Christianity in the Technological Society

Conversations That Matter

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00:11

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, for an intellectually stimulating discussion today and an interesting discussion and an applicable discussion with a first -time guest we have with us,

00:26

Kriptos. Kriptos, how are you doing? Kriptos I'm doing very well, John. Thanks for having me on. Now, that's not your real name.

00:33

Kriptos No, it is not. No, and actually, my wife was making fun of it for me yesterday, so she was laughing at ...

00:39

I think I could probably do a whole podcast episode of just pulling up my follows and mentions and just letting my wife make fun of us all for our online names.

00:49

John Harris Some people ... I should probably just get this out of the way. Some people might be confused by this. I've never had an anon, or an anonymous person who wishes to remain anonymous, on the podcast before.

01:04

People can find your substack, seekinghiddenthing .com. Is it seekinghiddenthing .com? Kriptos Seekingthehiddenthing .com.

01:10

John Harris Seekingthehiddenthing .com. Seekingthehiddenthing .com, and they can go to at underscore

01:16

Kriptos on X, formerly Twitter, but they will not find out exactly who you are.

01:22

I know that that alone is a little bit controversial now, I guess, on X, pseudonymous accounts.

01:29

I'll just give you the floor on why you wish to remain anonymous. I think it's fairly obvious and defensible, but what's the reason for you?

01:36

Kriptos There's actually two reasons. One is, it's interesting, because when I write pieces on my substack, I also record them.

01:44

I didn't always, and one of my subscribers suggested that I do that, because I tend to write long pieces, and he said, hey,

01:51

I don't have time to read this, but if you don't mind recording it, then I can listen to it in the car on the way to work. I thought, well, that's a really good idea, because that's kind of what

01:58

Charles Haywood does with his book reports, or his book reviews, right? He records them, and that's how I interacted with his material as well.

02:05

I thought it was a great idea. I've been going back and recording some of my old articles, and I just did one on Carl Schmitt, the crisis of parliamentary democracy.

02:16

For me, on a personal level, I do it in part because this is what my wife asked me to do, and it's also smart.

02:23

I live in the frozen north, and political speech is one thing, and I also have a business, so that's what actually pays the bills, and I have a diverse clientele of people of different political persuasions, and there is an open question of whether my political views ...

02:39

I don't generally talk politics with my clients, so there's a question if somebody decided to out me and my political views became wide known, would that detrimentally impact my ability to provide for my family?

02:51

That's on the one sort of practical level, so honoring my wife's wishes and just being practical about it.

02:58

There may come a time where I can do this for a living, and it's not a worry about having my name out there, but it's interesting.

03:05

Carl Schmitt made the observation that speech is always drawn to power, so he says that the majority will always pressure the minority into bending their opinion to harmonize with the majority, and he says you may disagree that you actually have free speech, he says, but you don't.

03:30

He says, and the sign that you don't is that your vote is a secret vote.

03:36

He says if you really had free speech, he says your vote would be open, but he says you know that that's a lie because you know that if your vote was open, somebody would be pressuring you to vote in the correct way and according to power and the majority, you would be pressured to vote for the majority.

03:55

So to maintain the authenticity of your vote and to secure your own opinion about the vote, you do it in secret, and so in that regard, the only opinion that can be thought of as being truly free from the demands of power, and even then there is some question, is truly in an anonymous opinion, and the founders basically felt the same way too.

04:20

I mean you look at most of the early dialogue with the founders was all done anonymously in op -eds, and now some people knew who the various names were, but it wasn't, it didn't necessarily have to be that way, but they wrote pseudonymously pseudonymously in part for that very reason because the kind of things that they were saying were dangerous, and then they would fall victim to the pressures of power to conform to the majority, and so that's

04:48

Carl Schmitt's observation about the, he was making observations about the contradictions within democracy in terms of, you know, democracy being built on the foundation of an open public debate, and he just basically says, well it's just an illusion.

05:02

He says it's not really the case because power always tries to conform the minority to the majority opinion.

05:10

So there you go, that's kind of the, that's the brief defense of why anonymity is a good thing. Yeah, yeah, and you know, we're not here to talk about this subject, but I will say for people who might be new to the podcast,

05:21

I've told this many times before on the podcast, but I actually used a pseudonymous name years ago to write a book, and it was,

05:33

I was actually warned by people that I respected, I was just gonna put my name on it, and they said you better not do that.

05:39

Like if you want a job in academia, then this could threaten that, and so I used the name

05:44

Joseph J. You can go check out the book, I'm trying to remember the name of it now, Sacred Conviction, the

05:50

South's, I think, fight for biblical authority is the subtitle. Anyway, I mean, you can already tell from the title that that's probably a book that would get you canceled in certain settings, and anyway,

06:01

I'm the worst at using pseudonyms. I just like, you know, then I went to like my personal Facebook, I'm like, everyone should get this book that I didn't just write, no, and so there were some people years later who thought they had doxed me and all this stuff, and I'm like,

06:16

I kind of already like put enough out there, I kind of doxed myself, and that's the difficulty with this, is that in a time when telling the truth is that you could be punished for it, and you know, it's a threat to your livelihood of your family, then you kind of have this catch -22, where if you're someone who, let's say years ago, probably someone like yourself, and I know many others would have been part of the ruling class or the influential class in this country, you would have a job perhaps at a university or a seminary, and the people, the smart guys like on our side,

06:56

I should say more conservative side, like they actually can't get jobs, and if they do, they have to be muzzled, and if they decide not to be muzzled, it threatens their family, and if they decide to go pseudonymous, how do they advertise what they're saying so people know, so it's like this whole thing, but so anyway,

07:13

I empathize with it, I understand, and I've been interacting or at least reading some of your stuff for,

07:20

I don't know, I think I've known about you for at least like a year or two. I've been doing this since I think 2021, so but yeah, that probably is accurate, yeah, yeah, because I think

07:33

Jay Burden and there's some other guys, I know you're sort of in a network, and I've listened to just like where you've been interviewed on other shows,

07:41

I think that's mainly where I started hearing you, so anyway, we're gonna have our own show here and talk about stuff that you've talked about before, and it's,

07:54

I heard the Chronicles podcast where you talked about this, I don't know if you've said anything about it in other places, but we're gonna talk about the technological society, and really like big picture here, what

08:04

I want to do for people who are listening is, I want to take a bird's eye view of one aspect of modernity, that is the increase in technology, we're using technology right now, you're using it,

08:16

I'm using it, people who are listening to this are using technology, and we just take it for granted, it doesn't even occur to us sometimes, like how different the world was before, like even if you watch a movie from the 1980s, let's say, and you just notice that like, hey, you couldn't do instant communication, you had to call the restaurant someone was at, if you wanted to try to track them down, if you needed to get a hold of them,

08:39

I mean, there's so many things that have changed even in a period of 40 years that are just, that are huge, and forget about going back 100 years or 200 years, so you know, what has this done to us, what should we be careful about, and Jacques Ellul was one of the critics, we'll talk about him a bit, of the technological society,

09:03

James Burnham with the managerial revolution as well, and so I'm gonna just kind of let you take it away in any direction you want, but first question here, why, or I guess

09:15

I will put it this way, what is technology when we talk about that? Okay, that, and that's, that's, that's good that you asked that, because I think that was probably the way that I was going to go for your audience too, but the hardest thing for I think people to, that there's two main things that if people want to take away from this, the first is that technology, or the, the, the technological society and technique is the word that, that Ellul uses, because there's a continuum that you move from tool using, and Ellul would argue that we're, we're a tool using species as human beings, so we use tools, but there's a difference between the way that we used to use tools and our interaction with tools today, and what

10:10

Ellul argues is that technique and the technological society is less about the actual tools than it is about a way of thinking about the world, and he says that this way of thinking in the technological society, and that's part of the transformation from being tool using people to living in a technological society, is that all solutions to every problem become technical.

10:39

There is really only one answer allowed. Now you might have variations within that, but all the solutions for every problem become some manner of technical solution, and it is the dominant way of thinking about everything, every problem, and if you might say it's the dominant ideology of our age, and that is technique, and so people don't really think about it, but that's really what binds, you know, when you talk about the uniparty, the, you know, the unifying state, why is it that is business woke, why are the churches going woke, and all these types of things, well it's because they all run on the same basic operating system, they are all think the same way fundamentally, and you might argue that all our conservative religious leaders don't, but they do, right, if you run a mega church, you're a technician, and that's just the the bottom line, right, and so, and fundamentally, technique is part of the whole movement and mindset of progressivism, and sort of technique is what gives progressivism its impetus and its legs, so that's the first part, is to say that technology is a way of thinking about the world, and that's the first thing

11:49

I think if your people can, and we can maybe dive deeper into that, and then the second thing that we would have to,

11:55

I think that's important to come away with, if you don't come away with anything else, is to change how you think of technique and technology, and we can get more into like what exactly is a technique, but to understand that technique and technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral, technique is ambivalent, it does not care, and so you have to understand the technique, every technique, every technology that gets introduced, every quote -unquote solution to a problem that is a technical solution will come with good things, and it will come with bad things, like ills, that negative impacts, and the two always come together, so whatever gains or benefits you get from technology will come with a certain price to be paid, there are certain ill effects that will come with it, and they both come together, and there's nothing you can do about it, you cannot plan ahead of time, because certain effects will be unknown, and generally the benefits are front -loaded, and the ills that result come later after most of the benefits have been accrued, and so what

13:08

Allul argues is that you have to understand that the introduction of a technique or technology will have effects regardless, so it doesn't matter, you could say, well, like for example, the favorite example is one of a gun, right, well what really matters, a gun is neutral, it's just like a lump of metal in your hand, what really matters is how you use it, and Allul would say that's absolutely incorrect, right, he would argue that that gun has a certain purpose, and that purpose is to fire projectiles at a high velocity, well those high velocity projectiles, they will do good things, you can use them to protect, but those high velocity projectiles will also be used to do ill, and those two come together, and it does not matter now, would you prefer that we use them for better things, yes, but you are never going to escape the ills that come from the introduction of firearms into a society, it's just you can't do it, there is nothing you can do to prevent the ills from coming into, the only thing that Allul argues in the end that you can do, and he says you can't introduce new technologies to protect against the old technologies, because those new technologies come with their own sets of goods and ills, the only thing you can ultimately do is to apply moral, to subordinate the technology morally, and just simply say no, but the problem with technology is that it's very powerful, so people introduce them, and use them because they allow you to manipulate reality successfully, both immaterial reality, human populations, but they also are very, very good at making people money, and so as a result, you can say, well, we're going to subordinate these technologies, we're going to say no, but somebody will say, hey, well, why did everybody say no to that,

14:58

I can use this thing to gain power, everybody else said no to guns, I'm going to like, yeah, let's use these guns, and we can rule the world, and make a bucket load of money, and that's one of the fundamental problems that you have with technology, is that, and this is really what allowed the technological world to happen, is that it overcame the religious restraints, largely through Christendom, the religious restraints that held back technological development, and that was part of the merchant classes pushing through and overthrowing the old order of nobility in the church, towards the making of money, the pursuit of knowledge, and the introduction of technique, and then once you've done that, and you've shaken off those moral restraints, it just basically allows it to go on without restraint, and so now basically every problem is a technical problem, it's a lot of words to say it, but that's kind of, so those are your two big ideas, that technology is a way of thinking, and technology doesn't care.

16:03

Could you give an example, like, for someone who has a middle -class corporate job, and like, just paint the picture of their life, from start to finish, right, they get up, they go to work, when they're at work, they, you know, they're a manager in some factory, or you know, they're an engineer, or whatever, and then they come home, and then there's diversion to try to kind of distract them from the problems technology has brought up, just to make it very concrete for people who actually live this life, many middle -class

16:38

Americans do, in the suburbs especially, so that they know that that's not the way humans have always lived, and that's still, in some ways, not exactly the way people live in more rural environments.

16:51

No, so probably the best way to do this is to draw a contrast between the older way of using tools and way of living, and the new way of, and the technical system, so let's go back to a pre -industrial world, okay, you're a lord, you have an estate, you have all these different functions, let's take, for example, this is the one

17:12

I commonly use, you have a stable of animals, you've got your horses for your nights, you've got probably some grazing animals, and so forth, and you have a staff of people in charge of them, right, at the top of that, you would have the stable master, now he's probably not a nobility, or if he is, he'll be a minor noble, but this stable master is somebody who would have grown up in the stable, so he begins as a stable boy, maybe as a squire to a knight, he learns to handle the animals, to love them, but a lot of this knowledge is being passed on to him apprentice style, so it's all part of memory, it's just the way, and so one person's memory, the cultural memory of the stable, sort of there's rules, but sort of this is how we do things, this is how we don't do things, and over time he interiorizes these rules, and he interiorizes the way of doing it, he learns how to care for the animals, he learns how to do it, and you could talk about this in a shop as an apprentice, he learns how to make, you know, chairs, or he learns how to forge iron, and all these types of things, so they're learning it intuitively, they're learning it, they're being shown how to do it, it's all embedded knowledge, it's all organic, eventually what happens is that, you know, maybe the old stable master dies, you know, and this guy has kind of risen up, and then he's placed in charge, now this person is actually in charge, and he's now bears personal responsibility, but he's learned everything that needs to be known about the stables from the ground up organically, he's soaked in the culture, and this is the way that they manage the stable, so he then, if something goes wrong with the animals, right, say a number of horses die, and it's inexplicable, he bears personal responsibility, the

19:03

Lord holds him accountable, maybe he loses his his position, his family is ruined, maybe he even loses his life, you know, because of that, he bears personal responsibility for this, and so in the older way, what was decisive was not the tool, but the skill of the craftsman, so you used a handful of tools, and you used them in a variety of settings, and what made the tools work was not the tool itself, but was the skill of the craftsman, and you could talk about it in terms of rules for, like, say, laws of a society, so you might have a social grouping, let's say there's a number of rules and patterns within the stable, and you might write them down, these are the laws of the stable, but those rules are merely a shorthand for what everybody knows intuitively anyways in a society, but it's just kind of, and this is kind of the way that, say, the

19:53

Ten Commandments function, they function in a small number of rules that get applied over a wide variety of situations, and the decisive thing is not the rule, but the wisdom of the person who understands the culture, understands the situation, and then knows how to properly apply the rule, much like you would use a tool, so that's kind of your relationship between all of your basic sort of social tools in an organic setting.

20:22

Now then, what happens is, in the transition, so we picture, like, a hard transition, so the

20:29

Lord, you know, calls up McKinsey & Company, send in a bunch of consultants, right, and what they do, and this is kind of the

20:37

Taylorism, the time and motion studies, they come into the stables, right, they examine everything from top to bottom, every process, everything the way that it's all done, and they come up then with a whole management plan, a set of policies and procedures for the working of the stable, so what they've done is they take this organic thing that lives in the lives of the stable hands, the stable master, and the whole culture of the stable, and they abstract it and rationalize it and turn it into a set of policies and plans.

21:09

Now, if you want to discuss, if you want to improve things in the stable, you don't even need the stable, you can go and have a meeting in a cabinet, you don't even have to even be a stable master, you can take all your information back to the offices in the city, and you can sit around with your consulting team, and you can try to improve the processes of the stable, and then once you've refined them, you can then transport these to other stables and implement, so what happens is now, is no longer that the culture and the people in there, the decisive thing, the decisive thing becomes the plan, the abstracted set of policies and the rationale there, but once you've also abstracted it, now you can also do things like you can apply machines to the running of the stable, so we think, okay, well, let's add a computer system in here to make sure that the feeding is more efficient for the animals, and so you introduce this idea of efficiency, you're looking for predictable outcomes, you're looking to elevate the floor, so now you can hire people who maybe are not quite as competent, but you can hire more, so you can expand it on scale, because you can take people that are less competent, and you can elevate them through training, through processes, and you can do it the, you know, the

22:24

Walmart way, or you know what I mean, and so then you can implement this policy, so what happens is, is that the important thing becomes the training, the disciple, or the policies, the procedures, the equipment, the machines, and the person is just really a fungible cog that can be swapped in and out as long as they can be trained into it, and then so you get like managers in offices, and really a manager is most often just a collection of policies and procedures, so if there's something going wrong in the office, he goes away for training, they bring in consultants, or a lot of times even the process of improvement, you know, this idea of constant improvement is part of it all, so where, you know, if there's something wrong, we bring in the consultants, we improve it, recycle it back, and what often ends up happening is that the process of improvement becomes even more important than the results, and so you hear this in meetings all the time, it's important that we have good process in the meeting, you know, and you think like, well, okay, but maybe the whole process is a completely you -know -what show, but as long as we've got good results, hey, that's a good thing, but the technical mindset doesn't think that way, they're worried about as long as the process is good, the result will take care of itself, so that's kind of your shift in mindset, everything becomes abstracted, everything becomes rationalized, it becomes portable, it becomes turned into, you know, sort of objective written policies that then transcend, and basically you don't really need, and you can see this in places like teaching, for example, like teaching, you no longer are dependent upon the skill of the teacher, you just basically bring anyone of a certain minimum of intelligence in, and you teach them all the methodologies, and then you will produce consistent results, educational results on the other end, and so the real important things becomes not so much the quality of the person of the teacher, but the discussion becomes about what methods should we use to teach the kids, does that difference then make sense to you?

24:22

Yeah, and if I could get your opinion on as to whether this applies, I think for this audience especially, to more an ecclesiastical situation, so like I've actually had a weird kind of seminary experience,

24:37

I went to three different seminaries, and most of my credits came from Southeastern, and that's where I graduated from, but I did a semester at the

24:45

Master's Seminary, I did a bunch of Liberty Online stuff, and I did an in -person course there, and if I had to sum up kind of like based on what you just said, like what they graduate from those seminaries, because they're all a little different, there's things that obviously are the same about them, but they have their spin on things, like what would they do when they got into a church, like you've been to the pastor factory really, which is kind of how we treat seminaries, and if you went to like TMS, and I've tried to do this so people don't get too offended, look,

25:23

I've appreciated it, you know what, don't be offended, because the seminary that I went to, okay, it's much the same, and the approach is fairly similar, so if you went to like, yeah,

25:33

I don't know which one you went to, maybe you'll blow your cover if you say, but you know, I probably shouldn't, but if I went to, you know,

25:39

TMS my whole time, I'm going to come out of TMS, probably going into a church, thinking like I'm going to be biblical, like that would be the highlighted word, this is going to be biblical, and you know what's part of being biblical, elders, and a plurality of them, and it's going to be reformed in soteriology, and it's going to be pre -millennial in its eschatology, and so there's sort of this like, there's this list, you might be able to add other things to it here and there, and there's certainly hidden things you don't realize that you pick up at these places, but you have your, what

26:15

I think you just described as like the process, the procedure, it's like the factory setting, right, and then you go into some podunk town that's nothing like Grace Community Church, because Grace Community Church is a huge megachurch that's attached to the seminary, and you try to like implement these policies, and it doesn't necessarily, it's not always suited, it's not always, it doesn't always work, and the timing of it doesn't always work if you try to do it too quickly, so if I, but do you think this is just biblical, right, if I went to SCBTS, which is where I graduated from, you know, you're going to go into a church thinking like, we're going to implement the

26:54

Great Commission stuff here, which means we're going to have a diverse congregation, it's going to look like Revelation, and if we, so you start changing policies to match that, or if you're from Liberty, you know, it's more of like maybe, it's more broad, but it's probably like based on individual experience and personal relationship with Christ, and so you're going to go to a church, and you're going to try to change the settings of that church to conform to the factory settings that you were taught, right, and so I think people can relate to that, because there's been, especially since 2020,

27:25

I would say a lot of people have realized that younger pastors, as the boomer generation is retiring, are coming in wanting not to be like the stable master you just described, to spend a long time really just learning the ways, the traditions of that particular stable, and taking personal responsibility, they're coming in as technicians.

27:50

Is that a fair parallel? Yeah, it's actually probably worse than that. We can really drop a black pill on your audience, but maybe,

28:00

Mimi, this is the place to do it. You can do it, yeah, go for it. Okay, so, and I will get into trouble for saying this, you know, things like systematic theology can be wonderful, right, and this is the thing about the policies and so forth of the technical regime, they are powerful, and this is the thing that you have to realize, is that because you can't say they're good or they're evil, they bring benefits, right, so that you have to remember that all of these techniques bring benefits, but if you want to do the long and short of it, this idea that we have of systematic theology, okay, think about what we just described with the stable, right, so you take scripture, which is a living collection of stories and poems and letters and so forth, and you're going to abstract it and rationalize it.

28:56

Well, what have we done? We've systematic theology is basically sending in the McKinsey consultants in to have a look at the

29:03

Bible, and now you can talk about the Bible without ever having to actually open the Bible, because you can talk about the theology as an abstraction separate from the scriptures itself, or even from the actual direct theophany that underlies the scriptures, right, so you can make the case, and I've gotten into trouble for people just like they really react badly when you say that, so there's on the one hand where for all the benefits of systematic theology, that systematic theology is like a policy manual for the

29:32

Bible, so it's a form of the same kind of technologizing of the scriptures. It just it is, and this is one of the things that Allul says, he says,

29:39

I'm not trying to be necessarily critical, I just want you to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, okay, so then there's the other thing in terms of how we interpret, and this is how

29:48

I was taught how to do interpret, so you use quote -unquote critical methods, you're given a methodology, hermeneutically, you follow these basic steps in terms of, you know, do the original language, do the historical study, do the form critical studies, do all of the various studies, and then when all of that is done, you will come up with the big idea of the text that then you can then transport into the future, and then we can apply that to the new setting, right, well that's basically a technical approach, you become a technician of the word, and most of us in our seminaries are taught to be technicians of the word in one degree or another.

30:28

There's very few that learn how to do mystical interpretation of the scripture or allegorical interpretation of the scripture, they just don't.

30:34

Can I stop you right there, and I want you to continue, I know there's like all sorts of red like lights going off and warning sign people listening right now, and I just want to say that, so I think the expository, what you're describing sounds to me like the sort of the expository preaching, or it could at least fit the expository preaching kind of brand where you do become this grammar expert who just talks about the relationship, yeah like here's what the nouns and the verbs and their relationship, and you don't,

31:07

I've even heard people go to the extreme of saying like you shouldn't even apply the word, like you shouldn't to the setting,

31:14

I mean you're talking about an application, which, but I mean it's so narrow that it's just like I become,

31:21

I don't know, like an English, like somebody who can explain what the

31:26

Greek says to you in English, so anyway, carry on. Yeah, so then on the other level is the whole thing of running churches, right, so you know you take the great commission, well we need the church to grow, we want to bring in the unchurched, and so then a lot of the focus in our technological society becomes on what's the proper methodology for church growth, so you know you've got your various different types of models, you've got the seeker model, you've got the small church model, or the small group model, so you have all these different models, and you're growing the church, but you're doing so using technical methods.

32:07

Now what is, what's interesting in a sense of this way is that most people who go through the seminary process, by the time you get to seminary, you're working on your master's degree, so who are your peers?

32:21

Well your peers are other people with master's degrees or beyond, right, so it's your lawyers, it's your doctors, it's you know, it's professors, your peers are the expert class, and so your pastors come in and they're basically, their ethos is this kind of professionalism that's built on smart policy, technical management, they're taught to be in many places technicians of the word, they're taught a technical approach to understanding the script or understanding scripture and theology in a systematic approach and an abstract and rational approach to understanding the scriptures, so they bring this basically in, and a lot of it you'll see, like especially in this dynamic now you're getting in like the

33:13

Southern Baptist congregations and so forth and others where you have many prominent members who are advocating, what we really need to do is just put this woke away and then allow the church to go back to normal, and what they're basically saying is that we've got to put the crazies away so we can go back to a kind of technical management of the church, to this sort of technocracy, this church's technocracy, and what people don't realize is that by and large our churches have in many ways already capitulated to the fundamental operating system of the regime, they just do so with a language of bible scripture and theology, but fundamentally at a basic level many of our leaders are essentially experts and technicians, they're part of the technical classes in that regard, and so this is one of the challenges that we face, so the really big question is like what do you do about it in response is, yeah this is kind of where your $600 question comes in, this is sort of what do we do with the response, but this is kind of where we're at in a society, and a lot of it we've done it for, we thought we're really good, so in terms of the country what we do to secure our liberty, so we invited the manager of the system in terms of to secure our liberty, or we're doing it to grow churches, or we're doing it to advance medical science, or we're doing it to enhance our business, and so we invite these technical means in, but now we've basically got across society more or less one solution which is a technical solution, everything involves a set of like well what's the plan, what's our policies, what do we need to do that, we need to study this, we need to have some seminars on this, we need to bring in an expert, and everything revolves around this kind of technical way of thinking, and there's no other really solution allowed, now thankfully within the church there are still other solutions embedded, and some of those like you talked about mentioning like focusing on community, on the mystical relationship with prayer, on you know because we can still say let's pray and wait on the

35:31

Lord, whereas in like a university, or a government situation, or a corporate life you can't in a corporate boardroom, let's say let's just sit around and pray and wait on the

35:40

Lord, in the churches you still have the hope that there's something there that we can grab onto that is authentically organic and rooted in a way that offers a solution that's different from the regime solution, and this is many ways why churches are increasingly under the microscope and targeted, is because we offer a real solution, sort of concrete communities who are organically formed, who are then rooted in a real spiritual reality, and although it's been stressed by the technocracy, it hasn't been entirely erased, so there is still that foundation there, even your technical pastor will still get on his knees and pray most of the time, yeah.

36:21

So all right, so now everyone thinks you're eastern orthodox, which yeah, which is probably, yeah, anyways.

36:28

No, no, I'm serious, like what background do you come from? I'm reformed, so I'm calvinist, but reformed, so okay, but I was blessed with having in my undergraduate years a professor who was deeply immersed in orthodox theology, and so I'm reformed with a fair degree of openness and colouring, and just I'm informed,

36:56

I'd say, by a lot of the wisdom of the orthodox tradition, like for example, we often talk about the head -heart split, that's what people like, you know, it can't be all in your head, it's got to be in your heart, which from my mind, it's just nonsense, right, because then you basically put yourself at your mercy of your emotions, and that's more or less, that's just quick suicide for erasing any kind of moral fabric within the church, right.

37:24

So the real alternative, and this is one of the things that happened, one of the downsides of the good things that came with the reformation is that we, you know, got rid of the monasteries, and we got rid of superstition, but in the process, we generally tossed out this idea of the mystical pursuit of union with God, the direct encounter with God, and although we talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus, we really don't talk about the encounter, there's not really a theology built around the encounter with God the way there is, say, in the

38:03

Eastern church. For example, we think of theology, Thaos and Logos, as words about God, right, because word and God, whereas in the

38:12

Orthodox tradition, they will talk about theology as words with or to God.

38:18

So prayer and worship are theology, and so for me, what

38:26

I argue is a sense of that we need to, rather than the head hearts split, well it's good to have a strong passion for God, but what in my sense of what's needed to counter the technocracy of the churches today is a re -encounter, a direct encounter with God, in a sense that mystical encounter with God himself.

38:53

So in a sense, stop struggling, even though the theological questions are good questions, that ultimately in the end, even what you think you know about God, God is really beyond your knowing, but God can be, he can't be known, but he can be met, much in the way that we as persons can be met, but not fully known.

39:13

And it's more of an intuitive thing, that you can, like, I can see you eye to eye, I can get a sense of who you are in yourself, but to ultimately say, well what is it that that makes

39:24

John who he is, you really can't put that in words, because it's unique to who John is, and there's something about that in the relationship with God, that God can be met, but not truly known.

39:34

And I think to put it, that's a good example to use, to put it in a personal setting, the technicians would want to come up with like an abstract list of things that would perhaps distill some of, like, they would reflect some of the things that I am, like, oh, he's 6 '1", and he has blue eyes, and he, like, they would get some things right, but then you couldn't, like, take the list and say, well, that's

39:59

John, like, that's, that's obviously, that's not a full picture, and that's not the essence of who

40:05

I am. It is deeper, it is more mystical, is the word you use, but it's definitely, like, beyond, might be another word, it transcends the abstract categories that we can come up with, and so, so anyway, like, to make this practical for people who are listening, and maybe some of them are freaking out,

40:25

I don't know, but who knows, yeah, well, it doesn't matter, but I, I'm only acknowledging that to say, like,

40:32

I, you know, hey, there's more coming, and we're going to try to explain this better, or not better, but more. We'll try to land this plane at some point.

40:39

No, we'll go deeper into it, and then give you some applications for, like, what does this actually mean to my life, personally.

40:45

You're obviously not saying that theology isn't important, that we should ditch theology, or, like, systematically, right, so, so, so I think what you're saying is that technology,

40:56

Just recognize what it is, though. Right, right, technology comes with blessings and curses, essentially, and so, like, we have to be aware that this will affect us.

41:06

I know when you were with CJ, you were talking about television, and you were saying, like, so, like, whether it's,

41:11

I think you were saying whether it's pornography, or whether it's something that's wholesome, like, you'll be watching Little House on the

41:17

Prairie, it's still mediated through this technology, the screen, and there's blessings and curses with that particular thing, and, and obviously, objectively speaking, there's a, like, we would, you know, reject pornography, and embrace something that's more wholesome with inspirational things, but, but there is, like, a curse attached to even that wholesome, so, so I thought that was, like, a really good concrete explanation that makes sense for me, if you want to expand on that.

41:49

Well, this, this is the thing, now, this is, again, we take now, we're getting away, so this is kind of why, you know, Allul's not the only thinker on technology, this comes from Marshall McLuhan, which is a really, really good insight, and so once you take

42:00

Allul's idea of technology as being ambivalent, it doesn't care, and then you add to it

42:08

McLuhan's insight that the medium is the message, right, and so what

42:15

McLuhan argues is that the important thing about technology is not the content, so we generally try to think of, we generally think of technology, again, this is that idea of technology is neutral, is that technology is kind of an empty vessel that we then fill with our moral content, right, so if you think of a system, like a government system, a bureaucracy, is fundamentally a technology, so we'll set that aside, now, so what we mean by the, the medium is the message, so the fact of the television is more important than any one single show that you might show on the television, now, again, we say, you know, good quality programming is better than lousy program, you know, wholesome programming is better than pornography, but you're, in the end, just the fact that you're using the technology will shape you in ways that the television wants to shape you, its own telos, so you'll end up with a three -minute second attention span, you'll end up being a couch potato, all of these types of things, the effects of the television will happen regardless of the programming, we think another example might be the automobile, the fact of the mobility of the automobile is more important than any one particular trip that you might take, right, so, and again, the fact of Twitter, for example, and its impact is more important than any one particular tweet that gets sent through Twitter, okay, the fact of YouTube is more important than any one single video that gets put up onto YouTube, I think that makes the point, so here, when we come to our governing institutions, right, the fact of, let's say for like local stay -at -home -for -church, the fact of a seeker church and what we might call outreach technologies is more important, right, than anything that's put into them, okay, so the very implementation of a seeker church changes you and your use of that technology, now when it comes to government and you're using the administrative state, and here's the thing that people really struggle with sometimes, it doesn't matter what the content is, because the administrative state will be the administrative state, and the administrative state is generally aligned with the ethos of technology, which is in itself has this kind of progressive impulse of constant improvement, constantly making things better, it's over, so it really doesn't matter whether you have a

45:05

Republican or a Democrat, as long as you use the administrative state, all policies, all technical policies are technical policies, and I know that seems like a thing, so what you're having is that you are not using, say, you don't use the example, like you could run a government by having, say, 10 ,000 stables that are all run organically, the guy in charge is the guy in charge, and they're all run a little bit differently, they're all run in their own ways, and they all grow up, you know, that type of thing from within, and they all raise it by culture, but that's not how we run it, it's all top down, it's inorganic, it's imposed, the systems are imposed upon people to create uniformity, consistency, and so forth, so it doesn't matter whether you have

45:56

Republican policies or Democratic policies, all of them are technical policies, the content is largely irrelevant, now would you rather have, in a sense, the difference between watching wholesome programming or pornography?

46:08

Probably on the balance it's better to have wholesome, you know, so maybe on the balance it might be better to slightly better to have

46:14

Republican policies than it has Democrat policies, but you're still being run by a totalitarian administrative state that wants to impose itself onto all of life and impose the technical way of thinking onto everything, that all solutions are technical solutions, and that all solutions can be solved if we just apply the right technical means to address them, so there isn't, and that's really where, you know, whether that problem is poverty, inequality, whether it's racism, whether it's low test scores, whatever the problem is, we can find a technical solution and we can apply it, and whether that problem is liberal policies, well then we come up with conservative policies to address the liberal policies, and really your only solution now becomes to have one policy replace another policy, but you're still using policies, it's still abstract, and it's basically the same thing.

47:06

And I know I keep bringing it back to the church, which I'm not like, it's just because of the audience and what we often talk about on this, but I see the same thing, this dynamic you're describing, playing out with the reaction to the woke movement in more conservative settings, there was this impulse to like blame it all on pragmatism, to try to find like sort of like one ism that it all can be summed up with, and then to just say, well we just reject that, like we'll just, we'll just, and everything will be fine, if we just reject pragmatism, you know, then the church will get like, and different people, it's funny because I was deep in like researching it, different sort of conservative groups had different, like they blamed different things and had different solutions for what they needed to overboard so that the ship would stop leaking.

47:53

And I don't know that any of them actually have like, like are permanent solutions to what they're describing, like, and I think part of the proof of that is like, you know, many of the big conferences and churches and so forth that blamed pragmatism.

48:10

Now, you know, for wokeness, now if you look at, you know, what they're doing, they're, they're involved in this political fight, you know, concerning quote -unquote

48:20

Christian nationalism, and they're implementing a lot of the same exact, like you called, you called it programming, but it's like the same exact programming that was used by the woke inter, you know, advocates, they're using it now against Christian nationalists, and it's like, wait a minute, like I thought, so the programming like wasn't really dumped, um, it was just, yeah, it was like rearranging chairs and like, so, um, all solutions are solutions.

48:47

Right, right. And so I guess, I guess there's two questions I have. One is, are there technologies that we as humans just genuinely cannot handle?

48:57

We can't be responsible with it. We're always going to, it's going to bring out like the cost is too high because it's going to do things to us that are, that are just bad.

49:07

And then with the current technologies that we're all using, you and I are using technologies right now to teach each other.

49:13

How do we manage or hand manage my, you see, even I'm using a technical word here.

49:18

And that's just, it's the way that we, yeah, that's the way we're wired. Right. That's exactly the way. And that's just kind of recognizing it.

49:24

It's just sort of, you have to sort of see it before you can begin to really the scope of the problem.

49:30

How do we live with it? Right. And how do we live? And that is part of the problem. So here's the, here's the question, right?

49:35

We, we, we, we hinted at this earlier, and this is what I've come to call the quote unquote, the tank problem, right?

49:42

So you could, as a society say, we think that this certain level of technology is, is, is evil and terrible.

49:49

We're going to get rid of it all. Go back to like the pre -industrial 1700 society, like the

49:56

Amish, but everybody, we're just going to, that's how we're going to live, just live life. And I suppose that's an option, right?

50:02

You could do that, but you need to know that your neighbor next door has an industrial society with assembly lines that produce tanks.

50:12

And you may think like, okay, we're going to live in the 1700s and be pre -industrial or whatever, but it won't take him long to realize like, oh, our neighbors have de -industrialized and they don't have any weapons anymore.

50:24

We're just going to roll over them with our tanks. And so to maintain your sovereignty, you're now faced with the question, you have to figure out a way to deal with your neighbor's tanks.

50:34

And so you may not have any choice in the matter, but to be technological. And this is the thing that a little says with the, with the technological realities is that from a political perspective, the presence of the technological system almost entirely eliminates the reality of real political choices, because you have no choice, but to address the tank question.

50:57

Now that is, and this is why I'm an advocate for parallelism, but even within parallelism, you have to recognize that you can't just simply say no, that you have to grapple with the sense of technology.

51:08

So you have to be able to say, well, we're going to have a more thoughtful interaction with, with technology.

51:18

But even if we set up a parallel Christian society, Christian community, that's really focused on organic culture, that's focused on rules and a way of life that emerge out of the life of the community that are held in the hand of the community, we still have to grapple with the tanks that our neighbors had, you know, like Joe Biden saying, well,

51:40

I've got, you know, you have to deal with my F -16s and I can just bomb you to, you know, and he's not wrong because that's a problem.

51:46

So you have to then say, well, how is it that then we approach technology in such a way that we don't buy into the inherent, what we might call soteriology of technology in a sense that the progression of technical advancement, as long as it continues, we will eventually arrive at a kind of nirvana, utopian state.

52:09

So is there a way for us to reject the utopianism of technology and to reground it in a way that gives us the, to subordinate it to the cultural ethos of a community, to say that we recognize that we just, it's a sinful world.

52:30

And in a sinful world, we have to grapple with the realities of a sinful world, that people will now use this technology to obtain power and money.

52:38

And if we want to create a healthy relationship with technology, it's the same thing with violence, right? That if we want to establish a parallel community and we're successful at it, that becomes a threat to the state.

52:51

And all nations, all communities, if you want to survive, they're ultimately in a sinful world founded on violence.

52:59

There's no way to escape that reality. And so you might have your beautiful parallel Christian community, but like say, take, for example, the

53:06

Amish, the only reason why the Amish exist is that they're not a threat to the current state. And so the state allows them to the peace thing, but the

53:15

Amish's ability to live peacefully and to conduct their life the way that they do in an 18th, 17th century way is built on the violence of the

53:25

American state. And they're protected by the weapons of the American state. And just because the American state doesn't see them as a threat, they're not stomped on.

53:34

And so we have to recognize that there's these realities, and this is something that Alul talks about when he talks about this idea of necessity.

53:42

In a sinful world, there are some things that your choices are not always between what is right and wrong, but between the lesser and greater evil.

53:52

So having tanks or means to stopping tanks may introduce into our community certain ills that we really don't want, but we have no choice but to introduce tanks.

54:05

So the question is, is what are the ways that we can introduce tanks into our society that will ground them as much as possible organically into the culture of our community and subordinate them to that culture, where we're not being told by the demands of the technology itself that this is how we must conduct ourselves, but that we can in a sense have tanks and subordinate them to the culture of the community.

54:30

I know it's kind of a fuzzy sort of thing. And I, you know, because I, like you say, I live in this technical reality like everybody else, this is all kind of new, but we have to grapple with the reality that we can't get outside the technological system in that sense, that we have to, even if we carve out a bubble for ourselves within the society, its demands will force itself upon us and limit our choices.

54:53

So that's, I guess, kind of the way to start thinking about how do we relate to technology in a new way that doesn't take on the kind of utopianism that is inherent in technology.

55:06

And I just maybe just give me for a second. Well, and you people say, well, the utopian in technology, I'll say, well, think about the idea of how the church change process goes to bring it back to people in the churches, right?

55:17

So we've got an older church, kind of stable, people in church realize we need to get the gospel out.

55:22

So they go down, they see this technology, there's this great system, you know, we're going to become, we're going to change our music style, we're going to So what happens?

55:31

People pick up these pieces of solutions from other churches, and then they bring them into the church and they're going to implement them.

55:40

And the problem now becomes how do you get buy -in from the community for the change process, right?

55:47

And so what's happening is then you're promising these people a utopian situation. So there is this future of the grand, vibrant church that we could be, the sort of the utopian future that we have for our congregation, which is this successful, vibrant congregation.

56:04

And now what we need to do is to undergo a revolution in our church. And through the revolution, when we arrive on the other side, we'll have this kind of church utopia and the price that to pay.

56:16

So because of the nobleness of the goal, if I force out certain malcontents who don't want to change, well, that's the price that I must pay to reach church nirvana.

56:26

And that's really what we're undergoing when we talk about this church change process with, you know, becoming more of like a seeker church or an outreach church or a growth -minded or whatever, is that we're really forcing a lot of these old congregations to, it's basically kind of a revolution within the church towards a new technical reality.

56:46

And so that's kind of when you take that, so what you're looking at in terms of building a community is how do we then relate to technology without this revolutionary process and without trying to achieve this glorious new future?

56:58

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I think so. And it's funny, before I was exposed to some of, well, before I listened to the podcast on Jacques Ellul and really started reading about the technological society,

57:15

I mean, I already was it's very similar to some of the managerial revolution stuff. It very is, yeah.

57:21

Yeah, I was fooling around with that a little bit. And I wrote a paper, I haven't actually given it or published it anywhere else, but it was to this small

57:28

Lutheran colloquy in Wisconsin last year. And I talk about lessons from the woke movement, how it just kind of took over so many churches and why was this?

57:41

And so I talk about, you have your managers, you have your activists, you have your therapists running these churches, but really what you need is a pastor.

57:50

And all of these other, I guess, technicians, they had ways of dealing with this problem that were a little different, but they were all compromised in some way.

57:59

And so then the pastor or the shepherd is sort of the model that I said, this is the only solution

58:04

I see. And basically, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was advocating casting off some technology,

58:11

I guess. So like one of the things was that seminaries are problems, basically.

58:19

They are, unfortunately, they are. I'm not saying it's innately evil to go to a place and study, but you look at everything in that process has a high cost to it.

58:34

So you upend the roots of your family and go, oftentimes, halfway around the country or maybe to another country to learn about the

58:42

Bible. Now, some people can handle that. Sometimes that works out. But you think about you're doing this on a mass scale, you're disconnecting people from their accountability structures.

58:53

And now they're not even with real people who, and when I say real people, I mean people from every age bracket and the kinds of people that they'll be ministering to after seminary.

59:02

You put them in this artificial environment where, as you said earlier, their friends are other students pursuing a master's and then professors who, frankly, a lot of them aren't even pastors themselves.

59:16

And they're forced to grapple with the deep questions, the most troubling critiques of the

59:21

Christian faith as well, too. So a lot of times you go in there and their faith is actually being undermined with the most challenging questions of philosophy and theology.

59:33

And a lot of them get an academic mindset that makes them incapable or it's not as attractive to them anymore to actually minister to real people.

59:41

They think it's much more important because the big thing is some hotshot apologist or theologian or that's who they're looking up to and they want to be like that.

59:51

So they end up like, well, I'm not going to be a pastor anymore. Well, you complexify the life of your things.

59:56

We have to come in and challenge the existing worldview because that's what they did for me in seminary.

01:00:02

So now I've got to go out and challenge the worldview of the people in the pews. So you basically, you go in and your whole purpose is to undermine the faith of your community.

01:00:11

You're giving me flashbacks because I remember sitting in class. Don't break out in hives or whatever. That's fine. Yeah. I remember the professor talking about, should we apologize for the

01:00:23

Holocaust as Christians and this kind of thing? And there seemed to be general agreement that we should in the class. And I'm looking around like, what?

01:00:30

But I remember one of the students was like, I'm going to go back to my, it was like in Mississippi or something, this traditional church.

01:00:36

I'm going to go back to my church and I'm going to tell them, and this is during the, remember the kneeling controversy? I'm going to tell my church,

01:00:43

I watch the NFL. And they're the ones that are being legalistic because they won't watch, they're boycotting the

01:00:49

NFL because they love America and all this. And I'm like, what are you thinking?

01:00:55

This is so outside, but they thought it was within the scope of being a pastor now because yeah, they had learned this in seminary and now they're going to go teach the hayseeds back home what real theology is and what real morality is.

01:01:11

And so anyway, seminaries are a problem. That's one of the things that I just identified is like a lot of this nonsense.

01:01:18

Actually, it began there. It began with systems imposed on churches from people who were, who went to seminary and learned to be technicians.

01:01:29

And the shepherd is someone who arises, I think, organically from within the body, more likely.

01:01:35

That's a better way to find your pastor. It's like you've grown, like he's been there for some time.

01:01:40

You, preferably someone who grew up there, man, that's not always possible. But someone you know, who's loves your people, because you got to love the sheep.

01:01:48

They're your sheep. There's like a relationship and ownership and like a responsibility and obligation.

01:01:55

And then yeah, like you equip them with these tools that they may need.

01:02:01

Like they need to understand some church history. They need to understand what the Bible says and how to read it in its languages and these, but you don't upend their lives and go give them a system.

01:02:12

Like they're still within the body, working among the body as they're learning these things. So that was kind of my solution.

01:02:18

And then the scale thing too, to have to focus on smaller units, like smaller churches, because it seems to me that the technology we're talking about, it's much more challenged on a small scale.

01:02:32

Like if you're one pastor who goes into a church with a hundred people, they're not going to put up with your innovations.

01:02:38

Whereas if it's a CEO, basically, a mega church pastor with a board, what are you going to do?

01:02:46

There's 10 ,000 people. Well, you need technology to run at that scale. You have to. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's, that's the thing that the technology gives you is the power to scale things up and to scale society up.

01:02:56

So yeah, that's one of the first things I guess that, you know, might you say, what can you do about it? Well, it's to de -scale society.

01:03:02

But again, it comes down to it. Like I remember I was, I had to deal with a lot of anger myself with my own seminary because my mental,

01:03:11

I, it took me a long time to figure out why was I kind of mad at my own seminary? Cause I got a world -class education at my, at my seminary.

01:03:18

You know, I speak two classical languages, a bit of a third. I know theology, you know, and so forth and so forth.

01:03:24

Right. We got a first -class biblical theological education, but it left me spiritually destitute.

01:03:31

And I realized in hindsight, what I was actually hoping for is that somebody would have take, put their arm around me and led me up the mountain.

01:03:44

And so I think there is a sense of, separating from the people can be a good thing. Like the way that Moses did, the way that Abraham did, the way that Paul did on the road to Damascus.

01:03:52

But they separate you and said, you know, come pray with me.

01:03:58

Together, we are going to go and meet God. And my sense of it is far, far more important for our spiritual leaders is that they have a real deep foundation that they have gone through that process of going up the mountain.

01:04:18

They've been tested by God and they've met God. And, you know, they've had that here am

01:04:23

I moment, you know, and, and the Lord has put their stamp of approval. Now they go back down the mountain and, you know, they go and make disciples in their own congregation.

01:04:35

So they're in a sense of come pray with me and together we will meet God. And to me, that's really what is, is far more.

01:04:42

Now, all of the rest of the stuff, like teaching people how to read the scriptures and things, there's some, there's value in, you know, critical methodologies and so forth, but there isn't a methodology in the world out there that can, that can guarantee you're going to arrive at the right meaning of scripture anyways.

01:04:57

You know, that's, that's the, that's sort of one of the lessons of post -modernism.

01:05:03

So in my mind, you're far better off. I think you're better off with a pastor who has met

01:05:09

God than with one who is a technician of the word. And I want to clarify, cause I don't know if even we're on the same page on this, but what

01:05:16

I think that you were just saying, you know, there's not a methodology that can guarantee is that so like the grammatical historical hermeneutic, right.

01:05:23

Which is what most conservatives they advocate. It basically, this is what

01:05:28

I think it boils down to the argument for using that is that it's inescapable. Like it's just kind of sewn into the fabric of reality that words have to mean something.

01:05:37

That's really what I think that's saying. And so when you apply this logic to a text to try to ascertain its meaning, like there's some good tool, like, like understanding the context and understanding something about the audience and the authorial intent, like all these things really do help you,

01:05:55

I think, understand the meaning, but they don't guarantee that you're going to uncover it. They they're well, okay.

01:06:01

So maybe I'll have you unpack that then, because like what I think of when you say that is like, without, without knowing

01:06:10

God, without I don't know, like with, without this, you called it a mystical component earlier.

01:06:16

Like you could have someone who doesn't even know Christ hasn't even been born again.

01:06:23

Who's trying to like apply these methods. Like they could apply it just as well as you're going to apply it.

01:06:29

Basically, you're looking at German New Testament scholarship. That's basically the essence of German New Testament. It's just more than that.

01:06:37

Yeah. Is that, I mean, is that what you're saying? Well, it, it, it's actually kind of a bigger thing. So you're, you're again, my, my undergraduate degree is in philosophy and specifically in hermeneutics.

01:06:49

So, you know, the theory of how meaning transfers. Right. So my touchstone in that regard would be

01:06:54

Hans, George Gautamer's truth and method. And Gautamer was a figure who tried to walk between the modernists and the post -modernists to say that the, the post -moderns have a valid criticism of modernism and, you know, hermeneutical methodology that you cannot guarantee the correct interpretation with method.

01:07:21

But Gautamer also then recognized that the, the modernists really dismissed the role of the interpreter.

01:07:33

So there's, there's this notion that words and their meanings are separate.

01:07:39

So for example, let's take a simple word like dog. You have a loving relationship with your dog.

01:07:45

You've had a pet that you grew up with. You know, you can have the sights, the smells, the sounds, the memory.

01:07:50

When I say the word dog, it evokes this, all of these positive memories. I got bit by a dog.

01:07:56

I was jumped on and attacked. And so every time you say the word dog, it provokes a very, very different type of response that way for me, we both are using the same word, but they both have two very, very different meanings.

01:08:11

So you know, and, and so this is, so what Gautamer tries to do is walk between, he says that there is a reality that that word has an intended meaning, but once you speak it, um, it becomes a thing of its own and the hearer will hear it from their own subjectivity that he can't escape from.

01:08:34

Um, so there, so he walks like there, I mean, we could do, we could probably do five episodes on just on Gautamer alone.

01:08:40

So I, sorry for like sidetracking. I've actually been pretty critical of Gautamer in the past, just because, I mean,

01:08:45

I think there is like, objectively speaking, there is such a thing as a dog, like whether you or I, we may have, but you always meet the dog differently at different.

01:08:56

So some of the, the, the being of the dog will unfold itself differently to you at different moments.

01:09:02

So, so in a sense, and this is what Gautamer is in order. What's that? Sorry. That's because we're limited.

01:09:08

We're finite beings. That's right. And that's basically what he argues. I'm talking about like an, an objective when I, when

01:09:13

I think of objective, like from the, like God knows what a dog is, right? Yes, that would be it. And that's one thing that Gautamer notes.

01:09:19

He says, you know, that if you stand outside of time and history and he says, really only

01:09:24

God is in that place. And it's just sort of one of these little throwaway lines. Um, that, so yes, for, for God there is objectivity, but for the rest of us, we, there is such a thing as truth, but our apprehension of it is always partial and limited because we cannot know the fullness of, of the being of anything in that regard.

01:09:45

Um, so that, that, so it just creates a kind of, of humility towards me. And I'm trying to, so, so like, wouldn't that, um, ultimately lead though to a rank skepticism where, or relativism and, well, yeah.

01:10:02

Cause, cause I do, I do believe in like a certain kind epistemological humility, just in the fact that we are limited and we just have to admit that kind of from the gate.

01:10:13

But at the same time, there is a created order and that God, God can communicate to us in such a way that we know things.

01:10:20

I think even the experience you're talking about where you have that face to face on the, on the mountain moment,

01:10:26

God, God is doing something to, to us that we like, we, you can't deny it.

01:10:32

Like that was God. I, I, I heard it. I saw it. I felt it, whatever. You know,

01:10:37

I, I experienced it in, um, yes. Even in the text of scripture, the Holy spirit does this where we do know certain things.

01:10:46

That's right. So, but now this, this gets us a little farther, but no, this gets us farther afield, um, to sort of what we would call the crisis of authority.

01:10:56

Right. So, um, just so the audience knows we're not talking about technology anymore. No, we're, we're, we're, we're a long way from Kansas now,

01:11:05

Dorothy. Um, so we're, we're talking in a sense of, of the crisis of authority. So where, where does authority, so one of, and it does relate though, because, um, one of the things that the enlightenment did in, you know, when you get the, the

01:11:21

Kantian sort of thing is that there was this severing between what we might call the metaphysical realities.

01:11:29

And, you know, they, they wanted sure knowledge. And so they looked at things like the, the platonic forms, metaphysical knowledge, the revelation of God.

01:11:40

And they said, well, you can't prove God. You just have to basically assume that God is there. You can't prove it.

01:11:46

You assume it a priori. So what Kant argued is that there's no content to be learned in the forms.

01:11:55

And what ends up happening with this, with this split with caught between the metaphysical and the, what we might call the physical, the material is that in this new scientific rational world, people basically then shifted from the question of what does it mean?

01:12:15

And how, what should I do to, how does it work? And this, this answering the question of how does it work is tremendously powerful.

01:12:25

So the basic utilitarian question. So the sense of if it's works, if it's efficient, it must therefore be good, right?

01:12:32

Because we don't test anything according to the metaphysical realities, but what this done did invariably is it created a crisis of authority because what happened is, is that the scientist was saying, if we look at things empirically, we can establish sure knowledge.

01:12:50

And what Gautama critiqued, and this is what the value of the postmoderns is that they said, no, you, you, you can't actually ever come up with sure knowledge.

01:13:00

So in the end, you never get away from the problem of how do you decide ultimately in the end, what is true?

01:13:09

What does it mean? And what should we do? So we've gone back to, well, we have substitutes now. Well, or if you went to Harvard, you must be an expert.

01:13:16

You can tell us what to do. Well, COVID really exposed the fallacy of that. So now we have this crisis in our society where authority is seen as inherently authoritarian.

01:13:29

The expert class has been completely discredited. The old form of science has been shown that it cannot provide sure knowledge.

01:13:36

So where do we find the answer? And so now you have to, in a sense, go back to the older things.

01:13:43

And ultimately really the only solution is that when you look at, even say something like a biblical text, well, what does, what does the scripture rely on is the belief that Moses, um,

01:13:56

Abraham, um, and figure out your people like Paul actually met

01:14:03

God and that Jesus himself actually was God. And that in so doing, they are revealing this intuitive mystical.

01:14:13

So they had direct theophanies. God spoke to them. They told, and they relayed that to us.

01:14:19

So ultimately it comes down to a sense of, is there a person in your community that you then can trust to say in the crisis, what does this mean?

01:14:31

I'm reading this in scripture. What does this really mean? Or what should I do with this? Should I take this new job? Should I get married to this woman?

01:14:38

Um, all of these types of questions we have, you know, um, when they're telling me to mask up and take this injection pastor, what should we do?

01:14:46

Or maybe it's not a pastor, maybe it's somebody else, but it really comes down to in the end, um, trusting that this person in the moment makes wise judgments.

01:14:55

So I, this is, this goes back to the older biblical wisdom literature. And this is an example. So for those that have heard me before,

01:15:01

I apologize, but I bring up this example again and again, because it really centers at Proverbs 26, verse four and five, right?

01:15:09

So in the first verse, it says, um, do not correct a fool or you will be drawn into his folly.

01:15:15

And in the very next verse, it says, correct a fool or he will ever remain bound up in his folly.

01:15:21

And you're thinking, you're thinking, if you think of like the scripture as like God's guidebook for living, you have completely two opposite advice, you know, bits of advice, um, on back to back verses.

01:15:31

So what do you do with that? How do you want to, it took me forever to, to, to realize that, wait a minute, the truth of it is in between it.

01:15:37

It's actually telling you the nature of wisdom is that you live before the face of God.

01:15:43

You go up the mountain like Abraham and you meet God. Then in the moment, when you encounter the fool, you will know what the right thing to do is.

01:15:51

It's like Solomon who, and, and meeting the two mothers battling over the baby and says, well, cut the baby in half.

01:15:58

Well, you can't, how do you write a policy manual that says, um, you know, the proper procedure for knowing when to cut off a baby in half.

01:16:07

You, you can't do it. And so really it comes back down to we of nurturing people in our society who have a direct encounter with God.

01:16:17

And so even with our pastors, there is this sense that even if they don't participate in a direct theophany, we talk about an archetype that your pastor is participating in the archetype of revelation when they're dealing with scripture, such that when they come up on the pulpit, they are not just a technician of the word, but they're actually participating in the act of revealing

01:16:41

God to you from the pulpit in the archetype of revelation, even in a small way.

01:16:47

Does that make sense? Um, I know we're like way far afield and that's fine.

01:16:53

If people, if you enjoy intellectually stimulating conversations like this, cause I don't always do podcasts like this.

01:16:59

Uh, let me know in the comments, uh, because I see this more and more, um, discussions that we're having are having,

01:17:07

I mean, Joe Rogan's having discussions. Oh, he's doing the same thing. Yeah. The big, the big podcasts are doing this where they're challenging things that we've always assumed, uh, and going back and forth.

01:17:18

And there seems to be a humble disposition about it to like, well, let me consider what you're saying. And I think it's because of what you just said that we've lost faith in science to arrive at like the correct answers, uh, every time or scientists, the experts don't have the experts.

01:17:34

Right. Um, so, so the question I guess I'd have, and I, so I suppose this might be an objection, I'm not sure, but I have this feeling that this would destroy what you're, what you're saying would undermine the created order for this reason.

01:17:48

When the postmodernists say they're not sure about the, we can't be sure. I mean, they seem awfully sure, right.

01:17:54

That we can't be sure. So there seems to be this inescapability that there are certain things that like are grounded in the way

01:18:01

God designed us. Like we, we don't have to have an argument for it necessarily.

01:18:07

Like there doesn't need to be a scientific process that brings this truth to us.

01:18:13

We just know it because that's how we were designed to function. God, um, gave it to us and he did not just give it to Christians.

01:18:21

There's not, there's people who are not Christians who like, like for example, Romans one, they have a moral law.

01:18:27

They know that they're in violation of it. Right. So I, I just think that there are some things we can be certain about, but that we cannot be certain that the scientific process will necessarily bring, um, truth to truth to us because it's based on a circumstance and its own philosophical preconditions and assumptions and so forth.

01:18:49

So, um, is that fair? Is that, are we on the same page or are we disagreeing?

01:18:55

Yes, because I know, because this is that the sense of the foundation is, and this is basically what the

01:19:01

Proverbs are about. So there is in the, there is a created order, a moral order, what we might call, you know, for those that are more philosophical, the forms, right?

01:19:11

So God has written, and he talks about this in, in, in the various proverbs, you know, in terms of weaving wisdom into the whole fabric of creation.

01:19:20

So, and I, and I would argue that there is a process between like the kind of coming together, and this is maybe a

01:19:26

God, but there is a sense where you see the world correctly.

01:19:32

And this is why you, in a sense, you need that divine guidance because going up the mountain allows you this process of, of, you know, the fear of the

01:19:43

Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So you stand before the presence of God. And then like Abraham, this is that whole in Genesis, the passage, when he goes up with the, the sacrifice of Isaac is what

01:19:54

Abraham is gaining on that mountain is his ability to see correctly.

01:20:00

And there's a whole right, which once you get into the Hebrew, it's my, most of the translations allied the, the thing, because they, they're some misunderstood words is this is why we do word studies, right?

01:20:12

But the idea is, is that in the encounter with God, you gain your sight.

01:20:19

And in so gaining sight and wisdom, it allows you to see the order that is woven into creation.

01:20:26

So that way, like the Proverbs and the writer of Proverbs, you can see correctly the situation as it lies in the moment of life.

01:20:34

And you can, you can create generalities and so forth. And there's an almost a kind of a scientific process, but at the same time, it really comes to you from a sort of, in a sense, it's hierarchical because it comes, flows from God.

01:20:47

Like, like, you know, a dog better when you have lived longer and had more experiences with dogs, whether good or bad, you get to know the essence of, okay, this is what a dog is.

01:20:55

But also then the, the greater meaning and significance of the dog also is enhanced.

01:21:02

If you live in before the face of God with, in, in that sort of intimate encounter, that intimate mystical encounter with God.

01:21:12

So because you, you, the fear of the Lord has began. So your relationship with God allows you to see the importance, the essence, and the meaning of the dog that's inherent in the dog.

01:21:25

So it also allows you to see more correctly the, the archetypes, the rules, the patterns that are buried in society.

01:21:34

So you see more correctly the, the archetype of the good King. And so it allows you to see whether your

01:21:41

King is a good King or not, because he, because you can see whether he conforms or not to God's pattern of Kingship.

01:21:48

Does that make sense? It's living before God that allows you. And that pattern for Kingship is woven into the creation.

01:21:56

So you know that he's a good King because he conforms, but how do you come to see it? Right? Well, you know, people say, well, these truths we hold is self -evident.

01:22:04

They're not really self -evident. They're learned by being before the face of God, or they're learned from the culture.

01:22:12

And again, we talked about that culture of, of the, of the stable, right? Well, everything that happens in that stable is self -evident to somebody who's grown up in the culture of the stable.

01:22:21

So somebody who grows up in a Christian culture informed by Christian truths, who lives close to God, all of these realities are self -evident to them.

01:22:30

The meaning of the Kingship, the meaning of the pastor, the meaning of marriage, the meaning of sexual morality, they're all obvious to them because the, the, like the, the culture of the stable is just ingrained into them.

01:22:42

And so because of that, it's all self -evident to them, but it really, in a sense, it's only self -evident because they're immersed in this reality of, of culture that lives before God that is in touch with the created order.

01:22:55

And that's kind of really the, you know, the ideal, but that's really, I think in a sinful world, that's sort of the best that we do.

01:23:02

So can I bring it sort of full circle and I'll give you the final word here. So we, we started off talking about technology and I think that this actually relates and we're, we've just kind of come full circle because this is some, what you're describing, wisdom is what you're describing, wisdom that comes with experience, age, and, and, and ultimately for Christians, this comes with, with knowing

01:23:23

God. This is not something that you can replicate in an abstract form with systematic theology or at a seminary and this, the various church growth strategies and so forth.

01:23:35

You can't get what, what we're, what you're talking about and what the Bible talks about. It doesn't, it's, it's not copied.

01:23:43

Like you could, you know, put it in a copy machine, like you would a paper and get replicated a thousand times.

01:23:49

And so that you can pick up a pastor at the seminary factor, the, the, the pastor factory.

01:23:54

Seminary factory. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, that would give me real nightmares if there's a seminary factory.

01:24:01

So, so, so you, these systems though, do not, uh, give us that.

01:24:06

And that's one of the things that we've kind of lost. We've lost the value of that because now we value systems and we don't prize wisdom.

01:24:15

We prize knowledge. We prize, as you, I think, I'm glad that you hit that, John, because that's the, the real conscious, like, you know, that sense of knowledge is power versus like, well, what do you have with wisdom?

01:24:25

You don't have anything. Right. Yeah. Um, and, and I think that that sort of nails it, that contrast between wisdom and knowledge.

01:24:31

Right, right. And, and we live in a society that prizes knowledge and the experts are the, you know, young whippersnappers even sometimes, but they, and sometimes there is wisdom in young people.

01:24:42

I'm not saying there's not at all, but, but, but it's, it's people who have studied in the university rather than,

01:24:50

I mean, I saw this, this is just a corporate problem. I saw this when I worked for a big company, it's like, you know, we were all furniture technicians and we're like, we understand how this works.

01:24:58

And then you get some, you know, bean counter who comes in to manage the place. And, you know, it wants to only be there as short a time as possible so they can climb the next rung and move to some, you know, some other place or that they have no roots and, uh, you know, get that corporate job, but they, they can't run the place because they don't understand.

01:25:17

They don't have the wisdom. They have the knowledge that came with going to school. They don't have the wisdom. And that's what I think, that's what we're talking about with technology.

01:25:24

Technology brings a blessing. It can teach some things, but there's a curse. Wisdom is

01:25:29

I think the casualty oftentimes. So, um, so that that's my kind of cap on what we've been talking about and the, and also

01:25:36

I think the application is, is built into that, that we need to change kind of the way we value things to value wisdom and, uh, and to just be self -aware of the way that technologies and systems can negatively influence us.

01:25:49

So I'll give you the final word on how you want to land the plane. I think it underlies for me, what

01:25:55

I've realized is a significant hole in the life of the church. We do a lot of church growth, church building and so forth, um, educating even, but we don't really make disciples.

01:26:08

So if we think about the discipling process to bring it back to that stable yard or, you know, the, the, the blacksmith shop or the furniture maker shop, and think about apprenticing in terms of that kind of organic apprentice where you're learning the job on the hand, you're interiorizing all of things and think about what

01:26:31

Jesus did with his disciples. And you look at the gospels, right? And you read the gospels through with an eye to like an apprenticeship process.

01:26:40

Jesus was teaching them how to have faith. You know, you feed them, right?

01:26:45

You know, these little throwaway lines in the feeding of the 5 ,000, you feed them, right? And the disciples are completely flummoxed.

01:26:52

And then he shows them, you know, why did you doubt? You know, Peter, I told you to walk to me on the water.

01:26:58

And then you start to see that, like, why did you doubt? And so where, as he goes through little by little, he's teaching these men, discipling them.

01:27:07

And he says to them, go and do likewise. So what we're really church is about bringing people into the stable.

01:27:18

And maybe not everyone becomes a stable master, but they all can become competent stable hands who can then teach the next generation of stable hands.

01:27:28

And the knowledge is embedded. It's intuitive. And that's really what we're teaching people how to pray, how to worship, how to live.

01:27:37

And we're doing it in an environment that, again, is cognizant of this understanding of wisdom.

01:27:45

And that much of what we do is held in the communal memory of us as a people.

01:27:52

And we're passing that on. It has maybe a bit of a bootcamp experience.

01:27:57

It has a bit of maybe training camp, like you would have two days with football kind of thing.

01:28:02

But you're forging relationships, you're forging a culture, and you're bringing people in.

01:28:08

And that's really, in a sense, the heart of Christian community, as opposed to the technical reality of what we're doing.

01:28:15

So I think you can create a picture for people of this alternate reality, but that's really the world that the technical society wants to deny us, because it wants to take that reality, abstract it, rationalize it, and turn it into a system that can then be replicated and produce consistent results.

01:28:33

And we need to say that, no, that thing that you want to replicate and rationalize, this is the thing that is most important for us to hang on to, especially for us as a

01:28:45

Christian community. Well said. Well said. Well, if people want to follow Kriptos, they can go to at underscore

01:28:50

Kriptos on X, formerly known as Twitter. And they can go to seekingthehiddenthing .com.