Sacred Offspring

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In much of modern theology—particularly in overly rationalized or disenchanted interpretations of the soul-body relationship—there is a tragic bifurcation between biology and spirit. Children are often reduced to mere biological outcomes, with God presented as a kind of bureaucratic soul-inserter, dropping spiritual payloads into otherwise mechanical processes. This view strips the mystery from human intimacy and ignores what many spiritual traditions have long intuited: that sexuality is not a sterile act of tissue and timing—it is a sacred rite, and children are its spiritual fruit.

To say that a child is merely the product of biology, with God tacking on a soul like a name tag, is to imply that spirit hovers outside of flesh—externally imposed rather than internally awakened. This view mirrors dualistic philosophies that devalue the body and treat matter as morally neutral or even corrupt. But if we affirm, as the Incarnation insists, that spirit and matter belong together—then we must also affirm that the act of union between two lovers can itself be a spiritually potent event, one that invites God not from above, but from within.

To separate soul from seed is to split what was never meant to be divorced. Sexuality, rightly understood, is not merely appetite or reproduction. It is mystical participation in divine creativity. In the intimate joining of bodies, there is also—if treated with reverence and covenant—a joining of essences. Love, trust, longing, vulnerability, even the metaphysical ache to be known and to know—these flow through the act like sacramental waters. This is not just mating. It is invocation. The lovers become co-priests in a temple made of flesh and delight, offering their oneness as a liturgy in which new life may be conceived.

The child, then, is not inserted by God as a postscript to biology. The child emerges from the spiritual current already moving between the lovers. We speak of the “fruit of the womb” for a reason. Fruit implies not just yield, but cultivation. Something tended, cherished, and emerging from the life of the whole tree—roots and branches, sunlight and sap. So too, a child is not merely the result of gametes and growth. A child is the fruit of love’s vineyard, formed as much by spirit as by cell.

This is not sentimentalism—it’s a theology of enchantment. It recovers the idea that human beings, made in the image of a God who creates through Word and Breath, are themselves creators of sacred mysteries. The family becomes not a logistical unit, but a garden of spiritual generation.

To teach that children are merely biological artifacts to which God adds “the soul component” is to flatten what should evoke awe. It’s like describing a symphony as vibrating strings or a cathedral as stacked rocks. True sexuality invites reverence. It insists that something more is happening—something that reverberates in eternity.

We must return to a vision of sexuality not as base instinct to be policed, nor as a clinical process to be managed—but as sacred dance, as covenantal fire, as the fertile moment in which the spiritual and the biological co-mingle like water and wine. Only then can we raise children not as chance combinations of genes but as spiritual inheritances, born from the holy communion of two souls.

Intro to Exile of Sophia

 I will be speaking on the introductory chapter, and more in the future, of Exile of Sophia by Dr. Michael Martin. (You can watch here in the 2^nd hour of my live stream link). This is more of a reflection and doesn’t necessarily promote his thought. In my public work, however, his thinking is clearly sensed, as he has been a great influence on the way I think. His book, Sophia in Exile, represents the final chapter of a trilogy on Sophiology, which, in terms of what that is, is more like a philosophy on how to experience what he would call “the Real.” Dr. Martin wrote this book around the time of the fires at Notre Dame and the emergence of COVID-19. To him, they were symptoms of a much greater problem within the Church that was manifesting. Sometimes things come to the surface or are exposed by God, as it says in Corinthians, “all things are tried by fire.” COVID-19 was the biggest for him. It showed the real cowardice and fakeness of the Church. He makes a valid point on how thousands died without access to the sacraments because of cowardly clergy and makes the point that Jesus would not have waited for the lepers to be COVID-free before he healed them. We are a religion of beating death. There is no doubt in my mind that Saint Damien of Molokai would not have been canonized in a pontificate of the pope calling for safety. He was the one who went fearlessly to lepers to give them Christ. That is what we have signed up for if you are clergy. Unfortunately, Dr. Martin, as well as thousands of others, fled the church of cowards. I personally pleaded with him to stay, not for the sake of his salvation but for the salvation of others. I don’t think I would have ever been introduced to him had not a subdeacon in my tradition done an interview with him. Going back to the problem of why he left, the Church in its cowardice is really a manifestation of great evil that is within. It’s not based in truth, more of an illusion, not really by design, but by a takeover from the archons of this world that have their hands in everything. The Church as an institution lacks the connection to the Real. That is what is going to be obviously the thought of Dr. Martin’s book, and the Real for him has a face; it’s living, and she is called Sophia.

When we hear the word Sophia, it is often conflated with the Gnostic Sophia, which really is of a different nature but in one way is saying the same thing. In the Gnostic myths, Sophia lives in exile or imprisonment. There is a great deal of Gnosticism, and they all have their story of her troubles. Like her, we too seem to live in exile or imprisonment. For us, it’s not just from God but from Creation. Like the Gnostic, we are seeking to return from our fall. This is ever so present in modern Christianity. Like Gnosticism, the world has no value and must be escaped. The escape comes from the knowledge of what Christ has done on the cross. Sometimes there is even the insistence that all you have to do is verbally acknowledge it, and one day you will escape to be with God in the new world of heaven.

Like modern Christianity, Gnosticism provided a formula through gnosis. The secret knowledge or remembering where we come from, as depicted in the Hymn of the Pearl, is the pathway back. In modern Christianity and in Gnosticism, the world we live in is bad or even an illusion. For the Gnostic, it’s the creation of Yaldabaoth, a false god who thinks it is God who has entrapped us. For modern Christians, it’s the domain of the god of this world, the devil. In both cases, it’s a world that is in opposition to what we are, and as such, we either seek to escape it or participate in the captivity.

In the absence of being where we should be, we try to fill the void. Religion works well for this. I often mockingly share the song that some modern Christians sing, “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.” This song is filling the void of what should be now. It’s a replacement of the now, the Real, as Dr. Martin would say, and I know in saying that people will be scratching their heads. Are we not supposed to be going to heaven is probably what you are thinking. To that, I would say no, the gospel doesn’t teach you about going anywhere; it teaches about having what you need now. It rescues you from the captivity of a fallen world and gives you the power to take it back and to enter into the Real.

The Gnostics were not the enemies that many Church fathers made them out to be. In fact, if anything, they had an upper hand in understanding reality, but like the modern Christian, they were escapists. The instance of Jesus’ bodily resurrection contradicted their understanding of the material world, the idea that it is all bad. Likewise, the bodily resurrection contradicts the modern Christian’s understanding of escaping this world and going to be with God. The world is not the problem; it’s rather our perception of it that needs to be resolved.

As Dr. Martin points out, our estrangement with the “Real” is twofold. It’s with God and Creation. To understand this better, we have to revisit the mythology of the Garden of Eden. The garden was not just a floral arrangement; it was the very way God was present to Adam and Eve. When they were exiled, they were exiled from this experience of God that came through the garden. As a result, salvation would be a return not to God but back to this Garden so that God could once again be experienced. An example of this could be found in the Temple worship of the Hebrew people. The temple was a reproduction of Eden, and when it was filled with the Shekinah, Sons of God were born into the world (Psalm 2:7).

The Shekinah was God’s presence manifest through creation. It’s what makes Eden, Eden. Without it, the temple is just a building, and Eden is just a floral arrangement. It might come as a shock that in the Hebrew tradition, this experience is referred to in feminine terms. I say it’s a shock because to speak of God in terms of femininity has become heretical. God cannot be a woman, we are taught. God has no gender, the theologians teach us. On the other hand, just about everything we know of God comes from gendered terminology. The very fact the Bible says that we are created both male and female in the image of God is something that is continually theologically erased.

Like the Gnostic myth, Sophia is exiled. The woman is forced to flee. This is very much present in the scripture. You have in Proverbs 8, Sophia (wisdom) being a central figure at the foundation of creation. In the book of Enoch, she is recorded as being exiled from the temple and being the reason for the temple’s destruction. Dr. Margaret Barker, another important scholar, has done a great deal of research on what was considered the original religion of the Hebrews and how it was forced to various parts of the world, including Egypt, a place that remains a central hub for much of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

You could even say the Woman in Revelation 12 is the figure of Sophia, who, with her children, is forced into the wilderness. What is all this forcefulness, and why is it happening, or why are we doing it? It is because we have something else in her place. A false Sophia, one that does not want us to consume the red pill. One who wants us to keep up our religious fantasy of another world. One which makes us an enemy to what is right before us.

In the Garden of Eden, our ancestors were given a special vocation. They were called to leave the garden and perfect the Earth by increasing the boundaries of the garden. The garden was their Sophia; it is what gave them God. It even in the narrative made them children of God; it was maternal. They were, in a way, called to find this Sophia in the Earth. Obviously, they failed to do this and found themselves estranged from what could be considered their Mother and God. They were estranged from the Real.

Do you think that it’s a coincidence that in every ancient culture, they sought to spiritualize the world they lived in? This is what we do by nature, but at the same time, we are doing this in a fallen way. We can never do it perfectly. We see this in many of the myths of the Old Testament. The Tower of Babel comes to mind. It was not wrong to build the tower. It was how they built it that was wrong. They did not build with Wisdom, in Sophia. The tower was an abomination because the unity of the people was false. This was the reason why they were divided and their tongues confused. Not as punishment, but so that they could see that their unity was false, that it was not Real.

It would not be until the coming of the Spirit that the curse of Babel was healed and languages were unconfused. This new unity that was given was one in Sophia. One that was returned to us by Christ. In this unity, God is experienced once again in creation in the form of fire. An element that is not given to destroy but to purify. This, to me, is Sophiology—a way to purify how we understand the world, not for purity’s sake but as a way to return God into this world by how we find the Sophia of God in what is created. 

Overcoming Sleep Paralysis

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Sleep paralysis can be a terrifying experience. I know this because I have suffered from it most of my life. In fact, I experienced it last night, but in my case, there was no terror. It wasn’t always this way, but through the years, I have learned to overcome it. I want to share with you the things that can help you overcome it too.

For many people, sleep paralysis is just a neurological condition. For such people, I want to teach you how to deal with it from that perspective. For others, it is a bad spiritual experience. I have had to explore both realities in my life, and in doing so, I have learned to deal with it in both scientific and religious ways. For this reason, I want to help both religious and non-religious people alike.

When sleep paralysis happens to me, my eyes are still closed. I know some of you experience this after opening your eyes. In whatever way, the first thing that happens is that we become afraid, which is normal because we don’t have control. In this fear, the next thing we do is panic or enter a state of despair. Unfortunately, being somewhat still linked to the dream state, such feelings begin to manifest. Our terror becomes our reality as we begin to hear or see frightening things.

The solution to this, speaking mostly to non-religious people, is dealing with the fear. Not controlling our fear is what leads to a state of terror or despair. Consequently, being near the dream state, we become the source of our own harmful hallucinations. The key to dealing with this is to expect the fear and practice dealing with it. Take control of it and don’t let it bring you into despair. It’s natural to be afraid, but you don’t have to let fear become the source of your own misery.

How I propose to do this comes from how law enforcement is trained. They go through rigorous training to help them deal with the fear mechanism that can be overpowering. For instance, they are taught how to deal with a person pointing a gun at a loved one, demanding that the officer drop their weapon. Fear kicks in, and the natural adrenaline flows through the body, making you want to give in to the demands of fear, which would make you want to drop the weapon. They are trained to understand that what they are experiencing is a natural chemical reaction. This reaction is primal, a product of our evolutionary instinct to survive. If they give in and drop their weapon, things will be worse. As a result, they train themselves to think critically and work through their fear. This is what I have also found helpful in dealing with sleep paralysis.

For religious people, this experience of sleep paralysis might be spiritual. The principles for dealing with it are the same. The demon wants you to feel that you are alone or abandoned by God. Once they get you to believe that, they begin to terrorize you. Like the solution above, you need to deal with your fear. You should be afraid; this is natural, after all, it’s a spiritual being. However, you have been given many things to deal with this fear that they cause. The first is believing that you are not alone. The Bible teaches in Hebrews 13:5 that God never leaves you or abandons you. Most of the time, we just need to believe this, and when we do, the demon becomes powerless in tormenting us. The other and most important is from Luke 10:19, which says that these demons cannot hurt you. If you have given yourself completely to Christ, they can’t touch you. When we start putting these truths into practice, you will find the freedom you seek.

It took me many years to find freedom. Most of my problems came from not taking control of my fear. God helped me to do that. In my case, I believe a being was taking advantage of a neurological condition. It spent years tormenting me, and I felt like the Apostle Paul, who I believe experienced the same thing in 2 Corinthians 12. God’s answer to him was that His grace was sufficient. For me, it took many years to learn this, and now I can say with confidence that I have overcome sleep paralysis. This is my hope for you as well.

The Divine Narrative

 

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The Bible, as it has been handed down to us, is filled with errors and often depicts God as a cruel deity. This becomes problematic if one views everything in it as the inspired Word of God. The solution to this issue lies in how one chooses to understand inspiration. The Bible did not fall from the sky, and just because God inspired its writing does not mean that everything in it is of God. The key is to understand the Divine Narrative, which is sometimes found in the flawed presentation of the humanity of the author.

One way to achieve this understanding is to consider Paul's instructions to Timothy about rightly dividing the Word of truth. To do this, one must recognize that there was no single "Word of truth" during the time of Christ. Every Jewish community had its own set of scriptures and its own editors, or "scribes." These scribes divided the word based on the traditions they belonged to, often adding or removing from their texts.

This might come as a shock to some, but editing was considered a sacred duty. Scribes were tasked with removing errors from their texts, guided by their traditions. It might be of a surprise to many, but the  Hebrew scriptures, as we know them, were edited all the way into the 10th century CE by the Jews, primarily to remove elements that Christians used to prove that Jesus was their Messiah. This is well-documented in history. For instance, a 2nd-century Rabbi, Shimon bar Yochai, cursed anyone who used the term "Sons of God" for passages like we find in Deuteronomy 32:8 and insisted it be changed, and it was  it became  "Sons of Israel."

Similarly, Christian scribes edited their texts based on their traditions, adding and taking away. For example, the last part of Mark's Gospel is an addition by a scribe and not the original author. This editing continued until the 4th century when the Church established the canon of scriptures, and it has remained in this form since. Consequently, the work of editing these texts ceased, leaving us with many errors that are easily identifiable.

Returning to the idea of "rightly dividing the truth," now that we know the Bible is a work of editing, we can follow this teaching. While we cannot edit the texts, we can, like the scribes, seek out the Divine Narrative. This involves leaving out or ignoring elements that contradict this Narrative. For instance, recognizing that the instruction in Numbers Chapter 31 to take sex slaves is not of God, and viewing any scientific claims in the Bible as purely the product of the human author.

Just because God inspired the Bible as we know it today does not mean He removed the humanity of the authors. It should be evident what is purely human. The humanity is there for the greater narrative, and it is our duty to sift through the scripture to find that Divine Narrative. Although we cannot use an eraser like the scribes because we have a canon, we can use our traditions of faith and our understanding of God's goodness to discern what is of God. The Divine Narrative is in the Bible if we are willing to seek it out.

Is your God a jerk?

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When I was a child, I recall reaching out to a presence that I had no way to name. I had no religion, but I knew that there was something there. This presence was inviting and did not impose any conditions on me; it was there in a benevolent way. I was only around 4 or 5 at the time, and in my innocence, I assumed it was the loving man at the mall with whom I took a picture. He could see me when I was sleeping, knew when I was awake, and wanted to give me presents if I was good. So, I called it St. Nicholas. In God's sense of humor, I now work at St. Nicholas Church, but that’s not the story I’m sharing today.

 

At some point in my later adolescence, I was told that this presence was the Father, and the face of this Father was the image of Christ. So, I addressed it as such and felt a bond with it. Transitioning into my teens, I was more exposed to ideas about God and came to believe that this being would destroy me if I did not get my life right. This caused me to weep bitterly every night because I did not want this to happen. I knew I was doing things that were bad, but I felt stuck in my wrongdoing and wretchedness. For this reason, my prayer to this being ended each night with, "Please don't give up on me."

 

As I entered adulthood, I began my journey into Christianity and learned about forgiveness, but I still felt the terror of losing this being that I wanted to be with. I would fall into sin, and when I did, I felt like I would be destroyed. I remember one time I made a significant mistake and felt doomed. I cried out in desperation, "Father, please don’t forsake me," and that’s when I heard His voice for the first time say to me, "My son, I will never forsake you." I still did not fully understand, and when I fell into sin again, I felt abandoned. He came to me once more and said, "Look at what you did before. Did I leave you then? Look at what you just did. Am I not here?" He did not want to say it, but I had a strong impression, like knowledge, that He knew I was going to do it again. If He had not said these things to me, I would not be a Christian.

 

As I became more involved with Christianity, I eventually developed the confidence to keep going after I fell into sin. I knew He would always forgive me, so I kept coming back to the path. However, there were times when this thought would creep up on me: "Would I even follow this Christian God if there was no hell?" I could never answer this question. I really wanted to love this God, but I couldn’t. My obedience was still based on the fear of being doomed, and the churches I attended did not help.

 

When I became a Christian, I did not know what Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox was. I made my way through all these traditions to get where I am today. One thing they all have in common, which did not help my situation, is that they all teach that I will be doomed if I do not believe and act the way they say. Their foundation for this is how they understand the Bible. In their interpretation, it’s universal: do it God’s way, or He will end you, and not just end you, but torment you for all eternity. Basically, God is a jerk. They won’t say that because they all have their strange theology for how God’s love is equal to His wrath and other things to justify a being who we would naturally reject.

 

Sometimes I would justify this "antigod." It affected everything. I was afraid of Him, and I would make other people afraid. I would teach "turn or burn," "obey or you will pay," and then I would speak of a God of infinite love. It was a total contradiction. I could never answer that question: would I follow if there was no hell? I think for about my first 20 years, it was no and yes, but it wasn’t a true yes until I stopped believing in the Bible as I was taught to believe. I began to question and challenge the traditional teachings, and for this, I became the heretic.

 

I think my heresy really solidified when I heard a debate between a Christian apologist and a famous atheist. The atheist asked simple questions like, "Are you okay with ending innocent life, as in children and infants, or sex slavery, which are all things God commands people to do in the bible?" The apologist defended these things simply on the basis that God can do what He wants. I bet if that apologist saw that in a religion not his own, he would rightly condemn it, but instead, he defended it and sounded about as evil as the God he was defending.

 

The way that God is revealed by the human editors of the Old Testament, if you read it literally, makes Him seem like Zeus. Without any help in understanding the Old Testament, you can easily arrive at a God who will destroy you if you don’t do things His way, which includes ending innocent life. Unfortunately, the New Testament is worse in its teaching on hellfire. Jesus says things like, "If you don’t bear fruit, you are good for nothing and will be thrown into eternal fire." How can you love someone if you are living in fear of them at the same time? It just can’t be done. It’s like in this message of Christ: you’re dealt a bad hand, do it this way or else.

 

If I went to my family members and threatened to destroy them if they did not do things my way, someone would call the police. This is basically the mainstream of the Christian message. God wants to destroy, but He has sent Jesus to stop you from being destroyed. How has the message changed? Like the God of Moses, if we don’t do what He says, we are destroyed. It’s the same message made to sound like He loves when He does not. It is a message of control and domination based on fear.

 

One of the most evil teachings that was birthed from this perspective is penal substitutionary atonement. This came from the Middle Ages, and it was theology used to control and manipulate people into religious obedience. The idea is that God is so angry that He needs to punish us but doesn’t really want to, so He sent Jesus to take a beating. Again, if I were to do this, someone would call the police on me if I were to do that to my kid on behalf of the others, but this type of God is normal for most Christians. The problem with this thinking is that there is nowhere in the New Testament where Jesus comes to pay off God’s anger, and it will challenge anyone who thinks differently.

 

This angry God prevails even in my own tradition. We are taught that any deviation from church authority, for example, missing our day of holy obligation, could get us damned. We see this play out in the history of the Church. What happened when there were disagreements? The other church became anathema, and these anathemas were recited in our liturgies. There was even an anathema of the Jewish people. This is historic abuse at the highest level, and how does it make God seem? Like a jerk.

 

In saying these things, I’m not saying I don’t want to be a part of my Church. I love my church, but I think you should not have to fear being critical of the unhealthy depictions of God, which I reject. I think faith in Christ should be presented as something beneficial to people, not something that will lead to destruction if you don’t agree. I don’t interpret hell in the Bible this way and think hell is something that can be better worked out as a doctrine. As it is now, it makes God seem evil. The idea of tormenting or letting someone be tormented is not the action of a Father, no matter how evil that person was. As a father, I would be viewed as evil for treating my children this way. Should we not do the same for God?

 

Judgment is a good thing. For me, it’s the idea of ending evil at the end time and its ultimately  beneficial for the person who caused the evil. This is how I understand God’s wrath, and so did many church fathers like St. John Chrysostom, who taught that wrath is a paternal action and that punishment is a good thing that benefits the one being punished. I think this is the only way to see God, as a loving Father.

 

Going back to that question I asked myself, “Would I follow God if there was no hell?” the answer is yes. Jesus Christ came to set us free from the power of the devil, not the anger of God. This is the gospel of the early church, not escaping hellfire, and this is the message we have preserved in the Eastern Church! Our sin ultimately harms us; it does not harm God. It keeps us from the good things of God, and our sin comes from our entanglement with the god of this world. I don’t want to be a slave. I want to be loved by God and Christ gives me that power, the power to be free. I no longer fear hell and do not believe God is a jerk.

Biblical Evils

 Actions such as sex slavery and the murder of children are undeniably evil, yet they were often commonplace in ancient civilizations. It should not come as a surprise to find such actions depicted in the Bible, sometimes appearing to be divinely sanctioned. However, interpreting these actions as 'evil' requires context. Many biblical stories were written to convey moral lessons, allegories, or theological principles rather than to serve as literal historical accounts. This does not mean the events or people described are not real; rather, it is in the symbolism of their presentation that we encounter God.

If these stories are taken purely literally, it would imply that both the God sanctioning such acts and the people committing them are evil. For instance, the story of Abraham and Isaac is often understood as a test of faith, not as an endorsement of child sacrifice. If interpreted literally, an all-knowing God demanding a worshiper to attempt something immoral would render both the worshiper and God morally compromised.

For those who, like me, are not biblical literalists, these stories are better viewed as symbolic rather than factual. This perspective allows us to focus on the lessons they aim to teach rather than the actions themselves. It also enables a nuanced critique of the text without dismissing it entirely—an approach that, I believe, should be the hallmark of any thoughtful Christian. Come join the conversation: (youtubelink)