#47 | Christianity is the remedy for Pride, drifting and dealing with shame.

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Sunny Banana (Sunny Banana + Jarvah Biltong)

Dr. Roger Mcfillin's Podcast
https://www.drmcfillin.com/

Virgil Walker's Substack
The New Normal Is Demonic—And Parents Must Stop Pretending It’s Fine

Something has shifted in the culture, and you can feel it in your bones: self is treated like a god, truth is treated like a preference, and shame is treated like the worst sin of all. We sit with a line from Virgil Walker’s Substack Sola Veritas, drawn from his article “The New Normal Is Demonic And Parents Must Stop Pretending It’s Fine”, and we use it as a lens to ask what Christians and curious listeners can do when “normal” starts to feel spiritually upside down.

We talk about why Orthodox Christianity leaves no room for worship of the self, not because your life does not matter, but because worship is meant to aim at God. We describe what an Orthodox Church points you towards, from the words of the liturgy to icons, movement, sound, and smell, and why “orthodoxy” means right belief and right worship rather than faith remodelled to match the times. We also speak plainly about truth as something received from God, centred on Christ’s resurrection, and lived with a horizon bigger than today’s headlines: the Kingdom of God.

Then we go to the uncomfortable bit: shame, repentance, and accountability. When the world tries to shame repentance itself, we argue for something older and freer: approaching God’s mercy with confidence, taking responsibility for sin, and learning to rejoice in saying sorry. If you want a thoughtful, Orthodox Christian take on modern confusion, spiritual formation, and real inner peace, press play.

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Transcript

Welcome And Subscriber Benefits

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Sunny Bunani. Welcome to the Sunny Banana. I see you. If you are listening to this, thank you very much. That means you have subscribed for £2.27 a month, and for that you get this exclusive content, more exclusive content in the future. You also get access soon. I'll be sending a link to each of you to Java Builtong. Java Builtong providing clean protein meat snack for all your protein and health needs. You will have access to a discount price for the whole year. The whole year that price will be locked in for a subscription per month that can be cancelled at any time. Also, you get access to a wonderful community in St. Leonard's Hastings, access to the church, the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God of the sign. And of course, this money that you have paid for this content and podcast goes directly to the church fund. The church is in a process of buying the building it worships in. Once we can buy the building that we worship in, it is then theirs, and more advantages and benefits come with owning the building. So thank you very much. And

A Warning About The New Normal

SPEAKER_00 1:35

today I would like to start with giving a huge shout out to Virgil Walker. Now, Virgil Walker has a lovely substack called Sola Veritas. And Virgil has written this his latest article called The New Normal is Demonic and Parents Must Stop Pretending It's Fine. The New Normal is demonic and parents must stop pretending it's fine. I don't think this can be only reading this article. This is only directed at parents. I think it's directed at all of us and most especially the Christians among us who are listening today. And if you are listening today and you are curious about the faith, especially the ancient faith of orthodoxy, then I hope this message, and also if you are not affiliated or not, or just here listening and you're curious, I hope this message gives you strength and peace. So there's one thing, or a few things that stuck out for me. He was talking about churches being co-opted or being coerced or being complicit in just going with the times. And one sentence stood out for me. Here is Virgil Walker saying the signs are everywhere. Worship of the Self, hostility to truth, and the complete loss of shame. And it just whacked me right there that I wanted to share with all of you. Okay. In the

Right Worship Over Self-Worship

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Orthodox faith, in the Christian faith, worship of the self, it's anything but that in the Orthodox tradition and faith. Simply put, the Orthodox faith worships God in a way that has been handed down by Christ Himself and then the Apostles and handed down to us today through holy tradition, holy teaching, discipline, and obedience. So the worship of self is nowhere in the Orthodox Church. You walk into an Orthodox Church, nothing in there points you to think about yourself and to worship, certainly to worship yourself. Everything is pointing towards God. The liturgy, the words, the icons, the movements, the rituals, the sounds, the smells are literally worshipping God. It's giving God the right worship. In fact, orthodoxy can mean the right worship. Although it means right belief in a straight sense, but also the correct worship. So that handles with that one. The next one is hostility to truth.

Truth That Refuses To Bend

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Now, truth is not compromised. Truth is not this or that in the Orthodox faith. Truth is given by God, first of all, and in the Orthodox faith we seek love and rejoice in the truth. The truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, that Jesus Christ saves us, redeems us, brings us back into paradise, into being who we were called to be and originally called to be. This is the truth. And we are not meant to be in this world as we're not meant to be subject to the authorities of this world. And we look beyond that to the truth, to the coming of the kingdom, God's kingdom. Once I heard the church fathers say we are have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. In those three categories, in the Orthodox faith, you stand. You may, and most certainly you're being saved, you're being saved. And this is the truth. This is truth. And the last one of that sentence is the complete loss of shame. Now,

Shame, Repentance, And Growing Up

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I think I've spoken about this before on a previous podcast, that we are that the world seems to rejoice in sin, leads to say, well, it it sort of encourages you to be out there or risky or or certainly gets lots of views and lots of clicks. I mean, my podcast, and that's not getting a lot of clicks, not getting a lot of views, because it doesn't appeal to the world. It doesn't appeal to the world. And so we've we've we've been conned into thinking repentance for that things we do, for the things we do, the risky things we do, or the the unworthy things we do. That's been shamed. You must feel shame to say sorry. So now this is where orthodoxy comes in. You feel bold and approach God's mercy and compassion with boldness and confidence. Not in shame to say sorry. We must rejoice in saying sorry. Repent. Repentance is a a reason to rejoice. And we must feel shame for what we do. So in the Orthodox faith, we understand shame and we know where to go and how to go when it comes to dealing with our shame for the things we've done in the past. Roger McFillen, Dr. Roger McFillen, a wonderful person you need to follow as well. Shout out to Roger, Dr. Roger McFillen. He says that. Oh, what does he say now about this now? Yes. If we look back at our past and things we've done and we don't feel shame, it means we haven't grown. We haven't progressed. Okay? Now, in this whole progressive world, isn't that fantastic? That's the way you progress. Is you actually take accountability, you take responsibility of your sin. Okay? You don't point over there like Adam did in the garden, point it over there. Oh, I was told to eat the apple. And then Eve pointed to the snake. Point, point, point. Okay. We take we take that sin, okay, and we repent of it. And we rejoice in the repentance like the prodigal son and return home. And I think I'm waffling a little bit, but this is what I got. It's a wonderful, wonderful article. I'll put the link in my show notes so you can read it for yourself. The new normal is demonic. And parents, I'll put, and all of us, must stop pretending it's fine. We're not not we must not be hostile to the truth. We must worship God, not ourselves. And we must re-renew and re-look at shame as a step in the ladder, a rung in the ladder to our salvation, to our return, our renewal, our peace, our inner peace.

Thanks, Community, And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 8:52

And that's all I want to say today, my friends. Thank you for supporting this Sunny Banana and the community here in Hastings, St. Leonard's. If you are from far away and you're overseas, I forgot to say in the beginning, you're not allowed to get the Biltong unless you're in the UK. I can't ship Biltong overseas. So, and those food products that are that will be coming out of Java Biltong. However, if you're in the UK, God bless you and thank you. If you're Orthodox or not, you are supporting something that I believe changes lives. The church has changed my lives, and church attained 10 other people I got baptized with this year. Absolute fantastic transformational stories. And may God bless you all. So thank you for listening and subscribing to the Sunny Banana. Sunny Bunani. Thank you for listening to the Sunny Banana. I see you.