Truth Unites - How to Overcome Intellectual Anxiety

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

In this video I draw lessons from Soren Kierkegaard for how to overcome intellectual anxiety. Thoughts on Reading Kierkegaard: https://truthunites.org/2008/06/09/thoughts-on-reading-kierkegaard/ Was Kierkegaard an Irrationalist?: https://truthunites.org/2008/01/18/was-kierkegaard-an-irrationalist/ Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

The struggle that I hear about most commonly in my YouTube ministry is what I call intellectual anxiety. So by intellectual anxiety, I mean those terrible feelings of anxiety. We all know uneasiness and fear and dread and so forth, but specifically in our thinking about discerning the truth. So I have people who write to me all the time, and I hear this question more than any other question that I hear. People say, there are smart people on both sides of this issue, whatever it may be, how can I possibly figure out which side to go on? You know, people feel stuck in this place of indecision and angst about these important questions, whether it's church traditions or Christianity or whatever it might be. Well, there's been

reflection about that in the theological tradition and pretty profound reflection, especially from the Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kirkgard, whom I love, and I'll try to defend a little bit in this video. And I want to kind of, extend from what Kierkegaard had to say about this to try to offer some help and some encouragement on this topic. I've been planning on this video for a while. A lot of people requested this. I've worked really hard on it. I hope it'll help people. Here's the basic encouragement from Kierkegaard. Anxiety, if handled rightly, can be the pathway to peace and assurance. That's what we'll kind of aim towards here. This is the goal of my YouTube channel,

gospel assurance, to take a metaphor for it. If you're swimming in the ocean, and a big wave knocks you over, and for a few seconds, you can't tell which way is up and which way is down. And then suddenly your feet hit the solid ground and you're settled again. That experience of feeling settled again is what I hope my videos are doing. That's what I want people to feel because of the gospel. And so that's what this video is aimed towards. Okay, two things. First, we'll lay out a framework for understanding what anxiety is, especially intellectual anxiety.

and then I'll give five specific suggestions for how to overcome intellectual anxiety in light of that framework. First, the framework. Anxiety is so huge right now. This may be one of the modern world's characteristic struggles, and it's not going away anytime soon. Recently I tweeted this, The ancients stared at the stars most nights. We stare at screens most nights. Stars make the world feel huge. They remind us we are tiny. Screens make the world feel small. They make us feel connected to everything. I wonder how much this contributes to our anxiety. I really believe that. We have to think about the way modern technology is increasing our anxiety. Hans-Zer von Balthasar, great Roman Catholic theologian, spoke about modern anxiety specifically as the anxiety of modern man

in a mechanized world where colossal machinery inexorably swallows up the frail human body and mind only to refashion it into a cog in the machinery. That was written in 1952. It's much more relevant today, where we have all, you know, our phones are constantly trying to consume our attention. Technology affects our anxiety profoundly. Well, there hasn't been, one of the things von Baltazar is talking about in that book is that there hasn't been as much theological reflection on anxiety, but perhaps the person

who has thought about it more than anybody else in the Christian tradition is Soren Kirkegaard, 19th century Danish philosopher. Let's work through this. There's two emphases about anxiety that Kirkagard has that are helpful to consider. The first one is bad news. The second one is good news. So I'll just say I'm up front. Anxiety is powerful, but anxiety can be productive. Powerful, productive. First, it's powerful. People who have never struggled with anxiety may not appreciate how terrible it can be, especially if it's deep anxiety, you know. By the way, Let me just say this up front. I had this in my notes to say it later. Let me say it right up front to be totally clear. If you struggle with severe and persistent anxiety, please consider seeing a counselor and or doctor to help you with those needs.

Carey guard's reflections, everything we're going to say in this video is really targeted at a more common struggle and intellectual anxiety specifically. It's by no means a substitute for professional help and there's zero shame whatsoever in reaching out for help when you need. need help. But people who haven't struggled with deep anxiety may not be able to understand just how terrible it is. It's like this unstoppable force that can transform and invade any experience you're having and make it worse. Kirkegaard understood this. In his journals, he wrote, My doubt is terrifying. Nothing can stop me. It has the hunger of a curse. I consume every argument, every comfort and assurance. I overtake every resistance with the speed of 10,000 miles per second. You get this sense of anxiety as this relentless force that's impossible to keep at bay.

And in the case of intellectual anxiety specifically, what one of the things Kirkgaard talks about is that mere arguments cannot overcome it. If it's anxiety here and arguments here, the anxiety is going to win any day of the week. Some of you know about this. You've experienced this. quantitative growth in the acquisition of knowledge is extremely limited for overcoming those deep anxieties that you have. If you think, you know, let's say you have doubts about Christianity and you're thinking, well, if I just understand the fine-tuning argument with enough precision, then I'll feel closure about this. Or maybe you're wrestling with, you know, East versus West, you know, let's say the filiocque, and you're thinking, if I just go back and read the sources enough, and I can

figure this out. If I know the Palomite tradition like the back of one hand and the Thomas tradition like the back of the other hand, I will get to a point where I can see it clearly. My anxieties will be resolved. I'll just be able to make my decision, check the box, and move on with my life. And this approach leads to this kind of never-ending treadmill where, you know, it's argument and counter-argument back and forth, and a lot of times it leaves you feeling paralyzed. If you're trusting in your own intellectual progress, to resolve anxiety, you will have to surpass so many geniuses on the other side, whichever side you go on these tough issues, you know, and there will always be new arguments popping up and so forth.

Thankfully, there is another approach, and this is what Kirkregard talks about, most directly in his 1844 work, the concept of anxiety. Two quick notes, here's where I'll defend Kirkagard. You can skip ahead in the timestamps if you don't want to hear this, but this is really important. Okay, number one, kind of two caveats about this book. This book is written by a pseudonym, okay? His name is Vigilius Hauffniensis, which means the night watchman of Copenhagen where Kierkegaard lived. I love Kierkegaard so much. I literally want to travel to Denmark just to explore Copenhagen because I've read his biographies enough. I feel like it would help me understand him. But basically the simple point is this. There's a distinction between Kierkegaard's

pseudonyms and Kierkegaard himself. He wrote both. You know, I've written an article. I'll put up a link to this in the video description if you want to read this. He wrote signed works and pseudonymous works, so he has a kind of dual nature to his authorship. And he said in three different books very plainly, my pseudonyms are not the same as me. They're designed to kind of arouse the subjectivity of his readers, but they're not all, they don't even agree with each other. In fact, you can read through and it's kind of hilarious to see how they'll pick fights with each other and so forth. So that's a writerly strategy, but people all the time miss this. Even though, someone like Walter Kaufman, who's a fantastic expositor of the philosophical tradition,

misses this and conflates Kirkagard's pseudonyms with Kirkigard proper. So we just have to be aware of that. This book is not, so in this, in this particular book, Kirchigard, is treating the subject of anxiety from a psychological angle, trying to lead the reader towards certain theological truths about it. Okay, second caveat, the word anxiety has a different range of nuances for Kierkegaard than what it does for most modern people. The older translator of this text, Walter Lowry translated it as the concept of dread. Kierkegaard is thinking about more than just a mental state or an emotional state like the way you feel when you drink too much coffee in the morning. He's thinking in larger categories ultimately about the way a finite individual

relates to infinite possibility, what von Balthasar calls the finite. mind horrified by its own limitlessness. So these are just two things you have to be aware of, okay? Just trying to be careful here. But Kierkegaard's larger vision of anxiety is profoundly relevant to modern struggles. And basically, you know, he describes anxiety as the feeling you have when you're standing on the edge of a cliff and you don't want to leap off, but you realize I have the freedom too. I could leap off. He says anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Here's how he puts it later. he uses these three images which very much convey the power of anxiety. Anxiety is freedom's possibility.

No grand inquisitor has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has. And no secret agent knows as cunningly as anxiety how to attack his suspect in his weakest moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught. And no discerning judge knows how to interrogate and examine the accused, as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, either through amusement, nor by noise, nor by work, neither by day nor by night. These are powerful images. You know, the Grand Inquisitor, the secret agent, and the judge. You know, you get this sense, again, the relentlessness of anxiety, the power of anxiety, like we have no defenses against it.

Okay, that's the bad news. Here's the good news. I hope you don't click off right now. This is the part we've got to get to. Anxiety is productive, or at least it can be productive. I mean, even, so not all anxiety, of course. But even a modern psychologist will talk about there's good, stress and bad stress. Good stress is I'm a little nervous before I do public speaking and it helps me kind of gear up for it. Bad stress is I'm so nervous that I can't function well during it. Kierkegaard talks a lot about the purpose of anxiety. It's doing something in us. It's educational. It's about put it simply. It's about soul formation. It's part of how we become who we are. So in the concept of anxiety, Kierkegaard says this is an adventure. Every human being must go through

to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing to anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. So it's interesting he speaks of this as an adventure, life as an adventure, and those words, in order that signal that he thinks anxiety has a purpose if it is done in the right way. And that is unto faith. The basic point here is, Kierkegaard thinks anxiety can sort of train a person or be a part of a process leading a person to faith. Here's another quote.

Anxiety is through faith, absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness. So, educative, that word in some translations, the Danish word there is sometimes translated formative. Think of anxiety as like part of the labor pains of the formation of your soul. because it's here it's leading you through finite ends leading you unto the infinite. Here's another passage. Now the anxiety of possibility holds him as its prey until saved it must hand him over to faith. In no other place can he find rest. Whoever is educated by possibility remains with anxiety skipping down.

For him anxiety becomes a serving spirit that against its will leads him wherever he wishes to go. So think of this, you know, think there's a lot we could unpack here in terms of the idea of possibility, the idea of infinity, and so much we could go into. But to just latch on to the one insight that will prepare us for the more practical part of this video, anxiety prepares us for faith. It's a part of the process of leading us to faith and growing us in faith. Kerrigard thinks faith is the place where we can achieve a kind of rest. Rest and assurance and peace doesn't come about through a kind of quantitative, intellectual growth. If I just read more books than the next guy, then I'll feel okay. No, it comes about through faith in this existential way. And anxiety, think of it like a teacher or a guide,

leading you toward faith. So a couple of basic things. Number one is this does not mean that there's no place for study or that faith is irrational. There's all kinds of caricatures about Kirkgard. I'll put up another picture you can see, and I'll put this link in the video description to where I defend Kirkgard from this charge. You know, basically just for our purposes here, reason has a role to play to get you to probability, but it doesn't just fully close the loop and eliminate all anxiety and get you to existential certainty. But it still has an important role to play. And Kirkgard has a lot to say about basically recognize the limitations of reason, but that doesn't mean to reject it altogether. Okay, but here's the other question I want to ask

to kind of move us into the next section. Why must anxiety be a part of the process of learning faith and growing in faith. The answer has to do with basically who we are. So Kierkegaard emphasizes that as human beings and as God's creatures, we are finite, we don't see everything, we see parts, not the whole, and we are temporal. We're moving through time. We're constantly changing. And so we don't relate to truth in this kind of static way. Rather, we have this kind of vivid dynamic relationship to truth. and for that reason, a total rational certainty without any anxiety at all wouldn't be a fitting way for our intellect to function any more than no anxiety is fitting in the process of falling in love. In another text, he says, certainty is impossible for anyone in a process of becoming.

Indeed, it would be a deception. It is analogous with human love. If a girl is in love and longs for marriage because of the secure certainty it would give her, if she wants to settle herself in legal security as a spouse, if she would exchange maidenly yearning for marital yawning, then her lover could rightly complain of her unfaithfulness. Hope that makes sense. There he's basically saying, you know, if you want to get married just because of the certainty and security it gives you, then you're kind of missing the point because it's about falling in love. And similarly, just as the person who falls in love may not have a rationally certain argument,

there is a kind of existential certainty that comes through faith. For Kierkegaard, the solution to intellectual anxiety has to do with our existential orientation to truth. It's not about more intelligence, it's about a kind of inward abandonment unto truth. One point he writes in his journals, The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live or die. What good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? This is what I want people to feel ultimately in their hearts toward the gospel, that Christianity is mine.

Jesus came from me. He hung upon that cross for me. Put my name there, you know. It's as personal as anything. It's a truth that doesn't merely lodge in my mind. it's in me. It inhabits me. I feel about it the way I feel about nostalgic memories or my loyalty toward a good friend or something like this. It's deeply personal. Okay, so what all this amounts to is basically intellectual anxiety is a part of the process by which we arrive upon and grow in faith.

And faith is where we find a kind of peace and intellectual certainty. That doesn't make it easy, but hopefully it gives you some hope along the way. Let me just share before I go on to my specific suggestions from a kind of free-form essay that I wrote in my journal when I was, when this really landed on my heart, I finally started to, caregiver art helped me when I was in college, or a little after college in this case. And I wrote this essay, I'll just read you the beginning and the end. Just as the human heart longs for enduring happiness in this life and confined none, so the human mind longs for enduring clarity in this life and confined none. Aristotle was correct when he stated that all men by nature desire to know. But there is another thing.

thing he did not say that is also correct, and that is all men by nature are unable to know to the degree that they desire. We long for clarity, for certainty, for completion, for a resting place from which to gaze upon truth but can find none. We are bobbing about in the sea tossed to and fro by the waves in continual motion groping for solid ground beneath our feet. Then I wrote a long essay talking about the Socratic principle that everything that is known is known according to the knower as well as to what it is, and so we have to take our own humanity and our own finitude into account and so forth. Kierkegaard is helping me with all this, and I ended it like this. Faith is for the man in the sea, while he is in the sea, and it is not meant to lead him to solid ground prior to heaven.

It is meant to teach him how to swim. So now I want to ask this question. In light of all that, what do we do? How do we make progress toward that existential peace that comes with faith? and I'll put up, I want to go through five values to try to help people who struggle with intellectual anxiety, because it's not going to be a quick fix. Sincerity, curiosity, patience, experience, and faith. Number one, sincerity.

I think this is what first and foremost Kirkgaard's reflections direct us to is sincerity of heart. Peace does not come from being super-duper smart. It comes from a sincere existential commitment to truth. Kirkregard will often speak of earnestness and sense. simple-mindedness. At one point he says in his journals, in order to swim, one strips oneself naked. In order to aim at the truth, one must undress in a much more inward sense. One must take off the inward clothing of thoughts, ideas, selfishness, and the like before one is naked enough. You can think of it like this, just to put out, I'll try to put each of these five points

briefly and succinctly. So if you've made it this far, I can sustain your attention to the end here. Are you all in, in your quest for truth? Are you seeking truth in the deepest places inside of you? From there, from that posture comes assurance and peace and rest. Maybe not right away, but that's how you're going to get there. In our intellectual life, no less than in any other area of life, we can abide by Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Those verses apply to our thoughts, as well as to everything else in our life. It's just turning away from ourselves and wholly trusting in the Lord. And in the sincerity of that act, that's starting to move us out of the dark and into the light, out of the constant movement and into a sense of settledness. Second, curiosity.

Listening to all different perspectives with curiosity, or let's say you're really wrestling with intellectual anxiety about this one particular issue. So you're listening to both sides of the point of view. avoiding the triumphalist and bad faith voices and really listening with curiosity so as to understand to both sides. I talk about this a lot, you know, the importance of Atticus Finch, seeing the world through someone else's eyes, that kind of thing. And that means really hard intellectual work, hard study and thinking and listening,

you know, reading lots of books. This point might clarify this video a little bit if anyone is thinking, oh, so mere intelligence is not the key to peace, therefore hard work doesn't matter. Not true. I think hard intellectual labor is a part of the process. Now, some of us when they hear this point about listening to both sides, we might feel like, but that's how I got into this mess. You know, listening to both sides is how I felt like I was stuck in the middle. That's just going to make it worse, right? But I think in the short run that can create more anxiety. But in the long run, once you do start to eventually settle down, you can have more of a piece of conviction because you know you've really been honest with yourself and with the process and you've heard the best pieces of the other side.

You know, you might think, well, if I really do that, I'm just never going to make any progress. I'm never going to figure this out. But I think we often underestimate what we can accomplish. You know, think of the tortoise and the hair and the tortoise and that daily plotting. It's amazing what you can do just with hard work and consistency over time. think about all the things that you didn't know five years ago that you do know now. Even on these complicated things like the filialue, let's say you're totally stuck. You're like, I just don't know which side is true.

If you really make it this great intellectual project to study, to read, to listen, I think you can make progress. It probably will take you some time. But over, you know, through that process of struggle, you start to identify patterns. One breakthrough can lead to another. And eventually you can start to feel more peaceful about it. Now, you can't do that on every issue. So you have to do triage. And you have to say there's some issues I just may not have peace about because I can't get there.

You know, I just don't have time to study every last topic in the world. But the ones that are really existentially significant for you that are causing the anxiety, you can make progress. But it takes time and you have to be genuinely curious, not just looking to reinforce what you already believe. That kind of is tied to the third thing, and that's patience. usually it takes a long time. So many people arrive upon peace and breakthrough after years of struggle. And that can seem like bad news, but the encouraging thing about that is God is at work through the struggle. God is at work through the process. So you can't look for a shortcut through.

In his journals Kirkagard also writes, there are many who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys. They cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the some for themselves. I like that image. It's like, that's not how you're going to find peace of conviction by just getting the answer, you know. You're going to have to go through your own process. Let me give two examples of what this can look like from church history. St. Augustine, you know how agonizing his process was just to get him to 386 AD where he has this dramatic breakthrough conversion? You know, for 10 years, he was a manichy. And then he had this phase. Some people think that he converted to neoplatonism and Christianity simultaneously, but I think

Peter Brown's biography has a good treatment of this, talks about how he had this separate autonomous phase in neoplatonism before he became a Christian, before 386, where basically the neoplatonism is kind of unraveling his manichaeism and kind of preparing him. It's kind of an incubating period, leading him to Christianity. And if you read through the confessions, the process leading up to that moment in the garden where a breakthrough happened was incredibly agonizing. It took time and it took genuine serious struggle. Another example would be C.S. Lewis. If you read through Surprised by Joy, it's a long agonizing process. He compares it to losing a chess match. He's reading William Wordsworth and the other romantics and so he loses a rook. And then he has this conversation with an atheist

and he loses a bishop and it's a slow piece by piece. His defenses are getting broken. down. He becomes a theist in either 1929 or 1930. That's disputed. He talks about that as him being the most dejected comfort in all of England, and that's a famous passage. Then in 1931, there's this famous conversation between Lewis, Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. At the time, Lewis was only 32, Tolkien 39, Hugo Dyson, 35. It lasts till 3 a.m. and then Tolkien leaves Lewis and Dyson go another hour talking till 4 a.m. This is when Lewis sees Christ. This is when Lewis sees Christ. as the true myth, and then there's nine days further before he is fully passes into Christian conviction, and it's during a ride to the zoo in his older brother's motorcycle sidecar.

And he comes to believe in Christ, and he says he didn't really spend the time deep in thought, but he realizes he passed a threshold at that moment. And so that's this long, agonizing process. And you see, you know, this part and this part and this part. And the point is something is being birthed through that process. and sometimes you don't even see it until you're looking back on it. In my own experience, I've been through a couple of seasons of angst and my own faith, and I look back on those as, you know, God did something in me through that.

I feel so much more settled. I think I can say today that being a Christian is the deepest and most certain thing in my life. It's just worked its way down deeper in me through those seasons of struggle. John Owen uses the metaphor of a tree, you know, a storm comes, and the tree is, almost halfway over and it looks like it's going to fall over. And you think, how can the tree ever survive this storm? But the storm loosens up the soil so the roots go down deeper. So ultimately, the storm causes the tree to be more secure and more stable.

I think God uses these seasons of angst and struggle in our lives and our intellectual struggles as well, though it's not just intellectual, to birth something in us. And so the encouragement is to be patient in that process as you keep With all your heart seeking him, God is doing something through that process in your life. Number four, this is also related, is experience. A lot of times breakthrough comes, just like, you know, I already referenced Lewis there, where he's saying, I wasn't really thinking that much, and it wasn't like an emotional experience, but it just something happened during that car ride.

A lot of times breakthrough comes through experience, sometimes even a kind of mystical experience. I think theologians should have a wide respect for the role of spiritual experience. And, you know, sometimes you think of Romans 816. The Holy Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Well, that bearing witness is an experience. And it's not irrational to think that the Holy Spirit can communicate and do that bearing witness work in non-rational ways. I've had experiences in my life where, you know, during corporate worship, where I remember after one, I remember saying to somebody once, I know that I experienced God during that time.

I just know it. I can't tell you how. I just know it. It was an experience, you know? I'm not saying that someone has to have like a real mystical or emotional experience. Leave wide room for all different kinds of, you know, again, think of Lewis in the car where it's not particularly powerful. But sometimes the Holy Spirit just zaps you. And I'll give two examples from church history, John Wesley.

1738, he's hearing someone read Martin Luther's preface. to Paul's letter to the Romans, and basically it's describing the nature of faith. Now, he's already a Christian. He's already a priest, and he already believes in justification by faith with his mind, but he has an experience, and he talks about feeling his heart strangely warmed, and then he says, an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. The words given me there indicate the experiential nature of this. It wasn't like he had a new intellectual breakthrough. Sometimes that can happen as well, but here it was just the Holy Spirit did something to it, to Wesley's heart. And he was

changed, and through Wesley, then the world was changed. Another example is Pascal. He had this profound spiritual experience in 1654 on a night in November lasting from 10.30 p.m. till 12.30 a.m. when he died, it was discovered that he had sown an account of this vision of God that he had inside his jacket to always carry it with him because it was so precious to him. It has these words, fire, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace. He goes on for some time. It's quite poignant.

He talks about tears of joy. But that repeated word, certitude there, you know? It's like many people have that experience. There's just something the Holy Spirit does, you know. Get some trusted Christian friends around you to lay hands on you and pray for you. Sometimes the Holy Spirit touches you in a way. So I'm just saying be open to the experiential nature of how assurance kind of lands upon the Christian heart. Lastly is faith.

Someone might say, but faith is the very thing I'm struggling with, you know. I have intellectual anxiety. I don't have certainty. Don't I need certainty to have faith? I don't think so. In Mark 9, this is all very complicated, but in Mark 9, you think of the words of the of the demonized child who says, I believe, help my unbelief. That is such a helpful little phrase if you think about it.

He wouldn't have prayed, help my unbelief, if he had no anxiety, if he had total certainty and no struggle. But he had enough faith to say, I believe. And so he came to Christ, Christ, and asked for his help. And my appeal would be you don't have to have total resolution, but do you have enough faith to come to Christ and ask him to help you with your remaining areas of unbelief and angst and anxiety and so forth? This is the ultimate best way to deal with intellectual anxiety that should kind of seal everything else. Once you've done everything else you know how to do, including study hard, work hard, you know, read the books. But once you've done everything and you're still kind of wrestling,

cast yourself at the feet of Christ and say, you know, basically appeal to his compassion. You know, say, I believe, but help me for where I don't or where I'm struggling. And that's the best kind of thing we can do because if we learn anything from the Gospels, it's that Christ is responsive to sincere faith. And he will meet you in that place, and he will be the kindest friend you can ever imagine. So I hope this video will be helpful to you in your own process, whatever you may be working through. May God give you assurance. as you trust in him. If you found value in this video, I always mentioned liking,

subscribing, sharing the video, all that helps. Also, if you're willing to help support Truth Unites financially, you can do so through a tax-deductible donation at our website or through Patreon. Links for that are in the video description. Thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. A lot of people requested this video. If this one didn't quite get at the need for you, try to articulate in the comments, here's what would help me, you know, and that that will help me because I view my channel as an opportunity to try to be pastoral toward people who are wrestling with these things. And I really do want to try to help. All right, thanks, everybody. God

bless.