Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / His Idea of Heaven is My Idea of Hell — Comedian Pete Holmes Critiqued || SLP570

Transcript

His Idea of Heaven is My Idea of Hell — Comedian Pete Holmes Critiqued || SLP570 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:06
SPEAKER_04: Pete Holmes is a fascinating comedian who talks about spiritual matters a lot.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Everything's made of molecules.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm made of molecules.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: You're made of molecules.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: The air between us is all made of molecules.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: That makes no f sense.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: These molecules know they're molecules.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: These molecules are like mummy.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make any sense.
0:35
SPEAKER_04: Here he is talking about the different options for who created the universe.
0:39
SPEAKER_04: Was it God or was it nothing?
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Some people think God created the universe.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Some people think nothing created the universe, which is the funniest guess.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: And the nothing people make fun of the God people.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: They say God doesn't exist.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, maybe.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: But you know what definitely doesn't exist?
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: But I think we can all agree if nothing, if your nothing sometimes spontaneously erupts into everything, that's a pretty goddamn magical fing nothing, you guys.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: And ask, ask the nothing people what happens when you die?
1:12
SPEAKER_01: They'll tell you nothing.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: You go into nothing.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you mean you merge back with your creator?
1:21
SPEAKER_01: That's heaven.
1:24
SPEAKER_04: I love that, but my question for Pete Holmes is: is his God actually a lot more like nothing?
1:30
SPEAKER_02: In the middle of the night, I'm going back to deep sleep.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: When you are deep, deep asleep, and I'm deep, deep, deep asleep.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: That naked being, I'm saying that's both of us tasting what we essentially are.
1:43
SPEAKER_04: Pete himself grew up Christian.
1:45
SPEAKER_04: He was considering becoming a youth pastor full-time.
1:47
SPEAKER_04: When his marriage fell apart, he started to reconsider all kinds of things, including his faith.
1:52
SPEAKER_04: And here he is on the George Janko podcast talking about it.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: But there's a certain degree of PTSD when we start talking about like uh, you know, labels and saved and Christian and can can kind of make me a little uncomfortable, I suppose.
2:08
SPEAKER_03: That's why I kind of wanted to.
2:09
SPEAKER_03: We hopped into it so quickly.
2:10
SPEAKER_03: No, I love talking about it.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: God just talked about it.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: But I just don't talk to a lot of people that are like uh we love your special, we love comedians like you.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: What did you say?
2:19
SPEAKER_02: God gave you this gift or whatever.
2:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I believe that God gave you this gift, and I think that you the way that you're using it is special.
2:25
SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate that.
2:25
SPEAKER_03: That's very kind.
2:26
SPEAKER_03: I'll take a bit the God part if you make it feel more comfortable.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: No, I yeah, yeah.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: I do I You know this gift that you've been summoned by nothing.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: This magical nothing that gave you everything.
2:37
SPEAKER_02: It's it's tricky.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: It's just uh yeah.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: I I I'm I'm honestly kind of taken aback as to why I'm bristling at that.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: I think it's just because I spent so much of my time, so much of my life the first 28 years, kind of in that circle and using these terms.
2:52
SPEAKER_02: And I haven't spoken to somebody that's just sort of like an overt uh Christian that uses these terms so freely.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: So you're referencing the joke.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons when we talk about believing in God, I don't believe in God as an object, and that's what I'm talking about in that joke.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: So when we talk about God existing, we're talking about um well, Rupert Spire, my my favorite teacher, talks about God being like the screen and we're appearing on the screen, but God, the screen doesn't exist to the things on in on the screen.
3:22
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
3:23
SPEAKER_02: We are the sub we're the ground, God is the ground of being.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think there's something called God that's watching us somewhere else.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: Something else, somewhere else, watching us subject-object.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: God is the all-in-all.
3:36
SPEAKER_04: And my big question for Pete is is his notion of God different from a notion of nothing?
3:41
SPEAKER_04: Now, absolutely, Thomas Aquinas with the classical theist tradition uh would say that God is no thing at all.
3:47
SPEAKER_04: It's not like there's the metaphysical furniture of the universe and you tick off every single item in the universe, and oh, God is one more item within the universe.
3:56
SPEAKER_04: It's true that God is not like that.
3:58
SPEAKER_04: My problem with Pete Holmes' conception of God is that while the atheists might have a magical conception of nothing that creates everything, uh, Pete Holmes has an everything that is not very magical at all.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: In fact, there is no agency or personality or particularity.
4:14
SPEAKER_04: There isn't a magician at all in Pete Holmes' conception of God.
4:19
SPEAKER_04: The atheists have a magical, fruitful nothing that produces everything.
4:23
SPEAKER_04: Pete Holmes just has an everything that to me doesn't sound particularly magical or inspiring or attractive or compelling in any way, as we'll see.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: So it's complete oneness, it's complete wholeness, holy, whole one oneness.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: There's a version of that that we believe in as well, it's called the Holy Spirit.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: I suppose I always thought of the Holy Spirit as the animus, the peace of God that's inside of us.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: So, in this theory that I believe in, there's three forms of one God.
4:53
SPEAKER_03: There's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
4:55
SPEAKER_03: And the Holy Spirit is the comforter.
4:57
SPEAKER_04: And George Janko, a Christian here, comes in with the doctrine of the Trinity.
5:00
SPEAKER_04: That's absolutely right.
5:02
SPEAKER_04: Let's come in and think about the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is not simply being itself, but that the Father has been loving the Son in the Spirit for all eternity.
5:10
SPEAKER_04: And in this triune God we live and move and have our being, and by the Spirit and in the Son, we can participate in this life.
5:16
SPEAKER_04: But to participate in this triune God is not to participate in something depersonalized, but something that is absolutely hyper-personal.
5:23
SPEAKER_04: And so George brings this point out.
5:26
SPEAKER_03: And I'm believing, if I am correct, correct me if I'm wrong.
5:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but the feeling that you're feeling is the Holy Spirit.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: It's like it's all with around, and people have it as challenge.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: And so that the things that I feel and I go through, you will also feel and go through.
5:38
SPEAKER_03: And we're somehow connected in this realm.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: That's why sometimes when I meet brothers and sisters, it feels like I've met them this whole time, but it's truly just the Holy Spirit or making like introducing itself to the Holy Spirit that's in this person.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: It's interesting.
5:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
5:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
5:51
SPEAKER_04: That's a fantastic point from George Janko.
5:53
SPEAKER_04: That there is a hyper-personal being called the Triune God.
5:57
SPEAKER_04: And by the Spirit, he connects us to other persons because ultimate reality is persons in relationship.
6:03
SPEAKER_04: It's face-to-face.
6:05
SPEAKER_04: That's what was there before the world began.
6:06
SPEAKER_04: That's what will be there in all eternity.
6:09
SPEAKER_04: Personal, face-to-face communion.
6:12
SPEAKER_04: Love, right?
6:13
SPEAKER_04: Love was before the universe, love will be after the universe.
6:16
SPEAKER_04: And the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son, given to you and I, so that we can be bound together as persons in relationship, and so that we can gaze upon the face of the Son of the Father and enjoy this love that is absolutely primary.
6:32
SPEAKER_04: After Pete describes getting his start in comedy, they then circle back to how he left his faith, and uh a painful divorce was part of the story.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: My wife and I were both, you know, believers, and we got married when I was 22 and she was 24, and then she ended up having an affair and leaving me, which you know sounds easy to scapegoat her.
6:54
SPEAKER_02: That's not what I'm doing.
6:55
SPEAKER_02: What came to the front for me at that moment was I thought I had a deal with God that I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't swear, I uh witnessed to people, I believed in the Bible, I read, I prayed, I did everything correct, and then I felt like he had sort of uh left me twisting in the wind.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's correct.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: Even if you read the Bible, I don't think that's what it's saying, but that was my interpretation.
7:19
SPEAKER_04: I hear a lot of deconstruction stories like this, and and it breaks my heart when people feel like they've got to do more and more and more and more, and it's never enough for God.
7:28
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and they end up leaving the faith when that was never the gospel of Jesus in the first place.
7:34
SPEAKER_04: I've got a video on this channel called I Gave My Life to Jesus, and it's a poem.
7:38
SPEAKER_04: I gave my life to Jesus about a thousand times at teenage shrines of a rare experience.
7:42
SPEAKER_04: They'd blare delirious, then dare obedience.
7:45
SPEAKER_04: I'd swear allegiance, soul bad, and serious each prayer, more daring than the previous.
7:49
SPEAKER_04: And it's about giving my life to Jesus in these kind of very melodramatic teenage ways.
7:54
SPEAKER_04: And and I think I probably did give my life to Jesus a thousand times in my teenage years.
7:58
SPEAKER_04: I think I probably did think that spirituality was all about the arrow up.
8:03
SPEAKER_04: And I deconstructed from that big time.
8:06
SPEAKER_04: As soon as I I left home, I left church and wanted that as far away from me as I possibly could because I was knock-knock knocking on heaven's door, and it felt like God was he there, was he hiding behind the sofa?
8:17
SPEAKER_04: Was he just laughing callously?
8:19
SPEAKER_04: There was a Christianity that I was pursuing that utterly burnt me out, and I needed to give it up.
8:25
SPEAKER_04: And I think actually it was right that I gave that up.
8:29
SPEAKER_04: What I needed to discover is that it's not the arrow up to heaven, it's actually Christ coming down to meet you in all your inability.
8:37
SPEAKER_04: And that was the gospel that actually saved me.
8:39
SPEAKER_04: And so it's good to hear Pete Holmes say, Look, I don't even think the Bible is saying what I took the Bible to mean.
8:44
SPEAKER_04: I don't think even the Bible is teaching this ladder to heaven, but it utterly burnt him out and it made him rethink everything.
8:53
SPEAKER_04: Out of the disillusionment came some atheism for a time, and then psychedelics, and then he started to have an idea of consciousness that led him to, I guess his his really now quite new age views about what is God and about ego death and about finding true meaning in dissolving into the great I am who is being itself.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: You have to empty yourself.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: That's that's the wisdom pattern.
9:18
SPEAKER_02: It's death and resurrection.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not just going to the promised land.
9:23
SPEAKER_02: You ha I had to die, I had to be broken.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: The seed has to crack for it to grow into wheat.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: That was my cracking, that was my humbling.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: I thought I knew the truth.
9:31
SPEAKER_02: I thought I I was a special boy, more importantly, than knowing any sort of truth, that I was in, that I was chosen, that I was correct.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: These people are wrong, these people are wrong, these people are wrong, these people are wrong, I'm right, my wife leaves me.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, suddenly I have to kind of re-look, re-examine my life.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: And it was actually the worst thing that I thought could have happened was to stop believing in God.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: And I very briefly did.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: I sort of dabbled in it just as a thought experiment.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, maybe there is nothing.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: All my friends were atheists, so I kind of just took a vacation.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: I called it in my book, I the chapter is called The Heratheist.
10:06
SPEAKER_02: I was very happy to be an atheist, a Heratheist, because it meant that there was no hell.
10:10
SPEAKER_02: I was like, you know, it might be a big black nothing, but at least we're not going to be tortured forever.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: So there was a certain freedom in that.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: And then as the story goes, now that my cup was empty, I was more open to hearing new ideas.
10:25
SPEAKER_02: I I took mushrooms and it wasn't really what I experienced, like what I saw when I took mushrooms.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: It's that I saw that you are seeing with something.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm talking about when I talk about awareness.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: In the Upanishads, it says, not what the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: That's what we're talking about.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: So right now you're listening to me.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: So you're listening, but it's not what you're hearing, it's the listening.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: It's the hearing that is the miracle.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: It's the knowing.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: Everything is known.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: You're seeing me, you're knowing it, you're hearing me, you're knowing it.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: When you take psychedelics, it really kind of eviscerates you.
11:05
SPEAKER_02: Pete goes away.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: The story of my past, my body, where I'm from, my even my beliefs, all kind of goes away.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: And all that's left is the light of pure knowing.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: And even if you're just seeing like a clown or Michael Jordan in the clouds, it doesn't really matter.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: It gives you a chance to witness that whereby the eye can see or that whereby the ear can hear.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: And that is eternal.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: And that's the I am, that is the ground of being.
11:30
SPEAKER_04: For Pete Holmes, the I am is actually the dissolution of all eyes, all capital I, first person um singular pronouns.
11:40
SPEAKER_04: It is the the evisceration of the self, right, into the ocean of being.
11:46
SPEAKER_04: You dissolve like a drop of water in the sea, like a like a a drop in the ocean of being.
11:51
SPEAKER_04: And ego death is the kind of hope that Pete Holmes has for peace and rest and reconciliation.
11:58
SPEAKER_04: And he he draws a link between this and the story of the prodigal son.
12:02
SPEAKER_04: And that's what really uh caught my attention.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: To me, the gospel is the prodigal son, which I always joke as Jesus' closer.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: He does the Sermon on the Mountain, he closes with the prodigal son.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: The prodigal son, obviously, we know the son is born into the kingdom, he leaves, he asks for his inheritance early, he goes and squanders it.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of like life.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: You leave unity, you leave, we could say God, you leave the king and you go off and you have a life.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: You make mistakes, you squander it.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: It's not, it doesn't say that he goes to sex workers or drink, but it's kind of implied that he like has a time.
12:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he turned up.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: He turned up.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: He had some fun with the money.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: He did.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: And then he ends up, you know, working with the pigs.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: And he's a Jewish man, so he's working with the pigs.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: That's like that's like a joke.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: That's a funny joke.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: He he ends up working with the pigs.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is being funny here, saying he's as low as he can be.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: Now, where you and I might differ, and I don't know, I really don't know.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we're the same.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: What Christianity has become is atonement theory, is the idea that Jesus died to change God's mind about us.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: But if you look at the the story of the prodigal son, the son remembers who his father is.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: That's all he does.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: And then he goes home.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: He's he's like, maybe he'll give me a room in the servants' quarters, but he goes home afraid.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: And what does the father do?
13:20
SPEAKER_02: He throws a party, he slaughters the fattened calf, gives them new sandals, gives them new robes, they have a party.
13:25
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
13:26
SPEAKER_02: That's the good news.
13:27
SPEAKER_04: He says, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough to spare?
13:30
SPEAKER_04: And here I am starving in this pig sty.
13:32
SPEAKER_04: I will return to my father, and I will say, I've sinned before heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
13:38
SPEAKER_04: Make me like one of your hired servants.
13:39
SPEAKER_04: Interestingly, the prodigal son wants to become a slave.
13:43
SPEAKER_04: He doesn't really imagine that he could possibly have a relationship of son to father anymore.
13:49
SPEAKER_04: He thinks he's blown it so much that all he can be is a slave to the one.
13:55
SPEAKER_04: And so he returns to his father, expecting not to be the son of a father, expecting to be reconciled to some degree, brought to peace to some degree, forgiven to some degree, and just put in the outhouse with the rest of the servants, a slave to the one.
14:11
SPEAKER_04: That's what the prodigal son wants.
14:14
SPEAKER_04: And yet, what actually happens?
14:16
SPEAKER_04: Let me read to you.
14:16
SPEAKER_04: Luke chapter 15.
14:17
SPEAKER_04: But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
14:21
SPEAKER_04: He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.
14:24
SPEAKER_04: The son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
14:29
SPEAKER_04: He was going to say, Make me like one of your hired servants, but the father does not let him become a slave.
14:35
SPEAKER_04: Instead, the father said to his servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.
14:38
SPEAKER_04: Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
14:40
SPEAKER_04: Bring the fattened calf and kill it.
14:42
SPEAKER_04: Let's have a feast and celebrate.
14:43
SPEAKER_04: For this son of mine was dead and is alive again.
14:46
SPEAKER_04: He was lost and is found, so they began to celebrate.
14:50
SPEAKER_04: What is life like with this father?
14:53
SPEAKER_04: It is not to be enslaved to an impersonal oneness, it is to be invited to a feast in which there is true life, in which there is utter celebration, in which there is joy, in which there is abundance, a dance, and persons are invited into this feast.
15:11
SPEAKER_04: As the story goes on, the elder brother is invited into the feast.
15:14
SPEAKER_04: The father really wants the elder brother into the feast as well.
15:18
SPEAKER_04: And he wants the elder brother as the elder brother to come in and to reconcile with the son and for the two sons to be reconciled to the father, and for everybody in interpersonal relationships to have a lively, reciprocal, personal communion of love.
15:34
SPEAKER_04: That's heaven.
15:36
SPEAKER_04: That's reconciliation.
15:38
SPEAKER_04: That's the future.
15:40
SPEAKER_04: Not getting dissolved into the ocean of being.
15:43
SPEAKER_04: And notice the thing that reconciles the younger son to the father is not the realization of the younger son.
15:49
SPEAKER_04: The younger son makes a pig sty plan and he offers some slavish repentance.
15:56
SPEAKER_04: He's offering his life back to his father simply to be a slave again.
16:00
SPEAKER_04: The prodigal's realization does not save him.
16:03
SPEAKER_04: You know the only thing that saves him?
16:04
SPEAKER_04: He could have the best speech in the world.
16:06
SPEAKER_04: That wouldn't save him.
16:07
SPEAKER_04: He could have the most magnificent realization in the world.
16:10
SPEAKER_04: That wouldn't save him.
16:11
SPEAKER_04: What saves him is the father, and the father runs towards him.
16:14
SPEAKER_04: He reconciles the son.
16:16
SPEAKER_04: And it's just like the other two stories in Luke chapter 15.
16:18
SPEAKER_04: You know the other two stories in Luke chapter 15?
16:21
SPEAKER_04: There is a lost coin, and the woman sweeps the house, and she finds the coin.
16:25
SPEAKER_04: There's a lost sheep.
16:26
SPEAKER_04: Okay?
16:27
SPEAKER_04: And the shepherd goes out and finds the lost sheep and hoists the sheep onto his shoulders and brings the sheep home.
16:33
SPEAKER_04: And then there's this story about the lost son, and the father runs and reconciles the son.
16:40
SPEAKER_04: It is about finding what was lost.
16:43
SPEAKER_04: It is not about the coin coming to a realization of its coinness or the sheep recognizing that it belongs to the flock after all.
16:51
SPEAKER_04: And it's not about the son coming to a certain realization, it's about the reconciling love of the father.
16:57
SPEAKER_04: Biblical scholar Kenneth Bailey has written Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes and as a missionary to that part of the world.
17:04
SPEAKER_04: He was reading through the parables and kind of understanding them from a Middle Eastern perspective rather than a Western perspective.
17:10
SPEAKER_04: And if you're a first century patriarchal Middle Eastern society, do you ever see elderly men running?
17:17
SPEAKER_04: You would never you would never see that.
17:18
SPEAKER_04: Okay, women might occasionally hit hitch up their skirt and run.
17:22
SPEAKER_04: Boys ran, girls ran.
17:25
SPEAKER_04: Old men, respectable men at the heart of the village, they do not run.
17:30
SPEAKER_04: Why?
17:30
SPEAKER_04: Because you would have to hitch up your robes, and what would you look like?
17:33
SPEAKER_04: You'd look ridiculous.
17:35
SPEAKER_04: In fact, because you're wearing robes and hitching them up, you would look like a very motherly father.
17:41
SPEAKER_04: And here is this very motherly father who the other village would expect to exclude the son, to have held a funeral for the son who had wished him dead by taking his inheritance and running.
17:54
SPEAKER_04: But instead of punishing the son, he bears the shame.
17:58
SPEAKER_04: The running father bears the shame as he goes out to the sun.
18:01
SPEAKER_04: And it's his reconciling move that makes the difference, not the son's realization, not his sorry spiel.
18:07
SPEAKER_04: It's the running father who reconciles through bearing shame and wrapping his arms around the boy still stinking of pig.
18:16
SPEAKER_04: And who is this father?
18:17
SPEAKER_04: Well, think about this scene.
18:19
SPEAKER_04: Okay, you've got Jesus there, and he's speaking to two different groups of people in Luke chapter 15.
18:23
SPEAKER_04: In verse 1, it says, Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.
18:28
SPEAKER_04: Imagine them to the left of Jesus, okay, the tax collectors and sinners, okay, the bad guys gathering around to hear Jesus.
18:35
SPEAKER_04: But then on the other side of Jesus, on the right side of Jesus, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are muttering.
18:40
SPEAKER_04: Why?
18:40
SPEAKER_04: Because they say, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.
18:43
SPEAKER_04: Think about it.
18:44
SPEAKER_04: This man, Jesus, welcomes the sinners and eats with them.
18:48
SPEAKER_04: That's why these guys are muttering.
18:50
SPEAKER_04: So why does Jesus tell the story of the prodigal son?
18:52
SPEAKER_04: Because he's basically saying, okay, the tax collector sinner type is the younger brother, the prodigal son, who goes and squanders the wealth and ends up in a pigsty.
19:00
SPEAKER_04: Okay, but who are the Pharisees?
19:02
SPEAKER_04: The Pharisees are the elder brother, the brother who slaves in the field and never wants to come home to the feast.
19:08
SPEAKER_04: They are the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, and they mutter, because this man Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.
19:15
SPEAKER_04: So that's the scene as Jesus tells the story.
19:17
SPEAKER_04: There are those to the left of him who are like the younger son, and there are those to the right of him who are like the older son, but Jesus is the one who welcomes sinners and eats with them.
19:26
SPEAKER_04: That's what the whole story is.
19:27
SPEAKER_04: So if the tax collectors and sinners are the younger brother, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are the older brother, who is the father in this story?
19:36
SPEAKER_04: It's Jesus, isn't it?
19:37
SPEAKER_04: It's it's just literally, actually Jesus.
19:41
SPEAKER_04: He is he is like the woman who finds the coin.
19:43
SPEAKER_04: He's like the good shepherd who hoists the sheep onto his shoulders, and he is the father in this story, okay?
19:49
SPEAKER_04: He's not a biological father, fine.
19:51
SPEAKER_04: He's he's not a shepherd either, and he's not a woman, okay?
19:54
SPEAKER_04: Um He's playing the part of the Father, or the Father is playing the part of Jesus, and Jesus goes into the far country.
20:01
SPEAKER_04: Jesus is the one who reconciles this boy, who bears the shame, who wraps his arms around his boy who is still stinking of pig.
20:08
SPEAKER_04: He is the one who eats with sinners while the righteous mutter.
20:14
SPEAKER_04: And so there is atonement theory in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
20:18
SPEAKER_04: Of course there's atonement.
20:19
SPEAKER_04: How are they at one?
20:20
SPEAKER_04: That's what the word atonement is saying.
20:22
SPEAKER_04: It's at one.
20:24
SPEAKER_04: How is Jesus at one with sinners?
20:28
SPEAKER_04: He bears the shame.
20:30
SPEAKER_04: He clings hold of us while we are still stinking of pig.
20:34
SPEAKER_04: He takes what is ours unto himself so that we can have what is his forever.
20:40
SPEAKER_04: Atonement absolutely involves reconciliation and sacrifice and stooping and service.
20:47
SPEAKER_04: It's a beautiful story.
20:49
SPEAKER_04: It's not about a son who comes to a recognition and then he dissolves into the ocean of being.
20:54
SPEAKER_04: It's about a sinner reconciled by stooping love, atoning love, and therefore invited into a feast.
21:03
SPEAKER_04: That's what the story is all about.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: The difference that and I've said this a million times, but I really love saying it as often as it comes up.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: Atonement theory, there's no Jesus character as we know him in that story.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: Incorrect.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the Father.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
21:21
SPEAKER_02: The prodigal son, you could say, is Jesus or is you.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: It's us.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: It's this.
21:27
SPEAKER_02: It's this.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: We go off and we live our life.
21:29
SPEAKER_04: No, very clearly in the story, it's the sinners and tax collectors who walk away from the father's love, but are reconciled by that father's love as well.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: Atonement theory would say you're working with the pigs, and then another man comes and says, Let's go home to your father.
21:43
SPEAKER_02: I know who your father is.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: He's a king, he's a great king.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: But I also know he's insane, and he will want someone's head to roll for what you've done.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: You've squandered your inheritance.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: You were a fool, you spat in his face, and he will not let that stand.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: But I will go with you.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: And I will let him murder me.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: That's what we've turned Christianity into is this idea that you can't go to God.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: You can't remember who your father is.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: You need someone to go with you so that God can whip and torture and crucify and bleed out this person because that's what you deserve.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: But if you look at the story, it really is right there.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: Our job, the gospel, is remember who your father is and go home.
22:25
SPEAKER_04: Jesus is not a third party in between us and God.
22:29
SPEAKER_04: It's not like there's God over there and there's us down here, and then God zaps this other guy called Jesus because we were in trouble.
22:36
SPEAKER_04: Okay, that would be a grotesque caricature of Christian faith, and that would rightly be rejected if that's what you think Christianity is.
22:44
SPEAKER_04: But Jesus is not a third party, okay?
22:47
SPEAKER_04: This is why George bringing up the Trinity is so important.
22:50
SPEAKER_04: Jesus is our maker, okay?
22:52
SPEAKER_04: He is the Son of the Father filled with the Spirit, and He is the one who goes out to us as God with us to reconcile us.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: And therefore, he is in this story the running father.
23:03
SPEAKER_04: He is the man who welcomes sinners and eats with them at great cost to himself.
23:07
SPEAKER_04: No matter the shame that he has to bear, no matter the stinking pig sty that he has to get onto himself, he will do whatever it takes to be at one with us.
23:15
SPEAKER_04: And that will mean being in great proximity to us, taking our sin onto himself, giving us his righteousness, that he might take everything that belongs to us, he might give everything that belongs to him, and that we might be at one.
23:26
SPEAKER_04: Atonement theory and the kind of oneness and celebration and feast that Pete Holmes wants, it's all the same thing.
23:33
SPEAKER_04: And it all makes sense with Christ and Him crucified.
23:35
SPEAKER_04: But unfortunately, Pete Holmes' gospel is you're in the pigstar, you just need to realize that you are one with the Father already.
23:41
SPEAKER_04: But the Father is not really the father for Pete Holmes, because for him, all ego must die.
23:46
SPEAKER_04: And conversion is just us realizing that we are already one with the cosmos.
23:51
SPEAKER_04: But for Pete Holmes, we are one with the Father in a way that strips us bare of our actual personhood.
23:56
SPEAKER_04: Um let me just show you a compilation of times where Pete Holmes talks about our oneness with the divine or our oneness with the great I am.
24:06
SPEAKER_04: And it is, notice, it is all about stripping away story, which is really ironic given that he thinks that the prodigal story really explains what life is all about.
24:16
SPEAKER_04: It strips us of story, it strips us of narrative, it strips us of personhood.
24:20
SPEAKER_04: Um it dissolves us into the ocean of being.
24:24
SPEAKER_04: And it's so interesting because I I think when I hear of these eastern visions of heaven, they sound like hell to me.
24:33
SPEAKER_04: Honestly, they sound like hell to me.
24:35
SPEAKER_04: Your idea of heaven, Pete Holmes, sounds like my idea of hell.
24:38
SPEAKER_04: Like, seriously.
24:39
SPEAKER_04: And while some of the language is about luminous nothingness, it's still kind of nothingness.
24:44
SPEAKER_04: Um, just listen in.
24:45
SPEAKER_03: I believe Jesus Christ is God.
24:47
SPEAKER_03: So that's my first different where we might differ.
24:50
SPEAKER_03: Well, I believe Jesus Christ is God.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: So it's not good.
24:53
SPEAKER_03: It's not Jesus convincing God himself that these people are.
24:57
SPEAKER_03: If Jesus is God, who are you?
24:59
SPEAKER_03: I right now, I was a sinner who was saved by Christ.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: That's a story.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: I would say that's a story.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a good story.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: When you're in deep sleep, and all the thought, even the idea I am George Jenko, I am married, I have a house in Arizona, I have a podcast, I almost went through the inauguration.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: All of that goes away.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: Who are you in that naked moment when all of it is gone?
25:21
SPEAKER_02: Deep sleep.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: That's I am.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: That's being.
25:26
SPEAKER_04: Sleep, the best thing is to be asleep.
25:28
SPEAKER_04: Christianity is about life in all its fullness.
25:32
SPEAKER_04: Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
25:36
SPEAKER_04: No, sleep is not the best picture of our future hope.
25:40
SPEAKER_04: Sleep is death.
25:42
SPEAKER_04: Sleep is not our hope.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: Or get this as an example.
25:45
SPEAKER_02: In the Upanishads, it says, not what the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: That's what we're talking about.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: So right now you're listening to me.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: That's beautiful.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: So you're listening, but it's not what you're hearing, it's the listening.
25:59
SPEAKER_02: It's the hearing that is the miracle.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: It's the knowing.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: Everything is known.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: You're seeing me, you're knowing it, you're hearing me, you're knowing it.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: When you take psychedelics, it really kind of eviscerates you.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: Pete goes away.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: The story of my past, my body, where I'm from, my even my beliefs, all kind of goes away.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: And all that's left is the light of pure knowing.
26:21
SPEAKER_04: I mean, this flowery language about, you know, luminescent nothingness and that kind of thing.
26:26
SPEAKER_04: But but you can put nice language on it.
26:28
SPEAKER_04: You can even affix Bible verses to it.
26:31
SPEAKER_04: But we're talking about the absolute evisceration of ourselves, ego death.
26:38
SPEAKER_04: There's no more Glenn, there's no more Pete, there's no more you.
26:42
SPEAKER_04: And we are just dissolved into the ocean of being.
26:45
SPEAKER_04: This is not good news.
26:47
SPEAKER_04: I mean, here's another example.
26:48
SPEAKER_02: I love talking about these ideas, but the truth is silent.
26:52
SPEAKER_02: The truth is silent.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: Be still and know that I'm God, right?
26:56
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: All of this stuff, all of this peat-ness comes in.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: It's window dressing, it all needs to go.
27:04
SPEAKER_02: That's why I was bringing up deep sleep.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: You can also bring up a meditative state, or just a moment of quiet, or looking at a sunset, or climbing a mountain, or whatever it is.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: So many things silence the story of who we think we are.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: And what's left is I make my bed in the depths and you are there, I make my bed in the heavens and you are there.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: Something is pouring out your eyes and out your ears.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: It's grabbing and knowing the touch of the sofa, the sound of my voice, the sight of this room, and your thoughts and your feelings.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: Something knows all of that.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: That is what I think Christ is pointing us to.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: I and the Father are one.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: I feel sad.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: What is the I that notices the sadness?
27:52
SPEAKER_02: And is it sad?
27:54
SPEAKER_02: Does it learn?
27:55
SPEAKER_02: Is it a Christian?
27:56
SPEAKER_02: Is it a non-Christian?
27:58
SPEAKER_02: Or is it pure naked light?
28:01
SPEAKER_02: Is it who you really are?
28:03
SPEAKER_02: And all you have to do is remember who your father is.
28:06
SPEAKER_04: When you focus in on the subject, the I who is sad.
28:10
SPEAKER_04: Is that I sad?
28:12
SPEAKER_04: Um Pete Holmes wants to strip us of sadness.
28:15
SPEAKER_04: And that sounds like a good thing.
28:16
SPEAKER_04: He wants to strip us of story and narrative and all the things that get in the way of peatness and all that stuff, to the the I that isn't sad.
28:27
SPEAKER_04: Well then the I might not be sad, the I might not be happy either.
28:32
SPEAKER_04: The I might not be satisfied, the I might not be in love, right?
28:36
SPEAKER_04: What is beautiful about life is interpersonal connection in which I am sad and then he joined me in my pit and then he took my sadness and I took his joy.
28:48
SPEAKER_04: And I was sad and now I am happy.
28:51
SPEAKER_04: That's a story.
28:53
SPEAKER_04: That is meaning, that is purpose, that is significance in this world.
28:56
SPEAKER_04: Dissolving into the ocean of being is not good news.
29:00
SPEAKER_04: It's not good news.
29:02
SPEAKER_04: So for all that I love Pete Holmes' comedy about all this stuff, for all that I love the way he distinguishes between the atheists who think that, you know, you've got this magical nothing that produces everything.
29:14
SPEAKER_04: I think he's traded that for an everything that is not magical at all, that gets stripped bare, stripped back to a personless, joyless, selfless mush.
29:28
SPEAKER_04: Really.
29:29
SPEAKER_04: And and this is this is my problem.
29:31
SPEAKER_04: And um, hey, wouldn't it be great to have Pete Holmes on the channel?
29:34
SPEAKER_04: I could talk to Pete Holmes all day uh about comedy, about life, about God.
29:39
SPEAKER_04: It would be uh a wonderful conversation.
29:40
SPEAKER_04: I wonder what you guys think about all this stuff.
29:43
SPEAKER_04: You can let me know in the comments.
29:44
SPEAKER_04: And if you want to check out a Christianity 101 that assumes no prior knowledge, you can go to 321course.com.
29:50
SPEAKER_04: Why don't you do the course right now?
29:51
SPEAKER_04: And uh you can binge it in a couple of hours or you can do it over eight sessions.
29:55
SPEAKER_04: See Jesus' vision for God, a God who is three, a God who is love, Jesus' vision for the world, in which, yes, in Adam we have departed and ended up in a pig style.
30:05
SPEAKER_04: But in Christ the second Adam, we have been reunited.
30:09
SPEAKER_04: We are one in Jesus so that we get his Father as our Father, His Spirit as our spirit, his future as our future.
30:15
SPEAKER_04: It is personal, it is joy filled, it is life in all its abundance.
30:21
SPEAKER_04: It's not like going to sleep, it's not like going to sleep, Pete Holmes.
30:25
SPEAKER_04: It's like life in all its abundance.
30:28
SPEAKER_04: Come home to him.