Hello, welcome to the Theology Pug Cast, P-U-G, not P-O-D. Anyway, the reason why I stress that is the AI that transcribes our episodes has been getting it wrong for like ever. And I'm just, it's an experiment. I want to see if it actually corrects it for me or not. But it's the Pug Cast. And we're glad to have you here. I'm Sierra Wiley. I'm a pastor and I'm a senior editor at Touchstone Magazine. How about you Glenn? I'm Glenn SanChine. I'm a retired history professor and I write and do freelance speaking and teaching some and a few other tricks. OK. All right, Tom, take us into the show, but introduce yourself first. OK. I'm Tom Price. I'm a theologian in Christian ethicist. I teach both at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and I minister at a church in Connecticut. Topic of the day. This is a fun one. It comes from an article by someone that I know where all three fans of and I imagine a lot of our listeners are Malcolm Geight, the ever interesting Malcolm. And it is called in defense of pint and pipe. All right. And I like even the sub part of the title, smoking and drinking, carry-known risks. But here's why I haven't given them up. Yeah, yeah, me neither. But anyway. Yeah, no, I really shouldn't be having my tea right now. There sounds like I should be aiming at something else. It does. And if you if you usually catch him, he's either got the pipe rolling or the scotch flowing. Or both. Yeah. All right. Well, he had Malcolm on the show before. So it was fun to talk about something he's written. Something. Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things I think that caught my eye about it is kind of a contrast that he he makes at the beginning, which I think is an important one to think about regularly as as Christians in our disposition towards certain kinds of creaturely things in the world. And kind of the difference that Christianity brought to that relationship that we sometimes forget about and sometimes we lose sight of. And I think it's a it's a good one to get get a hold of. But he begins and it's worth kind of me reading it. He begins talking about one of the kind of cultural obsessions that has come by what has become a strange, almost ironic, unhealthy stance towards being healthy. Yeah. All right. So he says, we live in an age when at least in the affluent West, there is something of an obsession with bodily health, with healthy lifestyles, healthy eating and drinking. And a constant cycle of new diets, regimens, vitamin supplements and exercise fads. And of course, attendant on these and fueling their consumer ratings, a rash of hypocondria, self-diagnoses, health scares based on spurious medical blogs, etc. The one thing all these trends, however helpful or harmful, have in common, is an essentially mechanistic and reductive account of health or in the current jargon, wellness itself. Yeah. Yeah, I've certainly noticed what he's talking about. It's funny, you know, you look at old like video from like the 70s and 60s when everybody was smoking and everybody was just like living without thinking much about this kind of stuff. It was in better shape. They just look thin. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's, I don't know if it's just because of meeting ages older or whatever, but I do think that people generally didn't think about this stuff as much in those days. I remember those days. And generally, you know, at least if the photographs aren't lying, we're healthier. Yeah. And well, actually, I, I rather like the way he expresses this as a mechanistic and reductionistic view of health or wellness. I did an article for breakpoint years ago, which is probably no longer on their site on Christians and holistic health. And you know, when you, when you look at the various holistic health things, a lot of them are drawn from medical theories coming out of Asia, either China or these days, I have a medicine out of India's probably just as common. And the thing about those is that, well, at least some of the stuff really does work. We can't explain why. We don't know why it does what it does. In their case, they have a theory of health that is based primarily on their metaphysical concepts around energy, whether you call it cheer prana or whatever. It connects, I would argue, it connects into something that's real about the world that we miss. We, on the other hand, have a view of the body that's used it as biochemical machine. And that works for some things, but it doesn't work for everything. In both cases, they're operating off a metaphors. Yeah. And in there, that's what you're talking about as a place I want to definitely be directing things, especially the issue of their metaphysical vision, because I do think that I think Malcolm is getting to that in a very literary and kind of everyday way. And then I'm going to move to those kind of questions. And I'm going to look at some of the work that I'm finding recently. And some of the work Lewis did, I think, on the same topic that really starts to get a hold of the fact that we as Christians, when we held to a much richer metaphysic, actually had resources to deal with this kind of stuff and not end up in these divisions between mechanistic view of health that you have to renounce all kinds of creaturely good things, nor inordinate kind of jumping into indulgence where you don't consider the fact that you also have a temple that is your body, and there are certain goods to cultivate. But I like how he picks the second paragraph. He goes, it is assumed that the body is essentially a machine. So we are definitely in this, this is the world we're familiar with, the world technology manipulates a linked series of mechanical processes whose performance can be optimized by ensuring the best input in terms of food and supplements and the best output in terms of exercise. There is an analytic attention to food and drink in terms of nutrients, fiber and alcohol content, but no consideration of the ambiance, the culture, the atmosphere, nuance, regarious and social aspects of eating and drinking. No consideration of their meaning or the part they play in the richness depth and happiness of human life considered it as a whole integrated experience. Most of the advice we are given on how to live a healthy life ignores or undermines the intangibles. The unmeasurable qualities as opposed to the measured quantities which make that life worth living. And I think this is where the question that is going to, you know, gets into what I think, you know, the holistic health and stuff tries to address from different traditions is for a Christian, you know, what does it look like for us if we actually affirm the reality of the human soul and try to imagine the consequences of taking that seriously. And I think that's a good beginning point. That's a point that a brilliant work which is actually addressing not specifically from a Christian angle, but at least the Western platonic somewhat Christian level. There's an interesting book called Magic and Melancholia recovering the soul after modernity by Laura McCormick. I think this was John Milbang's last doctoral student that he supervised. But that question is being asked in that book. The way we've approached mental health has been from not taking the soul seriously and it's embeddedness in a kind of reality that is closer to what Malcolm Guides talking about. And the reason we can't therapy doesn't work is because we're not taking the soul seriously and what is implicit in that. So what difference does it make to us and our relationship with others to create it things to the delights that are there in creation and our relationship to ourselves if we take the Christian notion of the soul seriously. And what we couldn't do is become mechanistic. That's kind of the first point. The thing that was delightful to me about his piece was how he tied drinking and smoking took into the reality. So this was something you did primarily the drinking in a pub. But also he spent some time talking about smoking a pipe and how that is kind of a meditative activity. I think that can also be a social activity, particularly the way things are developed in certain places where you have essentially then you have to have like a private club now to smoke because you can't do anywhere in public. And that tends to create again a kind of community. So just last night I was with about 40 men. We were at our Spurgeons which is our church's kind of men's club. And we were just hanging out around the fire pit and around out on the porch and there was a mixture of people drinking beer, bourbon and wine and smoking cigars and pipes. We were having a great time. We lasted for about three hours and we do it once a week. It was kind of a special event. We did it on Tuesday night. We usually do it on Friday night. And people just kind of come in and come out as they want as they're scheduled to allow. And it's a kind of thing that really harkens back to what Guy is talking about here where he talks about the pub. We don't really have pubs in the sense that they have over there. Yeah, that's right. Now there are places where maybe get close. I think down in Coventry, they're in Connecticut, they've got the Midwilt Havre and I think it's pretty close. But it didn't have the feel of the pubs that we visited when we were over there at Oxford a couple years ago. A little bit more of a kind of a just a neighborhood feel to those pubs. And even being a kind of bustling little city, you have your regular places and people, they're ritualistic. And I think that's another part of being embodied souls and participating in a reality that has soul at its heart is that these kinds of rituals, these patterns of meaning and place and atmosphere and I mean, created things that have form and pattern and meaning and our connection to them and connection to each other and God through them. This is what mechanistic ideas leave out. And so the idea of I think health hyper fixated on just my kind of physical okeness. And that's a good concern, it admits it. And we shouldn't get to where we should destroy relationships insisting on our indulgences. But the flip side of it I think is that there's great losses to the kind of reality we are as living souls that have the breath of life. We're not just machines. And I think this again is going to be a big thing, especially dealing later with technology and its temps to create a similar kind of similarity to a humanness that on all surfaces may fool a lot. But fool a lot who have already been predisposed to a mechanized notion of a human being. And the people who seem to have this mechanistic view just don't really seem to care too much about or for the social dimensions of ourselves. Yeah, the vast majority of your wellness things are highly individualistic. Yeah, right. Yeah, they really don't involve other people. I mean, I've looked at, I need to lose weight, ok. And I've looked at all kinds of different approaches to die. But every one of them would require me to do things that will not work in a household even. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, it's just hyper individualistically focused. And that's pointing right in the direction that guy is talking about here. Now getting to that, there are institutions that do a pretty good job of bringing together say health and fitness and community. Yeah. So my church again, we have a remarkably kind of unusual situation. Not only do we have a men's club called Spurgens, we have a mixed martial arts center that's run between the men and our church. And it's kind of a family friendly thing. And a lot of our guys, when they're not at Spurgens, they're at that place. We're working off the calories. We're working off the hair tails. But you're right, Glenn. I mean, for a lot of people, I think this is just sort of like a self creation project. Like I think about a guy like Brian Johnson, the creepy guy from Venmo that don't die guy. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's kind of a transhumanist who's just kind of fixated on staying ever youthful. And he's just kind of creepy. And he's the sort of guy that does everything from take all the supplements you're supposed to take and constantly kind of measures his biometrics and even ways his waist. It's just kind of a weird dude. But you can't do that in community. That community is kind of like a problem. Yeah. Well, it definitely, I think, stifles those people unless they have a product to sell. They really stifles their relationship to others. And if they have one, it's usually based around that focus. And it's not about these things that like Lewis would often argue is the part of the gift of these good creaturely delights in our sharing in them is it does get us out of our self. It moves us out of ourselves to enjoy something, something communicating. It's real goodness to us that we are free to eat of. And then secondly, that that is usually wrapped around the kinds of spiritual richness that come along with those things in the way they serve community and fellowship and life, family and everything else. I mean, think of how central eating is to a family. And the dinner should be. Yeah, it should be. And again, even that kid, kids, everyone grab what they want on the run rather than, you know, that yeah, let's just think about that. The fact that we live in kind of a fast food world with highly processed foods and everybody is struggling with the weight problems that we seem to be dealing with. Broly is not like a big secret. There have been a lot of studies that have demonstrated that obesity has continued to be a problem. It continues to be a problem and is a growing problem in all over the world, not just in the United States. You know, you think about, I think some of the most obese populations in the world are now in the Middle East of all places. And you know, you know, what is it up, what's going on with that? Well, partly part of it is we don't eat together as family, and we're all just sort of like on the run. And we don't make our own food. We're just popping stuff into the microwave or wrapping it out of the fridge or stopping at the fast food place on the way home. So the communal element is lost again. You know, when my kids are growing up, we ate together all the time, period. And we still, you know, we, Lynn Cooks, and, you know, we don't, we don't need a lot of pre-prepared foods. But when Elizabeth was in China for a semester abroad, she did a homestay with a Chinese family. And her Chinese mother told her that she was so very happy with Elizabeth because Elizabeth ate with them. She said they, they talked to a lot of the other homestay families, you know, they, they had a network there. And they were all complaining that the students always wanted to go out for pizza and they never ate with the family. You know, and it was, I mean, I'm convinced that was just simply a matter of how they, they grew up here and they just carried it over to China. And why are you staying with the family if you're not going to share in their life in anyway? You know, that, right. They were really thrilled with Elizabeth because she always ate with them. Yeah. And here I think is, is one of the things that, that kind of both, you know, the question I was asking in relationship to McCormack's work and guide is suggesting is that they're off, they're trade-offs here because with this kind of focus and, and especially the way we're talking about it now, the loss of that community around those things has created conditions that can affect the solace, health of the ones who otherwise are healthy in every other way on the, on the paper. And so because there is kind of an unhealthiness to that detachment and lack of associating with others and there is actually something fed, there's a, there's a proper human, solace appetite fed by eating together and, and sharing. That, that I think, I think like he says, I'm, you know, if we were looking at the input output analysis approach, he would have to give up convivial evenings in many storied oak rafted pubs where my friends and I and often strangers who are welcomed into the circle of conversation, sit for a while and set the world to rights. And, and, and I think that, I think that right there is speaking about something about this, that's a place where the difference that, you know, I'm speaking from a Christian angle, the difference, the Christian view of things makes in this situation, it shows up in a way that getting rid of all of these things we often find it easy to get rid of is actually doing harm to the human being and a lot of the harms in a health obsessed individual society are actually being reproduced over and over again because of this failure to recognize something about a true nature as humans and its sold creatures made for relation and made for these, these higher orders of meaning beyond just physical, you know, good physical looks and the ability to pass our health exams well. Right, right. Well, and that does kind of get us to the vanity sort of dimension to this health, you know, sort of obsession with health. It's not just about health, it's about looking a certain way and making an impression or maybe being desired, you know, by somebody who maybe you don't even know. I don't know, I don't want to know. Doesn't even care about you. That's right. Yeah, so there's all of that in play too. I mean, this is a multi faceted thing to think about. Glenn, you were going to. Yeah, I just had a flashback when you were talking to a Woody Allen movie called Sleeper. Oh, I know where you're going. I know where you're going. Yeah, Woody Allen is, you know, in some sort of suspended animation or something, and he wakes up in the distant future and he wants to have granola for breakfast. And they're talking about this and they say, well, why does he want to eat that? So while back in the 20th century, people believed that this was healthy and would make you live longer. And the response is they didn't know about chocolate cake. And you know, we have seen some of that just even in our own time. I mean, I remember when eggs were evil and now like eggs are like the super food. Yeah. And so, you know, it does, at least in my case, I'm just like anytime I read anything, I just kind of roll my eyes and I just say, well, you know, if the study supports something I enjoy, then I like the study. But if it doesn't, then it's bad. It's not accurate. And I know there was one study that came out recently that said ice cream seems to be preventative heart disease. Look it up. It's a lot. But do you remember the others? Did you remember the movie The Road to Wellville on Kale? It was about Kellogg. The Kellogg found it. Yes, that's right. Yeah, they were, what are they with where they said? They had an interest. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so they decided that breakfast cereal was the road to health, right? Yeah. And understand that corn flakes were supposed to be had with apple juice, not milk because they developed that whole wellness center and the film gets into that. And it is completely exactly this picture of all these people that are completely focused so obsessively on it that they're unhealthy in their souls in every other kind of way. And everyone had that. What was it? Well, Mel and Colleyo was one of the ways to just basically diagnosing. All of it, but it's completely interesting that Geith, he's indirectly tapping into all of this with his comment here. It's interesting how we kind of vacillate and go back and forth between different sort of crises. I remember when Anne Rexie and Bellemia were like the big problems. And now you hardly ever hear about those things anymore. But it's just like we can't make peace with our mortality or something. Well, and you're seeing now this very bizarre, I guess it's from taking this dietary medicine that the stars are now with so-called stars. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're taking it is horrendous. But I mean, I always thought that the whole face surgery and realignment was bad enough. They naturally beautiful people do the most hideous things to look young or stay beautiful. And they look like a freak. I mean, really, I can't even solve it just scary freaks. No, no, yeah, yeah, you're right. And you look at them and you say, why did you come out of the house? You should probably just stay inside from here on out. You just so marred your appearance, your monstrous. Yeah. And it's just, and it's not limited to the Hollywood type. Now you're seeing the news anchors, whatever side they're on. I mean, it's just everywhere. And it's hideous. It's another form of failure to receive certain gifted diamonds and the way that under the conditions of the fall, they gracefully age. It's not only on that end, it's probably how to date now. But I remember for a while, parents were giving their daughters cosmetic surgery for high school graduations. Right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was just absolutely insane. And yeah, and it would give you a pretty good, I guess, insight into just how unwell the family is as a family that that would be even like something that they would consider a good idea. Yeah. And again, the kind of social context, the way he had plays with pub here, and again, you're right, there it is a very different vibe to it. But I like some of the things he talked about with pipes, pints and pubs. I think the way he goes, I should give up the pipes I have collected and smoked over the years, each with its own beautiful pattern of grain, basically if he were to appease this group, each with its own cluster of stories and memories. And so really, even these kind of common objects of everyday life that we take for granted, often have stories connected to them, you know, to the very brands of cigars. Someone may have bought us or something else, which you can't put a kind of health price on. These things are related to solishness. And often, and sometimes even the people who, who, who, who we believe care about us most deeply, kind of lose touch with reality, I just brought them to mind something. I had a man in a church, a couple of churches back who was in his 90s and in an old folks home. And he had to sneak cookies because his daughter thought it was unhealthy for him. To enjoy candy. And I was like, you're 95 years old. Let the guy have a cookie. Let him have a Snickers bar. Mark Twain's doctor, he says, told him he needed to stop smoking, drinking and chasing women. And Twain asked him would that make me live longer? And the doctor said, no, it'll just seem that way. Yeah. Yeah. Before we get too far into pipes, I want to put in a plug for a price. It's important to remember two things from Scripture. First of all, wine was given by God to gladden the hearts of men. And I can guarantee that wasn't grape juice. Right. Okay. One of the things that we ignore is that there are multiple tides talked about in the Old Testament. And one of them is a tithe where you're supposed to take 10% of your income and use it for an absolutely blow out party. And it says that you should spend it on anything your heart desires, beer, wine or strong drink or anything else your heart desires. Beer, wine or strong drink. Yeah. Commanded by God in the second time. Yeah. So, I just want to put in a plug for points here. Yeah. And he gets into that a little bit. How alcohol taken in moderation, but nevertheless has a way of, well, as you noted, gladdening the heart, but also opening the mouth and getting people to be more sort of like expressive. He and that article talks about the tendency of Englishmen to be a little bit maybe too restrained or made too. And that this actually helps to kind of loosen things up and get people to talk to. Loosen the, well, he goes the rigid inhibitions. Yeah. Keep them. He goes, again, of course it can be abused with tragic results. But if T totalism were enforced and all the pubs close, individual bodies might be healthier in one respect. But the unreleased stress and epidemic of isolation and loneliness and this kind of fellowship and, and, and, and I think just spirited relation. I think that's something there. I love the way he goes to William Blake's poem, Songs of Innocence and Experience. That is Greg Brown, the kind of folk singer put that to music some years back. And one of the best ones is the one where this one here where he says, dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold. But the ale house is healthy and pleasant and warm besides I can tell where I am used well. And basically he's saying, you know, something that Geit kind of picks up on in the story of the good Samaritan. He said, notice that he takes him to an inn. And he's not just playing on that being a, a, a, a English pub. But he says, surprising though it may be to some of my stricter Christian brothers and sisters, there is something of a history of thinking of the church in this way of being sometimes a little too, you know, prudish to, to think that enjoying some of these delights could be a, a good for the soul. And he says, when Christ tells the parable the good Samaritan, he cannot think of a better place to take the wounded man for healing until he comes again than an inn. The early church, church commentators say the inn in the parable is meant to be a type of church. And he's, he plays, you know, he's a player on language here. It's a, it's a, it's a place where there is this kind of fellowship and joy that should be at the heart of things. And there is a tasting of it. And again, Lewis will later say, similarly, the inn is not our final home. It's not our home. But nevertheless, it is a, it is a real place of delight. And, and I think there is something that, that marks us as having a soul that is made healthy by a proper way of participating in these kinds of things. And I think that's what he, he's really onto here. Both the creaturely goods of pints, pipes, if that's what you're into or cigars, or, you know, desserts or fishing or, I don't know, you know, it could be, could be any kind of creaturely thing. And I remember CS Lewis, similarly, you know, he, he wrestled with this. And I think one of the interesting things, his, his ethical thinking really wrestled with and showed us is the way that that Christian difference shows up in our stance towards these kinds of created goods. This is something Augustine, you know, any Christians had to think about it. But I think at Lewis was very healthy. He asked sort of what sort of attitude is appropriate for a human being confronted with what he calls this astonishing catarach of basically what, what he, a imoterate day luge of creaturely things. In other words, the creators made all kinds of stuff. It's all over the place. It's, it's almost like a, he calls it a day luge. It's like a flood of, you know, food and, and, and trees made for, you know, all these things, just stuff everywhere. And he's like, what? Well, he thinks about it. And he says, basically, we are to offer creation or nature and creaturely things, neither worship, but nor contempt. And I love his way of putting that. We're not to turn to the creature to give us what only the creator can, but receiving it and standing towards it the right way. We're not to have content towards these things. And I think this kind of unhealthy focus on merely physical health is one of those ways in which we're failing to do justice to the creation as it's been given for us for the kind of souls, embodied souls that we are. And I think Lewis captures that better than a lot of people in the, I would actually take, Gullis one step further. And that's that every created good points to the God who created it. There's a sacramental quality to the world. And so when we enjoy the good things in the world, we are actually in a sense enjoying also God who created them. Or we should be, which is why Paul says that anything that is accepted with Thanksgiving is perfectly legitimate for food. That the Thanksgiving directs your attention back to the God who gave it to you. Yeah. Well, let's just think a little bit about indulgence. The word indulgence has a, I guess, I guess a negative kind of connotation for many people to indulge, but a context is everything. And then, you know, what we, is there a way to indulge gratefully, you know, and thankfully, and, but also just indulgence, the delight in the thing that you are receiving. And then there are some interesting paradoxes or maybe ironies. I think I've talked about this before the kind of the fact that upgrading has a kind of unintended consequence of making you less happy over time, because there are fewer and fewer things that can meet your rising standard. Yeah, but, but when it comes to say things like, you know, like a pipe tobacco or cigars or what have you. It's interesting, by the way, he makes a distinction between cigarettes and pipes, which is worth noting it is. But I think that, you know, what you, what you're delighting in, say with with a aromatic, you know, pipe tobacco, say, for example, is a kind of experience that you don't want. And then, you know, what you're experiencing is that you don't really get any other way. I mean, I don't know if there's anything like it. Maybe, maybe smelling flowers and, you know, and a really well-tended garden has similar kind of delight or, you know, to, to the, you know, to that sense. And then, of course, you know, when you, you know, in Bive, there is a kind of, obviously physical effect that alcohol produces that in, you know, moderation is just kind of a pleasant state. And that's not even taking any considerations, the taste of what you're drinking, which also can be pleasant. So all of those things are marvelous things. Yeah. Louis talks about one of the problems with being an alcoholic is that you cannot enjoy the feeling of being pleasantly intoxicated or it is worth. Yeah. So in other words, you got to get smashed. Yeah. Yeah. You, you spoil, you begin to say, it's like his story with Edmund. And once the Turk is delights, it becomes something that he has, he becomes addicted to almost and then he goes back, you know, to eating a meal with his family and he can no longer stand the taste of regular food because he's so spoiled. His taste for things. And this is, I think, what the unhealthy type of stance towards these created delights, you know, does. I think that's, you know, that is where the spiritual and soulish dimensions really sit because yes, receiving them is part of receiving them as a gift that is a tasting of something of heaven in a, in a limited way. That's why they are sweet and delightful. That's why you even look at the tree and see that it's good for food, right? You don't, it's, it, but it becomes that relationship we have with it. It's, it's, it's on the one hand, it's fragile and it is dangerous. And I think this is another important aspect of it. But the Christian faith is interesting because it doesn't say even though it's dangerous, therefore renounce all of it. What it basically says is there are snares and hooks and you have to be wise. And the real snare and hook first starts with, you know, confusing these things as the whole, the whole object of your, you know, your pursuits. The minute you start turning to the creation and feeding your appetite strictly from that, especially when they get in the way of your relation to God, they're not sacramental anymore. They, they end up becoming a kind of a substitute detached thing that is good in itself. Or, or just even a kind of a thing that ruins the convivial dimension of that aspect as well. Yep. Right. They can, they begin then to, you know, they cause breaking and they're not healthy. And so there is a healthy way. And I think for Lewis and, and I think guide here, they're looking at kind of first step healthy ways of relating to these as he says, I know they're carry their own risks, but here's why I haven't given them up. Because the risks are worth it to get a hold of something that you couldn't get a hold of without taking that risk. But on the flip side, you have, you, you do have to, to do it in a way that recognizes there's, there is risk there. And that requires one, you know, not being able to rip it from this being a theological world in which we are given the good grace to participate and share in these things, but also given the call to be wise with it and to handle it responsibly. And then I think also that's part of what we do as parents and ministers and teachers is we try to pass on ways of relating to those kinds of things that you get the goods out of them without them becoming a hook and something that ruins us relationships and everything else. So there is a good way to introduce your your kid to, you know, a good, good couple whiskey and the goods cigar, you know, and modeling it has takes on a certain kind of a very positive almost sacramental role too and and and manifesting. Yeah, this brings up something to consider and, you know, of course, as guide approaches these subjects, we can easily believe that we can, you know, easily believe that he possesses the virtues, requisite to do what he's doing in a good way. In other words, we're not worried about him. Yeah. But there are people that I think we would be concerned about. Of course, a person who's demonstrated their inability to control themselves would be a person that you would say, maybe you should never even go there. That's right. You know, that's that's something that something about your character or something about maybe the even even your biochemistry, just if you think about a safe, for example, Native American so many indigenous peoples around the world just can't seem to take a single drink of alcohol without like falling into the bottle. So, and then that's where I think there's a brokenness of soul in relationship to that kind of creaturely good and I do think that that is something that like you say renunciation of that kind of enjoyment is something that that is necessary. As long as that isn't healed and that oftentimes doesn't heal in this in this world. So it there are places for renunciation and I think Christianity has, you know, it's had its moment, especially in highly sexualized cultures and things like that. Church has taken a very strong role in renunciation because the people have been already predisposed to that and sometimes it looks extreme from where we are. But if we were in that context would say, wait a minute, maybe that that was the right thing to do because you didn't have this kind of balancing of virtue and that kind of climate. Yeah, when I was traveling in Asia, in Mongolia, the Christians are absolute heat holders because they've got a massive problem without call as I'm a courtesy of the Russians who occupied it from the 1920s until the breakup of the Soviet Union. You get to China, they don't have the same problem with alcohol. They agree with us that you don't drink to excess. But what excess means in China is a little, well, it's a tad different in practice from what it means here. I was with a high level member of the government who was Christian with this particular group I was traveling with. And she had a, one of the things that people in China like to get when they can get it is a monopoly on something. You can only get this wine from us. Well, she had a monopoly on a particular kind of, if I remember right, it's Baezu, which translates literally to white lightning. So we, you know, she had a set of dinner and she, you know, she brought this out for us. And what I was struck by was their version of white lightning is a lot weaker than your typical Irish whiskey or scotch or probably bourbon. So again, it because they don't have the same kind of alcohol tolerance that Europeans do. This breaks up an interesting thing about why certain ethnic groups have a high alcohol tolerance. I don't have great insight into this, but it's just an observation. I agree with you. They're just like when my boys, I didn't have much worry about them when, you know, they got to the point where they could choose from themselves whether they were going to invite or not. But I just knew that they were going to be pretty, you know, I mean sober in the sense that they're not going to be people who just kind of ruin their lives with alcohol. And they, and they've proven to be that way. But at the same time they are, they're alcohol tolerance seems to be very high. I would say higher than average. Maybe it's because, you know, they're partly Italian and partly scots Irish and partly German. You know, all the groups were, you know, I'm half finished and you know, Finn, it, you know, for every beer or two that everyone else has and starts feeling it, it takes about four to start feeling it. And everyone's looking at you like, oh, shouldn't you, you know, and it is kind of a weird thing because, you know, it's like your side of the table is filled with jars. Right, right. Yeah. But it is something to think about so that you know, we can't be too dismissive of the inner sort of the concerns that some people have about this stuff. But at the same time, again, Mongolia, it's an absolute no, you don't do it because of the problem with alcohol. Yeah. But you know, and I think one of the things Lewis is trying to work out there is, you know, no matter what, you know, that, that even if that is the case there and there are good reasons to to to renounce it in places. But there is a certain freedom that is there to enjoy it. You know, and he kind of developed something that Gilbert Milander calls the dialectic of enjoyment and renunciation. So these things are always a back and forth and they're never, they're never just of this and it's not a technique. It's, it's something that is part, part of it. He puts a very interesting, he says, all pleasures, Lewis says, are shafts of the glory of God as it strikes our sensibility. There's your sacramental every, every kind of good pleasure we delight in is kind of a shaft of the divine glory as it strikes our sensibility. But no thing is the glory itself, rather the glory of the one shines through the multiplicity of created things. And so are are enjoying them again is is to recognize that kind of balance to enjoy it as a limited tasting and sharing in something. But the minute we confuse it and start to run after in this unhealthy way is the minute renunciation is mandatory because it is preventing us from turning it into an idol or something that causes this kind of damage. And as part of the gift, I think of of the Christian faith is that it allows for this freedom on the one hand and this responsibility on the other that that doesn't say, okay, this is a religion in which creation has to basically be suppressed and ignored and not delighted in as some kind of certain strands of platenism or nosticism and different things. And on the other hand, it's that this freedom is not licensed to end up where you know certain kinds of you know that it's all about the party and pure indulges, but it is interesting that I remember see us Lewis somewhere was mentioning the way which sometimes the the pagan celebrating a little too hard is a little bit of an echo of the joys of heaven without the right kind of renunciations there, but sometimes there needed to be heard only because the renunciations have become a lot more important. So tight on the other side that you know as Blake said the church has become old and cold. Right. Yeah, this reminds me of Augustine's distinction between use and enjoyment. Yeah. Since the only thing we should properly enjoy is God, everything else we should use. Yeah. And one of the ways of teasing out what he's saying there is that there is nothing in this world that should be controlling us. You know whether it's alcohol or fitness. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's an interesting connection you made there Glenn because I do think that this kind of health obsession is a kind of addiction. You know people can sort of orient their lives so completely toward it that really as you noted earlier Tom really runs havoc with everything else and that makes you healthy. Yeah. I've run into some people like that. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's it. That's it. And you know he called it he was Lewis had called the you know the the the the person who kind of spiritualizes that you know the kind of renunciation because you know no thing can really satisfy fully in this world. Therefore anything less than the the full you know bliss of heaven should basically be denied us. He called it the dissolution sensible man. He's far left right up the run across thatieht. Yeah, yeah, he's far less optimistic about the enjoyment of things. The sensible man knows that our longings can never be satisfied. So he trains himself not to ask too much of things and to suppress his seemingly infinite longings. And this of course he talks about Mr. sensible in the pilgrims regress right. The great art of life is to moderate our passions you know and and I think for him Lewis believes this is you know a better way than the self indulgent full right. But on the other hand, it's just as problematic in the long run because they're not seeing the created world a right either. It's actually oddly Buddhist because the idea of Buddhists especially if you're working with the polycanon the first noble truth life is suffering. The word that is translated to suffering really means frustrated desire. Yeah, yeah, something along those lines. And so the solution is to get rid of your desires. Right. Yeah, that's right. I've run across people who always seem to be kind of a. I don't know glass have empty person about any pleasure. In other words in a Christian framework. It's like well, yeah, this is a nice day. It's beautiful. It's a nice day. It's beautiful. It's nothing compared to heaven. You know, and so there's a sense that you know you're you're always comparing these sort of homely sort of mundane goods which are in their own way really great. But you know, they're not ultimate, but do you have to like always remind yourself of what it doesn't possess to make certain that you're not a dollar truce. You become you become just a really a you know, just a miserable person to be around. I've run across these people. You know, Ken Boa actually works this in the opposite direction. He says that every pleasure we have every moment of enjoyment of love of adventure, all of those things are a foretaste of heaven. Yeah. And so as he's getting older, one of the things he says that he does is he goes back to revisit these things and we've used like a slingshot that that this is this is pointing me toward what is to come rather than saying yes, doesn't measure up rather this is this is just a hint of what God has in store for us. Yeah, they got so much healthier approach. Yeah. Well, that's a way of both like you say balancing the two things that Christian ethics have tried to balance through throughout its history is the reception of the goodness of creation, the recognizing of our fallenness in the fall. But also that this is still a good gift under those conditions and of course, then redemption adds a further a further gift to us the capacity to revisit things we want you know food sacrifice titles that that we once had to kind of refrain from and now are able to with the right reception of an instance towards it to enjoy it and fellowship as a good gift. And I think that's interesting. But before we go, I would like to go back to this thing what what does it tell us on the flip side about kind of this when he talks about this turn to the mechanistic conception of the human being in their bodily health obsession. I'm one of it. I think you're right vanity. The other is yeah people sometimes don't feel good for a whole bunch of reasons and they're looking for something to help. But this is a kind of almost like a spiritual industry that basically see spirituality as merely getting optimal physical fitness and and and longevity and and just optimal health. So it definitely it definitely is an imminent frame kind of holy this worldly focus. Right. Yeah, you hear people talk about meditation and mindfulness and just different things. But they're not necessarily means by which you connect with something transcendent. It's more like creating a kind of state of mind to help you kind of make it through the day and cope. That's right. It's very cycle almost like a psychological therapy. And it's interesting because classic views of the soul. The soul isn't located in the psychic. It's it's located in any everything that isn't in that harmonizing of ourselves with the cosmic order and beauty is its order to God and from and to is really where that where that wholeness is found in that of course include all these elements that that guide is on to here. These are all part of that that soulish fabric of things. But I do find it interesting that that we have this really that the byproduct of this obsession has led to all kinds of psychological unhealthiness. And this is where this is where I think work. It's very slow and coming, but this work of people like McCormick and stuff trying to recover the soul after modernity is very important, even though even if I don't think enough Christians have gotten on board. They're more more neoplatonist Christians, but there hasn't been a lot of classic Christians more broadly thinking through this. They tend to do integrative work, but they presuppose modern psychology as a good. And I'm not so just like modern health. I'm not so I think we've lost too many riches and that's creating like guide said more problems and problems with the soul and our overall health. And we have a lot lot more to draw from and I think starting with the pipe the pint and the pub is a good place to do it. Yeah. Well, and you know, it's, you know, think about it that way. Yeah, kind of the kind of the barrier to entry is fairly low. I mean, coming to the pipe, coming to the pub, you know, coming to the pint. You know, these are things that matter where you are and sort of your spiritual journey and maturity things, you know, keeping in mind that there are some people for whom, you know, one drink is like an invitation to like a lifetime of like alcoholism. Yeah, that's right. For them, it was, you know, go get a coffee, make it make it the cafe or make it the, you know, I don't know the dessert barn or what. But it, but that means that, you know, there's this kind of a enjoyment that we can all have and maybe the difference between say a CS Lewis and a pint and say Sam Gange and a pint is just how deeply they can think about the pint. Yeah, they're both enjoying it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's part of it is it is, it is, it is never just a pint, is it? And, and I think I think some of even our unhealthy ways of relating to things like pints come from breakdowns in the right reception of this, the, the spiritual sociality and meaning of which they should be a part. I think it's a breakdown somewhere there and therefore you're turning to it and disposed to it in a way that healthier forms of our relationship and connected to things may not foster environments like that. And that may be why you see different areas, different cultures, different genetic lines predisposed versus not because of kind of the soul health tied to their whole way of life. Yeah. Yeah. This reminds me of something I came across years ago, there was a documentary on beer that I watched and they were kind of investigating the origins of it and thinking a little bit about agriculture and how agriculture historically was something that also tied into worship. So cult to date culture, cult, you know, all those, those things that we know kind of intuitively connected with each other. But it was believed. It is. It is believed it is believed by some of the anthropologists that that the first agricultural kind of projects were around places of worship. You know, and they would be growing the food for the offerings, but also brewing the beer for the worship service. Yeah, one of the the oldest recipes that we have are for beer. Yeah. Okay. And they're actually anthropologists who argue that agriculture develops because of beer. Yeah. Yeah. The idea being that, you know, if you're a hunter, you know, hunter gatherer, you're out doing, you know, you're out doing exciting things, demonstrating your prowess and all of this kind of thing. If you're a farmer, basically, you spend a lot of time sitting around watching the grass grow. That's right. So this is basically back to this question I have about indigenous people so often indigenous peoples are hunter gatherers. They're not agriculturalists. I wonder if the kind of the alcohol tolerance that, you know, we share has something to do with our agricultural ancestors. And that maybe that's one of the reasons why there's a difference is just speculation. I don't have anything to base it on. I remember the old, I don't know if you remember the African beer gardens where they basically, I mean, they were they were heart and central, but they also would they wouldn't just make the beer, but they would make it into these solidified cakes filled with alcohol and eat them. So you talk about, but it's another one where there was central to the culture and its life together. It wasn't about going out and getting drunk. Yeah. Yeah. Well, right. The point that these anthropologists make about, you know, beer providing a motivation for why you would sit around at watch the grass grow is that beer is actually a civilizing influence. Yeah, which after college, I might have my doubts about, but there's, you know, that that was the argument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting. Well, we kind of the point where we should wrap things up. This has been a fun conversation. Tom, thanks for bringing it up. Is there anything else you want to leave us with that anything that you know? I mean, it was St. Patrick's day yesterday. And some people turn to turn to that side of the celebration. We know there was more to it for St. Patrick than that. But, but on the other side, I think it's one of these things we always need reminder, what is the Christian indifference and how does it show up in our relationship to everything? And I think one is what happens if we take the soul seriously and begin to think about these kind of cultural obsessions like mechanistic health, taking care of ourselves and our body only, how much damage are we really doing? And what does it look like to embody a different life? I think for him, the kind of the hit for him is kind of his cultural life of pints, pipe and pub. It's something we shouldn't just brush off as though it doesn't match our sense of hyper health, but there are goods here for the kinds of creatures we are. Nice. Nice. Well, I'm a believer. And anyway, thanks again, Tom. 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