Stranger Things 2: Paradise vs Utopia

In this episode, we explore the contrast between Paradise and Utopia through the lenses of history, technology, and faith. 🔍 From humanity’s pursuit of progress to the role of technology in shaping society, we examine the philosophical patterns behind modern utopian visions. 🌎 Using insights from pop culture, current events, and biblical stories, we uncover how our quest for a perfect world might be misguided—and what a faith-centered alternative could look like. 🙏✨ Join us for Season 2 of Stranger Things, where we explore modern ideas through a Christian lens.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Updates: Storms and Travels
• 5:06 Paradise vs. Utopia
• 14:12 The Concept of Utopia
• 26:11 Modern Examples and Critiques
• 40:29 Aligning with Truth and Reality
• 49:50 The Tower of Babel: A Utopian Project
• 57:18 Technology and Its Role in Utopian Dreams
• 1:15:47 Final Thoughts and Season Conclusion

Transcript

Paradise vs Utopia

David: [00:00:00] Should we wrap it up? Do you have any final thoughts? 

J.R.: Yeah. Uh, no, just the Chinese scalability of socialism.

Yeah, we can skip that. 

David: Okay, so if you listen to this podcast as we release them, which is the first and the 15th of the month, you may have picked up that it has been a while since we've released an episode. We, we are trying to get back into the swing of things, but allow us for a moment to explain everything that has happened in the last two months, because this is the first time we actually have not kept our release schedule.

And that's pretty good in two years, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, I was about to say, I can't believe there hadn't been something that's come up. 

David: Right, yeah. 

J.R.: But, you know, we get ahead of it pretty good. 

David: Yeah, yeah. We try to stay on top of it and we try to stick to those release dates of the 1st and the 15th. We take a couple breaks throughout the year, yeah.

J.R.: But then came the summer of 2024. 

David: Then, then came the fall, yes, of 2024, and as you might [00:01:00] recall, there were a couple of little storms that hit the East Coast, and those ended up affecting both of us, although in different ways. So, about the time that we had prepared to record this episode that we're going to record today, I lost power for over a week.

I was staying with family because they had internet and I had to keep working, and came back to a massive cleanup effort in the Tampa area. You were affected in a different way, but you were also affected there for a couple of weeks, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, sure. Well, four weeks. 

David: Four weeks, okay. 

J.R.: So, yeah, it was when when it when it came up and hit Georgia.

Uh, Georgia, North and South Carolina you know, they sent me over, I work in telecommunications. So they sent me over to Augusta, Georgia, and we were doing the cleanup effort there. And so of course, you know, anytime you do something like that, it's 16 hour days, seven days a week. So yeah, neither of us had a chance.

We just did not have a break in anything for probably about [00:02:00] six weeks. And then we did have a little bit of, I mean, we probably, if we really had pushed it, we might've been able to squeeze one in in a few days, but then we turned around and went to Greece. 

David: Yeah. So that was the next thing that happened is we went to Greece for two weeks and we had a great time. We'll spend some future episodes talking about that. So that was a period of what's at least two months where we just did not have a chance to record anything despite our best intentions, despite our best efforts. You were out in the field. I had no power, I had no internet. We were on this trip that we took and so that's what's been happening. So we apologize for the delay in releasing this but I think tremendous storms is a pretty good excuse and a trip to Greece, so. 

J.R.: I was about to say the Greece trip is a little bit more of an eye roll, but you know. 

David: In fairness though, in fairness, some of you may not know, but we have a YouTube channel.

<Right.> You just type in Navigating an Ancient Faith, and we were [00:03:00] actually releasing, what, we did four or five videos on our Greece trip, and put them out there pretty quickly. So we were releasing content. It wasn't just a podcast, so. 

J.R.: Right, and we kind of talked about combining them all and putting them out as a podcast, but it's like, ah, let's just stick with our schedule.

<Yeah.> Explain where we've been. That'll be fine. 

David: Yeah, apologize, explain where we've been. Of course, now we're into the holiday season as we're recording this, so, you know, presents challenges of its own because <Yeah.> Christmas parties and, vacations here and there, so. But we're gonna knock this one out.

Today we're gonna talk about Season 2, Episode 2 of our Stranger Things series that we should have done about two months ago. 

J.R.: Should have finished up, yeah, that's right, but here we go. 

David: Yep. But we're gonna knock this one out today, and then what's going to happen is, after the holiday break, we will start Season 3.

And, we were just together a couple weeks ago for Thanksgiving. We kind of have a rough outline of season three. We're already talking about season three. So I think instead of trying to keep any kind of schedule through the end of the year, we're just [00:04:00] going to start recording around January 15th, February 1st.

If you're again, listening to this as release them, that will start season three. We'll talk about the Greece trip and we'll talk about some other things that we're going to do in season three. So that's just a little look ahead and that's what we're planning. So hopefully everyone understands. 

J.R.: Oh yeah, we got an understanding audience. That's the best. <Yeah.> Best thing about it. 

David: That's true. Alright, so today we're gonna talk about this idea in Stranger Things. First of all, this series is meant to address the unique time that we are living in where all these odd things seem to be happening. Where I, I think everyone's sense is that we're kind of on the cusp of a lot of radical change going on.

And we're trying to make sense of these things, right? So we're picking some of these topics, we're trying to make sense of them. How do we think of these things as people of faith? So that's why we're talking about Stranger Things, right? 

J.R.: Right, And also, kind of the Stranger Things series, it's all about dealing with technological [00:05:00] advancements, right? <Yeah.> And so many of our modern tech movements claim utopian ideas. <Yeah.> And so to talk about the episode today, we're talking about utopia versus right, paradise. 

David: Paradise versus utopia. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. And I was thinking about just in general, the Stranger Things series is that a lot of these tech movements kind of talk about these utopian ideals, things like transhumanism and global governance, all this.

I read an article the other day about AI driven equality, which I thought was kind of a funny title, but that's exactly what it was talking about. It's saying we're going to generate equity by using AI. It's just, I won't go into the article. It's kind of silly, but in any case, there's always seems to be this feeling in that industry, the technology industry, that sort of AI or any tech advancement that sort of utopia is right around the corner.

And so, this is an interesting way to finish up this series because of that tie in, in the tech industry that this is going to advance more equality or, you know, [00:06:00] the utopian vision through the lens of AI or whatever. There's always a tie into utopia when it comes to any new technological advancement.

David: Yeah, that's probably a good way to start out, is this almost addresses maybe some of the underlying philosophy behind what we're seeing in some of the other things that we're talking about, and a way to actually interpret some of these philosophical underpinnings of what we're seeing and make sense of them within a, you might say, a Christian worldview, right?

<Right.> What is it we're actually seeing? And one of the reasons why we're doing this topic today, Paradise versus Utopia, So I read this series of books, it was a three volume series, on the history of the Orthodox Church, and it was based around this idea of paradise versus utopia. And I thought it was a really interesting way to talk about church history.

What the church was doing, what the culture was doing, and how the church was responding. Things like that. But it was very much couched in this [00:07:00] idea of paradise versus utopia. And one of the things that I took from it is, once you recognize that pattern of each, once you understand what we're going to talk about today, what paradise means, what utopia means, and you see the patterns of both, you can actually very quickly spot the underlying philosophy of some of these new movements that we see, right?

J.R.: Right, yeah, because Paradise and Utopia, what's the difference, right? I mean, we'll obviously get into that, but I'm saying that, you know, those are two very similar words. 

David: Yeah, and a lot of people probably think that, well, They sound like the same thing to me, right? 

J.R.: Right, right. You're right once you kind of unpack what both of those ideas mean, then you can immediately spot. Okay. Is this paradise or is this utopia? <Yeah, exactly.> Those are actually two very different things. <Yeah, yeah.> Yeah. 

David: So let's start by defining some of these concepts these two concepts, right? So just as a working definition. We could go a lot deeper into each one of these but when we're talking about paradise, right, we're talking about a spiritual [00:08:00] ideal, and it's usually associated with an afterlife or the life to come, right? And utopias tend to be more human centered ideals, focused on creating a perfect society, kind of within the bounds of human history and capability right now, right? And so that would be one of the first distinctions I would draw is paradise tends to be referring to a future state, right? A future ideal. Utopias tend to talk about here's what we can create right now if that makes sense. 

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Yeah, so maybe another way to say it is that a lot of myths, as well as in the Christian Bible, paradise is a return to the original state of the world. So, talked about it being a future state, but it's also a return to how the world was in the beginning. Something like that, if that helps. 

J.R.: Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Garden of Eden type of idea. The return to a properly ordered world. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Paradise in the Garden of Eden. So yeah, so paradise represents an ideal we're called back [00:09:00] to while utopia is an ideal that we're trying to construct moving forward. <Right.> That's a good way to think about it. 

David: Yeah. And the Garden of Eden, of course, is literally it's a paradise, right? <Sure.> That's what it's literally called. So, in the Christian version, paradise is something that will happen in the future, but it is actually a return to the way the world was originally. And you see that in other Greek myths other stories as well. I'm not throwing the Christian Bible in the category of myth. We've beat that horse dead, but we'll move on. So, but yes, utopia is something different then. So utopias tend to envision this linear progression here in this life towards a better or a perfect world, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. I would say paradise sort of builds off the idea that the original story was perfection that we started out perfect or we started out in paradise, right? And utopia doesn't start there. It says look it's always been a mess, but we [00:10:00] can create our own paradise. 

David: Right. It was never perfect, but we're evolving to a place that we can one day make this perfect, right? <Right, right.> We can construct this. 

J.R.: We're evolving. Yes, we're going up this ladder And so we're going to eventually evolve to utopia. Whereas religious narratives say no, we need to be called back to our original paradisal roots. <Right.> Right. Yeah. You know, okay. 

David: And so you might have heard this idea of the myth of progress. It's kind of a skeptical idea, but still, it's this idea of the myth of progress that humankind will eventually solve all of the world's problems. We will eventually figure it out, and I think to how we started this is a lot of it comes through technology.

Technology will help us fix all of these problems. Right? So there's this utopian idea of progress that the more we progress, the more we will solve all the world's problems. And if we just put our minds to it, we will one day [00:11:00] fix it all. Right? <Yeah.> So that's the idea of a utopia. 

J.R.: Right. Does anybody really think that? I mean, well, I mean, I can understand a hundred years ago thinking that we would eventually be able to overcome. You know, we've talked about this a hundred years ago, we thought there'd be flying cars, but the idea that eventually we'll be able to overcome natural disasters and defeat famine or eradicate poverty.

But what we've seen is with all the technology that we've seen emerge in my lifetime, in your lifetime, who can't see that it all just comes with a whole different set of problems, right? 

David: Right. Yeah. 

J.R.: Comes with its own baggage , and we are able to solve some amazing problems in transportation and, you know, standard of living for everybody. But we also realize that with these technological advances, it just exposes the root of the problem, which is usually us, people, right? It comes with its own baggage, right? 

David: Right, yeah. And I think we are starting to understand that now, as human beings, as a society. You can [00:12:00] understand how, as the last couple hundred years, maybe the last 500 years, we'll talk about the enlightenment that there was this perception that, man, look how fast everything is advancing.

Like think what's going to happen 200 years from now, what's the world going to be like? Remember the whole thing about how automation was going to make the work week about 10 or 20 hours long? <Yeah.> You know, there was, there was some of these very optimistic views of what technology was going to do for us.

And man, just imagine all the free time we would have. Imagine the, like you were saying, the equity. You know, name a problem. We'll figure it out and get rid of it. Like, that's a utopian view of society. In fact, there's one guy I'll throw out there. Thomas More had a book called Utopia. I think it was written a couple hundred years ago.

 <Yeah.> I haven't read it, but, you know, sometime around there. But he's not the only one who explores this idea of what a ideal society would look like. And he talks about, in his book, [00:13:00]Utopia, there's no greed, there's no corruption, there's no power struggles, right? Because there wouldn't be any money, there's no private property, everyone is equal, and, you know there's peace and harmony and we all just hold hands and sing Kumbaya or something like that.

J.R.: Right, right. <And so,> Yeah, well you can just see that, you said what, 200 years ago he wrote this? 

David: Yeah, two, I don't know, two or three hundred, exactly. I don't know, remember exactly. But yeah, that's probably the best example of a more recent idea of someone who really put pen to paper and said, Here's what a utopia would look like, right?

J.R.: Right. And the problem with More's analysis is that it assumes that our social and our economic problems are out there, right? That are out there, that are part of the system, right? That if we just fix the system, then these problems will be solved. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And while there's definitely a need to evaluate and improve the systems that we have, we recognize that the majority of our problems are not from the outside, they're inside us. Which is why the whole fallen man narrative is a better way to describe reality. 

David: [00:14:00] Right, yeah, so that's something we're gonna get into because that's one of the key differences of a paradise versus utopia. One more thing I'll say that was really interesting. I didn't realize this but once I read it I'm like, yeah, there it is right there.

So the word utopia, where does this come from? Well, it literally means nowhere. Now that's, that's a loaded idea, isn't it? <Yeah, sure.> So, you know, and you break it down. 

J.R.: That's actually a great example, yeah. 

David: You know, topos in Greek is place. So it's, literally, utopia is really No place, right? So it's almost like in this word, I guess you could take that a couple ways, but in this word is the whole idea of, yeah, this is never going to happen, and yet we're still going to try it in the name itself, right? Yeah. The name itself just says, yeah, not going to happen or something like that, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, it's almost like the, the people who came up with the word, you know, embedded the meaning inside the word and when they throw the word around, nobody thinks of it as, you know, unattainable or nowhere. In fact, the proponents of [00:15:00] utopia, the utopian visionists don't really understand where the word came from. And the irony is just built right in the word. 

David: Yeah, that's true. And maybe it's taken a different idea with someone who's, you know, a proponent of utopia. Maybe they would have a different spin on what that idea of nowhere means. But it is interesting that it's right there in the word. It means nowhere.

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. Maybe they would say it's nowhere yet. 

David: Nowhere yet, yeah. So we have to find it. Yeah, we have to achieve it. Maybe it's something like that. I don't know. Yeah. But it's a concept that goes back a long ways that we're going to get into. So it might help to start fleshing this out because these are kind of big concepts we're talking about.

Like, what are the different visions, then, of paradise and utopia? So I started to break these down into a couple of different ways you could think about it. But one way we could start with is the role of God or the divine in society. Now, obviously, paradise includes God in that role, right? In fact, it's actually highly dependent on God, [00:16:00] right?

If we are going to have paradise one day, it's, well, in the Christian version, it's because God's kingdom is going to fully come. <Right.> Right? Because it's something that God will enact, and God will take us back, so to speak, to the garden that God created in the first place. 

J.R.: Right. That's right. 

David: Right. So paradise envisions this union or reunion with God in the world. And we talked about this a lot during the Gospel Announcement. If you go back and listen to that series, you know, we talked about what does it mean that God's kingdom is coming? What does it mean that God is bringing all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, under the reign of Christ, Well, all that is part of recreating or bringing about the paradise that we're talking about in this idea, right? 

J.R.: Right. Reordering the garden. 

David: Yeah. Reordering the garden. Getting rid of, you know, quote, sin fallenness, and then restoring the world to how God intended it to be in the first place.[00:17:00]

<That's right.> Okay. So, that's the role of God. Obviously, God plays a primary role in this concept of paradise. But what about utopia? And in a lot of these utopian visions, it's really man's ascent towards the perfect society and in, frankly, a lot of them, God is completely absent. 

J.R.: Yeah. It's all within our ability to create this. Yeah. We're the creator, right? Ironically, this is like the original Temptation, right? The serpent in the garden, right? How to become divine without God. 

David: That's true. That was the temptation. How can I become like God? 

J.R.: Right. Yeah, that's right No, so okay. So this makes sense. So paradise sounds like a return to Eden where utopia is trying to create Eden without acknowledging the original creator, maybe. 

David: Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of this ...

J.R.: Trying to create a man-made Eden, obviously, but without the acknowledgement of God. 

David: Yeah, yeah, that's true. And again, those are broad strokes. Someone may [00:18:00] be able to think of someone's vision of utopia that somehow includes God, but a lot of this more recently comes out of more this humanism that basically says, Look, once we rid the world of God, or the idea of God, then we will fully be able to move forward and achieve these things as human societies, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, to More's analysis, the problem is the system. 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: So the utopianist says the problem is if we get the right system in place, it'll all work out. But the Christian says, no, the problem is us. Right, okay. <Right, yeah.> Right, I'm on the same page with you.

David: Okay, yeah, so that actually leads to the second point, which is the state of the world. So how do these two competing visions view the state of the world? Well, paradise, we've been talking about it, recognizes the fallenness of human nature. And so you might think it recognizes the need for guardrails to mitigate bad behavior because bad behavior is always going to be part of Society until God's kingdom fully [00:19:00] comes. This might be a way to think of that, right?

J.R.: Right. Okay. 

David: So paradise actually acknowledges and recognizes that we live in a fallen world. And I was reminded of that the last couple of days, because my doorbell, my ring app keeps going off, you know, and neighborhood people who also have the ring doorbell, they can chime in and say, here's what I picked up last night. Right. And the thing right now during the holiday season is porch pirates. 

J.R.: Oh yeah. That's right. 

David: Yeah. And I've just watched two or three videos this morning. Someone said, do you recognize this person? And they just, you know, brazenly walk up to someone's porch, grab the package. Huh? 

J.R.: In your neighborhood? 

David: Yeah. Around me. Okay. Yeah. Wow. You know, grab the package and just walk off. 

J.R.: Oh yeah. That's always so crazy. Yeah. I, kind of love those on Twitter. I catch those videos all the time. Yeah. <And I love the guy.> The best ones are the ones where they get caught. 

David: Yeah. , I love the guy. So those just, for some reason, that really drives home fallen humanity to me.

That simple thing right there. I'm like, yep, [00:20:00] we live in a fallen world because here's someone's Christmas present and someone just walked up on their porch and took it, right? <Right.> So, I had to go watch this YouTube channel where this guy actually makes glitter bombs. Packages for porch pirates to have you seen that? <Yeah.> And then there's a camera in there. So they open the package and it just like blows glitter. It just makes a mess. I've seen them do variations of it. But yeah, I had to do that to restore my faith in humanity, so. 

J.R.: No, but that's a good example because it's just like one of those simple things. It is. That shouldn't be a problem, you know, but I've also heard that the statement that all security comes at the sacrifices of convenience. 

David: Okay, yeah. 

J.R.: And so , it's anything, something as simple as lock on your door, that's a little bit inconvenient to get your keys out and open the door, right? <Yeah, that's right.> So any security comes at the sacrifice of convenience.

And so the opposite is also true. If you want the convenience of Amazon Prime being delivered to your doorstep, there's going to be a [00:21:00] security problem with it that's going to be taken advantage of. 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: And again, that sort of points to the idea of the system's pretty good.

I mean, the fact that I can order something and it show up three days later, that's great. You know, rather than the please wait six to eight weeks of our childhood that we we always heard on the, on the commercials, right? Allow six to eight weeks for delivery. But yeah, so things are convenient. Things are great right now. The system is good, but once the system is in place, the fallenness of man just takes advantage of that. You know, because it's just too easy. 

David: That's true. That's another example of advancements in technology , have made, I can order something today and it'll be on my porch tonight or tomorrow morning, right?

Right. And you know, like you said, when you were a kid, when you were a kid, six to eight weeks might as well have been two years, right? Oh yeah. Sometime in the far future, I will get what I just ordered. 

J.R.: Yeah. You save three months to, you know, , the cereal box tops to get some kind of toy and then you got to mail it off and then you torture your parents for the [00:22:00] next three months.

Yeah, is it there yet? Did it come in the mail today? Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine. Parents probably ones that put a stop to that. Just look. Nevermind. Yeah. They just would go out and buy a toy and say, yeah, yeah, look, it came. 

David: That's right. Yeah. Just go buy it themselves. That's right. But it's another example of technology has given this more convenience, but it's also how quickly has it been exploited because of fallen nature, right?

It just makes it so easy to walk up someone's porch and take their package. And we can all reminisce, you know, about the days when we were growing up, that that wouldn't have happened. But, to your point, it's like technology is making it easier and easier for, what, to exploit human weaknesses, right? Fallen nature is a way to think about that. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. I don't know if you want to go here, but The Village. Me and you both like The Village, right? Oh, yeah. And not Shyamalan the movie? The cool thing about the village is that's what the point of that movie was, [00:23:00] is that the society had become so messed up and all these people had had murdered relatives, you know, they lived in the city. And so they thought they're going to create utopia by going and building this village, right. <Right.> You know, it was funny because it felt like it was the 1800s. And hopefully I'm not giving anything away, you know plenty of spoilers in this but it's modern day, right?

<Right.> But they got this land and they pulled away from society. And the interesting thing about the movie is that because all the second generation of these people who started this utopia were so naive that it allowed what it allowed malevolence to easily infiltrate <Yeah.> the village. <Yeah.> And that was sort of the parable you know, so I'm not explaining the whole movie, but , that was the idea behind the movie, the concept behind the movie. 

David: Yeah, the concept was it took all of one generation, right? The next generation for this utopian dream to be totally shattered because they totally give in to superstition, [00:24:00] they're naive yeah, and all kinds of malevolence creeps in and destroys this utopian society.

<Yeah.> Yeah, that's a good example. No, no, that's right.

So the village actually, yeah, you're right, is a great example of kind of this naive attempt to what escaped society and built a utopian society and how quickly that goes off the rails. 

J.R.: Right, I like how you pointed out that they had to create superstition in order to create what, non moral guardrails to their society.

David: Yes. Some kind of some measure of control. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah, they told the next generation that if you go off in the woods there's monsters out there. <Yeah, that's right.> To keep them in part of the village because they're trying you know they're in the middle of what a forest or something like that in the middle of modern society And they didn't want kids to go out there and engage modern society, right?

Because that's why they retreated to begin with. No, that's an interesting, take, because that's, it's actually a pretty good movie too, that explains some of what we're saying. 

David: Yeah, and actually to go a little deeper, we didn't plan to talk about this, to go a little deeper, it's almost like, [00:25:00] once you remove the fallenness of human nature from your utopia, you have to replace it with something.

And so what did they replace it with? Well, they replaced it with myth and superstition, right? Yes. And so that's what creates these guardrails And it's like well, you should have just stuck with the reality of the fallenness of human nature in the first place, but instead you did this whole experiment and you ended up in the same place, I guess. Yeah, that's really interesting. 

J.R.: Well, it is because, you know, like you said, utopia , holds to this idea , that society is broken, you know, and so, well, we either need to fix society or disengage from society. 

David: Yeah, yeah. 

J.R.: Right, , and what they found out is that good and evil was right there in their utopia because they were there, right?

David: That's right. 

J.R.: Humans were there, so had to come face to face with that. 

David: Yeah, so that's the contrasting view, then, is Utopia's hold, like you said, that society is broken. It's not people fallen, it's [00:26:00] society is broken. And you see, actually, you see this all over the place today. You see examples of this.

We talked about, again, once you see the pattern, you start to recognize it everywhere. So to bring up another movie reference you and I have talked about this, but the new Ring of Power on Amazon. <Oh, right.> I'm going to admit count me as one that hated season one and I will not participate in it anymore.

J.R.: I didn't even get through it. I was excited about it when it came online and I watched the first few episodes and then there was just nothing there. Yeah Yeah, wasn't interested. 

David: Lost interest and have no interest to pick up season two. Even though I heard season two might be better, but they've already lost me, but I saw this clip in season two where this orc family. Okay, the orcs right and it's a orc husband and wife and a child and the orcs are going off to war, and the Orc husband is embracing his wife , which when you really think about it, it betrays the whole idea of what an Orc is. Right? [00:27:00] These are created creatures. 

J.R.: I was about say . I thought they were created in the depths of the mountain. Right? 

David: Yeah sure. Yeah. That's what it was. 

J.R.: There was a whole birthing scene in the Lord of the Rings, right? 

David: Yeah, all these, creatures emerging out of this 

J.R.: Out of the mud.

David: Out of the mud, and yeah, that's how orcs, they're fully formed, like, you know. But apparently in season two, I was, again, I just watched a clip from a reviewer.

And it was showing this scene, and I was like, you gotta be kidding me. This is not what the orcs even are. But then, I thought it was interesting, and here's my point, because there was a comment in the comment section that one of the commenters said, "There are no more good people and evil people. There are only misunderstood people." And I thought yeah, that's it right there. <Yeah, that is it.> And you actually see that trope. You see that idea in a lot of modern remakes that the bad guy wasn't really bad, he was just misunderstood, right? And once you kind of understand his background or her background then you [00:28:00] understand that they're not really a bad person, right?

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah just misunderstood. I noticed that in movies in probably about the 90s where you find yourself rooting for the bad guy by the end of the movie. 

David: Yeah Yeah, now there's that twist too. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah the heist or there's there's several of them that I could mention but something like that. Yeah, that's interesting, you know, and comes from a little bit different angle. But especially on something like the Ring of Power or the Lord of the Rings where it's a fantasy movie, where the characters are supposed to represent both good and evil. So you can understand good and evil, right?

It's not, it's not, trying to paint a picture to say, Hey, let's talk about the hobbits and all their complex familial situations that they deal with. And now let's talk about, you know, the dwarves. These characters all represent something. And the Orc was so easily represented evil that, you know, it's just like you move on. Now let's get to the larger narrative of good versus evil, you know, and when, and you're right, when [00:29:00] you try to cloud the waters of the poor Orc going off to war. And the son running out to grab him, dad, don't leave, right? It seems like an absurd yeah, an absurd recasting of the idea of evil. And that's probably at the very foundation of why that new series didn't really work. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And you see it in other stories as well. Modern stories where there's not really such thing as evil. There's just society that has failed people or that are misunderstood people, but there's not really evil, right?

And that's one of the things that's probably one of the biggest weaknesses of a Utopian vision is it doesn't factor in the human capacity for evil and the fallen nature of everyone. And and like you were saying the good movies actually have that tension of good versus evil actually within each character, right?

J.R.: Yeah, that's right. 

David: Yeah, and that's just a reality and you kind of watch that and you say [00:30:00] yeah, this makes sense. That's true. It's true of me. I see it in me. So I have no problem believing it in this character that I'm watching, you know. 

J.R.: It's like utopia recognizes our disease without understanding the cause. 

David: Yeah, right. Yeah.

J.R.: I mean it recognizes fallen nature I mean it recognizes evil in the world, right? Nobody's denying that But it just doesn't understand the cause behind it. 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: And yeah, I don't know. That's a stretch. It's just a stretch because I don't understand how you can How do you explain the nazi regime, how do you explain Mao's China, how do you explain these historical genocides and atrocities without bringing in the idea of deep dark evil? You know, how do you explain that by saying Hitler was misunderstood, or Hitler wasn't properly educated, you know what I mean? Yeah. Or Mao was just, he must have been brought up the wrong way. Like, that's just not a satisfactory answer. And I don't think anybody, I don't think it resonates with anyone. 

David: And yet [00:31:00] you still see attempts in society today to try and at least, you know, put that out there. No, these people aren't bad, they're just misunderstood.

No, this person, you know, you have to understand why this person was acting the way they were acting, as if that's kind of an excuse. And look, this goes back a couple thousand years, because one of the things you even see in Plato's writings is, Plato actually talks about this idea that no one is really bad or intentionally doing bad things in his words, in the words of Socrates, they just needed to be educated better. And so, some of the dialogues, they go into this whole idea that people are always acting with their best intentions. They just haven't been educated enough to make what we would call the virtuous choice. Which is just another way, it's just the ancient way of saying, it's not really their fault. Society has somehow failed them, right? And if we just educate people better. It's the [00:32:00]view of Plato that you would eliminate most of the what we he would call evil in the world. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Which is so interesting because it's an idea that's been around for a long time, right? 

J.R.: Right? Well, I'm surprised Plato fell for it. And the thing is conceptually we all know people we all probably have a family member where you know has run into trouble and , maybe end up in jail or something like that. And we sort of because we know the way they were raised, we know their family.

Sometimes we do say, man, to be honest, the kid never had a chance. <Sure. Yeah.> You know, , the father was an alcoholic. The mother abused it, whatever the story is. Right. <Yeah.> And so we do see these examples, but that doesn't satisfactorily describe evil in the world. It's anecdotal.

There are situations where that's the case, but yeah, that's right. Surprised Plato fell for the idea of ascribing that problem to all evil in all the world, right? Like I said, you just can't get to Hitler by saying, well, you know, he really never had a chance, had an [00:33:00] alcoholic father. <Yeah, yeah.> It doesn't explain that, right? Well It explains some things, but not everything, right? 

David: I think if you're going to say, look, there is evil in the world, there's such a thing as evil, then you have to say that there is something contra God, right? That is at the heart of it. And I wonder if Plato, you know, he's looking at the Greek gods, there isn't this idea of a good god and then a malevolent spirit, like we would say God and Satan, right?

Right. So I wonder if he was hesitant to actually pull this idea of evil in, because then you have to attribute that to something, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. I can see that. 

David: So maybe it's something like that. I'm just kind of thinking off the top of my head as we're talking about this, but yeah. 

J.R.: Well, the Greek gods and the construct that they viewed reality is that the Greek gods were all flawed. There was no perfect god. <Right, right.> Like, you know, we say God, that almost implies the idea of perfection, but certainly not to the ancient Greeks. 

David: Right, yeah, exactly. And even the god Hades wasn't totally a bad guy, right? [00:34:00] Right. He was just misunderstood. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, maybe that makes sense. You know, sure. Yeah. That's why the greek gods, have died off, right? Yeah, that's why nobody believes any of that stuff anymore. 

David: Yeah, it died out Probably one of the easiest reality. Yeah Maybe one of the easiest ways to see this in our recent movement is the whole defund the police, not to get overly political. But look that was such a ridiculous movement because at its heart and this is where it really helps to start seeing these patterns because at its heart, this is what it's saying, right?

That people aren't bad. It's society that's making them bad. It's the rules that's making them bad. Yeah Yeah, so if you remove this kind of quote corrupt system the police then everyone will suddenly, what, have room to have their virtue flourish, right? 

J.R.: Right, right. Yeah, which is not what I ever saw anywhere.

David: No, and it didn't take long for that narrative to start falling apart in fact [00:35:00] when some of the very people who called for it were calling the police because people were breaking into their house. Like That started burning tires in their front yard in that narrative But you know look we look at that and you may say, well, that sounds ridiculous, but it's actually a variation of this idea, right?

Yeah. If we could fix the rules of society, then people will naturally behave good. 

J.R.: But it's another example of taking a anecdotal problem, you know, the corrupt police officer, and extrapolating that out to explain why all the chaos and evil in at least that particular city is flourishing. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: It's like, golly, man, , surely you can think more multifaceted than that.

You know, not that there's not a problem that we need to address in the system, but again, I mean, that overall the police force and enforcing laws and making sure people don't break into your house and making sure that if somebody gets hurt, you know, the right people show up, is a force for good.

But since there's some bad actors in [00:36:00] it, that, that system needs to be addressed. Yeah. But I don't, I, yes, I'm, I was like you. I'm surprised that people were so quick to throw the entire system away, and to say that the system is the problem. 

David: Yeah, yeah. And I was surprised too, but I think that's where this framework of Paradise vs. Utopia helps, because it's actually a very old idea, even if it isn't, even if we would say it's not really true. But, you know, society is the problem, people aren't. And Paradise would say, no, no, no, people, we have a large part in what's going on wrong in the world, right? Because we live in a fallen world and we are broken people. And if you remove that, then it's going to take you all kinds of weird places. 

J.R.: Well, you see it also in the kind of the California experiment of, what is it, they decriminalize shoplifting, under whatever, $500. 

David: Sure, yeah, under $900. I think it was under $1,000 or something. 

J.R.: Yeah, what they see is people just walking out of, you know, Walgreens with arms full of [00:37:00] stuff.

I don't know how the security guard, if he tallies that up in his head and says, yeah, I think you're under 900 there or whatever. 

David: Let me scan, let me see how much you got. 

J.R.: Right, hold on, yeah, let me scan that last thing. You know, oh, sorry, you're going to jail. No, but the problem is that there's this assumption that 95%, maybe even 99 percent of people wouldn't shoplift, that somehow the 99 percent will offset the one or the 5 percent that would, right. But social scientists, they all understand that a tiny minority can wreak havoc on the majority. 

David: Right. 

J.R.: You know, that was another idea in the movie, the village. <Yeah, that's right.> That a tiny, you know, one person in a naive society can completely wreak havoc and, not what not prosecuting or not arresting people for any shoplifting is a naive idea, even if you set a cap on it, even if you say well anything under a thousand dollars. Well, that's a what a naive idea, right? You know a tiny minority is going to wreck havoc with that. They're just going to walk into the Apple Store That's another thing I've seen on twitter: The guy [00:38:00] just walking to the Apple Store and just grabbing phone after phone after phone and then walking out. And it's just, yeah, it's just crazy, but the naivete of, saying, yeah, we're not going to punish this is what opened the door for this, you know, the 1 percent to completely have their way with it and cause total chaos in the streets.

David: Right. And I would add to that, that once people actually see the 1%, just get away with no consequences, then that starts to spread, right? Right. Yes. Because it's like, why am I the sucker obeying the rules? You know, I just paid $500 for a new phone. I could have just walked in and taken it. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. 

David: And so that 1 percent actually starts to corrupt.

We've talked about this. The social experiment where you take the good kids and the bad kids, quote, you know. <Oh, right. Yeah.> You know what I'm talking about right away. And send them to camp. And the idea that is the good kids would help the quote bad kids come [00:39:00] around right and then they even change the proportions and what happened was they found every single time that the bad kids actually had more of a negative influence on the good kids then the reverse was true. 

J.R.: Yeah, even when they were completely outnumbered, you know, 20 to 1. 

David: Yeah, yeah. Right. So it's that 1%. All it took was that 1%. 

J.R.: Sure. 

David: Right? And it starts to spread.

J.R.: Yeah, it doesn't take, a social scientist to tell you this. You know, if you've ever been in a group of guys and one kid starts talking about how sex works, you know, when you're in you know, the fifth grade or sixth grade, suddenly, the kid that's talking about G. I. Joe's is no longer interesting to me. Right? Everybody wants to hear about the kid who's going to tell us about sex. <Right.> You know, it's like, Yeah, it's such an easy thing to see. It's so obvious when you look at it, but then we're surprised. And it takes a scientific experiment to figure out that, yeah, huh. Nobody's really interested. The good don't outweigh the bad. 

David: Yeah. Anyone who's been a camp counselor over the summer [00:40:00] can attest to that. Say, you didn't need to run a social experiment, I can tell you. 

J.R.: Exactly. 

David: Yeah, this is how this is all going to go down. Alright, so that's another aspect of the difference between Paradise and Utopia.

So another one is, we might say, the aim of society. So what is the purpose of society? Right, and I would say Paradise doesn't envision a perfect world now, but it aims to align with the future that God has laid out in the Bible, right? Or a return to Eden. Okay. Right? And I would call this kind of an alignment with truth, which is kind of what we've been talking about.

Like, a paradise takes into account this, the more we align with truth, both, you know, the good of people and the bad of people the closer we will get to this idea of a paradise, right? But not until God fully comes. Something along those lines. 

J.R.: Yeah, and when you say truth I think it's important to say that we've talked about this before, that truth is what actually corresponds with reality. Like, that's the best [00:41:00] definition of truth.

David: Yeah, we've said that before. 

J.R.: Because we talk about truth and lies and things like that, but we're talking about when we say what aligns with truth, it's what aligns with what corresponds with reality, with the way the world works. 

David: Yeah, you might say it's a sober view of reality. That's what the truth is. <Yeah, that's right.> A realistic view. 

J.R.: Right. And so the truth is, when we talk about human nature, The truth is, is that what corresponds with reality over and over and over in all these examples that we've been mentioning is that there's something in human nature that takes advantage for the self, right?

It's selfish. And so if the Amazon box is sitting on the front porch, there's something in our human nature. Maybe we all wouldn't run up to the porch and grab it, but there is something in us that thinks, huh, I bet you that box is worth something. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And there's something in other people that say, all I've got to do is walk right up this walk.

There's no cars in the driveway and it can now be mine, right? There's something in human nature that doesn't align with the utopian [00:42:00] vision. And when we say what aligns with the truth is the recognition that there is something in our fallen nature that wants to take advantage of whatever opportunity it can to further ourselves.

And if we can get away with it what we find out kind of like the shoplifting thing. If you let people get away with it, there's a lot of people that are more than happy to break the social code of just walking in a store and taking it because they can get away with it. 

David: Yeah, and it's even the recognition that that same tendency lies within me because I've taken the dog for a walk and seen a package on the porch and gone. Huh? I bet I could just go fetch. 

J.R.: Yeah, bring that back to me. 

David: Now the difference is that I don't okay, right. Don't check your ring doorbell. It's not me on it. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: But you know, let's be honest You We all have those thoughts sometimes. Yeah, I bet I could just take that. 

J.R.: Yeah, and a lot of times what stops me I mean if i'm going to be completely honest, it's just the idea of oh gosh Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be? Yeah, even [00:43:00] if you didn't get away with it to get arrested i'm not going down that road too far. But just the embarrassment of even somebody thinking that hey, were you trying to get this package? Oh my gosh, no, you know? It's like, you know, it's it's the embarrassment. I mean, there's all these things that get in the way of us doing it. And a lot of times, we would like to attribute it to our own superior moral compass, but a lot of times it's just like, yeah, I don't want to get caught.

I wouldn't want to get busted for that, right? 

David: Yeah, that's a dumb thing to get busted for. So if I'm going to get busted for something, it's going to be more than that, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Something more than, yeah. Polly pockets, gift set, you know, or something, you know, something that I don't want, right? 

David: Well, I guess another way to say this is, the more the paradisical alignment with reality, the Christian view is that we can align ourselves more with reality and therefore more with paradise in this lifetime.

Now it's not going to happen perfectly, but it is something that we can strive for, right? Because we've said this again, go back to our Gospel Announcement series, [00:44:00] the more I'm aligning myself with what God is doing in the world, the more I'm likely to experience what we would call paradise, right? Right, even if not perfectly. So that's this idea of alignment with the world, right? Or the correspondence with truth. 

J.R.: I'm glad you said that because there is something about once you understand human nature, there's a tendency of throwing up your hands and saying well, then what can anybody do right? Yeah It is just is what it is.

And the answer is exactly what you said is when you go against your human nature to align yourself with God, then you can create paradise in your own personal walled garden, in your own personal world, you know? I'm not gonna end world hunger, but I can have a nice, calm thriving household.

David: Yeah, yeah. I can be the kind of person that looks at the package and says, no, I'm not going to take it. Even if it would be easy, right?

J.R.: Even if it's just laying there. 

David: Even if it's laying there day after [00:45:00] day. 

J.R.: Yeah, that's right. If you find a 100 bill on the sidewalk, do you turn it in? That's a tough one.

David: Yeah, it depends on if it's someone's property. I don't know. 

J.R.: If it's in somebody's yard. If you have to reach through a fence to get it, then no, but if not, yeah, okay. No, but it's kind of that stoic philosophy that we can't control what happens in the world. All we can control is how we respond to it. 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: Right and so when you recognize your own nature your own human nature, I can't stop evil in the world. I can't stop all crime, but I can do something I can change the way I respond to the speed bumps that the world throws at me, right? I can change how I respond to it.

And that's sort of that stoic philosophy of trying to use the virtues to respond properly to a chaotic world. 

David: Yeah, that's right. I can't control how other people respond I can control how I respond. And the more people right who actually adopt that idea, you know, there is a chance that we can align the [00:46:00] world closer and closer to God's vision of the world, right?

<Right.> So, in contrast to that then, and again, I think you see this pretty clearly today, is Utopia insists that the more we move towards a perfect society, we can define what reality is. <Right.> And that's another thing I, think you see more and more clearly is the attempt to say, no, we can define what reality is. We don't have to bend ourselves towards what's real. We define what it is. Right? 

J.R.: Yeah. And that's that phrase that drives us crazy. My truth, right. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And we talked about that because there is your truth. That's the thing we talked about it in the truth episode. There is your truth. There is a reality about the way you were raised or the household or the world in which you live personally, there really is your truth.

But there has to be a hierarchy to it, and there has to be above that, you know, the my truth is the lowest form of reality. 

David: Yeah, that's true, yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah, it's not that it's not valid at all, it's just that on the hierarchy, that's the lowest rung. And the higher truths [00:47:00] are the scientific truth, and spiritual truths, and right, you know.

And so it's when you get that inverted, and that's what I hear you saying about the mistake Utopia is making is that they're trying to inverse that truth hierarchy. <Yeah.> And putting at the top of it, my truth, my personal truth. That that's what matters and that's what's most valid.

David: Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to say it, is they invert the hierarchy there. So, reality tends to be constraining towards what utopia is moving forward. So we'll just redefine reality. We'll flip the hierarchy and go with that, right? 

J.R.: Yes, that's right. 

David: Yeah, so those are some of the broad ideas. You know, I think you see this clearly in Marxism of the last hundred years, you know, is this idea that we can create a perfect society, but what actually happens is chaos and violent revolution, right? Right. What's interesting is when you look back, and this is such a clear example of what we're talking about, is when you look back at, say, the Russian Revolution, [00:48:00] where they overthrew Tsar Nicholas, and one of the very first leaders of it, and I may get the name wrong, I should probably, but, you know, it was a name you would recognize as kind of fomenting the revolution.

Well, what is often forgotten is that once the revolution happens and he becomes a primary figure, it's only a matter of years before he's executed. Yeah, he becomes the tyrant. Yeah, yeah. He becomes the tyrant, he becomes the power, and he becomes the one to overthrow. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And so it becomes this kind of cycle of, if that's your worldview, then that's the cycle you're going to create. And that's why a lot of these utopian visions actually end in a lot of violence. 

J.R.: Right. Well, that's the arrogance of the utopian view. Because underneath this idea that we can create our own Garden of Eden, our own paradise, without God and without bringing into the idea of human nature, what you're really saying is, if I were in charge, I would usher in the new [00:49:00]utopia.

Right. If somebody like me , had all the power, then I would ensure that there was equality and you know, thriving for everybody, right? I mean, so it's sort of this arrogance behind it is, it's, you know, that you always see with the kind of the utopian visionaries. 

David: That's right.

Yeah. There's a lot of arrogance there and you know, then the need to consolidate power because again, we're all fallen human beings and no one gains power without the desire somewhere to retain that power, right? And then like you said, you become the tyrant. <Right.> You're the new tyrant. Yeah, and again You see that pattern over and over again, even today in our societies.

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

David: Yeah. So obviously what we're putting out there is that our view of the world should align with this idea of paradise and not Utopia. And one of the most vivid pictures in the Bible of this attempt to create a utopia is actually in Genesis chapter 11, and it's the [00:50:00] Tower of Babel.

And so I thought we'd end by just walking through that story real quick. <Oh yeah, sure.> Because it's a quick story, right? It's 10 verses, and you don't think about it, but when you actually start to break it down, It actually falls into the same pattern, right? Which makes sense.

That's why patterns, that's why they exist. They repeat themselves, right? So, let's walk through the Tower of Babel story real quick, okay? It's a pretty short passage. So actually, we're going to pause here and you can take a listen to the story real quick. 

AI Winston: Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the [00:51:00] whole earth.

But the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

So the Lord scattered them from there, over all the earth. And they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel. Because there, the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

David: Alright, so let me just kind of hit the highlights of this story, right? 

So, Genesis 11:1 says, "Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. And as people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there." Okay, now the first thing that I actually want to point out, that first phrase is, "Now the whole world had one [00:52:00] language and a common speech." Okay? So, what's interesting is I think you can pull out of that this idea that there was a global culture with no uniqueness between societies.

J.R.: Right? And so Yeah, everybody spoke the same language. The assumption is everybody was of the same, what, people group. 

David: People group, they shared customs. The idea is that there weren't uniquenesses among these cultures. And the idea that everyone spoke the same language and shared a society almost is the trigger towards, hey, let's create a utopia.

Now, I think that's kind of interesting because I think you see that in some of the attempts of globalism today. <Yeah, right.> And some, there's even been some pretty explicit things that the more we can, what, minimize the differences of different cultures, the more we will move towards a global society, which globalism is really just another version.

It's a utopian vision, right? <Right. Sure.> [00:53:00] And so I just thought that was interesting. The very first verse kind of puts that out there, right? They didn't have these barriers. And so, hey, think what we can accomplish together.

J.R.: And it's one of those things that sounds good. The idea of it, hey, we're all just one human race. And the truth is, that is a reality, you know, we're all people. But there's also something to be said about celebrating the individual cultures that make up our world, you know. 

David: Oh, yeah, yeah.

J.R.: One of the things you and I ran into, and I don't want to get off on this too long, because we really could talk for a long time about this. But we went to a little town. And it was not a vacation town in southern Greece. <Right.> And we went downtown one night to grab something to eat. And it was really neat because it was, it felt like a city. You know, there's tall buildings all around. But the city, I mean, we Googled it. It was like a city of, what, 60, 000?

David: Yeah, 60,000, 70,000. What we would say is, you know, kind of a, <Right.> not a tiny town, not on the sticks, but yeah, small town. 

J.R.: Right, small town. And so we go downtown to this place, [00:54:00] and I mean, there's all these restaurants, there are kids playing soccer in the square. Everybody's, I mean, it was just really neat to see this really very distinct Greek culture.

All of them were speaking the same language. All of them were kind of playing in the, streets and they all had the, universal custom and you and I commented about, this is really neat. You don't see this in Athens. You don't see this in the bigger cities where there's a more diverse community.

And there is something, it was just kind of a, when you say this is not a diverse group, there's a tendency to draw a negative picture about this right, you know, yeah. They all thought the same or they all, you know. But when you see that, when you actually go and experience it, you're like, this is neat I would love for my kids to grow up here, you know? <Yeah> But there's something about kind of the more diversity that actually takes away maybe from the individual culture of a small town or something like that, you know. Well, I think we just had we just had a chance to see it firsthand. 

David: Yeah, and I think one of the things you've said [00:55:00] in the past is the problem is when you try to scale that, right? Because that was kind of this unique monoculture that was neat to get a glimpse into, right? The problem is when you try to scale that and say, okay, let's make the entire world this monoculture. <Yes.> Well, then everyone has lost their uniqueness. 

J.R.: Yes, that's exactly it. 

David: Right? It's just a monolithic, boring culture, right? <Right.> And so you have this kind of tension that one of the reasons why that was so unique is because it was done on this very small scale, like the southern town in Greece. Right. And so, yeah, I think that's a good point. 

J.R.: Well, I'm glad you said that because we kind of said in that conversation about one of the problems with ideas is the scalability. And you can see it in a very small setting. You're like, man, look how great this idea plays out in this group of 20. And maybe it works in a group of 100. But then, you know, the scalability doesn't work. [00:56:00] And so when you scale these ideas up to a city or a state or an entire world, then the whole thing it just falls apart, right? Yes, ridiculous And so i'm glad you said that about the scalability because that really is something that i've thought about lately. That you come across ideas people's you know, and it can be anything from globalism to, you know, the way we spend our money or the way we use money in our family group or whatever.

I heard somebody say that in their own family that they're socialists, I think. 

David: Oh, yeah, I've heard that. 

J.R.: Yeah, to each to what they deserve, to whatever they, then the expectations is what they can provide. I forget the line. But anyway, yeah, in their own family, they're sort of socialists.

You know, they only expect how much somebody can work and they provide what everybody needs, right? Yeah, but that doesn't work in, in a broader, once you scale that up, it doesn't work. 

David: Yeah. The problem is trying to scale that. Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. That's right. So I say that to say, I think globalism is one of those things that sounds like a good idea because you see it in small doses, [00:57:00] you're like, oh, that's really refreshing. There's something neat about it. <Yeah, yeah.> But then when you apply it to the entire world and insist that everybody be that way, that's when the whole thing turns into a tyrannical mess. 

David: Yeah, exactly. Alright, so this is the basis for this tower then, you know, this vision. Everyone had one language and common speech. 

So, what happens next, it says, "They said to each other, come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They use brick instead of stone and tar for mortar." Now that's an important line right there, because in the Old Testament, that idea of using brick instead of stone, tar for mortar, you'll see other examples of this, that's really referring to technology.

And we don't think of it as technology, right? We think of technology as the new phone I just got, right? But, in the Bible that is an example of a jump in technology. And I was just doing some writing yesterday where it says enemies of Israel had chariots of iron. Well, that's another example, right? What they're doing is they're pointing out the technological advantage [00:58:00] that someone else has. So those aren't just throwaway lines in the Bible, it's actually telling you something. In this case, it's about technology. 

J.R.: Yeah, it says they used brick instead of stone. It doesn't say that they just made it with bricks. But then they point out they use brick instead of stone, which is interesting, like, to your point, you know, that stone was how they did it in the ancient days. But they've got bricks, they're actually creating and firing clay bricks, , to build. Yeah, so you're right. It's a nod to technology.

David: Yeah. And the implication is, hey, with bricks, we can build this thing bigger. That's really the implication. And I think it's neat. I point out this technology idea because it's neat because we've already talked about, you know, in utopias. What's the idea? The idea is that technology will somehow rescue us and fix everything, right?

And it's funny. You go back to the story of Tower of Babel, and it's really right there. You see the same thing. Technology will allow us to do this. Isn't this great? 

J.R.: And there's nothing wrong with technology, [00:59:00] right? There's nothing wrong with bricks, right? But when you think technology will ultimately fix our broken human condition, Then you're putting it in a place that only God can exist, right? You know, and that's sort of what the tower represents, right? Our man made mountain to God. 

David: One of the freakiest podcasts I listened to, episodes, was a guy talking about AI. And he started to get excited talking, and he actually said he believes that AI one day will become sentient. And actually fix all of our problems. And so we will create this thing that will in turn save us. And I thought, Oh gosh, you've just created a god, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, that's exactly right. That sounds absolutely terrifying. Yeah, it does. 

David: Alright, so the next part of the story then, it says, "Then they said, come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may finally make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

And they say that like that's a [01:00:00] bad thing, right? So that's kind of interesting. Right. So We've talked in the past about this idea of a tower. What is it that they're really talking about here? 

J.R.: Well, it's just the idea that a tower, you know, we think of a tower as, well, a tower, a skyscraper.

Yeah. You know, and we hear that story, you know, I think I've discussed this before, that when I heard that story as a kid, or at least a younger person, I was thinking, what was the problem? Why was God worried about this? I mean, who building a tower? Why does reach reach God care if they build a tower? Yeah.

Why does God, you know, go have at it. Knock yourself out, kids, see how far you get. And it's just sort of a doomed idea from the beginning. But once you understand sort of the what the mythic idea, and again, we're not that it's false, but that it's mythic. It's a spiritual example of something. And so it's saying the tower is, a what? A mountain to God. It's an artificial mountain. 

David: Yeah, it's a ziggurat, right? That's right. 

J.R.: Yes, a ziggurat. 

David: That's what they would have called it. And yes, it was an artificial [01:01:00] mountain. Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And the purpose of that artificial mountain was that's how you reach the gods, right?

So the point was in building this tower and this makes a lot more sense. Then the point in building this tower then was to be able to coerce the gods down and then control them, so that we can use them for our benefit. 

J.R.: Right that you build a what a place for the god to reside. A desirable place for the god to embody and the god will come down. And then the god can be used which is such a crazy, I don't know, it's just such a crazy concept. But again when you understand the Spiritual symbolism and significance of it. You find out that we do this all the time, right? We tried to what to invite the fates to show us favor, right? That's that's not an ancient idea.

I mean, that's a modern idea Or it's not merely an ancient idea. I should say it's also a modern idea. Yeah, we're all the time trying to create favorability. Now we wouldn't say from the [01:02:00] gods, right? That's not our culture but we try to coerce favor for ourselves in society so that we can remove the difficulties in our lives. And so, to your point, to go back to the AI, you know, we're going to use AI to I read the article about established equality.

You read the article about that using AI to essentially be a god and to have all the answers for it once it's become sentient. <Yeah.> It's this weird process of building something that can be embodied by, I can't think of a better word than the gods, right? 

David: Yeah, I mean. 

J.R.: And I mean, again. I like AI. I think it's really cool. You know, me and you swap some pictures this week, some pretty cool AI pictures. <Yeah.> So it's not like I'm terrified of it. When you put it in that category and say that it can answer our problems, that's when I become terrified. And it's not because I think it can happen, but it is this sort of building something to coax the gods to give us, to show us favor.

David: Yeah, yeah, [01:03:00] and we have a modern spin on that, but the temptation is still there. And like I said I was doing some writing yesterday and in the Bible, technology always comes with a warning label. It doesn't say it's bad. It just comes with a warning label, right? Yeah, and so when it says they were building this tower to reach the heavens, that's what it's talking about. They didn't think that literally they could build a tower, you know, miles high to the streets of gold and the pearly gates. Yeah, that's not what they're talking about. They're talking about reaching the gods, and then the gods would come inhabit this tower, and then now we have control of the gods. Right? 

J.R.: Yeah, exactly. Using technology to build something that's habitable by the gods.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Okay. 

David: Okay, so the next part, and this is always the weird part, too. " Then the Lord says, If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Okay. Now that almost sounds like God is saying, Oh no, they might actually succeed in [01:04:00] building this utopia.

J.R.: Right. That's the way I've always read it. 

David: Yeah. Right. Cause that doesn't really read right. But I heard someone recently say a better way to think about this is instead of saying, "then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." It's actually saying, "then nothing will restrain them," right?

And it's another way of saying, like, there's going to be no guardrails on what they think they can do. And who knows what kind of chaos this is going to cause. Which is different than saying, it sounds like God's a little jealous and worried, right? And I actually like that idea better, this idea that if they do this, then nothing will restrain them.

And look, you can look around and see examples today of just society unrestrained. Right? <Oh, sure.> That's not a good thing. 

J.R.: Right. It's everything from the printing press on up to television on up to the internet. You know, you see both the, what the lack of restraint with every one of those things.

David: Sure. Yeah. 

J.R.: You know, and, it's in [01:05:00] one sense, it's wonderful. And the opportunities are all there to advanced civilization along those lines. But then it always comes, like I said, you know, at the beginning of the podcast that there's nothing wrong with technology. But if you can't see the technology doesn't bring its own baggage and its own issues, then you're just intentionally blind.

You know, you're naive beyond belief. You know that, you can't see that these things, what the, the Pandora's box that has been opened. And I mean that literally the Pandora's box, because you can't put it back in. You can't just sit there and say, well, yeah, now that we see what social media is doing with our kids. Let's just get rid of social media. Right. That doesn't happen. <Right, yeah.> You can't do that. 

David: Yeah. You can't undo a technology. But, especially at the individual level. I think that's a good way to think about it. You can put restraints on it. So I'm not a slave to my phone, right?

I'm not a slave to social media. Like, I've put restraints on it. So that I am not approaching this technology, any technology, unrestrained. Right? That's kind of an [01:06:00] interesting way to think about it. 

J.R.: Yeah, that's right. 

David: All right, so, I think that helps in understanding that God's not being petty here, God is saying they will literally destroy themselves if I let them do this, is basically what He's saying.

<Yeah.> All right, so the story ends then and He says, now this is interesting too, it says, "Come let us go down." All right, so who's the us there, right? "So come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth and they stopped building the city."

Okay, so that us there, I would see that as language of the divine council. <Yeah, sure.> Do you see it elsewhere in the Old Testament. We talked about this, so we won't get off in this rabbit trail, but usually when the Bible refers to God as speaking to other people, saying, us, it is this concept of there's a divine council of spiritual beings around God, and that's who he's referring to.

J.R.: Exactly. Yeah, go listen to the Divine Council episode. 

David: Yeah, exactly. Go listen to that one. So [01:07:00] what does God do then? He steps in and God confuses their language and actually scatters them, and it says they stop building the city. So right there. I think that's a great picture of the attempt to build a utopian society. <Yeah.> And God says, for your own good, I'm not going to let this happen. 

J.R.: Right. But it's just interesting that, I don't know that it's difficult to read it in any other way because if you do read it sort of as just a literal ancient story, then you do you run into this whole problem of what was he worried about? Why would they be you know? 

David: Yeah, what's the big deal? What? 

J.R.: Yeah, why would he have to confuse their language? You know what they abandoned the city who cares if they hadn't abandoned the city. It couldn't have been any better than any of the ancient cities that we've seen. You know that you and I have gone through all the ruins of you know. It just wouldn't have lasted just like any other city, but there's a spiritual reality to this story that really does overlay well to the idea of avoiding to try to build the utopian society. And we've also talked about the idea of the [01:08:00] city. In the ancient, , in particularly the Old Testament, that the ideas of cities you know, it's not, hey, man, just , head to New York and have a great time.

It's a, it's a beautiful city, right? Cities are not favorably spoken of in the Old Testament. <Right.> It's not that they're completely evil, but it's the representation of this man-made perfect society, right? That's what Cain, Cain, when he killed his brother and when he was banished from his people, what did he do? He went off and built a city, right? And so there's this kind of direct implication that when you shake your fist at God and he doesn't accept your gifts. And you are angry at the, what, the, reality of the world that's in front of you and cynicism and anger, you know, when that fills you up and you're cast out, I just think that there's an interesting tie in, interesting thread to say that the next thing he did was to go build a city.

And if you follow the ...

David: Yeah, that is interesting. 

J.R.: Yeah, the children of [01:09:00] Cain. They are the ones that built weapons of war. They're the ones that built iron. So again, there's sort of this technological tools of war that were built that came out of the city. <Yeah.> Came out of Cain's lineage. 

David: I'm glad you pointed that out because it's easy to miss too because a lot of the times we have this image of the Tower of Babel is this big tower in the middle of the desert.

<Right.> But we miss the idea that they were actually building an entire city. <Yes.> Which I think, I think we can see city as basically just another word for a society. And so what are they doing? They're building a utopia. <Yeah.> Because once you really talk about it, it becomes so clear, and you're right, you see that pattern elsewhere in the Bible, like, I'm going to stand against God. I'm going to fight against reality. What happens? I'm going to go establish this city, right? And then that city usually ends up being a disaster. 

J.R.: No, that's good. I'm glad you said that. The city could be better understood as a society without God when you read it in the Old Testament.

David: [01:10:00] Yeah, yeah. 

J.R.: An attempted society without the foundational principles of God. 

David: Yeah, and we've said this before, but it's important to say that that's not every city, because ultimately, the kingdom of God is described as, what, the New Jerusalem, right? It's a city, though, that God has instilled with His presence, and so it doesn't have all of these human attempts to create, well, a utopia, right? 

J.R.: Right, right. Well, the contrast is Babylon. So you have Babylon, which is the ultimate man made city that represents nothing good, in the Bible at least. 

David: Rome, you could say the same thing about Rome in the New Testament, right? Yeah. It's the ultimate city, full of hubris and pride and, you know, bringing peace to the world through endless war. Right? 

J.R.: Yeah , and the New Jerusalem is, what is it, a hundred? I always get, I get the number wrong, but it's a cube, right? It's a hundred. Yeah. Not a hundred, a thousand cubits miles wide, or [01:11:00] a thousand miles deep, and a thousand miles high, or something like that, right? It's a giant cube. And the interesting thing about that is not that there's going to be this cube shaped city in the future where, like, it's a massive apartment building, right, that reaches toward the sky.

It's that what it's saying is the man made cities are length and width, but the paradisal city, the God centered city, is equally high. In other words, it is going to bridge and connect heaven and earth. 

David: It actually will reach heaven, yeah. That's a good way to think of it. 

J.R.: Yes, yeah. Not in the mountain sense, where you start with a wide base and you narrow it to the point to the top. No, that's interesting. It is a cube where it's a complete connection of heaven and earth. 

David: Exactly, that's right. Yeah, I didn't really think about that aspect, but that's interesting. That's exactly right, I think.

J.R.: Yeah, so I think, that idea holds that the city, other than the New Jerusalem in Revelation, that the cities in the Bible are generally thought of as godless societies, or [01:12:00] attempts at societies without God. Sure, yeah. Man made societies. Yeah, you could go down the list. Which is what we would call utopia, sure.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah, okay, that's interesting. 

David: Yeah, so, I mean, there's a lot of concepts here. I'm gonna restate what I said at the beginning, is one of my main takeaways is, understanding these patterns and the difference between the two actually helps me look at a lot of things that you see you know, political ideas thrown out, societal ideas, right?

New technologies. And it helps me to go back to these patterns and say, okay, what's the underlying philosophy that this is actually trying to create? And, you know, so are there guardrails on it? Is it a sober view of, we live in a fallen world? Or is it this idealistic view of, 'Hey, this will actually solve all our problems,' right?

Right. So, it actually really helps me to understand the world we live in today. I don't know. 

J.R.: Yeah. Well, I think at a glance, I think what you said at the beginning is, after this episode, you should be able to, at a glance, be able to say, Is [01:13:00] this paradise or utopia? 

David: Yeah, yeah. 

J.R.: And I think it's helpful. I think you're right. I think there's a lot of things that are going on that you're like, okay, that's a utopian idea. 

David: Yeah. Try it out. When next time you hear some crazy idea, run that through the patterns here, paradise, utopia. And you can quickly say -that's the other thing. I'm learning to quickly have confidence in saying no, that idea will absolutely not work.

Yeah. And you don't need to, you know, go through the whole thing. Well, shouldn't we try it? Or how do you know? Well, again, Once you see the pattern, you know how the story ends. <Yes.> I've seen the movie. I know how it ends. It's a bad idea, right? So. 

J.R.: Yeah, that's right. This has been played out before. You're not the first person to come up with this.

David: Yeah. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah And you're right. It has all the earmarks of utopia and it will collapse under its own weight. Don't even bother. 

David: Yeah 

J.R.: No, yeah, you're just wasting a lot of people's time and energy and resources. 

David: Yeah, and at the same time it does call you to say okay then, let me embrace this view of paradise, you know, which does, I think [01:14:00] it puts more the impetus on me to say, I can at least try to live this out and be this person.

Yes. And, you know, the more we kind of join together, like you said, the more my family resembles a paradise. Maybe my little neighborhood, my church. I think that's one of the reasons why in the Tower of Babel God scatters them, right? I didn't think about that, but he's like look go create all these little pockets of unique culture and go figure this out. 

J.R.: Yeah, I think that's neat. Yeah, cuz what was the necessity of scattering them? Yeah, it's almost Almost as if the he said look go create your own utopia in in your own family Let's start there and it goes back to that idea of scalability. You know, the great ideas scale up, you know, and things like that and poor ideas, they may work in your family, but they just don't scale up that high.

And maybe that it's somewhat of what God was doing is saying, go create your own paradise first. Let's start with your own heart. And once you get that straight, then you can extend it to your family. 

David: Let's [01:15:00] be honest. You got your hands full with that one right there. 

J.R.: That's right. Yeah. That's going to take a whole lifetime.

And if you're fortunate enough to master your family and to create a paradise in your family, maybe you can do something with your neighbor and maybe you can involve your immediate community. But yeah, it's man's idea, man, that's so interesting that it ties back to something like Marxism and these other kind of terrible philosophies that got millions of people killed, right?

<Oh, yeah.> is that when you immediately say, I've got a great idea, let's scale this up to a worldwide phenomenon. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like, wow, that's doomed from the beginning. 

David: Without ever being changed by that philosophy in your own heart. And I think that's another key, right? Yeah. What Achilles heel of some of these philosophies. 

J.R.: Yeah. I think you're right. 

David: Well, all right. Yeah, so that puts a bow on Season 2. We finally did it. It took us a couple months, but we finally finished Season 2. 

J.R.: Yeah, that's right. A little bit of a break. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: But one thing I'll say in closing is that several of the concepts we talked about in this [01:16:00]episode I thought were interesting because it really ties together this entire series of Stranger Things.

You know, we brought in the AI, we brought in the reality to some degree, right. And I think it's just interesting that so many of these ideas tie together, you know, it's not just a singular standalone episode or concept or ideas that these all really do tie together. And they do kind of speak to the culture that we're living in today. The modern idea of where we're at in the world. 

David: And the other thing I would say along those lines is I think it also helps you realize one way to say it is there is a spirit that inhabits these ideas. <Oh yeah.> And you have to be aware of what that is. This underlying philosophy, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Right. That's right. I think it was CS Lewis that said a cow can be neither very good nor very evil; a dog can be a little bit more good and a little bit more evil; a Child can be even more good or have a propensity for even more good or more evil; a genius has even [01:17:00] more propensity for even more good, you know, how much more would an angel, how much more would a god, small G, you know, have the propensity for being extremely good or extremely evil.

And I think some of these new technologies, like you said, the spirit behind these new technologies, they have all kinds of propensity for good. <Sure.> You, it's almost like you can't say they have only upside with no downside. Of course that's not the case. There's nothing that in the world that that's the case with.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: If it has a propensity for immense good, it also has the propensity for immense evil. 

David: Yeah, that's right. That's right. 

J.R.: All right. So what, when are we coming back? 

David: Yeah. So that ends season two. Like I said, we're going to take a little break over the holidays, but we will actually, behind the scenes, we're going to be working on Season 3.

We'll have a little intro, probably, to Season 3 that will let people know where we're going. So that'll kick off yeah, after the holidays, if you're listening to us as we release this. And like I said, we have actually released content on our YouTube [01:18:00] channel, so if you didn't know about that, or you haven't checked it out, go to YouTube, Navigating An Ancient Faith, hit subscribe, because from time to time, especially when we travel, It is easier to actually release a YouTube video. I'll also say that the podcast itself is linked to our YouTube account, so it's not like you'll see our faces or anything, but you can listen to the audio, if you're a YouTuber. I'm a YouTube guy, so it's there, too. 

J.R.: I'm more of a Spotify guy, but whatever platform you listen to, we're there, so if you like the YouTube idea, that's fine. Yep. Maybe we'll upgrade to video one of these days. Yeah, we're both a little hesitant to make that leap. I look in the mirror and I'm like, eh, nobody wants to.

David: Nobody wants to, yeah. 

J.R.: Two hours of that, right? 

David: Yeah, that'll get old. Sometimes I actually like the video conversations, and other times, yeah, the content's good, but I'm like, I'm kind of tired of just watching these two guys just talk back and forth. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah, let's throw it on audio, listen to the background, right?

David: Yeah. Alright, we will talk to you in Season 3. [01:19:00]

J.R.: Alright, we'll see y'all.