Episode 25—

Why It May Be Harder to Start Flossing Than to Stop Smoking

Grace Isn’t Opposed to Works, It’s Opposed to Earning

We all know things that are good for us. So why is it sometimes so difficult to do them?

Using a joke from comedian Mitch Hedberg, we explore the gap between knowing what is good and actually doing it. From everyday habits like flossing to addiction, anxiety, and sin, we examine why changing our behavior requires more than simply having the right information.

How do human beings actually change?

In this episode, we explore the Orthodox understanding of the human person as a unity of body and soul, the relationship between the brain and the mind, and the importance of embodied spiritual formation. We look at the distinction between the intellect (dianoia) and the nous, and consider how Orthodox ascetic practices train our attention, desires, and responses.

We then turn to John 6 and Christ’s teaching about the food that perishes and the food that remains for eternal life. Are we primarily seeking Jesus to improve our mortal lives, or are we learning to recognize that Christ Himself is our life?

Drawing on Scottish Presbyterian minister Thomas Chalmers’s sermon The Expulsive Power of a New Affection, we consider why simply knowing that a destructive desire is bad may not be enough to overcome it. Lasting transformation involves learning to love something greater.

Finally, we examine the relationship between grace and works, the significance of Baptism as participation in Christ’s death and Resurrection, and the role of prayer, fasting, repentance, confession, almsgiving, and the Eucharist in the lifelong process of Christian formation.

The Christian life is not about earning God’s love. It is about learning to live in the grace we have received.

Grace isn’t opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning.

And perhaps the deeper question isn't merely What do I believe? or What do I know?

It is: What am I becoming?

Christ is risen!

In this episode

• Why knowing what is good doesn't automatically change our behavior
• Habits, addiction, anxiety, and the embodied human person
• The Orthodox understanding of body and soul
• The distinction between the intellect and the nous
• Orthodox asceticism and the formation of our desires
• John 6, the Bread of Life, and the Eucharist
• Thomas Chalmers and The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
• Grace, works, and the danger of reducing Christianity to a moment of conversion
• Baptism as participation in Christ’s death and Resurrection
• Why Christian formation involves the whole person
• Learning to live in the light of Christ’s victory over death

Scripture references

• Romans 7:19 — The struggle between willing the good and doing it
• Romans 6:3–4 — Baptism into Christ’s death and Resurrection
• John 6:26–35 — The food that perishes and the Bread of Life
• John 6:53–56 — Christ’s flesh and blood as true food and drink
• Hebrews 2:14–15 — Christ’s victory over death and freedom from the fear of death
• Colossians 3:3–4 — Our life hidden with Christ

Mentioned

• Mitch Hedberg
• Thomas Chalmers, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
• Lecrae, Don't Waste Your Life

The central question: Are we merely trying to preserve the life we have, or are we learning to live in the Resurrection life Christ offers us?

Episode 24 —

Put to Death? What Is Earthly? What Does That Mean?

What does Paul mean when he tells us to “put to death what is earthly”?

After becoming Orthodox, I found that one of the hardest things to communicate to my Protestant friends was the Orthodox understanding of the Fall. It isn't simply a matter of learning a different doctrine. You have to begin imagining the human condition from a different starting point.

In this episode, I explore a central question:

What if death is not merely the consequence of human sin, but one of the great forces driving human sin?

We are mortal creatures. Our bodies are designed to preserve our lives in a world where we die. Hunger, sexuality, fear, the desire for security, the accumulation of resources, and our instinct to protect ourselves are not inherently evil. They are part of embodied human life.

But what happens when these legitimate bodily systems become our masters?

Paul's language about the mortal body, its desires, the flesh, sin reigning, and obedience gives us a way to understand this. The problem isn't that the body has desires. The problem is when the mind takes those desires and decides that they tell us what we ought to do.

And Paul says:

“For the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace.” —Romans 8:6, LEB

We also look at Hebrews' startling claim that Christ came to free humanity from slavery caused by the fear of death, and what this tells us about Satan's role in human depravity.

From there, we explore:

• What Paul means by “what is earthly”
• The meaning of Paul's language of “members” and the mortal body
• The relationship between bodily systems and moral deliberation
• Why hunger, sexual desire, and the desire for security aren't inherently sinful
• Blameless and blameworthy passions in St. Maximus the Confessor
• St. John Chrysostom's understanding of marriage and sexual desire
• Augustine's different trajectory regarding concupiscence and inherited guilt
• Why death → life is such a dominant pattern in Paul's theology
• Baptism as participation in Christ's death and Resurrection
• Why Paul repeatedly connects Resurrection with Christian holiness
• How monasticism and marriage can both be understood within the horizon of Resurrection
• Why Orthodox fasting, almsgiving, and prayer train us to subordinate bodily desires rather than simply eliminate them
• The Didache and its two ways: the way of life and the way of death
• Why Satan's great weapon is not the creation of our natural desires, but the exploitation of our fear of death
• Why Christ being our Life changes the entire moral calculation

The central question of the episode is ultimately very simple:

If we have died with Christ and been raised with Him, why would we continue living as though death were our master?

The Christian life is not about becoming less human, less embodied, or less alive.

It is about learning to live according to a new reality:

The appetite is not your lord. Fear is not your lord. Security is not your lord. Survival is not your lord. Death is not your lord. Christ is your Life.

And because Christ has risen, we can finally learn how to live rather than merely how to survive.

Episode 23 —

Dark Matter Season 2: Before All Worlds

Leibniz, the Multiverse, and Original Sin

What if the multiverse isn't really about other universes—but about finding another version of ourselves?

With Season 2 of Dark Matter approaching, Matthew revisits the first season and follows its central ideas into an unexpected theological territory: Original Sin, the Fall, Leibniz's “possible worlds,” the problem of evil, repentance, guilt, grief, and the fear of death.

Why this world?

Leibniz's attempt to answer that question helped give us the concept of theodicy and his famous argument that God chose the best of all possible worlds. But what happens when that philosophical idea is transformed into the modern multiverse?

Instead of asking why this world contains suffering, we can imagine countless worlds where things happened differently.

A world where Adam didn't fall.

A world where Eve made another choice.

A world where you never made the decision you regret.

A world where you never experienced the loss that changed your life.

And perhaps, somewhere, a version of you got everything right.

But is that salvation?

Matthew explores the possibility that the modern multiverse functions as a kind of secularized return to Eden—a way of imagining another world in which repentance isn't necessary because another version of ourselves already made the right choices.

The episode also draws a surprising parallel with the multiverse response to the argument from design: rather than answering why this particular universe appears ordered or fine-tuned, multiplying universes can make the question of design seem unnecessary. Likewise, multiplying possible worlds can make the problem of why this fallen history exists appear to disappear.

But perhaps the deeper problem isn't theodicy at all.

Perhaps it is death.

Because in Dark Matter, Jason isn't really searching for another universe. He's searching for the life he lost.

And that's something much more familiar than quantum physics.

It's grief.

It's the human desire to undo what cannot be undone—to find the version of ourselves that existed before the fall, before the mistake, before the loss.

Hebrews gives Christianity a radically different diagnosis: humanity is held in “slavery” through the fear of death.

And Christianity's answer isn't another universe.

It isn't another version of yourself.

It isn't finding the Adam who never fell.

It is resurrection.