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Echoes of Eternity in Art
54 Plays8 months ago
In this episode Jon and Nate discuss works of art and artists whose art rings with the Kingdom of God. They read excerpts, discuss how they resonate with them, and how we as Christians and artists can keep the Kingdom of God present in our art.
*Unfortunately our video recording was corrupted, so this is an audio only episode.
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Transcript
Introduction and Mandolin Echo
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to Artists of the Way.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm John.
00:00:05
Speaker
And I'm Nate.
00:00:06
Speaker
And we are the hosts.
00:00:08
Speaker
I keep hearing my mandolin strings echo from my vocal thing and it's distracting me.
00:00:13
Speaker
Is that because you're talking so on tune?
00:00:16
Speaker
I'm talking on tune.
00:00:18
Speaker
Tune.
00:00:19
Speaker
What's A?
00:00:22
Speaker
A. Is that C?
00:00:23
Speaker
I just said A, so that's A. I think that was C. A.
00:00:28
Speaker
Do, re, mi, fa, so, la.
00:00:33
Speaker
Is that it?
00:00:34
Speaker
Anybody who's clicking on this podcast, it's like the first time they've ever listened.
00:00:39
Speaker
It's like, what on earth?
00:00:40
Speaker
We're here to talk about mandolin strings resonating in my office.
C.S. Lewis and the Ransom Trilogy
00:00:45
Speaker
We're really here to talk about things that resonate with our heart.
00:00:48
Speaker
That's a good segue.
00:00:51
Speaker
Nice.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yes, Nate, we're just here to chat about some things.
00:00:58
Speaker
So what you been thinking about this week?
00:00:59
Speaker
What I've been thinking about this week, John, is a little bit C.S.
00:01:06
Speaker
Lewis.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:08
Speaker
This is going to be a good episode if we're talking about C.S.
00:01:10
Speaker
Lewis.
00:01:12
Speaker
We're going to be, so it's going to be good.
00:01:13
Speaker
I love Lewis.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
I was listening to the end of Paralandra, which is his second book in the space trilogy.
00:01:23
Speaker
I wasn't sure which one it was.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's also called the Ransom Trilogy.
00:01:27
Speaker
Because he holds the books for ransom for money.
00:01:31
Speaker
Most authors just sell you their book for money, but he actually, when he sent it out... It's kind of the same thing as selling.
00:01:38
Speaker
No, because he had a letter on there, and he was like, unless you pay me $10, I will kill this book.
00:01:48
Speaker
Someone did it!
00:01:49
Speaker
The book is out there!
00:01:50
Speaker
I know!
00:01:51
Speaker
We've all paid the ransom, but if it goes like a certain amount of months without the ransom, you pay the...
00:01:57
Speaker
book gets killed.
00:01:58
Speaker
So like with the Lewis Foundation, he's taken care of this whole time.
00:02:02
Speaker
That's most of their job, is just checking on the ransom.
Audiobooks vs. Reading
00:02:06
Speaker
Keeps coming in.
00:02:07
Speaker
Good.
00:02:08
Speaker
There's one really devoted fan of the Space Trilogy out there.
00:02:11
Speaker
He's like, I've got to buy another book!
00:02:14
Speaker
Oh no, I've got to get the whole trilogy!
00:02:16
Speaker
Why did he do this for a whole trilogy?
00:02:19
Speaker
Darn you, Ransom Trilogy.
00:02:24
Speaker
Ransom is the name of the main character.
00:02:28
Speaker
Elwyn Ransom.
00:02:30
Speaker
He's actually who Lewis held for Ransom.
00:02:31
Speaker
A real man.
00:02:35
Speaker
This bit will continue.
00:02:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:39
Speaker
I just say okay.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:44
Speaker
So you're reading Paralandra.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:46
Speaker
Or listening to it.
00:02:47
Speaker
That's the same thing.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's not.
00:02:49
Speaker
But I was experiencing the book.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:53
Speaker
I think it counts.
00:02:56
Speaker
I think it's a thing, but you can't call it reading.
00:03:01
Speaker
But what if somebody is really bad at reading and that's the only way they can experience books?
00:03:04
Speaker
Would you say that's fine?
00:03:05
Speaker
But they're not reading.
00:03:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:07
Speaker
Because reading is a thing and listening is a different thing.
00:03:14
Speaker
Both good things.
00:03:16
Speaker
We should be doing both.
00:03:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:19
Speaker
Do you think listening is less than reading the book?
00:03:24
Speaker
I think they're probably different goods.
00:03:26
Speaker
I think it's really good.
00:03:29
Speaker
I think it's good for your brain to read and you get a good different experience because you're not having the outside influence of a spoken narrator.
Ransom Trilogy Overview
00:03:39
Speaker
Sure.
00:03:41
Speaker
And you get that experience of just like forgetting that you're reading and it's just washing into you and it's good for your brain.
00:03:47
Speaker
But listening is awesome too when you can't be reading and to hear someone else's interpretation of the book.
00:03:54
Speaker
What if you never have that experience where a book washes over you?
00:03:58
Speaker
Do you not?
00:03:59
Speaker
Not really.
00:03:59
Speaker
Oh.
00:04:00
Speaker
I think I've had it...
00:04:06
Speaker
I can only pinpoint one time that I think I've had that.
00:04:10
Speaker
Maybe twice.
00:04:11
Speaker
I guess maybe it happened with the Silmarillion a little bit.
00:04:14
Speaker
But that doesn't really happen to me.
00:04:16
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:04:16
Speaker
So I don't... Yeah, so I think then listening... I mean, it's still, I'm sure, good for you to read, but I think then listening is great.
00:04:26
Speaker
What a time-honored thing.
00:04:27
Speaker
A lot more people have listened through the age than read.
00:04:31
Speaker
And it's wonderful.
00:04:33
Speaker
Cool.
00:04:34
Speaker
Sorry, totally veered to stop talking there.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, but I was reading the book through my headphones and... It's like slam dunk on my intellectual point with a joke.
00:04:51
Speaker
The premise of this series is in the book one, Ransom gets kidnapped and taken to Mars.
00:04:56
Speaker
Would you say that he's held for Ransom?
00:05:01
Speaker
Almost.
00:05:02
Speaker
He's kind of brought there as a sacrifice.
00:05:04
Speaker
They think that he's supposed to be- So a ransom for a god.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:07
Speaker
That's a ransom.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
But he's-
00:05:10
Speaker
they actually didn't want to sacrifice him.
00:05:12
Speaker
They were just actually angels who take care of the planet.
00:05:14
Speaker
And they're like, what?
00:05:15
Speaker
No, we don't want to sacrifice.
00:05:16
Speaker
So was it like a, like a, it's just a misunderstanding.
00:05:18
Speaker
Oh, they were trying to sacrifice him to the angel.
00:05:20
Speaker
I said, yes.
00:05:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:21
Speaker
I thought the angels had taken him under the pretense that they were going to sacrifice him.
00:05:27
Speaker
No, just kidding, man.
00:05:29
Speaker
No, but it's like the, the angels are like kind of, they're not usually called angels.
00:05:35
Speaker
They're called like,
00:05:36
Speaker
or Yarsas.
00:05:36
Speaker
Nice.
00:05:38
Speaker
But it's like basically, you know, Mars.
00:05:42
Speaker
This is the real Mars.
00:05:43
Speaker
This angel who takes care of the planet Mars.
00:05:45
Speaker
That's that fake orange rock in the sky.
00:05:47
Speaker
Oh, I see.
00:05:48
Speaker
But his name, he's like the proper Mars.
00:05:49
Speaker
His name is Mars.
00:05:51
Speaker
Or in the real name of the planet is Malacandra.
00:05:54
Speaker
Is there a connection between him and Mars, the God of War?
00:05:58
Speaker
Totally.
00:05:58
Speaker
Nice.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:00
Speaker
And that's... Tolkien, or not Tolkien, Lewis flexing his like medieval... Oh yeah, totally doing that in these books.
00:06:07
Speaker
And then the second book...
00:06:10
Speaker
Ransom is brought by the, essentially the angels to Venus, which is called, the real name of Venus is Perilandra.
00:06:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:20
Speaker
And he's brought there to, it's like, it's like a planet that hasn't fallen.
00:06:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:06:29
Speaker
Like the people, there's not, it's not highly populated though.
00:06:32
Speaker
There's a lot of animals and there's only two people on the planet.
00:06:35
Speaker
So it's like, it's like another Adam and Eve story, but it's like the beginning of humanity basically on this planet.
00:06:44
Speaker
But, um, so this would be pre Jesus ransoming them.
00:06:51
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because we're still living within the universe that Jesus came to our planet and that comes into it because there's creatures on like Mars and other planets, but they're not humans.
00:07:03
Speaker
But they say after God was incarnated as a human, then all the planets that are like birthing people, they're forever going to be man after that.
00:07:18
Speaker
So it's once for all on a planet.
00:07:21
Speaker
Well, no.
00:07:22
Speaker
Well, maybe that.
00:07:24
Speaker
But at this point, I'm saying is that these people look like humans on Venus because they came after God was incarnated.
00:07:32
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:07:33
Speaker
Cool.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
But then, yeah, they definitely have a relationship with the true God there.
00:07:39
Speaker
But...
00:07:41
Speaker
And Satan or a demon comes to the planet by basically inhabiting the bad guy from the last book.
00:07:53
Speaker
And so it's, again, he's trying to tempt the Eve character into sin.
00:07:58
Speaker
And our guy Ransom is there to...
00:08:01
Speaker
stop him okay interesting yeah yeah it's really cool but what struck me was um we're fast forward to the end of the book so you should go read the rest of it it's really good yes we may be spoiling some some books in this episode
Climax of Perelandra
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:17
Speaker
But, but we'll, I'll fast forward past some of the, the good stuff at the, at the end where, um, our guy ransom is on top of mountain talking to, um, now the Adam and Eve characters who are like King and queen of the planet.
00:08:35
Speaker
And like they, okay, this is a spoiler, but they didn't, they didn't fall.
00:08:39
Speaker
And so it's going to be continued to be like an unfallen world.
00:08:42
Speaker
Wow.
00:08:43
Speaker
It's really cool.
00:08:43
Speaker
Crazy.
00:08:46
Speaker
So everybody trip your next vacation book tickets to Venus.
00:08:50
Speaker
It's good.
Art and Spiritual Truths
00:08:51
Speaker
It's good.
00:08:51
Speaker
Good place.
00:08:52
Speaker
It is a gas giant so you'll have to swim but wait.
00:08:55
Speaker
There's a lot of water.
00:08:57
Speaker
Venus is not a gas giant.
00:08:58
Speaker
I had my planets confused.
00:09:00
Speaker
No.
00:09:00
Speaker
No.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:01
Speaker
I was homeschooled so we'll blame.
00:09:04
Speaker
You should have known better.
00:09:06
Speaker
She's going to attack.
00:09:08
Speaker
Look out for my mom's defense of herself in the comments.
00:09:11
Speaker
Down below.
00:09:12
Speaker
Under the table.
00:09:17
Speaker
But at the end of the book, we're just kind of chatting together because we got some questions for these angel characters that are Mars and Venus, essentially.
00:09:32
Speaker
And we hear about the Adam character kind of prophesies what's going to happen on our planet, basically the revelation and stuff.
00:09:41
Speaker
And...
00:09:45
Speaker
And our main character, Ransom, he gets a little concerned that, like, we thought that Earth was kind of the center of, like, God's creation universe.
00:09:56
Speaker
But now there's this planet and there's other places around the universe.
00:10:01
Speaker
And he's, like, concerned that there's not, like, a true center to God's plan.
00:10:06
Speaker
And, like, is there a plan even?
00:10:10
Speaker
And so this concept is, like,
00:10:12
Speaker
bothering him that like maybe there's not a plan maybe it's all like random and stuff is their true center and so i'd like to read some of the book because really what i want to talk to today about is with you is um how art can give you uh
00:10:34
Speaker
wash over you and give you a vision of spiritual truths and eternity in a way that goes beyond just maybe just talking about it.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so we're going to be reading some Lewis today and letting the art wash over our audience.
00:10:51
Speaker
I'm going to read a little bit of Tolkien.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
Basically, this is a Lewis and Tolkien episode, which we didn't plan.
00:10:58
Speaker
But Nate was like, I want to talk about this.
00:10:59
Speaker
And I have some Lewis thoughts.
00:11:00
Speaker
There will be more.
00:11:01
Speaker
And then I was like, I have some Tolkien thoughts.
00:11:04
Speaker
The first of our Lewis and Tolkien episodes.
00:11:07
Speaker
Which there will be many.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:09
Speaker
Hope you like that.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:10
Speaker
Sorry, guys.
00:11:11
Speaker
We're obnoxious with this.
00:11:17
Speaker
So in this section that I'm going to read, it's almost like
00:11:22
Speaker
almost like a song, we have paragraphs of elevated speech that talk about God and his plan, and they all end in blessed is he, and they just go one after another like waves washing over you as you read them.
00:11:39
Speaker
And there's so many of these beautiful paragraphs.
00:11:41
Speaker
I can't read all of them, but I have a selection of them that hopefully give some of these great truths and the wash.
00:11:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:11:49
Speaker
We'll start with like the little introduction to this section.
00:11:55
Speaker
They're asking the Eldila, the angels, to speak to Ransom's question about what's like the what's the purpose and is their meaning?
00:12:07
Speaker
The voice that spoke next seemed to be that of Mars, but Ransom was not certain.
00:12:12
Speaker
And who spoke after that, he does not know at all.
00:12:15
Speaker
For in the conversation that followed, if it can be called a conversation, though he believes that he himself was sometimes the speaker, he never knew which words were his or another's, or even whether a man or an Eldil was talking.
00:12:29
Speaker
The speeches followed one after another, if indeed they did not all take place at the same time.
00:12:35
Speaker
Like the parts of a music into which all five of them had entered as instruments, or like a wind blowing through five trees that stand together on a hilltop.
00:12:47
Speaker
Now we'll jump to one of the middle sections.
00:12:50
Speaker
The dust itself, which is scattered so rare in heaven.
00:12:53
Speaker
Oh, I want to do one before that.
00:12:55
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
00:12:56
Speaker
We were going well.
00:12:57
Speaker
Oh, my word.
00:12:59
Speaker
This guy, we're going to fire him after this episode.
00:13:01
Speaker
It's going to be a long episode.
00:13:02
Speaker
That's what I said last episode.
00:13:03
Speaker
Hang on for as long as I can.
00:13:05
Speaker
All right, here we go.
00:13:07
Speaker
Though men or angels rule them, the worlds are for themselves.
00:13:12
Speaker
The waters you have not floated on, the fruit you have not plucked, the caves into which you have not descended, and the fires through which your bodies cannot pass, do not await your coming to put on perfection, though they will obey you when you come.
00:13:27
Speaker
Times without number I have circled Arbol while you were not alive, and those times were not desert.
00:13:34
Speaker
Their own voice was in them, not merely a dreaming of the day when you should awake.
00:13:39
Speaker
They also were at the center.
00:13:41
Speaker
Be comforted, small immortals.
00:13:44
Speaker
You are not the voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
00:13:51
Speaker
No feet have walked nor shell on the ice of Glund.
00:13:55
Speaker
No eye looked up from beneath on the ring of Lurga.
00:13:59
Speaker
An iron plan in Nervil is chaste and empty.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yet it is not for nothing that the gods walk ceaselessly around the fields of Arbol.
00:14:09
Speaker
Blessed is he.
00:14:11
Speaker
That dust itself, which is scattered so rare in heaven, whereof all worlds and the bodies that are not worlds are made, is at the center.
00:14:20
Speaker
It waits not till its created eyes have seen it, or hands handled it, to be in itself a strength and splendor of Meleldil.
00:14:29
Speaker
That's God's name in these books, Meleldil.
00:14:32
Speaker
Only the least part has served, or ever shall, a beast, a man, or a god.
00:14:37
Speaker
But always and beyond all distances, before they came and after they are gone, and where they never come, it is what is and utters the heart of the Holy One.
00:14:48
Speaker
It is...
00:14:51
Speaker
Holy One, with its own voice, it is farthest from him of all things, for it has no life, no sense, nor reason.
00:14:58
Speaker
It is the nearest to him of all things, for without intervening soul, as sparks fly out of fire, he utters in each grain of it the unmixed image of his energy.
00:15:09
Speaker
Each grain, if it spoke, would say, I am at the center.
00:15:14
Speaker
For me all things were made.
00:15:16
Speaker
Let no mouth open to gainsay it.
00:15:18
Speaker
Blessed is he.
00:15:20
Speaker
each grain is at the centre the dust is at the centre the worlds are at the centre the beasts are at the centre the ancient peoples are there the race that sinned is there tor and tinedril are there the gods are there also blessed is he
00:15:39
Speaker
Where Meleldil is, there is the center.
00:15:43
Speaker
He is in every place, not some of him in one place and some in another, but in each place the whole Meleldil, even in the smallness beyond thought.
00:15:53
Speaker
There is no way out of the center save into the bent will, which casts itself into the nowhere.
00:16:00
Speaker
Blessed is he."
00:16:02
Speaker
Each thing was made for him.
00:16:04
Speaker
He is the center.
00:16:06
Speaker
Because we are with him, each of us is at the center.
00:16:09
Speaker
It is not as in the city of the darkened world, that's our world, where they say each must live for all.
00:16:16
Speaker
In his city, all things are made for each.
00:16:20
Speaker
When he died in the wounded world, he died not for men, but for each man.
00:16:26
Speaker
If each man had been the only man-made, he would have done no less.
00:16:31
Speaker
Each thing, from the single grain of dust to the strongest Eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation, and the mirror in which the beam of his brightness comes to rest and so returns to him.
00:16:44
Speaker
Blessed is he.
00:16:46
Speaker
He has immeasurable use for each thing that is made, and his love and splendor may flow forth like a strong river which has need of great water course, and fills alike the deep pools and the little crannies that are filled equally and remain unequal.
00:17:02
Speaker
And when it has filled them brimful, it flows over and makes new channels.
00:17:07
Speaker
We also have need beyond measure of all that he has made.
00:17:11
Speaker
"'Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely necessary to you for your delight, and for your delight I was made.
00:17:19
Speaker
Blessed be he.
00:17:21
Speaker
He has no need at all of anything that is made, and Eldel is not more needful to him than a grain of dust, a people world no more needful than a world that is empty, but all needless alike, and what all add to him is nothing.'
00:17:39
Speaker
We also have no need of anything that is made.
00:17:42
Speaker
Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like his, born neither of your need nor of my deserving, but of plain bounty.
00:17:54
Speaker
Blessed be he.
Paradoxes in God's Nature
00:17:57
Speaker
And these go on until the character, until Ransom sees like the whole universe kind of in visible format and it gets complicated and then it becomes simple and we find out that he's been reveling in this conversation and in the vision of a glimpse of how God sees the world for like a year, though it just felt a few minutes.
00:18:25
Speaker
But I just love how these truths, they just like wash over you in elevated speech and gives you a little glimpse of how in our human way, we just can think of things in a very small way.
00:18:40
Speaker
Like, is this the way that things are?
00:18:42
Speaker
Yes, it's this way.
00:18:43
Speaker
But then in God's view, it's also this way and stuff like that.
00:18:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:18:48
Speaker
like the talk about love me for I'm infinitely necessary.
00:18:53
Speaker
Love me for I am infinitely superfluous.
00:18:56
Speaker
And, and just those dichotomies that are like both true and both beautiful is really lovely.
00:19:05
Speaker
I think that's something I like about God is I think he is inherently paradoxical.
00:19:11
Speaker
And I think,
00:19:12
Speaker
I don't think I've said this on the podcast.
00:19:14
Speaker
Maybe I've said it to you before, but I feel like the universe is in some sense built on a foundation of paradoxes.
00:19:25
Speaker
Like I think God just...
00:19:28
Speaker
I mean, there's the like age old, like dilemma that I think every Christian wrestles with of like justice and grace.
00:19:35
Speaker
Right.
00:19:35
Speaker
And like finding that middle ground.
00:19:37
Speaker
And the best we can do is find a middle ground.
00:19:40
Speaker
But God is like, no, I'm actually the fullness of both.
00:19:44
Speaker
I'm fully both.
00:19:46
Speaker
I am grace and justice both to the nth degree.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, and try to understand that.
00:19:59
Speaker
Try to deal with that.
00:19:59
Speaker
You can't.
00:20:00
Speaker
I am so much beyond you.
00:20:02
Speaker
Right.
00:20:02
Speaker
And so I think the universe that God created, because I think he is, is just paradoxical.
00:20:11
Speaker
And I think...
00:20:13
Speaker
That just makes sense to me because we can never make sense of a paradox.
00:20:19
Speaker
I don't know what the actual definition of a paradox is, but it's essentially by definition something you can't reconcile intellectually.
00:20:28
Speaker
And so...
00:20:30
Speaker
whatever is there.
00:20:31
Speaker
It doesn't mean they're contradictory inherently, but you just can't reconcile them.
00:20:35
Speaker
But they are reconciled in God.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:38
Speaker
Just as in Christ, all things are reconciled.
00:20:41
Speaker
But they are reconciled in God because he is where all things are held together.
00:20:46
Speaker
He holds all things together.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so I love that.
00:20:53
Speaker
God can say I am entirely this.
00:20:57
Speaker
I'm also entirely this.
00:21:00
Speaker
And then our brains go, what?
00:21:02
Speaker
That doesn't fit into my mapping of the faith.
00:21:05
Speaker
I'm in the smallest seed, the smallest microbe.
00:21:09
Speaker
I am all of me there, but I'm also bigger than the universe.
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's lovely.
00:21:18
Speaker
What do you...
00:21:20
Speaker
What do you think of that?
00:21:22
Speaker
I think it's good.
00:21:23
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:21:24
Speaker
But that's what I love about Lewis is the way that he, through his books and essays, just kind of expands your mind and gives you an elevated view of what heaven or eternity or spiritual things are actually going on.
00:21:44
Speaker
Even if it's not like...
00:21:46
Speaker
It's factually, necessarily exactly the way it's going to be.
00:21:50
Speaker
But it gives you a vision that breaks you out of your little world that we live in here and helps you be aware of, oh, this is a bigger world and bigger reality than I usually think about.
00:22:04
Speaker
I, yeah, I think I'm going to jump to slightly like theological intellectual side of that too.
00:22:11
Speaker
I think he was really good at that.
00:22:13
Speaker
And I think sometimes...
00:22:15
Speaker
We don't remember how, I guess, controversial some of his things could be.
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:22:24
Speaker
That he would say.
00:22:25
Speaker
Like, you've got the last battle there.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:27
Speaker
I think of the last battle wherein he makes the somewhat controversial, maybe Christian universalist.
00:22:35
Speaker
Feels like that.
00:22:36
Speaker
Argument of the Telmarine who worshipped Tash all his life.
00:22:42
Speaker
And at the end, Aslan, God says, really all along you were pursuing me, and now you're welcomed into eternity in heaven.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
Which is something a lot of people raised in like an Orthodox or traditional, we'll say traditional, like a traditional Christian upbringing would be like, that's heresy.
00:23:01
Speaker
But Lewis is like, I don't know, God is so big.
00:23:04
Speaker
Can we entertain the thought that...
00:23:07
Speaker
There's something weird and mysterious going on here, and I don't know.
00:23:10
Speaker
I'm not really convinced of Christian universalism personally, though I think there's some compelling arguments in there, but we don't have to talk about that today because this is not about Christian universalism.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think we definitely got to return all things to Scripture and judge things against...
00:23:29
Speaker
scripture totally well that's the plumb bob right so like we can have all these discussions and right and i'm sure lewis has things in scripture where he says this is where i see that coming from i know there's a lot of arguments for just using that as like a case study intellectually of like this is a polarizing thing to talk about yeah i've heard very compelling arguments arguing primarily from scripture for that really yes we can we can talk
00:23:56
Speaker
more about it.
00:23:57
Speaker
And now I'm like, well, the audience want to hear about it.
00:24:01
Speaker
If you're interested, comment.
00:24:03
Speaker
I don't know.
00:24:03
Speaker
We'll talk about it later or I'll send you some things or something.
00:24:08
Speaker
So we can talk about it later.
00:24:09
Speaker
But I've heard really compelling arguments for that from Scripture.
00:24:11
Speaker
So Scripture is still that plumb bob, but we're able to have conversations around it that broaden our minds
00:24:17
Speaker
To the possibilities of what God is not in a way that detaches us from scripture, but we can talk about.
00:24:24
Speaker
Right.
00:24:25
Speaker
Will in the end Christ somehow in a way we don't quite understand, save everyone and bring everybody into heaven somehow.
00:24:34
Speaker
Or will it be eternal conscious torment?
00:24:37
Speaker
Or will it be like an annihilation theory of hell where really it's like eternal death, you know, or they cease to exist?
00:24:45
Speaker
We can have those conversations still rooted in scripture, but it doesn't have to necessarily like threaten our faith to talk about these things because our God is so much bigger than them.
00:24:58
Speaker
You know, he's big enough that
00:25:02
Speaker
He, our, our, I'm losing my words.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:09
Speaker
He is big enough that he's like kind of beyond all of those conversations in the sense of like, we can entertain that and still put our faith in God and trust him to correct us where we need to be corrected.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:29
Speaker
But we can talk about what does his creation look like?
00:25:33
Speaker
What might it look like?
Speculative Theology and Faith
00:25:35
Speaker
What is his eternal plan and what does that look like?
00:25:41
Speaker
In that sort of speculative way.
00:25:48
Speaker
As long as we don't let that become our thing, right?
00:25:52
Speaker
Exactly.
00:25:52
Speaker
I feel like...
00:25:54
Speaker
people can have disagreements about this and like I can feel like very sure that it's one way.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:59
Speaker
But another good believer can feel it's another way.
00:26:03
Speaker
But you just want to be careful while you're having those thoughts that your faith is in God and not like –
00:26:11
Speaker
I can only believe in God if it's my interpretation on this.
00:26:16
Speaker
Right.
00:26:16
Speaker
If it's Christian universalism.
00:26:17
Speaker
Or if it's eternal conscious torment, you know, or anything.
00:26:20
Speaker
Right.
00:26:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
Right.
00:26:21
Speaker
And so we can't pin our faith on being right about this issue, but we need to ultimately have our faith in God that he is loving and he is just and he'll take care of it.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:36
Speaker
But I think Lewis does both in his fiction and his nonfiction a really good job of that, of being really rooted in his faith in God, his relationship with God.
00:26:47
Speaker
And then saying, let's explore this from all kinds of weird angles that maybe I'm making an intellectual argument for, or maybe I'm just exploring through story.
00:26:56
Speaker
Well, he kind of said that in like the great divorce at the beginning of it.
00:27:01
Speaker
It's like, I'm not trying to say anything about how it actually is.
00:27:05
Speaker
Though when you read it's like I don't know that's actually that way.
00:27:09
Speaker
It's like I wasn't trying to say it was.
00:27:10
Speaker
It sounds like you're trying to say that's how it is.
00:27:12
Speaker
I don't know.
00:27:14
Speaker
Don't know.
00:27:15
Speaker
You just want to put that.
00:27:15
Speaker
Sounds like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.
00:27:18
Speaker
What's that?
00:27:19
Speaker
Trying to have your cake and eat it too.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:27:21
Speaker
You just want to put that disclaimer at the beginning of everything you say.
00:27:25
Speaker
But I think that's an important humility we should all have about our theology.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
is that there's some things that are orthodox that are Jesus died and rose from the dead.
00:27:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:37
Speaker
Literally physically.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
You don't want to be like, maybe I want to be humble and say, maybe that's not true.
00:27:42
Speaker
Maybe Jesus didn't rise from the dead and save me.
00:27:44
Speaker
I'm just being humble here.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:46
Speaker
Right.
00:27:46
Speaker
Like we can, we can be bold in our faith in the person of God in Christ and what he accomplished.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:55
Speaker
But all of the like theology and doctrine around that, I think the humility to say, this is how I understand it.
00:28:03
Speaker
But I could get to heaven and God could say, man, you faithfully followed me.
00:28:08
Speaker
We're so off on infant baptism, John.
00:28:11
Speaker
You just really wanted to be Anglican.
00:28:14
Speaker
Which is like, I love my Anglican children.
00:28:17
Speaker
That's fine.
00:28:21
Speaker
Babies can't breathe in the water.
00:28:23
Speaker
You're going to drown them, John.
00:28:25
Speaker
You're going to drown them.
00:28:30
Speaker
I was just sprinkling.
00:28:31
Speaker
Oh, you were just sprinkling.
00:28:33
Speaker
The good thing is that the Catholics are right that baptism saves, just not about the infant part.
00:28:37
Speaker
So they did die, but they were saved.
00:28:42
Speaker
Well, nobody had that doctrine.
00:28:43
Speaker
I know.
00:28:45
Speaker
It's because I'm so huge and mysterious, John.
00:28:52
Speaker
Oh, goodness.
00:28:53
Speaker
I'm never going to play God the Father after that.
00:28:56
Speaker
No show will cast me now.
00:29:03
Speaker
No, but I think Lewis was really good at using art in that way.
00:29:08
Speaker
I feel like he's just so good that I can forgive him for some of those weird things.
00:29:14
Speaker
Just ignore that.
00:29:16
Speaker
I just love the rest.
00:29:18
Speaker
We get to heaven and God's like, he was actually right about all of everything.
00:29:23
Speaker
I wouldn't mind if people were right about Christian universalism and God somehow saved everybody.
00:29:27
Speaker
Right.
00:29:28
Speaker
Cool, that would be nice.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:31
Speaker
I'm like, ideally, I think that'd be great.
00:29:34
Speaker
I don't know if I'm 100% convinced.
00:29:36
Speaker
Again, we'll talk off air.
00:29:37
Speaker
No, no.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's not where I currently land.
00:29:40
Speaker
No, no.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yes, but no, I think art...
00:29:48
Speaker
I'm trying to decide if I'm going to jump to Tolkien or jump to another thought.
00:29:53
Speaker
Nate, pick a path.
00:29:54
Speaker
We're giving Nate a choose-your-own-podcast adventure.
00:29:57
Speaker
Do you want me to... I want to hear your thought.
00:29:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:00
Speaker
One of the plays that I did early on as an actor who was learning and a teenager was All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:12
Speaker
The ending piece of that, it's sort of a vignette show.
00:30:18
Speaker
Kind of like You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
00:30:20
Speaker
So it has all these little vignettes.
00:30:22
Speaker
The ending vignette is...
00:30:26
Speaker
I don't even remember what they're talking about, like what the like theme, or not theme, but like subject of their discussion is.
00:30:36
Speaker
But it's like this final day of class with a professor who had gone through World War II.
00:30:41
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:30:42
Speaker
And somebody's asking, what's the meaning of life?
00:30:45
Speaker
He's like, what's your last question on the day of class?
00:30:47
Speaker
And somebody's like, what's the meaning of life?
00:30:49
Speaker
Professor's like, okay, pulls out this little circular mirror and just starts reflecting light in people's eyes.
00:30:57
Speaker
And he's like, I think this is the meaning of life.
00:30:59
Speaker
And they're like, what?
00:31:01
Speaker
What do you mean by that?
00:31:02
Speaker
It's a poor meaning.
00:31:04
Speaker
Just to shine this light in my eye?
00:31:06
Speaker
Come on, man.
00:31:07
Speaker
Stupid.
00:31:09
Speaker
But it's about...
00:31:12
Speaker
reflecting the light good to other people.
00:31:18
Speaker
Take that a step further as a Christian, as we have to do.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, like good, but not good enough.
00:31:25
Speaker
We take that a step further.
00:31:27
Speaker
We're reflecting the light of Christ.
00:31:31
Speaker
I think every Christian is meant to reflect that to the world and especially artists.
00:31:38
Speaker
Our goal as artists is to reflect truth.
00:31:42
Speaker
Any good artist should be trying to do that.
00:31:44
Speaker
If they're not, they're a bad artist.
00:31:45
Speaker
They should at least be trying to reflect their understanding of truth to the world.
00:31:49
Speaker
We don't want universalism for them.
00:31:54
Speaker
But so then that idea that for us Christians, the truest thing is Christ.
00:32:00
Speaker
Like we just said, that's what we're hanging our hat on.
00:32:02
Speaker
That's what we're putting our faith in.
00:32:05
Speaker
Christ is the truest thing.
00:32:07
Speaker
So our art shouldn't just be reflecting the reality of human experience or human emotion.
00:32:12
Speaker
Those things are important and will be in it.
00:32:15
Speaker
And I think.
00:32:15
Speaker
I'll add this in a second, but that art should also be reflecting.
00:32:23
Speaker
should primarily be reflecting Christ to the audience, to the fellow actors.
00:32:28
Speaker
I think it can reflect Christ through the human experience.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:33
Speaker
Because Christ is in the human experience, baked in, I think, to its DNA in an abstract, not literal sense.
00:32:42
Speaker
We're not baking here.
00:32:46
Speaker
We're not baking.
00:32:48
Speaker
That is for communion.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
No, now it's just wafers.
00:32:54
Speaker
It used to be delicious bread, and now it's wafers.
00:32:57
Speaker
I feel like that's a little bit of an insult to God.
00:33:00
Speaker
It's just like we get to heaven, and God's like, you were spot on on your doctrine, but then you made me a wafer man.
00:33:08
Speaker
And then you go home and eat great Italian bread.
00:33:11
Speaker
Great Italian bread.
00:33:12
Speaker
And have nothing to do with me.
00:33:13
Speaker
Don't have the wherewithal to bring that great Italian bread to church and say, can you make this Jesus instead?
00:33:25
Speaker
Why of course son it's bread What was I saying I don't even but like yeah in reflecting the reality of the human experience Christ is in that so I think you can pick a Totally random.
00:33:42
Speaker
I don't know Mary Poppins is written by a Buddhist, but I think beautifully reflects the she was a Buddhist.
00:33:47
Speaker
No, yeah
00:33:50
Speaker
Australian Buddhists?
00:33:52
Speaker
Australian Buddhists.
00:33:53
Speaker
They make them?
00:33:54
Speaker
They do.
00:33:55
Speaker
Crikey.
00:33:56
Speaker
Crikey, it's a Buddha.
00:34:02
Speaker
Written by a Buddhist.
00:34:05
Speaker
fairly, like, it's fantastical and secular, but I think beautifully reflects some wonderful truths that Christ baked in and is a beautiful sort of, has a beautiful redemptive piece that sort of echoes with the great redemption that we all hope to have and the great.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
You know?
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
So I think artists should strive to do that.
00:34:26
Speaker
You don't have to be Buddhist, though.
00:34:28
Speaker
You have to be Buddhist to create art that reflects the truth of the Christian.
00:34:35
Speaker
It's a shame.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's a real bummer.
00:34:39
Speaker
God, I want to be an artist.
00:34:40
Speaker
Oh, buddy.
00:34:42
Speaker
I want to spend eternity with you.
00:34:43
Speaker
I know.
00:34:44
Speaker
But you want to be an artist.
00:34:45
Speaker
Dang.
00:34:47
Speaker
I'm going to love your art, though.
00:34:49
Speaker
It's going to be really nice.
00:34:50
Speaker
It's going to honor me so much.
00:34:53
Speaker
But you're going to be a Buddhist.
00:34:59
Speaker
Oh, goodness.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah.
Screwtape Letters Ending
00:35:05
Speaker
Want to hear more Lewis?
00:35:06
Speaker
Let's hear more Lewis.
00:35:07
Speaker
All right.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:10
Speaker
Where shall we?
00:35:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:13
Speaker
Audience, you pick.
00:35:16
Speaker
They can't respond.
00:35:18
Speaker
We're not young enough to fall for the door of the Explorer saying yes trick.
00:35:22
Speaker
Do you want... Oh, I got Nate.
00:35:24
Speaker
Which book are we going to do?
00:35:25
Speaker
You pick.
00:35:26
Speaker
Oh, I do love Screwtape Letters.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, yes.
00:35:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:28
Speaker
Hey, audience.
00:35:30
Speaker
Should we read The Screwtape Letters?
00:35:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:38
Speaker
Somebody, at least one audience member has to have turned off the podcast from that.
00:35:43
Speaker
Nope, I'm out.
00:35:44
Speaker
I'm done.
00:35:47
Speaker
All right.
00:35:47
Speaker
What you got for us from Screwtape Letters?
00:35:49
Speaker
We got the end of the Screwtape Letters here.
00:35:54
Speaker
I love this ending.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:58
Speaker
What a just middle finger.
00:35:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:36:00
Speaker
Take that.
00:36:01
Speaker
I know.
00:36:05
Speaker
I feel like Lewis would give the middle finger to Satan.
00:36:08
Speaker
He kind of did in his like, he'd like use like the word like, and that should be damned.
00:36:15
Speaker
And I mean that literally should go to hell.
00:36:19
Speaker
Oh, I love that.
00:36:21
Speaker
So yes, we know the screw tape letters.
00:36:24
Speaker
It's letters from a senior demon written to a junior demon about this is how you got to tempt your guy away from the enemy, which is God.
00:36:36
Speaker
And so we go through a bunch of letters.
00:36:38
Speaker
And then in this final one, the guy became a Christian earlier.
00:36:44
Speaker
And that's too bad for the demons.
00:36:46
Speaker
But they're still working on him, though.
00:36:48
Speaker
But in this final letter, we find... They're our protagonists, so we have to root for them.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:55
Speaker
Right?
00:36:56
Speaker
Protagonists are always the good guys in stories.
00:36:58
Speaker
Like in that Oceans movie.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yup.
00:37:03
Speaker
But in this final one, the guy died in like a bombing.
00:37:09
Speaker
Like bombing of England in World War II.
00:37:17
Speaker
And so the guy died and he sees – once he dies, his spiritual eyes are open because his soul is living now and he sees the demon that had been trying to tempt him.
00:37:33
Speaker
But now we're going to jump to this paragraph.
00:37:37
Speaker
As he saw you, he also saw them.
00:37:42
Speaker
I know how it was.
00:37:44
Speaker
You reeled back dizzy and blinded, more hurt by them than he had ever been by the bombs.
00:37:51
Speaker
the degradation of it, that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower.
00:38:03
Speaker
Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy, but that is the cursed thing.
00:38:12
Speaker
The gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet not strange.
00:38:17
Speaker
He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look and even doubted their existence.
00:38:25
Speaker
But when he saw them, he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone.
00:38:39
Speaker
So that now he could say to them one by one, not, who are you?
00:38:45
Speaker
But, so it was you all the time.
00:38:51
Speaker
All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories.
00:38:55
Speaker
The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained.
00:39:05
Speaker
That central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered.
00:39:13
Speaker
Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet.
00:39:20
Speaker
Only you were left outside.
00:39:24
Speaker
He saw not only them, he saw him.
00:39:31
Speaker
This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on him.
00:39:40
Speaker
What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him.
00:39:47
Speaker
Is clarity itself, and where's the form of a man?
00:39:53
Speaker
You would like, if you could, to interpret the patient prostration in the presence, his self-abhorrence and utter knowledge of his sins.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yes, Wormwood, a clearer knowledge than even yours, on the analogy of your own choking and paralyzing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of heaven.
00:40:16
Speaker
But it's all nonsense.
00:40:18
Speaker
Pains he may still have to encounter, but they embrace those pains.
00:40:24
Speaker
They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure.
00:40:28
Speaker
All the delights of sense or heart or intellect with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself,
00:40:38
Speaker
now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a rattled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door
00:40:59
Speaker
He is caught up into that world where pain and pleasure take on trans-finite values and all our arithmetic is dismayed.
00:41:10
Speaker
Once more, the inexplicable meets us.
00:41:14
Speaker
Next to the curse of useless tempters like yourself, the greatest curse upon us is the failure of our intelligence department.
00:41:24
Speaker
If only we could find out what he is really up to.
00:41:28
Speaker
That was it.
00:41:33
Speaker
Because they can't comprehend that he could actually love them and make them to be loved.
00:41:39
Speaker
But I just love that when the guy dies and suddenly things become clear, the angels are there and he sees, you were my friends and my companions this whole time.
Tolkien's Heavenly Portrayals
00:41:54
Speaker
And he sees God and he knows that and he recognizes him and they know each other and he doesn't have...
00:42:02
Speaker
The pain of all of his sin and stuff, despite the knowledge of it.
00:42:08
Speaker
I've got to jump into Tolkien now.
00:42:09
Speaker
I think this is perfect.
00:42:10
Speaker
All right.
00:42:11
Speaker
Now I feel like I should go grab Return of the King and read it.
00:42:13
Speaker
Will you stall our audience for me?
00:42:16
Speaker
I'll try.
00:42:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:17
Speaker
Believe in you.
00:42:17
Speaker
You can say whatever you want.
00:42:19
Speaker
I'll be in the other room, so I won't even know.
00:42:24
Speaker
Hi, audience.
00:42:26
Speaker
Thank you for being here.
00:42:28
Speaker
I know there's a lot of podcasts that you could be listening to.
00:42:32
Speaker
And maybe you are.
00:42:34
Speaker
Maybe you're not listening to this podcast right now.
00:42:37
Speaker
Maybe someone else is listening to it.
00:42:40
Speaker
But be comforted that one day you might listen to this and hear me talking to you.
00:42:49
Speaker
Are you talking to somebody who's not listening to our podcast?
00:42:54
Speaker
Offensive you got immediately.
00:42:56
Speaker
Maybe, John, what about it?
00:42:58
Speaker
Got a problem with it, John?
00:43:00
Speaker
They might listen someday.
00:43:02
Speaker
They'll know it was me talking to them all along.
00:43:06
Speaker
They'll hear you calling over the mountains.
00:43:09
Speaker
Listeners.
00:43:11
Speaker
Dear listeners.
00:43:13
Speaker
You come at last.
00:43:16
Speaker
Okay, so...
00:43:18
Speaker
Tolkien, I think... I like how you open to the beginning of the book and then flip all the way to the end.
00:43:24
Speaker
Listen.
00:43:27
Speaker
I don't know.
00:43:27
Speaker
I was like, maybe there was something at the beginning of the book that I wanted to read, even though I have all my notes right here about what I wanted to share from The Return of the King, one of my favorite books.
00:43:37
Speaker
I think that Tolkien... Is this White Shores?
00:43:41
Speaker
That will be one of them.
00:43:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:44
Speaker
I think that Tolkien is the best at describing eternity and heaven of anything outside of Scripture.
00:43:52
Speaker
Whoa.
00:43:54
Speaker
Outside of Lewis?
00:43:56
Speaker
I like Tolkien's descriptions better than Lewis's.
00:43:59
Speaker
I do like Lewis's.
00:44:00
Speaker
Tolkien is beautiful.
00:44:01
Speaker
Tolkien is beautiful.
00:44:03
Speaker
I admittedly, there easily could be theologians who've written more beautiful accounts of heaven.
00:44:09
Speaker
But they didn't get famous like Tolkien.
00:44:10
Speaker
They didn't.
00:44:11
Speaker
We're not reading them.
00:44:11
Speaker
Who's Augustine?
00:44:14
Speaker
Some people even call him Augustine.
00:44:16
Speaker
I don't know who he is.
00:44:18
Speaker
Which one is he?
00:44:20
Speaker
Is he both?
00:44:21
Speaker
Some days he's Augustine.
00:44:22
Speaker
Other days he's Augustine.
00:44:25
Speaker
Weirdo.
00:44:26
Speaker
Weirdo.
00:44:28
Speaker
What did he do?
00:44:29
Speaker
Lay the bedrock for the Western Church's theology?
00:44:33
Speaker
Lame.
00:44:35
Speaker
That's kind of cool.
00:44:36
Speaker
That's kind of cool.
00:44:37
Speaker
Nice.
00:44:38
Speaker
Even some Eastern Orthodox like him, I think.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
I think so.
00:44:42
Speaker
He's generally, most of the church fathers everybody likes.
00:44:45
Speaker
The hippos like him.
00:44:46
Speaker
Hippos, they're like woo.
00:44:49
Speaker
Woo-hoo.
00:44:49
Speaker
Isn't that like what he is, Augustus of Hippo?
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, Augustine of... Of Hippo.
00:44:54
Speaker
Hippo, yep.
00:44:55
Speaker
It's not there.
00:44:56
Speaker
Pagent Saint.
00:44:56
Speaker
It's not there.
00:44:57
Speaker
I went too far back.
00:44:59
Speaker
I'm sorry, people know I went too far forward again.
00:45:01
Speaker
I'm just stalling now.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:03
Speaker
doom doom doom
00:45:28
Speaker
It's got to be right here, right?
00:45:29
Speaker
Have you ever flipped through a book?
00:45:31
Speaker
Not found what you're looking for.
00:45:33
Speaker
We'll keep flipping on through.
00:45:34
Speaker
Flipping on through.
00:45:36
Speaker
Flipping on, flipping on, flipping on through.
00:45:39
Speaker
Trying
Eucatastrophe and Redemption
00:45:41
Speaker
it?
00:45:41
Speaker
Literally, I had it just a minute ago.
00:45:43
Speaker
Have you ever looked through a book?
00:45:45
Speaker
Not found what you're looking for.
00:45:48
Speaker
Have a look through a book.
00:45:49
Speaker
Oh, here we go.
00:45:50
Speaker
Lovely.
00:45:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:51
Speaker
You found what he's looking for.
00:45:52
Speaker
I did.
00:45:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:54
Speaker
So if you don't know the ending of Return of the King, I'm about to spoil the entire story for you.
00:46:01
Speaker
It won't be spoiled.
00:46:02
Speaker
You'll still enjoy it.
00:46:03
Speaker
Well, that's true.
00:46:04
Speaker
I'm about to reveal what the ending is, but you must go watch it or read it because it's my favorite story.
00:46:09
Speaker
And it's not just because it's an awesome fantasy story.
00:46:11
Speaker
It's because it is so immensely resonant and beautiful and echoes with eternity in the gospel.
00:46:17
Speaker
Resonant good.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:19
Speaker
So, preamble to my two Tolkien things.
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:23
Speaker
Tolkien hated allegory, but Tolkien is...
00:46:29
Speaker
I think impossible to read without a Christian lens.
00:46:32
Speaker
Many, many, many people do it.
00:46:34
Speaker
And I think they miss the rich depth of his work immensely.
00:46:39
Speaker
I was just listening to Leaf by Niggle again, which I will get to in a moment, which is a short story by Tolkien's.
00:46:45
Speaker
And I needed to do dishes today.
00:46:47
Speaker
So I threw on like somebody reading it.
00:46:49
Speaker
Because it's Thursday.
00:46:50
Speaker
It's Thursday.
00:46:51
Speaker
That's my dishes day.
00:46:52
Speaker
It is my dishes day.
00:46:53
Speaker
I work from home, so I do dishes around my lunch.
00:46:56
Speaker
But I was like, okay, I need to listen to this.
00:46:59
Speaker
Anyways, and so somebody was reading it who does like a Tolkien YouTube channel, but she's not Christian.
00:47:04
Speaker
And so she'd be kind of interjecting her interpretation throughout.
00:47:07
Speaker
And I'm like, wow, you are just missing it.
00:47:09
Speaker
You're just missing what this is.
00:47:11
Speaker
Definitely not Christian.
00:47:12
Speaker
And she like recognized, oh yes, Tolkien was Christian.
00:47:15
Speaker
This is working itself in in some ways, but still like the significance of it, I think, was missed.
00:47:21
Speaker
Tolkien...
00:47:22
Speaker
cannot help but imbue I think almost every part of his work with the reality of the kingdom of God I think it is it's on it like condensation on a soda cup like you can't hold it without getting your hands wet with the kingdom of God wow now you got even better I know
00:47:51
Speaker
So, Tolkien's great, one of his great magnum opuses, I think he has several magnum opuses, which I don't think is possible, but I think he does.
00:48:00
Speaker
My Tolkien fanboy is showing one of his great magnum opuses, Lord of the Rings, his big story.
00:48:08
Speaker
The only thing he finished.
00:48:10
Speaker
He finished The Hobbit and Leaf by Niggle.
00:48:13
Speaker
leaf by niggle is a short story no i know is that not i know i'm technically finishing something he didn't finish much he didn't we'll get to that in leaf by niggle but oh it's fascinating nate i can't wait anyways sorry i'm i'm i'm taking too much time lord of the rings okay tolkien could you tell us what lord of the rings is about well there's some jewelry
00:48:38
Speaker
But Tolkien has this immense gift to make everything feel so dour and dark.
00:48:46
Speaker
And yet, something beautiful and amazing and salvific comes through.
00:48:52
Speaker
What he calls eucatastrophe.
00:48:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:55
Speaker
Which I think is amazing.
00:48:56
Speaker
Side note, I think Avengers Endgame is eucatastrophe.
00:48:59
Speaker
But we can talk about that later.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, sure it is.
00:49:02
Speaker
I just had that thought recently and I was like, Nate will appreciate this thought.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:06
Speaker
Tony?
00:49:07
Speaker
Tony, the portal scene, that's like such a dark moment.
00:49:11
Speaker
And then it's like, whoa, light.
00:49:13
Speaker
So Tolkien has this thing that he's like, I think this is a true thing because you see it in Christ is what Tolkien says.
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:20
Speaker
There's catastrophe where everything's gone wrong.
00:49:22
Speaker
And then there's eucatastrophe where out of that catastrophe, something beautiful and good is worked.
00:49:29
Speaker
Or it's like something inexplicably went very right.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:34
Speaker
It's like deus ex machina, but way better.
00:49:38
Speaker
Suck it, Greeks.
00:49:40
Speaker
Why did they come up with that?
00:49:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:42
Speaker
That was like a Greek theater thing.
00:49:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:49:45
Speaker
Deus ex machina was a theater thing.
00:49:48
Speaker
Bring it back.
00:49:49
Speaker
Bring it back.
00:49:50
Speaker
Bring it theater back.
00:49:51
Speaker
Theater's very back.
00:49:53
Speaker
It doesn't need me to bring it back, which is good.
00:49:56
Speaker
You're dying.
00:49:56
Speaker
I'm dying right now, live on air.
00:50:00
Speaker
So Tolkien has constructed this dark, dour situation wherein Frodo has taken this ring to Mount Doom and it must be destroyed and he fails at his quest and he gets lightly mutilated and betrays his friend.
00:50:18
Speaker
And Gollum, who's been working with them, now has betrayed them and is trying to take the ring back.
00:50:25
Speaker
And the Nazgul, who are these terrifying monsters that have been hunting him, are headed for Mount Doom.
00:50:31
Speaker
And the ring falls in and you're like, oh my gosh, wait.
00:50:34
Speaker
They're actually like, it happened, it worked, but then the mountain starts erupting and you're like, oh my gosh, Sam and Frodo are going to die.
00:50:42
Speaker
They're just going to die on this mountain.
00:50:44
Speaker
They've been talking about it already.
00:50:45
Speaker
They've run out of supplies.
00:50:47
Speaker
They are sure to be dead.
00:50:49
Speaker
There is like a whole paragraph.
00:50:52
Speaker
Frodo says, well, this is the end, Sam Gamgee.
00:50:57
Speaker
Literally says that.
00:50:59
Speaker
They just lay down and Frodo says, I'm glad to be here with you, Sam, here at the end of all things.
00:51:06
Speaker
It's a beautiful line.
00:51:07
Speaker
Elijah Wood delivers it beautifully, I think, in the movie.
00:51:11
Speaker
And then you see some happenings and there's some eagles and they deus ex machina and that's great.
00:51:18
Speaker
And you know that they rescue them from the mountain, but then you jump to Sam's perspective.
00:51:23
Speaker
as he wakes up and he's literally just been in what is basically hell.
00:51:29
Speaker
It's fire and brimstone and darkness and evil.
00:51:34
Speaker
And Sam awoke and found that he was lying on some soft bed, but over him gently swayed wide beeching boughs and through their young leaves sunlight glimmered green and gold.
00:51:46
Speaker
All the air was full of a sweet mingled scent.
00:51:50
Speaker
He remembered that smell, the fragrance of Ithilien.
00:51:54
Speaker
"'Bless me,' he mused.
00:51:55
Speaker
"'How long have I been asleep?'
00:51:57
Speaker
For the scent had borne him back to the day when he had lit his little fire under the sunny bank, and for the moment all else between was out of waking memory.
00:52:08
Speaker
He stretched and drew a deep breath.
00:52:10
Speaker
"'Why, what a dream I've had,' he muttered.
00:52:12
Speaker
"'I'm glad to be awake.'
00:52:15
Speaker
He sat up, and then he saw Frodo was lying beside him and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head and the other resting upon the coverlet.
00:52:25
Speaker
It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing, which was where he was mutilated.
00:52:30
Speaker
Full memory flooded back, and Sam cried aloud, It wasn't a dream.
00:52:35
Speaker
Then where are we?
00:52:36
Speaker
And a voice spoke softly behind him.
00:52:39
Speaker
Side note, when Sam last saw this man, he died.
00:52:44
Speaker
When he last saw him, he died.
00:52:46
Speaker
He died, but then God sent him back because he was an angel and his work wasn't done.
00:52:50
Speaker
Tolkien would hate me describing it that way, but that's what it is.
00:52:54
Speaker
And a voice spoke softly behind him.
00:52:57
Speaker
In the land of Ithilien and in the keeping of the king, and he awaits you.
00:53:03
Speaker
With that, Gandalf stood before him robed in white, his beard now gleaming like pure snow in the twinkling of leafy sunlight.
00:53:10
Speaker
"'Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?'
00:53:14
Speaker
he said.
00:53:15
Speaker
But Sam lay back and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer.
00:53:23
Speaker
At last he gasped.
00:53:25
Speaker
"'Kandolph, I thought you were dead, but then I thought I was dead myself.
00:53:31
Speaker
Is everything sad going to come untrue?
00:53:33
Speaker
What's happened to the world?'
00:53:35
Speaker
A great shadow has departed, said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music or like water in a parched land.
00:53:44
Speaker
And as he listened, the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.
00:53:53
Speaker
It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.
00:53:59
Speaker
But he himself burst into tears.
00:54:01
Speaker
Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring, and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased and his laughter welled up, and laughing, he sprang from his bed.
00:54:14
Speaker
And I think that's just one of the most beautiful eschatological things ever written.
00:54:21
Speaker
There is another quote that's out on the internet, and I cannot verify that it was actually Tolkien that said it, because it uses that phrase, but I can't find a citation for it.
00:54:30
Speaker
So it is possible.
00:54:32
Speaker
It could have come from Tim Keller, because he preached a sermon using something from that.
00:54:35
Speaker
Or it could have actually come from Tolkien and have been one of his letters, and I just can't find a citation.
00:54:39
Speaker
Could have been from a Tolkien-Tim Keller rap battle.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yes, they did do that often.
00:54:43
Speaker
Occasionally.
00:54:44
Speaker
They loved to rap battle.
00:54:46
Speaker
Super frequently.
00:54:48
Speaker
No, it's a few times.
00:54:51
Speaker
But the quote goes, the birth, the death, and resurrection of Jesus means that one day everything sad will come untrue.
00:55:01
Speaker
I don't know for sure that that was Tolkien.
00:55:03
Speaker
It rings maybe as a paraphrase of Tolkien a bit more to me than his actual words.
00:55:08
Speaker
But I think that that is the belief that's running under this and running under all of Tolkien's work is that eye on the kingdom of God and Tolkien just being such a gifted writer and because of his deep love for God that...
00:55:27
Speaker
He never really wrote about in a book.
00:55:30
Speaker
He never wrote apologetic books like Lewis.
00:55:33
Speaker
They had very different approaches to that.
00:55:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:35
Speaker
But it just spills out into him creating the beautiful phrase, everything sad is come untrue.
00:55:44
Speaker
And I'm like, that's the thing we look forward to, that one day we're going to be reconciled with Christ.
00:55:51
Speaker
And even if, like we were talking about with hell, Christian universalism isn't the thing, we don't need to be like, oh, well, it's going to be sad.
00:55:57
Speaker
Somehow everything sad will become untrue.
00:56:01
Speaker
Because God is big enough to do that.
00:56:04
Speaker
And the saddest thing maybe that ever happened is Jesus dying.
00:56:10
Speaker
And that became untrue.
00:56:12
Speaker
You know, it's wonderful.
00:56:15
Speaker
I'm also going to read just cause we're going on and on.
00:56:18
Speaker
So my connection point here, cause I forgot to like bridge over is Lewis talking about heaven there.
00:56:23
Speaker
And you were mentioning the joys of, of like heaven and eternity and what that will be like.
00:56:29
Speaker
And I just think Lewis Tolkien, excuse me, Lewis does a fine job too.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:34
Speaker
He does a great job.
00:56:37
Speaker
Fine in the British sense.
00:56:38
Speaker
He does a fine job.
00:56:39
Speaker
He does a fine job, too.
00:56:41
Speaker
He does a fine job, too.
00:56:44
Speaker
Tolkien somehow makes another dark situation happen.
00:56:46
Speaker
Then we get past that dark situation, and then we get to basically the gateway to heaven.
00:56:52
Speaker
And Frodo has just been so wracked by the trauma and the pain of everything that he went through that he can't find peace in the world.
00:57:02
Speaker
And so he gets on this ship to sail to the other world.
00:57:08
Speaker
which is in this, in the world of the book Valinor, but basically heaven.
00:57:12
Speaker
I'm in heaven.
00:57:15
Speaker
But he writes just the most beautiful description of entering into heaven.
00:57:21
Speaker
And if it's not like this, then I will submit a formal complaint to God when I get to heaven.
00:57:29
Speaker
So he's saying goodbye to all his friends.
00:57:31
Speaker
Then Frodo kissed... These are other hobbits, if you don't know.
00:57:35
Speaker
Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin and last of all, Sam, and went aboard and the sails were drawn up and the wind blew and slowly the ship slipped away down the long gray firth and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.
00:57:53
Speaker
And the ship went out into the high sea and passed out into the west.
00:57:58
Speaker
Until at last, on a night of rain, Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water.
00:58:09
Speaker
And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the gray rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back.
00:58:19
Speaker
And he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
00:58:26
Speaker
Oh.
00:58:28
Speaker
Tolkien, I think, is also great at marrying... Right?
00:58:32
Speaker
It's so good.
00:58:33
Speaker
Every time, it makes me cry.
00:58:35
Speaker
Goosebumps.
00:58:35
Speaker
I mean, it didn't right now, but... Jump on YouTube, you can see my goosebumps.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:58:39
Speaker
If you're not watching this, what are you doing?
00:58:41
Speaker
We did an animation of the gray rain curtain peeling back and everything turning to silver glass and then white shores and beyond a far green country.
00:58:49
Speaker
That's on a different video platform.
00:58:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:58:52
Speaker
It's on...
00:58:55
Speaker
Angel, because it's Christian.
00:58:58
Speaker
They won't let us do that on YouTube.
00:59:00
Speaker
We'll get demonetized as if we're earning money.
00:59:04
Speaker
We're going to get canceled.
00:59:06
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:59:09
Speaker
I think Tolkien's really good at marrying the stuff of our everyday life and the stuff of eternity, which I think is good because I think a lot of times when we think about thinking about eternity, think about thinking about eternity.
00:59:19
Speaker
But when we're like, I need to focus on eternity, I think we think that means there's nothing of the stuff of our life in that a lot of times.
00:59:27
Speaker
I think we're like, it's high in the lofty.
00:59:31
Speaker
And it is.
00:59:32
Speaker
But it's also just a far green country.
00:59:34
Speaker
Like God made this world and he said this was good.
00:59:38
Speaker
And this is what he put us in.
00:59:40
Speaker
And what he's promising us is a new earth.
00:59:44
Speaker
A renewed creation, but still creation.
00:59:47
Speaker
But this is part of the timeline.
00:59:49
Speaker
This is part of the story.
00:59:51
Speaker
And what we see then will really just be what all of this was an echo of.
00:59:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:59:59
Speaker
And a glimpse of.
01:00:00
Speaker
And it matters, though.
01:00:03
Speaker
This matters, absolutely.
01:00:05
Speaker
The other day, my brother was taking a genealogy deep dive into his wife's family and found, like, oh, these ancestors were in the Civil War and this and that.
01:00:20
Speaker
But then he, like, said, I don't really know, like...
01:00:25
Speaker
why this matters, like genealogy, like it doesn't change any way that I live, you know, but it's like, but that kind of stuff though is like inherently,
01:00:37
Speaker
Fascinating.
01:00:38
Speaker
And I think what you were saying about not focusing on just beyond an eternity, but also the here and now, I think that things like history and genealogy can take us out of our moment that we're living here and remind us that...
01:00:56
Speaker
Life is bigger than our moment here.
01:00:58
Speaker
There was a past that matters.
01:01:00
Speaker
And then there's also a future that matters.
History, Genealogy, and Continuity
01:01:03
Speaker
And it's like, I love like those boring genealogies in the Bible.
01:01:07
Speaker
Why are those there?
01:01:09
Speaker
Well, actually, it's pretty cool that God who authored scripture made sure that Jedidiah was mentioned.
01:01:17
Speaker
And they're like those people that we don't remember.
01:01:21
Speaker
God remembers.
01:01:24
Speaker
I love, well, I don't love reading it, but I love that it is in the Bible, the long descriptions of the tabernacle and the temple in Exodus and Kings.
01:01:32
Speaker
Because it's like, what's the purpose of this?
01:01:35
Speaker
Especially in Kings where it's just a record of history.
01:01:37
Speaker
It's like, why is this in God's word?
01:01:39
Speaker
Well, maybe because God thought it was beautiful and wanted to set it down and remember this beautiful work of art made for his glory in scripture.
01:01:47
Speaker
And as an artist, that's special to me that God took special note on, designed it this way.
01:01:56
Speaker
I'm going to view these guys with very special artistic abilities, and they are going to make some great-looking apricots.
01:02:05
Speaker
I love it.
01:02:05
Speaker
It's great.
01:02:07
Speaker
Those pillars.
01:02:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:10
Speaker
It's great.
01:02:12
Speaker
I have another part to read.
01:02:13
Speaker
Do you want to read another thing, and then I'll read another thing.
01:02:16
Speaker
And then we'll wrap it up.
01:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
01:02:18
Speaker
Which doesn't mean we have to rush to wrap it up, but just so that... Hang on, you should pick another book and then we can ask the audience.
Reflections on The Weight of Glory
01:02:25
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:26
Speaker
I did remember what I wanted to be.
01:02:27
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:28
Speaker
Hey, audience.
01:02:29
Speaker
Thank you guys for listening.
01:02:31
Speaker
And if you aren't currently listening to our episode but are listening to another episode...
01:02:35
Speaker
Hey, listener.
01:02:36
Speaker
Hear my call through the mountains.
01:02:39
Speaker
Listen to our podcast.
01:02:40
Speaker
Come off, Joe Rogan.
01:02:42
Speaker
Come to us.
01:02:43
Speaker
He doesn't have weird calls through the mountains that derail the quotes of Lewis and Tolkien while we're talking about eternity.
01:02:50
Speaker
Apparently he does if you're listening to him and you're hearing this, though.
01:02:54
Speaker
That's true.
01:02:55
Speaker
Did Joe Rogan steal our podcast?
01:02:58
Speaker
Joe?
01:02:59
Speaker
Joe?
01:02:59
Speaker
Joe?
01:03:00
Speaker
Joe!
01:03:00
Speaker
What are you doing, Joe?
01:03:02
Speaker
Fuck.
01:03:03
Speaker
Fuck.
01:03:04
Speaker
Yes.
01:03:04
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:05
Speaker
Hey, audience.
01:03:06
Speaker
Should we read The Weight of Glory?
01:03:10
Speaker
We should.
01:03:13
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:14
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:18
Speaker
And another person's.
01:03:21
Speaker
They're dropping like flies.
01:03:22
Speaker
This is like in Judges when God's like, hey, Gideon, have them go drink the water.
01:03:27
Speaker
And if they slop it up like dogs and get rid of them, he's like, hey, John and Nate, treat your audience like you're a explorer.
01:03:34
Speaker
It's like the kindergartners.
01:03:37
Speaker
And then whoever turns off shouldn't be enough.
01:03:39
Speaker
They weren't worthy.
01:03:39
Speaker
They weren't worthy to be artists of the way audience members.
01:03:44
Speaker
right all right the weight of glory is um is a collection of essays and the most famous of them is called the weight of glory so it's a whole book called the weight of glory but i feel like maybe i've read this essay i feel like i was assigned it it's beautiful um i think i had covid when i read it so i don't know how much i remember of it
01:04:07
Speaker
Well, that's what we're here for.
01:04:08
Speaker
Every COVID will become untrue on this podcast.
01:04:11
Speaker
At least this one instance of the COVID.
01:04:14
Speaker
I was supposed to be doing like a retreat thing and it was right after Hunchback.
01:04:17
Speaker
So I only had like a day to do my retreat.
01:04:19
Speaker
So I really just took like two hours, but then I had COVID.
01:04:22
Speaker
So I was hiking through the forest of Holland and then got lost and then was hiking through a suburb while reading The Weight of Glory and reflecting on it to write something and then felt really sickly still and was lost in the forest.
01:04:35
Speaker
And I was like...
01:04:37
Speaker
Oh, it was fun.
01:04:38
Speaker
Like I generally knew where I was.
01:04:39
Speaker
Yes, I did.
01:04:40
Speaker
It was fun.
01:04:41
Speaker
And then I like crawled through the suburbs and then I found Shay and I was like, Hey Shay, I wrote some things down.
01:04:45
Speaker
I did my assignment.
01:04:45
Speaker
I feel sick, but I read this great essay.
01:04:47
Speaker
That's wonderful.
01:04:49
Speaker
There's my random COVID weight of glory story.
01:04:52
Speaker
You forgot about COVID, didn't you people?
01:04:55
Speaker
We're bringing it back.
01:04:56
Speaker
That was quite the thing.
01:04:58
Speaker
Um, so yeah.
01:05:04
Speaker
In this essay, Lewis talks about what the meaning of glory and how people don't –
01:05:16
Speaker
like downplay what that is and what we should be pursuing in this.
01:05:20
Speaker
But this specific part I want to read, it was an amazing experience when I first read it because I felt like he was describing something that I wondered if like one of those things like maybe only I've ever experienced this.
01:05:35
Speaker
I've never heard anybody talk about it before.
01:05:38
Speaker
And that's the way he talks about it.
01:05:39
Speaker
It's like this is something that people don't talk about but everybody experiences.
01:05:44
Speaker
And it's like, that's the thing.
01:05:48
Speaker
So I'm going to read it.
01:05:49
Speaker
Do it.
01:05:50
Speaker
In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness.
01:06:00
Speaker
I am almost committing an indecency.
01:06:02
Speaker
I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like nostalgia and romanticism and adolescence.
01:06:17
Speaker
The secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when in very intimate conversation the mention of it becomes imminent.
01:06:28
Speaker
We grow awkward, in effect to laugh at ourselves.
01:06:32
Speaker
The secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.
01:06:36
Speaker
We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.
01:06:43
Speaker
We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.
01:06:52
Speaker
Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that settled the matter.
01:06:59
Speaker
Wadworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past.
01:07:04
Speaker
But all this is a cheat.
01:07:06
Speaker
If Wadsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it.
01:07:13
Speaker
What he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
01:07:17
Speaker
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them.
01:07:24
Speaker
It was not in them, it only came through them.
01:07:28
Speaker
And what came through them was longing.
01:07:32
Speaker
These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire.
01:07:38
Speaker
But if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.
01:07:45
Speaker
For they are not the thing itself.
01:07:47
Speaker
They are only the scent or a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
01:07:59
Speaker
Do you think I'm trying to weave a spell?
01:08:01
Speaker
Perhaps I am.
01:08:03
Speaker
But remember your fairy tales.
01:08:05
Speaker
Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.
01:08:10
Speaker
And you and I need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.
01:08:21
Speaker
Almost our whole education has been directed to silence this shy, persistent inner voice.
01:08:28
Speaker
Almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.
01:08:39
Speaker
I do love that.
01:08:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:42
Speaker
And I think maybe elsewhere in this essay, he talks about that feeling of
01:08:52
Speaker
wanting to be drawn into beauty to become a part of beauty like like i've experienced like standing on a mountain and seeing that's beautiful but it's not enough i want to like become one with the beauty of it and like to have him like talk about it's like oh you've experienced that too and yeah i love him i always want to touch paintings
01:09:18
Speaker
I'm like, they're so beautiful, and they're so, especially ones with texture.
01:09:23
Speaker
I'm like, it's not enough for me to just look at it.
01:09:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:25
Speaker
Like, if there's, like, I don't know, any of these.
01:09:27
Speaker
No, that one right there.
01:09:29
Speaker
The one above me.
01:09:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:31
Speaker
You guys have seen it before.
01:09:32
Speaker
It's wholly embraced.
01:09:33
Speaker
It's the one that's swirly and colorful.
01:09:34
Speaker
I had it hanging behind me a little bit.
01:09:36
Speaker
Like, I want to look at the brush strokes and, like, trace them with my hands.
01:09:39
Speaker
Like, it's not enough to just look at it.
01:09:41
Speaker
No, it gives me that longing of, that's beautiful, and I want to be a part of it, but I know I can't.
01:09:47
Speaker
What's also amazing, I feel like that you encounter that in many ways, not just when you see something that echoes of that, but I think when there's a complete absence of something of that, too.
01:10:01
Speaker
Oh.
01:10:01
Speaker
Because I initially was thought back to...
01:10:07
Speaker
get a little personal here.
01:10:08
Speaker
I don't want to get too personal on the podcast, but I didn't have, I had a, I had a like childhood that had some like struggles in it.
01:10:16
Speaker
Right.
01:10:17
Speaker
Um, my parents were divorced.
01:10:19
Speaker
Uh, lots of things were mixed up with that, but I was a very sad child.
01:10:24
Speaker
I had a few friends.
01:10:26
Speaker
Um,
01:10:29
Speaker
I think for a lot of times I would like get to the end of myself and just be like, I'm just longing.
01:10:35
Speaker
I just got familiar with this ache.
01:10:37
Speaker
And I think probably everybody's gotten familiar with this ache.
01:10:40
Speaker
This was just the way I got familiar with it, which was just an ache for everything to be set right.
01:10:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:48
Speaker
An ache for this beauty, an ache for everything sad to be untrue.
01:10:51
Speaker
Yes.
01:10:52
Speaker
And...
01:10:54
Speaker
That's why when we get to it and achieve it, we're still feeling that ache.
01:10:58
Speaker
Or when we're totally depressed and at the end of ourselves and nothing sounds like it can...
01:11:06
Speaker
fix things we still have that ache and even in good moments we can't like be completely happy because it's not here right i think we get i think we get four tastes and maybe there's times where god graciously lets us forget because of some of the echoes of it that he's let us
01:11:27
Speaker
enjoy like i think spending time with my wife is oftentimes close to that i think good community like times with us i think can be close to that and i can sort of especially if you forget yourself and just are sort of existing yeah like it is a really good sort of echo and foretaste i i think of what the kingdom of god is yeah meant to be which makes sense because it's also here as well as not yet
01:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, when you're doing things that are eternal things.
01:11:54
Speaker
Right.
01:11:55
Speaker
Communing with people who are eternal or with God.
01:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's a beautiful passage.
01:12:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:04
Speaker
What do you got?
01:12:05
Speaker
All right.
01:12:08
Speaker
Leaf by niggle.
01:12:10
Speaker
What are those words?
01:12:13
Speaker
Well, one of them is leaf.
01:12:14
Speaker
The other one is bi.
01:12:15
Speaker
Like a leaf?
01:12:16
Speaker
Leaf, yes.
01:12:17
Speaker
Like a leaf tree?
01:12:17
Speaker
Leaf bi-niggle.
01:12:19
Speaker
One of the leaf trees?
01:12:21
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:23
Speaker
There's palm trees and there's leaf trees.
01:12:24
Speaker
There's a leaf tree.
01:12:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:28
Speaker
I want to talk about this and then around that talk about how we as artists create with eternity in mind.
Niggle's Artistic Fulfillment
01:12:34
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:34
Speaker
It's getting to be a long episode, but you know what?
01:12:37
Speaker
It's good and we're going to keep going because I'm loving it.
01:12:40
Speaker
We're saying this is a good episode.
01:12:42
Speaker
I think it's a good episode.
01:12:43
Speaker
I hope the others agree.
01:12:44
Speaker
If you guys think it's a good episode, leave us a review, comment, like the video.
01:12:49
Speaker
Keep listening.
01:12:50
Speaker
Keep listening.
01:12:51
Speaker
We're not done.
01:12:51
Speaker
Don't take that preamble as thinking we're done.
01:12:56
Speaker
Leaf by Nagel is about... It's a short story that Tolkien wrote.
01:13:02
Speaker
It's...
01:13:03
Speaker
It's inspired by himself and his experience as an artist.
01:13:08
Speaker
My inspiration was me.
01:13:11
Speaker
I'm so inspiring.
01:13:12
Speaker
He would hate that.
01:13:14
Speaker
Tolkien was a very insecure guy.
01:13:19
Speaker
And as you mentioned, there's a lot of things that he didn't complete in his life.
01:13:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:26
Speaker
He loved art, but I think in a lot of ways felt like his art was inadequate or was not where he should be spending his time.
01:13:33
Speaker
He had to be forced to be putting it out in the world.
01:13:35
Speaker
And I think somewhere deep down he wanted to.
01:13:39
Speaker
Sure.
01:13:41
Speaker
Which he even alludes to in this.
01:13:43
Speaker
It's just, if you are an artist, please find Leif, especially a Christian artist,
01:13:50
Speaker
And especially one who does not have the luxury of being able to make art their full-time job, which is most artists.
01:13:57
Speaker
Please read Leaf by Nagel because it is striking.
01:14:02
Speaker
Looking forward to this.
01:14:05
Speaker
I would read the whole thing, but that would put us another half hour longer.
01:14:10
Speaker
So I'm going to summarize, but still please go read it or turn it off.
01:14:14
Speaker
Go read it and come back.
01:14:17
Speaker
And you should still read it.
01:14:18
Speaker
I need to stay, though.
01:14:19
Speaker
Yes.
01:14:19
Speaker
I'm going to try and just be sparse.
01:14:21
Speaker
I'm not going to get into super detailed moments.
01:14:25
Speaker
Niggle is an artist.
01:14:28
Speaker
Oh.
01:14:28
Speaker
He lives in this little English countryside town.
01:14:31
Speaker
It's probably rainy.
01:14:35
Speaker
As it is.
01:14:36
Speaker
He has a homeowner's association that's strict.
01:14:40
Speaker
He has a neighbor that he doesn't love named Mr. Parrish, which I would be shocked if somewhere Tolkien wasn't smirking about that being associated with the church.
01:14:50
Speaker
I haven't figured that out yet, but I'm like, that seems...
01:14:53
Speaker
Tolkien cared too much about language to name a character Parrish when he was Catholic.
01:15:00
Speaker
So he doesn't love his neighbor very much.
01:15:02
Speaker
And he has this journey he's going to go on, but he doesn't remember exactly when he's going to have to leave.
01:15:07
Speaker
And he doesn't really want to do his packing and get ready for it.
01:15:11
Speaker
What he really wants to do is create and paint.
01:15:14
Speaker
And what he wants to paint is a tree.
01:15:17
Speaker
But Tolkien says he's not the kind of artist that is good at painting the tree.
01:15:23
Speaker
He's bad at painting the tree, but he's good at painting the individual leaves.
01:15:27
Speaker
He will spend hours on this leaf.
01:15:31
Speaker
Isn't this Tolkien talking about himself?
01:15:33
Speaker
Yes.
01:15:34
Speaker
He's getting the curvature right, the way it shines off of the...
01:15:40
Speaker
The sun shines off of it and eventually the tree grows into a whole landscape and there's birds that need tending and there's mountains behind it and he's like, oh my gosh, I don't know when I'm ever going to be able to complete this.
01:15:51
Speaker
And he keeps getting distracted by various things.
01:15:54
Speaker
Tolkien describes him, I have to read this because it's too good of a description that I think, I'm like, oop, that's me.
01:16:02
Speaker
Where is it?
01:16:03
Speaker
It's at the...
01:16:09
Speaker
I should have marked this up like you did.
01:16:10
Speaker
I knew I was going to read from the book with this one.
01:16:17
Speaker
Back page, maybe.
01:16:18
Speaker
There we go.
01:16:23
Speaker
So he kept getting distracted.
01:16:26
Speaker
There were other hindrances too, for one thing.
01:16:28
Speaker
He was sometimes just idle and did nothing at all.
01:16:31
Speaker
For another, he was kind-hearted in a way.
01:16:34
Speaker
You know the sort of kind heart.
01:16:36
Speaker
It made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything.
01:16:40
Speaker
And even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper, and swearing mostly to himself.
01:16:48
Speaker
All the same, it did land him a good many odd jobs for his neighbor, Mr. Parrish, a man with a lame leg.
01:16:53
Speaker
So he is kind-hearted.
01:16:55
Speaker
That's great.
01:16:56
Speaker
He is focusing on the people around him, but a little bit begrudgingly.
01:16:59
Speaker
He's like, yeah, I guess this is of more importance, but I really would rather work on my tree.
01:17:05
Speaker
Well, the day comes, he's not able to finish his tree.
01:17:09
Speaker
It's time for him to go on his journey.
01:17:11
Speaker
So he goes on his journey and then finds himself in this weird, trippy time of working in a workhouse and being tended to in the workhouse infirmary because he falls ill.
01:17:22
Speaker
Oh.
01:17:24
Speaker
But as he's doing this work in the workhouse, he finds that his mind gets clearer as he's working and doing this work and focusing on this thing.
01:17:34
Speaker
And he finds that he's able to rest more and has more peace in life than he ever did.
01:17:41
Speaker
And then he overhears this conversation between two people.
01:17:44
Speaker
Talking about Leith.
01:17:45
Speaker
Talking about him.
01:17:47
Speaker
And wondering, is he ready to move on to the next step yet?
01:17:49
Speaker
And one of them is very anti-Niggo and is like, no, I don't think he's ready.
01:17:54
Speaker
We need to give him some work.
01:17:55
Speaker
And the other one's like, no, I think he's ready for some gentle treatment.
01:17:58
Speaker
And he's really a good man.
01:17:59
Speaker
And here's some things in his favor and things that he did.
01:18:03
Speaker
And it's strange.
01:18:04
Speaker
And then...
01:18:06
Speaker
He they like realize that he's been listening to them and they're like, well, what do you what do you say?
01:18:13
Speaker
And I can't remember exactly.
01:18:14
Speaker
I just listened to it today.
01:18:15
Speaker
I should remember.
01:18:16
Speaker
I'm on the right page for it.
01:18:18
Speaker
Nice.
01:18:25
Speaker
Well, the first thing he does is he asks about his neighbor who he didn't like now because they mentioned him.
01:18:31
Speaker
And he was like, what about him?
01:18:32
Speaker
And they're like, oh, well, he's still he's still working here.
01:18:36
Speaker
And.
01:18:37
Speaker
Parrish or a different name?
01:18:39
Speaker
Parrish.
01:18:39
Speaker
Parrish is also like there.
01:18:41
Speaker
Parrish is here too?
01:18:41
Speaker
We're working on him.
01:18:42
Speaker
He's like, well, you know, I'd like to see him.
01:18:45
Speaker
I hope he's not very ill.
01:18:46
Speaker
Can you cure his leg?
01:18:47
Speaker
It used to give him such a wretched time.
01:18:49
Speaker
And please don't worry about him and me.
01:18:52
Speaker
He was a very good neighbor and let me have excellent potatoes very cheap, which saved me a lot of time.
01:18:57
Speaker
Excellent potatoes.
01:18:58
Speaker
Did he?
01:18:59
Speaker
Said the first voice.
01:18:59
Speaker
I'm glad to hear it.
01:19:01
Speaker
There was another silence.
01:19:02
Speaker
Niggle heard the voices receding.
01:19:04
Speaker
Well, I agree.
01:19:05
Speaker
He heard the first voice say in the distance.
01:19:07
Speaker
Let him go on to the next stage tomorrow, if you like.
01:19:10
Speaker
And so he goes on to the next stage of his journey.
01:19:13
Speaker
After having somehow proved himself to these voices, he's not really sure how.
01:19:17
Speaker
And here's where I think we get to my favorite part of this story.
01:19:21
Speaker
This has all been sort of preamble, which I think is important thematically.
01:19:24
Speaker
But he's taken into this...
01:19:29
Speaker
like countryside okay and he's taken to the top of a hill and there there's a bicycle which looks a lot like the bicycle he used to own in town and it has his name on it so he takes it and he's riding the bike along and he's just enjoying the countryside it's the niggle mobile that sounds weird for some reason yeah and he gets to this tree this great beautiful tree he's like whoa
01:19:55
Speaker
Look at this great, beautiful tree.
01:19:56
Speaker
And he realizes this tree, this living tree, is his tree.
01:20:01
Speaker
And there's mountains behind it that are his mountains.
01:20:05
Speaker
And the leaves are the leaves that he painted.
01:20:07
Speaker
And there's birds.
01:20:08
Speaker
And he's like, this was his art.
01:20:15
Speaker
Before him stood the tree, his tree, finished.
01:20:19
Speaker
If you could say that a tree that was alive...
01:20:23
Speaker
If you could say that of a tree that was alive.
01:20:26
Speaker
Its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed and had so often failed to catch.
01:20:36
Speaker
He gazed at the tree and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.
01:20:42
Speaker
It is a gift, he said.
01:20:45
Speaker
He was referring to his art and also to the result.
01:20:50
Speaker
but he was using the word quite literally.
01:20:53
Speaker
That's my first favorite quote.
01:20:57
Speaker
So somehow, this countryside that he's been brought to is the thing he's been trying to create.
01:21:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:05
Speaker
We'll touch on that a little bit more in a second.
01:21:07
Speaker
But first, it is a gift.
01:21:10
Speaker
That... It's a Boromir quote.
01:21:13
Speaker
It is a Boromir quote.
Art vs. Service Debate
01:21:14
Speaker
Tolkien's recycling his writing.
01:21:17
Speaker
Come on, John Ronald Ruel.
01:21:18
Speaker
Ruel.
01:21:21
Speaker
So that posture that the things that we create are gifts to us from God.
01:21:33
Speaker
Is that what he was saying?
01:21:34
Speaker
I think so.
01:21:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:39
Speaker
Because it says he said that he was referring to his art and to the result of the art.
01:21:46
Speaker
But he used the word quite literally.
01:21:48
Speaker
This thing I've created, which also somehow is like real in front of me.
01:21:53
Speaker
It's a gift that I think he's receiving, though it also I think is a gift to others.
01:22:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:03
Speaker
I also think that that is just the Christian life.
01:22:07
Speaker
Everything is a gift we receive from God that we also give to the world and back to God.
01:22:14
Speaker
And it's that.
01:22:14
Speaker
And then God fills us.
01:22:16
Speaker
And I think that that's true creatively.
01:22:19
Speaker
I would say fairly literally.
01:22:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:26
Speaker
When operating correctly, we receive from God, we receive.
01:22:30
Speaker
give that out and trust it to him.
01:22:33
Speaker
What a blessing to be able to be in that position.
01:22:38
Speaker
I think that does necessitate that our focus not beyond the thing that we're creating, but that our focus beyond the creator that we're seeking God's face, not the reality of our art, which I think is niggle gets caught up in all these other things that you can see Tolkien wrestling with.
01:22:57
Speaker
Are these things more important than the art?
01:23:02
Speaker
And I think he says yes, but, or I think he says no, but yes.
01:23:06
Speaker
Like the art is very important.
01:23:09
Speaker
The art shouldn't be diminished, but also yes, these things are kind of more important.
01:23:13
Speaker
That's where he's, his focus was where it should have been, even if it was hard.
Niggle's Collaborative Journey
01:23:18
Speaker
A little begrudgingly.
01:23:20
Speaker
His focus was on everything else serving others.
01:23:26
Speaker
Which is, I think, an outpouring of when we are seeking God's face, when we're fixed on him, we're serving others and we're serving our art.
01:23:33
Speaker
We're serving the art that God gave us.
01:23:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:38
Speaker
Then his neighbor that he didn't like never liked his paintings.
01:23:44
Speaker
Discounted them.
01:23:46
Speaker
He asked.
01:23:47
Speaker
Marked them down.
01:23:48
Speaker
Held them for ransom.
01:23:52
Speaker
Just like Lewis.
01:23:55
Speaker
At one point he's like, hey, can I take some of this canvas that you've painted and use it to patch my roof?
01:24:02
Speaker
Like he just does not care about it at all.
01:24:04
Speaker
But he's a great gardener.
01:24:06
Speaker
Okay.
01:24:06
Speaker
And so Niggle's here and he's looking at this landscape and he can just picture what can be done with it.
01:24:11
Speaker
He's like, I need Parrish.
01:24:14
Speaker
I need Parrish to come help me garden.
01:24:16
Speaker
Lo and behold, a little bit later, Parrish walks up.
01:24:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:22
Speaker
With a hoe, less of a bad leg.
01:24:24
Speaker
He's... Go on.
01:24:27
Speaker
For gardening.
01:24:28
Speaker
Go on.
01:24:29
Speaker
For gardening.
01:24:31
Speaker
Fine, with a shovel.
01:24:33
Speaker
With a rake.
01:24:34
Speaker
Uh-huh.
01:24:35
Speaker
Um...
01:24:37
Speaker
And he and Nigel, without even talking, just start working on this land and beautifying it and making it everything that it can.
01:24:45
Speaker
Him with his practical work of being able to garden and tend this and Nigel with his vision and what he learned in the workhouse.
01:24:53
Speaker
So he wouldn't really be able to do this without that time of refinement that he had.
01:24:56
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:00
Speaker
And then he sort of starts to get to the point of being done with this.
01:25:07
Speaker
He feels like he's done everything that he can.
01:25:09
Speaker
He and Parrish have built a house.
01:25:11
Speaker
And he's like, I think I've done everything with this landscape that I can.
01:25:18
Speaker
And so he starts to look to the mountains and he's like, I think I'm being drawn to the mountains.
01:25:23
Speaker
And then I'm kind of reading the climax here, but that's fine.
01:25:26
Speaker
That's what we're doing.
01:25:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:29
Speaker
Bunch of climaxes.
01:25:38
Speaker
What?
01:25:40
Speaker
Nothing.
01:25:44
Speaker
I'll tell you later.
01:25:49
Speaker
I have to focus.
01:25:49
Speaker
I have to read this.
01:25:50
Speaker
Sorry.
01:25:50
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:55
Speaker
Sorry, audience.
01:25:57
Speaker
It's late.
01:25:57
Speaker
That struck me.
01:25:59
Speaker
Okay.
01:26:02
Speaker
So he's like, I want to go into the mountains.
01:26:04
Speaker
And then they saw a man and he looked like a shepherd.
01:26:09
Speaker
He was walking towards them down the grass slopes that led into the mountains.
01:26:13
Speaker
Do you want a guide?
01:26:14
Speaker
He asked.
01:26:15
Speaker
Do you want to go on?
01:26:18
Speaker
For a moment a shadow fell between Niggle and Parrish, for Niggle knew that he did now want to go on and in a sense ought to go on, but Parrish did not want to go on and was not ready to go on.
01:26:30
Speaker
I must wait for my wife, said Parrish to Nigel.
01:26:33
Speaker
She'd be lonely.
01:26:34
Speaker
I rather gathered that they would send her after me some time or other when she was ready, and when I'd got things ready for her.
01:26:41
Speaker
The house is finished now as well as we could make it, but I should like to show it to her.
01:26:46
Speaker
She'll be able to make it better, I expect, more homely.
01:26:50
Speaker
I hope she'll like this country too.
01:26:52
Speaker
He turned to the shepherd.
01:26:53
Speaker
"'Are you a guide?'
01:26:55
Speaker
he asked.
01:26:55
Speaker
"'Could you tell me the name of this country?'
01:26:57
Speaker
"'Don't you know?'
01:26:59
Speaker
said the man.
01:26:59
Speaker
"'It is Niggle's country.
01:27:01
Speaker
"'It is Niggle's picture, or most of it, a little of it, is now Parrish's garden.'
01:27:06
Speaker
"'Niggle's picture?'
01:27:09
Speaker
said Parrish in astonishment.
01:27:10
Speaker
"'Did you think of all this, Niggle?
01:27:12
Speaker
I never knew you were so clever.
01:27:14
Speaker
Why didn't you tell me?'
01:27:16
Speaker
"'He tried to tell you long ago,' said the man.
01:27:18
Speaker
"'But you would not look.
01:27:20
Speaker
"'He had only got canvas and paint in those days, "'and you wanted to mend your roof with them.
01:27:25
Speaker
"'This is what you and your wife used to call Nagle's nonsense, "'or that daubing.'
01:27:30
Speaker
"'But it did not look like this, then.
01:27:32
Speaker
"'Not real,' said Parrish.
01:27:35
Speaker
No, it was only a glimpse then, said the man.
01:27:38
Speaker
But you might have caught the glimpse if you had ever thought it worth your while to try.
01:27:45
Speaker
Then Niggle is like, well, I didn't give you much of a chance.
01:27:48
Speaker
And they have a sweet moment and Niggle moves on.
Art Reflecting the Kingdom of God
01:27:51
Speaker
But that... First of all...
01:27:55
Speaker
This is, again, thinking, I think, similarly to Lewis, of just sort of fictitiously story-wise, just like, wouldn't it be cool in heaven if we all got just our little own plots and there was Nate's country?
01:28:06
Speaker
And it's like, God's just kind of giving you this to tend and it is sort of...
01:28:12
Speaker
I don't know.
01:28:13
Speaker
It's digital art and you're living in it.
01:28:15
Speaker
I don't know.
01:28:16
Speaker
You know, and like, but beautified in the way that you see it.
01:28:19
Speaker
And like, and some of it is, is, is, is John's amphitheater, you know?
01:28:25
Speaker
Um, I'm like, that's a, that's a sweet idea that, that, and I don't know that that's how new creation will work, but there is a reality to we're put here to tend the world that God made and, and, and,
01:28:41
Speaker
and help it to be be glorified and holy and good in the sense of not glorified, like help it.
01:28:52
Speaker
to get to that sort of fulfilled stage.
01:28:55
Speaker
And we don't achieve that, but God uses us in that way.
01:28:58
Speaker
We're his tools and servants.
01:29:01
Speaker
We create something that is holy and reflects his image and is good and thus beautifies the world around it.
01:29:07
Speaker
We create works of art.
01:29:10
Speaker
And that is through God's enabling, even if it's just in the way that he created us to be able to create.
01:29:18
Speaker
It makes me think too of, oh, you've been faithful with five talents.
01:29:22
Speaker
I'm going to give you five cities.
01:29:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:29:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:29:26
Speaker
And then the just, which I think is true, but the beautiful idea that the good of art, when it's done right, is that it is a glimpse and a reflection of the kingdom of God.
01:29:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:29:51
Speaker
And that can take so many different forms of how that is portrayed.
01:29:57
Speaker
But to me, those works of art that stick with me are ones where I can look at it and I'm like, that's an echo of the kingdom of God.
01:30:04
Speaker
That's an echo of the kingdom of God.
01:30:06
Speaker
And sometimes they seem like... I'm a citizen of the kingdom now, so I recognize it.
01:30:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:30:12
Speaker
And it comes in various sizes.
01:30:15
Speaker
I think this painting, I think probably all of these have echoes of that, I would say.
01:30:21
Speaker
Even BD1, because he's just adorable.
01:30:25
Speaker
The movie Logan comes to mind, which is again, like brutal, but there's things in there where I'm like, that moment.
01:30:31
Speaker
That's an echo of the kingdom of God.
01:30:33
Speaker
And I've mentioned before, I think that director has something more going on.
01:30:37
Speaker
And so I'm like, you can, it can be in all these like different things, but there's the echo of the kingdom of God.
01:30:44
Speaker
There's the glimpse of it, if you can see it.
01:30:47
Speaker
And just the idea that
01:30:52
Speaker
That's a way we as artists serve the church.
01:30:55
Speaker
Maybe we don't... There's a place totally for evangelization in art.
01:31:00
Speaker
And the gospel absolutely should be preached.
01:31:05
Speaker
But maybe...
01:31:07
Speaker
It's just good enough for us as artists to give glimpses to the heart of Christ and to the love of Christ and glimpses into the kingdom of God so that the world can see it and people can see it.
01:31:18
Speaker
And we can only do that when we're seeking God's face first and living primarily as citizens of the kingdom of heaven and not with other people.
01:31:27
Speaker
things weighing us down.
01:31:29
Speaker
I mean, we can do it with other things weighing us down.
01:31:31
Speaker
We all have things that hold on to us and that are hard to sort through and give to God.
01:31:35
Speaker
We're always doing that, but it operates best when we are rooted in our faith in Christ, our relationship with him, the knowledge that he loved us, came, died, rose again, is our older brother in the faith, in our eternal life.
01:31:54
Speaker
And then
01:31:57
Speaker
now has made us citizens of heaven and children of God.
01:32:03
Speaker
And like, Niggle, when we give those glimpses, we may not even think that...
01:32:15
Speaker
we did a great job in this case or whatever and stuff such that, you know, like, so that it's, we don't have like the pride aspect to it.
01:32:27
Speaker
Totally.
01:32:28
Speaker
And we may never feel free of that tension, that ache, right?
01:32:34
Speaker
Like what Lewis is talking about.
01:32:37
Speaker
I think for many artists,
01:32:39
Speaker
We create really in search of heaven.
01:32:43
Speaker
And I don't think that that's a bad impulse.
01:32:47
Speaker
That's again, I feel like I said this a couple episodes ago, but that's again why it's artists of the way.
01:32:52
Speaker
We create as we go.
01:32:53
Speaker
That's just what artists do.
01:32:55
Speaker
We may do a variety of other things along the way as well, but that's just part of our rhythm of life
Intentional Living for Artistic Creation
01:33:00
Speaker
as we create.
01:33:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:03
Speaker
We create as we go, but that tension we feel in the things that we create and our job that pulls at us or our sense of inferiority or anxiety that pulls at us or the sense of its incompleteness that pulls at us or our sense of its amazingness that it takes over our life.
01:33:23
Speaker
We'll never be free of those tensions until we reach heaven.
01:33:27
Speaker
But in heaven, we're going to see something so completeness.
01:33:30
Speaker
beautiful and everything sad will become untrue and we will see the angels and love them and be recognized by them and recognize them and we will see the beautiful paradox of God and be rooted in that forever and see the fulfillment of everything we were creating towards that is so much greater than everything that we can imagine but also that we see
01:33:55
Speaker
hope, I would imagine, glimpses.
01:33:56
Speaker
We recognize.
01:33:57
Speaker
We recognize where God gave us the echo of eternity that maybe was Nate's little echo of eternity that he could share with the world.
01:34:05
Speaker
And maybe my little echo of eternity of the kingdom of God to share with the world.
01:34:09
Speaker
And all of our audience's echoes of the kingdom of God to share with the world, which I think everybody has, whether you're an artist or not.
01:34:16
Speaker
It's the body of Christ, right?
01:34:18
Speaker
Yep.
01:34:18
Speaker
I brought the last battle.
01:34:19
Speaker
We're not going to read from it tonight.
01:34:21
Speaker
But at the end, they see that Aslan's country that they enter is actually the real Narnia that the other was just like a dim shadow of.
01:34:33
Speaker
It looks the same, but it's like the real thing.
01:34:36
Speaker
It's deeper.
01:34:37
Speaker
It's richer.
01:34:39
Speaker
It's just more real.
01:34:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:42
Speaker
And maybe there'll be something like that.
01:34:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:47
Speaker
Man, thank you for weaving that spell.
01:34:52
Speaker
That was beautiful.
01:34:53
Speaker
You've kicked it off.
01:34:54
Speaker
It was beautiful.
01:34:55
Speaker
That was lovely.
01:34:56
Speaker
Like Lewis said, not all, some spells are to break enchantments too of being stuck in the fakeness that this is the only thing.
01:35:07
Speaker
Right.
01:35:08
Speaker
There's a, I don't know, there's a beauty and a magic to the world that we should embrace.
01:35:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:35:15
Speaker
And then not only as doing art artists, but in like just...
01:35:23
Speaker
doing life like niggle did and treating how we treat others and stuff that has such eternal ramifications that may seem very mundane here, but, but it stores up treasures and glory and in heaven.
01:35:41
Speaker
And if we want our art to be like these things that we've read, which I certainly do, that's what I'm striving towards with my book and well, everything I create.
01:35:50
Speaker
We don't... Intentionality is good, but we don't achieve that on intentionality alone.
01:35:56
Speaker
We achieve that by living it out.
01:35:58
Speaker
I just read... I don't know if it's a quote from somebody or if it's just Instagram wisdom.
01:36:02
Speaker
I don't know.
01:36:03
Speaker
But I read somewhere on a writing forum, somebody would be like...
01:36:08
Speaker
You're going to write what you read.
01:36:10
Speaker
So make sure you know what you're reading and you're reading the kind of thing that you want to write.
01:36:13
Speaker
If you want to be, if you're reading young adult fiction, then that's what you're going to write.
01:36:17
Speaker
And if that's what you want to write, great.
01:36:18
Speaker
Like read young adult fiction.
01:36:21
Speaker
But if you want to write, like, I don't know, inspirational Amish fiction, then don't read Hunger Games and Divergent because you're going to have an Amish lady who's fighting other Amish ladies in the jungle.
01:36:35
Speaker
Now I kind of want to read like a dystopian Amish.
01:36:38
Speaker
I feel like that might just be the handmaid's tale.
01:36:40
Speaker
That's what they're doing.
01:36:41
Speaker
They're just living a dystopian life.
01:36:45
Speaker
Savage.
01:36:45
Speaker
No, we can't say whatever about the Amish because some Amish listen.
01:36:50
Speaker
I was like, they don't use technology.
01:36:51
Speaker
We can say anything.
01:36:54
Speaker
Oh, no.
01:36:55
Speaker
Did I lose my point?
01:36:57
Speaker
I like what you were saying.
01:36:58
Speaker
It reminded me of something we had talked about off air.
01:37:02
Speaker
But if you want to create something beautiful, try living a beautiful life.
01:37:09
Speaker
Yes, that's what I was getting at.
01:37:11
Speaker
If you want to create something filled with God's spirit, press into God in your regular life.
01:37:17
Speaker
I've been reflecting on that a lot over the last few months.
01:37:22
Speaker
Maybe we talked off air.
01:37:23
Speaker
I don't know.
01:37:23
Speaker
It was connected to our simplicity conversation about our phones and stuff.
01:37:26
Speaker
Yes.
01:37:27
Speaker
Um, and just around that I've been thinking about what am I like taking in online?
01:37:32
Speaker
If I'm just doom scrolling Instagram and TikTok reels, is that what I'm going to, that's what I'm going to churn out.
01:37:38
Speaker
And maybe some of those are, I enjoy that.
01:37:40
Speaker
I enjoy sending some to my wife and seeing a whole batch that she sent me over her lunch break.
01:37:45
Speaker
That can be a fun thing.
01:37:47
Speaker
But if that's everything that I'm doing as opposed to like,
01:37:50
Speaker
And I don't know that that is inherently bad, but for the kind of person, sorry, audience, I punched my mic.
01:38:00
Speaker
For the kind of like person I want to be, the kind of art I want to create, like, let's just slow down and take time to read things instead of going through like this.
01:38:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:12
Speaker
How much time am I spending digitally versus how much time am I sitting reading a book where maybe I haven't gotten absorbed into a book very much like I mentioned before and it hasn't washed over me in that way, but maybe it can.
01:38:24
Speaker
Can I keep trying?
01:38:27
Speaker
can I surround myself with more beautiful art and make what I'm around more aesthetically pleasing?
01:38:33
Speaker
My office has been gray and dull and boring in my cubicle.
01:38:37
Speaker
And I'm looking at trying to get some art and things that will spruce it up and the prayer of St.
01:38:42
Speaker
Francis and the everything sad is going to be a come untrue quote and some things like that.
01:38:47
Speaker
Like, like what can we surround ourselves with to live that life and then put that out in our art?
01:38:53
Speaker
And most especially, how do we do that in our relationship with God?
01:38:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:57
Speaker
And not as a means to an end to create better art, but just to know if we want to make art that's imbued with the kingdom of God and echoes with that.
01:39:06
Speaker
Yeah.
Community Engagement and Call to Action
01:39:07
Speaker
We've got to have that relationship with God first and make that a priority.
01:39:11
Speaker
It's amazing how intentionality can bring so much more life to your life instead of just going along with the flow.
01:39:20
Speaker
Okay, I'm just going to go back to my phone and keep scrolling and this and that.
01:39:23
Speaker
My wife Ellie was talking the other day that...
01:39:27
Speaker
when she's home with the boys, she has much better days when she plans on doing activities, even if it's just like me and Baron are going to do laundry together or we're going to go to the park together.
01:39:40
Speaker
But if, and she ends the day so much more with more energy and refreshment, even though she was doing things versus a day where she didn't plan on doing things.
01:39:51
Speaker
And it's just kind of feeling like in survival mode,
01:39:55
Speaker
Even though things aren't really happening, ending the day exhausted because of the lack of intentionality and Baron is moody and stuff.
01:40:05
Speaker
But like when you put that intentionality in, it's life that comes with it.
01:40:09
Speaker
I felt that way.
01:40:11
Speaker
You know, I've been depressed the last couple of days, but like I've had on my computer a to-do list.
01:40:16
Speaker
I'm like, well, you know what?
01:40:17
Speaker
I got through that to-do list at least.
01:40:18
Speaker
And that's great.
01:40:19
Speaker
And just the intent, being able to get through the day and be intentional about, okay, I want to, I want to pray.
01:40:26
Speaker
I want to do morning, evening in prayer and like pray in the middle of the day and just reflect with God.
01:40:31
Speaker
And I want to write and I want to read this book of the Bible and I want to,
01:40:35
Speaker
get these things done at my job and do this for the podcast.
01:40:39
Speaker
Rest could be part of the intentionality too.
01:40:41
Speaker
It should be a part of that audience.
01:40:43
Speaker
I'd like to be.
01:40:45
Speaker
Rest.
01:40:46
Speaker
I'm just bad at resting.
01:40:47
Speaker
So that can be a hobby horse of mine.
01:40:49
Speaker
That's good.
01:40:51
Speaker
Cool.
01:40:52
Speaker
This was a rich discussion.
01:40:53
Speaker
I loved it.
01:40:55
Speaker
If you guys loved it, well, first, thank you guys for joining us.
01:40:59
Speaker
Thank you for staying for this long episode.
01:41:01
Speaker
I know.
01:41:02
Speaker
Hour and 45.
01:41:03
Speaker
I know.
01:41:04
Speaker
They're just going to keep getting longer.
01:41:06
Speaker
Wait till it's a whole 24 hours.
01:41:10
Speaker
Ooh, marathon.
01:41:12
Speaker
Nate is crying.
01:41:15
Speaker
It'll be exciting to try.
01:41:17
Speaker
I bet we can do it.
01:41:18
Speaker
If we get to like, if we get to, if we get to.
01:41:21
Speaker
10 subscribers.
01:41:23
Speaker
We have 10 subscribers.
01:41:24
Speaker
Oh, we're doing it!
01:41:27
Speaker
I don't know.
01:41:28
Speaker
Maybe we'll do this.
01:41:28
Speaker
Maybe we'll set a goal.
01:41:30
Speaker
Anyways, thank you guys for doing it.
01:41:31
Speaker
I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts.
01:41:33
Speaker
If you guys have pieces of art where you're like, this is an echo of eternity that I see in this, we'd love to hear it or thoughts about how you can create with that in mind.
01:41:43
Speaker
Comment on the video down below, right under the table.
01:41:47
Speaker
Down there.
01:41:48
Speaker
Or on our social media, send us an email through our website.
01:41:53
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you guys.
01:41:54
Speaker
Write us a letter.
01:41:55
Speaker
You can...
01:41:56
Speaker
Mail it?
01:41:57
Speaker
You can mail the letter.
01:42:01
Speaker
I haven't put my address out there.
01:42:03
Speaker
You just got to mail it to us.
01:42:06
Speaker
Just write us?
01:42:09
Speaker
No, write John and Nate.
01:42:10
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:42:11
Speaker
And then I'll reach it.
01:42:14
Speaker
Yes, if you guys enjoy the podcast, join us if you're on audio.
01:42:22
Speaker
We're both reaching out to the video dramatically like we're Darth Vader trying to call you to join the Empire.
01:42:27
Speaker
There's two of us, so you're going to do it this time.
01:42:29
Speaker
Two Darth Vaders.
01:42:31
Speaker
Luke would have joined if he had two dads.
01:42:33
Speaker
If he had two gay dads, then Luke would have joined the Empire.
01:42:40
Speaker
I am your father.
01:42:41
Speaker
And so is Steve.
01:42:43
Speaker
Hello, Luke.
01:42:45
Speaker
Steve.
01:42:49
Speaker
If you guys like the podcast, it'd be very helpful if you left a review, shared it, subscribed.
01:42:56
Speaker
Word of mouth is like the way that these things go around and grow.
01:42:59
Speaker
Word of sharing it.
01:43:00
Speaker
Word of sharing.
01:43:01
Speaker
Sharing is caring.
01:43:02
Speaker
Do you care?
01:43:03
Speaker
Do you?
01:43:03
Speaker
Do you even care?
01:43:05
Speaker
I don't know.
01:43:06
Speaker
I don't know.
01:43:07
Speaker
But that would be greatly appreciated.
01:43:10
Speaker
I don't know.
01:43:12
Speaker
If people leave a review, maybe we'll read a review.
01:43:14
Speaker
I don't know.
01:43:14
Speaker
That's a thing some people do.
01:43:15
Speaker
Then you could become famous.
01:43:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:17
Speaker
If you, yeah, maybe leave a review and read a review.
01:43:21
Speaker
If we get a review in the week after I put this podcast out, then I will read the review.
01:43:26
Speaker
I may read just a section of the review if the review seems really crazy and shares like some crackpot conspiracy theories or something.
01:43:34
Speaker
Steve.
01:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, come on, Steve.
01:43:37
Speaker
Ever since Darth Vader turned good and left you.
01:43:40
Speaker
Now he's just all about the aliens.
01:43:42
Speaker
Spamming podcast reviews.
01:43:44
Speaker
I know, just like, well, did you know that the lizard people.
01:43:49
Speaker
Gosh, it's going to be terrible.
01:43:51
Speaker
I know.
01:43:53
Speaker
So if you're not Steve, leave a share.
01:43:55
Speaker
We trust you.
01:43:56
Speaker
Yes.
01:43:58
Speaker
I think that's everything.
01:43:59
Speaker
We did it.
01:44:00
Speaker
We did it.
01:44:00
Speaker
Thank you guys again.
01:44:01
Speaker
You did it with us.
01:44:02
Speaker
You did it with us.
01:44:03
Speaker
You marathoned through an hour and 47 minutes and 53, 54, 55, 55.
01:44:09
Speaker
Blessings.
01:44:11
Speaker
Have a great week, guys.
01:44:14
Speaker
It's Friday.
01:44:14
Speaker
It's week's over.
01:44:17
Speaker
Shoot, you're right.
01:44:18
Speaker
Have a good weekend, guys.
01:44:19
Speaker
Have a good weekend.
01:44:22
Speaker
Look, that's going in.