people find real values objective Goods in the world but our job is now to lead them to the summum bonum that's beyond even these great values they discover welcome back to the word on fire show I am Brandon vot the senior publishing director at word on fire what is the meaning of it all what's the meaning of life how do we find it that's what we're going to be discussing today with Bishop Robert Baron who joins us in studio Bishop good to see you hey Brandon always good to be with you we got a new issue of the evangelization and culture Journal which just came out this of course is our quarterly journal for members of the word on fire Institute if you're not yet a member now is a good time to sign up you can get a free copy of this journal but the new edition is on the topic of freedom I know you've had a chance to check it out Bishop maybe say a few words about it yeah it's fantastic you know shopo to um Todd Warner our great editor who does a marvelous job in the design team uh it's just a beautiful magazine to hold in your hands and to look at and it's filled with good stuff um I just finished the interview with Bobby mixo who's been with us for a long time and uh Robert George himself has a good article there about um is his the the one conflating to things with the Newman and John Stewart Mill I think that was Robert George's article uh Elizabeth scal has got a piece in there I've got an interview about um my book on the Creed so all kinds of great stuff in there pick up your copy at word onf fire. Institute when you sign up you'll get a copy of that journal a free book lots of other stuff including some Great Courses inside of our Institute okay let us turn to the topic of meaning I want to get right into this because this is a a long and loaded topic here uh maybe we could begin with a recent discussion you had with three other gentlemen on Jordan Peterson's podcast so the group included Jordan Peterson yourself Jonathan pasio and John Veri uh the title of this video which you can find on YouTube was the Four Horsemen of meaning I want to come back to that in a second the discussion lasted over two hours it already has over 500,000 views um maybe first tell us how did this come about what are the four horsemen of meaning what does that allude to and what were your initial impressions of the discussion yeah I think it came out of the conversation I had with Jordan Peterson now almost a year ago so he and I did a I think over two-hour conversation and we hit on some of those same topics and then Jonathan Pau who's the wonderful icon writer and I sculpter of icons and a guy that's very wise in regard to the symbolic tradition and then Veri is a fellow I didn't know him that well but he's a psychology professor at the University of Toronto and looking into the question of Consciousness and how that relates to meaning so I think it was Peterson's you know Camp kind of reached out to me and said would you be willing to sit down with the three of them and talk about this whole question and how it's um you know intriguing a lot of younger people today so I said yeah I'd love to so I think I did I think I was down at the cathedral in LA and we hooked up the cameras and lights and and I broadcast from there and it as you say went on for well over two hours and it's something I kind of like now uh you know worried about the short attention span of a lot of Millennials and youngers you know given given the social media but uh now it seems like a lot of people are get are very interested in these long form podcasts think of you know Joe Rogan is on for three hours with people and Peterson 2 typically goes two hours and we were talking at a pretty high level too it's not like just a real userfriendly mode of discourse but that's how it came about and uh The Four Horsemen thing of course goes right back to the Book of Revelation but that was picked up by the new atheists right The Four Horsemen of atheism they call themselves I guess the Hitchens Dawkins Harris and Dennett right so I think they're now playing on that that we're I guess the four horsemen riding in the other direction you know the direction of meaning at the very beginning of the discussion Jordan began by asking each one of the other three guests how they would Define meaning and here was your definition you said meaning is to be in a purposive relationship to a Val and then you added to be to live a religiously meaningful life is to be in purposive relationship to the sunum bonum or the Supreme value uh say more about that what do you mean by that definition of meaning I was trying to make it as simple as possible um and I was using Diedrich Von hilderbrand there whom I rely on a lot in these matters that uh these basic values appear and they shouldn't be analyzed um uh to dust what I mean is they they appear they're there in the world best to say aesthetic values beautiful things when you hear Beethoven 7 Symphony you say yeah that's beautiful uh moral values appear so the the the act of maximan col at the end of his life you know surrendering himself to save his other man yeah that's just good that that's morally good intellectual values appear you read Plato's Symposium and you say yeah that's true he's speaking a great truth there well these things appear and a good education our friend CS Lewis I think would agree with this is teaching people how to recognize those values so they they are intrigued by the right things that their their wills and their passions are engaged by the right things so I'm saying here that um a meaningful life is in a purposive relationship to a value you not only appreciate the value but now you're ordering your life toward it you're saying my life is about appreciating uh uh that value and maybe even trying to imitate that value so that that I can try to do something at least akin to what Plato did something akin to what Max col did uh something akin to Beethoven even though I don't have the the gifts of all these people I'm in a purposive relationship to the value that I've discerned I think that's what makes your life meaningful and then the next step well what's the Supreme values so I just named a handful of values right all sorts of moral values at different levels of importance we say a little kid like no no don't don't take that you know glass of water away from your sister well you're inculcating you're you're Awakening them to a moral value then there's maximan col that you know a moral value at the highest possible level same with aesthetic values teach a little kid like yeah look at you can you know you can draw a bird by doing this and and oh yeah that's that's beautiful and then there's you know there's my mangelo um so to be in a purpose of relationship to the highest value the suum bonum the Supreme good that's now to be in a religiously meaningful life um much of the purpose of education and formation is to move people into this realm of objective value but not just into it but to move into it in a hierarchically ordered way where you lead people to higher and higher expressions of value and then finally we talked about Jacob's Latter last time what goes to the very highest truth and goodness and Beauty we name that God right and a religiously meaningful life is one that is purposely related to that good there's lots of talk today about the meaning crisis that we're suffering a crisis of meaning and people point to all sorts of indicators such as record high suicide rates and opio opio addictions and depression rates addictions um do you sense that as well do you think we're we're suffering a unique crisis of meaning today yeah and I'd be I think in line here with Charles Taylor and other philosophers who would say look up until the really let's say maybe late 19th early 20th century most people in most civilizations in human history would say you can't really be happy outside of a relationship with a Transcendent good so let's name it as broadly as we can some Transcendent good without a relationship to God I can't really be happy I can't really be satisfied it's only in relatively recent years in the west that people have begun to say no I can be happy satisfied without that relationship bottom line is you can't and that's where a lot of the meaninglessness depression anxiety uh sense of drift is coming from the other thing I'd say Brandon is if the realm of value is objective it's outside of us it impresses itself upon us so back to Beethoven 7 symphony is it's not because it pleases me that's such a a crude superficial way of talking about it it it changes me is better it it controls me it takes possession of me Maxim col's Act is not one that I say oh yeah that's you know I that that pleases me to see that oh come on probably does it doesn't please me by the way it frightens me if anything but it's massively valuable and I recognize it as such if you say as many people do today that oh no no value all comes from inside of me as a matter of my own choice is I generate value that's never going to make you happy on the contrary if you say oh yeah it's it's whatever you know goes along with my private desires my superficial tastes well I'm not going to be happy I'm happy when the good knocks me down and rearranges me and chooses me and and calls me and summons me to become an evangelist IST for it say I'm using baltar's language here you know when youve you see a great play or a great film or you hear a marvelous Symphony or you meet a great saintly person and you say wow I I never thought that was possible that's he or it has has rearranged my thinking and now I want the whole world to know about this I didn't know this was possible so I invented it give me a break you didn't think it was even possible but it it grabbed you it rearranged you and then sent you on Mission see now we're talking now we're talking all the great Heroes of the Bible by the way they're not self inventors you know uh boy I you know I'm going to generate my own meaning I mean the Bible is utterly uninterested in that they're interested in those people who were knocked to the ground and rearranged and heard they heard a voice a higher voice you know now don't don't literalize that as they're hearing a you know a physical voice coming out of the cloud it's a symbol for this Attunement to the Supreme value that is now calling out to me right see now we're talking now we're into the realm of real value and that's going to make us happy you know as a father of seven young kids and an eighth on the way I think I told you that that uh we're pregnant with our eighth child watch a lot of I don't know if you did surprise to the whole world I don't know there's so many kids becoming B on fire I lose track well congratul I don't think I knew that thank you no thank you we were just joking on that note the other day how you know word on Fire's got um almost 60 employees and I think we have six or seven word on fire babies gestating I'm not sure that there's ever going to be a year where we don't have a word on fire baby in the next several decades God willing you know I going say that would have been a perfect moment for a spit take you know in the old bville CU I was drinking and the A on the way you know I should have done that what I was going with that was yeah as a father of all these kids you know we watch a ton of kids movies and I must say one of the things that really bugs me you can ask my wife Kathleen is how so many of these movies follow the same pattern of meaning crisis but then look within to discover true meaning and it's not it's not even self-invention the way you're describing these characters recognize meaning is something I discover not something I create but the place to discover it is within follow your feelings listen to your heart look in discover who you are find yourself and I think like like with you it leads to a dead end it's the exact opposite direction you should be going that meaning as you're saying is found outward either Among Us or Beyond us there's there's some objective values we need to latch on to and align Our Lives to to find objective meaning right I mean look at we're such unreliable guides you know I I'm such a sinner and I'm I'm so mixed up about so many things and so lost that I'm going to look inside me and my my mind and my little desires to find meaning I mean give me a break I I I'd be a wreck when Paul says you're right fed is ex aitu faith comes from hearing it doesn't come from doesn't welling up from inside of me it comes from hearing I've heard a word right uh Abram heard the voice of God and and followed um the objectivity of the good the the great Iris murdic the Irish philosopher is so good on that she was a platonist and uh brought Plato in some Way's up to dat for the 20th century but one of her essays she talks about when someone's depressed and they're and they're just they're full of anxiety and they're worried she said open the window and her her example is is I think it's a chrol it's a type of bird it's a like a type of Falcon I think I didn't even recognize but she said open the window and you see the Kestrel you see the bird this gorgeous beautiful bird and you just start looking at it and she said within like a minute all of your anxieties fall away and all of your preoccupation Falls away and your depression Falls away and she said before you know it you're all chol and her point was you're so absorbed in the objective goodness of this thing it's begun to rearrange you you and remake you um that's the way it is with the good in the platonic tradition and a lot of our great people are Pless in that sense um the recognition I've called them values following Von hilderbrand the same idea these Goods these basic goods and they will lead you to God if you let them but if we keep preoccupying ourselves with ourselves we're not going to get anywhere we're going to get stuck let's shift now to a couple of polls a couple of surveys dealing with the question of meaning that have recently come out kind of very timely in light of your Jordan Peterson discussion the first one came from the LifeWay research group and a lot of the stuff they discovered was stuff we would probably expect that people sync meaning in God and relationships and family and things like that but here's one interesting thing I found in the poll LifeWay discovered that four out of every five Americans 81% believe that quote there is is an ultimate purpose and plan for every person's life 81% of people believe there's an ultimate purpose and plan for every person's life now to me that was surprising in light of the statistics we've covered in the past about how much religion is dwindling in the culture I find it interesting that so many people believe in Ultimate plan but not a planner or an arranger agent of of this plan how how do you but you can't have it both ways right you can't have it because if you say well I make up my own plan well that's one thing but they're not talking about that they're saying there's something as it were out there there's something already there that's that's the purpose of my life it's like Lewis's thing right about uh everyone finds the same letter in their mailbox namely like the da right the sense of moral rectitude and moral responsibility no matter what the culture is and he said is isn't it odd that every single person in the world finds the same letter in their mailbox is it likely that the wind just happen to blow the same letter into every single mailbox in the world well no it's it's completely impossible and so this moral law within us where's that come from it's like the intelligibility of nature where's that come from that that the the world is is legible so that scientists can do their work why are we morally legible that we can we can uh the world is morally legible and we can U adjust ourselves to it um we're not coming up with the plan we discover it out there so to speak well if that's true then there has to be something like a planner or someone that provides the purpose now go back to aquinus so much of his anthropology is predicated upon this idea a final causality purpose purpose how come I do what I do so this morning I woke up and I got out of bed and I brushed my teeth and I said my prayers and I put my my uh suit on and I came in here so I was operating in a purposive way right I'm doing all kinds of things to attain certain goods and values but why am I ultimately doing all of it so I get out of bed brush my teeth get dressed come in here do this do that why ultimately am I doing it there's got to be some finally Supreme and unsurpassable good that I'm at least in coly seeking so now look I'm a bishop of the church so I'm I'm kind of aware God is the Supreme good but I mean someone who's a total non-believer nevertheless nevertheless there is some first cause of the will there has to be there's some Supreme good that you are at least implicitly seeking that's the good that will give meaning to your life if you fully surrender to its purposes for you you know now that's a Biblical view of life and uh that people still kind of acknowledge it at least implicitly that's not bad that means there's still something of the biblical uh imagination at work a second recent poll came from the Pew Research Center this one was completed earlier this year they asked 19,000 adults about the question of meaning all across the world and what was uh perhaps unsurprising is that in every single country without variation the top source of meaning was family family why do why do you think family is so closely tied to meaning because it's a it's a great good so do my little um I call it the Russian doal analysis you know the little Russian dos that nest in each other so I I let's say for a typical person uh I woke up I brushed my teeth I I got dressed I got in the car I went to work well how come well cuz I want to make money well why do you want make money because I want to support my family well why do you want to support your family CU my family is a great good and their flourishing is important to me see you've reached there I got eight Russian dials right that I've I've situated a very particular Act of the will like getting out of bed in the morning and I've come by eight steps to a really basic fundamental value that my family is it they're flourishing is a great good terrific you found one you found one of the most basic Goods that there are now read the Bible is family the ultimate good and the Bible says it in many ways doesn't it like Abraham you know your son Isaac whom you love I want you to sacrifice him to me God being cruel no no that's the wrong way to read it as we've said many times it's the Bible's Way of signaling there's a higher value than even the value of family or let's say someone else is motivated because they love their country terrific you found a great value you're a patriot loving your country is a good thing because the the country is a high value highest value no no no because if God is calling you to something that that goes against the desire of your of your country you got to follow God right so my point there is those polls represent something very real people find real values objective Goods in the world but our job is now to lead them to the bonum that's beyond even these great values they discover let's close with this final question I know we likely have listeners to this show that are struggling with this in their life right now they're they're struggling to find meaning or purpose in their life um or maybe it's the son or a daughter of one of our listeners or a friend a loved one who's drifting in neoism and lost without purpose as a pastor now what what do you say to someone in this situation someone who comes to you and says I don't have any meaning and I don't think my life is worth living you know I do I get that question a lot uh my user response is to say something like perform today the simplest Act of Love Will the good of of another and I'll leave that up to the I don't know the person's life well enough to know what that would be but will the good of another because that's one of the most important steps out of of the self- preoccupation that's making you so unhappy and it's ordering you toward a value you've identified someone as a great value and now you want to serve that person by an act of love that's a marvelous way to break out of the of the prison of the self another one would be along those Iris murdick lines is find something beautiful something good like like that maybe it is it's it's a bird you see out out the window look at it look at it just spend some time study it analyze it I think of that Lon breed like this as a philosopher it was um jacqu maryant said there's there's more reality in a seed between my teeth than in all of hegelian idealism what he meant there was a seed between my teeth it's real it's real it's the simplest stupidest thing but it by God it's real and and it's good in to that degree because being in good are convertible terms it's good there's more reality in a little bug crawling on the ground look look at it study it it it gets you out of yourself you know so that's my advice is perform an act of Love or look out the window or on the ground or even between your teeth to find something that's just real and lose yourself in that that's an important first step well it's time now for our listener question if you have a question that you'd like to ask Bishop Baron visit the website ask Bishop baron.com you can record your question there on any device today we're hearing from Jake he lives in the Philippines he's asking about uh your original discussion with Jordan Peterson not this Four Horsemen of meaning one but a a previous one where the two of you were discussing evil and good uh here's his question hi Bishop Baron I'm Jake from the Philippines I watched an episode of Jordan Peterson's podcast where you and him had a disagreement on what motivated people to commit great evils you said that even the most evil action is ultimately motivated by the desire for something good Jordan Peterson disagreed and said that there are people who commit evil just for the sake of evil can you explain further your argument can it be reconciled with Jordan Peterson's you thank you Bishop yeah good thank you for that um I'm sure those who know a little acinus will know that I was operating simply out of a Thomas acinus perspective uh the great acinus says that that that every Act of the will is seeking at least the apparent good and it's just the way the will is structured all right the the good is what's desirable the will seeks the good that's its nature now objectively speaking can a wicked person be seeking a wicked end yeah it happens all the time and so that's why I I don't deny for a second that there really are wicked people who are seeking very bad objectively bad things but at least to them it was apparently good or else they wouldn't have willed it you can't will something unless there's something at least apparently good in it Adolf Hitler was willing what appeared good to him in under some aspect a person who commits suicide is willing to him the apparent good of his non-existence right so in a way it's to me it's not really a controversial idea it's just sort of a common sensical more logical observation that the way the will is structured it's always seeking at least something that it thinks is good but can it be mistaken of course and can Wicked people choose wicked things yeah absolutely that's what makes them Wicked but here's the the I think lovely side of that idea is that even there Hitler the the the worst people is there something of God still there yes because God created the will to seek the good and even it's being done perversely it's being done with with deep you know confusion and inadequacy still there's something of God in it there's something of of that trace of divinity in the very way the will is structured so I guess there I'd say okay I'd be willing to see at least a glimmer of hope even in the most you know desperate moral situation well thanks for that question Jake and thanks to all of you for listening to this episode one more reminder to pick up your copy of the newest issue of our evangelization and culture Journal sponsored by the world on fire Institute this journal is on the topic of Freedom lots of great articles and interviews artwork and a whole lot more you can get it at word on fire. Institute when you join The Institute you get a free copy of this journal along with all future journals and access to all the Great Courses inside the Institute library again the website's word onf fire. Institute well thanks so much and we'll see you next time on the word on fire show thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video I invite you to share it and to subscribe to my YouTube channel