Jonathan Pageau Interview | Monsters, Hidden Symbols, and Jordan Peterson in Church

[Music] all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign calvinist slash reformed fans of the Babylon bee are you ever standing in line and you see an eligible co-ed next to you or behind you or in front of you or however people stand in lines and you're like hmm I wonder if that eligible bachelor and or Bachelorette knows that I'm a calvinist now you can inform them that you're a calvinist and then maybe God will have ordained a conversation for you guys to you know hook up not in the weird secular way but in like the you know just normal like hangout way that we used to use it in the early 2000s like 90s anyway you can buy this shirt that says no one is a good boy Calvin is dog which is funny because you know you always ask dogs like who's a good boy and then they're like I'm a good boy and now you can be like uh oh look that's funny and then maybe that girl's like hahaha that's so funny and then you get a number and then you guys you know get married and everything and that's how God pre-ordinating everything so get the uh no one is a good boy calvinist dog t-shirt today and your love life will Skyrocket as God has ordained from eternity fast symbols what are they what do they mean does this mean something is it important we're going to find out today because we're talking to Jonathan pajo who is like super duper smart he's very smart and uh he sees little symbols and everything he's like uh he's like the same version of Mel Gibson in them well no conspiracy theory he was sane he's like the same version of a crazy guy all sane people just sane versions of crazy games yeah I guess so yeah I don't know anyway this is how they're prepared super interesting we grill them on all kinds of things like what does the FedEx logo mean what does the Target logo mean what is the battle on B logo mean and then he just like we would return oils we would make adjusters or we would just like mention something in passing and then he would give us 20 minute response very easy one of these guys he gave very long responses but it was like I felt like I was being given a free college course yeah I didn't oh often I'd try to like with our guests I'll try to interject jokes and things that feel like oh they're giving a long boring answer I want to like break this off but I just sat back and let this guy go yeah I really wanted this to be like long much longer it was just felt like we're scratching the surface felt like we could just keep going sometimes we'll hit the subscriber portion 40 minutes in and I'm like okay time yeah it's time to move out and move along let's get to the Scrapper and I felt bad cutting it off into the subscriber portion because I'm like we could just keep going so let's do it let's talk to Jeff dive in uh and if you know if you're a Jordan Peterson fan Jonathan is a uh good friend of Jordan Peterson and uh they talk on very similar levels so uh in fact if you haven't seen his conversation with Jordan Peterson I highly recommend checking that out watch that don't watch this watch that first just watch that this is a good chaser and then this yeah Chase it down like a lemon after tequila or whatever you do yeah oh my salt or salt I don't know I don't know what she did whatever hey Jonathan all right well what's going on Jonathan thanks for coming on yeah it's great to meet you guys I've I've been a big fan for several years and so I was really really excited uh when I was invited to come on so I'm happy about this yeah it's exciting to have you on so you make any good icons lately or a little bit yeah I've been making I've mostly been doing this video in public speaking stuff but uh I still in theory have an icon carving practice that I that I keep up gotcha I didn't realize till now that I didn't have a mic by me I just got it so I've been talking to him and I don't think you hear me there's something deep and symbolic about that maybe I'm gonna analyze maybe I don't know yeah have you ever noticed how in the FedEx logo there's an arrow yes I think it's because they go places and they deliver things what do you think you probably saw that ahead of most people yes I think I also know that you have a b in your logo because you call the Babylon B how how did you how did you uh on that name by the way Babylon B so yeah Babylon is kind of like uh just the biblical reference of Israel being in Exile heard of it yeah and then yeah the Bible he might have heard of it it's the thing that uh you know Protestants uh um no tell me more about this Bible thing I'd like to know yeah did you notice the the two B's yeah nice yeah analysis and like a Twinkie that's been cut in four pieces so is it is it the idea because it could go both ways is it the idea of getting honey from Babylon or is it the idea of being really annoying and stinging the Babylonians while you're in Exile I think I have to ask Adam who's the actual founder of the site but I think Babylon was the key and then he wanted B to just come you know Sacramento be or whatever but it works great because it's like the Stinger you know we like the sting Sapphire that's I think that's kind of kind of all it was so and it sounds good it's cool yeah yeah it's hard it's hard to worship idols when you have a bee buzzing around your head it's true so let me sting them I don't know So speaking of Idols uh your Eastern Orthodox yeah that's right and you also do like graven images let's check your whole job yes Grave images yeah I'm a man of graven images [Laughter] explain so I'm are you curious about why why I make gravity yeah how do you get to that what I mean yeah that seems like a very specific interesting I don't yeah I don't think we've ever had an Eastern Orthodox Kion that's true I don't think people ask us to and we just never really connect with anyone so we're interested yeah all right so I mean it starts with the idea that everything in scripture points to Christ basically and so even all the Commandments the reason for the Commandments ultimately is is to is a kind of slow Revelation towards towards the Messiah um and so some of them for example the idea of uh celebrating the Sabbath is one which in Christ kind of gets flipped where you know we we actually don't celebrate the Sabbath anymore we celebrate on the first day so Christ revealed to us kind of the the secret of the Sabbath in his death on dying on you know being in the Tomb on a Saturday and then we now we will celebrate the resurrection and so it's something similar you could say with the images where one of the reasons well except the reasons why we can't we don't have images in uh they didn't have images in the Old Testament was one because we don't have an image of God we can't we can't make images of God because God is invisible and the second is of course you don't want to make images of false gods because you know then you're worshiping false things um and so in the church it was a big conflict about this in the in the in the 7th Century like this just big fight about about images because the problem that was being tried to dealt with is you know how would we do with this this idea that now Christ God does have an image right and this the image that God has given us is Christ and with the church fathers the conclusion that came to is that we actually have to represent the image of Jesus because if we don't we're denying some aspect of the Incarnation we're we're actually denying the visibility of God in Christ um and so so what happens is we have these images which remind us of the Incarnation or also help us understand the reality of the Incarnation uh and we don't worship them obviously we only worship God but we do reverence them because it has become a tool for God to manifest himself in the world so just like in the Old Testament you know they would they would let's say reverence the the altar or the temple or even each other you know they would they would bow down before each other and so now we have this reverence towards the images because God has restored the image of God in us as well and in the Saints and especially in Christ as the you know the head of this whole process that's maybe a simple way to explain it okay yeah nutshell I think I lied I think John Gabriel is Eastern Orthodox yes John Gabriel is yeah so you are the second yeah sorry so yeah as I've heard I've heard that uh you know there's some people that react very negatively if uh an image of Jesus is used and so I was obviously you uh carve images of Jesus right so you wouldn't agree with those guys yeah where do you stand on it's really the image of Jesus is really the central image it's really the central icon and it's and for for the Orthodox at least there's almost something kind of Muslim about not wanting images of Jesus because like I say you have an image of like a child's book with the image of Jesus in it and that usually for most products is okay and then your child asks you who's that so what are you going to answer are you going to answer well that's Jesus right and that's the that's the whole Crux of the matter it's that you can do that right in in Jerusalem you know in in Galilee 2000 years ago people could have asked you even even a harder question like who's that and your answer would have been God where oh over there there's God hmm so it's a it's that it's the intensity of the incarnations the scandal of incarnation uh which is so which make it makes it difficult to deal with obviously because there was a conflict in the church about this because it's like okay how do we how do we do this there's this commandment in the in the in scripture not to make these images but how do we deal with the fact that God walked in you know on the earth that you could have pointed at him you could have said this is you could touch him you could you know um and so that's really how you that's kind of how you you deal with that is there like Temptation when you're carving a picture of Jesus to like make him like look a little more like you or something or like something you like just add your own little touch that's because I don't know like that's like the reason to be careful about gravy images because you're yeah you're definitely rejecting your own ideas onto a thing that's why making whatever image you make for God you're just saying more about yourself than you are God right exactly well that's why there's a tradition right we follow the tradition of the church and so there's a way to represent Christ which has been kind of handed down and accepted you know as an azerine with long hair uh with a beard um like you and usually wearing uh like a Roman a Roman vestment let's say to show that he's a kind of a glorious figure um so we have this tradition but it is true that there is a there actually is a kind of Trope among iconographers that unconsciously people will make not just not just the image of Christ but like the images of I different icons of different Saints will end up making them look a little bit like them and that this is this is an unconscious thing people don't do it on purpose and so we actually we actually came up with a rule which is that that only good looking people are allowed to make icons really okay I'm out I'm in no I don't I don't really even know where to start I mean you're in such a interesting guy I you know you're we're starting with your faith obviously you know Eastern Orthodox faith and icons and the importance of that and you know but you kind of expand beyond that and talk about symbols and icons and patterns and Beauty in the real world so maybe we just make that jump in that transition how does how does your faith and your understanding of the way God uses symbols and patterns how does that inform the way that you look at the world well the first thing I would say it does is that it it makes your approach to scripture a little different in the sense that the way that we've approached scripture I would say for the past 200 years is something like you know I'm a rational being you know I had God has given you reason God's God has given me the capacity to understand and so now I stand Here and Now I read scripture and I interpret scripture with different new hermeneutical uh strategies whereas in the this kind of symbolic way of thinking what happens is that scripture actually becomes the length through which you look at the world and so the way to kind of understand that would be that the first chapters in Genesis are actually like a kind of uh like a kind of pattern they're a pattern which describes reality and then all of scripture is an unfolding of that pattern and uh it culminates of course into Christ who kind of reveals the totality of this whole structure um and then points to the eschaton which is let's say the the final totality of all this whole pattern and so you start with uh like a little example like you start with uh with a mountain it's harder for people to remember that the Garden of Eden is a mountain because it doesn't say that in Genesis it says it in Ezekiel but that you have this mountain with the tree at the top and you have these people you know up there um and then they fall they go down the mountain and they end up in a world of hostility of thorns and then they have to wear garments of skin they kind of cover themselves with with uh with different garments then they build cities you know this whole process of accumulation of Technology of layers and layers and layers you know put over this seed that's like let's say pure soul that has fallen it has started to become tainted uh and then that ultimately leads to the flood and now you have then everything breaks down and the water comes in and the whole world is kind of destroyed and has to start over and the the fall happens through Pride right it happens through self-sufficiency it's like you think you've got it all you don't need anything above you it's like I've got this you know I I take I try to take that which is above me for myself and so obviously in that case it's to to want to reach up to God so once you realize that that let's say that's the pattern this the basic pattern of the story then you start to look at the other stories and you see that it's it's the pattern of the Tower of Babel is the same story as the fall right like you go up you want to reach God you want to take the name of God for yourself and in doing that what happens is fragmentation and tumbling and falling down you know the tower Falls and everybody gets spread out into the world and into confusion um you'll start looking at stories you'll start to see that this type of story just repeats itself over and over this pattern of a of a mountain of moving up towards Unity towards one towards communion with God and then moving away from communion and and communion with God into multiplicity and fragmentation and breakdown and Chaos all of that um but it's not just the pattern of of a story in scripture it's just the pattern of everything and so you know let's say your organization you have an organization with a goal with a purpose and that purpose is above you it's invisible it's not you can't completely contain it into the things you do right all the things you do Point towards that invisible point and if you forget that forget that point that reason why you do things then obviously now all of your little idiosyncrasies among the employees are going to start to manifest themselves they're going to start to fight you're going to start to everybody's going to want to be the leader everybody's going to want to pull it in every direction and you rip the organization apart and the only way to kind of come back together is to remember the Garden or to remember God or to remember the purpose and so of course the purpose is lower than God but it's the idea that this pattern kind of fractively manifest itself in all the different aspects of reality and then you end in the the very very end with the image of the New Jerusalem where you have the mountain with the tree and the source of life and then around it now is all the all that the fall all that the fall kind of manifested the city of Cain you know all the technology gets glorified and transformed into this kind of Total Space of everything participating in the the glory of God let's say um and so that's just a basic idea but the idea is that once you start to kind of see that there's this basic structure in Scripture not only do you are you able to to see it repeated everywhere uh you know very simple example that that you can find in Scripture that say when Christ walks on water he he sends his disciple on a boat he goes up a mountain to pray and while he's up on the mountain then the disciples are in the boat they imagined The Ark on the flood they're forgetting they're forgetting Christ and so they get worried because things are getting choppy out there you know they're starting to be they're starting to be waves and Christ comes down and when he enters into the boat they worship him and then the storm stops and everybody everything becomes calm so you can see that as once again from Genesis to the flood it's the same structure it just totally condensed in that little story of Christ going down the mountain and going out onto the waters into the boat um and so like I said and then you can apply you can watch a movie and see that it's all it's always the same patterns you know you watch a movie it's usually some aspect of the story of Jesus which is being represented sometimes the form sometimes inverted but nonetheless it's kind of pointing towards these images especially now in a post-christian world all these Marvel movies and all these these big budget movies it's always a Messianic figure with a death and a resurrection it's a Non-Stop just a this this we are we are attracted to the story without even knowing it we're attracted to the story of that scripture gives us uh it's only that let's say in the past few hundred years people have been hacking at it trying to destroy it for us so that we don't even see it anymore right instead of talking about the stories in scripture all they talk about is you know this source and this source and this source and conflict between the yahwist and the eloists and all this nonsense so that we don't even see the stories anymore and so if we can just focus on the actual stories that are there and the actual patterns that you know no matter what who cares about all that other stuff it's it's useless to the person trying to live a spiritual life uh then all of a sudden we can kind of enter into these stories again and start to see the world through them you know instead of just seeing them as these facts that we accumulate you know uh so that's basically the work that I'm doing on the symbolic world is trying to help people re-see the world with all its fullness let's say all the magic all the spirit that God has put into it um and the surprise that I've had is I would say at least half of my public are atheists and they're just people looking for meaning people who are tired of the nihilism you know people who are who are sick of being told that the world is meaningless and can't they just not just sick of it they are existentially in danger and they feel they need to connect to something more and so they they find that the beauty that we that we see in scripture and not just in scripture but in the Christian liturgies and and the music and the songs in the icons and all of this kind of grand land language is a language which actually kind of holds the world together um so gives you a little idea what I'm what I'm doing let's say can you answer your question Kyle do you talk the whole time during movies oh man no I don't I actually try to shut off my symbolic thinking while I'm watching the movie because it's so little it's annoying if you do that you're like analyzing while you're watching it you're not enjoying it you guys you try to shut my brain off and then I watch it and then when I sit down later I remember the the the the story um and then I kind of analyze it yes yeah you're sitting there watching Smokey and the Bandit and you're going you ever notice how on the Amazon logo it's not just a smile it's an arrow pointing from A to Z yes I had noticed that because they're trying to take over they're trying to take over everything everything yes pretty much what they're doing with a smile on they will rule the world yes exactly it will rule the world with a smile a robot smile is what we're gonna get freaky Android smile that's right so you are one of the few people according to you uh that has been in church with Jordan Peterson I want to know what that experience is like he hated it he was he was bored to death you really really did not like it he wanted to like it was also like it was also like one of those worst things where it was uh it was a it was a Vespers liturgy so it's so it's like a Vesper service with liturgy so it was like two and a half hours long and uh hmm yeah he was he did not he did not enjoy it so uh not a fan you got to get him to like a Protestants or yeah like a like yeah some kind of charismatic I'm not sure he'd like that either I think you probably want something kind of in between I don't see him I don't see him like you know falling over in spirit and stuff like that maybe yeah I mean who knows but you know I mean really we'll take anything if he exerted and started a church he could immediately create a whole new denomination that would probably be huge yeah that's actually the the the scariest thing about recording right you would start a church yeah and start like a psychedelics church very it would be very bad meet communion you know meat dipped in meat [Laughter] as a Christian you know God's always there for you but sometimes things in this life can feel downright overwhelming and you just need to talk to someone that's right that's why the online counselors at faithfulcounseling.com are there for you connect with professional Christian counselor in a safe and private online environment it's so convenient it is and it's nice that you can talk to someone who shares your faith and values people that specialize in depression stress anxiety relationships crisis of Faith issues you're not going to get that with an atheist counselor I'll tell you what right and you just four communication modes text chat phone and video you can start communication under 24 hours desktop mobile web Android man they got everything you know there's financial aid uh available for those who qualify it's affordable faith-based so check it out you can go to faithfulcounseling.com Babylon B and you'll get 10 off your first month at that URL yeah why not get started today go to faithfulcounseling.com babylonbee what was that again oh that's right it was faithfulcounseling.com simply fill out a questionnaire to help them assess your needs and get matched with a counselor that you're gonna love ten percent off check it out so um okay so here's a question I'm always interested in and um you know I'm fascinated by gothic art and these old Cathedrals and they have these monsters and gargoyles and I as an I draw Comics I'm an illustrator I like doing concept art I love monsters and I see beauty in the grotesque but I don't know how to like explain it but like I see amazing Beauty and just like creating something hideous all right but I'm I'm borrowing everything I draw I'm borrowing from the nature God created octopuses and crabs and all the weird fish um so number one like why did the church have that should we still have it and what is our idea of beauty uh too simple that we don't include we only let butterflies and bunnies in but not you know uh tarantula not the monsters right yes well you've got the right guy because I can definitely explain that it's it's actually one of the main things that I talk about because we live in a world of monsters um right now we live on the on the edge of the world let's say so the way to understand it is you've probably seen these old Maps you know clinies uh Maps the the ancient maps of the world the way they were set up was that you whatever you were like your identity if you're Greek or if you were Egyptian or whatever whatever it is that you were you had your your met your Center you had the the envelopes you had the the the belly button of the world let's say you know it was like a a central space could be a temple it not necessarily but it could be just an object which would be kind of like the center of the universe for you uh in in Israel of course that was the temple and especially the the Ark of the Covenant um and so then that's you like that's the thing that joins you together right everything kind of points towards that and you come to the invisible place the invisible point where Heaven and Earth meet and that you find your highest form of your identity in that place and so then as you move out let's say from The Temple at first in the temple to just one guy right there's just the the whole the priest the the high priest is allowed to go into the holy holy and as you move out then you've got the Priestly cast is allowed to go into the holy place and then Israelites are allowed to go into the court and if you move further into like let's say the the later temples then strangers were allowed to move into let's say the outer outer courts we're allowed to kind of circulate in this outer court and so that was the image of the world so you like let's say you were Greek and you move out from Greece and you start to move away from at first you're going to start to see things that you recognize people like you the first people that speak Greek then maybe some people people that you that aren't you but did you know like the Persians right you've you've been around them for a long time you know them they're strangers but they're not that strange then the further you go The Stranger Things become the less you can recognize them and then you reach to a place where you don't understand what people are saying it sounds like noise to you barbar right that's where Barbarian comes from it's like the sound of a dog barking it's language that you don't understand and then as you move further and further away you start to see things that you don't recognize and you start to not be able to recognize the difference between that which is essential and that which is a detail so you look at someone and for example you meet encounter person or you can't tell the difference between ornamentation and their actual face so imagine now like the uh let's say the the natives in the in South America the first time they saw someone come down from a boat on a horse what if they saw like uh they saw like an eight-legged God you know it was shining with like you know all this shiny stuff on it and they couldn't understand what they were looking at so what they were looking at was a monster they're looking at something which doesn't have an identity yet or has a confused identity because it's not part of your identification system and so that's the experience of monstrosity which is the experience of something which doesn't have a clear identity to you and so the way it usually presents itself to you is as mixture yeah because you have categories so you go to you go to Africa and you see this huge thing that's swimming in the water and you think oh it's a it's a river horse right it's a hippopotamus because you don't have an actual category for it you have to join it to categories that you already have and so if you look at Dragon for example ancient dragons the way they were represented in uh in in ancient texts they're always hybrids they're always like a a lizard with wings and with uh you know hairy feet let's say so it's like a mammal it's a lizard it's a bird it's like a it's a con it's a monster it's a it's an impossible joining of different categories together because it's something that you don't recognize so in the ancient the way the ancient world represented that was that on the edge of the world there were monsters you've probably seen these images right of like these men with one foot or like men with heads in their chests or uh you know uh the dog-headed men uh all of these monsters that exist on the on the edge of the world because they are basically all the categories or and also the inversion so Amazons are on the edge of the world because they're upside down from us women are the Warriors men barely exist and so all the masculine qualities are are now taken up by women in that world so the upside down the the the hybrid the mixture the excesses too big too little you know leprechauns Giants all of this stuff right it's all about the edge of categories okay so now think about this image that I gave you about from Genesis to the flood okay now from Genesis to the flood you have the same structure that I just described starts in the garden you move out of the garden and as you're moving out of the garden you start to add these layers and you start to be in a world that's hostile to you the world of thorns and then what happens mixture between the sons of God and the daughters of men and you get monsters you get Giants and the Giants appear on the edge of the world in time in this story so it's like as you move further and further in time from the place where you were in communion with God then you start to encounter these hybrids this mixture this these categories that don't fit that are excessive and then you reach the Giants and the Giants bring up on the edge bring about the end of the world they bring about the flood right there the cause of the flood you could say okay so that's the cosmic image so it's like from the center to the periphery and as you get to the periphery that's where you have all the monsters now the monster as a marker of the limit you could say as an in-between character something which marks the difference between two worlds is also like a bridge so imagine the two empires like Roman Empire Persian Empire and you know that on the border of those two empires there's going to be mixture obviously they're going to be people that marry Persians Persians that marry Romans people that don't even remember whether they're Persians or Romans they're going to be this hybrid buffer between two identities this place where two categories are kind of mixed together and aren't clear this is just an inevitable part of reality right so you have to so you have to leave a fringe on the edge of the world something which is not identifiable it's not clear right so you leave a fringe on your investment that's what they say in scripture you leave the corners of the field until for the strangers so the strangers come to the corners and they are allowed in the corners and they're allowed to take some part of their world but only the corners because they're not part of you they're not one of you they're this they're strange they're they're not your identity okay so it's just a basic pattern of reality now this plays out fractally like it it actually happens at different levels so if you're going to separate two things you're actually going to put a monster on the separation and that's called a cherub cherub a cherub doesn't look like the the cherubs you see in uh in Indiana Jones they didn't look like that at all they were bulls with wings you know with human heads or they had heads of different animals you know like how Ezekiel sees the Cherub as foreheads with all these wings and so they are they are hybrid creatures because they Mark the limit between the Transcendent holy and the mundane world let's say so if you build a church and you want the church to be in the same pattern as scripture you want the church to look like scripture not just not just in terms of what you say there what you sing there but actually the actual architecture of the church you want it to look like the pattern of scripture then that's how you're going to make it you're going to have a holy of holy place where very few people are allowed to go and on that in in on the point of that is going to be the invisible point in communion where Heaven and Earth meet and then you're going to have a Nave where people can congregate and that that is now it's the people from the church and in the narthex which is the the the entry of the church that's where you actually had the catech human before so during liturgy even now in the Orthodox liturgy during the Liturgy at some point all the people that aren't baptized they get chased out of the church they're told to leave the church and they go into the narthex they don't do it anymore Nobody Does it they still say it sometimes but they don't actually do it but in the ancient days it's in the first centuries they would Chase all the catechumens out into the nartheid so now you have this image right of the priests of the people of the stranger that are on the buffer they're almost inside they're not totally inside and then on the edge of the church that's where you put the monsters that's where you have the Gargoyles because that's the actual that's actually the cosmic image and the gargoyle acts both as an image of the limit and also as a guardian for that which is even more dangerous from the outside right so it's like there are monsters are in layers you have layers of monsters you have you have let's say a monster like Cerberus in the in the Greek tradition where Cerberus this three-headed dog was a guardian because he was there to stop all the crazier stuff in hell to come into the normal world and so he is a monster but he's also he's also a guardian which protects you from the bigger monsters let's say right so you can imagine like layers of monsters where you have superheroes who are basically monsters they're all hybrid they're all Batman and bird this and whatever like they're all hybrid kind of monstrous Freaks and mutants and all of these freaks that that act as Guardians and the first thing they usually guard you from is other superheroes right so as I met the X-Men story is a great version of that you have these mutants on the edge of the world that are protecting you from what they're protecting you from mutants they're protect you from other mutants because the mutants are super dangerous so you need a bunch on your side to protect you from the bad ones that are coming in but behind those mutants then there are all these Galactic Monsters whatever all these Cosmic monsters that are so big that you know you you you want to have these kind of buffers to stop the bigger monsters and the demons and the really bad stuff from coming in um and so in the Orthodox church we actually have a Saint Saint Christopher who is a giant or a dog-headed man and there's a there there's a tradition that he's just he's a monstrous Saint and they would put him on the door of the church like going outside towards towards the the outside as a kind of limit let's say so that's what monsters are for my uh my church has a coffee bar is there a uh any symbolism or is that a monster I don't know I'm just coffee is a monster for sure I don't know I feel like you're playing 17 dimensional chess and we're playing yeah tiddlywinks over here but coffee coffee is not a monster but it has to do with that it's like a garment of skin think of it that way coffee is like a in when when when uh Adam and Eve fell they were going into a world of thorns and so God gave them a layer of death like a layer of of uh of garment to protect them from the Thorns outside and that's what coffee's for man coffee's there it is coffee's there to give you an extra something to be able to face Thorns of the world so it's like it's like a medicine of some kind I feel like we should just say random words yeah prompt him and then you can tell us the symbolism the symbolism of the random words thank you um but hopefully the monster one will will kind of sink in because that's a really important one because right now we live in a world of monsters the monsters are out the monsters are everywhere right they used to be hide they used to hide but now all the Hybrids all the mixtures all the fluid identities they're everywhere and that's what it is a breakdown of identity the breakdown of identity is it has become the reference point so we could say we are now in a world where monsters are the reference where we celebrate monstrosity we celebrate fluidity we celebrate lack of identity we celebrate breakdown of identity and it's actually the only thing we're allowed to celebrate is is a breakdown of identity and it used to be like an ancient world where you had those you had they're called carnivals you had moments in the year where you would celebrate the upside down right you'd have like a crazy moment where everybody's on stilts and wearing costumes and everything's turning and you have all these spinning things you know Purim for example in the Jewish tradition is still is still alive today where one day a year the Jews will dress up into crazy costumes and they're supposed to get drunk and spin until they fall down on the day of Purim like it's like a day we're supposed to do the opposite of what is normal and and kind of get it out of your system you could say so that then the world can start again like you basically you you start the world again so we have we just call that Tuesday you call it Tuesday I'm busy Friday though like wow Tuesday I thought Brad TGIF is about is it usually about that uh like they kind of get all that stuff out of your system and then and then start the day again um but that's that's like the basic that's the basic idea but now we're basically a carnival like our whole world is a carnival you know and the only thing we're allowed to do is Carnival now we have a whole month of Carnival and it's non-stop right so so it's it's important to kind of understand where we are uh let's say in that big pattern uh I can see like the the highly woke intellectual hearing everything you're saying just their head exploding yes that's what we hope we need more of those heads exploding you're calling all the Fringe people monsters and you don't want them to find their identity their own identity you think like having like our own Guru our own group identity is a good thing like it's good for us Christians to be like yeah I there's an inner circle yeah that's right hierarchies yeah it is very good it is very good and but the thing that's interesting is that even in the kind of fluid woke world they they actually take that up that identity right it's not like I mean obviously if if you say they're monsters they're gonna get annoyed a little bit but they say they're monsters yeah they that's that's that they actually take up that that Vision like dress up as dogs and dress up as you know the whole fetish culture is all about monstrosity excess you know and the imagery all the imagery of that world like wearing leather you know uh using tropes of violence like what do you think all that stuff is it's all about this Edge it's all about this you know coming into this uh this breakdown so so it's not uh it's not a secret right and you drew a cartoon where you had the sjw monsters the social justice people actually being monsters so you hit upon the symbolism didn't you yeah it's pretty deep it's pretty deep it's pretty but the the it's the the rainbow is all about that the rainbow is all about multiplicity it's all about the absence of pure light it's the breakdown it's the breakdown into into fluidity because a rainbow is actually fluid it doesn't actually have this the colors in a rainbow are actually fluid you know they they just kind of meld into each other and so it's a perfect symbol it's a perfect it's a perfect image for what it is that like the idea of multiplying genders indefinitely and having you know 100 million genders that's what it is it's a breakdown of of the world into into idiosyncrasy just kind of scattering you know fragmentation so does the the Eastern Orthodox church has pretty good beards usually yes we are all about the beard yours isn't that long but I did we have we have two things we have the desire to be an Eastern Orthodox man and have a beard we also have wives yeah that have opinions and so I grew my beard in 20 uh during the during covid I actually grew my beard pretty long I I was kind of it's kind of Castro like for some reason I had this I was rocking this Castro image not on purpose but um but my wife made it very clear uh that that uh this had to be a temporary thing so I got it out of my system okay you can only blame covet so long for the beard hey you are you enjoying this interview oh I know I am oh I sure am I'm actually probably sweating trying to think up new questions right yeah at this very moment but if you're enjoying it you should become a baby subscriber because the interviews are much longer yes and we we also have the most fun because the portion of the interview that does not go up here on YouTube publicly uh can be Googled so our guests kind of you know kick back a little bit and get a little looser they tell us what they really think and we always do our 10 questions which for everybody and tends to be the funnest part of the show yes so become Batman B subscriber at babylonb.com plans and you get the full interview show and you also get it a day early do it now what's the deal with the way that the EO Church's uh dunk baby is like there's this whole crazy uh thing yeah usually The Crazy Ones you see they're not the normal ones that goes those crazy videos where you see the preach like basically like the baby do backflips and stuff yeah exactly like tumble them in the water yeah I mean it's what's it's it's the symbolism of baptism in the Orthodox Church is actually more similar to Protestant baptism because it has to do with that with death you know it's it's about dying so so it's a that's why you have to dunk like you have to go underwater because it's it's all about uh about this dying and uh you know it's obviously in the Orthodox church it's also related to circumcision you know this idea of uh removing washing right you go down and you remove the excess and then you come back up as a purified you know rectified uh being so that's why they that's why they dunk the babies but you're supposed to do gently not supposed to do it like some of these crazy they keep seeing on YouTube or whatever I don't know I'm a fan you like that that's cool so what is like you know there's like kind of I feel like I'm getting into the same area here maybe it's because I'm just having time processing but also just like I'm fascinated by the idea that you know kind of the the way that Christians make art we tend to go we take that scripture focus on the good true beautiful that's not even the scripture whatever is pure or whatever uh we take that and we tend to think that means make you know fireproof or like these very kind of happy-go-lucky Christian movies make God's not dead that's what that means and is there a like how do you make the Christian Case from scripture uh or do you for making something that has that has the full uh spectrum of things that are in the world of as far as like violence violence evil ugliness grotesque I mean yeah you know people freak out of the side of a skeleton God designed it it's one of those things I find fascinating too GK Chesterton GK Chesterton yeah I think I think it's all about it's all about hierarchy that's the way you have to kind of understand things is that once you kind of see this this basic hierarchy that I talked about this basic hierarchy of the Garden or the mountain or whatever then all of a sudden everything has its place it just has to be in the proper place and so you know I think that the fact that you're let's say attracted to to kind of monstrosity or to these types of images it makes sense also with what you're doing as the Babylon be right you're acting like you're acting like a graffiti artist you're acting like the king's fool right the king's fool that thank you yes The King The King The King's fool is super important in the in the pattern of everything because pride is a serious sin like pride is a real Sin for Authority especially right Authority has the tendency to think that they're that they're self-sufficient to think that they've got it and they're basically they're God they're not going to say it but they think that way they think as if like we've got this we're in charge we're God so we need we need foolish characters to be able to point out that they don't like to to look under the to look under the the robe right to show the to show the idiosyncrasies to show the underside of of the system in order to uh to show how it's not complete it's not total and so I think that monsters are part of that because that's their role too role the monster is to show you that identities are relative As you move towards God like the only identity which is completely sure and completely certain is the identity we have in God and in Christ but all the other ones are secondary and so if you think that even for example like even um you know the idea that like being a father is is a total identity well it's not because father the jerks and fathers do all the bad things they do a bunch of stupid stuff so you also need places to be able to expose that so that people don't think that they're that they're that they've got it so so the king's fool that's what that's the role that they played and I think that the funny thing that I've noticed like for like what you guys are doing especially uh this is something that I've been thinking about a lot in the past few years which is that usually the the fool is usually the fool is is not the conservative guy right usually the fool is actually more of a you could say more of a liberal type in the sense that the order itself is conservative and so the kind of liberal type wants to show poke at the order and show that it's not like it's not what it says that there's hypocrisy that there's that there's Underside to it and everything but the problem is that what happens when the structure itself is completely upside down like what happens when the when the order itself is liberal like the order itself is completely about breakdown of family structure breakdown of of traditional Society breakdown of community so then the fool becomes a conservative guy oh yeah it's really fascinating because that's what you guys are basically pointing back to reality like a lot of your jokes are about pointing back to something completely normal and all of a sudden why is that funny I don't know it is funny because the whole world is upside down so it's like you know here's the freaky family of five you know who go to church on Sundays and you know they they need to be arrested by but you know they need to be arrested because they're completely Against the Grain and it's like you know that's that's the strange position we're in right now yeah we found a lot of humor just in the the progressives and the radicals have you know have seized complete control of the culture and yet still think that they're on the French they're radicals we still see themselves as oppressed that's where we find a lot of Comedy I think well like I think so and I think it's awesome because that's actually how that's I think that that's how the world flips back you know I always say the fool is always turning the world upside down like he's turning turning the world upside down that is that's his role so he he's always showing the upside down of things and so but when the whole world is upside down the only thing left to do is to show the right side up so it's actually flipping it's like using humor and using irony and using all these tools that are usually subversive to bring back a normal world it's a it's a wild time to see that that it's that not only it's necessary but that it's actually working because you guys are getting attention from all kinds of secular like kind of just basic conservatives that aren't at all Christians that are just even atheists and you know and and everybody is is enamored by the way you're able to kind of turn things back on their head but actually turn them back on their feet is actually the way to say it well I feel like we we haven't said much I know like sorry no it's great talk a lot that's great we're scratching the surface but we're we are going to move into our subscriber uh exclusive portion we've got some um uh we had our subscribers submit a bunch of questions oh yeah we have those too we're gonna dive into those and let's just keep talking this is great let's do it dive in all right here we go coming up next for Babylon B subscribers your study of symbolism can you explain what Target's logo is supposed to represent it represents a Target yes what symbols has the modern Church Twisted from their origin I'm going to give you the hardest one this is going to be a hard field to swallow but what are some of the ones that really annoy you that you see either in film or even in Christianity like yeah misused symbols or icons well to me the biggest gaffe has been enjoying this hard-hitting interview become a Babylon B subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation go to babylonbee.com plans for full-length ad-free podcasts Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dillon for paying the bills Adam Ford for creating their job the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines the subscribers and you The Listener until next time this is Dave d'andrea the voice of the Babylon bee

Channel: The Babylon Bee

Views: 43,197

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Id: q5RsWX2g34I

Length: 51min 19sec (3079 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021