transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:09] Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the auditory journey to prayerfully keep you of the spiritual gurney. I'm your co-host, you probably love second most Ryan Bethea. Please join me today as we lift up our hands in jovial jubilation and welcome a man whose intellect is surpassed only by his repertoire of 90s rap, what he lacks in hair, he makes up for in prayer, and were he to found a luxury haberdashery or Christian apparel brand, it would be known simply as the Dominican Republic. He is an author, he is a speaker and seeker, a successor to the apostles, and if friendship were measured solely in inquiries into marketing advice, he would be my best man by definition. So please welcome a scribe who wants to imbibe the cure to make our speech pure, and let's put the pedal to those miraculous medals. It's time for my man, Father Gregory Pine.

Speaker 2:
[01:03] That was some of your best work. I think that you, like a mango, ripen with each passing day. You know how like when you get an unripe mango, you have to do dread battle and at the end of the day, most of it's like pit and you feel like you go home beaten? But if you get a good mango, it's just slurpy delight. I'm not saying you're slurpy delight is that would be a weird image, but I'm just saying that you, my friend, have come into your prime. You have not yet peaked, but you are on your way.

Speaker 1:
[01:31] Thank you. Thank you. Last night, I was like, I could just introduce him, but then I thought, you know what? The people need a good introduction. I haven't done one in a while. And also, since you absolutely despise marketing yourself and we'll be getting into a little bit of that today, I figured every good humble Catholic priest who is a scribe and author needs a Protestant marketer to help them get their message out there. So I want to start today because every time Father Pine on the show, God knows what's going to happen, which is actually a spiritual truth. But today, we are going to be talking about his new book, which deals with a topic. If you're an extrovert, this could be very triggering. So be careful. Fair warning, this book, Training the Tongue and Discussing the Sins of Speech. This is very convicting and I'll be totally honest. I read this book and was like, oh boy, this is something we all need to read. I'm not just saying that because he's my friend. In fact, because the book deals with lying, I'm not going to lie on this show. So the book is phenomenal and we'll hold up a little image here. Father Pine's latest addition to non-canonized documents. This is Training the Tongue. And while the cover art does resemble sort of a Rolling Stones album, just know that the truth contained within this volume is actually quite convicting. And on that note, Father Pine, I would like to humanize you a little bit because, you know, you walk around in some fancy tires, some habits that are hard to break. I want to ask you because this book was really convicting and you do mention a few sort of anonymized anecdotes, but what is the worst sin of speech or perhaps lie that you could share with the audience right now? One that's maybe like actually serious and then maybe a comical one.

Speaker 2:
[03:14] Oh, well, how about I just do both in one story?

Speaker 1:
[03:17] Great.

Speaker 2:
[03:17] So one time, okay, I'm going to anonymize a bit to spare those involved in the sitch. But basically, like I got an assignment to a new house, but I was still kind of part of the community at the old house. But I was experiencing my new freedom in my new digs. And there was a situation where I probably ought to have got back to the old house because we were like doing votes for this, that and the other pertinent responsibility. But I wanted to kind of flaunt my new freedom and establish what I thought were good boundaries by towing the line or holding the line. So I said like, what if we just do it via Zoom? Well, as we know, everything basically done via Zoom is less excellent than everything done in person.

Speaker 1:
[04:01] Which is why we're doing this over Riverside.

Speaker 2:
[04:03] Exactly. Heaven for Fenn that we use Zoom. Yeah, but when you're comparing apples and apples is, apples is, apples is, when you're comparing apples and apples and oranges and oranges, it's typically better in person than it is at a distance, unless the thing itself is terrible. And then maybe you profit from some distance, so that way you can answer emails in the background. But yeah, so it's like the community to which I pertained was in the middle of their like two and a half hour meeting, and they were just in the relative doldrums of their existence. And I was, I was a very different set of circumstances and I zoomed in, but I zoomed in whilst having pizza and beer. So they're like, they're closeted in their meeting space, just really going through it. And I'm still kind of part of this community to a certain extent, but I'm flaunting the fact that I can eat pizza and drink beer. And so there was like a kind of ill-placed or misplaced humor in the background, where I'm like, ah, this is funny. But it's not funny if you, a free man, are testifying to, you know, relatively speaking, unfree men, at least in the circumstances. And I just, I just offended every single person in that room. Unfortunately, there were like 50 people in that room. Like, all of my closest friends were in that room. So I got emails from my closest friends or just phone calls or just, I met up with a couple of them the next day. And they were raw about it. So I began a campaign of apologies. So like, on the one hand, it was like, yeah, they should get over. But on the other hand, I began to see like, no, I was being a jerk. I was being like a decent size jerk, in fact. So I began a kind of campaign of apologies. Campaign sounds wrong because it sounds like I'm trying to be elected for political office. But just a series of apologies where I apologize individually to like 50 people over the course of the next week and a half, which was brutal. But it did reaffirm for me that speech is for friendship, it's for communion, and when you use it contrary to that purpose, you can cause some serious damage. So kind of silly, but also kind of terrible.

Speaker 1:
[06:02] Wow. And just so for the record too, because you do mention this in the book, but I do want to get this on the visual record here, is that you are a priest and you are a holy man, but you also are a flawed person, and you have committed sins of speech, and you actually document several cases where you in fact have lied. Is that true, Father Pine? You've told a lie?

Speaker 2:
[06:23] That is true. Yeah, yeah. I would say that, so my mom was really sensitive to falsity, to untruth, to lies of whatever sort. And so it was the type of thing where it was ironed out of our personalities to the degree that one can. But still, in certain circumstances, I find myself just like not caring about the truth. Like I'm just telling a story and I'm peppering in details, and I kind of realize, I don't know if all those details are actually true. Like I don't know if those things happened. Or you catch yourself telling a story and it's actually somebody else's story, like didn't actually happen to you, or at least the way that you're recounting it is not how it transpired. The one that I recount in the book is, at one point, I was like serving a table, and one of the members of the community asked me like, is this fresh coffee? And I was just like, I was terrified because I was kind of intimidated by this person. And I was like, yes.

Speaker 1:
[07:15] And spoiler, it wasn't. It was not fresh. But then of course, you could have done a Clinton, but well, depends on what you mean by the word fresh.

Speaker 2:
[07:25] Yeah, exactly. So it had been made fresh six hours previously, which I think most people would acknowledge or agree is not fresh.

Speaker 1:
[07:32] So it was not fresh at some point. So I love this book and it's something that really is interesting because someone who is by trade a marketer, I found the book was a really beautiful journey of reflection because it did invite me to think about just the ways we speak. And I think as we all grow in Christ, I think hopefully those overt lies where you're just intentionally saying a mistruth without trying to do something good go down. But the thing that really got me is just what you said there is the either incidental or just accidental proclivity to say things that are untrue. And this book has actually helped me a lot because one of the ones for me, just in the spirit of also saying this, I had a habit of where I'd meet someone because I make friends fast and I really just, I love people. And I probably said this about you. So I'll just use you as an example where I meet you and we talk for like two hours. And I go, that was great. And then we'll follow up with a phone call like two weeks later. And then I'll be at some conference. And someone's like, do you know Father Pine? He's like, oh, Father Pine, like he's only one of my best friends, right? And like, that's, we are friends. We are friendly. We just met at that point. But that is also highly insulting to anyone who's actually a best friend. And I've had to start catching myself when I say little exaggerations and say, actually, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. And one of the best parts of your book is you say, if you do that, we're kind of reluctant because we think it's gonna be embarrassing, but actually it engenders trust. Because when you say a mistruth and you stop and you go, oh, you know what, actually, I don't know why I said that. Or actually, you know what, I'm being overly dramatic. Because there also is license, we're storytellers, and we're gonna get into this because there's a time and place for dramatic license and then there's a time and place to tell the truth. So why did you want to write this book? And what was the part that led you to say, I need to tackle this, the sins of speech? Was it just a shot across the bow for extroverts everywhere?

Speaker 2:
[09:20] Exactly, yeah. So it was because the publisher asked me to write the book. That's the reason for which I do many things, because somebody asked me to do them. That's the reason for which we recorded our new little series there, The Born Again Identities, because you're like, hey, we should do this. And I was like, nah. And then you're like, you stink. And I was like, that's also true, but I don't see how these things are related. But then eventually it happened and I'm glad it did. So the publisher asked me to do it. But I wouldn't say yes to just any book project. If they're like, I'd like you to write a book about how John Adams is a paragon of hairstyling virtue. Well, I mean, I don't know how passionate I am about that.

Speaker 1:
[09:59] Is it called Revolutionary Hair?

Speaker 2:
[10:01] Exactly. Yeah. I jumped at the idea because I thought that I had something to contribute on the matter. So a lot of people when they talk about sin, they're like, root it out, get it out. But when we focus on rooting it out and getting it out, sometimes we just have a one track mind and then we just end up thinking about sin a ton, which isn't the most edifying or it's not really the most sanctifying course of action. Because let's say you're successful at rooting out all the sins. Congratulations, you have an empty soul. Whereas if you focus your attention on cultivating virtues, then yeah, I mean, sins and vices might still crop up here and there, but they won't be nearly as troubling and they won't be as vexing. You'll be able to identify them and root them out because you're living a life towards the Lord and in the Lord. So I thought that people can profit from this emphasis of the Christian tradition on focusing on virtue and the way in which we can co-operate with God's gift of grace. So yeah, that made me excited.

Speaker 1:
[10:59] I appreciate it. You could have told a lie and say that there was a spiritual revelation to write this book on not lying in the sins of speech. Instead, you're like, no, the publisher asked me to. Now, okay, well, sometimes the truth is less exciting than the dramatic stories we tell. So could you set maybe a high level theological framework here for just the faculty of speech because especially in Protestant circles, it's really interesting because you have particular, I'll call it theological diversions into, there's a word of faith, there's this, there's kind of a focus on the faculty of speech and the parallels between how God spoke the universe into existence and how all animals, or should I say many animals communicate, but humans have this special gift of speech. And we have scripture that seems to suggest some weighty significance to speech. The power of life or death is in the tongue. James either was dealing with severe gingivitis and tongue disease when he said, the tongue is set afire by hell, or he knew an insight into it. And you think, okay, just given that ability, and also, a lot of Christians will talk about the importance of speaking God's word out loud and speaking it out and declaring it over themselves. So could you give us, maybe just set the table a little bit with just kind of a theological overview of like, the gift of speech, the faculty of speech, and why it's so significant?

Speaker 2:
[12:14] Yeah, I think like the main insight that I want to contribute is that speech is for communion. We're weird creatures because we live a bodily life in a spiritual key, or we live a spiritual life in a bodily key. There's nothing else quite like us. Angels, pure spirit. Animals, pure body. We alone are this spirit, body, whatever we are. And so we have aspirations to share our life, to like bridge the gap, to traverse the distance between one person and another. But yet we do it in a bodily life and like where your body is, my body cannot be. And so it's like, how's this going to work? So the basic idea is our faculty of speech gives us the capacity to kind of concretize our thoughts and affections so that we can communicate them to each other, so that we can have this experience of genuine sharing not just with each other, but with the Lord. And so, you know, I think you're right to point out the connection between our faculty of speech and the word proceeding from all eternity, because it's this spark in us, which is a sharing in God's very intelligence, that imparts the desire to really commune, or to commune in the way in which spiritual creatures commune. But on account of the fact that we have a body, we need to rely on our faculty of speech to kind of concretize, again, our thoughts and our affections, or at least to formulate them in a way that another person who is also embodied can pick up. Like, are you picking up what I'm laying down? And so when we think about it as order to communion, it really gives us insight as to the shape of our faculty of speech. It's not just like, blurgity, blurg, blurg, blurg, blurg. It's like, hey, do you know what I'm saying? Do you actually sympathize with what I'm feeling? Because I need that. Because otherwise, I feel like alienated, isolated, otherwise at a distance or otherwise like kind of trapped in my experience. The fact of the matter is that it can be broken open, and then I can enter into it with you, and we can enter into it together.

Speaker 1:
[14:10] Father Pine, as someone who does a lot of ministry, I am curious, just as we talk about just the sins of speech in general, can you share maybe some anonymized just from your work and dealing with people who've just confide in you this? What are the costs, the real costs that we're not maybe thinking about of lying, gossiping, slandering? I imagine, now you've shared some of the stuff in your own life, but obviously, you've met and discipled and ministered to so many people. What are some of just the stories, the cautionary tales that you would say, hey, I'm not just saying this because it's an intellectual exercise. There is a cost to the sins of speech, and James is right when he talks about the tongue can start a fire.

Speaker 2:
[14:54] Yeah. I'd say with falsity, a lot of people rely on falsity to get themselves out of sticky situations, but it never actually succeeds in getting you out of a sticky situation. So like, for instance, you do bad stuff and then you lie to cover your tracks. You put the other person in a real tough situation in the sense that either they call you out on your falsity and then you get enraged and your friendship suffers, or they don't call you out on your falsity and then they effectively despair of your capacity to enter into relationship and then your friendship suffers. So it's like when you start lying to your friends, you basically cut yourself off from the main source of correction and edification, you know, like encouragement and empowerment. You effectively isolate yourself and I have seen that happen.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[19:29] Yeah, I don't have specific things ready at hand or like particular instances that I can recall right now, but I think that most people experience it, just anecdotally, but without details. I think most people experience it as liberating to tell the truth. Now, there are certain things that you shouldn't necessarily burden other people with the knowledge of. My suspicion is that for the most part, the person whom you think you're deceiving is not deceived. They know at some level that you are deceiving them, and they're just waiting for a kind of confirmation, and that when you do come clean, you actually reestablish trust, and I think it's the only way in which to reestablish trust is to come completely clean. And that's true also for the sacrament of confession. It's like, let's say you got three mortal sins on your soul, and you say to yourself, all right, I think I'm in a position where I can confess two of these, and you go to confession and you confess two of them, but you withhold one of them. None of those sins are forgiven. You leave with four sins, the three with which you entered and the fourth that you accumulated, which is having made a blasphemous confession. So I think it's like, if you're serious about conversion, you have to be thoroughgoingly serious about conversion. Otherwise, it's something else. So I think that you're always responsible for telling the truth if the truth is asked from you or if the person, you get it. But you're not always responsible for recounting everything that's in your head or burdening other people with all of the thoughts that you have about them necessarily. So you can't lie, that's the basic idea. You're responsible for telling the truth, but you might be prudent in determining which truths you share.

Speaker 1:
[20:56] Essentially, we had an exorcist on, as one does on the show, and he mentioned that, and we'll get into spiritual war because I find it so interesting that the exorcist is just pummeling demons with truth, and the demons are liars and just saying untruths. Just that contrast is so seemingly poetically obvious and I love that. He said that the demons were claiming that one of the ways the Christian Church is actually tearing itself apart is through gossip and slander and a lot of these sins of speech. And it's kind of on wide display today because it seems like in our culture too that mistruth or untruth, as you said, is actually just kind of accepted. And sort of like this is how you have to play the game. So let me start with kind of the obvious one here as we talk about training the tongue, but telling untruths and lying. One of the things I found so interesting and I'm curious if you could break this down from a Catholic standpoint because I always assumed that lying, yes, is not good, but like especially and you lay out the classic case, which I was, I read this like, oh, he's going to use the example, right, of lying to the Gestapo and sure enough it is, right? It's like, all right, if presented with a terrible sort of Sophie's choice and you are forced to lie to protect someone, I don't think anyone would say, yeah, it's a great thing to lie to Nazis to protect human life, right? But you said something in there that was really interesting to me was that we still need to acknowledge that telling untruth is just not the optimal way to use your speech faculty, and so there's a cost to it. I actually thought of even just the Lord of the Rings example, which is really extreme, but the mouth of Sauron, there's a communicator for Sauron who speaks the evil tongue of Mordor, and his mouth is completely corrupted, the teeth are bad, and it's like the speech is so vile. It actually corrupts the tongue because of how untrue it is. So is that actually the case that lying is always a sin even if done with the intent of doing good or the obvious choice of doing good in the case you laid out?

Speaker 2:
[22:48] Yeah. So people can say material untruths and that not be a sin. If they don't actually know the circumstances, or if they just make a mistake. I'm over here trying to figure out who won the NBA title in 2014. I think it was the San Antonio Spurs. But if it wasn't, like I'm not guilty of a lying because I'm telling you that I'm uncertain, I'm saying what I think to be the case. It's a lie when we speak contrary to our understanding of the matter at hand with an intention to deceive. So it's specifically like I know what is, but I'm choosing to tell you something that is not because I don't want you to know what is. So the basic idea is that that's always a sin. But in the Catholic tradition, we acknowledge different kinds of sins. So there's a mortal sin, which is a sin in the strict sense, and that really kind of puts to death the life of grace in your soul, and it represents an obstacle to your relationship with God. So you need to go to the Sacrament of Confession to have those mortal sins healed. Whereas a venial sin, it's not really a sin, strictly so called. It's just kind of like a certain infelicity on the way to God. Whereas like, so the image would be, let's say you're driving down the road, a mortal sin is like a car crash. Whereas like a venial sin is getting off when you need food and finding out that there isn't like a Chipotle or a Chick-fil-A, there's just like a Roy Rogers and a Cinnabon. You're like, oh gosh. You're like, I guess we're going to eat ourselves a $7.26 cinnamon bun, which will make me feel like death. So it's like, it's kind of like an infelicity. So those are the types of things which you can deal with by blessing yourself with holy water, saying the confederate at the beginning of a mass, whatever. You just like spiritual works tend to deal with vinyls. Oh, receiving holy communion. So when it comes to sins, three different kinds of sins, there's like what are sometimes called officious sins, where you, well, I should say three different kinds of lies. Officious lies where you lie to help somebody. That's typically acknowledged as a vinyl sin. Jukos lies where you lie because you like think that lying is fun or it's funny. So it's like, hey, wait, check out. No, go outside right now because your car's on fire. Like that's a jukos lie. And then you've got like pernicious lies or malicious lies, which you sin to hurt somebody. And those are typically acknowledged as mortal sins. So like you lie to get somebody in trouble at work because you want that person fired so you can take their spot or whatever it is. So in the case of lying to the Gestapo officer, you're terrified. Like, so there's a sense in which you're not even free. This is barely a voluntary act because you're wetting yourself at the very moment where the question is asked. So that would tend to mitigate against culpability. But I think most people would say like, at worst, it's a venial sin. So I think what we're trying to do is avoid situations in which we feel like we need to tell a lie because you never need to tell a lie. But there might be situations in which we're responsible for safe, like safeguarding people or protecting people. And we don't have a good way to tell the truth and not betray those individuals. So that's where we're looking for like a kind of evasion or something like that, dot, dot, dot. You get it.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[30:02] Yeah, I think the risk is that we become less human or we become less real. I think that I want people with whom I speak to know that I'm telling them what I think. I want them to know where they stand with me. This is going to take a different shape in different cultures because you have different kind of sensibilities as to courtesy or politesse. But I want them to know, when I say something, it's not to butter them up. It's not to get from them something in return. It's not to whatever, expedite my social or political aims. It's because I think it's worth saying. It's because I think it's true. And I think that a lot of us are worried that other people don't really like us and we're completely content with the untruths because it helps us to get through another of the otherwise complicated life. But the fact of the matter is that we're going to have to reckon with the fact that we are beloved. Like we're beloved of the father and it's possible to be beloved of other individuals here on the surface of the earth, but we're going to have to grow into that vulnerability. We're going to have to grow into that recognition. And so like I want people to know where they stand when it comes to me and I like to repeat to them like, no, I actually like you. All right, I actually think you're great. I actually find in you something worthy and worthwhile. When you've trimmed the fat of falsity or when you've otherwise pruned the bad growth of untruth, then people know that they're dealing with the real deal, that they're dealing with the goods. Not to say that, not to speak of myself as the real deal or the goods, but just to say the truths that you communicate are truths that have been formed or forged in contemplation and that you're not just saying them, you really intend them. And so I think that when we become the type of person whose word counts, whose word matters, that people recognize, you know, gives testimony or witness to a word that has real weight, then that can actually draw us closer together in communion. I think that's the promise.

Speaker 1:
[31:46] And the thing I appreciate about your book too is that you recognize that even if you are telling a lie for an ultimate good, to save someone's life, you also mentioned the aforementioned, which I do want to get on the record. Many of us have individuals who come to us and say, Father Pine, does this look good on me? Right? And the truth, my uncle had a phrase, always tell the truth, but the truth need not always be told. This was his advice for when people came to you asking for truth, but he didn't really think they wanted it. The aforementioned, if someone's wearing something that looks ridiculous and they want to know the truth, but you don't think they do, what's the protocol there based on the Sins of Speech?

Speaker 2:
[32:24] You've seen the movie About Time, we've talked about this, right?

Speaker 1:
[32:26] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[32:27] That scene where, I don't know how you pronounce his first name, but Dear McGleeson is sitting in the chair and Rachel McAdams is coming out and she's asking him what he thinks about a variety of different dresses. And he just keeps telling her like, looks great, looks great, looks great, looks great, looks great. And he's like, he's at his wits end as she tries on option after option after option. And then eventually, like she just comes back with the first option says, I think I'll do this. I think that's it's interesting, you know, like not all women are like that. But this particular woman demonstrates that she's not necessarily looking for you to say something kind of over the moon in the affirmative. She's looking to kind of weigh your opinion, weigh your judgment as she kind of weighs her opinion and weighs her judgment on the matter. So I think that, like sometimes we think that a lie is being asked from us when it actually isn't being asked from us and so we give it as a kind of point of courtesy, but actually it doesn't help the individual and it certainly doesn't help us. So I think that in those situations without being like a brat, we should actually ask the question like, what does this person want?

Speaker 1:
[33:29] Okay, so we're talking about lying and dishonesty. One question that immediately jumped out to me when reading your book is, and I'm being serious here, is what about those who work in espionage, marketing, CIA agents? What if your job is to assume a false identity? This sounds like a fringe example, but there's an entire industrial complex that involves trafficking in information and false identity, statecraft. So what are your thoughts on that? Because lying is, no matter what, not good for the human soul. Does that mean I can, like to all our, I know we have a huge CIA audience here listening, you know. What would you say to that?

Speaker 2:
[34:11] Rivaled only by the FBI audience. Yeah, so first thoughts are, I don't think that there was a CIA or an FBI in the garden. So what we're talking about is a dispensation in which sovereign nations don't trust each other because they're like bad people doing bad things. We're worried that those bad people are going to do bad things to us. And so I think that this is a post lapsarian phenomenon. You're hoping that the word post lapsarian would be used on this podcast.

Speaker 1:
[34:39] Oh, that was on my bingo card. Got it.

Speaker 2:
[34:41] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, bingo. So this is a thing for fallen people. Yeah. Now, in our fallen world, are we able to navigate various temptations and trials without falling into sin? Yeah. Okay. So how do we manage this? I'm not sure as to whether all intelligence agencies are in fact good things. I'm just going to say that. I hope that's not too controversial. But we've seen in the past that the FBI has been weaponized against good people for reasons of social or political ideology, which is scary. Okay. So they've got a lot of power, but it's not immediately evident that that power is always going to be used well. I remember reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Jean Le Carre, which is fictional. But there's a little prologue in the edition that I read, which was written by a member of MI6 or a retired member of MI6. And he was talking about all of the double agency that took place during the Cold War. And he said, truth be told, it probably would have been better had we not had an intelligence agency at the time, because on account of the fact that our intelligence agency was totally compromised, it ended up getting a lot, a lot of people, good people behind the Eastern Bloc or in the Eastern Bloc killed. And so I think that we all just kind of assume that intelligence agencies are absolutely necessary, that they're all doing good work and that we would be totally hosed without them. Whereas I don't know if those assumptions are actually accurate. Nevertheless, intelligence agencies often deploy certain limits or they have like certain bounds on the type of deceptions which they will engage. So like, for instance, the US intelligence agencies, apparently, they'll never impersonate a priest or they'll never do kind of information gathering by seduction. Those types of things for them are out of bounds. So, maybe other intelligence agencies? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:22] How do we know that?

Speaker 2:
[36:25] Based on the testimony of an intelligence officer with whom I spoke on the issue.

Speaker 1:
[36:30] Okay. All right. Take your word for it. AKA. Sins of Speech. Go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[36:34] There you go, bro. Yeah. Other intelligence agencies obviously aren't ascribulous. The Russians were somewhat famous for kind of crass impersonations and information gathering by seduction. But I think that even those in the industry recognize that there have to be certain limits. I'd be inclined to say the limits are more strict than they are currently at present. But here we are on the surface of the earth just plotting our way through. I know that's a somewhat dissatisfactory response, but I think it's necessary to say.

Speaker 1:
[37:02] I'm inoculated against dissatisfactory responses with you, so it's okay.

Speaker 2:
[37:06] Oh, thank you. This pleases me.

Speaker 1:
[37:08] But again, it would fall into the same category of lying to the Gestapo. Say you're an undercover agent. Not only getting at this, because I think it's just interesting, is all lying, all bad, all the time. Or, for example, say someone is in order to bust up a drug ring, and an agent courageously goes, and I ask this because my family comes from law enforcement, and if you're going undercover, it's like, yeah, you are assuming a false identity, you are lying to stop an evil. So is that still a venial sin?

Speaker 2:
[37:39] My first thought is that it is. I think I have to say that in order to be consistent, but this is the weakest link in my theory. I had an extended conversation with Janet Smith. I think it was couched in the form of a debate about lying, and this is where I felt like, yeah, that's tough to reconcile. So lying is specifically speaking contrary to what you understand for the purpose of deception. Now, when you assume a false identity, that's like simulation, which is a different thing, or when you let other people think that you are someone other than you are, that's dissimulation.

Speaker 1:
[38:12] Acting.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] Yeah, well, that's a genre. So that's to say, there are certain genres in which it's totally understood that you're acting, or that you're exaggerating, or that you're hyperbolizing, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:
[38:25] Or you get a reality theater and then the line gets really blurred, right?

Speaker 2:
[38:28] Yeah, exactly. Once you start breaking the fourth wall, things start coming undone. But you get the idea. You have to be able to recognize the genre. So when I tell a joke that involves mild deception, for instance, provided that it's recognizable as pertaining to the genre of joke, then you're in the clear, my friend. So it's one speech act. It's got a kind of integrity and a kind of coherence to it, and people recognize it as such. So we don't have to work. Yeah, you get it.

Speaker 1:
[38:54] What would you say to people whose job, for example, asking for a friend, advertising, marketing, where highlighting and actually your job is to actually cultivate influence on behalf of an organization, lobbyists, et cetera. I mean, sincere question for people whose job is to sort of traffic and influence and sort of win human beings over to their side. What would you advise as the line there with marketing? Because there, again, this book was so powerful for me too, because they're obviously, so I have a creative agency and we do awesome work and we try to really pray and discern and say what products would we use? Is this something we support? And obviously, just because I wouldn't use something, doesn't mean there's not value to it or special, but we have turned down products that we say we don't actually believe in this, etc. But whenever I deal with this, sometimes when brands will go over stuff in meetings and there's points where it's like, okay, do I want to say this? But actually, that's not true for me, that's true for someone else. So I wrestle with that quite a bit sometimes, because obviously, there's a lot of pressure to say, well, just go with this, but we're just, I don't know if what's being said is true. So there's just what considerations would you have for marketers, advertising, anyone in that field?

Speaker 2:
[40:12] Yeah. I think that typically you want to find yourself in a situation where you're promoting a product that you actually believe in, that you actually hope can have a good effect on the people who will use it in due course. So I think it's just like good principles of marketing is you shouldn't oversell and you shouldn't undersell. You should sell proportionate to the excellence of the product. Because when your word is proportionate to the excellence, then people trust you. So it's like people ask like, which are the books that you wrote? Do you like the best? I try to tell them exactly what I think. Because if I'm like, all of them are tremendous, then they read one and it's like not as good as another one. They're like, this guy has a somewhat unscrupulous opinion of his own products. So perhaps I'm less inclined to believe him in the future. Whereas when you say like, this one's like a seven, this one's like an eight, and this one's like an 8.4. And people are reading, they're like, that's, yeah, I'd be interested in seeing if this guy can turn out an 8.6 at some point. So I think that a marketer should find himself in a position where he's promoting products in which he believes that he hopes can be good for the consumer and that he's doing so with the kind of enthusiasm which was proportionate to the excellence of the product. Obviously, we don't want to promote things which are bad. We want to promote things that are good. I think we should be ever so slightly nervous in trying to create new needs in people's lives. You know, like a person didn't know about this product until such times you foisted it upon him. Like that's a risk, I think. So we might find ourselves in markets in which there is competition and we should be trying to provide good products that are better than their, you know, whatever competing products. But I just don't think that we should be like creating new desires that don't actually correspond to human needs and human flourishing.

Speaker 1:
[41:57] Then it brings up the question of, can you run for office and read this book and adhere to its principles? I don't know. That is a tough one.

Speaker 2:
[42:03] I don't know if you can definitely run for office. I don't know if you can win. John McCain was famous for being a good dude, but then he lost.

Speaker 1:
[42:12] Moral of the story. There you go. There's a cost, right? There's a cost to following God. All right, let's move beyond lying. You bring up a couple other things that are really interesting. So, gossip, slander, things that the Christian Church has different names for. In the South, I think it's called bless their heart. You say things that just, you know. But what is going on? Humans are obviously wired to want novelty, and it is actually a natural inclination because I imagine in previous day, long before the aforementioned Zooms were possible, someone would come into town. You want to know what's the news, right? You can't be everywhere at all places, so you want to know things. But obviously, like many things, that deteriorates into the sinful nature of gossip and slander, et cetera. So what are your thoughts there? What's going on and how can we best protect ourselves against that?

Speaker 2:
[43:02] Yeah. Basic ideas, again, we want communion, and when we give up on the prospect of genuine communion, we'll often settle for fell communion. And so, yeah, like maybe we've been hurt and we want to hurt someone back, or maybe we've been left out in the cold, and so we want to get ourselves as part of an in-group, whatever it is. There are various reasons for which we traffic in insights or we traffic in other people's stories. I think like gossip tends to be born of idleness in the sense that like we're going to talk about something we say to ourselves, may as well talk about this something. And like we, unless we have edifying topics of conversation ready at hand, we will settle for dis-edifying topics of conversation. And we really do like to kind of gaze into the existences of other people. If we suspect that they're better than us, we like to do it as a way by which to tear them down. If we suspect that they're worse than us, we like to do it as a way by which to vaunt over their fallen corpses, whatever it is, you know, but like, the fact is we're wired for communion. And if we don't get good communion, we will settle for bad communion.

Speaker 1:
[44:11] This brings up the question of, you're right, because when we're not talking about edifying things, it does degrade into, and I find this in comedy a lot too. I really admire comedians that can do it without descending into vulgarity, because it does seem to be, is that just a reflection on a human nature that in the absence of like a good conversation, it typically just turns into trash talking someone else?

Speaker 2:
[44:32] I think so, yeah, honestly, because it can be difficult to host an edifying conversation without feeling hoity-toity. Like if somebody tries too deliberately to curate a conversation, you can feel kind of strung along. Because conversation should be a kind of verbal adventure. It should be like a journey of discovery in which all persons present are welcome to participate. But that requires that each person has a kind of verbal culture, like has a vocabulary and a grammar of a sufficiently refined sort as to actually pitch in. Because if not, then we're just all just kind of gathered around the campfire, just grunting and groaning, griping and complaining. Because that's the thing that occurs most readily to us as fallen creatures who are slouching by virtue of the weight of original sin towards a progressive, whatever it is, devolution. So I think it's like, yeah, I mean, if we're going to be redeemed in our speech, then we're going to have to be saved, like saved from the wreck of humanity. And that means consenting to and cooperating with the grace that God gives. But that, yeah, I mean, it's going to be a little bit of an effort. Obviously, it comes more spontaneously with people who are good at repartee and raconteing, whatever that word is, made that up, felt right. But I think that we should be about that business in every opportunity.

Speaker 1:
[45:48] All right. There's an old debate that Paul uses the word for rubbish that is sort of the Greek vernacular for, you know, the S word. And so, one, is that true? But two, where is profanity? What's the deal there? Because I, and it's funny, I have a lot of devout Christian friends who do swear quite a bit. And beyond just saying, okay, yes, there are more polite things to say, or that's kind of crass. But is swearing in of itself sinful?

Speaker 2:
[46:17] I tend to think that it's not sinful in and of itself. I can be wrong on this. But my general thought is this. I think that these types of words are typically sourced from the bedroom and the bathroom. So they're the types of things that pack a little punch, they pack a little wallop, because they describe human experiences of like a visceral sort. It's also the case, though, that the bedroom and the bathroom, they're places of vulnerability. And I think that the way they treat that vulnerability is with humor, with a mild violence, with a kind of, yeah, disrespectful spirit. And I'm just worried about the effect of that because I think it makes people less likely or potentially less likely to open up and to share. So does that mean that your speech has to be like super prim and proper? I don't think so. But like, here's the thing. What do we want when we say a crass word? It's often like a crass word packs a little bit of a sonic slap, and it helps us to name our experience with potent emotion that helps us to kind of get through, get over, whatever, get beyond it. I think that we just, again, need more in the way of moral creativity. We need to be able to process our experience to like navigate our experience with some measure of freedom. Now, it's like also, I mean, I still say crass words with, I mean, it's not like dread frequency, but from time to time, because I think it does do that, in the sense that it does pack a wallop, that it does give you that sweet sonic slap. It can just be helpful to call a thing by its right name. But I worry that we lose the capacity to devise or to divine better names, more appropriate names, names that actually help us identify what's at stake, both like our thoughts and our feelings on the matter and the actual reality itself. I also think that it can tend to degrade a conversation or it gives people permission to introduce other sins of speech. If we're using crass words, then this is a place in which you can feel free to gossip. I worry about that as well. Those are my initial thoughts. You should feel free to differ though.

Speaker 1:
[48:09] Talk to you about sarcasm and snark. This one hits home. I am very sarcastic. I love sarcasm, but I've actually heard some really interesting positions on this, that sarcasm, even because it has some truth in it, but it's just a way to sort of sugarcoat insulting. I thought, hmm, that is interesting. What are our thoughts on sarcasm and snark?

Speaker 2:
[48:33] Again, I don't think that it's intrinsically evil. In your case, whenever you do sarcastic things, it's usually set within an overall context of earnestness. I think that that's important. I begin to wonder when somebody is so sardonic or so caustic that I don't actually know what he or she is thinking, then I get worried. Because I think if irony becomes a smoke screen whereby you conceal your fundamental commitments, then it becomes really difficult to relate to you. It becomes really difficult to interact with you. I sometimes find myself talking to folks like this, and it's like I want to like lay hold of him and be like, what do you actually think? What do you actually feel? Because it's only on the basis of what you actually think and what you actually feel that we can share our lives. And I want to share my life without being too kind of handholdy or kumbaya-y about it. Nevertheless, I just kind of give up on trying to understand people who are totally, totally ironic. And I do worry too that that gives rise to a certain societal ill of like truth and difference that at the end of the day, I don't know how much we're trying to actually tell the truth. We're kind of just giving up on the truth as a prospect for us because we're completely content to just kind of play around with our circumstances rather than actually commit to our circumstances. So I suppose, yeah, those would be my worries.

Speaker 1:
[49:49] When James says that may your yes be yes and your no be no and anything else is from the evil one, is he just simply saying that, hey, like the devil's a liar and the more you lie, you become just like the enemy or is there also, and again, this is a bit out there, but one thing I've wondered about is if there's such a thing as if there is like a spiritual economy and God is the like apex of it, he's the absolute truth, right? What he says goes. It's just like, am I a man that I should lie? And humans fall woefully short of that, but is there something about where the spiritual realm like sees us and when we say yes to something and do it, and we see that our actions correspond with our word, you know, I've often wondered like when I meet people and they seem to have just that extra something that's spiritual, like maybe we call it an anointing or just, there's just like, you feel like, yeah, like you were saying earlier, like, wow, this person, like they're leading me well. Like, they say, what's up? Is that, is there like a deeper spiritual truth there that like when our actions match our yes, you know, like that verse suggests that there's almost like a spiritual ramification to that. Maybe the heavenly host kind of takes notice of that.

Speaker 2:
[50:56] Yeah, what you call anointing, I might call vim and vigor. I'm always looking for opportunities to pair that with vim and vigor.

Speaker 1:
[51:02] That sounds like a speakeasy that we're going to start.

Speaker 2:
[51:04] Nice. Yeah, I can't rule it out. Yes. So, I think that there's a way in which you become more so if you live your life in accord with the truth. So, like, we're all either passing out of existence or coming into the fullness of life, depending upon how we choose to live our lives. And I think that we have to be confident that regardless of what happens, that the Lord will make all things work to the good for those who love him or are called according to his purpose, that he won't let us be tried beyond our strength, that will provide a way through. And I think that when we demonstrate that trust in life, that we grow into it, like, we become more substantial by virtue of the fact that we've seen it apply to our lives, we've seen it kind of cashed out in our lives. And so I think it's like, let your yes be yes, let your no be no. I think it's like the Lord is counseling against a certain vacillation, a certain spirit of distrust, a certain kind of conniving or manipulating type approach to reality, which is trying to get out of it, to get out of certain effects or certain consequences but doesn't trust that God is actually provident and governing, that He is actually seeing to it, that all of these things ultimately lead to His glory and our salvation. So yeah, I think that when we can steward our words in that way with trust in God, in God most high, then we grow into it. Then our conversion kind of fleshes out what we profess, such that we ourselves become a kind of confession of faith.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] Well, we're going to wrap up this section and we have a special Q&A from, we have a few audience members who have written in to want to ask Father Pine something about the sins of speech. But Father, what would be your just personal recommendation, your hope, what are the ways that you would hope people would read this book and that they would, next steps they would take as far as avoiding the sins of speech and the best way to implement this in our lives?

Speaker 2:
[52:58] Yeah, I think just to see each chapter is an opportunity to cultivate a certain virtue and to think about those virtues as making us more docile to God's prompting and then filling out our character and then acknowledging how sins of speech do crop up in our lives, not taking that as an occasion for further self-accusation, but taking that as an occasion for a yet fuller reliance or dependence upon the Lord who proves himself provident, who governs all things strongly and sweetly. And, yeah, just maybe taking the next step, and that might involve certain resolutions or certain promises as to how we conduct ourselves in the months to come, but all of it should be underwritten with the kind of sense that God who has begun a good work in us will see it do completion.

Speaker 1:
[53:41] Amen. All right, we're gonna go to some Q&A. All right, our first question comes in from a listener, asks, what are the sins of speech mainly committed on social media right now? Oh, spicy. Great question.

Speaker 2:
[53:57] Yeah. Detraction is when you say true things kind of out of turn. Slander is when you say false things out of turn. Gossip is when you just kind of chatter idly as a way by which to pass the time, especially when it concerns other people. Whispering, sometimes called susseration, is when you seek to actively undermine people's relationships. Derision, mockery, I'd say those would be the main ones that you see on social media. There's also a lot of lying, or a kind of genre of lying where it's like you're not even trying to tell the truth. You're not even caring about the truth. Some people call it like poppycock, malarkey. Some people use the word BS, where it just it floats totally freely from the actual real order. And so you see all those things in spades.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] Also, posting too many memes or cat videos could also construe venial sin, right?

Speaker 2:
[54:51] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[54:52] Okay. All right. Okay. This is very interesting. Father Pine, Obi-Wan Kenobi famously told Luke Skywalker that Darth Vader both betrayed and murdered his father. And then later when confronted by this, when Luke Skywalker confronts his hologram or ghostly apparition of Obi-Wan Kenobi in force purgatory, said, he's like, you told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father after Luke discovers that Darth Vader is in fact his father. And Obi-Wan Kenobi, famous response, what I told you was true from a certain point of view. Lying or not? What is that?

Speaker 2:
[55:32] Yeah, I think that's probably a lie. It also made it harder for Luke to experience the whole yikes, I've got one arm experience. So I understand what Obi is trying to do. But whenever we tell people certain things as a way by which to motivate certain reactions or certain behaviors, we're puppeteers, you know? Like at the end of the day, you can't control people, manipulate people by just curating what they know of reality. You know, parents are going to say, well, I only tell my kids so many things. That's true, but I don't think you should teach them falsities. I realize this makes me come down hard on the whole Easter Bunny type, whatever, Santa Claus question. We can have that conversation on another day. But I think people should learn to trust you, and they should not have reason to distrust you. I think you can entrust people with the truth, and you might say to yourself, maybe not all of the truth at this stage of the game, because, quote, you can't handle the truth. But nevertheless, whatever I share, it should be rooted in the truth. That's what I think.

Speaker 1:
[56:30] You're saying if someone pressed under oath and was asked point blank, if he ordered the code red, even though he has the Fifth Amendment, and he lies under oath to protect the fact he swore an oath to honor his commanding officer, that that is an understandable tension. But nonetheless, you should still confess that you did, in fact, order the code red.

Speaker 2:
[56:53] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[56:54] There's actually a great scene in that movie. So, A Few Good Men, one of my absolute favorite movies in the world, it's Keith Sutherland, is Lieutenant Kendricks, and I think it's his name, and he testifies, and they go hard at him, and he's like, I respect only two authorities. He's like, my commanding officer and the King James Bible. It was like two or three things. And then at the very end of the trial, they ask him, did you order the code red? And he just looks and he goes, and he just has this quick glance at his Bible, and he looks up and he goes, no, I did not. And it's so beautiful because it just shows that tension. They're like, oh, he just lied under oath. So, great movie, definitely check it out. Jack Nicholson, You Can't Handle the Truth, fantastic. All right, last question from our audience here. Does God have a sense of humor as we talk about speech? And since humans are funny, can we infer that since we're made in God's image, he also must dabble in hilarity at times?

Speaker 2:
[57:55] I think God does have a sense of humor, but in a certain sense. You ready for this? Okay, so the way that we experience a sense of humor is often at the crossroads of bodily and spiritual life. So like silly bodies wed to weird souls, just doing their strange things, whereas God doesn't have a body. So I don't think that for him, like it doesn't register in the way in which it registers in us. But I do think that God has a way of delighting with a playful spirit in making these types of creatures and engaging with these types of creatures. God doesn't laugh in so far as laughter is the type of thing which a rational creature only ever experiences in its bodily life. But nevertheless, I do think that God experiences delight, not in the way that we experience it, but in the way that he experiences it. So I think that all of the proper perfections of hilarity and a sense of humor pre-exist in God in a higher way, because he's the cause of our hilarity, he's the cause of our humor, and in so far as it's good, it's got to have him as its source. But I think it's going to look a lot different than what we might imagine. Obviously, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ, that's a particular instance because he does have a human nature, and so, yeah, you get it. We don't hear about him laughing, but Chesterton suspects that that's the big kind of omission from the Gospels that need be redressed by writing the book Orthodoxy.

Speaker 1:
[59:17] Well, I have thought about it. I was like, you know, God is infinitely content. He can be grieved, but I was thinking, man, God could never watch the usual suspects or the sixth sense without knowing the ending. That would be tough, right? He knew, like, he's up there going, this is great, I mean, I knew he was dead all along, right? So, and then in the aforementioned Obi-Wan example, should we have AI retroactively fix it and go, what I told you, Luke, was true at the time, because my writer had not actually figured out what was going to happen. And so that would actually hit a little less hard, right? So at the time we wrote the first movie, Luke, that was what was true. And now it's changed.

Speaker 2:
[59:53] Is that true? Did Lucas go in there without full storyboards?

Speaker 1:
[59:56] I think so. I don't think he knew in a new hope what was going to happen.

Speaker 2:
[60:00] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[60:00] Also really cool by Alec Guinness, right? He was a very successful actor at the time and they couldn't afford him, so they gave him points on the back end. So I think he made more money on Star Wars than anyone else, because the rest of the crew was relatively unknown. So anyways, well, Father Pine, it is always a pleasure to have you on the show. And even though I understand merely a third of what you say, that third is nonetheless two-thirds of my enjoyment for the show. So I appreciate you being here. Thank you for writing. Thank you for your friendship. And may we all train the tongue and learn to be better stewards of the truth. Because in the words of Jack Nicholson, it is true, some of us can't handle the truth.