We ALL Have a Porn Problem | Andrew Williams - Commitment to Reality

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Andrew Williams, thank you for joining me on commitment.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
To reality, pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Well, just to start, I'd like you to tell us
a little bit about who you are? Who is Andrew Williams.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's a great question. Where does one start with it
like that? Well, I suppose I would say that my
faith is a very central part that divides who I am.
And it's a really great question because I think it's
something I struggled with all my life. Right, who am I?
And what does it mean to be me? And or

(00:36):
what does it mean, you know, to be a person?
How does one define one's self? And I think I
came to the conclusion over time, for a long time
that it's not possible to define an individual apart from
the world in which the person lives. So we're all
a product of our environment, of our relationships. And obviously

(00:59):
the sort of relationship is that of being made in
the image of God and being invited into closer communion
with Him. So I think, you know, that is that's
why I start there, I guess, and I think a
lot of a lot of who I am? You know,
in the world, what are my interests? The people associate

(01:20):
with the things that I do arise very much from
that combination of my own a sort of personal early experience,
and how that led me to faith, and how that
led me to the interest in mental health and the
roles that I've done. So I've worked in charity work

(01:40):
principally in Russia for quite a long time, and I've
been teacher, and I've been a psychotherapist, and I'm finally
a chaplain in a mental health context. So I think
all of those things really tied together around that experience
of relationship and particularly of faith.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah a question, Yes, quite, Hey, it's an open question.
I really the reason I ask it that way is
I hate going through bio roles because you're so much
more than just the things that you've done. Absolutely, and
so I feel like it's slightly reductive. People could fight
me on that, but to just list this is where
you went to school, this is you know. But the

(02:20):
main reason that I became aware of you and aware
of your work is your book From Object to Icon. Now,
I gave it a different subtitle for years. I kept
saying that it was from Object to Icon, Living iconographically
in a pornographic world, And then when I looked at
the book. The other day, I said, that's not it
at all. It's the struggle for spiritual vision in a

(02:41):
pornographic world, which is so much better because your book
is really well, it deals with pornography. It's not so
much about the problem of sex or sexuality, but a
problem of vision of right orientation in the world. So
your subtitle is a lot better than mine.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, I mean, thanks to the people of the Ancient
Faith for the subtitle. I didn't.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
How did you get into this subject? And writing a
book is not easy? What motivated you to write a
book on pornography?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, to be honest, was at it was external pressure.
It was because I had done some of the study
and I'd talked about it, and then I got a
lot of people basically saying, can we hear more about this?
Can you do more? Can you write a book? First
of all the podcasts I did a series of podcasts
on Ancient Faith, and then following that, can you write

(03:36):
a book? So it was really you know, I didn't
I definitely set out to write a book on this topic.
In fact, I struggled quite a lot with the idea
of writing a book on this topic. I mean, it
all stemmed from actually a class when I was at
Holy Cross and I read I was reading Father John
Brett's book on I can't think what it's called now,

(03:57):
was bioethics, basically Christian etha, and he just used this
sort of he had a very brief paragraph on pornography,
but he just used this phrase demonic iconography and it
really stuck in my mind. And so when I had
the opportunity, I decided I would look at the topic
and I did. I remember interviewing three people, two priests

(04:18):
and an iconographer about what that, you know, how they
would see that this connection between the modern world's imagery
and how we're encouraged to look upon the world and
an iconography and that was so that was where it
all sort of started. And then I and then I
did a series of podcasts for Ancient Faith, and then

(04:39):
that led that lead to the book. And you'll see,
I mean, if you if people who've listened to the
podcast will recognize some of the material in the book,
but the book sort of builds on that announces that's
a lot.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well. I think the right place to start is with definition,
defining your terms, although I think it's going to be
quite difficult. How what is pornography? Because I know that
famous Supreme Court justice you know, said, uh, you know,
I know it when I see it. Yeah, but I
think that's a strict legal definition, and you you talk

(05:12):
about the pornification of the world that we live in,
and so I think that pornography is a lot more
than we immediately begin to think about.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah. Absolutely, Well, I came to the conclusion in the
end that that that pornography, I mean that it legal
definitions aside, because I don't think a legal definition is
going to be good enough. So what I've got is
maybe less It makes it less easy to say this is,
this isn't. But what I would say is that looking

(05:44):
at the I thought etymology is the way. So looking
at the Greek roots, you know, pornia is principally things
to do with prostitution, But I mean, basically it's about
sexual unfaithfulness, and I think it's that unfaithfulness in terms
of relationship and union. And then obviously is to write
or draw or make an image. So so what we're

(06:06):
saying is that if it's an image that relates to unfaithfulness,
then that's pornography in that sense. And I think that's
actually quite good. The literal, absolutely, literal definition is quite
a good definition. And so you know, obviously, image is
a broad term and it can mean things you see,
you know, in real life with your eyes. It can

(06:27):
mean images on paper or on digital devices. It can
mean video, it can mean a lot of things. And
you know, it can mean even writing, because you can
have bornographic literature, for example. So so it's anything that's
created that that either intentionally or unintentionally has the has

(06:48):
the effect of making us unfaithful to God, it ultimately,
but to but in them, you know, also to human relationships.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Mm hmm. And you say that we all, whether we
struggle with pornography explicitly or not, that we all have
a pornography problem. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yes, well, I think I mean obviously I've only lived
in this time, in this culture, but so it's maybe
it's all of human history. I don't know, but certainly
I think there's something particularly at this time, where we're
encouraged to objectify and to separate the personal reality from
the image or how we see someone. How we think

(07:30):
of someone doesn't necessarily relate to who they really are,
but it's associated with the whole set of other things,
and I think that's all the same part of the
same issue basically. So so in that sense, you could
say a broader definition of pornography is that looking at
someone and not seeing them they really are, but for

(07:51):
something else. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, it's that objectification versus veneration, which we'll get into later.
But you know, as I was thinking about this, I
started thinking about another parallel vice, which is that of gambling,
which has really exploded. I'm not sure about where you live,
but in America, gambling was legalized in many states, and

(08:15):
you've seen it pop up all over that. And I
had been to Vegas a couple decades ago when I
was younger, and it really felt different. And I went
to Vegas a couple of years ago. My wife had
a work retreat there and so I met her at
the end and we stayed for a couple of days.
Thought why not? And what struck me was how I

(08:39):
want to be careful when I say this, so, but
how ordinary it felt. It didn't feel like this special place.
Now you can find, you know, darkness wherever you look.
And I think that what has happened is like the
proverbial lobster in a pot. America has become a lot
more like Vegas everywhere else. So when you go to

(09:01):
Vegas it almost felt more family friendly. It's like, hey,
gambling has left the station. That's no longer our only
show in town. We have to find other ways to
attract people.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
I think that the new vice there is gluttony. I mean,
some of the best food I've had in a long time,
So they're really really high on the culinary scale together
well in quality. It's that thing where it just becomes slowly.
The reason I talk about the lobster, the pods. It's slow,
and you make little concessions here, you make little concessions there.

(09:37):
And I think that the same thing has happened with
the pornography that we all I know that there's a
more philosophical definition of it that we've kind of gotten into,
but just blatant pornography as we all understand it to be,
it has become much more common place to the to
the degree to which I think that I watch pornography

(09:58):
much more often than I even believe just watching television.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
No, absolutely, I mean I don't. I gave up watching
telligence more or less. I mean, there were very few things.
I'll watch quiz Strais occasionally with my children, But yeah,
I think you're right. I think it's really really pervasive
throughout the culture. And you can see sort of certainly
from the nineteen fifties onwards, are just looking at all
of this basic media outlets. There's a very clear path

(10:28):
that you're describing, this sort of broadening on what's considered permissible,
and it just keeps on expanding and expanding and expanding gently. Yeah,
and so the sort of as you see it in
the more explicit and extreme stuff as well, so they
know the internet is is this really writ large so

(10:49):
that the beginnings of the Internet, there were studies done
about pornography and the impact of pornography, and they talked about,
you know, hardcore pornography and extreme but what they were
calling hardcore and extreme pornography is now absolutely run at
the mill and there are far more extreme and hardcore
things out there. So it's the same on every level.

(11:10):
I think this has been working. It's really it's really
fascinating to look at some of those early studies and
see what they were absolutely shocked by finding, which you
know now is considered relatively mild.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, and it's pernicious. I mean, I remember I grew
up in the well My first exposure of the Internet
growing up was late nineties really, and I remember in
counting pornography and it was often through pop ups where

(11:43):
it would just pop up and you oh, and as
a child, do you think, Oh, and then you start
paying attention to it. Oh, that's that it's caught my interest.
What is that like? Especially as a young teenager. Now
it is so much more baked in, whether it's through algorithms,
and you know, I have a little hack that I

(12:04):
try my best to stay off social media, but when
I'm on it, I kind of have some degree of
awareness of how algorithms work. So when I see something
that I consider to be holy or like a quote
from a saint or from the Bible, I tap it.
I spend a little bit of extra time so that
I train the algorithm this is what I want to see,
and it does work, and it turns a nasty habit,

(12:26):
if you will. In terms of just I think that
social media can be a waste of time, but it
edifies it in some way.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
It really goes back to what I was saying earlier
about becoming the people formed by the people we spend
our time with in the place where we are. And
I think, you know, that's so that algorithm is a
sort of an artificial reflection of real life too, in
that we do form ourselves and I think neurologically as well,
we form our brains, you know, form around what we practice.

(12:55):
So I think that's you know, that's important not only
on social media in fact, but in every day as well.
How do we look at people, what do we how
do we think about people and ourselves and our relationships,
and how do we operate in the world. Yeah, all
of that trains us constantly into a certain direction. You know,
there's a C. S. Lewis said in one place, I
can't remember where, but he said that every encounter you

(13:17):
have with a human person, you're either contributing to them
becoming something so incredibly beautiful that if you saw it
now you'd be tempted to own worship, but or something
that's so awful that it's worse than the stuff of
your worst nightmares. That's an incredible responsibility. But I think
this is exactly the kind of thing that is that
that we are in fact doing to each other. All

(13:39):
the time. And that's why that's that's so important what
you're saying that training yourself to look upon the beautiful.
Some Paul says it as well, doesn't he. Yeah, pay
your full focus, your attention on what's good and beautiful,
not ugly. In there.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
There's one hundred dollars word for it, nepsis, just watchfulness.
And I think that it's a I think asceticism in
general is a lost art. How do you draw the
line between anxiety and watchfulness? You know, anxious paranoia about
am I doing the right thing? Am I? Am I
treating Andrew with the proper respect right now? And and

(14:20):
just what is a sober guarding of the soul?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yes? Well, I think I mean sober implies the opposite
of anxiety in a way, and I think I think
that's that's where the prayerful aspect comes in. So I
think it's the operating in peace, you know, rather than anxiety.
So we know we're going to fail, We're going to

(14:47):
do what we can do, and we're still going to
fail because as fallen human beings, we will fail. But
we can get up and we can keep trying. And
so if we operate in prayer and put the attentiveness
through prayer as well. You know, the Jesus prayer, for example,
is something it works really well as a hospital chaplain.
I understand this. You see somebody, you move to somebody else,
but you have a bit of time in between. You

(15:08):
can do Jesus prayer while you're walking in the corridor
or whatever, and sometimes even while you're with someone. So
I think it's staying in the prayer will bring peace
and that is the opposite of anxiety. So yeah, it
is possible to get too tangled up in this sort
of in the cognitive way and thinking about I think
it's sort of overthinking. You know, am I doing the

(15:29):
right thing? How do I know it's the right thing?
How do I know exactly what impact what I'm going
to say is going to have on this person? And
the answer is what I can't know for sure. I
can just pray, release it to the Lord and do
my best of it in the moment.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
M We talked about the legal definition of pornography earlier,
and I think legalism rules the day in much of
our modern world, or we get even within Christianity where
you get caught up in the act of sin as
though was that a sin? Was it? Well, well, maybe
not quite. It's on the borderline, I'm okay. And when

(16:03):
you view sin in that way as a kind of
a breaking of the rules of breaking of the law
versus a deforming of the person, then even the gray
area you can view differently in terms of is this
building me up or breaking me down? Kind of in
the same way that you were talking about Lewis towards
somebody else.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Mean absolutely, absolutely no, I think that's right, and I
think sin is you know, it's if we think again,
if we go back to the edge of thinking about
the good rather than the bad and keeping our eyes
on what's beautiful, then if we think about repentance, we
know repentance is not just you know, a correction to
a particular thing in a particular way. It's a whole,

(16:43):
lifelong process. And so I think focusing on that rather
than on the sin is actually quite quite helpful because
it's then much more of a disposition of the person
rather than a specific act. And we can talk about
specific acts all the time. And you know, certainly we
always have mixed motives. I mean I always have mixed motives. Okay,

(17:04):
I can do something that from the outside might look
completely beautiful and good, but I know that there's probably
something else in there as well. You know, I also
want the person to respond to me positively. You know,
there are all kinds of motives in that, and if
I start getting tangled up in that, I'm going to
get nowhere at all. So I sort of put that
aside and say, is what I'm doing, you know, broadly
in line with the life of repentance, with moving towards

(17:27):
being Christ Like? Is it something I'm doing in union
with Christ? Or am I doing it off my own
bat for my own edification or my own glorification? I
think again, going back to doing things in prayer, putting
the self aside and moving forward in love for you know, God,
I don't know, but which I think is the same

(17:48):
thing in action in practice.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, I kept thinking, and I'm pretty sure it's in
your book. But it's something that I think about all
the time. The paraphrase Saint Porphyrios when he talks about
let evil be turned towards Christ. I mean we can
lament the darkness, and it is something that we should lament.

(18:13):
I mean, evil is not something that we just brush aside.
But the way that we conquer it is by poking
that pinhole and letting the light flood in. Yeah, but
it's a conscious act. I mean it becomes difficult because
you have to talk about the darkness. You have to
talk about evil in order to rightly orient yourself towards goodness.
I mean, evil does not exist in isolation. It's always

(18:38):
the opposite of something good, right, I mean, how is
that true?

Speaker 2 (18:41):
And the twisting of the twisting of something Yes, because
evil can't have its own its own existence because God
only creates good. So evil is always something essentially good
that's been twisted or broken in some way to make
it evil. I think it comes to my mind. It
comes to the question that I've often been asked as

(19:02):
a chaplain, whether it be in in a cute hospital
or in the mental health wards, which is you know
the old how how can there be a God if
all these horrible things happen? Why does God let you
know my baby die or me have cancer, or me
suffer these psychotic episodes? Or you know how how is

(19:23):
how can there be a good God if this sort
of thing happens? And you know, there areus lots of
theological answers to this, but I don't find them very
practical or useful in that sort of context, because I
think people are asking not not for theological answer, but
for an existential one. Really, it's you know, and and yes,

(19:46):
this is a horrible thing, and and it's unfair because
people suffer sometimes no apparently good reason, and sometimes suffer massively,
you know, disaster upon disaster upon one awful thing on
top of another. But what I always and they say,
how can you believe in God? And so what I

(20:07):
always say is well, to me, it makes sense that
if the world is without God, then obviously all this
stuff makes sense, you know, the disasters and the pain
and the suffering and the evils and the tortures and
everything else. But what you can't explain then is why
is it that even in these darkest places and these

(20:27):
most awful times, there are still these little glimmers of light?
Where did they come from? Why is it that you
can be in this place with people who've sometimes you know,
committed terrible crimes and suffered horrible things, and yet they
can still do altruistic acts just out of love for
each other. How is that possible? Where does that come from,

(20:50):
and so I think that again, it's it's looking looking
for the good and the beautiful, because it's everywhere. You know,
I've been in some pretty horrible places, and I've always
found that there is good there. There's always there's always light.
It's like you know, the pasca, when the light appears
in the darkness.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
It's the pins Well, that's it's it's it's a very
appropriate analogy because for those who aren't aware, I don't
pretend to believe that everybody who watches or listens to
this has ever been to a pasca service. But it's
very beautiful. I mean, right at midnight, one single candle
comes out and then within several minutes the entire church

(21:33):
is lit up. I mean it's in total darkness, and
from one candle everything is illuminated. And that's really I mean,
it's illustrative of a lot of different things, but it's
that pinhole. It starts with one small ray of light,
and then it's our personal responsibility to be the light
of the world. I mean, that's that's why it's it's

(21:53):
so critical for Christians to not compartmentalize. And I was
talking to somebody about this the other day we live
in a secular world, which has caused many Christians to
live almost schizophrenic lives where I'm a Christian here at
home in church, but then when I go to the workplace,

(22:14):
I kind of have to put on a different hat.
And you really can't do that. I mean, I mean,
it doesn't mean that you are, you know, Bible bashing
people all the time, but it's it's the way that
you live your life that that really becomes that that
light of the world, that that transforms the world. Yeah,

(22:37):
I don't I don't know if that helps somebody who's well.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I think that really unfairly. The concept of the masks
that I use in the book, it's this idea of
having different hats and different roles I think is part
of is part of masks and I and you know,
obviously we have well we you know, we might have
a profession. We're called upon to be professional in our role,
which means behaving in a certain way, but it does

(23:00):
mean being a different person or a different kind of person.
If you're in a if you're in a job that
forces you to behave in a non Christian way, then
I suggests you get out of it because it's not
any good for anybody. So I think I think the
key is learning how to be the person we are
in the situation we're in, and that means not wearing

(23:21):
a mask, because we can't know each other or be
known if we if we wear a mask. I remember
I sort of I ham at this very hard, and
the children were very small, this point about telling lies,
because wearing a mask is basically telling lies. Rights about
telling lies about who we are for the benefit of
ourselves or the world or the relationship or whatever it is.
And I always said said this to the children when

(23:43):
they were very small, that if you tell them lie,
then you the person you're really hurting is yourself because
because I love you, but you won't know that if
you've told me lies, you'll think I'm loving the lies
that you've told rather than the real you that's behind them.
If you tell me the truth, if you tell me

(24:04):
the truth always, I will still always love you, and
you'll know it's actually you and not the stories, because
the stories won't be necessarily lovable, you know, in themselves,
but you will be as a person. And I think
that's that's the key with masks to me. Yeah, that's
actually in order to in order to have that relationship
be real. That's the only way you can know that

(24:25):
you're actually loved or.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Loving by others or yourself.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I mean, we don't just wear masks to fool others.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, exactly, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
And you talked about in the context of confession in
the book, I mean, what is the importance Once again,
I can't pretend that everybody practices not everybody's Orthodox or Catholic,
or you know, not everybody practices confession. Why is it
so important? Why is the act of confession and being
truly honest with yourself and others so important? I mean,

(24:59):
it sounds self evident when I say it out loud,
but it's not because I've even gone into confession and
withheld and felt like I'm not ready to say that
in front of somebody else. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Absolutely, yeah. And that's the thing. I think. It's because
because delusion comes so easily to us, and so you know,
we would like to think it's just as good to
make my confession privately in front of Christ, you know,
at home, as it is to go and actually say
to the priest. But it isn't because actually I'm holding back.

(25:33):
I don't know that I'm holding back. I may say words,
but when you're faced with an actual physical presence right
there that you can see and sense, it's different. It
really is different. And and if you can then take
that back, you know. And this is why another reason

(25:55):
why I think icons are really helpful in prayer, because
you can you can look, you know, Christ in the face,
which is one of the miracles, isn't it about the incarnation?
Compared to the Old Testament, when you can't see the
face of God and live, you can look Christ in
the face, and that's very difficult. And if you've really
got that sense of you know, if I've got the

(26:15):
sense of my own sin, then that's hard to do
because I feel ashamed automatically and I want to look down.
But I can raise my eyes and look up and
know that I'm actually loved irrespective of the stuff that
I've done, which is, you know, it's not very good.
So you can bring that back into your own prayer

(26:37):
life as well. But I think there's something about having
to actually be there next to a physical person present
and with sound and touch and smell and vision and
all of the senses and actually let this stuff out
is hard, and that's that's why it's good, because it's
so easy. You know. I want to think that I'm

(26:59):
a nice person and a good and I help people
and unfriendly and I do good stuff. But actually that's
only a bit of the story. I mean, I think
I do all of those things some of the time,
but there's a lot more to it, and it's important
to be aware of that reality. And that's the problem
with the mask is that it's fake. And I don't
want to be fake. I want to be real. And

(27:20):
the only way you know, I can ever I come
into union with Christ is by being real.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Amen. I mean, the name of this podcast is commitment
to reality. For just that reason, I was looking around
the world and I felt like we are living illusions
left and right. I mean, and we're rubber stamping illusions
left and right, and in order to kind of it's
almost like a gravitational pool that we need to enact

(27:46):
on ourselves to stay grounded. I mean, I just I
always imagine grabbing hold of something, because if you don't,
you're going to float off into the ether if you
don't make a conscious commitment to what is real reality. Uh. Now,
icons are once again Uh, you know, I'm always very

(28:08):
careful to try and frame things from a place where
you know, I don't want to just say icons are important.
And if you don't think so, you're an idiot, Like
you know, hey, get with the program. There's something wrong
with you if you don't see this, or because I

(28:28):
think that they can be easy to do, why are
icons important? And really, if you could explain it to
somebody who struggles with it, because I know people personally
who will not step foot in my church because of
the icons. Yes, and they are they are practicing, earnest
Christians who just grew up with a tradition. I'll use

(28:51):
that word that that either doesn't believe in icons or
even more so, I mean you said poornography is demonic iconography.
I don't think the distinction is wrong.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
No, absolutely, yeah. And it's this fear of it's a
fear of idolatry, right, this is in essence and and
idolatry is a thing well worth fearing. And I think
idolatry comes into a lot of what we've been talking
about in terms of the sin, and it's that desire

(29:26):
to to put our hope in humanity rather than in God.
Or in something something physical, something that we can touch,
and that is a temptation, and it is a real temptation.
And it's not something that you know, belongs in the
Old Testament times. That's still a real temptation and a
real problem. So I think, I don't you know, I
think it's understandable why people have this. I think the

(29:48):
key is to understand the nature of iconography, and that,
as Synton Damascus says, you know, we do not worship
the wood and the paint. If the image on the
eye is so defaced that we can't see the saint,
then we throw it away or we burn it in
the fire. It's not it's not worth anything. So I

(30:08):
think this is this is the key. The key point
is that we're not we're not worshiping the icon. We're
not using the icon for our own purposes. Is actually
quite the other way around, you know. There's there's that
concept of the of the reverse perspective of the icon.
So the idea is that we're not looking at the

(30:29):
icon and using the icon. Actually what we're doing is
being looked upon when we look into an icon. So
it's about this connection with the spiritual world, with the
reality of the spiritual world, and the fact that it's
a glorious thing that in the Church we don't just
have the physically alive people on earth now are standing

(30:50):
with us, but we also have all of these others
who are still alive and still with us, and we
can see them.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Witnesses when we are surrounded by such a great cloud
of witnesses.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Exactly, and they're all there and we can see them,
and that's really important, and that's part of the incarnation,
the gift of the incarnation that we know that and
we can see Christ's face because it's real, you know,
Christ's face human. Christ's human face is real, So it
is not it is not a blasphemy to paint it
or look upon it, because it is real. It's not

(31:24):
an imaginary face. It's a real face. And that's I
think the essential difference and the fact and the fact
is that we are connecting therefore with with Heaven. We're
connected with Heaven in that way, and and that's why
in the in the dimnetity, we can lay aside our
earthly cares and we can just for a moment experience that,
you know, being surrounded by the saints who've been perfected

(31:48):
in this life. And that's a wonderful, a wonderful witness.
But it's more than a witness, it's a it's an actual,
you know, fore taste of heaven.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, they knew, not whether they were on heaven or
on earth. You know, when when we first joined the
church my family, my sister said to the priest, well,
what do you tell people when they say that you
you pray to dead people or iconography? And he just saw,
point blank, there are no dead Christians. That's right, go

(32:24):
back to your Bible.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
No. I had, so my my family, a lot of
my family Salvation Army. So it's very sort of ultra Protestant.
And I remember when I was a teenager. I remember
so my my my granddad used to visit so his
his wife died. He lived, you know, another thirty years
or so after she died, and he used to visit

(32:47):
her grave quite often, but particularly on her birthday and
on Christmas Eve. And and when I was old enough
to drive, I drove him. I start, because he didn't.
He stopped driving when he was older, and I started
driving him to the cemetery to go to his wife's grave,
and he talked to her and I thought, well, that's

(33:09):
not very that's not very in accordance with theology. What
about the great gap that's between the dead and the lyric?
But if he talked to her because he loved her,
you know, the bond of love is the key and
and it will it will not be broken by death.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Mm hmm, well, you know it's it's sometimes the most
common example is common because it's obvious. I mean, whenever
somebody tries to make a passion defense of iconography, it's
is there anybody that you love? I mean, do you
have a picture of your They don't even need to
be dead. Do you have a picture of your wife

(33:52):
and children? I mean. The only thing that has changed
for me when it comes to a being oriented towards
iconography now is that I'm much more likely to kiss
a picture of my children than I would have been before,
which I think is probably a change for the better.

(34:12):
I mean, it's a beautiful thing to see it and
to feel it, and God forbid, if anything were to
ever happen to them, it would only heighten the importance
of that image because that they were real to me.
I mean, they are real, and that becomes even more
precious and as I've been Orthodox for a number of

(34:35):
years now, but as somebody was visiting our church the
other day and they said that they're studying hard, and
I said, don't study too hard. You've got a lifetime.
And that's still not enough, and that there's a constant
reorientation that's taking place, and that continues to exist for
me with iconography. I would say, intellectually I get it,

(34:57):
but practically speaking, I'm still trying to re orient. I mean,
you talk about the importance of vision. I'm trying to
reorient my vision so that I actually see what I'm
supposed to see and in your words, so that I
can be seen that that that you know.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
I was.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
On Mount Athos over the summer, and I was in
a kind of a cafeteria surrounded by all of these
icons of different saints, and and I don't know all
of them. And I started to think about it, and
I think it's it's appropriate start walking around and then

(35:40):
I see what I know. And it reminds me of
being at a party. When you're at a party and
you don't know anybody, and then all of a sudden,
you see that person that you know. I know that
saint and I go over to it and I start
looking at it and I feel this connection to it.
And I took that as well. That doesn't mean that
I only when you go to a party. Sometimes the

(36:02):
best part is meeting somebody knew or learning something about
somebody that you didn't know where you you might have
thought you knew them, and then you get to know
that and then you love them even more and they
become part of your family. Before we started, I said, Andrew,
I think we have some friends in common. And I said, well,
no matter what, we have friends in common because we're
both Christians, and these Christians love each other before before

(36:24):
they meet. You know, it's just that opportunity to, you know,
get to know each other. And I think that what
a what a blessing that iconography exists, because it's there
is something different. And so I'll ask you. I mean,
there was a lot of prelude to a question why
can't Why isn't just thinking and praying to God enough?

(36:45):
Why do you need iconography for that?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Because we're physical beings as well as cognitive. Thinking is
a suitable for cognitive, but when we're a physical being,
we need physical as well. And I think you know,
it's a very gnostic concept that the spiritual is more real.

(37:08):
Actually the physical is real too, and we're a combination
of the two. We're a blend. We're not you know,
we're not a spirit trapped in a physical body. That's
that's definitely not a consume way of thinking. So our
physical bodies are part of who we are and they
need to be taken seriously. And so that aspect of

(37:29):
being able to see and to hear, and to smell
and to touch and to taste are all part of
worship because that's who we are and that's really essential.
I think. So yes, they're thinking, yes there's praying, and
yes there's all these other things as well.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
And then and then that's where the really important and
necessary distinction comes in because I let this think, you know,
why do we need any kind of of Christ to pray? Well,
why do we need an icon of anybody else? Because
you could say, okay, well, I'd still that's a tough
pill for me to swallow, but I'll accept your icon

(38:09):
of Christ. But why everybody else?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Reason that you can't be a Christian on your own,
You need to go to church and you need to
associate with other Christians, and why would you not, Why
would you deliberately cut yourself off from those who are
strongest and most mature in the faith. Mm hmm that
would be insane, right.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
And you use stronger language in the book. You said
it's it's like cutting yourself off from the vine, which
is a terrifying image.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
So for you know, yeah, I'm constantly trying to build
the bridge because otherwise it's just an echo chamber. You
like icons. I like icons. Let's talk about how much
we like chicons. But you know, more than anything I've
began in my later years. You know, I grew up evangelical,
took a long walk in the wilderness, and now I'm

(39:04):
a firmly devoted Orthodox Christian. I mean, it's it's all
I care about. It's all I want. You know, I
didn't really understand evangelism growing up. Now it's like I
get it. I want to grab Andrew come to church
with me because I believe in the reorientation that takes
place there. I've seen it in my own life and
in like manner, all right, I believe in iconography. I

(39:26):
want other people to see what I see or what
I'm learning to see because you know, I forgive the
tired cliche. And if anybody's listened to this, they've heard
it or listened to this podcast more than once. They've
heard it already. I always think about it the bunny
ears on the old TVs where you know, I'm trying
to get the right picture, or you know, right before

(39:48):
we hopped on, I got something in my eye and
I just kept blinking, and I was like, maybe this
is God saying, really focus on vision and the importance
of seeing rightly because I can't see right now, and
you know, going to the eye doctor and having them
flip the things, and then all of a sudden, you go, oh, whoa.
I thought I could see, but now I can see

(40:10):
what was I missing before? And so it's that inclusion,
that reorientation, that like, hey, I want to invite you
into this world where you can see even deeper and
what's what okay? So once again I went different. I understand, Uh,
an icon of Christ? Why do the other ones matter? Well,
the reason I made the distinction is you said, that's

(40:32):
how we worship. And it's a necessary distinction because someone
will say, well, you're worshiping that icon and we use
the V word, the veneration. What is veneration and why
is veneration important and not just of icons? Well, okay,
that's the problem absolutely. I think you'll go there, so

(40:54):
we'll see.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
I mean, veneration is respect and blood, I think combined.
So you know, the appropriate it's just about being being appropriate.
You know, if I see someone and when I see
one of these great saints, I see somebody who I
love and I admire and I massively respect, and so

(41:20):
you know, it's a It's a culturally foreign thing, isn't it,
Because you know, there are there are many cultures throughout
history where you would simply automatically approach the person, you know,
bow or neil or kiss the hand or whatever it is.
And those are the kinds of things we've inherited as
Orthodox Christians, which are quite foreign to modern Western culture.

(41:41):
I think. But I don't think that's a good thing.
I think that I think those gestures of respect and
love are actually really important to human beings because actually,
you know, I'm not as good as anyone else. I

(42:02):
know lots of people who are better than me, and
and so yes, as a legal fiction, it's really important
that we assume a level playing field and give everybody
the same rights and responsibilities. That's really important for organizing
a practically society. But it's not true, is it. We
all know that's not true. We all know that some
people are better than this. We can't pretend that's not

(42:26):
the case. We can't we equally. We can't make lists
and rankings and you know, sort of sort out where
exactly everybody is because we don't have perfect knowledge. But
I know that there are people who are better than me,
and I think it's appropriate to give them a respect.
Mm hm. So I think I think this is a
big part of veneration. But I think more than more
than anything, it's the love, you know, because and it's

(42:49):
because it's a two way process. I think even that,
even the veneration, I think of that marvelous scene in
the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt when she encounters
fathers us Us and he wants to prostrate to her,
and she wants to prostrate to him, and uh and
this sort of back and forth because he perceives her
whole great holiness and she sees his his and that

(43:12):
I just think that's absolutely beautiful. I love that part,
and I think that's that's the thing. It's just the
quality of the relationship, the depth of love and respect,
and that's I think that's what veneration is.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, so veneration. I think the opposite would be objectification.
And that's kind of what you're getting at with the
whole issue of pornography, and that it's a symptom of
a deeper disease, which is narcissism, which.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Well, the problem is that you know, you can't object objective.
Objectification and love are incompatible, totally incompatible, because love requires
you to learn to know the person, which is not
knowing about the person, and it's certainly imagining. You know,
your desired reality of the person is actually knowing the

(44:05):
real person. And the only way you can love a
person is to encounter them in their reality. And so
it's it's a it's it's an attack on a person
to objectify because you're denying them their true reality and
that and that you know that happens on lots of
levels and in lots of ways, but I think you know,

(44:29):
pornography is the sort of exemplar of how awful that
is when somebody looks on another human being and instead
of seeing them in reality as the image of God,
you know, an iton of Christ. They see them as
a thing they can desire and use for their own gratification.
And it's hard to imagine anything, I think worse very
human being than that.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Well, how is the desire to embrace an icon and
pornography really based half of the same desire?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Uh huh? Because so all desire I think I came
to the conclusion when I thought about the question of
desire that actually all desire in the end is desire
for union with God, because that's what desire is made for,
right and the and the ultimate, you know, the eschatological
end for the human being is to be in perfect

(45:23):
union with each other and with Christ, because that's all
the same, all one. So all of our desire for
other humans is part of our desire for this greater union,
and it's it's a desire to come out of ourselves
and encounter a real other. And so even the most

(45:45):
sort of debased and broken and twisted forms of desire
still you can see a little bit of this in them.
And I think that's what happens with the pornography. It's
it's a fearful and broken desire when we know we
still want the other person in some way, but we're
fearful of showing ourselves. We're fearful of learning about them.

(46:06):
In our reality, we want the easy way out, we
want the quick gratification, and it just stops, it stops
anything deeper from being possible. And that's that's you know,
that's the evil in it, isn't it. But it's also
I mean, you know, if Christ said any anyone, any
man who looks on a woman was lust, it's the

(46:29):
same as committing adultery.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Mm hm with his heart right, think about that. A
lot years ago, I was working in the Dominican and yeah,
there was I was working with a family and you know,
we were at the beach and the husband we were
on the beach and he did kind of one of
those elbows and like and I was like, hey, you're

(46:54):
you're a happily married man. And he said, you can
look at the menu. I just can't order. And that
gets back to the legality of it all. Like it's
funny and it's clever and and yeah, but yeah, it's like,
well I didn't do anything, yeah, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
And that's the whole thing we were saying about sin
being a disposition of the person more than a specific act.
The act is just the outcome of the disposition. So
you can't make that. It's a very fake distinction again
to make. Yeah, so there's and and it's and it's
and I see why people get confused about it, because
you know, temptation itself isn't sin. Okay, they say, so

(47:37):
that you know, having the temptation, but that's already one
step way beyond, one step beyond the temptation. You're definitely
actively doing something when you when you make the look
and you make the gesture and you make the comment. Right,
So it's a definitely step further. So, And I think
the contrast between that response and the response that I
took about with syt Nonys in the example with synonyms

(47:59):
in the book where he's a bishop in a synod
of bishops meeting outside when this beautiful woman goes by.
I can't remember a horse or in a strong carriage
or something, and she's a sort of she's quite scantily dressed,
but you know, in a very beautiful, beaut beautified up way,

(48:20):
and all of the bishops avoid their eyes apart from
synon Us, who watches her go by and into the distance.
And then when one of them says, why, you know,
why are you doing this? She says, how could I
avert my eyes when such a glory of God's creation
goes by? And so I think, you know, this is
the difference. So it's not, it's not. The problem is
in us and the way we look. Actually, and so

(48:43):
if we can actually genuinely look upon any other person
as a glory of God's creation and a beautiful image
of God, then that's good. That's fine, We can do that,
But it's it's when the temptation is not to do that,
that's when we have to avert our eyes. And I
think that's a really important distinction to make. It's not

(49:03):
about how the person is portraying themselves so much. I mean,
obviously that is an issue, but it's much more the
issue that it's about us and how we're looking and
what we're doing with that in our minds and our hearts.
And if we can achieve the level of purity where
we can look upon any other human person as the
glory of God, then we might be ready to start

(49:25):
doing something good in the world.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Well, there's something quite scandalous in your book and I
remember reading it and doing a double take and thinking,
all right, I'm going to read that again. And I
remember communicating it to people because I read this in
that book, and they go, you might want to go
back and read that again, and maybe you will tell
me that's not what I meant, but I'm pretty sure

(49:50):
that I've read it carefully. You say that you can
even venerate pornography. Yeah, I'll find that because that's scandalous.
But rightly I mean, I'm not talking about the improper
veneration or the execrification, but rightly venerate pornography. Explain that
because that is scandalous.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yes, yes, because there's a human person there. So if
we look upon that human person with purity of heart
and see the image of God, of course we can,
because every human person is the image of God and
therefore deserves veneration. And it doesn't matter, you know, if
we have the eyes to see, we can always venerate.

(50:31):
And I think that, you know, as a chaplain, I
think that's that's my job actually, is to go around
venerating people whatever situation they find themselves in, and however
farther far they are from where they would like to be,
or where anybody else would like them to be. Actually,
every one of us is a human person, and every
one of us can therefore be venerated because we do

(50:51):
always to some degree show forth the glory of God
being otherwise we wouldn't be here, we couldn't live.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
It's that whole thing where you know, Okay, if you have,
if you have a hard time with the paint and
the wood perspective on iconography, okay, yeah, you can't win
every battle, I think it would be good for you.
But at the end of the day, and you mentioned
this several times, and I think it's worth drilling into

(51:25):
what does the incarnation have to do with iconography? And furthermore,
I mean, we are all icons what what is what
is the incarnation? What does the incarnation change there?

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Because well, as I said earlier, you know, in the
Old Testament you cannot look upon the face of God
and live. But actually Christ Christ bore the face of
God in a human face, and so we can in
that sense now. And and because that is a physical
human face, it can be portrayed in an image without

(52:01):
any issue. And because of that we can use our vision,
our physical vision to become spiritual vision and that's what
this that's what this takes. So you know, our physical
vision alone we can't venerate. But our physical vision joined
to our spiritual version vision is exactly what we do
to venerate. And we can venerate every other human person

(52:23):
because every other human person is also an image of
God in that sense. In fact, even broader than that,
all of creation, all of creation reflects God's glory and
God's presence, So we can venerate everything in creation. It
doesn't mean we're worshiping it as God. It means we're
seeing God through it, because God's presence is in it,

(52:45):
in his creation. Every part of God's creation bears his mark.
We cannot look at it if we have true vision,
we cannot look at it and not see God's And
that's again we'll only mean by surrounding ourselves with the beauty,
because we learn to see the beauty.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
And you talked about spiritual vision. I mean, that's another
one hundred dollars word that maybe shouldn't be help. We're
just not as well acquainted with it, especially in our
modern world. But what what is noose I mean? And
why is that really that the hinge of your entire
thesis in the book, I mean is developing the news.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Right, because so it's it's it's a marvelous thing. This
translation is a really dodgy activity. But and it's not
to say even that it's just you know, it's not
even if we stick to Greek, it won't work because
of course, the difference between the culture means that what
was understood but in ancient Greek isn't understood necessarily in

(53:43):
modern Greek. And I'm telling this discussion just the other
day actually about about these some of these concepts, because
the you know, modern modern Greece is part of the
modern world and has modern concepts, and so the same
words can be used in a different way. But I
think the concepts are really important. And I think the
key thing with the news is that it's it's about

(54:03):
it's the point at which we connect with God. So
it's our it's the source of our spiritual vision. And
you could say in that sense because obviously on our own,
if they're I mean, on our own is an imaginary thing, right,
We don't exist without God. God is there, whether we
like to think so or not, and that and if

(54:25):
if there was, if God wasn't there, we wouldn't be
so that's you know, it's it's entirely we're entirely dependent.
And so the noose really is how we connect bring
some of that into our awareness. We can connect and
we can receive, we can receive that presence of God
in a in a in a more aware way, if

(54:45):
you like, in our spiritual and then we can convert
our physical vision and our physical desires into spiritual vision
and spiritual desire. And I think I think it's again
going back to this union of of of of of
the spirit and the and the body in humanity, which
is an unusual and unique thing.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Mm hmmm. Well, and two things came to mind when
you were talking. I mean there are two eye words.
One that the origin of the word idiot, which I
thought was beautiful.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Can you yes, Well, I mean idiotis is the individual.
So an idiot is one who's cut off, completely cut off,
and the the opposite of that is being connected and
in relationship.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
And an individual I mean individualism rules the day. So
when I read that, I thought, wow, I mean we
idolize individuality, we idolize idiocy in a sense, here's just going.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And of course actually we're
not individuals. We're persons primarily. I mean, we can be individuals,
but it's not a desirable state because the person is
the one who can see face to face. Individual is
just a thing, you know, on the board that can
be moved around, or a piece that can be assembled

(56:05):
together with other pieces. But actually we're much more than that.
We're persons, and that face element of the person, the
persona or the pros upon in Greek is that is
the key that we can encounter face to face. And
that is why the masks are such a problem, because
they get in the way. They prevent us from seeing
each other's true faces.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
The mass whose elaborate on that way, I mean the
difference between individual and person, because I think a lot
of people would see that as synonymous.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the difference is simply that the
individual focuses on the difference and the person focuses on
the connection. So what is our primary thing? Is our
primary thing to cut ourselves off from all of humanity
and God and make somehow our own state a world
of its own? Or is our primary purpose to bring
ourselves into union with all of humanity and Christ in

(56:56):
a union of perfect love? I mean that's what we're told.
It's the end of our lives.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Yeah, Like, like you said earlier, I mean, no one
has saved in isolation. We are saved in union and
communion with each other and with God.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
And that is, in fact, our our ultimate destiny is
to be an ever more perfect union. So why would
we want to focus on cutting ourselves off and bringing
something of our own when actually everything we have is
already shared, and everything we have is already a gift
from outside.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
You know, it's probably why we find ourselves in such
a disordered state, I mean, in our modern world. So
that was one I word, the individual slash idiot. The
other one that I kept thinking of when you were
talking about is imagination. And we think I would never
I mean, you just think of the Willy Walker song.
Pure imagination. It's a good thing, right, And you said

(57:47):
that more often than not, if not always, The Church
fathers speak of imagination as a negative thing, whereas in
our modern world we think of imagination as a positive thing. Yeah,
who's right.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
I mean, the thing is, it's partly because of the
definition of the word, but I think because we all
know that imagination has two aspects to it, right, you've got,
you've got the kind of imagination that takes you out
of reality, and it can be really it leads. I mean,
where's where's the distinction between imagination in that sense and delusion?

(58:21):
I mean, in the end, it's it's creating a sort
of a parallel reality which is not God's reality but mine,
and that's a bad thing. But on the other hand,
creativity and being co creators with God, that's a positive.
And we often use imagination to indicate something like that.
So I think that's the key is what are we
doing and why are we doing it? And if it's

(58:43):
because because we want to be individuals and therefore we
want to be imaginative in a new way and create
something ourselves out of ourselves, then that maybe not so great.
But if we're if we're imaginative in the sense that
we're being very creative with with with what God has
given us for the purpose any of these purposes we've
been talking about, then that, you know, that's that's a
good use of imagination. So I think I think it

(59:06):
really very much depends on the context and what we
mean by it. But I think it's really important to
be aware of that distinction. And not just assume that
to be imaginative as a positive. It's interesting because I
think there's a there's a sort of a trend in
healthcare as well, that people talk about spirituality as if
it's always positive. Of course it's not always positive. They say,
you know, we want to get in touch with people,
allow people to get in touch with their spiritual side

(59:28):
and develop their spirituality. So well, that would be that
that you know, that's that's great, But not if it's
about connect communicating with demons, then maybe it's not saying good.
We don't want to talk about that in a positive way.
So I think there are lots of these things. I mean,
pretty much everything in this world is split, isn't it.
So there's always a danger, and there's always a temptation.
There's always a way of using something to separate yourself

(59:50):
from God, and there's a way of using it to
connect and join yourself.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Yeah. No, it's it's it's the one hundred our words,
the news and the neapsis. I mean, it's it's it's
it's transforming or getting in touch with the vision of
your heart and and guarding it, I mean, being watchful
being and like I said, not to the degree of paranoia,
but this constant I mean prayerfully considering everything that you're
going through and your desires, because I mean you talk

(01:00:19):
about desire and specifically in context of pornography, but it's
not just enough to kill your desires, because that's a
that's a road block.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Not helpful, because it's that's basically you know, the the
it's emptying, emptying the house of the demons, so that
if you do that, then just more demons will move in, right,
So that's yeah, that's the desire is desire is not
about being cut off, is about being transformed into desires
for the wholely for God, and it's for the good

(01:00:52):
of of you know, not only ourselves, but all the
people we come into contact with.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
So it's ultimately all about transformation. I mean, it desire
in and of itself, like like we've been talking about
over and over. I mean, and I think it's it's
a positive thing that to reiterate because it's something that
I only learned a number of years ago. I Mean,
I'd never really thought about good and evil just being
parallels of the same stick and that nothing that evil

(01:01:19):
does not exist in isolation. That was news to me.
I mean I had kind of just had never really
drawn the distinction. And then when you really, I mean
sometimes it takes a lot of work, but you can
trace the line where you go, ah, that's how something
good got perverted into X. And it's the same way.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
And I'm hopefully the hopeful side of this is that
it means that in every evil in this life, there
is always an element of good. Yes, you're never entirely separated,
because you can't. You know, everything depends on God. So
if you're still alive, there's still you know, where there's life.
There's how they say, And I think that's really really

(01:02:02):
true for this reason, because however perverse or evil, the
situation is, there's still well, it still is has a reality.
Then that means there's hope and there's there's good in
there that can be grasped and built on developed and
I think that's really important.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
So, you know, this is just this has just been
a conversation about killing sacred cows. In our modern Western world.
You talk about you know, one, you say we all
have a pornography problem. Two you bring in the twelve
step program and you basically say we're all powerless which

(01:02:41):
is anathema in our modern world. Are are you kidding me?
Maybe you are, Andrew, But I I I've life hacked
myself to the degree to which I am in control.
Why is that an illusion? I mean powerless? We are
all powerless. And you know it's it's said we we
should not rely on ourselves. That that's that's completely contrary

(01:03:04):
to everything that we're told in our modern society.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
I think it's pretty clear that none of us can
create the world. I think I think we reached the
realms of definite delusion if we're talking to somebody who
thinks they can create the world. And so there's you know, yes,
of course we can make a difference, and that's important,
and that's important to affirm that. And you know, we
do have the power to make things better or worse

(01:03:28):
for ourselves and for other people. But we don't have
the ultimate power. There's a very high degree of powerlessness.
I can't control, you know, whether I'm going to get
some terrible disease and die tomorrow. That's not within my power.
It's just not. And so I can do things that
make it more or less likely, of course, but I
can't ultimately control it. So in the sense, in that

(01:03:51):
sense we're all we are all powerless, and and and
the idea of you know, sort of self made man
that it's impossible because there are so many things that
the self made man is depending on his health, you know,
living in a country where somebody doesn't just turn up
and steal his house and his family and you know whatever.

(01:04:12):
You know, there are so many things that he is
not responsible for in his self health made life. Which
is not to say that hard work is you know,
is a waste of time and pointless at all. It's
just to say that there are limits and to acknowledge
those limits. I think there's there's so much black and
white thinking. And that's that's the thing, because actually real
life is full of degrees of things. You know, where

(01:04:36):
is the where It's not that there are good people
and bad people, and good is this thing over here,
and evil is that thing over there. It's just never
so simple. The evil always contains good, that good always
contains evil, That good people do bad things, that bad
people do good things. You know, it's all mixed. And
that's why it's so difficult, because we'd like it to
be really obvious and simple.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Nuance is a lost art. I mean, so true freedom,
what is it? Because I mean, if we're powerless, how
can we experience true freedom?

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Yes, I mean again, it's one of those things, isn't it.
Freedom is like everything else on the continuum, and when
we never entirely without it, but it's also never complete
in this life, like everything in this life. So you know,
I think I sort of thought about this from reading
the accounts of the people who had been in concentration
camps and in the Soviet gulags. You know, their freedom

(01:05:33):
was enormously limited, and yet they used it but a
little tiny bit they had to enormous effect in some cases.
And we've got saints, you know, who came out of
these contexts because they used their human freedom in a
case where pretty much everything that we would call freedom
had been taken away to such effect that they became

(01:05:55):
they were able to use it to become saints. And
so I think, you know, freedom is a huge, huge,
And the other thing, I guess, the other thing that's
really important to me about that is that that love
depends on freedom, because love cannot be forced and still
be real, and so in that sense, I think freedom
is really at the center we have to be we

(01:06:17):
have to be able to give and receive love freely,
and that that's what God gives us, that opportunity to
do that. We're not forced ever into can't be forced
into loving God, right or anyone else. So the freedom
is really it is really important, and we all exercise
it all the time, all the time. But sometimes I

(01:06:39):
think we you know, maybe we use it. Obviously we
use it in negative ways, but I think sometimes we
underestimate actually how valuable it is. And perhaps that's perhaps
that's why, you know, the people who had most of
it taken away were able to value the part that remained.
But yes, there's a sort of a I think it's
also part of being a a physical and a spiritual

(01:07:01):
being that enables us to maintain that inner freedom even
when the outer freedom is mostly stripped away.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
And how is this important the context of pornography? I mean,
you're kind of tagline. I guess if I would attribute
it to is finding the freedom to live And this
is all based in the context of free I guess
to some degree freedom from pornography. But pornography is just
the symptom of the greater disease, right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Absolutely, Yeah, And there's so many things that limit our freedom,
and so many of them are I mean, I'm not
going to say self imposed, but so many of them,
things that we feel limit our freedom are actually not.
You know, they're internal as much as external that we
say in some cases, So I think, I mean, I

(01:07:49):
think my own case, I was always a very anxious person,
and the anxiety massively limited my freedom. But it was
and it existed because of a you know, external factors
in my life growing up. But I also had some
freedom in how I dealt with that and what I
did with it. And so I think there are lots

(01:08:12):
of things like that, I think, which are sort of spiritual,
if we like to say, spiritual limitations on our freedom
rather than physical ones. And so I think this living
the life of repentance actually helps to break through some
of those things and allow us to experience its freedom
and to use it. And I do think, I mean,

(01:08:34):
I know that I underestimated my own freedom, and I
suspect that's not a unique case, and that there's actually
so much we can do for good if we're willing
to grasp it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Well, you talk about repentance, I mean, why what is
true repentance? And just to really hammer home that the
point that we've already discovered. But I think it's worth
it because you know, think about this a lot. Andrew that,
and and I did a podcast with a guy named

(01:09:10):
Justin Marler, who I love deeply, and I got a
lot of pushback on it. This guy doesn't take sin seriously.
Did you listen to our conversation? Did you read his book?

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Really?

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
I mean, he is not saying that sin is not
a problem. It's just not the problem that you think
it is. That your focus is so heavy on the
infractional element, and I think it has a lot to
do with the maybe the Western conception of sin and
the Western conception of even being saved. And so I

(01:09:45):
don't know if that's something that you think about a lot,
or if you have anything to offer in this this realm,
but it's something that I really, really, I don't think
that we can talk about enough because I think that
you know, you're you're in the the realm of therapy.
Think there's a lot of hurt people that are hurt
by a misconception of sin and that carrying it through

(01:10:07):
they're unable to truly face or to live a life
of repentance because they can't handle the concept of sin
as it's been presented to them. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Yeah, no, it definitely does. No. I mean you said,
you've said you know what is repentance? I was going
to say, well, when you when you find out, you
can tell tell me, because I think it's one of
those things that to grasp in all its fullness is
the work of more than a lifetime. But yes, I
think you're You're right. I mean, what we know, what
we know it isn't is this very limited conception of

(01:10:40):
a sin being a bad thing that we've done, and
the repentance being somehow overcoming that bad thing or turning
away from that bad thing. And I think that's a
very limited sort of concept of what it looks like
and repentance. You know, there's so much in the Father's
about this. The repentance is is a lifelong process, and
for me that the best image of it is the

(01:11:03):
story of the prodigal son. You know that his repentance
was finding himself in there with the pigs and the
husks and thinking, even the servants of my Father's have
something more than this. And then he said, lor why
not let's just go back. And it slept turning back
and then throwing himself on the mercy of the Father
and saying, you know, I did, I made a mess

(01:11:24):
of it basically, and the Father says, you're my son.
And so I think the repentance is just that in
a way, it's it's being able to let go of
all this stuff and go back and go back to
the Father. And it's nothing to do with you know,
doing stuff and overcoming issues issues, and all that is

(01:11:45):
is that, you know, it may happen, it may be
part of the process, but it's it's not the way.
It's not the way we move. The way we move
is to turn back to the Father and say your
your will is what we need, Your love is what
we need, and we need to live in that and
the rest will just follow from that. Hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
Yeah, once again turned towards the light. Yeah. I'm going
to ask a question that it probably should have led with,
why does the church care so much about sex?

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
Oh, here's that one, Because it's about life, right. I
think the obsession with sex actually doesn't so much come
from the churches, with people constantly asking the questions of
the church. Because I don't know about you, but I
don't actually hear very much when I go to church.
I don't very hear very much in my sex, and
it's almost never in the sermons. So I don't think

(01:12:38):
it's you know, I don't think the obsession is quite
the churches, but maybe societies. But the Church does care
about sex very deeply because it's at the heart of
who we are as people, and because marriage particularly is
at the heart of the image of heaven. And I

(01:12:58):
think it's because, as I was saying earlier, you know,
our vision of heaven is this true union of all
in all all in Christ. And marriage is given to
us as the sort of first earthly taste of this union,
which is then fulfilled, you know, in the wedding banquet
of the Lord. And part of the concept of marriage

(01:13:21):
is precisely this joining together of the male and female,
which were set you know, as Maximus, that confessor says,
set we're one of the separations of creation. And so
it's it's coming back together in a union of perfect love,
where we can appreciate the other and the difference and

(01:13:42):
come together in union and be one and yet still
be twos as God is, you know, one and three,
and Christ is perfectly divine and perfectly human, and it's
all of the joinings together in which all of this works,
the joining together of the things that are different. And
so I think that's that's why, because sex is about

(01:14:03):
the joining together of the things that are different, and
so it's absolutely at the heart of the message of
the Gospel. It's possible. You can do this. You can
join together what's different, and you can do it in
perfect love, and it can grow in union, and it
can grow in union for a eternity.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
M beautiful brother, thank you for that. Thank you. It
was like, you know, it's just there's so many different
ways that that question could be answered and in just
like you do in your book, and just like we've
been talking, is the right way to try and do this?

(01:14:40):
Is sure you could have answered in a polemical fashion,
but but you chose to focus on the good and
what well, why do we talk about it? Because it's
beautiful if we don't just talk about why the ways
that you are are kind of screwing it up, the
ways that you're perverting the good. Well, let me tell
you how the vision of what's truly good and the

(01:15:03):
way that we're truly meant to live and it's it's
that that whole thing. Wow, when you paint that picture,
I want to live in it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Absolutely, Yeah, it's a gift from God. I've got some
big picture questions for you really relating to reality. Where
are we most eager to ignore reality?

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Well, I don't know. That's a that's an interesting one.
Where are we most ego to ignore reality? Well, probably
wherever it's the greatest challenge to our own autonomy. I think,
I think. I mean, it's something I actually I thought
earlier I should probably mention. Is the idea of escapism,
right that the part of the pornography temptation is the

(01:15:47):
escape from reality. In reality, I'm struggling to form a relationship.
I'm not meeting the people that I feel like I
can connect to. But in pornography, I can imagine. I
can imagine this. Yeah, I can take this image of
this person and make that person whoever I want them
to be and have that relationship however I want it
to be. And that's a huge temptation of a break

(01:16:08):
from reality. And you can understand exactly why that temptation exists.
It's very obvious and being lonely is a horrible thing,
and we've all experienced it at some degree. We know
we don't like it, and so we understand why there
are temptations to escape from it in an apparently easy way. Yeah.
So I think that's it's important to live in reality

(01:16:32):
because that's the only way of connecting with God in
the end, because God is ultimate reality, and because we
can't connect with anybody or anything. I mean, we can
connect ourselves with lots of unreal things, but they lead
to more unreal things, and we don't want that. We
actually want reality. We want to love really and be
really loved and be part of a real union. We

(01:16:54):
want to be able to create things that are real
and important and lasting and good. And we only we
only satisfy ourselves with the evil because we think we can't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
We can't it mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
And hard. It's hard work. It's sometimes very hard work,
trust me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
That's why each other well each other.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
And we have the Church, and we have the and
we have the Saints, and we have Christ ultimately, and
we have to keep returning to that. And it's hard
sometimes to do that, and we want to escape, but
it's hard, but we have to keep going back because
it's the only path. It's the only path that makes sense,
if the only path that needs anyway good in the end.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Well, a friend that we have in common. The first
person that had on this podcast was Frederica Matthews Green,
and I asked her. I said, well, what went through
your mind when you saw the name of this podcast?
Commitment to reality? She she got to give her answer,
and I said, well, I think that the most important
word is commitment. Yeah, but for me, because I mean, yes,

(01:17:55):
reality exists whether you realize it, admit it or not.
But it's making that commitment. And it's hard. I mean,
we've talked about words in it's watchfulness, it's it's it's
it's ascetical disciplines and practices. But hard things are almost
always worth it, Like do the hard thing, like you know,

(01:18:17):
going for a run. I don't always want to do it,
but I can say with the high degree of certainty
that I'm almost always happy that I did, unless I
like pull the hamstring or something.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
My best example of that confession, I never really liked
the idea of going, but I'm always really happy when
they come out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
It's a hard thing. No, you're right, I mean every
time you're like, oh man, going in and you just
there's and it's it's a really really good example. And
I'm glad that you brought it up because there's a
lot of people, especially well even Orthodox people might not
like to do it. But it's that concept of being
truly seen. And I say this to my kids just

(01:18:57):
the same way that you brought it up with yours.
I love you. Let me love you, not the mask,
I mean. And and you go in fearing the bad priest,
right or the judgmental priest, or the person who's gonna
tell you how bad you are. And and my experience,

(01:19:19):
I always walk away feeling loved and seen and and
and you know it's it's before the face of Christ.
And what can be more relieving, you know, is that
you see me and you love me.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
Astonishing is you know, I did? I did. I somehow
still to this day sometimes seem to imagine that I
can hide things from from Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
We're deluded, yeah, but in a world that feels increasingly unreal,
you know. By One of the other motivations for this
podcast is our world is changing rapidly, I mean, with
the assent of Ai and just I mean, I use
the term future shock all the time. I think it's

(01:20:11):
so funny because, you know, I think it was Charlton
Aston in promoting future shock. He was doing a documentary
on it, I think, and he's in a library and
he's like, look at all of this information. Man has
never had access to information like this ever before. And
we're experiencing a state of a future shock of paralysis.

(01:20:32):
And I remember watching that on YouTube and thinking he
had no idea. You thought that was future shock? Like this,
we are in shock, and so you know, we live
in this world. It's increasingly feels unreal. What do you,
Andrew Williams feels most real?

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
I think it's and I think this is why I
really appreciate my job, because I go in and talk
to people who have incredibly difficult lives, and it's an
enormous blessing. It's an enormous blessing to be able to
share the reality of the situation and to be open

(01:21:21):
to to to being there, you know, and and and
to understand why people want to avoid it or escape
from it or reinterpret it, but to just be able
to be there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
So I think I really value the ability to have
those really real relationships, even even when they're difficult or
sad and heartbreaking sometimes but they're but that's they're real

(01:21:55):
and and the people are real, and we're all in
this weird journey of live together. And yeah, I think
I sort of lost a bit of a taste for
the for the fake, and so I really appreciate those

(01:22:18):
those moments when people and you know, I've never met
more honest people than people in mental health wors and
and also people with such a genuine interest in the
reality of the spiritual life and what it means, often
masters of research and come up with some really quite
inventive answers, some tellius, but I mean the conversations are

(01:22:41):
always fascinating. What was that?

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
There was a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and I can't
remember what it was, but there was a character and
I think he won an Oscar for the for the performance.
But he was crazy. He was the only one who
saw things and said things as they truly were.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
They were uncomfortable told tradition of the you know, the
holy fool, which I think is really important. And sometimes
it is the person who will actually just say what
they see and when the rest of us are sort
of conforming to various societal requirements and not able to

(01:23:24):
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
Revolution Road I think was the movie. Uh yeah, And
what you're talking about, what my mind just drifts there.
You know, you're talking about suffering, and what feels real
is is being in the presence of suffering with another
I mean, not exclusively, but that's that's where my mind
goes when you're when you're talking about it. Yeah, and

(01:23:46):
the aforementioned justin Marler when I had him on the podcast,
he said that a monk when he was in the monastery,
he was a monk for a while, he said something
that shattered his paradigm. And I said, I want to
feel that, and I'm keeping it with me for the
rest of my life. Said, we're taught in our modern
world to avoid suffering. Suffering is evil, Suffering is bad.

(01:24:09):
And the monk told him when you're suffering. Now once again,
this isn't in a masochistic way where you seek out suffering, said,
when you're suffering, God's visiting you. And I mean, maybe
I'm reading too much into it, but when you say,
I mean you if you're with people who are suffering,

(01:24:29):
what feels most real to you, is the presence of God.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Yes, No, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right.
But and I would also say that that in the
midst of suffering there is also joy and that's also
the presence of God. Not always obviously, that the joy
isn't always there, but there are moments, there are moments
of joy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
Mm hmm. How because I can hear somebody saying, not
my suffering, I've never felt joy and suffering.

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
Well, maybe, And I think maybe that's the individual thing
as well, because I think it's when we when we
when we when we join together there, when we sit
in the place of suffering together, that we can find
the moments of joy even lefter. You know, I've I've
experienced times of lefter with people who are dying, with
people who are in the bits of terrible suffering. And

(01:25:22):
the humanity is humanity, and that that hope is always there,
and there there are moments that come, sometimes quite surprisingly
out of the blue, moments of joy and beauty.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Particularly beautiful bright sadness. Yeah, absolutely, will you talk about hope?
And I'd like to end that way, you know, for
a podcast on pornography, I feel like we didn't talk
about pornography a whole lot, which is kind of the point.
That's it's kind of like that that that that I've
read it before, where you know, a priest is told

(01:25:58):
somebody confessing. You know, you think your sins are special,
they're actually kind of boring. They're all the same. You know,
it's beauty and that's unique.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
Look at the same slaves.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
But you know, hope, hope for anybody who you know,
Glory to God, thank God. It's not something that I
personally struggle with in the in the more acute version,
not the because you did say that we all have
a pornography problem. But for somebody who's really struggling with pornography,
give them hope, give them a way out.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
Yeah, that's I mean, I think the way out in
all of these things is always real relationship. You have
to It's difficult because it requires being vulnerable, and being
vulnerable is a risk. Okay, whenever we take that step
to be vulnerable, we're taking a risk, and there are
people we can't trust and there are people who will

(01:26:55):
abuse that. So it's a difficult thing. But I do
think that the answer to to the problem is if
you have to find a place where you can make
yourself vulnerable. You have to find a person that you
can trust and make yourself vulnerable with. And when you start,
once you start to make that real connection, you understand
how much more that's worse than all of this fake stuff.

(01:27:20):
And I don't think there's anybody who choose this, this
imaginary reality for the real one once they've experienced the
real one. But I just think there's so many people
in this world that are lonely and that don't have
a person that they feel they can turn to and
actually willingly make themselves vulnerable. And so I think that's
that's the key, that's the key.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Vulnerability when properly harnessed, is a superpower, true vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
Not yeah, absolutely, but it's always a risk. It's always
a risk.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
I don't know if it's directly core a litive, but
it's right below. And I think, hey, if there's an
opportunity to bake this end to the end of the podcast,
why not? Because I read it and I thought it's
too good. Stand on the edge of the abyss and
when you feel it's beyond your strength, break off and
have a cup of tea.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
Do you know what I quoted that so often. Apparently
in one of the hospital justs that I worked in
that when I moved, when I left, as a as
a parting gift, they gave me a mug with that
quote on. So I have a mug and I drink
coffee out of it every morning with that quote right
on it. So I'll never never be able to escape it.
Now I don't want to because I think that's an

(01:28:35):
absolutely beautiful, beautiful quote.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
It will unpack it and then we'll leave. I mean,
why do you love that quote so much? Because I
saw it and I go, I don't know how to
work that in. It feels like I might have to
force it. But it's so beautiful because it's what we,
I mean, we're called to do. It's the watchfulness, and
it's it can feel so heavy.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
Yes, and I think it's just that it's just that
reality of it, isn't it that that? Yes? Okay, we
we want to be heroes, we want to do grand deats,
and sometimes we really struggle and we suffer and we
have to contemplate, you know, this existential gap, what's missing.
But but we have to also just be normal human
beings and say, actually, you know, I can I can

(01:29:18):
do this for so long, but I don't have all
that strength I need. I need a cap of perhaps
a couple of coffee if you.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
Context coffee, or you know, depending on the time of day,
maybe a recent you go have a pint. But Andrew Williams,
thank you so much. When I when I was conceiving
of this podcast, you were one of the people that
I wanted to talk to first and foremost because I
just really really appreciated your book. And I think, like

(01:29:49):
I said.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
I think because I wouldn't have done it without a
lot of pressure.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Well, it's just it's a it's a perfect example of
how you take a a subject that can be so
dark and the answer is light. Yeah. Yeah, So thank
you so much for joining me on commitment to reality.
I appreciate you, I love you, and I thank God
for you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Twice. Thank you.

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We ALL Have a Porn Problem | Andrew Williams

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