they are. They were not invented at all, they were arrived at. They were not set forth to control people, they are what sets you free. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Something that gets buried today is how the pagan or secular world treated people, and it's buried for a reason. We like to pretend the “Dark Ages” were full of witch-burning psycho priests but that pre-Christian societies were joy-filled lands where all joined hands and sang songs like the Whos in Dr. Seuss's Whoville. But nothing could be further from the truth. A good read on how much people have forgotten our Christian roots is a book by Tom Holland, titled: Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. We have forgotten how much Christianity has improved the lives of everyone in comparison to the “good old days” of paganism. We are so accustomed to hospitals, universities, libraries, and non-profit charities that we forgot where they all came from. They didn't come from Caesar or anyone in his time. People like to think there was some utopia before the “evils” of Christianity stamped out the fun. We will get to find this out soon, however, since we are lurching backward toward that “fun.” We forget things easily, not just over long expanses of time, but in single generations. The book of Judges illustrates this well, where each fall into sin has a savior, but within forty years, the people resume their errors and forget why they needed order. Our era is similar to that which preceded World War I when nations celebrated the beginning of the war, holding parades, cheering, wishing the boys well in their lovely uniforms and flags, only to find out a few years later that the war was a meat grinder of unprecedented levels, thanks to progress in technology and science. As we whisk God out of the public arena and out of our personal lives, we forget what the world was like before Jesus walked this earth, died on a cross, and rose from the dead to take away our sins, transform our suffering, and defeat the devil. One of the primary lies told today about the pre-Christian world is that women's lives were better without the Church imposing restrictions on them. But this is not true. It has never been true. It never will be true, no matter how many professors and bloggers keep writing about it. Disrespect of women was not a Christian doctrine or idea, but it was indeed a core doctrine of the secular powers of Rome, actually quite similar to the lyrics of Snoop Dogg. You could sum up the treatment of women by the wealthy of the ancient world in Snoop's hit song, “It ain't no fun, if the homies can't have none.” Women were objects, pure and simple. The interesting thing about reading the Old Testament treatment of women is that today we think it sounds barbaric, when in reality it was the most progressive treatment of women in the ancient world. We read with Western eyes, blinded by time, through which we are blocked from understanding, nuance, and history. With the Church, women achieved a radical leap forward, one that the pagan world mocked for centuries. Many of the women who fought against the old ways were martyred for it. Strange that they would be willing to die for such “oppression.” We are taught and bonked over the head repeatedly with this “Dark Age” myth in every university course. By design, we are not taught the reasons why Christian life appealed to so many women, because it undermines the sand foundation of modern life, which will ultimately undermine itself because it is spiritually dead.Here is a summary from Mike Aquilina of how women were treated before God revealed himself to us through Jesus. I should note that none of this was covered in my university history classes, nor was it ever mentioned in the Women's Studies class I had to take:Pagan and Christian sources agree that the Church grew at an astonishing rate in the first three centuries of its existence. The modern sociologist Rodney Stark estimates a steady growth rate of forty percent per decade during centuries of intermittently intense persecution when the practice of the Faith was a capital crime. Pagan and Christian sources agree that women made up the majority of converts.The most effective opponent of Christianity from this period, the Greek philosopher Celsus, mocked the Church for this. Around A.D. 178, he accused Christians of not daring to evangelize women when their sensible husbands and fathers were present but rather getting hold of them privately and filling their heads with “wonderful statements, telling them to pay no attention to their father and to their teachers.”What kind of statements were those? They no doubt involved the principle of equality of the sexes before God. “There is neither Jew nor Greek,” said St. Paul, “there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).The apostle wasn't denying sexual differences, nor was he claiming there should be no difference in the roles that men and women played. Rather, he was claiming for women—and slaves and foreigners—a dignity that no one in his world, not even a philosopher as brilliant as Celsus, could recognize.A woman in that world was seen as having little intrinsic value. She derived her identity from the males in her life—first her father, and then her husband, and then her sons. The law recognized little for her in the way of natural rights or protections. Women were not permitted to testify in a court of law because their testimony was considered unreliable. The law treated them like children.The value of their sex was nowhere more evident than on the day of their birth. Infanticide was common in the Greco-Roman world. It was practiced mostly for economic reasons, to limit family size and to maximize the future return on the father's investment in childrearing.Thus, children who were “defective” in any way—i.e., disabled—were usually drowned in a bucket of water at birth or left exposed at the town garbage dump. There they might be claimed as carrion by vultures and dogs or taken up by pimps to be raised as prostitutes. All the documentary and archaeological evidence indicates that the most common “defect” for which children were abandoned was femaleness.Nowhere is the matter expressed more shockingly than in a “love letter” found in the excavations at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. The husband, Hilarion, closes his missive to his wife, Alis, by saying: “If you happen to be pregnant again, if it is a boy, leave it; if it is a girl, throw it out.”In the economy of antiquity, a girl was an expense, an economic liability in ways that a boy was not. A boy would one day be an earner. A boy might provide for his parents in their old age. He might even improve their status by his accomplishments.A girl, on the other hand, would need to be fed and clothed for more than a decade before she was married off—and upon marriage her father would have to pay a sizable dowry. For these reasons the Roman playwrights referred to girls and young women as “odious daughters.” It's likely that the dialogue in their works is an accurate reflection of common turns of phrase.The ideal daughter, for pagan Romans, was physically beautiful, for the beautiful would be married off the soonest. The typical age for her arranged marriage was twelve, theoretically at puberty, but many girls were given in marriage at eleven to a man much older. And the marriage, it seems, was consummated whether the girl was physically ready or not.It appears there was little expectation of a loving relationship. Adultery was common, as was divorce. Abortion was common, as was infanticide. Marriage was a transaction established for the continuation of the customs of family and society for another generation.A woman's role was to produce a son to be heir. If she suffered the misfortune of widowhood before bearing a son, she might live the rest of her life in poverty.The laws and traditions of the Greco-Roman world had been refined over centuries to communicate the value that society placed on women. It was very low.If not held back by faith and morals set on the rock of objective truth, people will treat women like objects and objects like women. (This is sin in a nutshell, by the way: choosing the wrong goods.) And there is no one more in danger of being treated like an object than the crown of creation, who is called woman. If you were rich and powerful in pre-Christian times, you could have as many objects called women as you could afford or capture, including the wives of those less powerful than yourself (see: every King that ever had a harem. Also see: David and Bathsheba, as well as Solomon's sex life with hundreds of wives. These are two Biblical falls from grace for this behavior, where sin is being narrated and not praised…notice that wherever there is polygamy, you have a mess, and that includes Abraham and Jacob. At least Isaac kept it together with Rebecca, and they are the true model of marriage in the Old Testament). We are moving back to that era now, as calls for the bad idea of polygamy have resurfaced. Utah is no longer the only place we associate with this term. This is just one form of sin that is being presented as a good today, as slippery salespeople twist truth into the shape of bad ideas that women finally escaped through faith in Christ and living the Christian life with Christian men. The arguments today are no different from the Romans and Greeks. Is your baby possible defective or just bad timing? Kill it. Abort. Marriage has a minor difficulty? Divorce. Want immediate pleasure instead of commitment, responsibility, and love that requires work and action? Porn. Got a mother-in-law you don't want to deal with? Park her in a home. The reality is that the only reason we have nice things at all is because of Christianity. And that is the spiritual struggle that we are in, where advertisers and intellectuals preach from the screens, telling us that progress means going backward to pre-Christian insanity, which always ends in “might makes right.” If you are not pursuing objective truth as your ultimate goal, as the end of all things, then the desire for power is the substitute. I don't care how you try to sugar coat it; when God is no longer the foundation of truth, you end up with “my truth” and that devolves into groups dictating “truth” by coercion, eventually at gunpoint. Whenever the church has gone astray, they fall into this same trap, of power politics mixing with the faith. The eye can never stray from Christ, who is the truth and foundation of all things. Nor can his words be twisted, as he says of the Commandments they are not malleable to fit the decade we live in:Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:17-20)To understand the difference between the pre-Christian era and the “Dark Ages” of Christianity, let's compare two buildings, arguably the two greatest buildings in the world, which happen to be in the same city, just a few miles apart.When people travel to Rome, they mainly visit two places. One is the Colosseum, where hordes of bloodthirsty fans got drunk, gambled, and watched men fight one another to the death. The other is St. Peter's Basilica, a Church, where a fisherman was crucified for telling people about a carpenter who was God incarnate. It's stunningly beautiful, but the real purpose is that St. Peter's is a place where the Sacraments take place: Baptism, Confession, Holy Matrimony, and the Eucharist. Holy Mass happens hourly, even while the tourists mill about. The purpose of St. Peter's, and any other church, is humility and surrender of your life to God. Do you see the difference? Both are architectural marvels, visually stunning, spectacles to the senses, but their purpose is in direct opposition to each other. Notice that America no longer builds beautiful churches. This should tell you something, as we build billion dollar stadiums for gladiator games. St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City was built in 1858 and dedicated in 1910. The rise of the modern stadium started in the early 1900s, and exploded after World War II. We are moving away from St. Peter's and back to the Colosseum, and so are our human relations. What I am getting at is: without humility before God, we see competition and strife as the great entertainment, the great game. Suffering is something to avoid and shun at all costs. Winning is all that matters, because winning removes suffering. We completely lose the point of redemptive suffering. This is because most of us don't really believe in the afterlife or eternal life any longer. We have no meaning in our lives, so we look for it in athletics, sex, money, and power. Our simple functions as fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters no longer excite us because we have traded eternal life for the plastic trophies of this world. One thing that always amazes me is that within three months after the Super Bowl or NCAA Tournament, I can't even remember who won, because it really doesn't matter. But I never forget Christmas or Easter or Pentecost or the Ascension days, because those matter immensely.Nothing angers unbelievers so much as the idea that you were made for a higher purpose, made by a living God who resides outside of time and space but speaks to us here. The purpose is to serve him and serve others, and the primary way we do that, if not married to Christ or his Church, is marriage between one man and one woman. Having a marriage and family is the great purpose of our earthly lives. Why is that message so bothersome? Because it doesn't allow us to follow our base instincts, which is to pleasure ourselves constantly. It requires abandonment to a higher power and a higher purpose, neither of which is the self. Sometimes we confuse this, thinking that our “sacrifice” for work or school is the offering we make to God. But those things are ultimately for the self, not God. Offerings to God expect nothing in return, because there is no transaction to be made when dealing with God, and if your offering is contingent on receiving something from God, you are actually talking to the devil. Yes, some people are not fertile, some will live a single life, some will adopt, some will never have children. Abandonment of the self means conforming your life to God's will, not despairing over what struggles he has given us, because we are all given struggles in order to draw us closer to him. Until you realize this, suffering will seem arbitrary and unfair. As for sex, the great call to chastity is pursuing a life of virtue whether you are married or single. They are both chastity, just different types. How can anyone understand the parable of the grain of wheat without looking at the formless void of creation and seeing that in order to fill it, it must be done in the right way, which is to fill this void in the form with families? God didn't say, “Subdue the earth and form a government, and have the government raise the children.” No, that's what Karl Marx said, and all of his flunkies that followed him, who now occupy your employer's human resources department and local school board. The form we are given by God is called marriage, between a man and a woman, and the void is filled with new life, called children. That sentence there is enough to get me fired, but the truth must be spoken and the truth will remain whether I say it or not. Because not only does marriage and family fulfill the physical form of this world, but it fulfills the heart. Dying to self means maturing into a greater purpose to serve God and others. Only then can we be spiritually reborn here. Then in physical death, if we choose God's will and not our own, we will we be brought back to union with God in eternal life. That's what we want, both here and hereafter. We don't want what HBO is telling us to want. We don't really want what Apple is selling. It's not just sex that we want. Not just career. Not a threesome. Not four wives. Not soullessness. We want God, as it is in heaven and on earth. Psalm 128 is the model for fulfillment. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;your children will be like olive shoots around your table.Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. FYI: “Fear” of the Lord means wonder and awe, a healthy fear, not the kind of fear where you simply pay your taxes to avoid jail. This is a kind of fear that grows out of love, wonder, awe, reverence, and it all starts with knowing that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness, in need of a savior. Recognizing your status as a sinner will free you, because it sheds all the fig leaves we wear. Then once we have bore our souls before God, and become honest, open, and willing, then we can return to the faith of a child and let the ego wither away as it must. Recall that Jesus died naked on the cross. All was stripped away, and his death showed us the result of our sins, for what we did to Jesus we do to one another every day. This doesn't mean it's easy, but if you fear the Lord and are grateful for your daily bread and want nothing beyond the grace of God, only then will the blessings of a wife and children satisfy you, because you will share all of it with the Creator. And if some tragedy occurs, like in the book of Job, and all is taken away, even then you will still have the grace of God, as that is the rock of your life that can be clung to when everything else fades away. When your life becomes an offering to God, and God's endless offering of creation is accepted by you, then what more could you possibly want? Conforming your will to God's is how you level-up in this world, and you do this by praying. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

In sales, when you have to sell a lemon, and you know it's a lemon, and the buyer knows it's a lemon, then as a salesperson you must re-craft the story for the second sale. Bad products require a good story, and one that gets told and re-told often. How else could Coca-Cola make an entire nation obese and continue to sell the same product without relentless marketing? How else could Bud Light sell a watered-down tasteless slop without funny ads that convince children it's cool? With a good story, and one that is constantly updated, no one has to feel like a fool for buying it the first time, or the thousandth time. The trick is keeping up the smoke and mirrors so that the buyers feel “in da club.” People don't want to admit, undo, or take action against prior bad decisions, so a fresh, shiny story helps re-affirm a poor choice. An ever-changing, shape-shifting narrative is essential to this strategy. Rather than feel stupid and admit something is a bad product and bad choices were made, we just modify the story. Surely, the crafted story will insist, something just wasn't quite right the first time around. This time it will be better. This time, the bugs are fixed. Version 2.0 is improved. The installation was done incorrectly. The product wasn't tuned properly. This time, the springs won't break and the bottom won't rust out. The first time a terrible idea was bought happened in the Garden of Eden. Eating the fruit, it was said, would make the people like gods, but it didn't. So this was a bad sale. It was a faulty product. It was a bad sale, based on a lie, for a product that couldn't deliver what was promised. The fruit only led to sin. If the devil had been a vendor on Amazon, Eve would have written a one-star review. But the devil is a relentless salesman, with an apparent quota and target number, so he comes back with new pitches for the same old awful product. Since we are humans, and curious, and because we hate to admit that we are suckers, we give him another chance. In re-crafting the story, he returns with something of interest, something different than a fruit, to sell us the same rotten garbage. In modern times, a reverse Garden of Eden happened, where for men, women became the fruit. Consuming her would make men like gods. The same Fall happened all over again, because when you eat from the tree of knowledge instead of the tree of life, you get sick. Instead of loving, respecting, and supporting women, through sickness and death, for richer or poorer, until death do us part, men opted for quickies and no responsibility. But we did not become like gods. We became estranged from them because we forgot that they are the crown of creation, the finishing touch on this world. We became islands instead of joined together with them. And because of this choice, many men became divorcees, isolated in apartments, separated from our wives and children in broken homes, lost because we or our parents bought the lie that monogamy and chastity could not make us happy, when it is only virtues like these that can ever make us happy, because they bring us closer to God. When men stopped believing that they are joined in the flesh with their wives in marriage, they stopped leaving their families and cleaving to their wives. I don't think most men today have even heard of the “leave and cleave” idea. I certainly hadn't. No one ever gave me a “leave and cleave” sit-down chat, because most people had forgotten it, or never heard of it. The TV certainly was not teaching it. If anything, the TV was shouting for divorce and birth control. There are so many stories of men coming drunk to their weddings in the 1970s that it is no wonder the state we are in, since treating the Sacrament like a bachelor party invalidates the ceremony. This is why American culture is dying. But this is not a bad thing in its current form. You can tell which way a nation is heading by whether it leads its citizens toward God or away from him. If cultural practices and laws attempt to block or silence God, then God will indeed withdraw from the nation. God's grace is available, but when media and politicians actively put up smokescreens, God will allow it. He'll just pop up later once the chaos ensues and say, “Here I am.” The only thing a culture can do to God is attempt to hide him, but his Presence punches through regardless to those who he calls. And as for our faltering society, which is bent on self-worship: it's not much of a culture to speak of anyway when the American centerpieces are money and power (which we mis-label “liberty”). The pitch, demonstration, and sale of Americanism has played itself out. The shiny product of Jeffersonian Democracy turned out to be a lemon, just like the fruit in the Garden, and the only thing propping it up for the past 250 years has been Christendom. The last days of America will be chaotic, because that's the exact result of life without God. The funny thing about this attempt to normalize and celebrate immorality is that it just brings us back to an old familiar place. The next generations will come to know the same conditions that made the world ripe for Jesus and the Apostles to change the world, and perhaps the most radical thing of all that was preached was chastity. Chastity is not a flaw in Christianity. It is one of the main reasons why early Christianity took off. It is self-denial, not self-affirmation, that frees us from slavery. In the birth of Christianity, women led much of the charge. Starting with Mary Magdalene at the tomb, women are first to find the risen Jesus, before the stubborn and fearful men do. Like Mary Magdalene, they lead men to faith, or like Eve, they can easily lead men away. Why? Because we want women and follow them. Women tend to find the meaning of Jesus before men, and this is how millions of men end up in churches to this day. Rest assured that many men are in the “sexist” church on Sunday under orders from their wife. They are rousted from bed to get dressed for getting to church, because women often understand Jesus and need for a savior more readily than men. The sanctity of marriage was real among practicing Christians in the first centuries, and still is. In the Roman world, marriage was a joke, as it is in secular America now. No-fault divorce is one of most anti-Christian developments in the Western world, but it is nothing new. Jesus admonished his own people in his own time for disrespecting marriage. Whenever I hear that “Christianity doesn't respect women,” this is a statement that is a naked rejection of facts from history and the story of the gospel. My own college history textbook stated that Islam treated women with more respect. The main thing I learned in college was “Christianity Bad,” especially for women. But reading the history of the Church, that doesn't fit at all. I mean, the thing is, you actually have to read. You cannot just ingest a video from a YouTube influencer who hates the church because his uncle was mean, or nod at a modern academic's portrayal because he had to pick a thesis on Marxist theory that would get accepted by the humanities journals. The Church was led by the Apostles, but it was filled by women. It's worth noting that the creation story follows a pattern, where the “formless void” from the very first sentence of the Bible has a three day period of making a form, of construction and architecture, and the second three day period fills that “house” with beings. The Church was a formless void, which needed structure first, and then it had to be filled with people. Pentecost is the “let there be light” moment, and the structure of the Church is then formed in the shape of the Apostles, who appointed bishops and ordained priests. But a church of merely bishops and priests would be a empty and lonely place, just as the creation of galaxies and stars and planets would be boring without something living in the void. A beautiful church has an architecture and form, but without people inside singing and worshipping, what's the point? For the same reason, outer space is boring because there is nothing in it. Only the stars make it interesting. The same goes for planets, where a rock spinning in space without life is nowhere we want to visit. Empty churches are great for contemplation of God's greatness, but solitude is not the primary purpose of any Church. Now this is important: notice that once God completes the first three days of architecting things, and after filling the earth with plants and animals, he creates man. In the first chapter of Genesis, he creates man and woman at the same time, but in chapter two, there is a critical thing to notice about how he completes and caps this great project of creation. The last thing created is woman, like the finishing touch on a great work of art. In other words, all of the architecture of the first three days, and all of the creatures and things in the second three days, including the man, Adam, are incomplete without the glorious master stroke of God in creating the woman. This is important to understand, because if Jews and Christians hated women so much, then why is the crown of all creation Eve, a woman? The problem we have is that we don't venerate woman nearly as much as we should, and anyone that misunderstands the veneration of Mary in the Church is missing this point, that womanhood and the gift of motherhood and marriage are utterly sacred parts of humanity, the likes of which we cease to exist without. You have to ask yourself a few things. If the Church hates women so much, then why was the early Church inundated with women converts? If the Church hates women so much, why did so many women in the early Church want to have a Christian husband? If the Church hates women so much, then why was marriage to one woman for life so important to men of the Church? If the Church hates women so much, then why did women get to participate in Christian worship, from the beginning, when they didn't get to in any other religion? If the Church hates women so much, then why are they involved with so many parts of administration and education at churches? If the Church hates women so much, then why are so much of the liturgical calendar days every year dedicated to women saints and martyrs? If the Church hates women so much, then why do we have so many saints that are women? An answer to all of the above questions is simple. The answer is that the Church does not hate women. The idea of complementarity is anything but hateful. It's reality and it respects women far more than second and third wave feminism ever did. First wave feminism was just the secular re-assertion of what the Church had already been teaching, but obviously men had failed women terribly in practicing it. What the Church teaches and what people actually do in life rarely match up. That is the case today, too. The later stages or “waves” of feminism were all about abortion and divorce, at which point the Church must part ways, since the goals from the 1960s onward did not deal with human dignity, but rather centered on the blessing of murder and adultery. Jesus was against those things, and it wasn't popular to say so when he was alive, nor is it today, yet it must be said. The modern stage of feminism, like stage four cancer, is pure delusion. The great irony today is that men wearing women's clothing have moved in and hijacked the ship of feminism because the ship shifted from Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian ideals over to Sophist, Enlightenment, and Marxist ideas. This is how all good things fall apart. In case you wonder when and where the shift happened, it's easy to spot. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a Christian, schooled in a seminary, steeped in classical philosophy and she had a healthy fear of God. Betty Friedan was schooled as a Marxist and God was nowhere in sight. This is the most modern story you can tell, because this is the story of America as it sheds God's graces and runs with Lady Liberty's hair flowing in the breeze as she rushes into the arms idolatry of the Self and the State. The difference between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Betty Friedan is that the former was arguing for “The Truth” and the latter was arguing for that slippery and shape-shifting serpent known as “My Truth.” It's literally Socrates against the Sophists all over again. What Betty Friedan really meant to say was this: “Men failed women.” And she was 100% correct. I actually like Betty Friedan quite a lot, but not nearly as much as I crush on Dorothy Day. Because Betty saw birth control and smashing all men as the cure for the yearning of the bored mother and wife. Yet now women have all the opportunities of men and the yearning continues, but is worsened because of the degrading state of motherhood and marriage. Dorothy Day saw the errors of Marx and the beauty of motherhood and marriage. In fact, it's ironic how these two women passed like ships going in different directions. Dorothy Day started with an abortion and had two marriages, only to find Jesus and the Church. Day then proceeded to feed about a million homeless people and restore thousands of families to health. In contrast, Betty Friedan had one husband and one family, but her ideas advocated for divorce and abortion and led to more broken homes than the family tree of Genghis Khan. The thing about “The Truth” as opposed to “My Truth” is this: Imagine a man standing in a pool that is just deeper then he is tall. He has two beachballs, one large and one small. “My Truth” is what you see him holding above the water, but underwater he is desperately trying to keep the other ball, the giant inflated beachball, between his knees, so that it doesn't pop up and reveal “The Truth.” It is an awkward state to be in, because it takes so much work and struggle to pretend that “My Truth” is “The Truth.” This is why people who see Christ for who he is are so relieved. Augustine saying, “My heart was restless until is rested in Thee” is the admission of the man in the pool who has stopped trying to keep the giant beachball submerged and pinned between his knees. It's a relief. For goodness sakes, even finding Socrates is a start if you can't find Jesus yet. Read Plato, today if you can, and then the Gospels, if you can't quite stomach the miracles. Men stopped treating marriage as a covenant, and Christianity became a joke. But this all goes back to sin being blessed and allowed in the culture. The heresies that deviate from Catholic teaching is the root cause, and men were hearing the shape-shifting voice of “My Truth” long before Betty Friedan ever started arguing in favor of abortion and pornography. I could drop a long list of male names who heeded the devil's voice before her, starting around the year 1500, but I'll resist the urge. The other reason why men treat women poorly has a simple answer. It's actually the same answer. That answer is this: sin is real. And so is the devil. Fallen men find bad patterns of living, and one of those patterns is the overly macho persona that spawned Burt Reynolds in the 1980s, as he marked the pinnacle of the Playboy era. Today, at the end of macho men, we are naturally rebounding into an excess of macho women. If you've ever balanced tires or watch a mechanic do so, you can see how this happens. If I've used this metaphor before, I apologize. When an unbalanced tire spins on the balancing machine, they get violent, and as we all know from Newton, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. To resolve the unbalanced tire, you stop the machine, reset, hammer the weights onto the rim, and restart it. You don't just speed up the machine and hope it balances itself. It takes work to fix the unbalanced wheel, not just faith. It requires evaluation and action. The mechanic may even hit his thumb with the hammer, causing a little pain when stopping to fix things. But you have to stop the machine or it will throw out the bearing. We're nearing that point where the whole machine breaks down because we're spinning violently and blaming each other when the problem is the lack of balance in our relationships. If you understand the concept of the Fall of Man, you will understand why we have sin and suffering. If you think that the Church invented sin, or that sin isn't our fault and came from Pandora's Box, or that people are all good with no flaws, then you cannot understand Christ. But if you understand the Fall and come to know our own weakness and poverty comes by choice and by our putting evil thoughts into action, you will humbly understand that there is sin. There are two types of sin as well, ones that offend God like lust and greed, and there is also physical sin that causes suffering and pain. We tend to only focus on the physical and mental suffering, while we completely ignore the massive tumor of spiritual sin that weighs us down. Whenever women are disrespected, as in our modern culture today, we have forgotten that every human is made in the image and likeness of God, the imago Dei, and more specifically, we have taken our eyes off of Christ. We've started to sink in the water, just as Peter did. The great question of “Why Did Peter Sink?” that this entire blog is centered around applies to this. To accuse the Church as being anti-woman is to ignore history as well as Christ's life itself. Yes, many men in history have disrespected women, but “disrespecting women” is no more of a Church doctrine than geocentrism ever was. Just as Copernicus and Galileo didn't disprove the faith and morals of the Church, neither has your angry uncle's treatment of his wife. Disrespecting women is not a position of the Church. It never has been. The fact that the Apostles were men is not disrespecting women, it's just that Jesus formed his church this way. If he had selected twelve women as his Apostles, then the Church would be structured that way. If you go back to the “formless void” of creation, which is a critical two-word term in the Bible, note again that in creating, God first makes structure and then populates and fills it with living things. In the first chapter of the Bible, we see the mode of creation that God uses, which is to architect and build the house, and then he fills the house with plants, animals, and people. Whether you believe in 6-day Creation, theistic evolution, or even atheistic evolution, we all know that the world was created before living things filled it. Whether you believe that the first bacteria came from an asteroid or from the finger of God, there is no denying that the structure in which bacteria could live had to exist prior to bacteria performing it's first act of mitosis and splitting into two bacteriae. The formation of the Church happens like this as well. Jesus creates his Church by choosing Apostles, and suddenly there is a structure - a form. But with a mere twelve people, this form has no living things in it. Bishops and Priests alone do not make up the Church. It doesn't even seem a stretch to me to see Pentecost, the day that the tongues of fire touched the Apostles and Mary, as the moment of “Let there be light” in the universe. I've often felt that the “light” made much sense in the idea of the Big Bang, in the concept of fire, while simultaneously meaning “light” as in the act of creation itself. Pentecost was the Big Bang of the Christian story, as it exploded from Jerusalem, as critical mass was reached in prayer in the upper room when the tongues of fire touched the Apostles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com