- Have you seen that painting of a person shooting up and it's Jesus' arm? - Oh, and it's Jesus' arm, yeah. - Okay, listen, before that was a meme, I legitimately loved that painting. And it really spoke to me, and I was kind of really bummed that that became a meme that people were just like, that's crazy, 'cause the idea behind it is basically what you're talking about. Yes, and so that just made me think like, wait, so does that mean... That's a weird thought. That's kind of like the thought of like, your relatives looking down on you from heaven, so that means that they see every awful thing you do also. - Right, it is weird. - So that means God has, like, I've gotten God high, or like... (laughing) - Well, there's like, there are also, like even two of you just wanna talk emotions, like there's a philosopher named, he goes by R.T. Mullins, his name's Ryan. Ryan Mullins, who does a lot with like God and emotion, he's like, he's not like a full blown, open and relational person or processed person, but he's a neoclassical theist. And so he believes that God can experience emotion and does, but in his book on this, he talks about like what he calls weird or creepy emotions, he's like, okay, so like, can God experience horniness, or like these kind of things? - Well, yeah, that's like, that gets kind of odd. - That's like thinking about, you know, Jesus like having nocturnal emissions, or... - Probably did. - Well... - I would think so. - Statistically, he did, if he was a human, like he did. Or like, do you think, it's like, I don't even wanna talk about it, right? But okay, if God was fully man, that means that like, he had like, diarrhea sometimes, he got, he had to have probably gotten aroused and like fought that, or, I mean, do you think he ever kissed? Yeah, I don't know. Boy, people don't like talking about that. I don't think he would have known anyone without being married, I don't. 'Cause they said he was without sin, right? - Yeah, well that's part of the Christian tradition. I'm not sure, 'cause I mean, like honestly, from like, the Bible's not trying to answer any of those kind of questions. So like, going there for something like that isn't, in my opinion, helpful. So you just have to be like, okay, well, if Jesus was fully human, then we can assume Jesus fully embraced the human condition. Jesus experienced all the fully human stuff. - I don't, that can get dicey though. But I mean, for me, like, I'm fine with the whole sinlessness thing. Like if people wanna hold that and that's important to them, that's cool, and like, I know it's a part of the tradition. I'm far more interested in the faithfulness of Jesus than the sinlessness of Jesus. I think Jesus' faithfulness to the divine call in each moment is what makes Jesus special. - Is it one of the things? - Is it not a cheat code though, because he's faithful to himself? - So this is, all right, now you're gonna make me confess heresy and shit, maybe, I don't know if it's heretical, but I, so this is how I see it. I see, like, I think Jesus becomes the image of the invisible God because of Jesus' faithfulness. So in each moment, if God is inviting us into the good and beautiful and true, and you and I have the ability to respond, like say on a good day, I'm like a five or six in responding to the divine lure. Jesus was up to 11, so Jesus was completely faithful to the divine call in each moment where Jesus literally imaged God because Jesus was so faithful to the call that God's will was being completely, you know, actualized through the person of Jesus. So that's like different. I don't know, I don't know if I, like, I don't think like Jesus, the person, the human being, existed eternally forever. That's weird to me. I don't know. - Yeah, okay, that is, yeah, that's a... - There's gonna be a difference 'cause everybody's talking about like, well, so what do you make, I ran across this on Reddit, which I often do, this is a pretty common thing, where especially in the alternative history or strange earth or conspiracy subs, when Jesus gets brought up, they talk about the lost years of Jesus and then someone always recounts, I should have saved it. The Gnostic text that basically the summary is that he trained under the Magi, that like the same ones that like predicted his birth, he like went with them, made his way to India, like studied under the Buddha, learned from him, came back and like basically like took a tour and like picked up little pieces of Indian and Buddhist and Eastern philosophies and then came back when he was ready. I can't remember the group of people that they said he was associated with, like not Zoroastrianism, but it was like the something to do with the Magi. That's all like horseshit, right? - Yeah, I mean, I think so. It sounds like just people doing what people do, which is when there's somebody who is really special in history and they want to demonstrate how special that person is, you create these mythologies around them, that's like very common practice. I actually think, so I'm reading a book right now about like John the Baptist, which is fascinating. Actually, you would probably like it. James McGrath is the scholar, he has a normal people version and then like a scholarly version that's not out yet. So I'm reading the normal person version and it's all about like the historical John the Baptist and just, it's called Christmaker and just how much like-- - That'd be a cool band name. - Jesus, it would be, (laughs) like how much Jesus picked up from John 'cause Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and then it's like tying in, like showing all the influence that John had and kind of how Jesus was like the student that like surpassed Jesus' teacher, John. It's really interesting. - So he was Obi-Wan. Well, how much extra biblical information is there on John the Baptist, a lot? - So he's pulling-- - Like where does he get this from? - He's pulling from the Bible. He's also pulling from, there's a group of people, I forget what they're called, it starts with the letter M, like as in M like McDonald's. - The Mormons? - The Mormons, it's them. - The Masons. (laughs) - It's not the Masons. - The Mansons? - It's also not the Masons. - The monsters. - That's the one, the monsters, Herman Munster. - Okay. - But anyway, it's this group that was like religiously devoted, like was a follower of John the Baptist, right? And so they like continued and their religion like still exists. Like they do these like really-- - To this day? - It's intricate, I believe so. Yeah, they do these really intricate like baptism ceremonies and all these kind of things. So they have a holy text that like goes into a lot of John's teachings as well. And so I know one of the things James is doing is comparing the Christian, like our Christian scriptures slash Jewish scriptures with this text and like finding some of the overlaps. Yeah, it's really cool. I'm interviewing James on Wednesday actually. - Oh, so this was just a plug, dude. - Hey, there we go. - You don't give a shit, dude. - Oh, it's cool, it works. - Are they called, are they called Johnny's? - That would be cool. - Is that the religion? What, are you a Christian? No, I'm a, I'm a John the John's, I'm a Johnny. (laughing) (laughing)
