Episode 090: Obedience - Slavery or Freedom?

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic welcome to god splaining this is father bonaventure chapman and i am joined by father gregory pine although for those of you have been paying attention watching on youtube you'll notice that the background is different from father gregory he's done some construction in switzerland without telling the prior and here we are uh no that's not entirely true although i like what you've done back there so father gregory where are you right now where in the world is father gregory pine it's like a new game from carmen san diego i've just dated myself i played that i played that computer game that's how i learned that riyadh is the capital of saudi arabia i don't know that i retained anything else um i am in austria so i'm in gaming austria that's the campus of the cartels of gaming which is where franciscan university of steubenville has its study abroad program so i am just continuing with my academic work at the same clip but in a different place and celebrating mass and exposing blessed sacrament hearing confessions for um the community here associated with franciscan university so yeah i took a 10 hour and 15 minute train ride yesterday which um which was long it's funny i like flying and i like driving and the jury's still out on trains because on the one hand you're like oh yeah this is great because i don't have to drive and endanger other people's lives but on the other hand you're also like i also can't like make rest stops and pick which road i want to go on i don't know there's something about it that i feel constrained by um still still still trying to sort out whether or not i like trains do you think the answer is maybe maybe all right let's go yeah yeah this good answer well we're going to get to the constrained part of this in a minute here which i suspect but i'm just going to say anyone from steubenville we might have people who are alum uh alumni and alumnae from steubenville and or people's students right now currently going if you want to call in at this point and answer asking questions to uh father gregory since it's in garmin or your friends uh you can't it's not a call-in show um so uh we're talking about constraint because father gregory feels constrained when he's riding trains he doesn't get to have this sort of freedom this sort of thing and uh that harkens back to an episode we did a little while ago on speeding and uh which was basically a discussion of um why speeding is okay to do if you want to do it and not okay to do if you're a moral person um so we thought we'd just kind of ratchet out a bit and go to like a meta level for a moment and talk about obedience another thing uh which obviously obedience as a virtue and uh as an experience as an emotion i don't know if you can emotionally make obedience an emotion or a passion you know i feel very obedient today i don't know it doesn't seem likely and there's probably good reasons for that which i have suspect but obedience is important for dominicans obviously because father gregory why because it's the only vow that we make correctly in a lot of religious congregations or religious orders you profess obedience chastity and poverty but in the dominican order you only profess the one that's not to say that you aren't committed to chastity and poverty because obedience encompasses them but it's the one thing that we state yeah i was going to say um it means yeah we don't have to we don't actually give up on wealth or women which is surprising most people we just choose not to do those things but no they're encompassed under obedience and maybe there's a question a quick comment on that what why under a how are they encompassed under obedience and not like other things that like vows to hold turtles and stuff like that like why those how do those two get under there well on the one hand it's because it's how the church envisions religious life so you kind of profess with the mind of the church but on the other hand saint thomas will say that the vow of obedience encompasses chastity and poverty because because why well because when you profess these three evangelical councils in a certain sense you give of your whole person so by poverty you give of your possessions by chastity you give of your body and by obedience you give of your will but when you give one when somebody gives his or her will you effectively give the whole person because the will sets everything else in motion the will is the seed of choice the will is in a certain sense the seed of identity i think is is how many would describe it so for that reason when you give your will you give your body you give your possessions um unless you do some strange form of mental gymnastics which i can't imagine how that would work yeah yeah no that's right if you get that that's a good point it's like thomas says if you a will the end then you kind of have to will the necessary if there are necessary means to it then you have to will those things as well they're included you can't say well i'm gonna i'm gonna fly to gamey now but i don't i don't intend to take a plane you're like well you don't have wings it's not gonna happen you kind of you do commit yourself to flying in an airplane at this point or a rocket ship or something um yeah but unless you're wonder woman and then you can just will to fly and then that's what you end up you know that movie um had a possibility of dece it made you think i'll watch a dc cup marvel movie again a dc comics movie against the marvels and then after that one you thought nah no more i'll give you that flight thing it's like you know what i want to do fly yeah okay why not why not go for it who knows these rules don't make sense um but what rules do make sense obedience um so that's what we're again we're talking about here and you know i think just psychologically there's probably two two kinds of there are people who love rules just love them you know they're called germans and then there are other people who hate rules you know and i think i suspect there's also maybe developmentally too i suspect when you're i don't know if this is true might cut cross there might be children who absolutely love rules uh all the time and there's other children who just hate rules all the time or maybe it's a developmental thing but i think by the time you get by college or something you're kind of set with either thinking uh when you hear a rule thinking awesome or if you hear a rule you think nah that doesn't sound right why would that be yeah so father greg where would you put yourself on the uh on the the rule versus uh the awesome or nah that's a good question because on the one hand too i think it may also depend on what types of rules you're interacting with because not all rules as we experiencing as we experience them are on the same footing so you might have like rules of the house so you might visit a family's house and you notice that all of their shoes are neatly arranged um you know just like right inside the door and you're like ah this is a house where one removes his shoes uh but maybe you know like you just don't like taking your shoes off because you're like i don't know i feel it feels weird to be sock-footed i feel half-dressed you know so it's like discounts you have to yeah you have to contend with that kind of unstated rule of a household but it's not that big of a deal you take your shoes off you keep your shoes on it's whatever i mean if you just tromped through a muddy field i think that probably conditions your choice in a little way but okay so that would be on the more trivial end and then you have other rules right which are a lot bigger of a deal i remember when you know when we took our canon law course and you learned about grave crimes uh or you know like grave dealings types of things the types of things would be like whoa you know uh the kind of sins that cry out for vengeance or the kind of things which are just unconscionably bad so one of which would be like revealing something a priest revealing something in the um that was that was recounted in the sacrament of confession right so that's a rule in a in a very different way than removing your shoes when you come into a house one would think yeah some might say yeah yeah it's the types of things that like you know when when you are engaged in a conversation with somebody and even if the conversation might touch at three degrees of remove or peripherally to something that could tend in that direction you you feel it in your bones you're like ah you know you just you want to avoid that at all costs um but like most rules i think kind of happen in between and then it's a matter of okay who's promulgating it for what and does it seem reasonable and then those types of things may make it chafe more or less so there's some rules for me that chafe but there are other rules for me that i i love and i get pumped about following them um yeah yeah yeah and the question is so in that in that case rules it sounds like rules are kind of like prudence you know for ends it's kind of ends means so like the reason why the one rule about i mean the dialect of uh mentioning what you've heard in confession or something is yeah i mean that's like whoa i think of that as as like there's a precipice there so you know if you go off of that massive thing bad things happen excommunication all this sort of thing whereas like if you just step over a line in the road nothing really matters that much um so under that aspect like rules rules and being what you obey it sounds like it's kind of related to like what the consequences might be on things so for instance you you feel obedience very strongly for that uh the rule about confession stuff but is that because the consequences are so bad or is that because well something else whereas like you know shoes and and socks in this so is obedience under this aspect more of a prudential matter or is it or is there something else to it so there might be an element of that i know when saint thomas talks about obedience he says on the one hand it's a virtue that fits here but on the other hand it's it's kind of a virtue that we see throughout the moral life because why well he says for instance if you're obeying god all right if it's a matter of obeying god that pertains to the virtue of religion which is that aspect of justice which concerns you know giving god what is his do if it's a matter of obeying your country or your parents that pertains to the virtue of piety because it's a matter of giving your country or your parents what is their due if it's a matter of a superior like a boss at work a religious appear something like that okay that pertains to the virtue of what's sometimes called obeisance um so in saint thomas i think in st thomas is imagining of it the first consideration is the object right so with whom are you engaged you know so so like obedience is our response to a command right our generous response to a command but what really i think what matters most is who's giving the command so like not all obedient acts are on the same footing like you know if you obey the guy at the kfc who says you know six feet between you know all customers and if you obey god who says um you know greater love hath no man than this lay down his life for his friends and you like offer your life and testimony to the lord's goodness as a martyr right those aren't those aren't the same kind of obedience they're both acts of obedience but because they concern different objects one is more exalted and the other is more humble um so i don't think that one does himself a service by just putting them all in the footing like i will obey everything always without thinking about the consequences without thinking about the object just because like i relish the opportunity of obedience that's not to say that you say you know i'll obey the big matters but i won't obey the small matters because i think the lord is cautioned directly against that kind of mentality so they're related obviously but it's not like univocal to use a somewhat jargony philosophical word um it's analogical you know so it it's it's all bound up with with the object yeah i know i think that's that's in the in the object is since the commanding the one commanding because obedience is this kind of hearing the command of someone and it does make a difference i mean like one of the most bizarre games of course when you have children around your parent is like the when the children get to command you and like do this stand on a toes and there's something bizarre about that event it's so it's a hilarious situation when you're when children are commanding adults because you think this is insane like why are those why are those grown people obeying those small those small little miniature people who don't know what they're doing um and yeah and so obedience in that sense is is like a willed decision to obey for in a particular kind of context of a game then like societal obedience again you know wide like traffic signals or traffic rules or those kind of things like what's going on with those well it's something well who am i obeying in that sense well this data i suppose and then the state is like us together as a convent you know a conventional community or something we could have a discussion about this and how this social contract business works if it does um and then of course like divine law yeah so the how we obey these things depends on on who's who's giving them now the question is um what is the virtue in in obeying and how do we figure out where well where does draw the line on it so what kind of i mean when we've asked you so the guy in kfc for instance you know six feet social distance or something right how do you calculate that like what do you what are you thinking when uh so how about this week we'll do a test case like what are you going through what's going through in your mind and then i'll tell you what goes through my mind on these things and then we'll see like what happens yeah okay so here i think it's helpful to think about it in terms of justice right and all justice that we encounter on this earth is a participation in god's justice so god is just but god doesn't owe us anything so god doesn't obey us but in a certain sense god obeys himself right so that god made us he created human creatures in grace with a supernatural destiny and we sinned and yet it seems in a certain sense just that god afford us a re-entry into his divine life doesn't know us certainly doesn't know us but it seems to issue from god's own self-consistency if that makes sense like god owes it to himself so i think that there's an element in justice which regards the other you know like that's what justice is about it regards the other and what's due to the other but it also regards oneself so justice um has this element of interior consistency but like you want to be a just person so regardless of it is of of whom it is who's ordering you to do something and whether or not you think them a good or bad person provided that it's in a setting where it's warranted right you're in the kfc he's wearing the kfc hat he's purveying the kfc goods right it's his domain and mind you sometimes people lord it over you and it makes you want to do anything other than obey them but by by doing so it's not so much a matter of like he wins this round you know it's like okay this is an opportunity whereby to become more just right i owe it to the grace at work within my soul to um you know perform acts of justice which are which are proportionate to uh to the virtue that i have cultivated to this point that god has kind of made to be cultivated in me um so on the one hand okay the kind of calculus that i introduce is like all right is this a situation where justice obtains because sometimes people are just going to want to boss you around even though if you know they may be out of their lane and my inclination is not to follow them because then you start seeding power to them that they begin to lord over you even more stridently and you're like yeah um but if it's you know if it's if it's proper you know if it's proper to the setting then i think even if it does chafe you do you know you have this kind of outward order in the relationship but then you also have this interior inner order uh that that grows as a result i don't know if that's helpful yeah i know i think that's good and i want to before i get into my uh my calculation of it i think we have to take a little break here um hear from our our be obedient to our sponsors uh whoever they might be so um in a moment you'll hear someone who's not one of us and then we'll come back and we'll talk again you are listening to godsplaining visit us at godsplaining.org to listen to our episodes shop our store and donate to our podcast all gifts go to improving the podcast and bringing the gospel to more listeners thanks for your support welcome back to godsplaining this is father bonamic i'm joined by father gregory in austria and we are talking about obedience and what the the goods of it the value of it where it comes from what's it for this kind of stuff and the pers some personal reflections too so father gregory we did the kfc like going to kfc and they say or maybe a chick-fil-a who knows that's very popular today um but six foot apart like why'd you do this and yeah it's the internal dispositions for justice and ordering and offering what is right and what is owed as long as someone's not um pushing too hard on something it's his responsibility but also the goodness that yeah i think that's that seems to me i mean i guess for me uh obedience has this it's always related to the moral law um so that it has this which then relates to freedom of course because one can't be free unless one has laws or you can't you know just like you can't play a piano well unless you have some scales measured and understood so i mean the the moral law kind of to me at least calls out to one uh and it instantiates itself it's like life you know it instantiates itself in little creatures sometimes and like sometimes it's instantiate itself as plants and sometimes it's birds but all the time life is pulsating at you and i get a sense of like the moral law you know this life is is one of of of moral experience um just like physical experience i'm always being hit by small particles in the same way like i always been hit by there's always a possibility to be hit by the moral law the goodness of things we're drawn i mean i think st thomas talks about this all things are drawn towards towards god in the way and the moral law is one particular way that we're drawn towards it so like when i'm in a situation and there and i see a sign so that's why part i say i love i love laws so i'm i'm inclined to to obey them as much as possible because it's a chance to in a sense ride the wave of moral goodness towards towards the one uh who is god so when i'm gonna when i'm in a line at a uh you know a burger king or a kfc or something and i see you know six feet apart it's all the sudden like the universe i've heard it's called out to me that there is goodness here and uh and then i can comport my will to it you know but that being said of course uh so it gets i should say that the disposition of willing to obey those injustice um and not just injustice but in sense the the rightness the ordering of things because even though he's kind of pimple-faced and has a funny hat on at kfc he is like an instrument of god's will you know and romans talks about the same paul talks about this right as he was put to obey the emperor and remember at the time the emperor's not exactly like a christian guy then you have all this controverted area slaves and masters um kind of stuff like there is this there seems to be this sense that that god is the voice of this sort of thing uh in all obedience that when you obey you're somehow disposing yourself towards a relationship with with god uh as the author of the moral law but there are dangers watch out will robinson for this thing because of course um you know just because someone says to do something doesn't mean that they're actually instantiating the moral law it's like when you go to disney world to use my analogy of life and its instantiations just because it looks like a bird does not mean it is a bird it might be one of those anatomic things you know and you will be delighting yourself in some sort of metal which is fine if you wanted to light under the under metal i like to do it under the aspect of metal but if i'm like look at that wonderful deer and someone's like idiot or go into the president's hall or something and they look kind of realistic um they're not real they're not real so there can be counterfeit instantiations of life and counterfeit instantiations of the moral law yeah so yes right now i'm i'm living in the the german speaking world and people talk people still talk about this i mean i only have had a handful of conversations here but people still talk about obedience vis-a-vis the weimar republic and hitler right so like what if a legitimately elected superior starts telling you to do things that you're like i don't know seems seems off and then at a certain point you're like i'm pretty sure that's wrong and then at the next point you're like definitely wrong the next point you're like ah you know so so like at what point you know especially if you feel that you are a frog being slowly boiled in an increasingly hot pot and so yeah maybe maybe that's a place to just a launching off point for talking about the limits of obedience or maybe the context of obedience the setting of obedience yeah i think you're right and and some of this i mean it the yeah how much you followed i suppose depends as you say on the object who's who's the one who's speaking and that you have to obey um and i mean go back to abraham abraham account with moria right i mean god you know if if you tell me go and slay father jacob bertrand i might obey but it's not going to be because you know i mean i would probably say that i'd ne i don't think so even if you were my superior you need to give me a formal precept which is like you're out if you don't do this i would i mean i would think twice about it um before you know before doing it but because you're not you know it strikes me that that that violates the moral the the you know the natural law and the moral law and that's a little above so when we rank like laws from things uh your law of the priory uh dyslexic father jacob bertrand is different than is not as high as god's natural law of you know not taking innocent life um although maybe there's circumstances it's always confusing but but like if god says go slay father jacob bertrand right now we've got an issue now then we've got we've got discernment of like what that would possibly be but i think one help context is is like thinking in hierarchy stacked hierarchies of laws you know that there are these kind of laws promulgated at different levels and that's helpful at figuring out so that um if if it's someone on a low level which who promulgates something that's against something on a really high level well then you have probably good reason not to obey it uh or at least to to take pause of it um that's so that's one context i think about in this circumstance yeah another way that i think about approaching it which um it accounts for the criteria that you just described is to kind of compare a law to the definition of law so when saint thomas defines law he says it's first an ordinance of reason second that it's given by one you know legitimately appointed so the one who has care of the community at three it's for the common good and four it's duly promulgated so you know obviously the calculus to evaluate whether or not a law corresponds to that definition is hard um but but if something falls a foul of that it it should give pause all right so like is this is this an ordinance of reason like is this wise maybe just to say in shorthand okay is this being being put forward by a legitimate superior or somebody just um you know just kind of seizing the reins of power so they can force whatever it is that they want through is this generally for the common good uh which is which is to say like whatever setting does this build up the family does this build up the quality does it build up the church or does it potentially detract from it and then is it duly promulgated like is it something that's made known or is this kind of like a a secret gerrymandering of jurisdictions so that way whoever is doing it can get what he or she wants and i think that um that you know that gives you some criterion where for for some criteria for why one might not obey so like if a if if someone is commanding you to do something that you know to be sinful you know off the table right um and so that's that would be like the clearest example something that you know to be sinful um but i think that once you start thinking along the lines of okay i'm going to accept myself from the law you're on uncertain ground and i think that's why the conversation regarding civil disobedience is so fraught because it's like okay am i just stepping outside or should we step outside together and if so on what authority because we're kind of breaking from authority so i mean those are things you're probably better suited to describe well it seems yeah to me it's there seems to be a on the face of it you should assume that well obeying authorities is something that you should assume to be done as opposed to um always checking on for instance i mean i think there's a lot of sense of autonomy we live in a in a time when oh hey it's however you want it it's focused on yourself autonomy against the law that's given to someone else authorities you know think for yourself all this kind of stuff but i think from a virtuous perspective uh if authority you should assume the authorities have some legitimacy you know and that there should be this that there's it should be i say i suppose uh a disposition to obey i would say um that's good for the soul such that if you're thinking about disobeying uh then you should have a large reasons not to because it seems that obedience is good for the soul uh probably i i suspect and i maybe you have reasons on this and then i want to get done whereas it could be bad for the soul um that it it harmonizes you or situates you correctly with respect to your status as a cr as a creature um i think it's it's easy today to forget that we're creatures of god because of our power over things our ability to solve will seemingly solve coronavirus and things with vaccines that are created in nine months and stuff i mean the kind of things we can do with medicine with surgeries all of this the you know the harnessing of nature and everything and then in political discourse and idea that well everyone should have a vote and everyone should be in charge of things and the only reason that we don't that i don't get to choose my laws myself because it's too complicated all right um to set this up it's hard for us to realize that we're creatures today but obedience uh strikes me as it's just a reminder because it's it's an imposition on your will you know obedience is your will subordinated to another's will and in that act itself that has a humility to it and a virtue of of creatureliness that reminds us who we are i think that's one to my mind one aspect of obedience that's salubrious yeah i think um i mean just to launch from there i think that it's very easy just to end up living your own life as you imagine it and while there's a certain satisfaction that comes comes with that there's also a certain disappointment that comes with getting what you want because i think many of us just kind of by bent by by by virtue of original sin by virtue of our own sinful dispositions we just we tend to prefer ourselves to other things and when you you know happen or when you when you adopt a policy which always gives preference to you rather than other things then um that logic kind of um yeah i guess it just gets more and more pronounced in your life so you become less and less flexible you become less and less open you become less and less like you said creaturely dependent um or cognizant of the fact that our lives are not our own that they've been given to us from others and that we owe them back as a kind of debt of gratitude so i think there's a real threat of just you know living your own life as it were and setting yourself apart from or against those relationships that place claims on us those relationships that shape us in a way that can be really beautiful and dynamic and unforeseen and surprising and yadda yadda but there's a real threat of just just carving out your own life which i think is a little bit scary yeah and i think i love that aspect of of the surprise and the gift there is a gift of obedience too it uh in in that it's not just like oh the gift of realizing that you don't get to do your own will like that's a gift to some people some of us enjoy that sort of thing but also the when when you obey someone else sometimes surprises occur uh situations that you didn't expect pathways that you didn't plan to take but actually can be the really exciting ones whereas when you kind of choose your own thing sometimes you just end up disappointed it's like if i let someone else choose what we're going to do you know in certain cases i might actually be really happy with it whereas when i'm the one choosing it's like well if i choose poorly you know uh this is going to feel doubly bad you know like with obedience when you set yourself in these hierarchies sometimes surprises will happen because i do think again that god works through through the wills of others um in our lives as opposed to direct communication with us all the time um and so sometimes his will for us in is presented in surprising ways in ways that we wouldn't expect to go to but um i expect many people can imagine situations where someone said you need to do this and he said i don't really want to do that but you went along with it and you thought yeah this is fantastic this is great i would have never done this otherwise but it's really good so allows an element of surprise yeah and we've had we've had experiences like that like that time when father patrick invited us up to that vocation event in new hampshire and he's like it's going to be great there's going to be awesomeness and splendorful and wonder and joy and we're like okay we're there and then we just like drove three hours and then like drove another three hours and got rained on and ate bad pizza and carried a very heavy statue and i was just like what just happened but like as we were driving home i remember having that we we ended up at a mall food court eating bourbon chicken and we just looked around the table you know father dominic were like it's really good to be a dominican and what have we done that day like nothing except for be frustrated but yeah and uh pro tip pro tip when carrying uh if you have to carry statues on the on the shoulders of four men or what have you um make sure that the court that the coroner's their people are evenly s uh height wise distributed evenly because we we had two corners basically with one one was really short one was really tall you can mention the tall person was and then the so the weight just resides so you're basically instead of four people carrying it two people are carrying the other two people are playing this bouncing game and you lose people's shoulders driving in so just it's a tent you know you think oh the height thing just an aesthetic matter no it's not do not have people who are more than three inches different on a height carry carry things together it's not it's gonna be a disaster you might as well not have those other two guys there you know yeah um quickly then what's maybe we'll do uh the vice so you know we no one likes a guy who's just totally obedient all the times yes yes yes ma'am yes man kind of thing but what are the vice what what are the vices of of being uh obedient we could say we know the voice of being disobedient that sort of thing but what could be a vice of obedience you could say what's the danger of being obedient too much i think there's there's like um there's a kind of obedience which only does what one is asked you know it's not it's not very enterprising right it really doesn't exercise much in the way of agency and i think that that's um yeah that's that's not genuine obedience like genuine obedience should be on the lookout um it should really be excited at the prospect of receiving um the revelation of of god's will so it shouldn't you know like it shouldn't be a kind of quietest thing where you lay back and wait for it to come to you once it does come you're perfectly obedient but until such time you're just kind of in a suspended state um and certainly you know when one talks about um deficiencies and agency then you know you're getting into the territory of the virtue of prudence so yeah if you have like a a hyper docile spirit that can actually uh address or um recognize injustice that's a problem right because those types of things should be even if it's a certain situation where you should obey uh but you suspect that were you to obey for a long time or without questioning it it might actually lead to problems in your family and your polity in your church whatever then you should work to address that but you should work to address it through just means so it shouldn't just be like i don't like this so i'm not gonna do it because that doesn't really help anyone except for you kind of and truth be told it probably doesn't help you that much um because of the aforementioned disposition of disobedience right um so so i think that that obedience goes alongside a real thick a real substantial a real rigorous account of human action human agency human prudence whereby the person is engaged in the living of his or her life so that um it's not just like you know things pass you by until such time as they're issued as direct commands and then you thrill at the possibility you know it should be it should be a matter of moving forward on your steam by god's grace but but with a real sense of purpose yeah that's i think that that's that's crucial that obedience obedience and non disobedience disobedience you think oh that's just me and obedience is when i just surrender myself so i'm just i let someone carry me but obedience as a virtue has to be it has been act of of you it has been active obedience such that you're willing the good of you're willing that good whatever it might be of the superior god's will or what have you um as your own will you've engaged on it you're not just like accepting the way that you accept you know your umbrella breaks and it's just raining on you and you're sad you know you're just like let it come you know you can't you can you can't make the ra but you can't make it rain on you but you can make the obedience occur in you in a sense and if i give so prudence there but i give the last word to kant on this one um for con autonomy of course you know you give the law to yourself right what does that mean well many people like oh it means you just kind of make up you decide what you want but no no no the content of the law is set i mean khan has some pretty rigorous stuff to say about you know the caterpillar comparative and like what you can't do cannon can't do and what you must do especially when re regime change goes if the regime is ever changing make sure you go and quit kill everyone in jail um because otherwise their no justice will be done but that's disputes but for him when you give the law to yourself it's an active obedience so you accept the moral law not as like this thing that happened to you he thinks that's heteronomy he's his autonomy is accepting the moral law actively is something that you choose to put yourself under and obey not as something just happens to you like getting hit by rocks but something you as a human irrational in fact it's the most human thing you could do so active obedience kant thomas aquinas prudence jailbreaks all there we've covered some things with obedience hopefully if you if you were inclined to obey you're still going to be inclined to obey before good reasons as a human if you're declined to disobey hopefully you've uh you've heard the warning about jailbreaks um and will no longer do so if you have um friends who you might find are inclined to obey or disobey it might be it'd be good for them to hear this please share with us uh with godsplaining you can podcast youtube all those sort of things also there's some merchandise on the website apparently you can buy uh stickers that say obey or else no they don't say that they say other things um any other announcements father gregory that you want to say about god's planning things that are coming up or things we people might want to know yeah just a continued thanks and promise of prayers uh to our listeners uh you know we're super appreciative for your support and know that we pray for you um and then we have a retreat july 23rd through 25th in huntington new york uh which i think is nearly full um i don't check before we record these episodes so i hope i'm not you know uh well making promises that i can't keep but it's july 23rd the 25th and huntington new york for um uh young adults young professionals ages 21 through 33 and uh yeah it'll be a retreat with the ordinary things that you would imagine with mass divine office confessions adoration talks time to enjoy each other's company and uh to enjoy the beautiful long island sound just there off the uh off the edge of the retreat center apparently it's beautiful i haven't been there but it's one of like two and a half places that are open and hosting retreats and it just happens to be a really great place so we're pumped for that but i think that's i think that's it well for father gregory and myself we'll be praying for you so pray for us as well and enjoy the rest of the easter season god bless thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org [Music]

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 1,273

Rating: 4.9607844 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, #obedience, #priest, #catholicpriest, #frgregorypine, #washingtondc

Id: 22PQXRGj2AQ

Length: 37min 43sec (2263 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021