June 20, 2025 - Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer
01:40:06
Is ORTHODOXY the TRUE Church of Christ? | The Rift | Guests: Jay Dyer, Jamie Hanshaw + Luigi
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There’s a crisis of order, truth, and morality in the world today. To fill some of the voids, a lot of turned to religion - more specifically, Christianity. But even among Christians, there’s a dispute - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism?
Jay Dyer, Jamie Hanshaw and OrthodoxLuigi join us on this episode and make their case for why Orthodoxy is the TRUTH!
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The Orthodox Church is somewhat of a relic to many people who think that we've got to be progressive.
I need a man in skinny jeans.
I need a barefoot woman.
Give me some flags and let's do some backflips for Jesus Christ.
Is that really worship what we see today in the Protestant evangelical church?
Seems like you talk to Protestants and they say, well, yeah, that's the way, the truth, and the life.
Sola scriptura.
That's what we need.
We don't need a priest.
We don't need a deacon.
We can have women lead us.
On the other hand, you talk to Catholics and they'll tell you straight up, we are the only church.
This is the Apostles' Creed, you know, the Catholic Church.
That's us, our name.
But then there's another group of people that really we didn't hear a lot about in the United States.
They kind of were Russian or Greek.
I'm talking about the Orthodox Church.
Then all of a sudden, particularly during the 2020 pandemic, a lot of people saw churches shutting down.
But one church didn't shut down pretty much anywhere.
It was the Orthodox churches around the country.
And people started to ask themselves the question, this mysterious, foreign, somewhat goddess form of worship.
Maybe there's something else to it.
Maybe there is a reason why we have to stick to the classic traditional people who have served God since the beginning of Jesus Christ himself and technically even before it.
Perhaps if these people didn't cave to the pressure of governments, maybe their faith has something special about it.
The Orthodox Church has been somewhat of a curiosity for myself.
It's hard to understand because really it seems like it's not easy to become Orthodox.
It seems like they take it quite seriously.
And in the midst of that, anything that's good takes time.
It takes investment.
I'm on a journey of faith myself on a special episode tonight of The Rift live Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
This is pre-recorded so you know with your super chats because this is a conversation.
We're headed out to Brohemian Grove this Saturday.
You can find the event details in the description.
We're going to be talking to some experts on Orthodoxy who are somewhat well more versed than I am about what is it?
Why are you Orthodox?
And why should we become Orthodox?
This is a spiritual episode of The Rift.
Let's start the show.
When you think of a good Christian, my name doesn't typically come to mind.
In fact, people always ask me, what are you?
What are you?
Well, I'm a man and I was made in the image of God.
But I've realized myself personally, like a lot of you guys might be watching today, it's too hard to go out in the world on your own.
You feel like, you know, if we're a sheep and God's the shepherd, then where's the rest of the sheep?
And how do we find our way to a place of safety?
How do we find ourselves back with the shepherd?
He leaves the 99 to go after the one.
I feel like I'm one and I need God.
And I want to do a very important episode today on Orthodoxy.
Hi, I'm Jamie Hanshaw Dyer, and I am Jay's wife, and we do the show for Jay's analysis.
He does a lot of comedy.
I do conspiracy on my own.
I have a channel on YouTube under my name, Jamie Hanshaw, called Out of This World, where we talk about pop culture and conspiracy theories, magic, occult influence, stuff like that.
Yeah, and by the way, that actually struck me as very interesting because you were covering, you said, conspiracies back in the day, which by the way are still banned on YouTube.
And nothing says more that something is false and it's definitely not worth your time than the big tech corporations colluding together to let people know you can't talk about this.
It's so untrue, you can't question it.
2020 made us question a lot of things, but what kind of conspiracies do you cover?
Yeah, the American political system, democracy, and other conspiracy, whether it exists.
No, and by the way, for you, I encourage people to check out her stuff.
I want my wife to meet you and, of course, meet your wife and stuff too, because I think there is a lot of power right now, especially with Candace and stuff, with girls who have a powerful voice reaching the moms, right?
We got to get the moms up and going because even the Bible talks about, you know, the wife, like, you know, inspiring her husband if he's not a believer by her actions, by the way that she lives, right?
Not nagging him every day.
Please don't do that.
But honestly, these powerful women that are being used, I'm very interested to hear more tonight.
Also, joining us back in the studio as well from last night, the one, the only character of Nintendo.
So, I mean, in the Orthodox Church, like, we don't, we don't make hard judgments against, you know, those outside the Orthodox faith as far as salvation.
What we say is that the Orthodox Church is the church that Christ founded.
Therefore, it's the normative path to salvation.
What I would say, you know, from my faith beforehand, you know, one of the things that our leadership likes to say is like, don't, don't despise like the things that brought you to Orthodoxy.
And that's one of the things that I love about my non-denominational faith is it laid a lot of the foundations for what really allowed me to find Orthodoxy.
Because I think a lot of people do struggle with the question you just asked.
You know, they're like, gosh, it seems like I have this genuine experience, you know, being in these evangelical circles or even maybe Roman Catholic circles, whatever the case may be.
But for us, what we say about the Orthodox faith is that it's the fullness.
We say it's the fullness of the Christian faith.
And that's because we say Christ founded one church in Matthew chapter 16.
And I'm going to kind of lead this discussion out of genuine curiosity.
If you're watching this today and you're Orthodox, you're probably like, hell yeah, brother.
Maybe not saying that.
I don't know how you guys talk.
But, you know, we're doing it.
We're laying it down.
But for those of us, I'm attending.
I'm going to be upfront.
I'm attending a Catholic church right now.
I've been attending for the last two months.
I am not Catholic.
So I've not converted.
I'm not under the Catholic authority.
I was raised.
My dad is an evangelical pastor, retired.
I was raised in the Calvary Chapel movement.
I went to Calvary Chapel Bible College.
I finished up my undergrad and some grad work at a Wesleyan theological seminary at Azusa Pacific University.
And like many people, I became disillusioned not only for why the evangelical church seems to be so counterproductive to scripture.
There were so many women in leadership, but the entire function of it seems to be a feminine approach to God.
And what attracts me personally to the Orthodoxy and to Catholicism is that I see that it's still led by God, as in men are still in control of the church.
It sounds stupid to some people, but it's like there's still structure and order.
And with all the chaos, all the lies, the censorship, there's two churches that have stood out that have stood against the test of time that have not changed for better or for worse.
It's the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but I cannot tell which one's correct.
And I want to be careful because a lot of people, you might sit here and say, yeah, if it's really important to go to heaven, if it's about salvation, then we want to make sure that we are at the right place with the right people.
And there's no better time than now.
So let's go to Jay.
Let's jump into this.
So Orthodox Christianity, share me a little bit about your journey.
Were you always an Orthodox Christian?
And sort of what drew you to the faith?
Why did you initially, as someone like in my position, see Orthodoxy and go, hey, that might be the truth?
And by the time I was about 18 or 19, I started getting more serious about religion, theology, philosophy.
I wanted to study it at an academic level.
And that took me kind of like Luigi down a kind of a path of church history.
This was in about the year 2000.
So I started reading the church fathers pretty in-depth.
I started reading the councils and so forth.
That led me out of Protestantism ultimately.
And in about 2003, I became Roman Catholic because at that time, there was a lot less information out there on the internet.
So I thought it's either Protestant or Catholic.
So I became Catholic in 2003, took the name Augustine, very serious about Catholicism all throughout my 20s for about eight, nine, 10 years.
But then as I got deeper and deeper into it, started reading all the dogmatic manuals and the theology, Vatican II, et cetera, papal teachings.
I had a lot, there were a lot of problems that I couldn't reconcile within the theology.
So that took me into a domain of looking at other options to make sense of Christianity.
I didn't really know much about Orthodox stuff until about 2007 or 8.
I started looking at reading Eastern Church Fathers, started reading Orthodox apologetics and history books.
And I almost converted Orthodox in 2008, but I decided not to, held off.
It was kind of just general, not sure, kind of in the position maybe you're at right now.
Because I was raised Protestant.
I'd been Catholic, but then I wasn't sure between Orthodox and Catholic for a long time.
So I read a bunch of perennialist stuff.
I read a bunch of traditionalists, a lot of philosophy, Neoplatonism.
And then about 2015 or 16, I got more and more serious about reading the Church Fathers again, went back through biblical theology.
That was always something I was really interested in.
So that got me back into Orthodoxy.
And then I converted, I became a catechum in 2017.
Then it was received in either the end of 2017 or 2018.
So about seven or eight years now of being Orthodox.
I don't really regret it or anything like that.
I would never go back to Protestant or Roman Catholic.
So, yeah, I think my situation is unique because I was both.
Like I was Protestant.
I was serious Roman Catholic for almost a decade.
Even was interested in monastic life before getting married.
But yeah, I just felt like there's no way to make sense of Roman Catholicism.
So last thing I would say is before you go to Luigi, like you were saying, like both of them haven't changed.
Areas where they haven't changed, but we would argue as Orthodox, like the structure and profession of faith and theology of the church of the first thousand years is identical to Orthodoxy.
But the things that you see in the Roman Catholic world in the second millennium are significant departures.
So the innovations of like the Reformation, it's actually the papacy that's the first innovation because the papacy begins to say in the 1300s that you have to believe in the pope as a world ruler also to be saved.
That's no longer a politicization of the church, right?
Well, yeah, I mean, the Papal States, but the Pope was basically saying to the kings and the emperors that he is also a world ruler above all kings and emperors.
So he's king of kings.
And then we would say that post-Vatican II, that doctrine has actually just completely been discarded and in fact is frowned upon.
When the Pope took off his triple tiara, that's a three-tiered crown.
He took that off as a symbolic gesture that the papacy doesn't mandate or believe in the temporal supremacy doctrine anymore.
And all the way up into the 1800s in Syllabus of Errors, they were still mandating that you had to believe in the temporal supremacy to be saved.
So that's one clear contradiction among many, like the death penalty is another one where they taught the necessity of through natural justice, the state punishing with the death penalty for hundreds of years.
Now post John Paul II and post-Pope Francis, that's contrary to the gospel.
So the Catholic Church has rejected the death penalty in most cases.
Yeah, a lot of the, you're right, the evangelical world is a lot of emotionalism, a lot of sensationalism, anti-intellectualism.
That wasn't my path because, you know, I was studying philosophy in undergrad.
So I wanted to be rigorous in the way that I defended my beliefs.
And so even when I was a Protestant, I was into Greg Bonson and Cornelius Van Til, who are famous Protestant apologists that are very logical and rational about the way they defend the faith.
So I was always drawn to that.
But yeah, I mean, it wasn't just book stuff.
Like I was, you know, involved in the local Roman Catholic Church, went to Latin Mass for about seven or eight years.
So I was very serious about my traditional Catholicism before just finally saying there's no way to make this post-Vatican II thing work.
Okay, well, we're going to have to jump onto that in a bit.
I want to go to your wife real fast because as a woman, I mean, a lot of people are, a lot of women are drawn to evangelical Protestantism because it is, it does have a very feminine spirit.
And I know a lot of you who watch the show are evangelical.
And I'm going to say, I'm glad you're going to a church, right?
I'm glad you're trying, right?
That you're connected, that you want to know God.
And I think my personal opinion is, you know, a lot of evangelicals are much better people, much better Christians, more devout to God, and really genuinely do their best.
But, you know, if you're a woman, most of these churches are female.
And the greatest position you can take at a lot of these evangelical churches is worship leader, which is actually why they wear the tight pants, because the tighter it is on your scrotum, the higher pitch you can get when you're playing the guitar.
But in terms of being a woman, obviously, did you get attracted to it or what your journey was after you met him?
Or like, what happened?
And why would you, as a female in 2025, go towards such a, I'm using the world's terms, misogynistic, patriarchal system like orthodoxy, which is for the Russians and the people who are behind.
Well, I didn't find it to be that at all when I first started going.
So I was raised Baptist.
I went to a private school and then I was homeschooled.
My churches that we attended were always very small, very fundamental, very trad, right?
So we were doing trad wife things way before it was cool.
We were going to Bill Gothard conferences and stuff like that.
And then in my 20s, my paradigm kind of shifted, started to learn about conspiracy theories and secret societies and looking at chemtrails and all of these different things going on in the early 2000s, you know, 9-11 and stuff like that.
And I just kind of reshuffled my whole brain.
I said, okay, so what if Christianity is also a lie?
Because when you're deconstructing all of your thought processes about what you think about the world, Christianity is going to come into that, right?
So what if the Bible is a lie?
So I went through all of these thought processes, like what if it's Hinduism or what if it's Buddhism?
So I looked into so many different religions, so many different cults, systems of magic, stuff like that, along with the conspiracy theories.
And that's how I met Jay.
So when we met, we were sort of living, you know, secular.
Like he had been through Orthodox classes and stuff, but he hadn't joined the church for specific reasons at that time.
And the first time I ever saw an icon was at his house.
And I was like, what is this thing, you know?
And he was telling me, and I'm like, so is this like...
And I knew that I would never want to be Catholic because, you know, I had studied like Jesuits and Vatican and conspiracies and, you know, the different scandals they have.
We're all aware of what goes on, right, in the Catholic Church.
I'm like, is this Catholic?
He's like, no, it's Orthodoxy.
And I was like, is that like Russian Catholics?
He's like, is that Greek Catholics?
And he's like, no, it's a whole different thing.
So we went to church a couple of times.
And it's interesting.
The first time that we went to an Orthodox church, it was beautiful.
It was a beautiful cathedral with all of the icons in it.
And he goes up to the icon of Mary and he crosses himself and kisses it.
And I'd never seen anything like that because I'd never even been to a Catholic mass before, right?
So that was my first impression of it.
And then we kind of decided that this is something we wanted to do together.
So we were like reading the Bible together.
We were doing long distance relationship.
We would do Bible study every night.
I would go to my own Orthodox church where I lived in Greenville, South Carolina.
And the first time I went in there, it was interesting because you go into the church and there's little a little room called the narthex before you enter the main part.
And they had all of these pictures of Orthodox bishops and the way they dress is like they all have long gray beards and they all have like black robes and a black hat.
And I'm coming out of the occult, like tarot card reading, you know, Hermeticism, all of that milieu, right?
And one thing that's interesting that you say that it's not feminine is that drew me to the church was the feminine side of it.
That we venerate Theotokos, who that's the name we call Mary.
She is right there prominent on the altar with Christ.
Her and Christ is on the other side.
We have women saints who many of them they say are equal to the apostles.
So this was different for me personally because coming out of Protestantism, there was no like framework for femininity.
It's always trying to be more masculine in the church.
Like you said, like the leadership, the worship leaders taking on these roles, the pastor, stuff like that.
But in the Orthodox church, I found that the feminine side was a lot richer and they did have a lot more respect in some ways for women than the Protestant church does.
Okay, so that's interesting because I see what you're saying.
I just feel like, you know, I was in LA and I feel like somebody should have told me that I came across like I was completely gay in the church there.
Like there was no challenge to be masculine.
And it's like in LA, everybody's gay until proven otherwise, right?
That's kind of what it is growing up there.
And like, you know, when I, I think it wasn't until I made, you know, conservative content and people were starting to be like, oh, are you gay?
Are you this or that?
I actually didn't even, I never, no one ever asked me that.
I never thought about it.
And then I started to see how other people dressed around the country and I was like, oh, they don't have spacers in their ears.
They don't have nose rings and blonde hair and they don't have camp wrists and have this voice.
I'm like, it's weird because I didn't notice in the church any difference between in the world in LA, meaning my church looked like the world and it acted like the world and the worship leaders looked the same as the singers and the bands that I followed.
And meaning like it was all like, oh, and as I grew up, I'm like, there was a lot of, like, it's kind of interesting.
The Orthodox church looks different where like the church that I went to looked like, like I didn't realize that maybe as a man, I shouldn't be dressing like that.
I shouldn't look like that.
Like there's, there's some sort of seriousness that God calls us to.
And it didn't seem like God was serious is sort of what I mean.
And it seemed like it was more like your own interpretation.
And, you know, that's an interesting thing.
And so kind of going with Luigi here, you're a newer convert.
You have the female, the female side.
That's really interesting because I'm having my wife watch this.
I wanted to hear this because we might, she wants to convert to Orthodox.
I might do Catholicism.
We don't know.
But, you know, you converted during the time, and you might reflect the more modern convert.
Yeah, I mean, for me, like, I did look into, you know, the other options like Roman Catholicism and stuff.
I had a debate with one of the most famous Roman Catholic apologists, Voice of Reason.
He and I debated on the papacy, actually, when I was still inquiring into both churches.
I kind of wanted to test my arguments to see if they would hold up.
I converted shortly after that.
But yeah, I mean, to Jay's point earlier, like you brought up how kind of both churches have not changed.
Actually, one of the reasons why we're called Orthodox uniquely is because, you know, Orthodox by definition means original or true.
And so, like, as the Latins, we call them the Roman Catholics, started adding to the faith, that's why we became known as Orthodox, because we were holding to the original core doctrines of the first millennium.
In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope, he actually explicitly says about the Orthodox churches that we uphold the original Orthodox faith of the first millennium, but we reject later developments.
This is a verbatim quote you can look up by Cardinal Ratzinger.
He grants that we literally have the faith of the first millennium, but we reject these later developments, which, and we take that as they think it's a they think it's like a burn.
They're like saying it as like, yeah, you guys, what are you doing over there?
You're a stagnant faith.
We see it as no, like we are upholding the traditional church.
Like a great example is ecclesiology.
So in the first millennium, you had what's called the Pentarchy.
You had five patriarchs, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
At the schism, four of those five were on the side of the East.
Rome stood alone at the schism.
And they created this whole new ecclesiology, which is why you have the College of Cardinals now.
You have things like papal infallibility that end up developing out of that.
Whereas in the East, we have the same four ancient patriarchs.
Now we have five more on top of that because the church has grown.
So as it grows, it has more jurisdictions.
But we still have the exact same ecclesiology as the first millennium, where you have a patriarch that is responsible for a particular jurisdiction, and they have authority over that jurisdiction.
What the Pope did at the schism with Constantinople is he excommunicated Constantinople for not abiding by what he decreed about bread at the Eucharist, the use of unleavened bread at the Eucharist.
So we see an overstepping of his jurisdiction.
He's extending his jurisdiction to the East, whereas before that, his jurisdiction was just the West.
So that was what originally caused the schism.
So you see these type of developments in the West that we just reject in the East.
We uphold the same exact ecclesiology, the same creed.
You know, they changed the creed.
This is the whole point of the Filioque controversy.
So in the West, starting with the Council of Toledo in the sixth century and then developing finally culminating at the Council of Florence in the 15th century, you have the addition of the clause Filioque.
It's that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The original creed from the Constantinople Council in 381 states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father because that's what scripture says.
Jesus tells us the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
That's literally the words of Christ verbatim.
So that's what they transcribed in the Creed originally.
It's what the church recited for about a thousand years until the West finally dogmatized this addition in the 15th century at the Council of Florence.
And that's really, that was the culmination of the split between East and West.
You have kind of on and off things going on for about 500 years there, but it really culminated at the Council of Florence.
Well, it's Lions is dogmatic at Lions first, and then it's restated at Florence.
But yeah, the papacy had already like they'd made silver shields, Leo III, that are still there in the Vatican that have the Creed without the Filioque.
And it's the Pope after him.
It's John VIII that changes it and goes with the already existing altered creed that had been passed.
No, I know, but I'm saying, that's what's, that's, that's why I like you.
And that's why I think, you know, it's interesting because a lot of people have passionate beliefs and they don't read and they don't know why.
We saw with Ted Cruz that he has, he, he wants to go to war.
He wants to go to war.
You guys watch our other episode talking about this.
He wants to go to war with Iran because God said that we need to bless Israel.
And then it's theologically blessing Israel means bombing anyone that Netanyahu wants to bomb.
There's a real world implication that comes from this.
And when pressed about what he was talking about, you know, we won't get into that today.
It turned out he didn't know what he was talking about.
So it is important our theology is correct.
Here's what I want to break down.
I'm going to get into this about what are the foundational beliefs of Orthodox Christianity because, and I want to know not your beliefs or just your sect, Greek, Russian, or Antiochian or whatever it is.
I want to know, like, you know, together, what is the core definition of like, what is the Orthodox Christianity?
And how would you explain it to a five-year-old in like a couple of minutes?
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Links on the screen and the description.
Go to Jay.
I have not gotten a straight answer from anyone on what the core foundational beliefs of Orthodox Christianity are and how it differs from other Christian denominations.
Everyone I ask just tells me, like, we're the true church.
So in the New Testament, part of what goes along with the idea of successors to the apostles is the notion of a ministerial priesthood.
Priests offer sacrifices.
And so if you read Hebrews 10, Paul describes the altar that we eat from as a priestly, uses the Greek word Eucharistia there, an offering.
Protestantism, when it was birthed, basically took issue with this and they shied away from the notion of the bread and the wine being transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ and then being an offering to God the Father.
So there's a sort of a shying away from a perpetual Eucharistic sacrifice that Orthodox and Roman Catholics do believe in.
So that's a big difference between us and Protestants.
But we also disagree with quite a few things that Roman Catholics do as well.
We don't have the Immaculate Conception of Mary doctrine.
We don't have the idea that Mary was also born in a special way such that she was not subject to original sin.
The effects of sin pass on, the fallen nature passes on, but we aren't inherently evil or guilty for Adam's sin.
So we disagree with the notion that many Protestants or maybe even Calvary Chapel believes that there's an original sin that's guilt that's passed on from Adam.
Your children are going to sin because they're sons of Adam, but they're not sinners immediately because they're sons of Adam.
So we look at sin a little bit differently in the East where we say that sin is a sickness to be healed rather than a crime to be punished.
So what we see as infants, they're born with the sickness, right?
This inclination towards sin.
And through the sacraments, this is why we baptize and chrismate infants because it's through the sacraments that they're actually being restored and their nature is being healed of that sickness that is sin.
They would maybe become opium addicts, but they're not guilty of the crime.
They're not guilty of a crime.
It's not their fault that they're feeling the effects of my action.
If a mom has a child who develops fetal alcohol syndrome because she drinks, right?
The child is not guilty of the sin of alcoholism because it's not his fault.
So in the same way, we all feel the effects of Adam's sin because he is our forefather, but we're not sinners in the sense of actual sin or guilt until we commit sins.
I also, people know, I was like very new age before I became a Christian.
And I was like tapping into witchcraft.
And I know this might, people think I'm like, you know, bullshit about this, but I actually did get possessed by like a spirit or a demon at one point.
And it was crazy.
We've talked about that on the show.
And I was like possessed by a spirit and then it left me and I got back control of myself.
And that's what made me like actually afraid of darkness and the devil because I was like, wait a second.
This isn't a Ouija board or this is not like an eight ball.
These are real entities and I'm not channeling the Kundalini spirit or something that I'm getting like, you know, my stretch is on point and my aura is going up.
Like these things have power over us or can have power.
Maybe if there's this darkness, then maybe there might be something else out there, right?
Some light.
And even though people say, well, you had an evangelical pastor, you know, dad, you must have been a Christian your whole life.
In fact, no, I was a skeptic.
I was not a Christian.
My background is in developmental and genetic biology.
I've always been a science guy, right?
And so I always wanted proof and evidence.
And it might be anecdotal, but I did experience spiritual darkness.
Coming from this, coming from your background, not saying you had the exact same side.
Were you familiar with spiritualism before this?
And like, what is it about Orthodox Christianity that would convince you that like their beliefs that, you know, spiritism, new age stuff, which is a lot of people in LA, like that that's wrong?
What was their beliefs that you were like, oh, this is why Orthodox is truth, you know, even beyond just, you know, Christianity and Catholicism and this, you know, if you bring spiritism, everything, why, what beliefs about these people reigned true that you still hold today that kind of set it apart?
Well, it's interesting that it's set apart from Protestantism in that we have to go through a process of catechism, they call it.
So, you know, in the Protestant church, you can just go knock on a door and someone answers the door and they say, believe in Jesus.
And you agree.
And, okay, now you're saved, right?
Like, it's raise your hand.
Yeah, it's that easy.
But in our church, it's not really like that because it is a commitment.
The framework they explain it in is becoming the bride of Christ.
So you are going through the stages that you would go through if you're going to marry someone.
So first you meet them, then you date them, then you become engaged, then you become married.
And so all of these ceremonies we have in the church, that is a lot different than you have years or however long that you need to decide, yes, this is what I'm going to do, right?
Like, like ideologically, I'm looking at like my sister Perduce over here and it's like, you know, we're not Orthodox.
You come from more of a background than I am.
But like, you know, you saw this, you converted to it.
So what were those core beliefs where it's like, yeah, we were going over a little bit of Catholicism and like what's different, but why was this different from what, you know, you're living in the world?
What did you see as the core beliefs that was like, oh, yeah, this is the truth, right?
This is the way the truth in life, this church, why was that attractive to you or what led you to that?
So once you start looking into like secret societies, conspiracy theories, ancient history, other cults and gods, it gets so dark, you know, satanic ritual abuse and those kind of subjects.
So once you've seen the darkness, you know where the light's coming from.
And even the people in these things say that the power of Christ has, I mean, the name of Christ has power in these occult realms and we don't even know why.
So you can see that there's different paths that women and men take to get to the same place.
Right.
And the church that I went to, what stuck out about them, everyone was so humble.
The clergy and the priest, it was a contrast between the evangelical world where a pastor is like a rock star or a local celebrity or something like that.
The priest in the Orthodox church is very humble.
They call themselves a servant.
They don't take vows of poverty or anything like that, but they're not flashy.
It's just everything that you would think that a spiritual father should act like.
They act like that.
Another thing that attracted me as I was going there was there wasn't a bunch of people trying to date me all the time.
I was like, this is, this is actually, my wife pointed out.
She was like, have you noticed the girls here?
And I go, trick question, huh?
Nope.
No, but she was like, you notice the girls?
I go, oh, you mean it's like a bunch of college girls dressed like they're going to the club?
And you're going, I don't want to be going to a church trying to find, you know, worship God and then like noticing if a girl's got a nice ass or something like that.
Like there is a little bit in the Protestantism, like a lack of reverence.
And it's like, I'm not here to like police and be this guy that's like, you know, you have to dress like you're in a burqa.
People always do that.
Oh, so you want me to wear a burqa?
Like, there's a little bit of difference modesty-wise between a burqa and just not wearing a mini skirt where your thong's showing, you know?
So that is interesting.
I did notice that in the Catholic and the Orthodox, like women wear veils sometimes.
They have a reverence.
And I think that's really important, you know, to understand that we're going to behave differently than the world.
So let me ask you on your conversion then, because I really respect the difference.
Like that's what I feel like evangelicalism didn't have.
It's like it kind of like says, like, oh, here's the way to know God.
And it seems like it's, it's just trying to attract a feminine side of things.
And I also find, I don't know if this happens in the Orthodox, but there's a lot of gossip in the evangelical church.
There's a real problem.
And that to me, I've always said, even within politics, like politics have a feminine spirit now, which is now all about slander and gossip versus, you know, it used to be like you went to war and it was your achievements and what you accomplished.
And now no one even knows what Ted Cruz has done.
No one can name a bill he's had.
It's just that, you know, he's probably got dirt on people.
People have dirt on him.
And there's this manipulation, right?
This way to kind of get ahead.
And I feel scared in the evangelical church if people were to know my sins, you know?
Like if you go out and you bang some chick, you know, whether you're married or not, you don't even know what to do in the church.
And that's what happened to me is before I was married or whatever, fell into sexual sin and was like trying to figure out what to do.
And like the pastor's like, you have to stand in front of the church and confess it to everybody.
And like, and I was like, all right, that doesn't sound right.
Went to another pastor and he's like, then like 20 people found out and like everybody knew.
And then they were like, it was like.
It was really weird.
And they ostracized me and like, you know, you got to start from zero.
It was like we were in like a game, a VR.
And it was like, you know, I lost my points or something.
And then I got to start over.
If there is that sort of sanctity, you wonder, you know, can people hold your secrets?
Can they keep it before the Lord?
And kind of want to know with you, Luigi, right now.
As someone who's a new convert and someone who's here, you remind me of a lot of the people that are attracting me to this, just young guys who have found some sort of a wholeness or a peace in this.
What are their beliefs?
And what drew you to that?
Or why is it that you chose that over Protestant churches, which I would say are a lot easier to break into?
You can just go there, you already got a bagel.
Not going to lie, the bagels are a good selling point.
It just doesn't help you when you fall into sexual sin.
Yeah, I mean, really what it comes down to is our view of worship.
I mean, if you think about what the Christian life looked like for like a medieval peasant or just really anyone in any century before like the post-Enlightenment era, like Christianity was attending divine liturgy and partaking in the Eucharist, reciting the Creed.
Like I noticed that as I was studying history, I was like, my version, I actually read this from an Anglican, it was an Anglican scholar who pointed this out that, you know, until the invention of the printing press, the lay people, all they did for the Christian life was attend liturgy.
They partook in the Eucharist.
They recited the creed.
And so I noticed this as a modern Christian.
I was like, my version of Christianity is completely disconnected from the way that Christians have always lived the Christian life.
So when I realized this, I attended the divine liturgy at the Orthodox service.
And what's amazing about the Orthodox divine liturgy is the priest is just a humble participant in the worship service.
He's facing the altar.
So contrast that with this fire and brimstone preacher, right?
Who is making you feel really good?
He's making you feel inspired.
Now, we do have homilies where they give teachings, but it's very short.
The focus is on the Eucharist.
The focus is on Christ.
And even actually, Francis Chan, who is a prominent Protestant apologist and pastor, previous pastor, he pointed this out.
He said, at the Reformation, what changed, what really occurred in substance there, the change at the Reformation was the Eucharist got replaced with a really good preacher.
So now the culminating aspect of worship is no longer Christ.
Well, I was laughing because I was going to say I was having PTSD because it reminds me of my two-year-old son when I tell him he can't have a cook, aka cookie at 6 a.m.
He's like going through a Pentecostal reaction.
Maybe he's just a spiritual guy, you know, who knows?
But like that is, so let me, let me actually, I know you're going to, you're going to lead on that, but this was my next question.
Let's let's talk about this, this, the Eucharist.
Let's talk about some of this stuff and the practices.
Can you explain the importance of this then, like the Eucharist, the confessions, and I guess the icons liturgy and like fasting?
Like, what do these things play a role in Orthodox?
Because again, in evangelicalism, people might not be a Christian.
You know, you don't know the difference.
A lot of you guys are agnostic that follow the show.
But, you know, obviously fasting is optional, right?
I mean, they didn't tell you to fast.
Most of them are, most of the people at my church look like this, and so you could fast.
One thing that is a couple of things I'd recommend to people that really want to look into this.
There's two documentaries on YouTube that are really good on this topic.
One is called Fountain of Immortality, and it's a Russian Orthodox Church made a documentary on what the liturgy is and what the purpose of it is.
And so it kind of walks through each section of a worship service in the Orthodox Church and why it's that way.
But there's another documentary that my friends over at Orthodox Shahada made.
They're apologists that do a lot of work against Islam.
And they made an excellent documentary that explains the continuity with the way that the temple and synagogue worship services were set up.
And since the New Testament doesn't give us an actual list of a service, then by default, both Orthodox and Catholic agree that the way that we're going to know how we do worship has to be from tradition.
So we believe that the apostles, when they went out in the Roman Empire and set up bishoprics, they established a pattern of worship or a liturgical tradition, including an altar that Paul mentions in Hebrews 13, where there's a focal point that Ben was talking about that is the culmination of the service.
But the rest of the sections of the service, as you see in the Fountain of Immortality video, if you watch it, those are all patterned on the way that God had always had his worship done.
So you can go back to Genesis.
Abraham builds an altar, calls upon Yahweh in the time of the kings, right?
There's David would go and worship at the temple.
He wrote his psalms for liturgical temple worship where there's an altar.
So everything is directed towards this focal point of the offering.
In the New Testament, all of that is fulfilled in the Eucharistic offering, which is what the priest does at the divine liturgy.
So we think all those things in the Old Testament are literally pointing to what we do.
And what we do is the heavenly worship on earth.
So if you read Revelation 5 through 9, you see an altar, you see incense, you see vestiments, you see imagery, you see elders, you see robes, you see all of these saints involved in that.
Angels are involved offering things.
All of that we think is identical to what's happening in the earthly worship service.
So literally all of it's straight out of the Bible.
And if you had Orthodox liturgy, literally everything that's happening is the Bible come to life.
I don't know if you want to add on to that, you know, with both of your perspectives.
We don't have to keep going with the same circle, but it's like, yeah, the Eucharist is a weird thing because I'm not taking it at the Catholic Church because my understanding is if you take the Eucharist, you're also like under the authority of the church.
He's one of these crazy guys, like what you just showed on that.
I have a very low tolerance for shenanigans.
And that's the contrast that you're going to see if you go to a divine liturgy as opposed to like a Pentecostal church or a weird Catholic church or something.
Everything is very reverent.
Everything is very respectful.
You're never going to see anything goofy or something that could be mocked.
What your question is, look, can we as Protestants just like have a higher view of worship and then kind of like do the same thing the Orthodox are doing?
The answer is so I before I converted, I was a very high church.
I was Presbyterian.
I was part of the PCA.
It was about as traditional as you can get as a Protestant.
But even there, it's very evident that it's a pseudo-tradition because here's the deal.
It's still disconnected from the historical church.
And one of the things that Jay brought up is the concept of apostolic succession.
So you can actually go, you can just Google Orthodox apostolic succession for Antioch, Orthodox Apostolic Succession for Constantinople, et cetera, et cetera.
And you can literally see the list of names of the ordination all the way back to the apostles.
So if you pull up Antioch, you can literally pull up our current patriarch, and then it'll trace by name in every century all the way back to St. Peter.
And St. Peter appointed somebody, who appointed somebody else, who appointed somebody else.
So we have this apostolic succession.
We have that continuity with the historical church that these Protestant churches don't.
Now, what can happen, and this has happened, is we can bring in churches into our communion.
So if they decide to submit to our theology, they can be brought into the Orthodox communion.
And this has happened in something called the Western Rite, where you actually have like whole Anglican and Lutheran churches that submit to Orthodox theology and they're brought into our communion.
So for people that are new here, obviously this, I want to talk about, I really want to talk about the icons because this thing, the icons and the praying to saints, because this is a, this is, I'm uncomfortable with this.
But as we talk about this, I want to remind you guys, you want to feel comfortable?
Get yourself some van man.
No, not, not a joke, actually.
You guys know we've been partnering with a lot of companies here that, you know, believe in our values.
And one of the things that I really like that Jay and you guys are talking about is like, there's a difference between men and women.
And I just don't like, I don't like, like I went through a real woman-hating period.
Some women really try to ruin my, you know, ruin my career and stuff.
And like really, really, really were nasty to me publicly for a long time.
And it kind of made me like, you know, I got into the red pills stuff.
I was like, just started to hate women.
And my wife approached me one time.
And I know people are going to say, oh, you're, you know, whatever, a wife guy or whatever.
But no, she told me, she was like, hey, listen, I'm mad at these people too.
I don't like what they're doing.
But, like, you know, I noticed that, like, when we're arguing, you start, now you're starting to say, like, oh, women are like this.
And it's like, why don't you just treat me like I'm an individual person?
And why are you putting me in the group of a woman?
And, like, why don't you, why don't we work on these as two people together, like under God, and like work on our own issues.
I said, you know what?
You're right.
You know, I don't want to turn into what a feminist is, but towards women.
I want to remember that God made us distinctly different, but for a purpose, right?
That God, there's a purpose together.
And I know that sometimes, you know, we get so we forget that there is a difference between us.
But one thing that I love is that God did, we're still humans.
We still have bodies that God made that are unique, that need good things.
And I think that a lot of women get scammed into buying products because of their tendency towards vanity, that there's all this skincare stuff that's just full of poison and toxins.
And I also think that sometimes men in the reverberation from that just don't want to be feminine stuff.
So then, like, you know, you see guys, right?
They don't clean themselves.
They don't have good hygiene.
I think God does call us to be clean.
I think, you know, you see a lot of laws in Leviticus.
And I think what's been hard for me too as a guy is like, you know, I used to take care of myself.
I used to put on all these creams and retinols and whatever.
And then, you know, all of a sudden, like, I found myself looking kind of like, you know, shaggy and whatever or shabby.
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My babies, we use it for like diaper ration for like cracking and chafing in the skin.
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Okay, so I want to talk about, though, you know, this iconography, because this does seem feminine to me.
It seems weird.
Okay.
I'll just be completely honest.
I don't understand it.
There's people, I have a brother-in-law who's Orthodox and they start putting like little pictures up in their house and stuff.
And I was sort of raised that this is like, you know, how's that feminine?
Well, I meant like just having like little like pictures up and stuff.
Like, well, maybe I'm wrong.
That's what I'm saying.
To me, I was raised.
It's like, you know, you just like, girls always have these posters on their walls and like little tapestries.
And as a guy, you know, it's like the church is like, we're all coming in.
We have the blank walls.
You know how it is, evangelical.
It's as dumbed down as you can be, except for the $10 million TVs.
But also on top of that, my friends were like, oh, we pray to the saints and stuff.
And I genuinely am not trying to be disrespectful.
So again, when God creates the worship of the Israelite nation at the temple, remember, there's already altars that Abraham had set up, Joshua set up.
When he gives the law to Moses, he says, here's how I want the temple worship to be conducted.
Inside the temple, there's all this golden imagery everywhere, right?
Inside the Holy of Holies, there's the Ark of the Covenant, which has angels on the box.
Everybody's seen Indiana Jones, right?
You know, the Ark of the Covenant, right?
Raise the Lost Ark.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so the visual imagery aspects, the guy, you know, you even have Hiram, who's who's given the gift of the Holy Spirit to make the temple ornate.
When Christianity comes, a lot of Protestants assume that that's all somehow wiped away or done away.
And the Orthodox and Catholic views have never believed that.
In fact, the earliest worship services in the second and third century are identical to, in substance, the way that we worship now.
So, for example, in the book of Revelation, which I said chapters five through nine, we believe are an actual liturgical worship service.
You see, it says, for example, when he had taken the book, the four beasts and the four elders fell down before the lamb.
This is John seeing into heaven.
Every one of them had harps and they had golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
If you go the next few chapters from five to eight and nine, there's very similar imagery of an altar and there's saints that are underneath the altar praying for the church on earth.
So when David was composing those psalms for the temple worship, he would address the angels and he would say, praise him, all ye angels.
Praise the Most High.
So you can speak to the angels because we believe that the angels and the saints who have gone on before us are part of the exact same worship service that we're having on earth.
So both Roman Catholic and Orthodox then believe that icons are windows into heaven showing us the relationship that we have in terms of the doctrine of the community of saints.
Yeah, the God of Abraham is very particular about the way he's worshipped.
If you read Leviticus 10, the famous passage with Nadab and Abiyu, they kind of make up their own liturgical practice, and then God immediately kills them on the spot because of their illicit practice of worship.
So basically what it comes down to is the order of the service.
I mean, we literally have the liturgy of St. James, the brother of Jesus.
We have the liturgy that goes back to St. James himself.
We have the liturgy of St. Mark.
And then the normative liturgy we use in the Orthodox Church is the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is from the fourth century.
But I wanted to bring up something with the prayers of the saints, too.
I mean, like, so, so you like, you don't have a problem like asking like a friend to pray for you, right?
Like, if you say, hey, can you pray for me for this?
Yeah, if you read, if you read Revelation chapter 20, you can actually see the saints particularly experience a unique resurrection where they're reigning with Christ.
So it's talking about in Revelation 20 where the saints are actually resurrected and reigning with Christ.
So we believe that the saints are adjacent to Christ's throne right now.
And so when we're asking them to pray for us, that's really what prayers say.
Okay, but I'm saying, but in that idea of like, you know, they're all, each worker, I mean, I just summarize it, each worker basically was hired at a different point and they were, you know, offered a certain wage.
And then the ones that worked earlier, you know, were all saved.
That's what I'm saying.
So is the gift then salvation, but in heaven, it's a kingdom.
Is it called that as an allegory, or is it actually that, you know, in the kingdom, there's hierarchy, there's people closer in the court?
So even though you, you know, the thief on the cross is still entering, he still enters into paradise, even though he repents on his day of death, right?
But even still, in one of the other parables, Jesus says that you did good, faithful servant.
You will have dominion over five cities.
You've done good, faithful servant.
You will have dominion over 10 cities.
So there's even an appropriation of a reward, greater reward.
I mean, we are resurrected, but Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that just as you look up into the sky and you see stars, some are more glorious than others.
He says, likewise in the resurrection, some will be rewarded better and more than others.
Yeah, I mean, there's parable after parable in the New Testament where Jesus is talking about the final judgment where you are going to be evaluated for your life.
And there's this obsession in evangelicalism.
There's this even, yeah, it is scary.
That's the point, right?
I mean, you see, St. Paul even says this, right?
Like St. Paul in Rome, you've talked about your struggle, you know, in the Christian life.
St. Paul in Romans chapter 7, it's a beautiful passage because he's talking about his struggle.
He's like, all the things that I want to do, all the righteousness I want to do, I can't do it.
I just keep falling short.
I keep doing the things I don't want to do.
And then at the end, he says, what a wretched sinner I am.
Thanks be to God and the Lord Jesus Christ, right?
So that's really the Orthodox life.
I mean, I really recommend anybody watch the movie Man of God.
It's about one of our saints named Saint Niktarios.
And he has this beautiful line in that movie where somebody asks him, they say, he says, are you a Christian?
And he responds, I try to be.
And I really think that that right there embodies like the Orthodox Christian life because we are constantly at this struggle with our sin nature, right?
And we're just trying to be a Christian, man.
We're just trying.
You know, our most famous prayer is the Jesus prayer.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.
And it's what we recite over and over and over again.
And really what that is, is it's the Orthodox, it's really the Orthodox prayer.
It's the prayer that embodies the Orthodox Christian life.
It's the God of the universe becoming a man, literally entering into creation, becoming nothing for our sake.
That's like, are you ever taught in Protestantism, other than like, when it comes to the incarnation, are you taught anything beyond just the crucifixion?
Like, I know I was taught mainly the incarnation, the purpose of it was for Christ to die for our sins.
But the point is, like, how often were you taught about like, why did Jesus become flesh?
Was it just to die on the cross?
I know tons of Protestants that teach that.
It's only to die on the cross.
That was why he became flesh.
For us in the Orthodox world, we believe that Christ would have incarnated even if Adam would have never fallen into sin, even if he would have never fallen into sin.
Because what Christ is doing at the incarnation is he's sanctifying humanity and bringing it to the throne of God.
So at the ascension, he actually is carrying his human nature and his human nature is currently seated on the throne of God.
And this is the process of theosis in orthodoxy, where we are actually becoming like God.
When we walk in the ways of Christ, we are actually becoming like God.
And for us, that is salvation.
Theosis is salvation.
And this is why I say Paul always talks about it as a process.
You see him in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, he says, to us who are being saved.
Now, you've probably heard in Protestantism, when were you saved?
Well, we kind of laugh at that question in Orthodoxy because for us, we've been saved, we're being saved, and we will be saved.
Because that's how scripture talks about salvation.
Because the reason why I know something's wrong, and I talk to a lot of guys and I feel the exact same way, is that I think we were talking earlier yesterday.
I'm like, you know, I'm kind of, I'm carnal.
Not even kind of, right?
I'm sort of like carnal.
I'm not spiritually dead in terms of like, I know that God is the way, the truth, and the life.
And I know it's not the vex God.
You know, we talked about that.
I know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
But I've also been taught and I've been trained in a way of thinking, a theology.
And it didn't work.
It didn't stand the test of fire.
And I've seen a lot of people the same way.
They didn't work.
When they hit, you know, kind of like the house built upon the sand, it was like, well, I did all this stuff and the emotion stuff.
And when I really needed to be tested, you know, my morality slipped and the foundation left.
So clearly, I'm not an idiot.
It's like, okay, I don't want to build my house back on sand again.
That's not a good thing.
However, you kind of just get comfortable, especially someone like me.
Like, I can't really get fired or anything.
You know, I can kind of live however I want.
And besides like breaking the law, and I can kind of get away with it, per se.
As some people said, it's like the great curse of a man of success.
Like, you know, you're not, you're not, no one's your boss.
No one's going to tell you what to do.
You're not at a church.
There's no accountability.
Nothing.
You kind of live your life freely.
However, I'm not like extremely, you know, evil at the way that people would notice.
I don't cheat people.
I don't screw people.
I'm not like doing things to other people, right?
However, I know all sin leads to death.
So this is not an excuse.
I just mean I suffer with the same normal sins that men, that men are around.
And the problem is I notice that it's a very empty life.
You know, I have beautiful children, a wife, success in other ways.
I make $37 a month.
We're getting up there.
I was looking at my producer.
We'll start paying them next month.
So don't worry, guys.
We'll get there.
But yeah, but I noticed that there's this sort of like disquieted, disquietness in my soul where something always feels wrong.
And like there's something lacking and there's something missing.
And my buddy Chris keeps telling me it's a God-sized hole and you can fill it with whatever, but it's never going to go away until you submit to the Lord.
I don't understand.
Like, so I go to become Orthodox, but like I could join a club too.
I can go join a neo-Nazi club or something.
I can go join some club and be a part of something.
How does this, how does becoming orthodox solve the issue, the God whole issue?
Because I'm kind of scared for my own salvation.
I've always known God and I've always been confident that God knows me and loves me.
But then I also see like gay people with husbands on like Prague or you being like, yeah, God loves me and I'm going to heaven.
Maybe my sin's not the same, but I definitely feel a little bit like a retard like that, where it's like, maybe I'm justifying my own sin in my life, my own issues, because I'm definitely not putting God first.
So like, how does orthodoxy play a role, practically speaking, of like a guy in my position, which is most American evangelical guys who just feel like, you know, they're living in sin.
You know, everyone's looking at porn, by the way, or something, right?
It's like what 93% of guys have some light form of porn addiction in the United States right now.
Clearly, everyone's got an issue, especially men.
What does this do?
And how does this actually help me versus just going back into the Protestant church and finding my relationship with God, as they would say?
If I could read this quote by Father Seraphim Rose, he's soon to be canonized in our church.
He's part of the Russian Orthodox Church and very modern, reposed, I think, about 50 some years ago.
He says this: He says, Christ is the only exit from this world.
All other exits, sexual rapture, political utopia, economic independence, are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of the many who have tried them.
And I think one of the things that Orthodoxy uniquely offers is, especially for you as a man, is structure.
I found my life in Protestantism to be chaotic.
I had this genuine desire for Christ, but I didn't know how to actually embrace him.
I didn't know how to actually fill that God-sized hole in my life with him because it was so chaotic in Protestantism.
What Orthodoxy does is it gives you structure.
You have your daily prayers, you have your fasting, you have your calendar of fasting and feasting.
And the beautiful thing about fasting is it makes our times of feasting so much better.
I mean, one of the funnest parts of the year, and these guys I'm sure would agree with me, is the paschal season when we're celebrating the risen Christ.
I mean, it's a party.
If you look at pictures of like Greece and like the Orthodox countries, like it's like the 4th of July.
They have fireworks going off to celebrate the risen Christ because they've been fasting for like 50-some days leading up to it.
And now they finally get to eat meat again.
Like it's like, you know, so there's a celebration in that feast.
So all this to say, you know, one of the things I struggled with was my prayer life, you know, when I was Protestant because it's like it's so I just had a hard time.
I loved reading the Bible.
My prayer life was so hard.
Orthodoxy gives me this structure of the morning.
Well, yeah, we have it.
So we have prayers throughout the day.
So there's prayers in the morning and prayers in the evening.
My wife and I always do our evening prayers together, which also, by the way, like, and these guys can probably attest to the same, this does wonders to your marriage when you're praying together every night.
I mean, I thought I had a great marriage before we became Orthodox.
Like just the, you start to see the holes in like, wow, gosh, like, how were we living like that before?
You know, you don't even realize some of the things that you're not doing.
Well, yeah, I mean, for us, so in the Orthodox worldview, marriage is part of salvation.
It literally contributes to your salvation.
And one of the, I mean, something simple is like accountability.
I mean, like, I'm lazy.
Like, if I don't have my wife there to like remind me, let's do the evening prayers, like, you know, I'm going to probably forget or I'm going to blow it off.
And, you know, sometimes I joke that like the only reason I might make it into heaven is because of my wife.
I mean, because literally like, like the accountability that's there, but just the unity that's formed, like, you know, in praying together and in walking the Orthodox life together.
My wife spends all day, you know, when she's not working, she's reading the Orthodox saints.
She's reading the lives of the saints.
And then she's telling me about the stuff she's reading about the Orthodox saints, right?
Because for us, the saints are, that's our example, right?
And so to Jamie's point, like, look, you have the female saints that are giving you that framework for the feminine life.
And then you have the male saints that are giving you the framework for the masculine life, right?
And so for us, it's the lives of the saints, you know, that we're really, you know, striving to be like.
Orthodox priests are master human psychologists because they've heard and they know it's not like in the Roman church where it's a transactional thing when you confess.
We're engaged in legal battle right now because the state is trying to enforce our priests to actually disclose information and they're refusing to do it because that's the point of confession is for it to be this private confession between you and the priest.
Look, and that's where I hate all these based takes.
That's like, I've always said therapy is gay, but the reason why I say it's gay is I go, you know, therapy is gay in the fact that like, why don't you go talk to a woman?
Like, and no offense to you, but like as a man, why am I yapping to a woman about my problems?
But you need a male priesthood and a male authority because our deity, God the Father, it's a patriarchal religion.
Christ became a man.
It's not that women are bad or evil, but God did make women in the image of man and man in the image of God.
So there is a hierarchy there.
There's different roles.
It doesn't mean women can't be saved or can't be saints, but there's a reason why he chose, and the Orthodox Church always maintains an all-male priesthood because that's who is appointed to have that role and that authority to be able to diagnose what your illness is.
So it's like this is a few hundred bucks for one of these.
And a lot of you guys want it.
So we'll see who wins.
It'll just be a, we'll just do a generator with your email and someone will win it and we'll announce it on the show.
But to kind of end here, we could talk about this forever and I'm sure there's more we could discuss.
But what would you say is the best next step for someone who's interested in this?
Plus anything else that we didn't talk about, whether it's a misconception or some point you wanted to make that you feel like, you know, it's probably been a little too intro for you guys or like surface level.
But for me, this is like more than I knew, you know?
Well, yeah, I mean, for us, like as apologists, like what we're doing is like a fraction of a fraction of like what orthodoxy is.
Like really, ultimately, our goal as apologists is to get you into the door of an Orthodox church and experience the divine liturgy.
Because the divine liturgy is really what transforms you, right?
And that's really what happened to me.
Like I had all this head knowledge when I showed up to divine liturgy, but I was still wrestling over the stuff with like the icons.
And it wasn't until I actually walked into an Orthodox church and experienced divine liturgy when I actually saw the icons and I saw the veneration of the icons when I started to understand like what the point of this is and how we're surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses.
Like St. Paul says in the book of Hebrews, he says we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses.
In the Orthodox church, you are physically surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, right?
Another thing that, you know, the divine liturgy does is it shows you like not only the saints that lived like 2,000 years ago, but like the saints that just lived like within the last 10, 20 years.
And so what that does for your children, like as a father, right, is it tells your children that this is not a dead religion that like died in like the first century, right?
Like we have this chain of saints that have been living this transcendent life for the last 2,000 years.
So this is why divine liturgy is so important to the Orthodox life.
And so to somebody in that position, like, look, show up.
So you are seeing a mystery play almost that is over a thousand years old that people have been doing all across the world.
And they didn't always allow you to witness the communion.
So there's a break in our liturgy that says, all catechumens depart.
And in the olden days, it was such a serious thing that they would make all the non-baptized people leave because it was a private thing.
Also, because they were fighting different pagan groups and the pagans would run up and try and steal the Eucharist and use it for magic and stuff like that.
So this is a very recent thing that you are even allowed to witness what is happening.
So there's three documentaries that people are interested.
I'd recommend.
First, I sent to you because you asked a lot of questions about icons.
There's a great documentary called The Icon, a seven-part documentary.
What I sent was one full three hours of the full thing.
That's a good place to start because it kind of gives the worldview, the philosophy of orthodoxy through the lens of iconography.
Second, I would say there's a documentary called Fountain of Immortality that I mentioned earlier.
If you are going to go to Orthodox service, this will explain the sections of it and why we do it that way.
And then the third one is another documentary my friend made called Christian Worship in the Old Testament that shows the biblical basis for all of the Orthodox distinctives, you could say.
We'll download them because honestly, my producer over here, Henny, we will be going to Australia, Lord willing.
We got our tickets, so it's a good 24 hours of flying each direction.
So I'm sure some of these documentaries, you don't want to just watch Spider-Man.
I'll knock them out.
I was like, man, I'm going to get some books done.
And it's true.
And then I'll probably pop a Xanax as well, legally, and fall asleep.
Just to let you guys know, I really appreciate this conversation.
And I get the feeling that because you talk about this stuff all the time, like this is this could be talked about for days and weeks and months.
And you could get into the depths of it.
And I know you guys traveled long and far.
And it's been so great to have you.
I'd love to always have you guys back on the show, whether for specials.
Just so you guys know, if you're watching this, there is another show called Almost Serious that we run on Saturday.
So on this channel, because it's new, we have content seven days a week, Monday through Sunday at 7 p.m.
If you don't see an episode of a show, it's simply because we are traveling.
We have a small crew, like we were covering the riots.
However, Saturday is Almost Serious.
Almost Serious is a one-on-one interview, getting the background on someone's life.
What drives them, what they believe, what they've done.
So, well, the focus is not on Orthodox Christianity for our episode tomorrow.
Jay Dyer, it's gonna be the one-on-one.
We're talking about his politics, his view on the current state of affairs, uh, talking a bit about like how involved should Christians be politically?
When does it cross the line?
Is Christian nationalism an issue?
Um, you know, what is evangelicalism and this idea of uh Zionism and how do they play together and just a lot of interesting things.
You know, uh, is racism a Christian principle?
Can't you be racist and Christian?
These are gonna be tough things talking to like a theologian about, um, that I think it'll be really interesting.
So, watch that tomorrow at 7 p.m.
And then the book club on Sunday.
Uh, but these guys have websites, these guys have so much content.
If you enjoyed this, uh, and I know that not everyone will because some people are like, dude, I don't want to hear these people yap about God, um, or you think Orthodox is bad.
It's always funny.
I see people, you know, shit talk um Catholics a lot or should talk to Protestants.
I don't hear a lot of bad talking about Orthodoxy.
I don't see a lot of people like, oh, Orthodox suck.
Um, all the only time I ever see that war is just between the actual Orthodox in Russia and Ukraine right now, you know, that they're the right of the wrong way.
So, people want to find you and they want to follow you.
Uh, Jay, you got these new books that you've authored that you've written.
Um, you're also a treasure trove of information that you've read.
If you can go to his screen there, uh, yeah, you got a few things.
Tell us how we can find you, follow you, support your work, support you and your wife, and the mission you guys have out in the world.
Because I do watch your stuff quite often and I find it to be extremely interesting, but it's mostly clips.
I think I'm just more of a crazy sort of internet man that's you know, character, a comedian, the Shrek of theologians.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, um, because most of what we do, I mean, we do a lot of debates, we do a lot of open calls, we do a lot of theological discussion, but we also cover Hollywood.
I mean, my third Hollywood book is about to come out, Esther Hollywood 3.
Um, same publisher as Whitney Webb, Trine Day, so people can check that out if they want to get a copy at jsonalysis.com in the shop.
Um, I've got another book I did here, which is just kind of all my geopolitical or yeah, theology, geopolitics, and philosophy essays in one big red book at JSALysis.
You can get that in the shop.com.
Um, yeah, and then um, I cover all of that on my channel, YouTube, fourth hour of Alex Jones, Most Fridays, done that for the last five years.
Sam Hyde writing was crazy writing for Sam Hyde, yeah, the Sam Hyde show, not World Peace.
So, if you work for one, don't say that they're going to hell, yeah, no, I don't, but um, but yeah, so amazing, and of course, lovely wife, how can we find you?
If you can write that down, we got to do more stuff on the channel, like movie reviews and things, the bonus content on, you know, on Saturdays or whatever.
I know, everyone, it's been a long week.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I can already see my staff too.
Everyone's just like so tired from life.
Get some sleep, please, everybody, this weekend.
Catch up.
We were at the Riots, as you know.
You can check out that work.
And this guy got beat up by the LAPD.
But, you know, he did a damn good job.
I'm very, very proud of everyone who works here.
Thank you guys for supporting the show.
Don't forget, I'm sorry if you had a super chat.
Again, if you didn't watch the beginning and it's airing live and you see that there was no super chats, we'll read your super chats at the book club.
We'll just check out if anyone sent them in on Sunday.
So we'll still address that.
This is pre-recorded.
I told you at the beginning.
Sorry if you just joined in.
To the rest of you guys watching, shout out to my guests today.
Thank you so much.
It's been wonderful having you on.
And to Mike Mendoza and the rest of the crew, we'll see you tomorrow at 7 p.m. with Almost Sirius.
Have a great rest of the week.
As always, my name is Elijah Schaefer, and may God bless the United States of America.
