Fr Robert Spitzer | Four Levels of Happiness

thank you very much a real honor to be with this great community and just filled with faith and also a desire to no reason philosophical theological scientific anthropological what a splendid splendid atmosphere to be to present to be president what I'm going to do today is give a tool which I consider to be one of the best possibilities for doing evangelization it's a tool all of you will later be able to use with people who may claim that they're atheists people who claim that they're secularized people who may claim that they're agnostic people who might claim that you know they've fallen away from the church for various reasons but I do think that this tool will be exceedingly useful and the reason I think it will be exceedingly useful is because it's useful for everyone this gets right to the heart of human existence right to the purpose of life and of course it concerns the question of happiness now happiness has been trivialized in our culture I don't have to say that you know two of to many times today but happiness has a history of utter profundo t particularly within the catholic tradition I'll just start with one phrase and really get right to it Aristotle if I could paraphrase book one chapter one of his great classic the neat the Nicomachean ethics I would say it this way happiness is the one thing you can choose for itself everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness I must tell you I agree with him but it all depends therefore on what you mean by happiness if we do not get clarification on this term then we are likely to be led around by the nose by virtually anyone within the culture we're likely to live a life that is very superficial not very pervasive in its effects and pretty much egocentric we're likely to live a life that does not exploit the full potential of the soul that we were born with the unique soul that we were created with for Aristotle he saw it this way that happiness would control what we think about ourselves our notion of happiness would control what we would do in our lives the careers we would pursue the spouses we would pursue the friends we would pursue the associations we would pursue the affiliations we would pursue the ideals we would pursue the principles we would pursue everything of relevance everything that goes into human freedom the objective and the end of life somehow will be controlled by our definition of that one little term happiness we are crazy if we do not get that term straight for ourselves and if we don't see the the advantage of using this and Evangelization this is our portal this is our entryway to getting to a person I mean from every you know walk of life from extreme atheism all the way you know to a person who just left out of apathy the the Catholic Church this I think is where we need to start let's get to it what I tried to do was condense 2,400 years of history for you in what I've called the four levels of happiness I've tried to be faithful to the authors that I've used Saint Augustine's Confessions primary among them st. Thomas Aquinas Asuma Theologica and also the Summa countries and Teela's also of course Bonaventure is the minds road to God but not just you know I mean going through the history of philosophy the history of theology to the present moment even with Christian existentialism because søren kierkegaard certainly uses you know something akin to this Carl yeah Spurs Gabriel Marcel the great Catholic philosopher much Taylor a great Catholic philosopher all of them use some form of these four levels of happiness all I did was try to condense take from their writings what was common to at least you know you know let's just say 70% of them in one group 70% in another group of levels of happiness etc and synthesize them for you here in four levels of happiness why call them levels just as we get off the ground I call them levels because as we go up from one to two to three to four we're moving toward what is more pervasive enduring and deep we're moving toward levels of happiness which will have effects we will have effects in our lives good effects which will reach out beyond ourselves the higher we go the greater the more pervasive the effects similarly more enduring the higher we go up the levels of happiness the longer the happiness and the effects of the happiness will last even I dare say unto eternity because of course the fourth level concerns are transcendent faith and finally it's deep and what the Philosopher's I think meant by deep or what I think you know Agustin means by profound is that we're using all of the highest dimensions of our soul the highest dimensions of our spirit the highest faculties of our mentation and creativity not just fact the the faculties of intellection not just creativity in the intellectual sense but our capacity to know morality through conscience and and practical reason so it would involve our our moral capacities our capacity to form our ideals our capacity for empathy and love our capacity for agape for self-sacrifice our capacity for transcendence and spiritual life our capacity for what can truly last and matter in our lives the higher we go the more pervasive the more enduring and the deeper the effects and of course the happiness itself will be so there's one little problem level 1 and level 2 are really intense surface apparent and immediately gratifying and every time you move up the levels notice you're gonna have to leave behind a little bit of intensity a little bit of immediate gratification you're gonna have delays in gratification and you're gonna have to leave behind a little bit of that surface of parentless you might have to study you might have to learn a skill you might have become nuanced and the higher you go the more it will become you know it's less surface apparent but as Plato's insight and the cave goes the less surface apparent better for we get right to the depth of being and into the heart of transcendence itself no thing wrong with that but let's go through the four levels for just a second one at a time and then you can feel the sense of pervasiveness endurance and depth as we kind of go up the levels I won't explain it to you nauseam but I think you will you'll see it the level one let's call this in Latin lightest la et us I'll use Agustin's terms as he's moving through the confessions yes for Latin terms for happiness like tous là ET us is the kind of happiness that comes from sensual pleasure and material possession something that comes out of something that comes to me from outside and stimulates me Bob Spitzer seized the bowl of linguine lunges toward the bowl of linguine wolf sit down and goes young he's exceeding happy he's getting surface apparent immediately gratifying and intense pleasure all in one drop and of course he's happy not pervasive enduring in deep Bob Spencer moves into the Mercedes 508 class with leather upholstery smells the great upholstery of course feels the fine German engineering going into the turns at 80 miles per hour and he's happy because of course his whole kinesthetic sense has come alive with German engineering now that's level one everybody gets it it's right it's you know material possession and essential pleasure is real simple level two now we're going to get to the park or Eve Angela's ation that needs to take place in this culture because this is in Latin Felix right from which we get felicity and and Felix is the kind of happiness that comes from ego comparative gratification something with which san agustin was well familiar right this is the kind of happiness that comes when you're winning it's the kind of happiness that comes when you shift the locus of control to yourself from the outside it comes when you feel yourself better than others or acknowledged to be so no there's very good things that come from level to happiness right we can develop a sense of competitiveness and in a sense of excellence and these are good things a sense of self esteem but if you let level to happiness ego comparative happiness really get to you if you make that the sole reason purpose for your life this is what this success my definition of success then you start finding yourself in what's called an ego comparative turmoil that I call the comparison game I'll explain it in a moment but if you find yourself start two ants to ask the following questions obsessively even at 3 o'clock in the morning you might be a candidate for what we'll call dominant level to happiness who is achieving more who's achieving less who's got more status who's got less status who's got more popularity who's got less popular who has got more control who's got less control who's got more power who's got less power who's smarter who's not as smart who is more athletic certainly not me who's laughs as I said buddy who you know is more beautiful who is less beautiful you get the point if this is on your mind 24/7 whether you view yourself as winning losing and drawing and if you're worried about it if you're losing and if you're just contemptuously proud of your winning you are going to be in some kind of trouble as I'll explain in a moment indeed I would say 71% of our culture is in some kind of trouble and I'm gonna call that emptiness and alienation loneliness and the negative emotions of the comparison game in one moment so some good things about level 2 happiness right we get self-esteem competitiveness and things but some really really bad things an obsession about ego comparative advantage and we cannot progress we get locked into it we're stuck in the proverbial ego comparative right let's go to level 3 for just a second level 3 is really the opposite of level 4 sea level at level 2 excuse me level 2 comes from having self-consciousness and when we're self-aware we do tend to try to shift the locus of control to ourselves but that's not the only thing we can do God gave us two other powers if I might just appeal to him for just a moment in this Christian audience and Catholic audience and just simply say it this way God gave us empathy in conscience and because of that our self-consciousness does not have to turn in on itself all the time it reaches out to others it can have sympathetic feelings for others it can be in with others it can feel conscience right and feel sense of alienation when it's about to do something wrong and a sense of great nobility when it's ready to do something right all this leads to a different kind of happiness a happiness that comes from what we'll call contributive happiness contribution or what the Christian tradition has called charity or agape or love it's the kind of happiness that comes from trying to make an optimal positive difference to someone or something beyond myself with my life so if I'm trying to do this I'm living a level-3 existence and if I'm trying to optimize the amount of good I can do for my family and my friends for society right for the church for the kingdom of God for my community for the organization in the and the institutions with which I work right all of these things if I'm trying to make an optimal positive difference to everything I can before I die I am going to call that a contributed level of happiness and when a Gustin reaches this in the confessions he shifts is a word for happiness from felix to a Beatus or from from which we get the Beatitudes right that which means happiness but happiness in a sense that is a profound contributive charitable happiness and we can get this kind of happiness from either being with somebody or doing something doing something's obvious so if I'm trying to make a contribution by helping out a food bank or if I'm trying to make a contribution by talking about my faith to someone who you know it just isn't include Enya if I'm trying to to help somebody who's just in a in a real pinch psychologically or whatever it is fine you're doing something for somebody but you can also just be with somebody right without doing anything really I mean you could actually be with a person right to is suffering and you could sit there and say nothing of any great profundity but just just be with them you can listen to somebody you know and and so forth or even you could even play a meaningless game of Crazy Eights with your seven-year-old nieces and of course this could do a lot of good for society without having to do something necessarily now if you put all this together right you can pretty much see that this contributed view of happiness it really grows on us and it is our salvation it's one of the ways we can get out of a dominant level to happiness right who's achieving more who is achieving less etc and and level three happiness you start noticing it when you wake up one day and you begin to think hmm now what's the difference between the value of my life and debt of a rock how has my life made any difference to the world beyond what an inert piece of dirt has done if the answer to the question is well not much more then we have what's called incipient despair you have a real problem and what happens is it manifests itself as we'll see in a moment an emptiness alienation a profound sense of loneliness but hold on to these little markers of self created hell until we can get to the comparison game there is a fourth level but contribution that's pretty good life and that's one way out of dominant level to hammies and the fourth level of happiness I think all of you have studied Plato and Aristotle to some extent especially Plato through the ISIF of Saint Thomas Aquinas and he did know a lot of Plato through Agustin and others right and so there's a lot of platonism there and you'll know that you have these five transcendent desires desire for perfect truth perfect love perfect goodness or justice perfect beauty and perfect home sometimes called perfect being too correspond with the metaphysical transcendentals but these five desires reveal that you have five kinds of awareness too if you can desire perfect truth then you have to have some kind of awareness at least a tacit awareness of what perfect truth might be if you desire perfect love then you must have some kind of an awareness of what perfect love might be you cannot desire what you do not know and you certainly can't critique not having gotten there unless you have that same tacit awareness for example how in the world can we constantly say well you know that my love is imperfect that person's love is imperfect how can you know the imperfections of love unless you have some kind of standard some exemplar the perfect notion of love by which to compare it how can you know yet we seem to know little children seem to know well three-year-olds can look in your eyes and go they won't use these words but they'll think something similar to it not authentic and now with me for all intents and purposes little kids also know what perfect justice or goodness is don't think for a moment they don't have some awareness of what the unfairness of parents and teachers might be oh they don't have to be taught instinctively they can blurt out with total rage that's not fair with a lower lip extended as if the entire world mattered right it was a collapsing you know as they recognize this first moment of unfairness the same thing with beauty we drive ourselves crazy trying to be ever more beautiful make the garden ever more beautiful turn up the music so that Brahms more beautiful or whatever kind of music you listen to my niece will have that thing at 80 decibels playing right into our ears the Christian why are you doing that makes it more beautiful really you know for a hunter but true true enough I mean we know we have the sense that we can go further in beauty and goodness and just we have a sense of what's imperfect in truth and so we ask questions what's imperfect and love and it drives us forward to look for people who can do this right and what's imperfect injustice and we get frustrated at the educational system and then and the justice system and the governmental system it's never fair enough - tidy lists all around us you know beauty etc of course says Plato you are transcendental beings you little ultimate eyes as you and you will never you have a soul you couldn't possibly be aware of what perfect truth love goodness beauty and and being would be like or might be like unless you had a soul with which to grasp something that is completely non concrete if I can put it that way non instantiated a perfection taken in in and of itself you have a soul a created soul and you know I'm talking here about Plato here right so if you feel like if you playing somebody said oh I've heard enough about this Christian ah this is not Christian of course it was adopted and baptized by the Christians like Saint Agustin and so forth but this comes from just a good old pagan reflecting on the true mystery of his own being Plato now enough said you are ultimate eyes so you have a soul so you also have transcendent desires as Saint Agustin put it in the confessions at the very beginning he's speaking to God remember in book 1 chapter 1 he's speaking to God and he says he blurts out hermeneutical key to the the key of interpretation for the entire confessions for thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee so he's telling God that you have made us fearfully and wonderfully transcendent you have made us with a soul that will never be satisfied until we reach perfect truth perfect love perfect beauty perfect goodness and perfect home perfect being in you because you are the only one and by the way there is a proof for this which you can read about on a wonderful website called magis center.com that you're fine president just already recommended so M Agee is center.com just take a look at that proof you can also of course buy a book called new proofs of the existence of God by one author but the book that really contains all of this is finding true happiness satisfying our restless hearts quoting agustin for thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee a Gustin knows further than Plato he realizes that perfect truth love goodness beauty and home is not enough what we really want is to be an interpersonal communion with God who has present to our souls from the very day of our conception and in being present to our souls was inviting us and calling us to be in deeper relationship with him and when we are not in that deep relationship with him as the American Psychiatric Association study showed in 2004 this is a great study but canina terrific and ten other psychiatrists and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2004 and what did they notice about human beings their need for transcendence their need to be in a relationship with God with this mysterious perfect truth love goodness goodness beauty and home creator this um Nishant being this perfectly loving and good being what happens when people become non religiously affiliated what they show in that study is that suicide rates go up by three times also what they show is that that the impulsivity levels agressivity levels depression levels malaise levels familial tension levels and substance abuse levels go up you know and exponentially with only one factor being addressed religious affiliation make no mistake about it Agustin he might have been a really really in the past kind of guy profound of course aristotle really in the past kind of guy plato and in the past kind of guy but they were dead on right because when we separate ourselves from God or ignore him altogether we are in a state of restlessness and a gasm we're in a state of malaise we get into states of profound emptiness and loneliness we get into states where of course we feel almost compelled you know in a way for substance abuse aggressivity suicide and and and other things and and it's very well documented enough said you have all four desires in you and therefore happiness being the satisfaction of a desire you have all four levels of happiness okay let's get to the problem of the culture the problem of evangelization from which I started everybody kind of gets the idea more pervasive enduring and deep the further you go up the the scale there what's the problem our culture is about seventy one percent dominant level to our culture is 71% would pick ego comparative happiness as their reason for living their purpose in life so what did you do by the end of your life what is it that you would consider being successful well I joined the Mensa Society and I was really rich okay you were better than a lot of people in those two areas what did you do with your life well I I was really beautiful and really athletic clearly not me but nevertheless right you could say thank you for that all right but imagine for a moment that you really had this soul that Plato talked about and imagine for a moment that this soul wanted so much more than to be better than somebody ill actually athletically aesthetically you know status wise control wise power wise whatever right imagine that this soul recognized that this was not enough that it wasn't enough to be smarter than anybody and than everybody you really need to use your intelligence to do some good for somebody what if your soul began to recognize that it wasn't enough to be more athletic than everybody more powerful than everybody more controlling than everybody you needed to do something with the gifts that you had or earned or were given and that you had not done anything of the sort with your life yes what does every philosopher talk about atheist Christian existentialist Thomas what are they all talking about across the board you're gonna feel empty you're gonna feel lonely and you're gonna feel alienated not just from yourself but from the totality of being and that's what causes all the detailed in the dervish study in the American Psychiatric Association Journal my point that I'm trying to get to is it's not enough for us to be better but it's not just the emptiness the loneliness and the alienation when you make level 2 your dominant success your dominant purpose in life your reason for being you get into a game called the comparison game I'm gonna dispense with it quickly it's the perfect way of creating a perfect self created hell if you lose the comparison game remember the only thing that really matters is winning being better than other people right showing yourself to be the high guy right the high woman whatever it may be if you lose the comparison game you're going to be filled with inferiority depression jealousy and a variety of other things which are really unpleasant whatever you do don't lose the comparison game stay ahead even if you have to lie about yourself even if you have to create a facade even if you have to basically be the most inauthentic person in the world even if you have to step on everyone on the way up in a ladder for crying out loud do not lose now you say why do people do those things because the only thing that matters to them in their lives is being comparatively better and they're scared to death if I don't make up a facade if I don't do this if I don't even superior I'm gonna lose everything I'll lose my being and I'll lose my sanity can't do that now of course you could draw and of course if you draw just be aware of the following things fear of failure fear of loss of esteem have you ever seized up on an SAT you don't have to do this but a lot of people who are level two dominance right you know if you don't have an ego to go along with the level two dominance right and you seize up on that SAT and the only thing that matters you is performing on that in safety these are gonna really get depressed and you could sweat bullets at night just thinking about the fact that you could go down on the SAT and everyone would judge you to be an inferior and your life would be over it it's juncture and as you're sweating the bullets at night you do perform badly on the SAT it's real simple you know I mean but people do this continuously we live in a dominant level-2 culture a dominant Salix culture if I can put it that way and of course many I doubt that winning will be any better to be very frank with you if you're a winner whatever you do don't plateau because if you've led toe there's nowhere else to go but the only thing that matters is going further and you can't so just go ahead and give up on life and be depressed and by the way if you're a winner whatever you do just remember ego sensitivities are always around the corner I remember when I was in the 12th grade and an advanced physics class I was so proud of myself I'm giving you know a presentation and I'd never heard the word spectroscopy pronounced before I'd only seen it in in print so I was calling it spectroscopy and this fine fellow in my advanced class came up to me afterwards at Spitzer that word spectroscopy you pronounced it spectroscopy three times and now the entire class thinks you're a consummate idiot and of course I was done I went home I played that tape I'm telling you a thousand times and had suicidal feelings before I went to bed because I mispronounced a word the winner does not have a happy life you cannot make a public mistake oh no because of course you emerge as the idiot you never wanted to be now of course all these things being said in jest right it is a tough life and not only that but let's face it people with a superiority complex start feeling contemptuous about other people and then when they feel contemptuous about other people other people get sick and tired of being around them they can't stand being around a person who's either putting them down or expecting you to become obsequious ly inferior before their divine presence so having some self-respect they abandon the contemptuous person they're continuously poised for flight until the only one who will hang around a contemptuous person is his mother and at this juncture right we see as a Gustin astutely observed that contemptuous people are lonely but they're not just lonely lonely they're resentfully lonely that wonderful words right Nietzsche ladies own Tim mom that you know where the French always pull out the word a little bit you know and of course you get that feeling of I really hate you for leaving me behind and not giving me obsequious lis all the adulation I desired I'll get even with you don't worry now you think about that for a moment Hagel would just say it in this way this is the description of the onion happy consciousness Kierkegaard would call it despair and of course our entire Christian tradition would simply shout out you are under living your lives creating a perfectly horrible self created hell and you have forced yourself into a corner where you will get nothing more than the hell and no other contribution no other transcendent link no other fulfillment of your soul except this you guys if you have faith and I have to believe most of you do and that most of you have a very enriched faith who else is going to come to this talk on a perfectly good Monday night when you could be watching I don't know football if you were level one or you could actually be still doing other level two up activities but you're here my point of course is we know one thing if we're gonna evangelize the culture we're gonna have to get him to here we have to present him with the facts of the comparison game we have to present him with the talk about emptiness the guy is sitting in front of his mirror one day and he's shaving and he's looking at himself and there's no substance coming back into his eyes he feels this terrible emptiness in the pit of his stomach and he goes gosh I better have a scotch I can't take it but why the guy is walking down the street one day and he feels that he's all alone in the entire cosmos that he doesn't even feel like he fits into the entire killer because he's out of kilter with totality itself it's all black and dark and empty out there but why why tell these kids tell your colleagues your work I mean I've done this canvas and probably find few and far between but boy I'm telling you out in the culture to the people you're gonna be working with most of people you're gonna find you know on a day-to-day you know a scale these people are really suffering you can do two things in one fell swoop you can get them out of the comparison game get them out of the existential emptiness loneliness and alienation and get them to God so that they can get true fulfillment of the soul which is what everybody yearns for lest we have a restless heart we want to be in communion with God who is perfect truth love goodness beauty and home so how first tell them about the comparison game and tell them I'm gonna give you a get out of jail card free and here it is three techniques for your toolkit of evangelization I kid you not these techniques will work and we've tried them in many many contexts I've literally tried them right here in our fine federal government I've tried them in intelligence community boards I've tried these techniques with public high schools I've tried it for these techniques with our fine Ivy League colleges I've tried these techniques on a variety work just use them number one what's the first way out of hell you gotta write your own self manifestation used to call it a manifesto until marks co-opted determine made it bad but it's a I manifest right you know sorry oh oh thanks so much yeah just perfect so we used to call it you know manifesto but an in point of fact all right it is a self manifestation so what do we want to do you know in in light of this convince a person to write down the following eight questions they don't have to answer them now just write them down and spend five minutes every morning give up five minutes of administrivia five minutes of whatever and think about these questions how can I make an optimal positive difference to my family how can I make an optimal positive difference to my friends how can I make an optimal positive difference to the organizations or institutions with which I associate how can I make an optimal positive difference to my community how can I make an optimal positive difference to the kingdom of God and to the God who loves me how can I make an optimal positive difference to my church how can I make an optimal positive difference to my community how can I make an optimal positive difference to the society if later on in life I'm so lucky just write down the questions and at the end of your writing put this one statement for this I came and drill it into your heads five minutes every morning look over the questions as if this was the most important and significant thing you could ever do with your life what will happen even if you don't answer the questions what will happen even if you just give thoughtful consideration to the questions you will notice that the the comparison game emotions the negative emotions of comparison game start going down the jealousy the fear of failure the self-pity the ego rage the ego blame that this the ego sensitivities the theory or tea the superiority the fear of loss of esteem the fear of failure all these emotions will begin to decrease and so also will the emotions of emptiness loneliness and alienation all of a sudden you will find yourself being pulled in a whole new direction toward making that positive difference before you leave this earth that your whole life is oriented toward making that positive difference no longer do you have to notice immediately I really frankly don't care whether I belong to the Mensa Society or not it's how did I use the intelligence I had you're gonna see a quick complete re you know a shifting of intentional disposition within your own soul you're gonna see really quickly that you're shifting your intentional disposition toward making that difference to the kingdom of God to making that difference to the society to making that difference in every way you can with every talent you can irrespective of whether you have more or less of them or not it's irrelevant the only thing that won't matter is I used everything I had to make the most difference I could and I'm happy by the time I leave I'm not gonna be undifferentiated from a rock that at the end of the day will save you number two the second thing that is real clear importance a level two person is not going to be able to properly empathize with somebody and if they can't prop a dominant level two person and if you can't properly empathize with somebody you're not gonna be able to show them Caritas agape love if I can put it that way the self sacrificial love the love that that sees the intrinsic goodness love ability and value of a person and gives of itself what do I mean by that this great French philosopher Gabriel Marcel put it in this way you cannot look for both the good news in someone and the bad news in someone simultaneously if you're looking for the bad news then of course it will completely wipe out the good news however if you're looking for the good news it will contextualize the bad news you will still notice the bad news but the bad news will be set within the context of the good news of the individual now what I want you to do is just try out Marcel Marcel hypothesis but with one caveat added Marcel says it this way are looking for the bad news is the default Drive in other words it's much easier to look for the bad news than to look for the good news one problem is that the bad news rivets us to itself just think about it for a moment you're seeing something irritating Spitzer is taking too long to make this point something stupid he's inarticulate and can't quite get it out clearly something which is unkind right so you're starting just think about it when you start focusing on what's irritating weak stupid unkind and then you add history to it lo these many years what happens immediately the capacity for empathy ceases and if you keep empathy right that ability to have a sympathetic vibration if I you might use a physics term to have a sympathetic vibration with some other human being upon the recognition that here is a unique good lovable mysterious transcendent individual human being and that means I will serve that person and try to wish them the best benevolently because I cannot abandon them to the darkness okay that sense of empathy of a feeling for the other person and of course recognizing reflectively their goodness then of course Caritas is possible but boy if you know I can tell any married individual right here if you're looking for the bad news and when your dominant level two you have no intrinsic motives so ever to find any good news in anyone the best thing that can happen when your dominant level two is what the Germans call schadenfreude a I rejoice in your darkness oh your book was rejected from the publisher for the second time I'm so sorry right now of course when we focus on the bad news and charity is we're incapable of charity right or we're focusing on what's irritating right and so forth and so on this is just gonna make empathy and love almost impossible well okay love occurs when you're trying to make a difference to somebody or something beyond yourself what do you have to do says Marcel you have to shift your intentional focus and I'm begging you make this a discipline for yourself and if you do this then you can teach it to others it'll make a world of difference to them instead of getting fixated by the bad news and irritated by it instead look for what the little good things that people try to do the great good things that people try to do look instead for you know that they're you know I'll call them delightful idiosyncrasies the foundation of buddy dumb look for of course the gratuitous acts of kindness right or people are just kind when we don't even deserve it that are kind they're good to us they're friends with it right look for the mystery of their being look for their trick I mean they're deep sea transcendental fish I mean they're looking for perfect truth love goodness beauty at home in a completely unique and mysterious way and contact with God this this is not all bad you start by looking for the good news in the other and what happens all of a sudden there's empathy watch out though because of course it's really easy to play the Christian but actually be the stoic and you know the the fellows can Jose coming down the hallway and of course you're saying there is that irritating stupid weak and unkind Joe that despicable little preacher but I have a good Christian so I will love him anyway because what does not kill me makes me stronger now that's really not love you know that stoicism writ large in a very unloving way but if we kind of avoid these pitfalls starting to look for the good news in the other start to contextualize ourself manifestation then we're in really good shape I just got to take one more point we've also got to introduce them to transcendence now I've got some spontaneous prayers here and I'm not going to be able to go through them with you tonight but I want you to go to this website mangia center.com and just go to that article called getting started on prayers prayer just please take those 12 spontaneous prayers commit them to memory but before you do this in your toolbox of evangelization there's three things I said right the self manifestation the discipline of looking for the good news in the other that leads to love thirdly you've got to get people to purge the false gods from their consciousness people have bizarre notions of God Christ came to teach us that God was not the angry God the terrifying God the disgusted God the payback God right the stoic God he's not like that and I can tell you right now just what will work almost instantly to get them over the hump so that at least they can consider that God and His goodness is unconditionally loving just retell the story of the prodigal son and I'm just going to give it to you in a quick way here you can get an entire exegesis of this from that same site magis Entercom just go to the prodigal son you it's such an important tool of evangelization once upon a time there was a man who had two sons remember the father in the parable is Jesus's consummate revelation of who God is Jesus is consummate revelation of who God is his Abba his father is a father who had two sons the youngest of the son said father give me my share of the inheritance that I may do with it as I please a translation I'm gonna shame you I'm gonna shame the family I don't care about you I don't care about the family you're as good as dead to me just give me your money and I'll be out of here the father who is God what does he do he divides up the property and gives it to him God gives him the property then the son goes off to a foreign land I don't have to tell you what the right to Gentile City to the right and of course for the Jewish people in the first century this is not a good thing it's a betrayal of your election it's a betrayal of your people you'd rather live with the Gentiles and to live with the elect or out of your mind but the kid doesn't Jesus building it up said the kid can't get any worse right so finally he says then the kid in front of the Gentiles and they all know he's Jewish right in front of the Gentiles what does he do he spends all of his father's money on dissolute living violating Torah right and left so he's violating the law of God he's shaming God he's shaming his people he's shaming Torah and of course he's just doing this with reckless abandon as he spends his God's money on this finally Jesus has to build it up to the ultimate maximum to ritual impurity that that country goes into a famine and where does the kid have to go to one of the Gentile farms and he has to live with and tend to the pigs now if you know anything about first century Judaism you will know that if you touch a pig you Pig uncleanliness on you for life this kid is living with the pigs and he's taking pig food and putting it inside of him this is like holy mackerel this kid is good for nothing Jesus has built it up so that the kid is in their view not in Jesus or the Father to you right he's worthless right there's no good coming here disowned the little rat have done with him now the little rat comes to his senses and what happens he starts thinking you know just very pragmatically let's call this an imperfect contrition he starts thinking to himself how many my father's servants have more than enough to eat and Here I am living with these pigs I gotta be out of my mind what am I gonna do I know I'm gonna go to my father and tell him I've sinned against you and I no longer deserve to be called your son just just treat me like one of the service I'll go in the back door I won't wearing sandals I'll be you know the servant but get me out of this misery and imperfection so of course he goes home and of course the entire audience of Jesus they know what's going to happen they think the father's gonna go right out there and send an emissary ah get off my land you're polluting it you little bump but that's not what happens he doesn't send them out there with some kind of a pre script saying you're basically disowned the father sees him coming from afar he's been missing him so much and in elation and jubilation he runs out to meet him this is your God throws his arms around him and kisses him this is after everything the son is trying to squeeze out the line father I've sinned against you and I no longer quick he says get a tuna can put it on who wears it tuning aristocracy royalty not common people treat my boy like royalty the rat yes and now get sandals and put it on his feet right and of course that means I don't want my son to be a slave one second longer get him sandals so he becomes a free man he becomes a man of the household then the father goes all the way get a ring and put it on his finger I don't have to tell you Jewish man the first century did not wear rings for cosmetic purposes this is the signet ring that contains the sign the coat of arms of the household in other words you wear my ring you belong to my household 100% I accept you back into this family and household 100% no conditions attached and the soul overjoyed that your God kills the fatted calf and throws a huge celebration now the older son is outside now finish this quickly and you know I don't want to go too much overtime but the older sons outside who does he represent the Pharisees Jesus is worried that the Pharisees are going to be scandalized by the first part of the story because he does think that the Pharisees are trying to do what's right and a lot of Pharisees are very much trying to do what's right and so he portrays the older son and the second part of the story as working out there in the field he's sweating he's working and he hears the music and the Merriman the dancing calls one of the servants over and he goes hey what's all the music merriment and the dancing oh you know that rap brother of yours had shamed everybody in front of the Gentiles and spent all your mom your father's money on dissolute living well he's invited him back into the family now giving him the family ring and has now killed the fatted calf to celebrate his return this boy is like he doesn't want to go into that house and he doesn't want to celebrate with the rat he doesn't and so he just tells his dad I'm not coming in here's what your God does he comes out and he kneels before his own son this is not common in first-century Jewish protocol and he kneels before his own son and he begs him and of course as he's in that position of humility his son gives him what for you you never gave me so much as I could go to celebrate with my friends and didn't with a little rat comes home you killed a fatted calf he's basically saying I hate you and the father is saying right there in this completely humble gesture son you have been with me always and everything I have is yours and when he says that statement this is a significant statement that means the father just gave up the right of inheritance the son gets it all now before the father's death this is exactly how the Jewish audience understood in the first century that everything belongs to the older brother but the father says this brother of yours he was lost and is found he was dead and has come back to life now we don't know whether the older son goes in story stops right there because of course it's the free choice of the Pharisee in question now what's my point my point is this is I mean if you don't think that God is willing to kneel before you and take a lot of guff from you let me tell you God would die for you on a cross in a completely ignominious and yet he loves you that much I'm gonna just complete it with a story about a wonderful person he was a very high in in Paisley's oh well the Protestant group in Northern Ireland and and I was invited to give some talks to the cabinet of Northern Ireland with my friend Lou theis a while back and I was over there lecturing to the cabinet about the four levels of happiness and at one point nobody told me who was there besides the Irish cabinet there are Northern either Irish cabinet so I I had no idea and there's one guy who looked more disheveled than the rest so sort of growled at me and he finally stops me at level four and he goes who now he says tell me what would a happiness for God be and I told him the story of the prodigal son exactly like a first century Jewish person would have understood it like I just told to you this guy Jackie Ridpath he was sitting there and he looked up at me and he goes well he says some how these years ostensibly I've been a Protestant but the reality I've been an atheist but if this is who God is then count me in so I thought wow this is amazing I didn't know who he was I didn't know he would belong at Ulster defence force you know I mean I wouldn't worn my robe in collar you kidding me so of course you know I'm I'm going out the door and the guy runs up to me and he kisses me right on the cheek and he goes thank you he says learn more from you than anybody about God I said oh no that wasn't my story that was Jesus and he goes oh oh he so I leave about six months later I'm in there at in in that area at a peace conference in northern southern Ireland and I'm there with paddy Doherty on one side right the IRA and and also defends forth their jekiri path the other side and Jackie you know stands up on the stage and he goes I just want to tell all of you that I learned more about God and religion from then man over there then he's pointing to me than anybody else in the in the world and Patty Daugherty you know kind of an archrival right leaps up on the stage and he shakes hands with with Jackie Ridpath and I just thought there's the power of evangelization dare is the power of that story all I can say my final words is use it along with those other two techniques you will do immeasurable good not only for the faith and the kingdom of God but from all the individuals you serve and love through it thanks very very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: ChristendomTube

Views: 9,314

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Id: w_YjXjv2f8E

Length: 61min 20sec (3680 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017