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The granddaddy of all covert contracts are contracts we have with God.
If you feel like you keep your side of the bargain and in return he's supposed to come through for you, I just ended a fast today, when is
God gonna deliver? Well, it would be very nice if our relationship with God like was a transactional one, but authentic relationships are not transactional, they are transformative.
Thought you would reward me with more and yet you took away, and that was really hard for me.
When did God agree to give you job security? I don't remember that in the gospel. I remember, you know, take up your cross and follow me.
Belief does not protect you from life. Hello, hello, welcome to Biblically Speaking.
My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts,
PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.
Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the
Bible make sense so we can get to know God our creator better. Hi, it's
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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. This is Biblically Speaking, and I'm your host,
Cassian Bellino. Today, we are going to talk about, maybe it's the unspoken deals you have with God.
Maybe if you feel like you keep your side of the bargain, and in return, he's supposed to come through for you, I definitely felt this before about things like fasting.
I just ended a fast today. When is God gonna deliver? Because I just fasted, right? Isn't that the way that this works?
Sometimes that's not how it works. Sometimes life falls apart, and you feel like maybe God didn't pull through.
He kind of didn't fulfill his side of the bargain. Or maybe you feel like you see people use spirituality to avoid real pain.
You know, the praying, the quoting verses, even fasting, and nothing is actually changing. Why is that happening?
Also, why fasting? What is it about fasting that we feel like will almost harness some power from Jesus?
And what about Easter? There's a lot of questions regarding the Orthodox faith that I'm gonna jump into as a follow -up to my last conversation with Father Michael Butler.
I am so excited to bring you back onto the show. This already sounds like this episode's gonna be all over the place, but it really is one level deeper into an
Orthodox conversation that so many people loved. You know, you introduced Orthodoxy and how it relates to Catholicism, Protestantism, and the history of the church.
But there are so many nuances, being Orthodox myself, that I don't understand, and I was raised in it.
So for anyone who had not heard that episode, go back and listen. But if you're going to stay, Father Michael, you've been a priest for over 30 years in Michigan.
You have a PA in archetypal psychology, an MA in theology, and a PhD in church history and patristics.
You've also taught at the university level. You've trained men for the diaconate. You also have an amazing work where you help men mature and grow into their masculinity in a healthy, faith -driven way.
I am so glad to have you back. Welcome back to the show, Father Michael. Thanks for having me back.
It was a good conversation last time. I'm looking forward to this one. And I'm so glad that - No, I too. I'm so glad that your audience found something of value the last time we was here.
Seriously. Seriously. Multiple people have brought it up to me, and I feel like it's reshaped things for me.
I mean, being Orthodox, it was nice having that clarity in the church history, but also why we believe what we believe.
And I feel like it's like regrown a newfound appreciation that I didn't have before. It kind of helped me revisit it and talk about it more often.
But today, this is gonna go like one level deeper. It's gonna go into kind of the whys behind what you explained in the last episode.
And one of the things I was really excited to talk about with you is this concept called covert contracts.
And that's kind of like what I was saying at the beginning is like, we feel like we're serving God. Therefore, we deserve a response from him.
And then we don't get it because we did the right thing. So why doesn't he? What do we do with that feeling of,
God, I thought I was serving you. Shouldn't you serve me back? Yeah, well, it would be very nice if our relationship with God was a transactional one, where we put in so much what credit and he spits out so much credit in return.
But, and there are some relationships in life that are transactional. When you go to the supermarket, they give you goods, you give them money.
It works like that. And even with some other people, you go to them because they have services that you want and they give you service, you give them money or you exchange something like that.
But authentic relationships or real relationships between people are not transactional, they are transformative.
And it means that they are not tit for tat. And with a lot of people, a lot of people engage in conversations which are in relationships, which are in fact what we've called a covert contract.
And a covert contract is an unspoken agreement. That's what gets us into trouble. We have an unspoken agreement with somebody else that I'm gonna do this for you and I expect for you to do this in return for me, but I never really tell you about the contract.
I never really tell you what I expect from you. And then I get all pissed off when you don't uphold the end of the bargain that you don't know anything about.
Why would I have to communicate? Isn't it obvious? Well, isn't it obvious? Well, no, actually it isn't.
And I mean, sort of like one of the classical ones, at least in men's work that we get around is the notion of chore play.
This is - You don't know chore play? Chore play, with air quotes, yes, is foreplay in the form of household chores.
That, oh, I carried out the garbage, I cleaned up the dishes, I emptied the cat litter and all of that, so my wife will be really happy with me and reward me with sex.
And then I get all upset when she didn't say, ooh, my hero, and want to jump my bones. That's a covert contract, because if he had gone into her and said, babe, let's get together later tonight for a little intimate time.
Let me help you with the chores, help get cleaned up so that the evening is free, and I'd just like to help you out that way, and afterwards, we can go upstairs to bed.
If he had said that, it would have been explicit, and she could say yes or no. But instead, he just worked on an assumption.
And we have a lot of these covert contracts, and it ends up by placing a lot of undue expectations on other people, and then we get upset, or we get frustrated when they don't live up to our expectations, but we never communicated those expectations in the first place.
And so this is a place where communication very often breaks down, and where we need, some people especially need to learn to be a little clearer and a little more open in what it is they're really looking for, because otherwise, they're just constantly frustrated.
They don't actually get what they want because they never ask for it. They're just, as you say, can't you read my mind?
Don't you know what it is I'm wanting for you? No, honey, use your words.
Tell me what it is you want. And most people are, everybody's free. They'll say yes or no as they will, but at least it's up front.
And the granddaddy of all covert contracts are contracts we have with God.
How could we possibly have a contract with God? Oh, people do it all the time.
I see it all the time in my congregation. I'm a nice person. I go to church regularly.
I believe in you. I say my prayers. I'm kind to dumb animals. I pay my taxes. I don't honk angrily in traffic.
Therefore, nothing bad is ever gonna happen to me in my life because you're gonna see to it that life is smooth sailing.
And then my wife finds a lump, or husband loses a job, or discover kids have got a porn addiction or are smoking weed.
And suddenly, where's God? Why didn't he save my family from this? I did everything right, and now he's failed me.
And then what happens? Then we punish God by refusing to believe in him. Wow.
Okay? Man, tell me you've not seen that. No, I totally have when you...
Yeah, no. No, I actually, I feel like I experienced that firsthand.
And whether you want to mean to or not, I mean, I have a Christian podcast, and then I got laid off. And I was like, what?
I thought I was good. I thought you would reward me with more, and yet you took away. And that was really hard for me because I felt so much safety in my job, and then
I lost it. So it was like a personal attack. Did, yeah, so when did
God agree to give you job security? When did, where was that written?
I don't remember that in the gospel. I remember, you know, take up your cross and follow me, and you'll have all this, plus tribulations as Mark points out.
Do you feel like that's where eisegetical understandings really come into play, like Jeremiah 29, 11, where it's like, well,
God promised he had a plan and that I would prosper? I think sometimes so.
And I think people just don't like to read the difficult parts. Yeah, yeah.
Honestly, look, it's easy. I'll believe in you and just say amen to whatever, but then, you know, you're gonna make sure that nothing bad ever happens to me.
It's also a matter of cherry -picking verses, you know?
Come on, Christians get cancer and lose their jobs and, you know, have marital issues and affairs.
Alas, you know, as often as anybody does. Would that it weren't so, but it is. Oh. Yeah.
And belief does not protect you from life. Okay, so if that is guaranteed, it's kind of a hard sell to say, why serve a
God that's all -powerful and I don't even get to benefit as like a child of the king? Shouldn't I get some perks because I give my life to living a holier life?
Do you understand, like, it feels, again, transactional, like, well, I gave up this. Yes, yes, yes,
I understand, yeah, it feels transactional. Yeah, elder son in the story of the prodigal son, you know, son, all that I have is yours, you know?
And we are promised a kingdom and I need to remind you also that that old saw, virtue is its own reward, is true.
The benefit of being good is that you're good. The benefit of being faithful isn't to get something else, it's that we are faithful to the
God who's faithful to us. And if you're only faithful to God when it's easy and when it seems like he's blessing everything that you do, all right, go back and read the book of Job.
Yes, that is so good. Seriously, seriously. You know, the man was incredibly blessed but he was wretched and miserable and he spent 38 chapters bitching and moaning about it too, you know, which, okay, a lot of Christians do that too.
In his defense, he has his losses and family. This is life and he's a big God and we wrestle with reality rather than, you know, putting on the pious little happy Christian face that everything is nice and sweet and praise
Jesus because life is wonderful when we're falling apart inside. Yeah. Who does that serve?
That doesn't serve anybody. When we are falling apart, what does a healthy limitation look like?
How do we process those emotions without targeting God? When we say everything comes from God and I'm suffering.
So God, this suffering is from you. What is a more spiritually sound way to go about that? All right, couple of things.
First off, everything comes from God. Second place, examples of good prayers of lamentation.
All right, in the first place, yes, it seems to be, now I remind your audience, I have never been a Protestant. I am not going to play one on your podcast today but from an outside observer, it seems to me that many people in the
Protestant world like to, in order to demonstrate their faithfulness or their
Christianity, to ascribe everything to God, meaning ultimate cause as opposed to immediate cause.
Okay, so, you know, I bust my butt, I work really hard and I got this job because, you know,
I actually went to school, studied hard, did everything I needed to and got there but God gave me the job. Okay, on the one hand, that's fine.
Give glory to God for, you know, for the blessings we have and be grateful to him. I have no problem with that but let's also acknowledge that you put in a lot of the work too.
Okay, but somehow that doesn't, that usually doesn't get mentioned or you don't acknowledge all the work that I put into this and you just simply give glory to God for my success.
You say, wait a minute, you know, like, you know, this, you know, overnight success, this took me 15 years to get to where I am today.
You know, let's, I have some skin in this game and it's okay to acknowledge that. Like manner, when everything bad happens, it's not like, oh, you know,
I've not been living up to my obligations to my family. My husband feels neglected and he finally decided he wanted a divorce.
Oh, God has ended my marriage. Okay, where's your responsibility in it? Okay, what's your piece?
I mean, let's just take a little bit more holistic view of this, you know.
Yeah, every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the father of lives. Yes, we get that, but he also works through his world and through human agency as well.
You know, so if, you know, if things have happened, you know, does God purposefully manipulate the economy so that you will lose your job because your employer can't afford to pay you anymore?
You know, I suppose you could look at it that way.
Frankly, it strikes me as a very selfish way of looking at the whole world. Sorry, with all gentleness to whomever may kind of think in this way, you're really not that important in the grand scheme of things.
Okay, you know, let's maybe take ourselves a little bit out of the limelight here and find a little bit of humility.
But very often people, and here, you probably see this as well, because I get it in the church and the parable or the story of the healing of the 10 lepers plays out constantly in the church.
Yeah, nobody, nobody thinks about God until something goes wrong because people need something to blame.
I'll go off on this point in just a moment. At, you know, 99 years, I had this actually a situation in my parish where I have an older gentleman, he's about my age.
Okay, his elderly uncle, who's late 80s, early 90s, finally contracted his spinal illness and died over the course of a few weeks.
They say, long life, old life. This guy, like I'm 64, and this guy was really ticked off at God that his uncle died.
He thought, ain't none of us getting out of this alive. I mean, maybe he didn't die in a way that you would have liked for him to die.
I mean, I don't remember if it was painful, miserable, drawn out.
I really don't know, but, you know, somehow, where was the gratitude for the 89 plus years that he knew his uncle and he had him around, you know?
We're not, you know, we're not 10 healed, we're the nine, you know, who comes back to give glory to God. And very often we forget to see all of the benefits which we have received.
And only God only comes to mind when we need somebody to blame. And blaming somebody for our issues is one of the most fundamental human reactions.
It is not a good response, but it is a reaction which goes all the way back to the beginning of Genesis.
Adam, did you eat that tree I told you not to eat? Her fault, her fault.
She gave me the apple and I ate it. It's her fault, you gave her to me and she gave me the apple.
Eve, what did you, ah, snake. And the poor snake didn't have a leg to stand on, right?
You know, as the old joke goes. But you see, that's it, is to blame somebody else. And so when things go wrong in life, we want to blame somebody and God is the usual punching back.
That's a good point. And never, like I said, nevermind gratitude for everything else that has gone beautifully, you know, in people's lives to that point.
Yeah, yeah, I guess I thought it was the like holy Christian thing to do was to attribute everything to God as like he is the ultimate provider.
But I do understand that there is. He provides, but he also provides, like I say, through his work, through his world and through human agency at all.
Okay, so you can thank God, absolutely. I have no problem with that. Do it, I encourage it.
Let's also acknowledge everything in between and all of the ways that he worked, you know? Wow, yeah, that is, that's a really improved perspective to have on, is kind of focusing on the glass half full and understanding what he has given and our responsibility and accountability within that, like you said.
Moving into a different topic, which we're gonna get more into the orthodox topics and something that I'm not really familiar with is spiritual bypassing.
What is it, what is it? Okay, that is not actually a specifically orthodox topic.
It actually comes out of psychology. There's a psychologist that came up with it, the notion,
I forget how long ago, but it's just where he encountered spiritual people, religious people who are using their faith as a way to avoid dealing with their actual problems in their life, okay?
Dismissing trauma, emotions or relationship problems, you know?
I end up, it just happens that, do you know that program, television show,
Young Sheldon? I don't watch it, but I've heard of it. So I can visualize the way ahead.
It comes on like immediately after the news where I live and it sometimes gets left.
My wife likes to watch the news and I don't mind hearing the local news, but sometimes the
TV gets left on and this is what happens to show up after the news. And in it, it is of course,
Young Sheldon Cooper, but his mother is a devout fundamentalist and she is a perfect example of spiritual bypassing because she doesn't deal with anything.
She just says, oh, I'll just leave it in God's hands. Oh, I'll just pray about that. Rather than dealing with the actual situations that are on the ground, she retreats into her faith and retreats into her
Bible and she doesn't actually deal with the problems because she can't deal with conflict. She can't deal with difficult feelings and all.
And she just, you can see it's just a total withdrawal. And so, I mean, an example of that is, oh, well, you lost your job.
Well, glory to God anyway. I'm sure God has a plan for your life. Okay, ain't that sweet.
Now, what does that do for you? How is that helpful? Absolutely nothing, but we get that kind of stuff.
Scriptural quote, James, epistle to James chapter two, what is it, verse 15, 16, somewhere around in there.
He says, keep warm and well -fed. If you just say to someone, keep warm and well -fed, but you don't do anything to clothe them or to feed them, what is it, profit?
This faith without works business. I know some of you in the Protestant world have issues with that, but you need to resolve them.
The name it and claim it thing. I want something, I want an end. God, I need to lose 15 pounds.
In the name of Jesus, let him be gone. Amen. I've heard people do stuff like that.
Did the ice cream go away? Did you throw away the ice cream from the fridge?
Are the chips still on top? Are you still sitting out for DoorDash for lunch? Are we eating
Big Macs or whatnot? No, but Jesus is gonna get rid of my 15 pounds for me. No, he's not, because you're not lifting a finger to help yourself.
The famous, it just reminds me just of a line from one of the great spiritual fathers of the
Egyptian desert, the founder of monasticism, St. Anthony the Great. A brother came to him and said,
Abba, pray for me. He had some sort of issue. So Abba, pray for me. And Abba Anthony says,
I will not have mercy on you and neither will God if you do not make an effort and help yourself.
And I thought, wow, I just kind of laid into him there, but that was it.
You don't make an effort yourself. Why do you expect for God to do it all for you? Again, this offloading of personal responsibility is a problem.
Yeah, but what you said about faith without works is dead. Forgive me? What you said about faith without works is dead.
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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. That if it's not up to you, because I can understand the
Protestant view, you give everything to God, but I also understand like God's like, then like, don't pray for the bus, go chase it, go catch it.
Yeah, yeah. As St. Augustine put it, and I think it's one of the best one -liners, pray like everything depends on God.
Absolutely. But act like everything depends on you. I like that.
If you do that, you know, you got a pretty good chance of success there. And I find that I am, the harder
I work at the things that I need to work at in life, the more grace -filled I find that I am. Yeah.
How do you balance not being God? Because everything's coming from you. It's not coming from, well, in the first place, all of my gifts are given to me, but what am
I doing with them? Look, it's a parable of the talents. You've been given talents. What are you gonna do?
Bury them in the ground and say, oh, God will provide. No, you're supposed to use those talents to make the world a better place, you know, to enhance your life, the light, you know, support everyone in your family, add value to the world and all of that.
And God's gonna say, okay, you know, in my case, you know, I am a husband, I'm a father, I'm a pastor.
God's gonna say, okay, what did you do as a husband? What did you do as a father? What did you do as a pastor? These are the domains which
I gave you to have for your responsibility. Did you show up?
How did you show up? Did you use the talents and gifts? Again, if you didn't, depart from me.
I never knew you. Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
Yeah. I mean, well, some people just need to grow up, you know, and you gotta do the work, okay?
Yeah, I do feel like that's a theme in this conversation. Yeah, you know, and this is, you know, it is in the
Protestant tradition at some point, and I'm no specialist in y 'all's history. Justification and sanctification somehow got separated out completely.
Just get saved. Just accept Jesus. And that's all you need to do.
Then after that, you're kind of good because you're going to heaven regardless. The old once saved, always safe thing, which
I understand John Wesley went to the wall for, but it's never been a part of the
Christian tradition prior to Wesley. And so I think I see it somewhat of a, you know, if there's nothing left to do, people tend to want to coast.
Well, I'm already safe. What effort do I have to do? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to grow in my knowledge and my love of God, but you know, it's already done for me.
Man, I'm just good. Slide on into the kingdom for the rest of my life. This is not the traditional
Christian view. And by traditional, I mean, anything older than about 1820, the older Protestant tradition, certainly the
Catholic tradition and the Eastern Christian tradition as well, that was never the older Christian position.
You know, we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And we work with God for that, or he works with us.
It doesn't really matter which way you say it. You know, and to go back to a more specifically
Orthodox understanding, in the Orthodox church, we have a very strong understanding of what we call synergy.
Greek word, synergia, which means working with. So that our salvation is 100 %
God's grace, and it is 100 % our effort. Not 99 % grace and 1 % us, not 50 -50.
Whoa. 100 % and 100%. We run the race set before us every single day, like St.
Paul says, and we strive for the crown. Oh my gosh. Well, okay.
Let's get into one of the examples, fasting. And I do feel like this might be, would you say running the race?
I mean, I - That's just part of it. It is a tool. Yeah. I did a 72 hour fast about two months ago.
And I always looked at fasting as very transactional of like, oh, you know, cause it's, you know, it's so encouraged in the church that you should fast and you should fast and you need to draw closer to God.
And I always thought as, okay, so if I give up food, then I get blessings. Like it just never made sense to me.
And I just never thought even like the January fast, you know, the Daniel fast, like what are we doing?
And then I fasted and it changed my life and it actually worked. And I understood where it took me and how it took me to that place and put me in a position to depend on God and only hear
God and only need God because like you're so deprived of that stimulation of food and comfort that you are consistently like, well, what do
I do? I go to God and you get in that practice. And when I broke the fast, I clearly saw the difference in living life, comfortable, full, satiated.
And then that life where I called out to God every time I was hungry and I was like, Lord, the only thing that can fill me is you.
And I knew physically I would be fine. I do a lot of just like nutritional fasting. So I understand what the body can take and that I will be fine.
I won't die. I'm not afraid of the hunger bangs, but it was, it put me in like a postulate, like it put me in a position to cry out to him in a ways that I never had to when
I was hungry. And when I entered that fast, I was, I had no job.
I was desperate. I was scared. And I exited that 72 hours with a job.
It was the most wild 72 hours of my life. It's so weird. And so now I have this amazing job that God brought me into from this place of,
I wanna say like sacrifice. So that's how, that's my testimony. That's what I bore witness to when I fasted.
But what would you say? Did I miss anything? Well, you spoke to your experience.
No, I don't know that you missed anything. For drawing closer in intimacy with God, absolutely, that is the purpose of a fast.
Sometimes we fast to join with a prayer when there's something specific that we want an answer to, like you have said.
There's a biblical example for that. Sometimes when there are difficult situations in the world, more communal fasting things on behalf of oppressed people.
Or someone who is sick. Maybe if I have a family member who is ill, perhaps I would undertake a fast to join with the prayer on that person's behalf.
That's referenced in the Psalms. Sometimes we fast in response to tragedy and terrible things that have happened, as Job did.
Running my own podcast, I'm always moving too fast. I'm finding guests, I'm editing episodes, I'm creating reels or guesting on other shows.
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Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things. Now, back to the show. And it's dunghill and fasted for seven days, okay?
In Book of Acts, before people were to discern if someone was ready for ministry and to be committed to work, the apostles fasted and prayed before they laid hands on people.
So it is a way of strengthening God. Sometimes even before major religious events also.
You may remember before the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the Israelites were told to prepare themselves and fast for three days.
And one aspect of fasting that nobody likes to mention, fasting involves abstinence from sexual relations with your wife.
Prepare yourself against the third day. Men do not touch your wives, says that explicitly in Exodus.
And when St. Paul says, and in the old King James Version, defraud ye not one another except for a time that it be for prayer and fasting.
The defrauding actually means, you know, don't deny your spouse marital rights, except for a little while, and by mutual consent, so that you can give yourselves to prayer and fasting.
Okay? So that's an aspect of it, of an aspect to do. Christ himself fasted.
We know that in the scriptures, the disciples fasted. He expects us to fast, because he says in the
Sermon on the Mount, when you fast, you know, don't make your face long and look like someone fast.
He didn't say if you fast, he says when you fast. So there is an expectation that Christians are going to fast.
And he even says later on, you know, in the days when the Son of Man is taken, in those days they will surely fast.
So Christians are expected to do this. And we even have, you know, there's extra biblical references in the early
Christian literature to Christians fasting from nearly the beginning. There's this little book called the
Didache, with the teaching of the twelve apostles, and in it, and this dates to about the year 80.
I mean, this is still the time when the first, you know, when the New Testament is not even completely written yet, and this
Didache is circulating around, and it says, you will not fast like the Jews. They fast on Mondays and Thursdays.
You will fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. And so from the earliest days,
Christians have been fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the week. In fact, if you don't mind, here's my little
Orthodox calendar for September. In September, you notice there's a gray column here on Wednesday and Friday.
Those are the fasting days. Every Wednesday and Friday. We've been doing it since the year 80, at least that's what the
Christian tradition has. So many questions. So the preparation that you mentioned, like, my experience is the only reason
I can see why you would fast, is like to put yourself in a position to need and depend on the Lord. But you mentioned a couple scenarios where people would fast.
Is there different outcomes that fasting can achieve? Sometimes it's an expression of repentance.
You remember when Prophet Jonah, you know, who's there? That's Jonah coming, vomited out of the whale.
That's the little icon behind me here. He went to Nineveh. You know, in 40 days, Nineveh will fall.
And the king says, oh, everybody fast and pray. Even put sackcloth on the cows, you know.
So it can be done for repentance. It can be done for mourning. It is a broadly human expression.
And every religious tradition in the world, past and present, has always had some kind of fasting discipline.
And I think that goes to a broader thing, because what we eat is one of a handful of bodily functions that we can regulate or control voluntarily.
Like, you can't stop your heart from beating. You really don't want to, you know. But we can, you know, our breathing is autonomic, except when we want to, then we can physically control our breath if we want to do that.
Okay. We can regulate how much we eat or drink. We can regulate how much we sleep.
We can also regulate how often, you know, we're intimate with our spouses. And so those are the things that we always find religious practices concern.
So keeping vigil, staying awake at night, is limiting the amount of sleep that you have when you stay awake to pray, you know, late into the night or get up early in the morning.
Fasting is regulating food and drink. You know, sexual abstinence, like I say, has always been a part of fasting.
A lot of traditions have breath work of some kind. There's even kind of a practice of that in the
Orthodox tradition. And in the medieval West, the monks in the monasteries, they would chant the psalms.
Which, if you chant psalms out loud, is actually kind of a breath work joined with a prayer.
You know, so we, you know, these things are, they're sort of universal and they're human things. And the reason that at least in the
Christian tradition, fasting always involves, well, fasting technically means
I restrict how much I eat. And, you know, if you're going to fast, like during Great Lent for 40 days, you're not going to go without food completely for 40 days.
So the tradition is you eat once a day, usually dinner, late in the day. And it's always a strictly vegan diet.
No meat, no animal products whatsoever, no dairy even.
And what you'll find is that if you change your diet in that way, that it seems to be animal products that tend to stimulate more of the bodily passions, lust and anger go down.
And you find that you kind of even out emotionally, which makes it much easier to pray.
Whoa, that's insane. It only takes three or four days. Seriously, only takes about three or four.
I have people prove this to themselves every year when we get to Lent. People say, Oh, Father, I don't know if I'm going to fast.
Just do it the way the church says and prove to yourself. Come back to me at the end of the week and tell me lust and anger didn't calm down and it was easier for you to pray.
And every year, Oh, Father, it's true. I would never have believed it had you, you know, had I not proven it for myself.
There it is. Also, Adam and Eve did not eat animals. We were not given animals to eat until after the flood.
No. So we eat in the way in imitation of our first parents. Okay. And it's precisely sort of the spiritual benefits,
I think, is what you're seeing when we do fast because sort of the energy in the body is reduced.
And there are things that do calm down. It does make it much easier to pray. Yeah. And if you're not spending time prepping meals, eating food and cleaning up afterwards, it does give you a little more time to turn to God anyway.
Also, I mean, you know, that's practicality right there. But this is the effect of it.
Wow. Would you say that that three day or I'm sorry, that week of one meal a day, only vegan eating, would you say that's like the most powerful fast?
Is there a difference, like a differences in like outcomes that certain fast can bring? That's very idiosyncratic, honestly.
Okay. You know, I mean, I know, I know I have people in my congregation who, you know, for whatever reason are vegans year round.
So they don't give up meat and dairy, so they don't notice that benefit anymore.
And there are guys who are physically active, like me, for whom it's murder.
Just I need the calories and I can't get them in one meal a day. You know, so I'm just,
I'm just miserable. But other people just sail through it. It's like nothing happened. It's not a big deal.
Eat once a day, three times a day. Father, it's all the same to me. So it's extremely, extremely individual in that respect.
But also, and this is part of the thing, the fasting seasons, the fasting days and sort of the rules of what we eat and what we don't eat have been given to us by the church.
And so part of the fast, at least for Orthodox Christians, is that part of the benefit and the spiritual value is that it's an act of obedience.
Christ and his church asked me to fast. This is the way that it's come down that I am to fast. So an
Orthodox Christian would never do like what you just say, oh, I'm going to have a 72 hour fast and just not eat for the next three.
No, we're going to look on the calendar and say, when is the next fast? You know, so tomorrow's
Wednesday. Whether I want to fast or not, tomorrow is Wednesday. Yes, sir. And I'll keep the fast.
And what will the fast be tomorrow? Forgive me? The fast tomorrow is that one meal vegan?
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I cheat. I have coffee in the morning. Why is that cheating?
I don't know that it is. I'm being a little suspicious. Okay, so that's so interesting because I was like my dad's
Russian Orthodox, and he would do no meat on Fridays. And then I think dairy.
So is that a different fast? No, it's just a modification. It's a relaxation of the strict rule.
And this is one of the things that's beautiful about orthodoxy. And this may be of interest to your listeners.
Some people may be gawking, one meal a day. My God, how can I live on that? I have a physical job.
I've got blue collar guys in my parish that have very physical jobs. They can't live on one meal a day. I have brittle diabetics who cannot live on one meal a day.
I have pregnant women who cannot live on one meal a day. And so in the orthodox tradition, we set a very high standard for everybody.
But it is individually appropriated and applied. So if someone needs the fast to be relaxed in their situation, the ideal way to do it is that they come and they talk to the priest, their spiritual father and say, father,
I can't do this. I have a young man just come to my parish who is trying out for the U .S. Olympics team in 2028.
I mean, he is almost a professional athlete. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, this guy is training six, eight hours a day right now.
Can he keep a fat? He needs his protein. He can't really keep a fast. So in his case, I had to severely tone down the fast.
But then he's a very devout guy. So we added in some other spiritual practices that he could do that fit his schedule, that would do him some benefit and at least honor the fast in spirit.
You know, we do what we could in his case. But most of us are not like that.
You know, in the case of a diabetic, you eat what your doctor has told you to eat. And if you don't, you bring that to confession.
That's your fast. I don't want you fainting in the middle of liturgy on Sunday morning. And I've had that happen.
And then the EMS comes and they come in with the ambulance and the lights are flashing and they come in with the stretcher in the middle of the church.
And it makes it very difficult to conduct a church service while the EMS is right there in the middle. Yeah, I can imagine.
Again, partly facetious response there. But the purpose of the fast is not to debilitate us.
We need to be able to carry on our days. You're like Christ says again in the Sermon on the
Mount. If you're fasting, don't make your face long. You know, comb your hair, wash your face, go do your job.
No one should know you're fasting. You know, if you're there in the break room at three o 'clock, prostrate across the table because you need calories and you're not getting them for two more hours.
We need to adjust something here. What would you recommend to somebody in that position of like, they tried fasting and they just realized that they can't do it.
It's not working. It's such a horrible experience. Then what we do is, okay, you can't eat one meal a day, eat two.
You can't do without protein. Don't eat meat on Wednesday and Friday. My God, eat dairy on Wednesday and Friday.
See how that is for a while before they're good. Okay. Now we've done that for a month. That was now take out the dairy on Wednesday and Friday.
Let's see if we can eat three meals a day, but let, you know, have bread, you know, fresh fruit for breakfast, you know, just eat some, eat some veggies or have a salad for lunch, you know, go and get morningstar farms, you know, pretend chicken patties or something for dinner.
You know, come on in a world of vegans and vegetarians and all the options for a strictly vegan diet have never been better before in our lives.
You know, if you're starving nowadays on a vegan diet, you're just not trying.
Okay. I'm definitely somebody that needs like one meal a day and somebody that can like operate that way.
So I enjoy fasting, especially just for like nutritional purposes to do, you know, the benefits there. Well, look, what is that?
There's a diet scheme nowadays. What is it? Where you have a window during which you eat. What's that?
Do you know what I'm talking about? Intermittent fasting. Yeah. Intermittent fasting. How do you, okay.
I feel like, like what you're saying is so freeing that like our faith accommodates us that it shouldn't be debilitating in our faith.
But there's like a very, like a thin line here of like, then just do whatever works for you.
Like, how do we stay within obedience? No, here is the standard. This is what's expected of everybody.
Fulfill it to the best of your ability. Some of us are going to be able to do it completely. Others, a little less.
Others may not be able to do it at all. Why do I, like I say, what do I do with brittle diabetics and elderly people?
My God, you know, they need all the calories they can get, you know, it's getting enough food into them.
That's the problem, you know, and so for them, I kind of reverse it. You eat everything you're supposed to eat.
And if you go skipping meals, you bring it to confession. Count that as a sin. See, so again, so it adds, it adds, they eat.
Well, like St. Paul says, you know, he who doesn't eat, doesn't eat unto God. And the one who does eat, eats to God.
So who are you to be, you know, judging your brother? So this is what I tell them. If you don't do what makes you healthy to where you can be viable and function, throw a level of spiritual accountability on top of that as well and come and talk to me.
It's interesting how much fasting is playing a kind of a role in the Orthodox faith, whereas the only fasting that I really hear about in the
Protestant faith is the Daniel fast in January. I don't even know what that is.
I think it's, I haven't done it to be honest, but the Daniel fast is when he refused the king's food.
So I think he just nuts and berries and vegetables and water. So it kind of sounds like, you know, the vegan diet that you're already talking about.
But it's not like fasting is required within my faith, aside from that Daniel fast.
And then even Lent, Lent is a Catholic thing. So we might give up some things before Easter, but what is the encouragement that you might have to any
Protestants that are like, okay, I'll give it a go, but it's not really required when I go to church. You know,
I don't know that I have a recommendation. Honestly, because in this respect, and forgive me if this cuts a little close to the bone for you having described your own fast recently, because it's going to be individualistically taken up.
I'm going to do this on my own, rather than obedience to a Christian tradition. Yeah.
You know, so okay, if you want to go without food, if there's blessings in it, yeah, I mean, go and experience what
I've described. Go two or three days on a strictly vegan diet, eat once a day and see how it does for you. Or if it's very restricted, like 24 hours, 48 hours, or perhaps 72, like you've done, where maybe you're just on water or juice, see if there's a spiritual benefit to it.
I see. But you see, this is it. Okay, yeah. This is the problem in the
Protestant world. Nothing's required of you. You get to do whatever you jolly well please. Oh, boy.
Where do you gain the benefits of obedience when there's nothing to obey? That's a trick question, because there's plenty to obey in the gospel.
Yeah, I was about to be like... Yeah, yeah, let's put brakes on that a little bit. But the purpose of the fast isn't to punish us, and we don't do it the way that Catholics do.
We don't give up something we like because we need to punish ourselves because we've been bad.
No? Oh, because we've been bad. Well, I mean, it's taken as penance in the
Catholic tradition. And I mean, my God, I do without chocolate for 40 days? What the hell?
You know? Wow. Major encumbrance there, you know? Try go...
Yeah, try... Like I say, just go 40 days without meat or dairy.
I mean, we've been doing it for so long. We have a completely different set of cookbooks, and there are meals we only eat during fast, which we actually look forward to because some of it is pretty good.
But we only bring that out because now's the time when there's all the recipes without meat or dairy in them.
And so it does change life, and it changes relationships. And yeah, we go extended times without intimacy.
And that ain't easy. But we give ourselves to prayer for those times.
And there are spiritually intense times of the year when, frankly, in some cases,
I'm too tired for anything else. Like during Holy Week, the week before Easter, before Pascha, all
I do is pray and sleep. Thank God I have a wife. She reminds me to eat. I honestly forget to eat.
I'm so busy at the church now. But yeah, there's not time.
You don't want to think about anything else either. You know, if you can restrict your thoughts just to following Christ in the steps from Palm Sunday through his passion, death, and resurrection, and think about nothing else for seven or eight or nine days, it's a beautiful thing.
Well put. I'm going to move on to two other topics in our remaining time.
One is the calendar, which you did show earlier. I have mine right over there. My dad sends it to me every year.
Easter this year was on the same date as the Protestant Easter. Yeah. That's not always the case.
Growing up, we had Easter. And then the following week, we had a different Easter at the Russian Orthodox Church.
And then same with Christmas. We had Christmas at my mom's church. And then in January, we had Christmas at my dad's church.
On a more theological question, why are there two calendars? Why aren't these on the same date?
Shouldn't a date be a date? It can't move Christmas to be a different date if it happens on December 25th or not
December 25th. Can you just explain that? Yeah. When is December?
What is today's date? Today's September 2nd. Not on the old calendar, it isn't.
What is the old calendar? The old calendar is the Julian calendar established in the days of Julius Caesar, which the
Christian East followed, and which was not quite accurate and so lost one day about every 200 years, which is why it falls behind.
And now the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the
Revised Gregorian calendar, which is named for one of the Pope Gregories in the Renaissance. Once the science got good enough to say, hey, we're drifting and we're 13 days, or in those days, it was about 12 days off or 11 days off.
Let's fix the calendar so that spring occurs at spring. And the Bernal and autumn equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices actually line up the way they're supposed to.
And in the Renaissance, Western Europe revised the calendar and basically skipped 13 days and said, okay, it's 13 days later now.
England held out for the longest time because it's the middle of the English Reformation. The English says, to hell, we're not going to do what the
Pope said. And they actually kept on the old calendar for several more years. So for a while in Elizabethan or post -Elizabethan times, you'll see two dates on a lot of legal documents and whatnot, because it was the
English calendar and the European calendar at the same time. So it's fascinating.
Yeah. Wait, I think I, like you skipped, maybe you said it too fast, but why did it fall behind? Because every 200 years they would lose a day?
Yeah. It just wasn't that accurate. Okay. So it was revised and they didn't, did they have leap year?
They sort of had leap year, but somehow it still was off. The calendar is not 365 days exactly for us to go once around the sun.
I think it's like 365 days and a few hours. So somehow, after a few years, it starts to add up.
Then you need, well, it's about a quarter of a day. It's about six hours because every four years we have leap year.
So we add one day to the end of February to line it back up again. That's what leap year is for.
Right. It's a calendar drift. Well, How does that relate to the Julian calendar?
Somewhat. Yeah. Please, this is ancient math. Don't ask me to go there. Okay. So how is this determined?
This is two issues. This explains why on the old calendar, Christmas doesn't come until what's
January 7th. On the new calendar, it's December 25th on the old calendar.
It's just they're 13 days off. All right. Okay. That's for feasts that sit on a particular date, like December 25th.
Easter is a different matter entirely. The calculation for the date of Easter goes back to the first council of Nicaea in 325.
We're responsible for that. Okay. Where they said, because they said, when do we celebrate
Easter? We're not going to celebrate with the Jews. And we don't want the Jews telling us when Passover was.
And so the Christian church said it will be the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox.
So spring comes, full moon, the
Sunday after that was the original calculation. And oddly enough, the
Orthodox church has sort of, they said the Julian calendar was off by about 13 days.
Okay. They have sort of fixed that to sort of revise that a little bit. This is where it gets too muddy, even for me.
But sometimes on the Orthodox calculation, the Western calculation, it lines up exactly the same.
And so we have Easter and Pascha on the same day. Sometimes depending on when the new moon is, maybe it's the first new moon of spring on one calendar, but it's the last new moon or full moon of spring of winter.
And then it gets thrown off five weeks in advance. And sometimes it's just a little off and we're just like one week off.
So Pascha and Easter are going to be the same day, one week off or five weeks off. And it's just kind of the way it typically works out.
And would it be easier if we were all on the same day? Yeah, come on back. But that's really not going to happen.
Okay. So with the full moon, it being the Sunday after the full moon, does that have to do with the fact that like in scripture,
Jesus died the Sunday after the most recent full moon? It matters because Passover is the first full moon of spring.
Passover takes place in the month of Nisan on the Jewish calendar, which is the first month of the
New Year's spring. Okay, first month of spring. Jesus died on Friday the 13th.
Because the Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar. So the first day of Nisan is going to be the new moon, or the first little bit of a crescent moon after a new moon, when it just began to wax.
So that Passover will be on the 14th day of the month, which is the full moon. Because Jewish festivals were lined up on the calendar so that you would have a full moon so that the feast would be illumined all the day and all the night and all the next day.
So it made it easier to celebrate. Okay. We know Jesus died on Friday the 13th.
Because Saturday the 14th would have been the full moon. And that's the Passover. Because, of course,
Christ is our Passover sacrifice. You know, I mean, all of that symbolism and imagery all comes into play here.
So we know that Christ was crucified on the full moon. And so as not to worship with the
Jews, we just put it to the following Sunday. What happens if the full moon is on a Tuesday? Are we going to celebrate
Easter then on Tuesday? Some people did that very early on. And the church says, no, no, we want to do it on Sunday.
Because Sunday is the day of resurrection. And we want to honor that. So we'll just put the Easter celebration on the
Sunday right after the full moon. And that's kind of what we do to this day. Okay.
Okay. So, I mean, and then the math got to be, I mean, it was such, basically, the ancient church said,
Church of Alexandria, with the great library, you've got all the scholars, you have all the mathematicians, figure it out, tell us when it is, it's your job.
That's basically what they did. So the Church of Alexandria figured it out for everybody and then sent a letter out, tell us when
Pascha was every year. Got it. Last question. More closer to home is, how do interdenominational marriages work, especially between like non -Orthodox and Orthodox?
Is just your hot take that it can work, that it can't work? I personally, my mom converted to the faith.
She was kind of raised like Lutheran. My dad's Orthodox and she became Orthodox. And then just like in her own faith journey, now she's more so Lutheran, non -denominational, but he's still
Orthodox. And so like, as a Christian, to me, it seems great, you know, like my parents made it work.
So I've normalized like an interdenominational marriage. But from your perspective, are there any things to be wary of any
Christians that are maybe looking like Catholic to Lutheran or, you know, more Baptist to Orthodox?
Is there any theological things wrong with that? Or just fundamentally, you're just going to disagree on some things?
Yeah, first off, just I'm going to be nitpicky here just for a moment. And Orthodox don't do interdenominational anything because we're not a denomination.
Orthodox are pre -denominational. And I'm going to be a stickler on that point. Okay. You can call me old and kaji if you want, but I ain't budging on that one.
All right. That said, I do have, yeah, I have some interfaith marriages.
The broadest, my broadest observation and all of that, and this extends even outside of the
Orthodox realm, is the person with the strongest faith sets the tone. This kind of sets the tone because they're the one who are going to be most insistent on how things take place at home.
You know, whether or not feasts and fasts are kept, where the children are baptized, what church the kids are raised in, where they tend to have major celebrations and that sort of thing.
So the person with the strongest faith typically wins. Where things can get difficult is very often when you have an established married couple where one spouse like comes to faith of a new, where had not been a person of faith before and now is introducing
Christian faith into the marriage. And sometimes the non -believing spouse, there's my
God, what is it, you know, where are you going with this? Why is this, you know, why are you insisting on this? Why can't we do that?
What's happened? You know, we used to have three -day weekends. Now you're in church on Sunday morning. You want to do what with the kids and you have issues like that.
St. Paul does tell us not to be unequally yoked. And sometimes that can happen.
I have known a few households where, well, like in yours, people basically did everything twice, you know, to accommodate, say, a
Catholic or a Protestant and an Orthodox observance. My former physician, when
I was a priest in Cleveland, he was a good Catholic boy. He married a very strong Orthodox woman.
But they would do like great Lent twice, you know, and God help in the years when our
Easter was five weeks later, the guy like fasted from the beginning of February to the end of May.
But they were trying to, you know, be faithful to both.
And sometimes you can straddle things and people make things work. And so sometimes you have to give a little around the edges, you know, and sometimes everybody adjusts and everybody makes compromises and you do the best that you can.
And if a couple love each other, they'll find, they typically find a way through. And in some cases, you know, like I say, they're just people who one really strongly believing spouse and one more, more cultural
Christian. Sure, I'll go where you want to go or, you know, I don't feel like going, you take the kids, you know, can be one of those sorts of things.
I've, I've seen everything. And in very few cases,
I can't think of any off the top of my head where faith became such an issue.
Oh yes, I can. Where faith became such an issue that the marriage did not survive. And actually that was a case where the wife got involved in a cult.
What was it? Oh, she went, she got into Scientology. And so she just like went, you know, maxed out the credit cards.
I understand that they have courses you've taken. I guess the courses were very expensive and she wanted to do this.
So she like maxed out the credit cards, taking all of these with Scientology. And so now it's not Christian.
No, but it is a spirituality of some sorts. And, you know, in that case, the, you know, the husband said, no, you've like gone off the deep end.
We're in debt. Come back. She says, no, these are my people now. And he's like, I can't deal with it.
But that's about the only one. I'm sure there are others out there where, you know, someone has, someone has, you know,
I have known a few cases where faith has gotten in the way of couples getting together, but better to have that argument or that discussion up front and be clear about it and say, okay, this is not going to work.
Yeah. You know? Okay. Yeah. I think, I mean, everything that you've said today,
Father, is just so logical. And I feel like I get so into like the theological weeds of like, is this right or wrong?
Like, are we breaking the rules yet? But I feel like even from spiritual bypassing to covert contracts, it's like the responsibility and even the fasting, the responsibility is on you.
And you just have to be honest of doing everything to the best of your ability, even in the instances of, yes, this isn't very like puristic culture of a hundred percent one way.
It's God meeting you where you're at. Always. Always. Yeah. Meeting you where you are and then calling you higher as best you're able, you know, because we always want to strive.
And come on, we want to give God our best, don't we? We want to give him our best. So maybe I don't fast so well this year, but maybe next time
I'll try a little harder. Wow. I like that. Yeah. And where we fall short, we repent of it and we get back up and get back on, get on with it.
Yeah. Father, you're amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. And you're coming back for two more episodes, which
I'm so excited for. We're coming back for two more episodes. I think we got like one more sort of general conversation like this one.
We'll do a bunch of topics. And then you wanted me to come near Christmas to talk about the nativity icon.
Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm so excited. But for anybody who might be listening for the first time, how can they get in contact with you just because they love what you're saying?
How, if they're in Michigan, how can they join your parish? Or if they want to grow within their masculinity, they're a young man and they want to be guided by you.
How can they get connected? All right. The easiest way. First, if you are in greater Detroit area,
I'm in Livonia. My parish is called Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church. We're always welcoming to visitors and to guests.
If you'd like to pop in, I'd love to meet you. And if you tell me that you're here because of the interview here with Miss Cassie, I'll just be blown away and I'll be gobsmacked by that.
So please know you're always welcome there. For myself, I'm easiest to find on social media. I have a social media handle,
Average to Alpha. That's A -V -G, numeral two, Alpha. And I'm on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and God help me,
TikTok. Don't find me on TikTok. Find me on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. But Average to Alpha is the name of my channel mostly for the men's work, but I do answer direct messages there.
So if anybody has any queries or if I can be helpful in any way, I'm more than glad to be of service.
Well, I'm so glad that you're here. I can't wait to have you back on so soon. And we will chat very soon, but thank you so much,