Journey Home - Former Atheist - Marcus Grodi with Dr. Kevin Vost - 02-14-2011

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program and it's always a pleasure to introduce to you men and women who because of their love for Jesus Christ their love for truth for drawn home to the church and our guest for this evening a great pleasure to have this particular guest with us dr. Kevin vhost revert former atheist you'll talk about that in a moment but I want to say before I welcome into the program as if when I first knew of dr. Vose was because I'd read one of his books fit for eternal life it's about getting in shape and as you can tell I like the book but I didn't follow everything he said but it was a it's a super book and I was able to contact him to find out more about what he not only what he wrote in that book that book but about the aspect of understanding ourselves to need to grow not just physically in shape but spiritually and philosophically it was a wonderful book so dr. Vose welcome to the program a pleasure to be here Marcus it's great to to have you here I hopefully will get talking about some of your books later I'm laying before me are a couple your other books on earthing your 10 talents the atheism from atheism to can which is your the story of the conversion right yes it is that is partially my reversion story and you've done a bookmark recently with with Doug Keck so that'll air soon so you'll be able to hear more about his books but thanks for joining us on the program Kevin it's great to have you here hopefully we'll get in to talk about your fitness book a little bit later in the program but now about your journey of faith you've seen the program before right yes actually since I came back to the church about seven years ago I've seen it virtually every Monday night give or take a a couple here there alright so you know what you're in for I'm glad you're watching the program I always invite the guests to start us way at the beginning of the journey part because I know we have a mixed audience we have Catholics and non-catholics we even have a theist I watched the program and they often wonder what what was in his closet you know that opened his heart to the church so once you start back at the beginning sure I'll go way way back Marcus to something I think that we actually share in common in that my mother had several miscarriages before I was born that's right about five of those she was Catholic in fact my middle name is Gerard was named after Saint Gerard of Majella a patron of childbirth something I found just a few months ago though I was doing some research on the st. Kevin of glendalough Ireland and I had heard that the name Kevin meant like fair or gentle but I found it actually means fair or gentle birth so interestingly both of my names related to your childbirth and I'm not sure if my mom knew that about Kevin or not because they never they never told me that but mom was Catholic Irish Catholic my dad was convert from I believe the Methodism I don't think my dad's family really was going to church regularly but for the sake of my mother he joined the church and I was always proud of him when he would usher dad was kind of a rough-and-tumble guy he was a Laster he actually is that man I never remember once reading a book or even watching a television program he is a pure man of action but every Sunday he would take us to Mass and he put on his suit and go up and down those aisles so that was you know very fond memories there we went and with you Catholic school my brother and sister and I which was wonderful experience we were taught by Dominican Sisters you know all through grade school and interestingly though we were Catholic family Mass every Sunday later I became you know a server altar server but we really didn't talk about religion in the home at all I remember in high school took a religion class at the Catholic High School and needed a Bible and we had to go to the Marian center our local Catholic bookstore to buy one because we didn't have one that I could use members a Jerusalem Bible still have that one so the faith wasn't really talked about much at home we didn't have regular prayer or anything like that but we did go to Mass regularly we went to the Catholic schools so would you look back you're you're on what's often typical conveyor-belt for many Catholic children you put them on baptized catechized confirmed on this Catholic school swimming at the other and you'll come out a good Catholic which doesn't always work but one of the problems is often that there's this compartmentalization between the faith and the rest of life is that how you would describe your upbringing yes yes it was sure their faith or something for you know for Sunday's active practice of the faith though the moral lessons the ethical lessons they came through and we lived in our lives you know we we learned to be honest and caring and so forth so that came through but other elements of the faith were really yeah kind of compartmentalized and your dad was going for you kids and his wife not so much for himself either yes it seemed to be the case yes mm-hmm and then also I realize you know by the time I went to the Catholic High School there I tended to be kind of an intellectual kind of an egghead type person always interested in deep thought and I remember my early teens that kind of developed those hypothetical thinking abilities the adolescents skating think in terms of if-then thinking you know remember one time it occurred to me if all this stuff I've been taught about Jesus all these years if this is really true then this is the most important material in all the universe and I should really start you know trying to live by it at the time I was really immersed in weightlifting and some of my way of thing buddies were you know calling themselves born-again Protestants and they were really and in love with Jesus and and these were my friends so for several years I associated with them and at times went to their Pentecostal church you know did spiritual reading myself never had a desire to leave the Catholic Church though you feel at the time you look back that you were indeed experiencing deeper walk with Christ or was it still on the surface or as you look back to that time well I think that you know there was some element of a reality reality there okay the contact with Jesus maybe more of on an emotional side thanks for kind of chaotic in the home too at this time there may have been some reaction to that but but I did spend a few years still kind of kind of deeply immersed in the faith my level of understanding there and interestingly you know my friends here were these evangelicals and Pentecostals you know most of my friends were Catholics but but most of us had compartmentalised a religion none of my like friends when I started talking about Jesus they kind of give me a funny look like why are you talking about about Jesus you know but after a few years here through my weightlifting avid fan of the muscle magazines and there happened to be a top-level bodybuilder at a time who is like the heir apparent to Arnold Schwarzenegger he's a really brilliant man are really quite the intellectual and I learned from him oh I'm important things about physical training training the body in very efficient ways in being realistic a lot of the magazines would give young kids the idea if I if I eat all these supplements and lift weights six hours a day I'm going to look just like Arnold Schwarzenegger but this man mic minister told us like the things about factors of your own genetics he said the key factor in becoming a world-class bodybuilder is choosing the right parents you know there's just certain realities there the way your bone structures behind an egg yes you can't really do that but ideally but anyway he was a very intelligent man the things that I learned to him about weight lifting and nutrition I found to be very very accurate but he also had gotten into atheistic philosophies himself I mean he wrote about this in his magazine articles people like Friedrich Nietzsche and later ein Rand and through him I read some books about these people and then became immersed in those philosophers myself so I reached a point in my late teens when basically for intellectual reasons I was convinced that well God simply isn't true and that if and then thinking it's kind of like my if had been taken away I was convinced through logical arguments that the idea of God didn't make sense that it was contradictory idea people would say well if God is all-powerful and all-knowing if he knows what he's going to do tomorrow then he can't do something different kandi these atheists would talk about this kind of thing presented as if it was a unsolvable dilemma and I didn't know the answer to that it took me 20 some years to find the answer maybe you're gonna get to this later you probably are but right now is I think about okay you're you're at the stage of your life right now that you're talking about you're buying into the philosophy of an intellectual weightlifter yeah who argues on the one hand for devoting a great part of your time to physical development yet at the same time denies the reality of a creator of the very thing that you're trying to improve in its sense that seems illogical at that time it was just something later you saw or at the time did it make sense to you I mean in other words if there is no creator there's no purpose then why are we wasting time trying to make our body better yeah and at that point no I didn't think of it at that level it took a long time before he wasn't addressing that either in his writing oh no no not at all he was being basically talking about these Nietzschean ideas that I ran her philosophy called objectivism without without considering issues like that without really address once again which is funny because he in a sense he was compartmentalizing too in a way yes yes very much so yet his philosophy in his bodybuilding but he wasn't bringing the two together just to make sense out of it yeah he'd kind of attempted a synthesis through some of these atheistic philosophies that were kind of they were missing big big chunks they were you know partial truths there were some you know some ideas of value in these different systems of philosophy but they're missing the most important part that the creator that is responsible for so you're brought into this I did you know like I said I was intellectually inclined because of the partial truths and their philosophies that drew me in for example I ran in philosophy of Objectivism very much into pro intellect Pro thinking this is our fundamental choice is to think or not to think very much oriented towards achievement making something out of your life for individual freedoms and individual rights she wrote these fictional novels with these heroic characters calling you to make them make the most of yourself you know so there's a lot of a partial appeal there and it did draw me away and to give me kind of a sense where my life was at this point where I where I drew away you know we had our our Catholic upbringing here the by the time of my late teens my mom had become very physically and mentally ill with a profound depression and severe heart failure and my parents were separated so dad was you know only partially in the picture there none of the family was going to church at this point then I had turned to atheism and we actually ended up losing the house that we lived in to there all kinds of financial turmoil so hopefully I'll get to it later but all these loose ends were tied up later sure every single one of us is really amazing the God's grace the way he did that later but at this point my life we had all these these things going on too when I think of the difference in atheist and an agnostic I usually think of as an a thesis is talks about it in other words makes an issue of the atheism agnostic can be silent about it not make a big deal about it just not care about God or were you an outspoken advocate of these ideas okay of the the philosophy of Objectivism this later psychology called rational emotive therapy was another thing I was into that had atheistic elements I was outspoken for the positive parts of those systems for the value of the intellect and productive work and in the psychology the way you can have reason control your emotions and help keep you calm and so on so those things I was very vocal in favor of but no I was never an outspoken atheist I would never attack the church or anything I mean I grew up with enough of that to know to know that there was good there so no I was never had spoken against a church or anything all right was this thin what led to your desire to go into psychiatry yes well actually might my primary interest was I always loved philosophy I love those deep deep issues and at this time because of the way things were in our home I wasn't going to be leaving home it's gonna stay in town and we didn't have a philosophy major so what's the next best thing and that ended up for me being psychology so I did pursue a bachelor's degree in psychology and while I was there going to college I work part-time as a weightlifting instructor I met this female pupil of mine who was the probably the honoree so when I ever came across and we ended up getting married about a year and a half later and had a son went to work at a disability office for government agency determining manifold and physical disability cases and about the late 80s my mom's sister Janet one of my aunts called and said hey you were halfway through a master's degree program you need to finish that and I think she's got a point there I went back to school still here in town while I was working and finished the master's in general psychology where I focused my master's thesis research on memory improvement techniques and interestingly there in reading the history these techniques I came across the figure of st. Thomas Aquinas as a person who was very influential on the history of these techniques so I knew his name from from growing up Catholic but I didn't know very much about him and I did not go directly into his writings I just knew him as he related to these these memory techniques couple years later in the early 90s I had the opportunity to go into a psychology doctoral program actually the state of Illinois invited school from Chicago to bring a program down to Springfield so students could do most of their study there and I did that obtained a doctorate in clinical psychology and focused on neuro psychology like the early detection of Alzheimer's disease ulster my thesis my dissertation subject matter but all this time I also taught on the University on the side for about 13 years mostly the University of Illinois Springfield taught mostly developmental psychology like the lifespan and focused courses on adolescents or on psychology of of Aging but all this time I think I last taught in 2004 so all that time though I considered myself an atheist in the sense that I really didn't believe there was a God but on the other hand my wife and I also sent our children through Catholic schools and I occasionally attend what was in practicing her faith at the time and no no she she was she'd never lost her faith because she she was also believer but we would just occasionally go to church kind of when we thought we'd get in trouble because our kids our Catholic schools and we're not going to church so is that kind of a of a thing weird I'm curious then at this stage atheist PhD in psychology teaching it that it seems that some of the the very influential psychiatrists logical writers of the 19th in the early 20th century had a major flaw and their understanding of the human person it would seem in psychology if you don't believe it's a god then it also touches on the belief in a soul or a person and you really look at human being for a totally scientific standpoint did you is that where you were at the time looking at your the people you were talking about is purely the scientific sensual being and not the soul aspect of their personality yeah I guess actually it kind of was it I mean you not believe in the immortality of the soul you know I believe that people I mean there were persons that were worthy of respect and so on this the whole time too I did have a great respect for some of the ancient philosophy like Aristotle this this Iran system objective of Objectivism was built and partially upon Aristotle's system also this rational emotive therapy and psychology that was really involved in was based upon much of the thinking of the ancient Stoics interestingly Aristotle himself in the Stoics themselves their reason led them to God but it was these modern people who built upon their systems who who had rejected him and also in the field of psychology so many of the the prominent thinkers there did not include God Alfred Adler the namesake of the school I went to he called God we called a fictive goal he thinks God is a wonderful idea that that mankind is created and then he kind of pulls us up we tried to live up to these these standards that we create out of our own mind so that was kind of some of the Adler's take their trajectory for Freud him so and yeah I'm before we fact those two were were a collaborator early on and they're also they had some very positive elements to his psychology he talked about what he called a striving for superiority not necessarily over others but we try to make ourselves to grow and become more competent and so forth but he said the most important principle is what he called social interest and this is our ability to have a sense of community and fellowship with our fellow man so he said the way we strive for superiority or to improve ourselves it's going to be psychological healthy if that is in line with this social interest if we're striving to build ourselves in ways that will act to help others so it was very much you know in line with the Christian ethic but it just left out God it's kind of like the the second Great Commandment without without the furs so were you starting to see this in is that what was moving in a direction toward the church or back to faith yes it was kind of like so immersed in Iran's philosophy of Objectivism I probably would've called myself than Objectivist in my 20s and 30s but it was through one of her focuses to is on selfishness their self-interest reso we should primarily look out for ourselves not not taking anyone else's rights away for them or try to hurt them but we should look out for number one and if other people are benefited by that well that's fine but that doesn't have to be our primary focus but with Adler he was tempering that with with the focus on the other at the time I also had young children in my household I say it's hard to keep yourself as your highest goal when you got this little baby looking at you and you realize you know you're partly responsible for that he's there so yeah this was trying to kind of break down some of these ideas and get me ready to you know more willing to accept the notion of God would it was there an event or something that moved you back in the direction of God or was it more just the intellectual yearning well it was partially intellectual I'm sure you know God was behind it but his actually I was reading one of those ancient Stoics little book from the Loeb classic library the ancient Roman stellar Seneca it was a Roman and he had a little line in one of his books it was just uh he was like me he'll Nima's sto - aku potty qualms way we're a which basically is translated say the the one thing the busy man is least busy with is living okay and here I was in 2004 I'd gone through school with young kids in the house I stayed in my job through the great majority of that also until my internship year I taught college on the side I thought I'm that busy man who doesn't have time to live it occurred to me later it is well relevant also to Socrates saying you know the unexamined life is not worth living and also something I realized later that Jesus said Martha you're busy about about many things you know so that was really a turning point for me I realized well I'm not gonna each anymore I don't have time to reflect on things well the next thing I knew a few months later I got a course in a teaching company on natural law I'd enjoyed a previous course they had on the Stoics and one on Aristotle the one on Aristotle was taught by a Roman Catholic priest and so is this program on natural law and in that program he showed the influence of Aristotle of the Stoics and half Thomas Aquinas made this huge synthesis he was so fundamental to these some of our modern notions of human enable rights and the dignity of man and so forth I'm thinking well here are these people who believe in God who are so fundamentally these things I think are of such importance and here's this Roman Catholic priest teaching this course anyway is that course that led me to read some books and led me to read the writings of st. Thomas Aquinas for the first time and then it was all over for my atheism from that point on I was going to say that when you read some of those like like Thomas Aquinas you're open and reading it or if you're coming in with a big chip on your shoulder and you're reading him through glasses based on Adler and the other yeah actually I never read him directly his own writings well I'm gonna had a book of like snippets from when I was a teen but but it was actually put by his Mortimer Adler who was 20th century philosopher and psychologist - who spent most of his life outside the church but a fan of Thomas Aquinas he later became a Christian in his last year's life actually a Catholic he was reading one of his books called how to think about God that I'd actually read in my early 20s thinking well maybe he can convince me to believe in God and it didn't do it but I read the same book 20 years later and it really started to work on me and then that led me to Thomas Aquinas and something I discovered shortly afterwards was in one of Pope Leo the 13th since cyclical --zz from 1879 he said that you know besides the the grace of God himself what's most likely to draw people who devoted their lives to reason back into the church is the church fathers in the Scholastic's and the chief scholastic there was st. Thomas Aquinas and that was just so true in my case that's interesting comment because in the Reformation one of the keys that that led to that break was a rejection of the Scholastic's are kind of a running away from the Scholastic's especially in Martin Luther himself and it seems that it was I'm wondering if it's because and I've heard it said many times that it was his formation on the Scholastic's that was a bad formation on the Scholastic's that got him off in the wrong direction you know I'm saying in other words yes yes and it was Martin Luther obviously 14 hundreds or so I think I think some of the late 40s early 50s yeah late 14th early 15 yeah some of the peak of the scholastic thought was coming in the 13th century with Saint Albert the Great and Saint Bonaventure and st. Thomas Aquinas I'd heard that you know maybe they'd gotten off on some different tracks after that but yeah it was those scholastics that pulled me back because the Scholastic's one thing about them I mean it was said of st. Thomas Aquinas that in some ways he was the greatest doctor of the church because he's so respected the Church Fathers and doctors that came before him that he in a way kind of inherited all of their thoughts he he wove it all together his mastery the Bible was amazing before I came back I had this idea that the ancient philosophical systems were very profound and the Bible I didn't appreciate its its depth and when I read st. Thomas Aquinas I he's just boggle my mind he knew Aristotle and the Stoics far better than these modern philosophers that I read and yet here he is also bringing the scriptures integrating all this in a way that just made incredible sense to me I mean it was a revelation I've heard that it said that when Charles Darwin first read Aristotle he said you know these modern scientists I'm reading they're mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle and that's how I felt when I read Thomas Aquinas I thought these atheists I'm reading they're mere schoolboys and a schoolgirl because they resign ran compared to st. Thomas Aquinas so that was a profound intellectual experience for me and it started through the intellect I would be another double take in there because Ayn Rand and the others in their rejection of God would have looked at the sacramental life as fiction did you go through a transition there to recognize the transubstantiation a lot of these things which have gone completely against a lot of your psychological teaching and training that you would have had before them yes like for Iran for example she said the world is ruled by faith reason and force and she said that not only faith reason don't make she said there they go together like poison and food you know she thought faith is something pre-scientific pre rational and for time I bought into that so I had that seeable theology that's really a whole lot of much ado about nothing you know if I didn't believe in God though what is all this theology later when I came to Thomas Aquinas I saw home this is what explains it all this is how it's everything in that picture Thomas Aquinas is a master psychologist the most profound understanding of psychology I've ever come across is in st. Thomas Aquinas because he's informed not only by those prior philosophers and thinkers but also by the Holy Scriptures so that I you know he talked about the completeness of truth the fullness of truth that's what I found in Thomas Aquinas and then and then you know the other church fathers and other documents as I came back in was it was it hard if you then to make the transition into accepting the the validity of the sacraments for example as you came back into the church they came back in a way no because you know there came to that leap between what the calling of the God of the Philosopher's yes there is some kind of a prime mover or or creative person out there but but but is that the god of the Scriptures is that the god of you know Abraham Isaac Jacob is that Jesus Christ and it was through Thomas Aquinas that that that leap was made it was not hard at all I went from one step to the next once I saw how seamlessly that was integrated how it all made sense even has a few very pithy scriptural verses even from Exodus when God says you know tells Moses you know I am Who am that encapsulate this profound philosophical idea of God as a being whose essence is the same as his existence it's very very abstract but right from the start how its seen how this all fits all since did it change your psychology your journey once you came back to the church and it change how you understood your own vocation your psychology that you were teaching and believing well yes it sure did interestingly when I would teach on moral development remember one class I hit him in I think he was going through the diaconate program he said well the Catholic Church has some interesting you know takes on on moral development he gave me some literature on fir trees and I looked at though it's kind of interesting now I wouldn't realize that seven or eight years later I'd be writing books on this myself based upon that Catholic understanding of virtue which is built on the understanding of the human being what it is to have a will and an intellect and and have senses so it just really integrated and brought my own view of psychology to a great a fullness it did not have before all right Kevin let's take a break now we come back like to begin right there is talking more depth about your understanding of the virtues to intellect the will especially in relationship to conversion you are moving closer to God so let's do that we come back Harry thank you welcome back to the journey home our guest this evening is dr. Kevin vhost and we're going to move on a little bit into these deeper issues that you've been writing about intellect will virtues vices before we go there though I want to make sure we make sure we covered all the aspects of your journey and one thing that I know we didn't get back to was your family how did they respond to your journey what difference your journey made to your family yeah I'm glad you asked I talked at one point how things were kind of in a bad way late teens at the time that I had left and it just amazed me the way over time God kind of tied up all those loose ends gradually over time 1986 my my mom would had all these problems with depression and heart failure she's in the hospital and had two valves replaced at exactly the same time our first son was born I remember making the hospital rounds checking on my wife and my son and my mom interestingly after that surgery she was pretty much healed physically and and mentally and spiritually she got to the point where she was worked she had been as like a stay-at-home mother but but she worked selling ads for senior citizens newspaper is very very proud of that she's one of their prized employees she she did income taxes for people on the side and she pride herself in not using a calculator she did it pence on a luridly yes she was a tremendous fan of bingo she went to bingo multiple times a week and did many jackpots and the most important thing about that is that who took her there was my father my parents ended up reconciling he treated her you know just incredibly well you know until the until the day she died I remember I think the first time I ever heard my dad cry was the day he called to tell me that mom was gone she lived to see all five of her grandson so it's very very wonderful story also later in the year 2002 my wife had noticed that a house was for sale a newspaper and it was the house that I'd grown up in and we really really loved that place my parents had had to sell it in the 80s because their financial disaster and so we went to look through the house and my brother and his family she went to and ended up a few days later we put it down a bid for that house cot we want to live there again and the bid came in from another family that's the same day also a full price bid like we did and the person selling it was a Baptist minister and his family a really wonderful man he was relocating back to another city and the realtor had had told him in the patio out on the side that my dad had built it had my brother's name and mine and my sister's in a date there you know with all of us there and he said he said no this house has to come back to you so we were able to buy back that house let's see in 2002 2006 one day doorbell rings is the front door and its box of books my first Catholic book memorized the faith they come out and here we are actually that book is uses the rooms of a house as part of the memory method in those rooms were based on that very house and those books at riding my door on July 12 2006 which was the seventh anniversary of my mother's death so just really amazing the way all that had tied in and then other my brother had come back to the church so it's just kind of amazing the way God had tied him some of these loose ends and made things we really had a very happy ending at that at the end of May the Lord works you know and sometimes my guy works that way in people's lives but they don't they don't take the next step of seeing that it was the work of God they do a coincidence yes you see that more horizontal level rather than seeing the the God side of it which was really paralleled your own journey of faith moving away from seeing life without God and then now seeing God as purpose and all the little things of life exactly that's one thing a coincidence I believed in coincidence all those years I did not believe in God's providential plan and it's since I've been back I'm amazed to see the way God does work now sometimes it takes a long time you know it took me 25 years to come back to the church and I should say too that you know it was this intellectual thing that brought me back it was the intellect that pulled me away in some sense and then it was the intellect that brought me back through Thomas and other other figures but the one thing I felt like I really came home was probably the first time in 25 years that I had read the Gospels and read those passages from Jesus and stuff like you know I didn't give up just some abstract notion of God I mean I'd given up the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ himself you know that the truth is a person and that's when it really hit home and you know the great sense of joy had come back to me and it's being back it's far more than just the head it's the whole the whole person Kevin looking back I'm not looking for you to point fingers at anyone you know in terms of why after all that formation you left the church but when you look back especially thinking about other Catholic young people brought up in the church yet lose their faith drift away either into nominalism or atheism or agnosticism site I mean what happens what happened is you think but what was missing that may have kept you from drifting yeah that's a very important question may be partially when I grew up in the in went through school in the late sixties in the nineteen seventies Oh different different things going on in church kind of changing some of the teaching methods but I was even though I was intellectually inclined and I was a very good student I really knew nothing about the intellectual depth of the church I mean when I had left it I thought well I'm seeking wisdom and knowledge and truth and I don't want this deep philosophy I had no idea that the deepest of all philosophy was right where I was to begin with within the church so I was not aware of Thomas Aquinas and st. Augusta I mean I heard their names but I wasn't aware of the depth of their teaching another person influential when I came back was GK Chesterton I don't remember air ever hearing about him except maybe in books of quotations until I'd come back to the Trish in the 40s so I'm thinking well gosh how come kids are growing up Catholic don't know about some of these monumental figures you know they're just such a glory to our tradition so how was it I mean I really when I left I did not understand what it was I was leaving hmm you also mentioned at one point that something came up where you needed to read the Bible and even have one in the house I mean you as a young man going to Mass would have heard Scripture read every single but there was a sense of which it had not become a part of your life right I mean it was kind of there you heard it on Sunday but didn't maybe not even realize it was from the Bible it was from the liturgy the lectionary but not the Bible and sometimes I think that's where you know we miss out letting our young people really understand the beauty of scriptures that's absolutely true you know and one thing that I realize when I came back of course now our church has also been blessed in the United States with so many you know converts with that great deep appreciation for the Bible so you know I've read the books you know your books got onto people like that and yes now I do see how that masks on me oh my gosh it's completely you know ties into the scripture in every single part I had no idea growing up all those years going through mass after mass after mass I had no sense of the just how deeply that was integrated with the scripture and also there's that stance of the church that you know truth is truth no matter where it comes from that's why I found like someone like Thomas Aquinas it hears I love Aristotle I love the writings of the Stoics it's all there except he even improves upon them and adds revelation on top of all that reason for the complete package what John Hawke all the two wings of truth faith and reason you know it opened my mind and to see and to be open to faith not as something that opposes reason but it's something that you know completes it and fulfills fulfill see it's interesting that you did have a period there when you were very much into your weight lifting where you said your best buddies were the the born-again Bible only folk yes but that hadn't drawn you away why did that not catch you at the time was it because it wasn't intellectual enough for what possibly I knew that I thought the core of this you know they had the love for Jesus Christ I also had it as a Catholic so it was no there was no pull away from there but it was at this time you know we were in our teens and it it was there was not a great deal of intellectual depth to it in fact I remember one of my friends was also a former Catholic and there was no no fire in the people he was around so he was pulled and you know became a Evangelic or a Pentecost I don't recall exactly which but know that that never pulled me away from the church it was the systems of philosophy a few years later that did okay we have an email let me take this now and might lead us into our other discussions we were thinking about does Deborah from Oregon how can I respond to critics who claim that philosophy and science leave no room for belief in God okay that that's a good a good question there and many many modern scientists and philosophers would try to argue that I think it's actually the exact opposite it's in the scriptures Romans 1:20 st. Paul says that you know we can see through through the world through what God has made his effects we can reason our way back to God so we can start by using our senses by using our intellects reason will lead to the existence of God st. Thomas Aquinas is his classic five proofs that had some some impact on me they're covered very briefly in the Summa Theologica and in a much more depth in the Summa contra Ginty lays there he shows how you can start with natural reason start with things that you can see like the fact that things change and things move that one thing causes another and your reason actually will lead you to the idea that there there has to be a god there has to be a being whose essence is to exist because nothing on earth that we see can give itself its own existence matter can't do that matter can't produce new matter from no matter at all only God can and in the Catholic tradition you do have these rational methods that lead you to the acceptance of God but then we also have revelation the the rational methods we kind of go from the bottom up from our senses up towards God in a revelation and we have this direct you know information from God in Revelation and the actual Incarnation so no there's no reason reason properly applied should lead us toward God not away did in the process in in your journey did you did you early on read john paul's encyclical on faith and reason I did yes one of the first few years I was back I read his encyclopedia sat/rad yo faith and reason I thought that's absolutely wonderful and beautiful in fact for the book of my reversion story the first quotation I had is from John Paul and here's where he's saying that even in the right of people who try to drive faith and reason farther a / apart their partial truths he said we can possibly get insights there that can lead us to the full truth and I thought that is so true some of these atheistic philosophies do have some partial truths not not the the fact of their atheism but other things that write about psychology philosophy science so it doesn't hurt to learn and rationally examine those but in the fullness of truth you're also open to faith and yeah I didn't read it until you know through every Rebecca and Rebecca all those years when John Paul was the Pope I didn't wasn't aware of what a profound person that we had I mean such a holy person and such an intelligent prisoner would you agree that there's a with the irony that on the one hand you know the scientists the atheists think that it's their intellectualism that keeps them from believing in God in reality it's their ignorance that keeps them from believing in God would you agree with that irony yeah yes I think it is their ignorance and in sometimes - it's like a intellectual pride or hubris you know or arrogance that the idea that so they so easily dismiss so many of these powerful thinkers throughout you know 2,000 years you know who their reason has led them to god it's like some of the new atheists think that well reason developed when they themselves became able to reason and they discount all they found thought before them yeah that's forget there's a great book on that talks about the 1300s the ger that may be 13th century but you know the beauty and the intellect of that century that most of us today look back and think you know we're so much smarter today that all then way back when but that's when all the universities were started - all the great writers like you said Aquinas and and you just have a new book coming out about Albert the Great you tell the audience about Albert the Great because there's a lot I never heard of Alfred a great when I was outside the church yeah see how about the great I mean he was a person who's called the great while he was still alive he was such an incredibly intelligent and learned man in the Natural Sciences he wrote books about animals and plants he's said the the earth was round he predicted he said the features of the were actual you know like mountains and indentations not just optical illusions get all this profound science and also theology wrapped into one he was Thomas Aquinas teacher you know brought out that incredible brilliance in philosophy and theology st. Thomas Aquinas so yeah when I was away from the church I this profound respect for the ancient Greeks and Romans when I came back in my mind was blown away by that 13th century you know an incredible depth of knowledge sometimes people get this idea these scholastics these are the guys who said you know how many angels can dance on the top of them the head of a pin but when you actually go and read what people like Saint Albert and st. Thomas wrote about is just incredible and it's incredible love for the world they saw God reflected in creation so they they studied creation one of the things that arose during that time before Luther that influenced Luther is the rise of nominalism as a philosophy that's very influenced us to date is that's something that you also studied in your journey to realize how much that infects psychology and philosophy today yes I mean there are some of the modern philosophies really kind of got off got off the beam in many many ways we're gonna be very subjective kind of ignoring the capacity for objective truth I found that so many the the relativism is so rampant aney because of these these little self of ideas that were started around that time so that that hasn't had a very important I think to the extent that most of us in our culture are blind to the the levels of which affected us and how we understand the human person because of these philosophies that have infiltrated you know the media and are it's just there and our Catholic faith is just so key I think to cutting through it all but but it is an automatic right this because you go to masses I mean all sudden you become magically aware of this the Catholics would be easily as blind to it as the rest of our culture in fact let's take the sex email because this one might get us into a question I'd like to ask you Jim from Louise C Louisville writes since I'm one of the only practicing Christians in my workplace and most of my colleagues consider themselves agnostics or atheists well I don't want to form formally enter into debates with them does Kevin have any practical tips I could use to share my faith of those who are so far from God okay that's a very relevant question you know my workplace is very much like that also and of course you know the first thing is to try to embody Christian behavior in your interactions with these people just show them there there's that that the fundamental it's not just in the head it's about we're supposed to love each other so be carrying be that person that kind of reflects that Christianity with Christ within your soul but in terms of debate I would just kind of be open to the kind of subject matter they're talking about if they bring up certain books or certain topics maybe you're aware of something in the Catholic world that addresses that so you might just very respectively suggest if they've heard about this one or engage them on that particular subject matter personally I don't usually you know bring up issues like this to people out of the blue but if they have talked about something that that's relevant then then I will engage them Avery Dulles is book on the history of apologetics penance of the story of fighting these battles with those outside the church to defend the reality of the Christian faith and it's a wonderful book published by Ignatius press but that talks about that that whole journey but Kevin part of the issue that I want you to think about also though is how does it's one thing to you can see it in your co-workers yeah they don't believe in God and they're caught up in these philosophies what can you do for yourself to recognize the ways you may have bought into bad philosophies from your the soup of your culture but not aware of it yourself any ideas from us like as a psychologist psychiatrist give me you know how do you how do you break through that in yourself to move forward okay well yeah you know because it is all around us we're immersed in it and don't even think about it what I have done myself since I came back is I mean I just try to immerse myself in that counterculture which which is the Catholic culture now myself it's through my my reading through Catholic radio through Catholic television for myself I tried to well there's no saying that you become what you think about so I try to think about those things that are that are worth thinking about that's one of the keys of the virtue of wisdom is that you focus on what's really important so so my advice for that the Catholic him or herself or the Christian who wants to stay that way is immerse your own thoughts your radio your television your reading and then of course your actual participation in Mass and you were receiving the sacraments just immerse yourself in that wonderful Catholic world part of that media around us that has fed us for so many years at least in my lifetime which is almost parallels television is that so much it's been a good aspects of our faith our belittled I remember growing up as a child watching the comics and it shows that little picture of the devil and the angel on your shoulder fighting at you so in your mind you get this idea that that's not really real that's a joke that but it's true that's spiritual battle is that a little bit what your write about in your book on virtues and vices I mean how do you cut through the voices in your life so that you can choose the right one and be obedient to God okay well one thing I talk about with the virtues and again I borrow mostly from from Thomas Aquinas here his idea that virtues are perfections of our powers our capacity so they make us all we can be but they're also habits virtues are good habits essentially in habits you have to build by by thinking about the right things by acting on them every day so you have to actually practice them day after day after day and that's part of that that immersion they're not in the worldly culture but in the Catholic counterculture so so part of it is I mean to really build virtue in your soul you must think it you know feel it live it do it every every day an email from cari from Connecticut in dr. Vose experience can living an active lifestyle have influence on a person's spiritual life and if so in what ways okay an active lifestyle and that's interesting so one of the Dominican sayings is they want to share with others two fruits to their contemplation so kind of an ideal lifestyle is where you know you're contemplating focusing on God meditating on the Scriptures and study but then you know from from what you learn from what's infusing your soul that overflows and you go out and and act so ideally an active lifestyle is is good as long as they're you don't neglect that contemplation as long as you have that time to reflect and focus on what's important part of my own problem is having too active a lifestyle like I talked about if you don't leave yourself time to reflect then you'll be all the more susceptible to the culture around you so so that's one of the risks of being too active is you don't have that time to reflect and then you'll be even more susceptible to those listen egative messages if you would talk a little bit about the parallels between the physical disciplines and the spiritual disciplines since they both have the same fingerprints of God on them yeah and that's good too because another thing when I came back to church I realized so many things I was interested in when I was away from the church I didn't realize how the church had talked about them how the church had the full picture of them and one of those is physical physical training they'll make taking care of your body you know st. Paul says the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit a very strong Christian theme is that a Catholic understanding is that we are you know mind and body and soul and body unities a human person is both we're not just a soul whose in this machine with just our body we're a composite we're made of both and God calls us to take care of both and the healthier we are the fitter we are the more likely we are to feel better to have energy to do things for others so they're very closely entwined we really are called to to be stewards of our body it doesn't mean to become obsessed it doesn't mean to try to be super lean or you know or look like a bodybuilder or a runway model or something but just that care of our body that it's likely to make us healthier to give us more energy it's very much a very important you can also incorporate spiritual methods my friend Peggy Bo's writes about the Rosary workout right and she has a system where you pray the rosary while you work out my own methods of fitness focus on building virtue they also focus on being very very brief so does not pull your time away from other responsibilities my kind of strength training methods so it's just all sorts of ways that the physical and the spiritual are intertwined and the Catholic Church has I mean that God's perspective on that yeah because again we're not a soul trapped in a body we are one person soul and body and the disciplines of the spirit often parallel disciplines of the body what we can learn about our diet you know eat the wrong diet we're gonna have be sick of all the same things spiritually if we're not spending time with certain does it really it's it's really all the mind of God helping us understand how we can grow in union with him through the discipline of our body which helps us discipline our will there's nothing the intellect in the we'll talk a bit about that because my background in Protestantism didn't make the distinctions as clearly between intellect and will freewill responding to God's calling in our life in obedience to Christ and this is a thing to that many the Atheist thinkers some scientists applause is kind of ignore to people like Thomas Aquinas talk about different layers or characteristics of the soul the vegetative that we share with plants or nutrition and growth and so on because the first function of the soldiers to bring make something alive you know an animate object anima is a Latin for soul so something that's alive has a soul at some level but we talked about the vegetative sold things like nutrition and growth and reproduction the sensitive soul that we that animals we share with animals ability to receive through our five senses four locate motor abilities to move about and so forth but only humans have this intellectual layer to the soul well we can think at a conceptual level we can also direct our actions by our will animals acting according to instinct because of our in electing we can understand things at a deeper level then we can choose alternate courses of action so so there's the will so those are also two of the ways that were made in in God's image we can understand things through our intellect and we can make choices to our will for us it's limited and it works through a series of steps for God it's total in its it's instantaneous but but yeah part of our way they're made an image of God is the fact that humans uniquely have these intellectual capacities and this capacity to choose let's assume that we've got watching listening to your story someone that's an atheist or agnostic left the faith maybe hasn't thought about it but have to tuned in tonight what would you like to say to them about the need to come back to the church okay since my own journey tended to be such an intellectual basis I'd give like maybe four reading assignments now that you had to do all these two are very brief if you read the encyclical attorney Patris pope leo xiii 1879 another is that faith and reason john paul ii encyclical from 1998 those are brief if you want a 3,000 page reading assignment I'd say actually open up the Summa Theologica which is available on online as are its most of these documents a fourth is then also look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church because this is a distillation of all this incredible whismur's incredible beauty in their incredible depth so I would just say try to muster up within yourself the courage and the humility to do a little searching and I'd recommend documents like those one that I might just throw in there a Peter creep as a nice little summa of the Summa for those were just beginning you don't want to jump into the 3,000 page one that he can just he condenses it down quite a bit right yes exactly I had that book that's an excellent way to go there's also just many many wonderful books written about st. Thomas Aquinas that can draw you in GK Chesterton's classic biography is just a pure joy that would be another place to go all right Kevin in case the audience want to connect with you and your writings do you have a website you might want to mention yes I do it's it's dr. Voss com does dr vos t.com and people can contact me through the site if they like all right Kevin thank you for joining okay thank you Marcus thank you so much for writing and for your witness I appreciate it so much thanks for all you thank you for joining us on this program I'd encourage you to look at some of his other writings because I think both intellectual as well as a physical he he helps us deal give our whole body to our Lord Jesus Christ and to grow in obedience to him thank you for this program I hope that's been encouragement to you and your walk with Christ Oh

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: EWTN, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Kevin Vost, Former Atheist, Catholic, JHT01306

Id: 87rnTioOhjk

Length: 56min 0sec (3360 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2011