# Frederica Mathewes-Green — Making a Commitment to Reality (Preview)

An episode of [Bible Answer Man Podcast with Hank Hanegraaff](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/569236334), 16 Mar 2026, 41 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70660053/hup_ctr_preview.mp3

Frederica Mathewes-Green was the very first guest on Hank Unplugged. As the longtime producer of the podcast, Dave Hanegraaff thought it would be fitting for Frederica to also be the first guest on his new podcast, A Commitment to Reality. In this preview episode, Frederica Mathewes-Green and Dave Hanegraaff explore what it means to live in alignment with reality. To hear the full conversation, search for A Commitment to Reality wherever you listen to podcasts and follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can also watch full episodes and clips onYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi, This is Dave Hannigraft, the producer of the handkum
[0:03] Speaker 1: Plug podcast and the host of a new podcast called
[0:07] Speaker 1: A Commitment to Reality. Today, you're hearing a preview of
[0:11] Speaker 1: a conversation from a Commitment to Reality. On this show,
[0:15] Speaker 1: I sit down with the same types of guests that
[0:18] Speaker 1: you've become accustomed to hearing on the handcum Plug podcast,
[0:22] Speaker 1: think the most interesting, informative and inspirational people on the planet.
[0:28] Speaker 1: On this episode, I'm speaking with Frederica Matthews Green to
[0:32] Speaker 1: hear the full conversation search for a Commitment to Reality
[0:36] Speaker 1: Wherever you listen to podcasts, I want to start by
[0:42] Speaker 1: telling you a story that has to do with podcasting.
[0:45] Speaker 1: I listened to Tim Ferris and his podcast. An episode
[0:49] Speaker 1: came through and it was Tim Ferris with Glenn Beck,
[0:55] Speaker 1: and I thought to myself, I don't want to listen
[0:57] Speaker 1: to this. I hate Glenn Beck. And then I started
[1:01] Speaker 1: to think, well, I don't really even know Glenn Beck,
[1:04] Speaker 1: but I've seen him on TV. Hes kind of angry
[1:08] Speaker 1: looking and yelling or frantic about something. I've seen his
[1:12] Speaker 1: face plastered on books as I walk through the airport,
[1:15] Speaker 1: and he has this smarmy look and why would I
[1:19] Speaker 1: listen to a podcast with Glenn Beck. But I did,
[1:26] Speaker 1: and an interesting thing happened. I don't remember much of
[1:30] Speaker 1: the podcast in terms of what they talked about or
[1:35] Speaker 1: the substance, but I remember thinking, Wow, I had completely
[1:40] Speaker 1: made a caricature of this person. And some of that
[1:47] Speaker 1: is his own fault because he's a public person, and
[1:49] Speaker 1: that part of that is a caricature a mass.
[1:53] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:54] Speaker 1: But through the process of listening to him and his life,
[2:00] Speaker 1: and I think that's the beauty of podcasts and conversation
[2:03] Speaker 1: period person to person, is you start to realize more
[2:08] Speaker 1: and more about somebody. You start to see their humanity
[2:11] Speaker 1: as opposed to the caricature. And as the process of
[2:16] Speaker 1: listening to him played out, this idea of him started
[2:20] Speaker 1: to change in my mind, and I started to develop
[2:23] Speaker 1: a warmth to the point where now if I see him,
[2:25] Speaker 1: I still don't know that much about him, but his
[2:29] Speaker 1: face pops up on the internet here there on Twitter,
[2:34] Speaker 1: and I don't feel that same disdain even though I
[2:38] Speaker 1: don't remember much of what he said, although I do
[2:41] Speaker 1: remember one thing, and I want to ask you it.
[2:43] Speaker 1: Because I listened to him, my whole view changed, which
[2:48] Speaker 1: is the benefit of actually listening to people instead of
[2:51] Speaker 1: just projecting what you think they are. And he said something,
[2:56] Speaker 1: and for years after that it was one of those
[2:59] Speaker 1: questions that when I met somebody for the first time,
[3:02] Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, well this is really incisive. This gets
[3:06] Speaker 1: to the core of who somebody is. He said, I
[3:10] Speaker 1: like to ask people, how is your soul? So, Frederica,
[3:15] Speaker 1: how is your soul?
[3:16] Speaker 2: It's a wonderful question. My soul is contense and my
[3:20] Speaker 2: soul is joyous because my prayer times just get better
[3:24] Speaker 2: and better. I've gotten to the point where I have
[3:28] Speaker 2: I don't know how many prayer times in a day,
[3:30] Speaker 2: but in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle
[3:32] Speaker 2: of the night, I get up and say the Jesus Prayer,
[3:34] Speaker 2: with the Prayer of and all the other ones. It's
[3:38] Speaker 2: like I'm always being brought back into the presence of
[3:41] Speaker 2: the Lord, and I love them so much so that
[3:44] Speaker 2: gives me contentment. Other than that, things in my life
[3:48] Speaker 2: and my family, my health, it's all pretty good. I
[3:51] Speaker 2: feel like I'm being given time to prepare for debility
[3:55] Speaker 2: and maybe dementia, and I don't know what I'm going
[4:00] Speaker 2: on a ride that the Lord's going to take me on.
[4:03] Speaker 2: So at seventy three, I'm looking down the years and
[4:07] Speaker 2: you know, maintaining the strength to go wherever he wants
[4:10] Speaker 2: to take me. So yeah, contentment, I think is the
[4:14] Speaker 2: main one.
[4:16] Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I started to think about that question,
[4:22] Speaker 1: or I started to think about Glenn Beck and that
[4:24] Speaker 1: situation and that situation of being exposed to somebody and
[4:27] Speaker 1: having your mind changed through actually listening to them. And
[4:32] Speaker 1: you know, it's funny, I completely forgot the question. For years.
[4:37] Speaker 1: I would ask people, how is your soul? Yeah? And
[4:39] Speaker 1: it had morphed in my mind to a question that
[4:41] Speaker 1: you answered when I asked who are you? What's your story?
[4:46] Speaker 1: A question that what I remembered him saying was what
[4:50] Speaker 1: makes your heart sing?
[4:51] Speaker 2: Huh?
[4:53] Speaker 1: And I used to ask people that quite a bit
[4:55] Speaker 1: as well, because I think, you know, okay, yeah, you
[4:58] Speaker 1: might do this to pay your bills, but what makes
[5:00] Speaker 1: your heart saying yeah? And then the follow up question
[5:03] Speaker 1: was what breaks your heart? So you answered what makes
[5:10] Speaker 1: your heart saying without me asking. I wonder if you'd
[5:14] Speaker 1: answered the second part, what breaks your heart?
[5:16] Speaker 2: What breaks my heart is usually hearing of someone else's trouble,
[5:22] Speaker 2: and sometimes I feel like I hear something. And the
[5:26] Speaker 2: first time I met my new GP, my PCP here
[5:31] Speaker 2: in the mountains of Tennessee, I was sitting waiting for her,
[5:34] Speaker 2: sitting on the table using my prayer rope, and when
[5:37] Speaker 2: she came in, to my vast surprise, she had a
[5:41] Speaker 2: prayer rope around her wrist and I said, you're wearing
[5:45] Speaker 2: a prayer rope and she said yes, a friend gave
[5:49] Speaker 2: it to me at my husband's funeral. And it hit
[5:54] Speaker 2: me so hard. It was like a donkey kicked me
[5:58] Speaker 2: in the chest. And I just went oh. And I mean,
[6:03] Speaker 2: she must have thought it was a nut, but I
[6:06] Speaker 2: genuinely couldn't speak for a minute. I just felt so
[6:09] Speaker 2: much pain over that, and I do think it took
[6:13] Speaker 2: a little a few more visits before she realized I
[6:16] Speaker 2: was actually not an insane person. But that's what breaks
[6:20] Speaker 2: my heart. Things like that break my heart. Cruelty, you know,
[6:24] Speaker 2: breaks my heart when I read about it, and especially
[6:28] Speaker 2: I worry about the perpetrator and the state of their soul,
[6:33] Speaker 2: and I pray that God will bring them to repentance.
[6:36] Speaker 2: It's more things like that. It's more like real people
[6:40] Speaker 2: or incidents than the state of culture, because there's good
[6:46] Speaker 2: things as well as bad things happening all the time,
[6:49] Speaker 2: and there's so many cataclysmic things approaching. We don't know
[6:52] Speaker 2: which one is going to hit first. It may make
[6:55] Speaker 2: all the other concerns, you know, just wipe them away.
[6:58] Speaker 2: They won't matter anymore. So I don't worry about the
[7:01] Speaker 2: big things. My heart breaks over these incidents and these
[7:05] Speaker 2: human beings.
[7:06] Speaker 1: One thing that I do want to talk to you about.
[7:09] Speaker 1: It might be possible that you haven't seen it, but
[7:11] Speaker 1: I think that you agree based on what you said
[7:14] Speaker 1: about the atomization, the loneliness. I think something that's connected
[7:18] Speaker 1: to that is that we've experienced a large degree of
[7:21] Speaker 1: social atrophy that we don't even know how to interact anymore. Now.
[7:28] Speaker 1: I loathe small talk. I cannot stand small talk, and
[7:32] Speaker 1: I think anybody who's met a Hanograph understands that we
[7:34] Speaker 1: don't like talking about the weather or anything inconsequential. We
[7:38] Speaker 1: like to get straight to the big things in life,
[7:40] Speaker 1: the existential questions. But I miss small talk because when
[7:46] Speaker 1: I'm in the grocery store, I feel like people can't
[7:49] Speaker 1: even look at you. I mean, cashiers don't look at you,
[7:53] Speaker 1: or they don't you ask them a simple question and
[7:55] Speaker 1: they feel a sense of panic that they have to
[7:57] Speaker 1: interact with another person. Experience this so often that I
[8:01] Speaker 1: feel confident saying it. I'll be pushing the buggy so
[8:06] Speaker 1: otherners call it the cart in the grocery store, and
[8:11] Speaker 1: someone will be standing there needing to get past, but
[8:15] Speaker 1: they just freeze. Historically speaking, I feel like we would
[8:19] Speaker 1: use words like excuse me or may I get past you?
[8:22] Speaker 1: But people just freeze and they stare. And I feel
[8:26] Speaker 1: that palpably as a sign of this social atrophy that
[8:33] Speaker 1: we're experiencing. That we can't even talk to each other
[8:37] Speaker 1: like that, and I fear what that means. If we
[8:42] Speaker 1: can't even talk about small things, how are we able
[8:45] Speaker 1: to talk about the big things in life, the big problems?
[8:49] Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And unfortunately people do talk about the big
[8:53] Speaker 2: problems and great ignorance and contentiously, and it just makes
[8:58] Speaker 2: everything worse. They don't know how to relate to another
[9:02] Speaker 2: human being and have an open conversation where you're willing
[9:06] Speaker 2: to take in what the other person is saying.
[9:09] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[9:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, I have seen that and worried about it less
[9:14] Speaker 2: so now that I live in Tennessee and in a
[9:18] Speaker 2: little town in Appalachia, and there is more interaction. We
[9:21] Speaker 2: we have a funeral. Leaving the church and going the
[9:26] Speaker 2: twenty minutes to the cemetery, we saw other cars pull
[9:30] Speaker 2: over for us. We saw men get out of their
[9:34] Speaker 2: car and take off their baseball cap and hold it
[9:37] Speaker 2: over their hearts. I never saw that in Baltimore, never
[9:41] Speaker 2: err and even it's a divided highway, even on the
[9:45] Speaker 2: other side of the road, they were doing pulling over
[9:49] Speaker 2: to show respect for funeral procession as we went to
[9:53] Speaker 2: the cemetery. It still exists in some places, and we
[9:57] Speaker 2: do get the chatty you know, cashiers who want to
[10:00] Speaker 2: interact and have things they want to tell you. That
[10:05] Speaker 2: on the last islands where this still exists, it's the screens,
[10:10] Speaker 2: isn't it. It's people looking at their screens too much.
[10:15] Speaker 2: And something I noticed early, even in the nineties before phones,
[10:20] Speaker 2: when it was just computer screens, is that what you
[10:24] Speaker 2: see on the computer is so much more exciting than
[10:27] Speaker 2: what you see in your surrounding world, and so much
[10:31] Speaker 2: more authoritative, it seems. And you're seeing movie stars and
[10:36] Speaker 2: famous people, and they're interacting and having conversations, and when
[10:41] Speaker 2: you look away from the computer screen, it was all
[10:44] Speaker 2: so dull and familiar and pointless. Really, and the people
[10:50] Speaker 2: in your house you see them all the time, the
[10:52] Speaker 2: people in the grocery store, they're just the same as
[10:55] Speaker 2: yesterday and last week and last year. So I think
[10:58] Speaker 2: there's something about the draw ah of the internet that
[11:03] Speaker 2: is just so much more vivid than exciting the daily
[11:06] Speaker 2: life that has seduced people into putting all their energy
[11:11] Speaker 2: there in their masks, you know, their persona, and even
[11:17] Speaker 2: more than their work.
[11:18] Speaker 1: You know.
[11:18] Speaker 2: I wonder if that's the case, is when people think
[11:21] Speaker 2: of who are you really? Their work doesn't really matter
[11:25] Speaker 2: that much. For many people, they don't get to earn
[11:27] Speaker 2: money at the thing they really love. We who do
[11:31] Speaker 2: should honor that and respect that.
[11:34] Speaker 1: Well. On the internet is one place where people aren't
[11:36] Speaker 1: afraid to talk.
[11:37] Speaker 2: Well, that's it's very true. And they get into arguments
[11:40] Speaker 2: so fast, you know. I used to do a lot
[11:44] Speaker 2: of speaking and a lot of media on the abortion
[11:47] Speaker 2: issue as a pro life representative, and I never forgot
[11:50] Speaker 2: One time I was on CNN and it was a
[11:54] Speaker 2: half hour show that had commercial interruptions, and I was
[11:58] Speaker 2: in the studio and everybody else was in a studio
[12:01] Speaker 2: somewhere remotely and whenever there was a commercial, the producer
[12:05] Speaker 2: would come in and say, doesn't that make you really angry?
[12:09] Speaker 2: Don't you want to just challenge her, like, just come
[12:12] Speaker 2: right back at her and challenge what she said. And
[12:15] Speaker 2: I didn't do that. You know, I was not going
[12:17] Speaker 2: to do that. I had the idea that the audience
[12:20] Speaker 2: was interested in hearing a conversation between two people who
[12:24] Speaker 2: disagreed on an important concept, an important topic that they're
[12:29] Speaker 2: both very well informed on. I had that illusion that
[12:33] Speaker 2: that's what it was all about. But no, she was right.
[12:36] Speaker 2: They wanted do your argument. If they're clicking through the
[12:39] Speaker 2: five hundred channels, what's exciting is seeing people who are angry.
[12:43] Speaker 2: I just was not cut out to that. So I
[12:45] Speaker 2: think that is the model people follow on the internet
[12:48] Speaker 2: most of the time is get in there and I'm
[12:52] Speaker 2: sure you've seen the little meme where the guy is
[12:54] Speaker 2: this computer and he calls to his wife says, I'll
[12:57] Speaker 2: be there.
[12:57] Speaker 1: In a minute.
[12:58] Speaker 2: Somebody is being wrong on the internet.
[13:04] Speaker 1: I did want to talk to you about your history
[13:06] Speaker 1: with abortion, but not talk about abortion, but more so
[13:11] Speaker 1: how we can't talk about anything anymore without getting incensed.
[13:15] Speaker 1: I mean, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and
[13:17] Speaker 1: I were sitting and we were talking to somebody on speakerphone,
[13:20] Speaker 1: and she started to say something about abortion or her
[13:23] Speaker 1: view on some issue that's politically charged, and I remember
[13:28] Speaker 1: going and what what? I don't get, I don't care who,
[13:34] Speaker 1: I don't care, and I just I feel like we've
[13:38] Speaker 1: experienced that so much. Even you know, we lived in
[13:42] Speaker 1: a condo when we first got married that faced a courtyard,
[13:46] Speaker 1: and let's say we were exposed. Anything we said could
[13:49] Speaker 1: be heard by fifteen twenty different condos at the same
[13:53] Speaker 1: time if they were listening. And if we're talking about,
[13:57] Speaker 1: you know, who won the game last week? Okay, full volume,
[14:01] Speaker 1: but then certain topics take the volume down a little
[14:05] Speaker 1: bit and look around, look over your shoulder. And I
[14:09] Speaker 1: don't know where we go as a society if we're
[14:12] Speaker 1: constantly thinking that way, How can we talk to each
[14:16] Speaker 1: other without dehumanizing one another? And the reason I wanted
[14:20] Speaker 1: to bring up the abortion topic with you is you
[14:24] Speaker 1: changed your mind? Yes? Yes? How do we change our minds?
[14:28] Speaker 1: And why is it so hard to change our minds?
[14:31] Speaker 2: Gosh, I wonder if the attachment to being right and
[14:37] Speaker 2: believing you are right, because that imagine somebody opposing you
[14:43] Speaker 2: and hating you, trying to drag you away. That makes
[14:47] Speaker 2: us more polarized in our thinking. And then because you're
[14:51] Speaker 2: clinging to this rightness and there's only you know, one
[14:55] Speaker 2: or two. There's only black or white, there's only two possibilities,
[15:00] Speaker 2: no subtlety. If you step back from your intense position
[15:04] Speaker 2: on something, you're just in free fall and enemies are
[15:08] Speaker 2: attacking you. I think maybe there's more fear about being
[15:12] Speaker 2: open minded than there was then. And of course I've noticed,
[15:17] Speaker 2: as you have too, that it seems like people who
[15:19] Speaker 2: hold progressive or even woke opinions feel quite free to
[15:25] Speaker 2: express their opinions, and those week conservatives, you know, who
[15:29] Speaker 2: have to hold back. I read a column in the
[15:32] Speaker 2: Washington Examiner by Rob Long, who was a TV producer.
[15:37] Speaker 2: He was the producer of Cheers way back when. Now
[15:40] Speaker 2: he is in seminary. He wants to be an episcopal priest.
[15:44] Speaker 2: So in hiss Colin, he said, I was meeting with
[15:46] Speaker 2: an old friend and he has gotten into using psychedelics
[15:50] Speaker 2: for trauma healing, emotional healing, and so we were talking
[15:54] Speaker 2: about this, and of course those drugs are illegal, but
[15:58] Speaker 2: we were talking at full volume, and we weren't ashamed
[16:01] Speaker 2: of what we were saying. And then they asked me
[16:03] Speaker 2: about seminary, and as I started to talk about my faith,
[16:07] Speaker 2: I noticed that we both began talking much more quietly.
[16:10] Speaker 2: You know, it's illegal to use these drugs, but it's
[16:15] Speaker 2: perfectly legal to be a Christian. But we feel like
[16:18] Speaker 2: that's the thing that we're not allowed to talk about.
[16:21] Speaker 2: So that's another part of it. I think. In fact,
[16:26] Speaker 2: I was talking to two friends who are more progressive,
[16:28] Speaker 2: and I said, I read this really interesting thing in
[16:31] Speaker 2: the Washington Examiner, and both of them said, oh, that's
[16:35] Speaker 2: a conservative magazine. It was like I was saying, yeah,
[16:39] Speaker 2: but that doesn't matter as far as this is consumers column.
[16:43] Speaker 2: But I felt like, you know, it's like cut them off,
[16:46] Speaker 2: you know, wipe them off the table. They have nothing
[16:48] Speaker 2: to say, they're probably lying. That's hard to feel like
[16:52] Speaker 2: you're being silenced for some of the opinions that you hold.
[16:57] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And I think if I'm thinking back on
[17:00] Speaker 1: the context of the conversation that I'm referencing with Emily,
[17:03] Speaker 1: my wife, I think it was after the Charlie Kirk
[17:07] Speaker 1: assassination that was kind of a breaking point for her
[17:12] Speaker 1: in terms of I'm not going to be quiet anymore.
[17:17] Speaker 1: My wife is very mild mannered. She the last thing
[17:21] Speaker 1: she would ever want to do is offend anybody. And
[17:24] Speaker 1: it's not as though she's not a handograph by birth,
[17:28] Speaker 1: so she doesn't need to get into the existential questions
[17:32] Speaker 1: all the time. Something about that situation and watching it
[17:36] Speaker 1: play out for her kind of broke in a good way,
[17:40] Speaker 1: kind of like the scales fell from her eyes, and
[17:43] Speaker 1: she realized that she was kind of being silenced in
[17:46] Speaker 1: a way that wasn't equal in terms of what she
[17:49] Speaker 1: was able to share. Like you said, if you're talking
[17:51] Speaker 1: about something that's illegal or something that's socially acceptable, let's
[17:55] Speaker 1: say ultraally acceptable in the broader sense, then yeah, go
[18:00] Speaker 1: right ahead. But once you start talking about your faith
[18:03] Speaker 1: or your views, whether let's say it's pro life versus
[18:06] Speaker 1: pro choice, okay, the dominant cultural narrative is that pro
[18:11] Speaker 1: choice is the socially acceptable, the cool thing. Yeah, the
[18:15] Speaker 1: cool thing, because I think a lot of it comes
[18:18] Speaker 1: down to influence. And I mean, like I said, this
[18:21] Speaker 1: isn't an opportunity to litigate different views on abortion, but
[18:25] Speaker 1: more so how we talk to each other even the
[18:29] Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk became a social signifier of where you stood,
[18:32] Speaker 1: whether you were conservative or progressive. But I did notice
[18:36] Speaker 1: that a lot of people who normally wouldn't speak out
[18:41] Speaker 1: started to speak out.
[18:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's I think that's the case. And
[18:46] Speaker 2: that was when I decided that I would wear this
[18:48] Speaker 2: cross every day. I always wore a little cross kind
[18:52] Speaker 2: of tucked inside, but I'm gonna wear my beautiful cross
[18:56] Speaker 2: just so anybody who looks at me they know I'm
[18:58] Speaker 2: a Christian and don't thing similar happened to me. I
[19:01] Speaker 2: was saying, that's what happened to me after the Charlie
[19:04] Speaker 2: Kirk assassination. And I wonder, you know, so many Christians
[19:08] Speaker 2: all over the country they had a similar kind of
[19:10] Speaker 2: a like after Bellis struck.
[19:12] Speaker 1: It just keeps.
[19:13] Speaker 2: Vibrating and we kept feeling that resonance. But the same
[19:17] Speaker 2: thing happened after your dad's chrismation. Because the day he
[19:22] Speaker 2: was Chris Maten, do you remember the sermon? What a
[19:25] Speaker 2: sermon so late in the service, that was when he
[19:29] Speaker 2: had your parents come up to be christ Maiden, and
[19:32] Speaker 2: then he preached this sermon. I never forgot he said,
[19:36] Speaker 2: early early this morning, most of you probably have not
[19:39] Speaker 2: heard about it. In Egypt, there was a bus of
[19:44] Speaker 2: Christian Orthodox Christians who were on their way on Palm Sunday,
[19:49] Speaker 2: on their way to the monastery of Saint Anthony to
[19:53] Speaker 2: celebrate and to hear a service.
[19:55] Speaker 1: And when they.
[19:55] Speaker 2: Got there, the bus was attacked and most of them
[19:58] Speaker 2: were killed. And he said, that is the church the
[20:01] Speaker 2: Hanographs are joining. It's not about Greek cooking, it's not
[20:07] Speaker 2: Greek ethnic culture, it's not about Greek dancing. It is
[20:12] Speaker 2: about following the Lord Jesus Christ wherever it leads you,
[20:16] Speaker 2: and it may be leading you into danger, and you
[20:20] Speaker 2: have to be willing to go there. It was off,
[20:22] Speaker 2: you know, fire breathing sermony. My hair stand on end.
[20:26] Speaker 2: So as soon as I got home, I thought, I
[20:29] Speaker 2: want to get a tattoo on my wrists like Egyptian
[20:34] Speaker 2: Christians do. Coptic Christians have a tattoo made or inc
[20:40] Speaker 2: hated on their children's right hand anywhere from your wrist
[20:45] Speaker 2: all the way up your arm or your hand, and
[20:47] Speaker 2: it is to identify them as a Christian. This is
[20:50] Speaker 2: an ancient habit because it used to be that Muslims
[20:55] Speaker 2: would abduct Christian boys and carry them away and to
[21:00] Speaker 2: be slaves, to be sex slaves. Who knew what terrible
[21:03] Speaker 2: thing they would go through, but they would always have
[21:06] Speaker 2: that cross, and they would always know they were baptized
[21:10] Speaker 2: and that they were Christians, no matter what else happened
[21:13] Speaker 2: in their life. So I really wanted They still do this.
[21:16] Speaker 2: All Coptic Christians have a cross tattoo, and so I
[21:21] Speaker 2: got mine because I wanted to, you know, stand in
[21:24] Speaker 2: solidarity with them. I didn't want to ask my husband
[21:28] Speaker 2: if I could do this. I didn't want to tell
[21:30] Speaker 2: him I had a time because I knew he would
[21:33] Speaker 2: say no, you know, he's just more like that than
[21:36] Speaker 2: I am. So I waited till he was out of
[21:39] Speaker 2: the country, and I had it done while he was
[21:43] Speaker 2: in Italy, and then I put it on Facebook and
[21:46] Speaker 2: then I told him in an email and he was like,
[21:49] Speaker 2: oh wow, look at that photo. It looks beautiful. So
[21:54] Speaker 2: that was how I got away with it. Every once
[21:56] Speaker 2: in a while, I think I want to do something
[21:58] Speaker 2: else of this, but something in side. He says, no, no,
[22:02] Speaker 2: you don't need to do anything else. But I did
[22:05] Speaker 2: that because of the day that you're dead was Chris
[22:08] Speaker 2: made it. It had just as much impact on me
[22:12] Speaker 2: as the Charlie Kurr murder, and it seems that we're
[22:16] Speaker 2: seeing so many murders of Christians. It really seems like
[22:20] Speaker 2: the rhetoric about violence is going up that one worse
[22:23] Speaker 2: step We just can we do and work to march
[22:27] Speaker 2: into the future as courageously as we can well.
[22:31] Speaker 1: And it's a wake up call that and here we've
[22:33] Speaker 1: been afraid of a little side eye when we share
[22:37] Speaker 1: our faith a little too loudly at a restaurant or
[22:39] Speaker 1: of our you know. And so it is a wake
[22:41] Speaker 1: up call to be proud of your faith, to be
[22:44] Speaker 1: proud of what you believe in, and to really to
[22:48] Speaker 1: actually believe that you can convey why you believe. Like
[22:52] Speaker 1: I grew up surrounded by apologetics, you know, the defense
[22:55] Speaker 1: of the faith. Yeah, yeah, And I for the longest time,
[22:59] Speaker 1: I loathe it. And I still hold it at arm's
[23:03] Speaker 1: length because sometimes it can be weaponized. And that's what
[23:07] Speaker 1: I experienced so often growing up. Is and you see
[23:11] Speaker 1: these people and this is something that you told me,
[23:16] Speaker 1: you said. Theologian it means two different things often in
[23:21] Speaker 1: the West and in the East, Yes, and the West,
[23:23] Speaker 1: a theologian is somebody who knows about God and the East.
[23:29] Speaker 1: A theologian is somebody who knows God. Yes, and you
[23:33] Speaker 1: quite often you experience that without them even saying anything
[23:36] Speaker 1: about God. It's like the definition of pornography. You know
[23:39] Speaker 1: it when you see it. Yes, And you know, I
[23:44] Speaker 1: often use that, you know, whether it's crass or not
[23:48] Speaker 1: to define whenever I've met let's say it's a monk
[23:51] Speaker 1: or a holy man, or even a lay person who
[23:55] Speaker 1: just you can tell that they know God. They might
[23:58] Speaker 1: not be able to give you a systematic theology, but
[24:03] Speaker 1: you meet them and you say, I know that they've
[24:05] Speaker 1: been praying. I know. I just know that they know God,
[24:09] Speaker 1: whether they know about Him in a way that's acceptable
[24:12] Speaker 1: to theologians or apologists. Yes, and that's why I held
[24:17] Speaker 1: it at arm's length for so long. But you talk
[24:21] Speaker 1: about a commitment to reality. That is where apologetics and
[24:25] Speaker 1: understanding your faith is not. It's not blind, right. We
[24:30] Speaker 1: do have a reason to believe. And as I've gotten older,
[24:33] Speaker 1: I've started to understand that and accept that and kind
[24:39] Speaker 1: of wear it outside of my shirt.
[24:41] Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think about that sometimes
[24:47] Speaker 2: that I tried for many years to figure out what
[24:52] Speaker 2: is the difference that I sense between Orthodoxy and Catholic, Protestant, Vangelical,
[25:00] Speaker 2: non denomination, the whole thing. I mean, there's a way
[25:04] Speaker 2: in which all of Western Christianity is alike, and it's
[25:09] Speaker 2: something that Eastern Christianity doesn't have, you know, It's like, Gosh,
[25:15] Speaker 2: we've been separated Eastern Orthodox from Oriental Orthodox, like cops Coptic,
[25:21] Speaker 2: three times longer than Catholic and Protestant have been separated,
[25:27] Speaker 2: and yet we are so much one with them. And
[25:30] Speaker 2: when I need other Oriental Orthodox, I know it's the
[25:34] Speaker 2: same God. I can just feel it. In America, there's
[25:38] Speaker 2: just such a wide variety of theology and styles of
[25:42] Speaker 2: worship and all that, and yet there is something that
[25:46] Speaker 2: they all have in common. I tried so long to
[25:48] Speaker 2: figure out what it was. What is it that I'm sensing,
[25:52] Speaker 2: And I finally decided it's that in the West they
[25:56] Speaker 2: separated thinking from holiness. And it's just what you said,
[26:02] Speaker 2: a theologian to somebody who knows a whole bunch about God,
[26:06] Speaker 2: and they can talk about God, but they don't necessarily
[26:10] Speaker 2: have to be a holy person. They don't have to
[26:12] Speaker 2: be prayer. Thank God. In the East, we had all
[26:15] Speaker 2: these ways of fencing in the faith so that it
[26:19] Speaker 2: wouldn't change that. We never got to that point. In
[26:24] Speaker 2: the West, there was the Reformation, and it became all
[26:27] Speaker 2: about talking about God and arguing about God and use it,
[26:32] Speaker 2: weaponizing apologetics and proving that you're right. It became so thinking.
[26:39] Speaker 2: Even before the Reformation, going back to the time of Aquinas,
[26:43] Speaker 2: you probably know the story that Aquinas had been writing
[26:47] Speaker 2: so much. Theology just very heady, very complex. It is
[26:52] Speaker 2: still the official theology of the Catholic Church is what
[26:55] Speaker 2: Aquinas worked out. And yet in the last month of
[27:00] Speaker 2: his life, on Saint Nicholas Day, December sixth, he was
[27:05] Speaker 2: at the Mass, the liturgy, and something happened to him.
[27:10] Speaker 2: He had some kind of revelation, and after that he
[27:13] Speaker 2: refused to do any more writing. He never wrote another
[27:16] Speaker 2: word in his life. And his assistant kept telling him,
[27:20] Speaker 2: you need to finish, you know, the works you're writing on.
[27:23] Speaker 2: You need to get this done and complete it. And
[27:26] Speaker 2: he said, I can't. Everything I've ever written now seems
[27:30] Speaker 2: to me like straw. And that's it, really, you know.
[27:35] Speaker 2: He came to understand, and I think in the West
[27:39] Speaker 2: it's like and what a brilliant guy was, and he
[27:42] Speaker 2: was so humble. So now let's read more of the
[27:46] Speaker 2: things he wrote. In Eastern Christianity, we look at that
[27:49] Speaker 2: and say, thank God, thank God, he saw the beauty
[27:52] Speaker 2: of the Lord. You know, he went to heaven embraced
[27:57] Speaker 2: by the Lord and experiencing that wholeness. So it's, yeah,
[28:03] Speaker 2: that difference between apologetics and rational thinking about theology versus
[28:10] Speaker 2: trying to be a holy person. We in the West,
[28:14] Speaker 2: we tend to say it's head, it's intellec versus part,
[28:17] Speaker 2: which is emotion, and that's entirely wrong. That's not how
[28:22] Speaker 2: humans are put together.
[28:24] Speaker 1: But we despise.
[28:25] Speaker 2: Emotion as it's not rational, you know, it's like sub
[28:29] Speaker 2: push it down, it's not authoritative, it's not important. You know,
[28:33] Speaker 2: the thinking is the important part. And it's so crushingly
[28:40] Speaker 2: wrong that that division occurred.
[28:43] Speaker 1: Mm hmm when it's holistic. I mean, you talk about
[28:47] Speaker 1: my dad's conversion and the story that kind of details
[28:51] Speaker 1: that conversion is this book Truth matters, Life matters more.
[28:55] Speaker 1: And I guess if you were to break it down,
[28:58] Speaker 1: life essentially is that the feeling the experience of God.
[29:04] Speaker 1: That's not saying that truth does not matter, right, And
[29:08] Speaker 1: I often. I think about that a lot in terms
[29:10] Speaker 1: of what Aquinas said, everything I've written is butt straw.
[29:13] Speaker 1: Does that mean he wishes he never wrote it? I mean,
[29:18] Speaker 1: and how do we handle that because it's it's like
[29:21] Speaker 1: our past. Sometimes you don't want to wish that something
[29:25] Speaker 1: didn't happen, but that's what got you to where you are,
[29:29] Speaker 1: and that's what makes you, makes you who you are,
[29:30] Speaker 1: and your experience and yeah, so it's it's complicated, but
[29:35] Speaker 1: you know, I think that is how.
[29:38] Speaker 2: Interjected the whole thing about your your thinking and then
[29:42] Speaker 2: you're feeling, you know, what do you feel? And the
[29:45] Speaker 2: tragedy that feeling got identified with the emotions I want
[29:50] Speaker 2: to point out, Uh, there're two different ways we use
[29:52] Speaker 2: the word feel. We could say I feel happy, I
[29:56] Speaker 2: feel dejected, I feel whatever. Talking about emotion, we could
[30:00] Speaker 2: also say I feel this cup. This cup feels hard
[30:05] Speaker 2: to me. I am experiencing the presence of this little
[30:11] Speaker 2: cup here. And I ask somebody who read Japanese, what
[30:15] Speaker 2: does this say? It was given to me by friend.
[30:18] Speaker 2: It's all advertisements and even there's a phone number for
[30:23] Speaker 2: a sushi restaurant in Tokyo. I thought it would be
[30:28] Speaker 2: I love joy all kinds of things like that. But
[30:31] Speaker 2: that's that's all it is. Anyway, when we talk about
[30:34] Speaker 2: feeling the presence of God, we're using it in the
[30:37] Speaker 2: latter sense. We don't mean we're having emotions about Gop.
[30:42] Speaker 2: I'm thinking about God and I get emotional. We mean, Wow,
[30:45] Speaker 2: that presence was there and I felt it in the
[30:49] Speaker 2: same sense that I can feel this cup. And so
[30:53] Speaker 2: that's a big problem I think, is that we use
[30:57] Speaker 2: the word feeling in two different ways, and one of
[31:00] Speaker 2: the ways that people assume we mean that is one
[31:03] Speaker 2: that utterly discounts the feeling that we're talking about. So
[31:07] Speaker 2: I try to use sense, I sense the presence of God.
[31:11] Speaker 2: I perceive it, I am receiving something. I try to
[31:15] Speaker 2: stress the reality of it and stay away from that
[31:18] Speaker 2: word feeling because it just confuses things. I think I
[31:21] Speaker 2: interrupted you. I'm sorry about that.
[31:23] Speaker 1: I'm so glad you did. Ah all right that if
[31:27] Speaker 1: there's something that I'm going to take away from our conversation,
[31:30] Speaker 1: that it's a huge thing. The devil's in the details.
[31:33] Speaker 1: And that's such an important distinction, right, because emotions are unreliable,
[31:42] Speaker 1: they don't always tell the.
[31:42] Speaker 2: Full story so true, and they change.
[31:47] Speaker 1: That's why the famous speech that I always give it
[31:49] Speaker 1: at weddings is that love is a commitment. It's not
[31:51] Speaker 1: a feeling, and it doesn't always give people the warm
[31:54] Speaker 1: fuzzies initially, But I say, look, the way you feel
[31:58] Speaker 1: is going to change. But your commitment to loving that's
[32:02] Speaker 1: what you have to be dedicated to, which you have
[32:04] Speaker 1: to say you make those decisions to love the person
[32:08] Speaker 1: even when you don't feel that way. Let's say you're
[32:11] Speaker 1: upset with them, No, I committed to love them, and
[32:14] Speaker 1: so it's a it's an important distinction.
[32:18] Speaker 2: Yes, it really is. And it's that word commitment again,
[32:21] Speaker 2: which means a lot to you, doesn't it. It's that
[32:24] Speaker 2: solidity and knowing. There's the one thing that guarantees that
[32:30] Speaker 2: stability is that the person be stalwart and committed to
[32:36] Speaker 2: what they believe and that they will stick by it
[32:38] Speaker 2: through thick and thin. This is reminding me of a
[32:41] Speaker 2: very ancient prayer to the Virgin Mary that begins under
[32:45] Speaker 2: your compassion, we take refuge theo topos. This is the
[32:50] Speaker 2: earliest prayer addressing her. It was found on a little
[32:54] Speaker 2: three y five papyrus in Egypt, and the papyrus states
[32:59] Speaker 2: to two hundred fifty, and so the prayer existed before
[33:03] Speaker 2: the papyrus did. We don't know how early, and we
[33:06] Speaker 2: still use it. The point I was going to make was,
[33:09] Speaker 2: what are we calling on when we call on her?
[33:11] Speaker 2: Under your shelter, under your protection, under your power, under
[33:17] Speaker 2: your tremendous ability, is an intercessor Now we say under
[33:21] Speaker 2: your compassion, because that's where the commitment is. It is
[33:27] Speaker 2: in her heart. She is dedicated to praying for us
[33:31] Speaker 2: and to loving us. And we can confidently say by
[33:36] Speaker 2: the fact that you are compassionate, that you have compassion
[33:40] Speaker 2: for us. On the basis of that, we ask you
[33:44] Speaker 2: to pray for us. We ask you to take care
[33:47] Speaker 2: of us and to solicit the healing that we need
[33:50] Speaker 2: or the protection that we need. That's the commitment thing.
[33:55] Speaker 2: When people at the wedding reception, when you offer a toast,
[34:00] Speaker 2: you're saying, it's the commitment that matters. There's emotion in that,
[34:06] Speaker 2: but a married couple of their emotions are going to
[34:09] Speaker 2: come and go over the decades. I've been married almost
[34:13] Speaker 2: fifty two years now, and certainly I talk sometimes about
[34:17] Speaker 2: the day that I was out of town for the
[34:19] Speaker 2: weekend and my youngest son went off to college and
[34:23] Speaker 2: I came home to an empty house except my husband,
[34:27] Speaker 2: And that was one of those moments I thought, he
[34:30] Speaker 2: is so boring. Is this going to be it? I mean,
[34:37] Speaker 2: the kids, the teenagers, they were so interesting, so lively,
[34:42] Speaker 2: and they brought so much new stuff into the house
[34:45] Speaker 2: and new ideas, new music, and now it's just him
[34:49] Speaker 2: and me. Oh no. Not long after that, I ran
[34:53] Speaker 2: into a guy who'd been married like sixty or seventy years,
[34:57] Speaker 2: and he said, this is the best part of their marriage.
[35:00] Speaker 2: We are more in love than ever and I am
[35:03] Speaker 2: enjoying her more than I ever did, and this truly
[35:08] Speaker 2: is the golden years of our married history. So that
[35:13] Speaker 2: gave me something to think about, and in time it
[35:15] Speaker 2: became true for me and for my husband as well.
[35:19] Speaker 2: These are the best years of our marriage. But there
[35:21] Speaker 2: sure was a time there where I doubted that. It
[35:24] Speaker 2: just goes to show what you say about commitment, that
[35:27] Speaker 2: no matter how I was feeling, no matter how my
[35:30] Speaker 2: emotions changed, I had already made a decision I wants
[35:33] Speaker 2: her to priest talk about. He was middle aged and
[35:37] Speaker 2: he was getting off an airplane and got into a
[35:40] Speaker 2: conversation with the stewardess, and she invited him to come
[35:44] Speaker 2: back to her hotel room, and he said, when I
[35:47] Speaker 2: told her, no, I didn't have to make that decision.
[35:51] Speaker 2: I had already made that decision on my wedding day.
[35:55] Speaker 2: It was already a done deal.
[35:58] Speaker 1: And that with me.
[36:00] Speaker 2: You make that decision on your wedding day, and then
[36:04] Speaker 2: the answer is always easy. You always know what it's
[36:07] Speaker 2: going to be.
[36:10] Speaker 1: Well, going back to the Aquinas conversation real quick, I
[36:14] Speaker 1: was just wondering, how has your relationship to truth evolved
[36:17] Speaker 1: over your life? And the bigger question is how important
[36:20] Speaker 1: is getting it right?
[36:26] Speaker 2: I'm bouncing off the end of that because of the
[36:28] Speaker 2: getting it right, I've got it roam many times in
[36:32] Speaker 2: my writing and then my speaking and then my being
[36:36] Speaker 2: interviewed and things like that. I've had to rethink things
[36:39] Speaker 2: and I've learned more, just like you with blown back,
[36:43] Speaker 2: discovering well, there's a whole human being there and I
[36:46] Speaker 2: was giving him short stristh. I haven't always got it right,
[36:50] Speaker 2: and so I can't blame that. That kind of getting
[36:53] Speaker 2: right is at the top of my priority. I more
[36:55] Speaker 2: wont to be in tune with the presence of the
[36:57] Speaker 2: Lord and doing what he's calling me to do it moment.
[37:00] Speaker 2: And I'm also this this might sound weird, but I'm
[37:04] Speaker 2: also I'm open to being wrong. Like what the Lord
[37:09] Speaker 2: is doing, it's huge, it's a symphonic it's involving so
[37:13] Speaker 2: many people all over the world at the same time,
[37:16] Speaker 2: and it might be my job to say the thing
[37:19] Speaker 2: that's wrong that will crystallize for others Wait a minute, well,
[37:24] Speaker 2: now that doesn't sound right, and they bounce off of
[37:28] Speaker 2: that and then they find the truth. I'm willing to
[37:31] Speaker 2: be the person that gets proved wrong, you know, I'm
[37:34] Speaker 2: willing to be the person that says the stupid thing
[37:38] Speaker 2: because that, you know, in the whole symphony, that might
[37:41] Speaker 2: be my role at the moment, and that might be
[37:44] Speaker 2: how God wants to use me.
[37:46] Speaker 1: That's more comforting than you realize. Good, because that's well,
[37:50] Speaker 1: that's been a huge impediment to my moving forward with
[37:55] Speaker 1: doing anything front facing. Is you know, I really take
[37:58] Speaker 1: the weight of responsibility for putting anything out there is Yeah,
[38:03] Speaker 1: it's and it doesn't come from a place of pride
[38:06] Speaker 1: per se. It's just I don't want to say something
[38:09] Speaker 1: that's wrong. Well, and I have such a fear of
[38:12] Speaker 1: saying something that's wrong, and and what you just said
[38:16] Speaker 1: is really enlightening in terms of, hey, maybe you'll be
[38:20] Speaker 1: the crooked stick that guides somebody to the truth, you know,
[38:25] Speaker 1: through something that you said that's incorrect, as long as
[38:27] Speaker 1: you approach it with humility.
[38:29] Speaker 2: As you were speaking, I was thinking about, you know,
[38:32] Speaker 2: growing up with your dad, that idea of the inviolability
[38:37] Speaker 2: of truth, and that truth is just so beautiful and
[38:42] Speaker 2: it is on a pedestal, and we may be wrong
[38:46] Speaker 2: right now, but we're getting closer to and we're discarding
[38:50] Speaker 2: things that we thought that were wrong and we're moving ahead.
[38:54] Speaker 2: And your dad had to do that with some Chinese Christians,
[38:57] Speaker 2: I know, you know, he apologized to them and he
[39:00] Speaker 2: admitted that he had been wrong, and that almost reinforces
[39:03] Speaker 2: the sense that it is important to get it right
[39:06] Speaker 2: because of the beauty of truth. And I think where
[39:11] Speaker 2: my mind has evolved as an orthodox Christian is that
[39:15] Speaker 2: I see truth as something that is more collaborative and
[39:23] Speaker 2: something that exists in the mind of God, and that
[39:26] Speaker 2: he has all these Christians all over the world like
[39:29] Speaker 2: a symphony, as I was saying, and we come together,
[39:33] Speaker 2: we need each other, we need each other's feet back.
[39:36] Speaker 2: Truth is not static, you know. I think in Western thought,
[39:41] Speaker 2: truth is almost like a beautiful marble statue and it
[39:45] Speaker 2: doesn't move, and it's cold, and it is the same
[39:49] Speaker 2: through eternity. It never changes. I don't want to sound
[39:53] Speaker 2: like I'm saying truth changes, but I want to say
[39:56] Speaker 2: that it's alive and it changes like a forest, but
[40:02] Speaker 2: the forest remains a forest. But because it's alive, you know,
[40:07] Speaker 2: it's it's continually growing and shedding and then growing some more.
[40:12] Speaker 2: It's beautiful, like the ocean, which is immense and full
[40:18] Speaker 2: of life and also changing somehow. That's part of its
[40:24] Speaker 2: a liveness, and yet it stays the same. I am
[40:27] Speaker 2: definitely not arguing for you know, everybody has their own truth,
[40:32] Speaker 2: or you know the truth is going to evolve and
[40:37] Speaker 2: will understand it better. I mean, I hate that. I
[40:39] Speaker 2: hate that idea.
[40:42] Speaker 1: You've been listening to a preview of my conversation with
[40:45] Speaker 1: Frederica Matthews Green from a Commitment to Reality, our new podcast.
[40:49] Speaker 1: To hear the rest of this conversation, follow a commitment
[40:53] Speaker 1: to Reality wherever you listen to podcasts, and make sure
[40:57] Speaker 1: to subscribe so that you never miss a conversation. I'll
[41:00] Speaker 1: see you there,

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.