Robyn Riley

Hi, everyone, It's me. I'm back from my two year hiatus on YouTube. This isn't a comeback video or anything like that. I'm not going to be uploading on a regular basis again. But I was approached by my guest here today to talk about some really important things regarding Orthodoxy. And so I felt like it was a good idea to use my platform for something good and have a chat with Father Joseph Gleeson, who is here with me. Would you like to introduce yourself, Father, please?

Fr. Joseph Gleason

Thank you so much! I'm Father Joseph Gleason. I have a wife, eight children, and was a priest in southern Illinois for a while. And then about six years ago, my family and I moved to Russia. We are a couple couple hundred kilometers north of Moscow, close to the ancient city of Rostov Veliky. And so now I run a number of substacks and blogs talking to people about Orthodoxy and talking to people about Russia.

Robyn

So interesting! And one of the projects that you're currently working on and promoting, it was quite timely for me. It was one of those little synchronicities that really made me feel like I should do this conversation. You're working on a fairly dense volume of books on Creation, and it's being translated - correct me if I'm wrong - from Russian to English. Is that right?

Fr. Joseph

Yes, that's right. Father Constantine Bufeev is a friend of Abbot Damascene of Platina Monastery, the same monastery, of course, where Father Seraphim Rose was. Abbot Damascene even wrote the preface to one of these three books. And it's just something that's really needed today.

There's a lot of books out there about Creation, written by Catholics, written by Protestants. But at least in English, it seems like there's not as much material [written by Orthodox Christians]. You know, certainly the Orthodox Church has been saying [a lot] about Creation for 2000 years, but it's only within the past 50 or 60 years that a lot of their materials have been translated into English. And over the past 150 years, as you know, Darwinism and the theory of evolution have
really encompassed the globe and made their way into every corner of society, every corner of people's thinking.

Fr. Constantine serves as a priest in Moscow. Before he became a priest, he was a scientist himself. He has an advanced degree in geology, and he did a lot of work in that field. And now he's been a priest for about 20 or 30 years; I don't know the exact number. And also over the past 20 years, he has been very interested in researching, the science of origins — the orgin of the world and the origin of man — looked at as an Orthodox Christian, and from a scientific perspective.

In doing that, of course, he's had to encounter all of these atheistic scientific books and journals, as well as those who think that they can reconcile the two and have something called "theistic evolution". And after 20 years of research, he has written just a massive work, three books. Combined, it's almost 1400 pages.

Robyn

Wow!

Fr. Joseph

It's a three book set. It's just a masterpiece, beautifully bound, nice, big, thick volumes. And the first one focuses on: over the centuries, what has the Orthodox Church taught about Creation? Because, of course, that's how the Bible starts.

Robyn

Yes! 

Fr. Joseph

Now you open up the first pages of Genesis, And you have to make certain decisions. Is this the word of God or is this just some myth that somebody wrote down somewhere?

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Is this literally true, or is this merely poetic and something we're not supposed to take seriously? And, you know, these are not only scientific questions; they're also theological questions. And the saints of the Orthodox Church for the past 2000 years — both before Darwin and after Darwin — the Saints have had a lot to say on this issue. And so looking in Scripture, looking at the writings of the Saints, Father Constantine has painstakingly gone through that first volume and really said, "Look, this is what the Scriptures and the teachings of the Orthodox Church are on this topic."

In the second book, he goes through the science...

Robyn

How interesting!

Fr. Joseph

He goes through [the science], and he does it in a couple of ways. He spends some time on the science itself, looking at microbiology, looking at the fossil record, and looking at geology, his own specialty.

But interestingly, he also spends part of the book looking at actual letters written by Darwin himself. And there's a lot of controversy. There are a lot of people that will say, "Oh, Darwin was a Christian, you know, he was just following the science. He had faith in God. But he also believed that he could study the world and find out important things." And it was really eye opening for me. He painstakingly went through a lot of Darwin's writings, from Darwin's own pen, and not in his published books. And in his private correspondence, there are a number of cases where Darwin just came out and admitted that he had lost his faith.

Robyn

Oh, interesting!

Fr. Joseph

And there was one particular letter in which he even admitted that he took pleasure in helping other people lose theirs as well.

Robyn

Wow!

Fr. Joseph

Darwin said: If I just went out into society and I said there is no God, then nobody would respond to that. Nobody would agree with me. But by teaching this — and he was he was talking about his his controversial theory of evolution — he said by by teaching this, it helps wear away at the foundation and it helps undermine your faith in an organic way.

Robyn

Wow!

Fr. Joseph

Now, people can still argue all they want: "Well, you can believe both. There's no contradiction." Be that as it may, it's interesting that Darwin didn't see it that way.
It's interesting that there actually seemed to be, according to his own private correspondence, there seemed to be a connection between embracing this idea that billions of years of death is what created man, that billions of years of struggle and tooth and claw and bloodshed and survival-of-the-fittest led finally to the creation of man — At least in Darwin's own mind, he saw a connection between that, and completely losing your faith in God. And he actually intended that.

So in the second book, Father Constantine talks some about Darwin and his history, and then he spends a lot of pages on the actual scientific questions.

And then in the third book, he responds to a number of modern theological writers who try to find some way to reconcile Darwinism and Neo-darwinism and Darwinian views on microbiology, with Scripture and the Fathers and the teachings of the Church. And he points out the inconsistencies that you run into.

So the first book is on the Church's teaching, the second book is on the science, and then the third book is responding to this. And it's just really refreshing. My sons and I over the past few months have been going through these writings by Father Constantine. And a friend of mine who is a teacher — she's an Orthodox Christian also — and she kept saying, "Oh, I wish those books were in English so I could read them, and so I could share them with other people!"

Robyn

Yeah!

Fr. Joseph

And I'm not always that quick, but a few months into it, she had said that one more time, and I said, "You know what? You're right. These do need to be in English!"

And so I approached Father Constantine, and I just said, "These books are fantastic! They're really important. They've been a blessing to our family. But there are so many Christians in America, in Canada, in Australia, in England, who need these books!"

Over the past 20 years, I myself have read a lot of the literature that's in English. There's a lot of good literature in English, and there's also a lot of bad literature in English on this topic. You know, not every book that says "Creationism" on the cover is put together very well. And I think not only Orthodox Christians — there are tens of millions of people in America who are Protestant, who are Catholic, who are Orthodox, and who do not follow Darwinian teaching, who do not agree that a silver haired baboon was my great, great, great grandfather . . .

Robyn

::laughs::  Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

And and I think there's there's really a need for books like this that are written well. They're written from the perspective of Scripture, from the historic teaching of the Church, and simultaneously a look at the actual observable science. And I think this set of three books does it better than just about anybody I've seen.

The three books — he actually dedicated them to Father Seraphim Rose. While Fr. Seraphim was alive, he collected many hundreds of pages of teaching regarding Creation, but he never actually published them. And then after his repose, they took all of his work that he had done, collected it together as best they could, and they published this gigantic volume of about a thousand pages.

And it's really good! But unfortunately, Father Seraphim Rose himself didn't live long enough to really complete it, to edit it, to codify everything, to finish everything. And just considering that he died in 1982 — that's been 40 years ago. And over the past 40 years, there's been a number of new advances in microbiology that need to be accounted for. There's a number of new books that have been written since then that need to be responded to. And so, just because God has given Father Constantine a longer life, he's had a greater opportunity to really edit it, polish it, and complete these three volumes, as a really good polished work that responds to all these different things.

So I'm very excited! Fr. Constantine gave his blessing to translate these three volumes into English. So we've started a fundraiser on Indiegogo.com, and it's really encouraging people from all over the world, literally. There are already donors from America, from England, from South Africa, and from Russia, all coming together and donating for this project, saying "this is important!", "this is a work that needs to be available not only in Russian, but in English too!"

Robyn

Agreed! And so we will have the link to that fundraiser in the description of this video for anyone who's listening, who would like to learn more, and how to support Father Gleason in this important project. I agree, it's very, very important!

So, the last video that I made on my YouTube channel, I was still an inquirer. Since that video has been made, I was brought into the Orthodox Church. I've been Orthodox now for a little over a year and a half. And just before Lent began this current Lent, I finished reading Genesis for the very first time in my life. And even though I'm a convert to Orthodoxy, I was raised Christian. I was an Anglican growing up, but I never read, like, I never read Genesis. Like, of course you would hear pieces of Scripture read during services and stuff, but no one ever sat me down and went through Scripture with me.

And I'm very grateful for my current spiritual father at my parish who has been having Bible study classes after liturgy. He was giving us tools and information on how to read the Bible, which has been very, very wonderful for me, because before I got that information, I was sort of sitting down trying to read from the beginning and just, you know, I didn't have the knowledge or the information to make sense of, you know, how to read it both literally and symbolically, to understand that this is not just a religious book — it's a history book.

And once once I found the resources to be able to read the Bible in that way, it was like I hit the ground running, and I was just able to read Genesis for the first time. And I did it in about 30 days, 35 days, and it was wonderful! It was amazing! And I really felt for the first time in my life that I was really understanding what it meant to get to know God through his Word. I'd always heard people say that before, you know, "spend time with God by reading the Word."

I guess on the surface it's not nonsensical, but I had never experienced that, because I didn't know how to read the Bible, and I certainly didn't have an Orthodox perspective on how to read the Bible, which is the best perspective to have when reading the Bible, in my opinion.

And so I really felt like my faith grew. I really felt like there was a few days there where I was just in sort of in a state of awe, just kind of like, "Wow, this is real.
It's real. And I understand how it's real, and it's logical, and it makes sense!" And all of these little things that didn't make sense to me before started to make sense.

But of course, I still had lots of questions, and I still do currently have lots of questions. And so a project like this is just — that's why it was kind of like a little synchronicity to me, because I was like, "Oh, here is this collection of books that's probably going to answer a majority of these questions which are still sort of left hanging." They're not questions that are make-or-break questions in terms of like my faith, but they're things that like — I still am unpacking my materialist indoctrination, you know, just by living in the in the modern world.

And so, I'm doing that for myself, and also I have small children who have questions. I have a three year old and he has questions about the dinosaurs, for example. He's really into dinosaurs right now. I can't just lie to him, and I don't want to avoid [his questions]. I want to be able to answer his questions in a way that isn't undermining our Christian worldview. And right now, the best that I've got is that "God was finished with the dinosaurs, so He got rid of them." But I'm sure that there are better ways of explaining it and working all of the different stages of history into that. I just don't have the knowledge to do that yet.

Fr. Joseph

Exactly! You know, every creature that God created is good. God created every creature for a good purpose. And yet we know that even today, animals go extinct.

Robyn

Yes. Every day. 

Fr. Joseph

It's unfortunate and it's not a good thing. Up until 400 years ago, we had the dodo bird. Up until a hundred years ago, we had the passenger pigeon. Sadly, though these animals used to be around in very large numbers, now we don't have any living ones on earth. I'm not gonna steal Father Constantine's thunder, but the world before Noah's Flood, in many ways was a different world. A lot of the features — I think that's one of the mistakes — it's so easy to look at a map or to travel and just assume that what you see is the way that things have always been.

Robyn

Yes. Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Just for example, Mount Saint Helens in the western United States — you go look at it now, and it looks vastly different than it did 50 years ago, vastly different, because in 1980 there was this huge eruption. A huge portion of the mountain was blown off and there was massive lava flow, massive ash, massive erosion, and even a "miniature Grand Canyon" was carved out. The whole area was changed geologically.

Well, now imagine that on a global scale. You know, if you have massive flooding globally, volcanoes going off, all sorts of movement, massive erosion, the world after the flood looks vastly different than it did before.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

And even weather patterns change significantly. So a world that was conducive to 40 foot tall dinosaurs and dragonflies a foot wide, it wasn't as conducive to that after the flood. Things were different. So there are a number of species that died off after Noah's flood that that were perfectly fine beforehand. And that's a very, very short answer.

You know, it's interesting. Anything that God has created, we should not be afraid to show our children. You're exactly right, kids love dinosaurs. I have eight kids, and the boys especially love dinosaurs. They think they're cool.

Robyn

Right.

Fr. Joseph

And I agree. They are cool! They're really neat. But there's this cognitive dissonance. You know, when I was a little boy, I still remember I had a little Charlie Brown Encyclopedia. And I remember in — I think it was volume three was all about dinosaurs. I was just fascinated when I learned about the T-Rex and triceratops and stegosaurus and all these different dinosaurs, and I was fascinated by God's Creation. And you know, throughout this whole children's book, it never came out and said "there is no God" or "the Bible is a lie." If it had said that, my parents would have thrown it away.

Robyn

Right!

Fr. Joseph

But on every page, it had this thing:  "65 million years ago, this . . ." and "125 million years ago, that . . .".

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

So it's just sowing these little seeds of doubt, these little seeds that sprout later when the child is much older.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Years later, you're a teenager, you're in your early 20s, and you're reading the Book of Genesis, and Genesis 1 does not start out, "13.5 billion years ago,  the Big Bang saith . . .", you know, it starts very differently.

Robyn

::laughs::  Yes. 

Fr. Joseph

It starts out with, first of all, consciousness and personhood and wisdom preceding matter.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

You know that before matter is, God is, and that it wasn't some "natural" process that just "happened", but the world is because God spoke. God created the heavens and the earth. God is the one who did this. And you know, that's a very, very big difference just right there, even before you get into the "how", that you start with God. A thinking Person is behind everything that you see.

There literally is nothing that just "happens". Even the laws of physics themselves are the creation of an intelligent Being. You know, that's the thing. So many scientists, even Christian ones, talk as if there are these sacrosanct "scientific laws", that just have to be that way, and even God must follow them. Maybe have heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the idea that you cannot simultaneously know the location and speed of any given particle.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

And it's blasphemous if you think about it — Stephen Hawking, tongue in cheek, in one of his books said, "Even God cannot know the speed and direction of a subatomic particle", which is just ridiculous.

Robyn

::laughs::

Fr. Joseph
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle certainly applies to you and me because we are creatures, because we're not omniscient. But God doesn't even need to measure it because He already knows it.

Robyn

Right!

Fr. Joseph

There is no bit of information in the cosmos that is not already in His mind. So, it's just a fundamentally different way to approach what is.

And I really like what you pointed out, the importance of it to you — I can relate because I'm a parent, too. It's not just important for you. As an individual, you care about these little ones that you're raising.

Robyn

Yes!

Fr. Joseph

You have these precious children — and by the way, I just want to commend you for something that so often I see go the other way. . . . I know you would not just go online and brag about this, but I will ask you, what is your social media following? How many people?

Robyn

Across platforms?

Fr. Joseph

Yeah, just all together.

Robyn

All together, it's about 55 . . . 56 thousand.

Fr. Joseph

Okay . . . There are a lot of people that would saw off their right leg and donate it to science if they could have a social media following of 55,000 people!

Robyn

::laughs:: Yeah. Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

That's a nice sized football stadium!

Robyn

Yeah. It's a lot of people.

Fr. Joseph

A lot of devoted followers. And how many years have you been seriously engaged in social media?

Robyn

Since around 2017, I think. 2018, roughly. Those two years.

Fr. Joseph

Yeah. So that's very quick. You know, a lot of people work hard for five years and don't reach that.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

You put in a couple of years, you get this really big following, and with that kind of a following — as you know — it's possible to make an income, it's possible just to have that as your full time job.

Robyn

Yup. 

Fr. Joseph

And so it's not just a bunch of fans; it can be a career. And whether it's good or bad we'll leave to the side, but we'll just admit the fact that there is a certain amount of pleasure that comes from knowing, "hey, I'm talking, and 55,000 people are hearing my voice."

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

So, many moms in your shoes — many moms, sadly, would say, "Yes, I love this little three year old and I love this little baby. I love them so much, but I have to put them in daycare all day, and I have to send them off to preschool. I'll spend 3 or 4 hours with them, you know, I'll spend time with them because I love them. But I've got my career to think about. I've got these 55,000 devoted fans to think about. And, you know, I can't just turn my back on them . . ."

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

And yet, for the past two years, you've not really been putting out very much content.

Robyn

No,

Fr. Joseph

It seems to me — and I applaud this — that having 55,000 online fans is really good, it's nice, it's a very useful platform that can be used for good things, but that those two precious children that God gave you are of greater importance to you.

Robyn

Yes! Yeah!

Fr. Joseph

And so, whenever it's them versus social media, they win.

Robyn

Yes!

Fr. Joseph

And I just want to honor you for that. And anybody who is watching this, I hope that they will see that good example, and if they're in similar shoes, I hope that they will follow that example, because truly, we don't need to be sending our kids off to government schools, we don't need to be sending our kids off to daycare. There's a famous poem that says, "babies don't keep".

Robyn

Yeah!

Fr. Joseph

Yeah, and it's so true. I have eight children, but my oldest are 20.

Robyn

Wow.

Fr. Joseph

And my youngest, my little guy, Kenneth, he is six! And he's so big, and I miss having babies to hug! I miss having little tiny ones.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

So I'm ready for my oldest to marry and give me some grandchildren. I want more babies!

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

And, you know, that really is where discipling takes place. I know we were talking about Creation and evolution, and we can get back on that topic, but you know, I'm a dad. I have read a lot of the literature, I have studied the statistics, and it's really interesting. You know, as Christians, we like to talk a lot about missions. I came from a Protestant background, and you came from a Protestant background, but even in Orthodoxy, there's a fair amount of interest in missions. Especially when you read the lives of the Saints, they're out and they're spreading the Gospel around the world.

And worldwide, whether it's a Protestant church, a Catholic, Orthodox, whatever it is, you walk in there and you start asking people, "How did you come to the faith? How did you come to believe that Jesus is God?" And there are exceptions to this, but I would say in the vast majority of churches in the world, including in America, you walk in and you ask that question and they're going to say, "Well, my grandparents were Christians and my parents were Christians, and so I was just kind of raised up in it."

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

Now, there still has to be an individual choice at some point.

Robyn

Yeah, 

Fr. Joseph

At some point you say, "I believe in this faith that Mom and Dad taught me, or I don't. I'm going to stay in this faith or I'm not." So your will is still involved. You still choose to stay or to leave. But the vast majority of the time, it's not first generation converts.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

And even in those cases where you do have a whole congregation that's mostly converts, that doesn't last very long, because those people have kids, and then those kids are not converts. Those kids are just raised up and whatever their mom and dad taught them.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

So you can't escape it. In a very short amount of time, even a church of converts will have a second, a third, or fourth generation. And now you have all these kids being raised up with whatever their parents and grandparents taught them.

You walk into your average church and most of the time, 90-95% of the people there are going to say, "my grandparents were Christians" or "my mom and dad were Christians", and "that's how I came to be a Christian . . . My parents introduced me to the faith."

And yes, 5 or 10% are going to say, "everybody in my family were not believers, and I'm the first one." And so missions are very important. It's very important that we spread the Gospel, that we teach about Christ, and that we bring people into the church. But when you consider that the vast majority of people are there not because of missions, but simply because of good parents . . . If mission and missionaries are so important to the world, then how much more important is it to be a Christian Mom and a Christian Dad, carefully passing the faith off to your children?

So, don't diminish missions at all. I think they're right up here, just like most people would say they are. I simply say being Christian parents — it's even higher.

And so I just want to say that I'm very pleased with the decision you've made. You know, talking about Christ to 55,000 people, that's very important. But it's even more important that you are there as a full time Mom, taking care of those two precious little souls. And, you know, in this very short amount of time before they grow up — it goes so quickly — hopefully you're doing everything you can to pass the faith on to them.

Robyn

Yes! Thank you so much for those encouraging words! It's really, really wonderful. Thank you. But I have to be honest, that it's been really hard! It hasn't been this thing where I've been like, "Oh, I'll just give up all of this that I've worked for." And this amazing big platform feels like, in a big way, it was handed to me by God, because I didn't really work for it. My first video that I uploaded went totally viral and had hundreds of thousands of views on it, and it was very overwhelming and intoxicating when it happened. And I really felt thrust into a kind of public persona that was never why I made a YouTube channel. I was just interested in ideas.
It was during the Trump era. I felt like I was being pulled away from my secular, liberal indoctrination. And at the time, when I started my YouTube channel, I was becoming more right wing or more conservative. There wasn't even really a faith element of it yet at that point. But over time it has developed into that.

And so I've always felt this desire to help people with this platform, because it really did feel like it was just placed in my lap. I felt like I had to give something back and do something that was useful with it. And even now, I still get messages and emails from people all the time, especially from other moms who tell me, "Your motherhood content is so encouraging. It's made me feel less alone. You know, I don't have a village around me. I don't have supportive family around me. So having your content in your videos has made me feel less alone." And those sorts of things just make me feel like it's so worth it to continue, and it's the allure to come back in, because I'm helping other people, right?

But actually, who are the people in my life that need and deserve my help the most? That's what I have to keep reminding myself of. Yeah, sure, it's great to help anyone and everyone who I can, but my children have to be the priority. And I've had to learn this lesson over and over and over again, because it's not just been social media that's been a distraction there. There is like a plethora of distractions in the modern world, so that there's always justifications for why I should do this. "Oh, I can bring in extra money and the money can support them," or, you know, any number of excuses that are whispering to your ears.

I think ultimately it's the Evil One that is pulling me away from the most important holy work that I can be doing, which is raising my children properly. And over Lent, this has been the most humbling iteration of me being having to have this lesson drilled into me over and over again, is that I got sort of spiritually amped up about reading Genesis. And I was on this spiritual high, and I was just feeling so close to God, and feeling so just amazing and happy about this accomplishment of reading Genesis, and I just wanted more. And I found myself trying to set the children up so they're doing something, busy, so I can get to my Bible, so I can ignore my work of doing the house and the child rearing, so I can read my Bible and I can get deeper and deeper into the knowledge and the wisdom.

When that happened, I was feeling hungry for more spiritual wisdom, more spiritual experience. I didn't want that high to go away. Right? And even this was — the most profound thing about it is that I can even make my own faith a distraction from my children if I want to. And it's such a difficult thing to get grounded in that. I can be praying, and be connected with God, and be doing my my work in the household, and with the children, without having to put them on the sidelines.

You know, for a moment there I was thinking, "Oh, I just I just want to sit quietly with my Bible", you know? And I was getting resentful and feeling like, "Oh, I wish I didn't have to tend to all these little requests every five minutes. You know, I just wish I could focus on my Bible." And that seems like, "Oh, I'm doing the right thing because I'm reading my Bible." But actually not, if I'm putting aside my most important job that God gave me, which is to be serving my family and my children
before it.

And I'm so grateful for you reminding me that what I'm doing is right, because I have needed to be reminded over and over and over again that it's right. Because the allure of distraction, however it can manifest itself, is just so powerful in today's world. So thank you for that.

Fr. Joseph

Exactly! And you know, that social media following, those people are there right now. They're waiting. You know, they're interested. They want to hear something. But you look at a little two year old or three year old, and you wipe their nose or feed them some cereal, it's hard to see that person as an adult that's out there changing the world.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

And yet you blink your eyes, and that baby went from newborn to three. Blink your eyes again — that baby will be 18.

Robyn

Mm-hmm. 

Fr. Joseph

No mommy likes to hear that, but it just goes so quickly, and you don't get that time back.

Robyn

No.

Fr. Joseph

Now, most likely YouTube will still be around in ten years or so.

Robyn

Yeah. And there will come a time, probably, when I will have [the time] to do this if I want to.

Fr. Joseph

And whether you decide to do it or not, All that you're pouring into your children right now, they will take what you have given them and they will pour that into the world when they're adults. My favorite example of that is Solomon's mother, Bathsheba.

When people hear the name Bathsheba, they usually don't have super positive thoughts. But you know, all of us, we have a past. All of us are sinners. All of us had to come to God. We had to go to confession. We had to say, "I'm a sinner. Please forgive me." There's not one of us that can say, "Well, I don't need the blood of Christ on my account. I'm already perfect." You know, we all need forgiveness. We all have pasts, including Bathsheba. But what happened after that?

I believe it was Saint Gregory the Theologian, one of the Cappadocian fathers in the fourth century, and he was writing about Proverbs 31. Now, everybody knows about Proverbs 31. If you're in a Christian culture at all, you hear about the "Proverbs 31 woman", right?

Robyn

Yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to be a Proverbs 31 Woman.

Fr. Joseph

Exactly. Right. This wonderful, hardworking [woman who] gets up early, stays up late, takes care of the kids, takes care of the field, buys and sells land, just does all these different things, makes her own clothes at home — and so many women look at her as the ideal wife and mother. And they should, because she is the ideal wife and mother.

But who is she? Who is the Proverbs 31 woman? Saint Gregory the Theologian said that King Solomon wrote Proverbs 31. And in Proverbs 31, the opening to it says that these are things that the king learned from his mother.

Now, people have different names in Scripture. You know, at some point the person is called by one name, at some point by another name. And in Proverbs 31 [the author] uses the name "King Lemuel", which led a lot of people to not realize that it's the same person as King Solomon. But then you realize that this is King Solomon, and that he's writing words that were taught to him by his mother. And then he writes Proverbs 31.

Okay, it wasn't her hand. It wasn't her pen. But it was her teaching throughout his childhood. It made such an impact on him, that now this king, this leader of the nation, this writer of Scripture — it's his mother's words. It's Bathsheba's words coming out.

And would Solomon have written all these things, if he felt like his mother was a hypocrite? If he felt like she wasn't that "Proverbs 31 woman" that he was writing about? [Of course not.]

So it seems, based on what Saint Gregory has written, that when I sit down and read Proverbs 31 . . . I believe Bathsheba is the Proverbs 31 woman.

Robyn

Wow. Interesting!

Fr. Joseph

She's the one who set that example. Solomon saw that she was a good mother, that she was a good wife to her husband. And even in adulthood, he looked at her with respect. He looked at her fondly.

In fact, we read elsewhere in Scripture, even after he became king . . . his mother, Bathsheba, walks into the room, and he gets up and he bows down to her.

Robyn

Oh, wow! Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

Now, he wasn't confused. He knew that he was king. He knew that he was the one ruling the kingdom. But he wanted to honor his mother. So even the king gets up and he bows to his mother, Bathsheba. And when he writes Proverbs 31, he says, "I'm writing the things that my mother taught me." I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically how the how the proverb opens.

And that's very encouraging, because if Bathsheba can be the Proverbs 31 woman, then any woman can be the Proverbs 31 woman. Anybody can have a past.
Anybody can be imperfect. Anybody can look back on things they did years ago and not be very proud of it. And yet today, that woman can choose to be a good wife, can choose to be a good mother.

And in her case, she didn't have any social media following because there wasn't any social media.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Through that one son, through decades of raising this child and teaching him what is good and what is right and what is holy, and setting a good example, he becomes who he is, and he honors his mother directly. Whenever he writes Proverbs 31, he gives her the credit for that.

And now, how many people in the world have read Bathsheba's teachings via Proverbs 31? Way more than 55,000.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Millions, hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people have been blessed by this teaching. But it came about not quickly, not in a hurry, but slowly, from all these years and years and years of teaching her son and ingraining the truth in him.

And now some people would say, "Oh, you know, it was it was King David [teaching him]." Well, of course, King David had a great impact on his son, no doubt. But it's interesting, in Scripture, King David had many children and many wives. And his son Absalom rebelled against him, and tried to kill him. Adonijah his son also rebelled against him. There was a lot of turmoil in the family. Some of his sons turned out very badly, very ungodly.

But they had different mothers! And it says in Scripture, of Absalom and Adonijah, that no one ever got after them. No one ever said, "What are you doing?" No one ever really corrected them as children. So they turned into very wicked adults, and they even despised their own father.

So that's at least a hint that suggests King David was not the best parent. He was a godly man. He loved God. He was a man after God's own heart. But he did not do a very good job of passing that on to all of his children and disciplining them correctly.

What was different about Solomon? Well, Solomon had the same dad that Absalom had, the same dad that Adonijah had. But his mom was different. Bathsheba was his mom. And as we read in Proverbs 31, his mom taught him about righteousness. His mom taught him about what is good and holy and true and pure, and she set a good example.

I know that in many families it may work differently. There are families where you have a really good dad and maybe not a great mom. There are families where you have a good dad and a good mom. There are families where both of them are not very good. But in this one particular family, the biblical evidence seems to suggest that David was not the best at being a dad. Not the best at correcting his children and being careful to teach them what's right. But Bathsheba was an excellent, godly mom, and it made all the difference in the world.

And that's really encouraging, because during those years that Solomon was growing up, who knows? Maybe she was tempted to say, "Oh, I could have had an amazing career. Oh, I could be out there writing books. I could be there giving speeches. I could be changing the world. But I'm stuck here changing dirty diapers. I'm stuck here feeding cereal and oatmeal to my baby."

But she did it faithfully. She did it for years. She did it quietly. She did it without any acclaim, without any recognition. And today, there's this whole chapter in the Bible that is her teaching. It was filtered through her son, and it comes out his pen through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And now you have hundreds of millions of lives changed.

I do hope that you will continue to do videos when there's truly available time, and when you feel like it's not going to conflict with the family. But worst case, even if you never did another video, just be encouraged that those years where there's no acknowledgement of what you're doing, no acclaim, and you're just changing diapers and and feeding babies and reading books to babies and teaching them about Jesus and teaching them about the Bible — that is how you change the world. That is how you change millions of lives. It's done gently and quietly and slowly, but it's effective.

Robyn

Thank you! Thank you for sharing that with me. It's very, very encouraging! Motherhood can be very monotonous and and repetitive and really, really physically and mentally draining. But it's also like the best . . . It's just the best! It's the best job I've ever been honored with. And actually, it's such an honor to be able to serve my family. It really is. I feel so lucky that I get I get to stay home with them and be with them. I can't even imagine not being with them! It's wonderful. I'm very, very blessed!

Fr. Joseph

Now, what are your plans . . . to stay home with them their entire childhood? To homeschool them? Or are you just counting the days until they're 5 or 6 years old so you can send them off to school all day to be educated by the government?

Robyn

::laughs:  Oh, absolutely not! I am a full-time stay-at-home mom until the end! And, God willing, [I'll be a] stay-at-home Grandma. You know, I don't think that I can even imagine my life, not looking after children, or not having the home be the center of my universe anymore. I'm so in it now.

It wasn't just joyful right from the start, of course. Right? Because I was a maiden for my whole life. And then all of a sudden I was thrust into motherhood. And then there's sort of your wobbling, trying to find your footing, and you're learning as you're doing. You know, it can be really, really difficult and painful sometimes, and you're learning to find the joy in the pain.

And so now I've been a mom for three years, and I feel like I've found my footing. You know, it wasn't easy in the beginning, and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be a good mom, or if I was ever going to be able to be joyful while I was doing what I've been doing. But now I feel like I'm finally just starting to. And it's really something that's happened very recently.

And one resource that has helped me do that, that I would just like to share because there's a lot of moms out there who are also watching, is a lecture
series that's offered by Patristic Nectar publications called The Good Wife, and it's a five part lecture series, and it goes through Father Josiah Trenham's teachings on what it means to be a good wife. And then of course, within that is what it means to be a good mother. There were just so many little bits throughout that lecture where I had to pause and just like quite literally weep, because it was humbling me and changing me. And there were all of these revolutionary lessons that completely changed my soul and my heart and my mind towards the work that I was doing. The work didn't change, but I changed.

One one of the things that was in that lecture that really just totally, radically changed me was this: My husband is the priest of our home. If our house is a little church, the husband is the priest of the home, and I shouldn't speak to him in a way that I wouldn't speak to a priest. And that just blew my mind, because I was a secular woman for a long time throughout my 20s, and there's this toxic sort of feminism, you know, always thinking about yourself as a woman and what the man is doing for you as a woman, and this kind of brattiness and entitlement that even though I didn't consider myself a feminist anymore, I would be disrespectful to my husband. So thinking of my husband as the priest of my home changed the way that I interacted with my husband. And that just changed our marriage in this beautiful way.

And another thing that he said was that mothers who respond to the cries of their children at night without hesitation and without even considering for a moment letting them cry alone are competing with the monks and the nuns in their holy work. And that just hit me right in the heart because I have never even considered doing "cry it out", this sort of horrible trend, mostly in North America. I don't think it happens much outside of North America, where parents just leave their babies to cry until they exhaust themselves and then the baby sleeps through the night. But what really has happened is that you've broken the child's instinct to call for their mother, because it's easier for the mother. Right? To do that, and then get a full night's sleep. And I'll tell you, not having a full night's sleep in three years has its drawbacks.

But my son started sleeping through the night all on his own when he was 20 months old. And, you know, looking back on those hard nights now, I have zero regrets. I'm so proud of myself for never choosing my own desire for rest, my own passion for rest, over my duty to my son. So I really highly recommend that lecture series, because that's just two little wonderful little bites of wisdom that changed my heart towards the work that I was doing in my house with my husband, with my children, all of those things. And it's still, it's like an ongoing process, right?

So now it's a lot easier to just put the social media to the side, because I'm fully invested in this work now. And it actually does feel really meaningful, even though it is just changing diapers and feeding oatmeal and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I hope that other moms out there will be really encouraged by what we've shared with regard to that.

And when it comes to homeschooling, which is something that's going to be starting very, very soon — I mean, it already has started in some regards, even for a three year old. We're teaching things every single day. And I really struggled with, like, "how do I create structure in my day?" So that my children feel that structure. They feel that there's order in their lives. And that's something that throughout my entire life, before I became Orthodox, I really just struggled with, you know. I just kind of had this sort of laissez faire attitude about things. "Things will get done when they get done," you know. But having prayer be something which is guiding our day, it's like this structure has emerged on its own and I didn't have to create it myself. And that's been wonderful.

I'm always looking for more resources for what I'm going to teach my children, and how I'm going to teach my children more in alignment with Orthodoxy, which is another reason why I was so interested in this book series, because that's something that I will now order, and it will become a part of our homeschool curriculum.

But the schools in Canada, I mean, even if I wasn't Orthodox, I don't know if I could send my children to the schools here, because of how children are just really targeted in the most gruesome ways in our school system. And the worst thing is they're not even receiving an education. There are the horrible grooming things that go on with the trans agenda, the sexualization of children younger and younger, and pushing vaccinations on them. Then you also have "evolution" which seeps in and chips away at faith in all sorts of subtle ways. It isn't excusable, but it would almost be excusable if they were at the same time receiving a really nice education, learning how to operate in the world in a way that's functional. But they're not. You can look at the way that children's scores have been getting worse and worse in all sorts of different subjects over the years. So it really wasn't even a question for us that we won't be able to put our children in school.

It's a huge responsibility. Transferring the faith and transferring the wisdom of the faith that I'm accumulating over time is a huge responsibility. Making sure that they're going to be educated is a huge, intimidating responsibility too. So if you have any advice or wisdom on how to best do that, I'm all ears.

Fr. Joseph

Well, first, I just want to second what you said about Father Josiah Trenham. You know, his lectures, his series on the family are very, very good. So I hope that anybody listening, who has not heard them, will go onto Patristic Nectar and download those particular teachings that he has about good parenting and being a good spouse, because they're definitely worth the time!

And you're right. I mean, in the public schools, they have a lot of the overtly anti-Christian things — the LGBT stuff, the trans stuff, you know, just a lot of the woke political things that have worked their ways into the schools. But evolution, you know, we were talking about that earlier, and the schools have been teaching this for over a hundred years now. And the way you described it is right. It's really not an in-your-face denial of God. It's not an in-your-face denial of Christianity, which is why so many Christians let down their guard and they allow it in.

But it's a gradual thing. It just chips away at your faith a little piece, by a little piece.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

If you imagine your house on a cliff, and somebody chipping away at the cliff underneath for a long time, you're going to feel like you can move. It's sturdy. The house is just as stable as it's ever been. You keep chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. . . . One day, it's not going to be strong enough to hold you up anymore.

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

Then all at once, it's just going to come crashing down. And suddenly you see the fruit of all those years of chipping away.

And there's so many of these things coming together. You personally have been experiencing the presence of God through reading, through the book of Genesis, reading his Word the way that He has written it. You've been experiencing the glory of motherhood, and little by little, passing the faith on to your children and passing the glory of God on to your kids.

And how is it that this teaching of billions of years of time, billions of years of death, molecules-to-man evolution — How does it chip away at these things? Why is it that a child can be raised in a Christian home for 18 to 20 years or more, go to church every Sunday with his parents, grow up praying at the family dinner table, and then in their early 20's, turn their back on Christianity entirely and say, "I don't believe this"? Why does that cliff come crashing down? And what are some of the specific things that do that?

One of them we already talked about. You just read Genesis. It does not say, "13 billion years ago, God did this and that." It says that God created the world and everything that we see in six days. And it doesn't just use the word "day", because people like to get hung up on "what is a day?" It specifies it, it defines it.
It says "an evening and morning were the first day" and "an evening and morning were the second day." And throughout Scripture, whenever you have evening and morning, that's very specific. It's about 24 hours of time, what we would call a "day". And regardless of how long somebody thinks that was, there was no death during that time. So hypothetically, even if you could stretch that into 13 billion years, it would have to be 13 billion years of no death.

Robyn

Yes.

Fr. Joseph

Which does not match evolutionary teaching at all. 

Robyn

Right!

Fr. Joseph

Because it's a theological question. It's not only a scientific question. Where does death come from? You know, when you see a person die, or when you even see an animal die, it's a really gut wrenching, horrible thing. And it's not natural. It's not normal. God did not create a bunch of animals that kill and slaughter and eat each other and then say, "Oh, this is very good."

Robyn

Yeah.

Fr. Joseph

He didn't he didn't create a world full of death and tooth-and-nail and call it "very good". That's not the world he created. 

It explicitly says in the New Testament, in the book of Romans, that death came into the world because of man's sin. God made man the king of creation. And then man turns his back on God, and then man and all of creation falls and suffers this penalty, this horrible disease that leads to death.

And then redemption in Christ — the New Testament says not only is it our souls that Christ saves, but Jesus also saves all of creation. So all of the cosmos falls in our sin. And then when Christ redeems us from our sin, that's how He restores all of creation to its original glory. And I just think it's so important to realize that if the Scriptures are true, if the teachings of the church throughout history have been true, you can't have death before the fall of man.

And also, Adam and Eve are mentioned as real historical people, even in the New Testament. In the genealogy of Jesus, it says that Adam is the direct ancestor of Christ. So if Adam is not a real historical person, then neither is Christ. And so you have to take it as a whole. Either it's all true or none of it is true.

Robyn

Yes! Wonderful!

Unfortunately, that's going to have to be the point that we end on today. Thank you so much for your time, Father!

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Apologies for the abrupt ending! The kids needed tending to! To find Father Joseph's substack, socials, and how to support his work translating the important Orthodox texts on creation we discussed, please check the description box below! — CHRIST IS RISEN

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Below you will find links to all of Father Joseph's online work and socials. Please do consider supporting his important project translating Orthodox texts on Creation to english, this is so very needed!

Fundraiser for translation of books on Creation: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/creation-evolution-groundbreaking-new-book-set/x/9980253#/

Fr. Joseph's Substack on Creation Theology & Science: https://sixdaycreation.substack.com/

Fr. Joseph's Substack: https://movingtorussia.substack.com/

Telegram Channel English: https://t.me/movingtorussia_goldenring

Telegram Channel Russian: https://t.me/o_IOSIF