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Cloud of Witnesses Radio
From ATHEIST to Orthodox Christian! From Secular Science to Sacred Tradition | TLTS012 CWP063
When Orthodox Christian TikToker Nikko from Idaho stepped into the world of Orthodoxy, little did he know his journey would be a beacon to many, lighting the path to faith and community. Our latest conversation on Cloud of Witnesses Radio delves into the intricacies of Nikko's six-year odyssey, unveiling how a nuclear research professional found his spiritual nucleus within the historical folds of his local parish. His story, interwoven with his Japanese-American heritage and the local LDS community's response to Orthodoxy, offers a tapestry of transformation and fellowship that is truly inspiring.
Imagine navigating the choppy waters of faith and doubt, only to find a haven of truth in the unlikeliest of places. Our episode traverses such personal quests, exploring the critical role of questioning and the subsequent epiphanies within the Orthodox tradition. From the dynamic interplay of faith within a marriage to the philosophical musings of a former atheist Marine, we share narratives that highlight the profound impact of personal agency and the communal embrace of Jesus Christ within Holy Orthodoxy.
As we conclude our intimate discussion, we consider the conundrum of 'online orthodoxy' and the paradox of digital engagement in a faith deeply rooted in tangible experience. The stories of service and choosing patrons like St. Nicholas draw a vivid line from past wisdom to present action, urging us to live our faith with intention. Join Jeremy & Nick as hosts on this soul-stirring voyage where history, humanity, and holiness converge, here on Cloud of Witnesses Radio.
Please visit our friend Nikko at his TikTok channel:
https://www.tiktok.com/@saintnicholas1103
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US NIKKO - GOD BLESS YOU!
Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!
Hi, my name is Jeremy, I'm Nick. This is Cloud of Witnesses Radio.
Nick:Thinking like the Saints.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Excellent, you guys. We are really, really excited. Today we have a very special guest. Joining us, all the way from Idaho is Nico, who is my friend from TikTok of all places. You might have seen a recent episode we had with Priscilla, who I also know from TikTok as well, and Nico, I think I've known even longer. Actually I've known. I met Nico first. Nico and I have ventured through the airwaves of Christian TikTok, as it were. But, Nico, welcome to Cloud of Witnesses. Really, really grateful that you're taking the time to chat with us and we're looking forward to this discussion.
Nikko:Thanks, jeremy, I appreciate it. I'm Nikko. I am in the nuclear research field, believe it or not. Just a little interesting tidbit. That's actually what I do for work and I've been Orthodox for about a period of time about six years now and I live in Southeast Idaho area, as Jeremy has already mentioned about Idaho here, and we have one parish in this area. It's interestingly like 109 years old and there's a great bit of Orthodox culture and interaction happening here. We've been growing dramatically recently. Glory to God for that. No-transcript churches.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Wow, that's wild, the idea that the parish you're at has been there for 109 years. Right, when you think of Orthodoxy in America, you know we often think of Alaska and you know even some parts of the Northeast et cetera, going back a long time. I personally would not think of Idaho, but to think that it was there that long ago, that's really, really amazing. I bet you there's quite a story there.
Nikko:Well, it's interesting just because, like I said, that did come over with the Greeks and the railroad, and so for a long time, I mean we can all attest to the fact that it's been an interesting period for orthodoxy because until, like the nineties, there really wasn't a lot of efforts to try and co-mingle in some ways, like there was a little less emphasis placed on putting services into English and really trying to help the localities around the parishes with joining to the church.
Nikko:So that's kind of changed over time.
Nikko:But I can tell you that it's glory to God for that effort, because a lot of the people around here in the LDS community are starved because of the sole amount of legalism that comes out of that faith and it creates a lot of difficulties for people in this area because they are kind of here because they've never culturally seen anything different, and so it's actually rather shocking for them to run into orthodoxy and find out that there is another church out there that's claiming to be the true church and has all this tradition and all this history in the background, and also that we're really communal, because if you want to know what wins over LDS, most of the time in my opinion it has very little to do with the theological ends of things, even though that's there in droves.
Nikko:It has a lot to do with the fact that Orthodox actually have communities. So they come, they visit the parish, they have a divine liturgy, and then they come for coffee hour and all of a sudden it's like, oh, these people actually co-mingle and they actually know each other. And I had one person in my parish remarked to me that it was refreshing that not everybody was just happy, shiny people, that there weren't just smiling faces there. Some people were having a difficult time and other people were coming to console them and they were talking about things that they could do to help them. And then also realizing that we met outside of just Sundays and even outside of fellowship.
Jeremy Jeremiah:That's a beautiful thing the, the, the power of agape right, the power of the coffee hour, um, I, I, nick and I are at a at a parish in in San Diego, california, and we've been very blessed, nico, with just a very, very substantial influx of converts to Orthodoxy, a lot, of, a lot of young men in particular, but, you know, we're seeing families as well and and it's been a really beautiful, exciting thing, and I think a lot of it, as much as I may, at one point in my life have would have liked to have said it was the theology and all that. I think you're absolutely right. I think they're coming and they're seeing the community, the genuine community, and I love how you put that, nico.
Jeremy Jeremiah:The Orthodox Church is the hospital for the soul and there are a lot of people that are struggling or in difficult places in life. I've been there, I've been one of those guys, and it's you know to to be able to come and rely on, you know, not only the guidance of the priest, um, and, and you know, the, the conversation with the deacons and the readers, and but to have the fellow Orthodox Christians, many of whom are going through similar situations, um, you know, or their own travails is is a a beautiful thing and a huge testimony. Nico, we are now where we're at now. Right, I want to go back with you a ways for our audience. Can we talk about Nico in the early years, nico, before you were Orthodox, and again, what early years means to you is wherever you want to start. We'd love to hear kind of a bit of the beginning of your journey and, again, what early years means to you is wherever you want to start.
Nikko:We'd love to hear kind of a bit of the beginning of your journey. So my father's side of the family who had a large influence on me as a young man is Japanese American, and that was actually a big portion culturally into the influence, because there's a joke that my family are either merchants, warriors or preachers among my family members, and so the growing up period of time where I actually encountered faith was that I had members of my family that are pastorate and so on and so forth. In the Protestant side of things. In fact, one of my cousins right now is a pastor and he's all the way out on the East coast and he just wrote a book that I just purchased and it has a very interesting name. It's lamentation is discipleship, and I haven't gotten into it yet, but I'm very interested to see what it says, cause just that name rings of orthodoxy to me, because there's not a lot of modern day Protestant Christianity that talks about suffering and repentance.
Nikko:But anyway, that's like where my family's at and most of us are are started out as a Methodists, and so the interesting thing is is that I grew up in a church that was very ethnically influenced. It was Japanese, american and the, the church was actually split into two separate parts. So you had services for the Issei and the Nisei, the first and second generation Japanese Americans, and then you had services for everybody else and at times they even had two separate pastors. They had a Japanese speaking pastor and they had an English speaking pastor, and so it was very interesting dynamic between the two. So it was very interesting dynamic between the two. And so, unfortunately, when I was younger, due to a lot of the difficulties that was created by that culture dynamic, there seems to be a larger emphasis on being Japanese than there was on being Christian, and I don't really think that that's necessarily a commonality. I would never push that off on even the rest of Protestantism. But there was a gap or a space that was left in order for that to kind of fill in. And so after a time period I started to move up in the church a little bit and get more involved with the youth and everything like that.
Nikko:So as at the time that I was like starting to move away from home and become like a man of my own and everything like that, I was also involved with these activities with that church. And, uh, we had a point where a certain activity was going to go on and they had essentially said if you're not this quotient of Japanese, you shouldn't come to this camp. And at the time, from what I understood, I was like, well, this doesn't matter, we're we're Christians first. That doesn't make any sense. And I was like, well, this doesn't matter, we're Christians first. That doesn't make any sense.
Nikko:And I got in a big fight with the elders of the church. Now, admittedly admittedly, the thing is is that I was a young man, so I was not very tactful in the way that I approached that situation. I was extremely angry, as you can imagine, because I'm thinking I have friends that are going to be victimized by this event, and so I said this can't possibly happen, and, of course, reasonably in my opinion, even though they might've been wrong at the topic, I definitely was wrong in my behaviors. They kicked me out, and so that dialed me down a path towards atheism, because I said, well, if this can happen inside of the church, the churches I knew it at the time then there's no way that I want anything to do with God or anything else like that. This is absolutely insane. This is a strong delusion that people have. I can't believe that anybody would ever fall for this type of stuff. This is just covering for people's bad behaviors. They've turned it into a codified situation, and I don't want any of that. And so I went into the working world from there and didn't have a lot to do with religion, and I'm going to introduce this because this is going to come up later on in the path to orthodoxy.
Nikko:Here I met my friend Apollos. We were working at an alarm center together at the time, dispatching, and he was a lapsed Jehovah's Witness group, jehovah's Witness his whole life, and that's why his name is Apollos. His parents were fairly faithful in the way that they could be, and and that's why his name is Apollos is his parents were fairly faithful in the way that they could be, and so they they named him Apollos. Everybody in his family has biblical names, interestingly enough and so I continued that path until I finally one day got so frustrated with regular life, as we'll call it, that I joined the Marine Corps.
Nikko:And then, when I joined the Marine Corps, I ended up having a whole bunch of experience that only the Marines can bring. So lots of stress, lots of unique occasions and so on and so forth. I won't dive too deeply on that, but to put it simply in a faith kind of way, that really opened me up. I suddenly realized, like well, I believe all these things still, like I don't want to steal from other people and I believe in being honest to them, and that kind of discipline benefits you well in the Marine Corps as far as being able to have a general ethic and really protect the family and stuff like that.
Nikko:So you, you develop this cultural group and so after a while I started to soften out, but most of the time while I was in the Marine Corps I was what I would call militant atheist. I absolutely despise Christians. They drove me absolutely insane. I would go to no ends to try and tie them up in all sorts of scientific, logical, philosophical trickery, sophistry as I know it to be now. But at the time it just seemed like really good questions. You know, like if God is all powerful, then can he make a rock so big that he can't move it? You know lovely things like that Absolutely.
Jeremy Jeremiah:And so it's. Can I, can I just jump in a little bit here, cause it's? It's fascinating. You know, what I'm hearing you describe isJapanese people. You really internalize that, and it sounds like you projected something onto the church capital C that was bad, based on the act of that small little group, and it sounds like it was an opportunity for you to. I don't know. It sounds like to me. Nikolai, you made a decision Okay, I'm mad at the church and they can't be right now, so I've got to find ways to show they're wrong. Is there any truth to that?
Nikko:Oh, absolutely, but I think at the end of the day it's really hard. Protestants use this term all the time, by the way, but you know best, be right with the gospel, because you might be the only one that anyone ever reads. You know, there's this whole concept of that. We get stuck in these microcosms and we really don't have the ability to experience the wider world. So for me at the time, that church in the United Methodist Church not even that, it was a good reflection of the United Methodist Church, as I've seen later in life, but was the church to me. And so we get caught up in a lot of these situations. And it's very interesting because, like Jeremy I know that we've talked about it before, but I'm very much into epistemics I love knowing how do you know what you know? And that comes from the atheist side of things, and that really in inquisitive skepticism. But on the flip side, when I got down to it, I started realizing like, oh well, this isn't even the broader sense of the United Methodist Church and United Methodist is one denomination inside of Christianity, and so I started to get a little confused about how these things were represented well through my childhood. But on the flip side. Growing up in that environment, that really did make me angry and I viewed that as the entirety of the church. I didn't have any other frame of reference. There was no contrast for me and I really hadn't gotten out into the world. And what's really interesting is is if you come from that background and you really don't consider how secluded you are, it creates all sorts of different issues. It's to the point recently where I don't.
Nikko:I haven't made too many TikTok videos recently, but one of my recent TikTok videos I was saying that you know, if my daughter ever comes to a crisis of faith, she's being raised Orthodox Christian, but if she ever comes to a crisis of faith, that will actually be a moment of joy for me on some level, because she needs to be in battle, because otherwise the faith won't be hers, and I certainly don't want her to live just solely off of my faith. It's not quality enough in her relationship. It's just like she needs to have a personal relationship with God and his church. I can't provide that to her ultimately, and it's kind of that same concept as we get into God, parents, you know we cover for you for so long in the faith, but then it's really up to you to develop that personal relationship with God.
Nikko:So I think that a lot of things that happen now, where you have so much battle between people that get into circles of doubt and people will just come down on them and say you've got to do this and you've got to do this and you've got to come back. The pleasant part about that experience is that I don't think that I have that anger or that emotional knee-jerk reaction anymore, and so I can sit there and say, hey, you can go out into the world and experience those things and have those doubts and battle with those things, but I really have faith that orthodoxy is true. So I'm not worried about you coming back. Maybe you'll go away for a time, maybe you have to be the prodigal son. I don't dictate these things God certainly does but as far as that goes, it's not something that panics me right away anymore. And so, like coming out of that circumstance uh, to go back to my experience from the Marine Corps, what ended up? Before we go there sorry, before we go- there I had to pause.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I wanted to see if Nick wanted to jump in with anything.
Nick:I'm still just listening.
Jeremy Jeremiah:No, it's very interesting Great.
Nick:Because I kind of wanted to hear what happened with the, yeah, with the Marine Corps actually kind of what steps you took forward, or what happened in your life, nico, that led you, you know, onward, to, you know, with, with, uh, you know, philosophically, theologically, etc perfect.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I'll just make this comment really quick and then we and then we'll go into that. Does that sound good? Uh, because, because this is based on what you were just saying, n, nico, I loved how you were talking about you know, if your daughter at some stage has a, you know, has to struggle with her faith on a real level, that you almost encourage that and I think that's a beautiful thing. I don't know who said it, but it's been repeated so many times now that, even cradle Orthodox, we're all converts. Right, because we have to constantly be choosing faith. We have to constantly be choosing faith. We have to constantly be choosing are we going to do the will of God today or not? Right, and so I love that.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I'll tell a quick anecdotal story. I won't use any names, but a friend of mine who's Orthodox. He recently had some friends and they have Roman Catholic backgrounds, and they told him. They said we'll go to church with you, to this person, we'll go to your Orthodox church If you come with us once to a Roman Catholic mass. And his point was you know, he kind of asked about it and my take was just like you, nico, I was like you know what, I'm not afraid.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I'm not afraid at all. You know I've got no worries that this Orthodox Christian going into a mass you know he knows not to partake in the sacraments or anything, and he just wants to go to support them because they never go to church ever, and then they'll come with him to Orthodox liturgy and so I thought, you know what, I'm okay with it, you know it is, I'm not worried about him and that he's going to be in some way, um, you know, convinced or or, uh, you know, lured into the Roman Catholic church. Cause I feel like orthodoxy, as you said, nico, is the fullness of the faith and I've got no doubt about that, and so I don't know, it's just kind of a blessing. I hope that doesn't sound overly prideful or anything, but I see it as a huge blessing.
Nikko:I think to add on to your point, though, if I may, that the truth in that lies that if you have that conflict, it probably needs to be had, and God is just this beautiful teacher beyond what we could even imagine.
Nikko:And so a lot of times, if we have that fight and you have that little break, that little doubt enters your head, that may actually be something that you need to battle with, because it is the solidification of your faith. And so ultimately, like when we have those fights, it's that God doesn't provide us with the will. He doesn't just fill in for that, not monergistically, not like many people think, it's synergism and so he doesn't provide you the will to change. He provides you the opportunity, he provides you the experience, and so if you run into that occasion, I don't think that you can battle that in all honesty, because if you don't actually have that fight, you're actually resisting the experience that he's trying to teach you something, and I think that's the shameful part. So oftentimes, when I get caught up in difficulties or challenges, I just say to myself what am I supposed to be learning here? Because it's so much easier of a way to navigate travesty than it is to try and say, well, this shouldn't be happening. What do I know?
Nick:I think that's one of the strengths with American converts in general to orthodoxy, you know, is that we've basically gone through the whole philosophical cycle of the fall of the West atheism, the crumbling of Protestantism, et cetera. It's like this huge, like you said, it's like this purging fire. You know, and I do love, like what Jeremy said, what you were saying, that you actually invite your daughter to go through that to some extent. Right, and it's not fun, right, it's painful, but it is like you said, it's an opportunity that God gives each person to more fully experience and come to the truth. Experience and come to the truth, you know, as opposed to, you know, more surface level type, you know, just hoping for numbers in a church. You know we don't know what success looks like in the eyes of God.
Nikko:So, anyways, yeah, yeah, nick, that's a great point, and I think that, like when we look at the necessity of being comfortable where we're at, because that was part of what drew me to orthodoxy but I'll get to that in a little bit and, jeremy, since you brought up the story about going and swapping places with someone, I have two very interesting stories about that, and since we already talked a little bit about my wife, that should definitely be one that it gets included in there too. Okay, but to reel back, so I joined the Marine Corps. I realized that I have all of these tendencies and they're serving me well, right, like I have these ethoses that I'm keeping where I. I have the principle of not lying to my men and I want to take care of them and I care about their wellbeing wellbeing, excuse me and I'm suffering for them. And I'm thinking like, wow, these things I don't really know where they come from. So now I'm going to have to go on this philosophical journey and I really started to question, well, ethically, how, how do I know that any of these things are true? And I had all of these, these battles, and I know modern day atheists hate that this gets said at all. But there's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole. I don't care in any world I would be, I would gladly die on this hill, but there is. There's a moment where you reach out to something. You don't know that you're reaching for God, but you are, because that's innate to us in our creation and being the image of him and we know that. But it's kind of that treasure too that we we get to have an actual relationship with God, not to digress too much onto that.
Nikko:But I started realizing I have all these tendencies, these ethics and like this desire that I can't really explain and the materialist answer for that is not satisfactory at all. It doesn't explain why I don't see things as like is this person really harming this other person? And if, if I can see that, how is that possible? Why is that not just a whole collision of atoms? Why is this not just two chemical changes that are occurring? Why do I observe that with an ethical reasoning right off the bat?
Nikko:And so I start getting out of the Marine Corps with all of these questions and I pretty much softened my position towards religion at that time. I've decided well, I disagree with them but I'm not going to be angry at them anymore because that's really burning me out, and I have plenty of other problems that I just experienced, plus the transition of coming out of the Marine Corps. And so I've got that entire background of discipline and structure and I'm used to being okay with you know, the authorities, the authority, it doesn't matter what they tell me. I'm going to follow that to a certain degree because that's the nature of authority, and so I'm really not going to buck that. And so I learned about the nature of loyalty there too, that like hey, if you're only loyal when it's good, you're not actually loyal. That's counter the definition of loyalty. And so I learned all these things in the Marine Corps and I'm grateful to God that I actually had that experience, because it did pretty much soften and subtly change my mindset towards a lot of these things, to be ready to receive them. And so then I start my transition out of atheism at that point because I'm starting to think I need to learn philosophically, and I went down some new age stuff. I started reading like the four agreements and stuff like that. And there's a book that I picked up in Australia by an Australian author called Species in Denial, which has all these philosophical roots to it. I started reading Jean Boldriard, simulation and Simulacrum and all these different things. So I start really diving hard on trying to figure these things out now.
Nikko:And I'm going to move up to Idaho, so my wife's going to move before me and then I have about a month that I'm going to work behind her in order to support that move financially. And I need a place to stay during that time period. So I reach out to my friend, apollos, right, and I said, apollos, I, I need a place to stay, can I come stay with you? And he says yeah, but there's one condition which I thought was odd, because normally this wouldn't have been a big deal. And he said I, I said what is it? And he goes.
Nikko:My mother recently passed away, as you know, and he was like on her deathbed. She told me that I have to go back to the church and I I said wow. I said mom, I can't go back to the Jehovah's Witnesses, I don't believe in that. And she goes well, you have to try. So he goes. I can't possibly do that, but I'm going to honor my mother's request. I'm really going to look back into religion Now. I'm really going to look back at the Christian faith, specifically because I find it the most compelling. And he says so we're going to do this the way that we do everything else, because me and him have been friends for years.
Nikko:At this point We've been talking for a long time, so from before the Marine Corps until after, and so he starts tearing into the history of it. We start really looking for where's the roots of this, like how do we find this, like in a grounded way, how do we find our way back to what Christianity is supposed to be? And he lands on Roman Catholicism for a little bit. Well, that didn't pan out very well. We don't like the messages that Francis is giving at the end of the mass. It's causing us major problems because we're still functioning from that secular background, so we're conservative and the messages that Francis is putting out are not not in line with that. So that kind of turns us off to Catholicism. But it also puts us in a little bit of distress, right, because it's like well, these guys have a really good claim to being the true church.
Nikko:And then we had a coworker that worked with us at the time. That was Oriental Orthodox and she said well, you ought to check out Orthodoxy. So then we start studying Eastern orthodoxy and Oriental orthodoxy and the differences between them. And then, while I'm staying with him, his stipulation was you got to go to church with me. And I'm thinking at this point I've softened out enough. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to catch on fire if I walk in there. I don't believe any of this stuff, so it'll be fine, we'll just go.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I like this Apollos, by the way.
Nikko:I like this guy a lot we got to meet this guy sometime.
Jeremy Jeremiah:for sure, this is an amazing story.
Nick:It's really really amazing.
Nikko:Well, I couldn't believe, because I oftentimes tell people when they're really really hard on these other groups, these fringe groups like the LDS and the Jehovah's Witnesses, I go, I converted to orthodoxy because of Jehovah's Witness. It was through a chain of events, but God moves that way. So you can't be, you just don't see the path. We just have to try. That's the only thing we're here for is to be the tool. So, throughout this, and we start going to all these different parishes and and and Denver by the way, I was in Denver, colorado at the time, wonderful place to experience orthodoxy. There's Antiochian, there's Rocor, there's OCA, there's GoArch you got the four major diocese in there there's Western Rite Antiochian churches there. You even have Ethiopian Orthodox, if you wanted to experience that. So we're going around and I start going to this little tiny parish which to this day I love so much, called the transfiguration. It's an OCA cathedral, actually believe it or not, which is hard to believe. It must be the smallest cathedral in the world, but the nave, the nave at transfiguration, is tiny and the narthex is only so big as, like you could fit maybe like five or six people standing shoulder to shoulder in it. Wow, it's very, very tiny but it's beautiful because the nave is filled full of icons that people have obviously donated to the parish over time. So they're your eight by elevens and they're all around, and so everyone who's a part of this parish has donated these icons and everything like that over time and and so it's. It's fairly obvious that they aren't much in the way of wealth and it's in the smaller part of Denver where it's obviously a little less wealthy and but it's the most beautiful parish that I've ever seen, for that facet, because it's very intimate and very small, and it was the right place. You know, god knows better than us every single time. So it was like I got stuck in this parish immediately. That's going to bring this intimacy and fit on me kind of like a warm blanket, like I'm walking into something that's really just going to grab a hold of me and I'm going to be enveloped by and I start talking to the priest there.
Nikko:At the time the priest's name was father David and he's this jovial old grandpa looking character, big white beard. He old grandpa looking character, big white beard. He looks very similar to Abbott Trefon in my opinion. And so he starts talking to me and I start talking to him and I start asking him these really tearing questions, trying to drive in things, and he just politely deflects, or sometimes he would straight up refuse to answer. He would say I don't think you're ready to hear that. And then he goes through the history of things and we start talking and we start having these long two or three hour organic conversations about history and just the different stages of of orthodoxy in the church and everything like that and it's it's jiving with a lot of the things that I already know from secular history. So I'm not really opposed to it and everything like that and it's subtle.
Nikko:And then, as we keep attending these parishes, I start thinking to myself I think I want a prayer book. And so I'm going to go get a prayer book and I'm going to start to pray, and so I start praying. Meanwhile I'm calling my wife during the week and her experience is agnostic, never been religious whatsoever. And so I'm calling her and I'm telling her hey, I'm going to start to pray, religious whatsoever. And so I'm calling her and I'm telling her hey, I'm going to start to pray.
Nikko:So little did I know at the time, but she's freaking out because she's thinking I married this man that's a complete and total atheist and now, all of a sudden, he's praying. What is this? Wow, this is, this is madness Like I don't even know what happened. So she's concerned that she's losing her husband to a certain degree. So we have some damage and some fault from that night. And I'm thinking to myself God, these Orthodox must be the toughest people alive because they they, they actually never stopped praying. I'm convinced now, because I can't even finish these two iterations, let alone the hours and the midday prayers and the prayers before meals and the prayers before. I'm thinking to myself there's no time, I'm just going to pray for the rest of my life, only harder.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Right, that's that meme, yeah, that's it. Wow, what a great way, though, what a what a beautiful way to get exposed really to what orthodoxy is right, cause it's all in the prayers, right, All the theology is there, that, and it really ultimately to my heart what the, the, the true heart of orthodoxy is humility, right, the, the call for humility and repentance, and it's all in the prayers, um, that's, that's pretty amazing, nico. Well, I don't know.
Nick:Please, I have a quick question. Does that mean that, uh, your friend apollos, he ended up joining you at that church, that that?
Nikko:same church. So we were, we were attending together at the time, and so the part of the reason is is uh, hopefully God forgive me if this offends him I don't think that it will, but Apollos has some social anxiety, so at the time he just didn't want to go into a new environment with the without somebody that he knew, and so that was part of the reason, original reason that I came with him and you know, so he kind of drug me along and I give him a pretty hard time because he's still inquiring, and so during the time period that we found the church together and I joined and became baptized, he's still inquiring but he's a tough case, but anyway, he, uh, he, he knows which mountain he wants to climb, of that much I'm convinced. Amen. So we start going to this parish and I start praying and and it really to your point, jeremy it really does start to like eat me up, because I'm having these deeply, deeply meaningful not emotional, but meaningful experiences during prayer and I'm having these thoughts that are kind of pointing me towards Well, these are the things I need to look at and these are the things that I need to change and this actually makes sense. And so throughout that course, I continue to go to the parish and we try a few different parishes besides the transfiguration. So I got to go to a Western right and a Russian right and, you know, really start to experience what orthodoxy is, even in the different cultural facets, which was awesome. It was a good way to know some things and I'm very glad for that.
Nikko:Grounding now because that's actually something I enjoy now is calling up my priests and telling them like hey, I'm being out of town, I looked up this parish in this area. Do you see any reason I couldn't go there? And then go to that parish and visit with them and I have to tell you, uh, my Orthodox experience and other parishes has just reinforced my faith entirely, because I show up and I'm still family there. We're one church, one church, and it's incredible to actually experience that. But anyway, so I I then drive back up to Idaho where I'm now living, and my wife is terribly upset by a lot of the things that I'm doing. We're getting in fights over stuff like that, and so I talked to my current priest, father Constantine. Father Constantine tells me you need to leave her alone, don't try and convince her of anything, don't pressure her at all. Leave her alone.
Nikko:And me from you know my protestant legalistic roots, atheist skepticism, to new zealousness inside of orthodox is thinking why in the world would I want to stop? I have all this information to share with her and all this stuff that I'm happy about. Why in the world would I not want to pressure her into this? And so I stopped? Because, again, nice preparation from from the Marine Corps, I know what discipline's like. He said stop, I'm going to stop. I don't agree, but I'm going to stop. And my wife says well, you go every Sunday. Can I come with you one Sunday a month? Okay, sure, and meanwhile I'm trying to suppress that really, really excited state. You know I'm trying to. Yeah, you know, I guess you can, I guess you can come with me. Yeah, no big deal. Yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly. And so I'm so excited that she's going to come.
Nikko:And then she comes the very first time and she's getting people that are kind of trying to encourage her to participate in the veneration of the gospels and so on and so forth, and she doesn't want to participate in any of this. And I told her before we walked into the parish you don't have to partake in any of this that you don't want to partake in. Literally, just come see experience. You don't have to be a part of this and you don't have to do anything that you're uncomfortable with. And so people out of their love are trying to encourage her to come, just to bid her to come, not telling her that she has to, and that gets interpreted as some frustration there, and so we walk out of the parish, she jumps into the car and she immediately starts crying and says I'm never going back there, ever again. I don't like this. It's's all comfortable, uncomfortable, it's all foreign.
Jeremy Jeremiah:And so for a month or so, it must have been devastating, nico, to hear that I could. You know Well.
Nikko:I, I was lost and at the time I was like, well, I believe, but like, how do I get to this end? And everything like that, and and to my shame. But I think as humans we could understand this. I told her. I was like, if you want me to give up this path, I value our marriage I would think about doing that. Okay, and that crushed me at the time because I didn't know if I could actually do that. It's what I wanted to do to reinforce my marriage, but that wasn't a possibility in some real ways.
Nikko:And so I'm crushed by this for about a month, and we have a lot of fights for a month, to the point that I'm going through the process of getting baptized and we have a fight the day of my baptism. So my, my wife doesn't attend my baptism, and so I'm thinking at that point there's no way, it's not going to happen. And then, shortly after my baptism, she starts saying, well, I'd like to go at least every other Sunday. And I'm like, where did this come from? I don't. We, we fought twice about this.
Nikko:You, the first time you left, you never wanted to come back. The second time you refused to come, just for something that I thought was significant in my life, that you should be a part of. And so she starts coming and then she attends regularly. Like after the second time, so like a week in between, she immediately says well, can I just come every Sunday? You go every Sunday. Can I ever come out? Yeah, you can come every Sunday. Yeah, there's, there's no possible reason why I would bar you from that. In fact, secretly, I'm hoping that this is the case.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Can I ask in terms of that, you know, if you can give us maybe a glimpse into the dynamic there of your marriage at the time? You know she went from this not wanting to be there ever again to, hey, I'll go again with you once a week. And then then she's like, okay, I'll go with you every week. Were you guys talking actively about this, or this is going on in in in her world, so to speak?
Nikko:In fact, at times we're fighting about this, but there are little things along the way that she's doing, not as small details, but she's getting Bibles and she's starting to look into like Bible studies and stuff like that. And the funny part is I should mention this they're Protestant and I'm thinking to myself oh well, great, you know on fire zealous convert moment. You know like well, protestant stuff I don't know. And so I start doing this and she starts reading it and I'm like, well, at least she's looking into it. Right, so that was a good experience, cause it softened my opinion out a lot towards that particular end of things. And so she starts coming once a week with me, where she's coming every Sunday basically, and after like it was a short time, just like three or four months, she was like I think I want to do introduction to orthodoxy, I think I want to do catechism.
Nikko:I said okay, and she goes well, you've got to go ask the priest for me. And I said I'm not asking the priest, there's no way. He told me to back off of this. I can't come to him and tell him well, my wife wants to join catechism classes. You know, that's not going to work, that's going to sound like I'm trying to sway you into something. You got to go ask him and I found out that the entire time, a big obstacle to it was she was scared of the priest, and at some point she thought that father had the ability to see through her and see her sins and had all these magical capabilities that priests, as human beings, simply do not have. And so she was.
Nick:She was terrified that she was going to be condemned by him do you think that comes from some kind of like a American slash Protestant negative concept of the priesthood?
Nikko:No, because for her, she was agnostic in her childhood and didn't really have a concept of Christianity, and so she never really went to church. She attended very few times during her childhood and didn't know much about it at all, so she didn't come from that background and this will lead into the next interesting story about after she converts to orthodoxy. So she starts going to catechism classes and glory to God for this in an absolute way. Glory to God for this in an absolute way. But her and my priest are now the type of friends that I would never have thought would have happened. They are so much closer and she is like a pit bull in his corner when it comes to everything. Now she's she's that man's friend to a deep, deep degree. Yeah, so so it goes from being completely and totally afraid to being on this guy's side almost entirely, and it was so wild to watch because her catechism ended up just being two people. So it was her and one other gentleman that joined our parish and they get to have all these fun conversations. Glory to God, because she got to join in such a way that really was applicable to her, and so she gets baptized and then, shortly after that, she starts having questions about other things, like Protestant churches and things like that. So this is, this is the church swap story.
Nikko:I wanted to talk to you about Jeremy, so my one of my close friends, who is actually the reason that I ended up here in Idaho, because he told me about the area and we came and visited him. So a close friend of my family at the time. He's. He's Protestant and goes to a church up here. And not to scandalize anybody, but it was very interesting to see from someone who had converted to orthodoxy and had only ever known orthodoxy outside of agnosticism, like just no, no clue about the church, just kind of apathetic towards the entire thing to converting to orthodoxy. And then we agree, one day we're going to go to services with him. So we're going to go to this little church service that they have because they do it on Sunday nights, so we're able to go. No big deal, not even missing out on divine liturgy. So we go and they have food before and then they also have taxidermy inside of their their chapel, if you will, and cause it's, it's, it's an outdoorsman church.
Nick:It's Idaho.
Nikko:Yeah, so it's, it's good for the hunters and everything like that. My friends who's uh, who's the associate youth pastor there at the time and the pastor are all hunters and they're all really big into this. So it fits characteristically in a lot of ways with my friend. So we go into this and she's seeing all these things and she's listening to them sing their songs and everything like that. And we get back out and I could not have had a more fun view at the time through the eyes of someone who had just newly become Orthodoxodox and was seeing protestantism for the first time in a in a really considerate way. And she comes out and she goes why, why in the world did we eat before we had service? And why in the world did they have coffee in the middle of the service? And why was there? Why are there these taxidermy items on the walls and everything like what? What is this? Why does this all belong here?
Nick:Very interesting.
Nikko:And so I have this mind blowing moment because we don't think about it that way, because I'm assuming, at least, nick, I don't know for you, but we've all been inside of Protestant churches before, yeah, and so you kind of know what the rhythm is. But it was wild to watch someone who had just ever experienced orthodoxy as a, as a form of christianity, all the different things that she started questioning, yeah, so that it's like.
Jeremy Jeremiah:It's like she had already understood this intrinsically, the phronoma of the church yeah, you know, and as being inherent, and was able to see the distinction so clearly with with very little cerebral barriers.
Nick:You know, it was all very, uh, experiential because it really made me think of I don't even know where the saying comes from, unfortunately but you know, we pray what we believe and we believe what we pray what we right. So all these things, it's not just some codified legislature of some magisterium that says, well, we do this and this. No, this is all organic, it's all incarnate, the whole experience. Sure, you can say it in words, but ultimately it is that mystical experience, right, coming to Christ and coming to the church, which is his body right, coming coming to Christ and coming to the church, which is his body right. So it's very interesting that that experience is a very unique experience in many ways.
Nikko:Well, and to segue back, for me coming out of atheism, it was very interesting too because, like that period of time that I had being an atheist really opened me up to orthodoxy in ways that I couldn't imagine. And I'll tell you that I actually view my transition into orthodoxy as much, much easier, because I really didn't have faith before in the same way, even not what I would call faith. Anyway, I had faith in some things, and this is the fun part is is in my, my personal personal opinion, atheists have a very unique kind of faith and it's very deep. In fact, it's very driven and it's a lot more emotional than what they would like to give it credit for. But because I was an atheist for so long when I got into orthodoxy kind of in the same way that my wife once she decided to actually get in because of that I showed up and I didn't have to align the Orthodox theory of the atonement and Christus Victor with penal substitutionary atonement. I didn't have to co-align and make these pieces that I have now that are some of them are being fractured away and the other ones are orthodoxy and I'm trying to fit them conveniently together. That's not happening for me. I'm just in the church now, and so it actually very conveniently limited the amount of struggle that I had to have in order to enter the church.
Nikko:Because when praying is foreign to you, praying to the saints is also foreign to you and it's just encapsulated in that. Praying to the Theotokos is also encapsulated in that. So if praying is strange as a whole, then I don't really have to have like a midway practice where I prayed before and now I've got to adopt praying or this practice that is traditionally held. Otherwise I just the whole thing is strange. So I just got to dive headlong into it and really just become part of it. And in my opinion, if people could let it go and I'm not saying that most of us are capable of that, and I wasn't even to some degree but if you can dive in that way headlong and just really trust in the church, you can find enough security in that faith much easier transition than trying to amalgamate everything.
Nikko:Because after a while what I realized is is that, well, if they're right about 80% of it, what's, what's the likeliness that they're actually wrong about the other 20% that I have contentions with?
Nikko:And that's a real principle that you don't often hear, because you look, I would say, at the majority of Protestants that convert to Orthodoxy and one of the most difficult times they have is they sit on the outside for so long and they look at things and they try and make everything match and well, what do I want to buy here and what has to be worked out here?
Nikko:And they approach it very Western phronema, very just like I've got to take in this entire thing. And so they try and learn the entire Orthodox faith from outside the church, which the phron my inside of the church tells us that's not even possible. You can't do this without the experience of the church. And so they get to that degree and they don't realize that you're trying to make all this stuff match. You're standing outside of the hospital bleeding and saying, well, what treatments do I want? Instead of going in and realizing that some of the help that they administer to you is going to be painful, it's not going to be enjoyable for you and it's going to be hard to accept.
Jeremy Jeremiah:And it's going to look a little strange sometimes, you know, yep.
Nikko:Yeah, it's the treatment that you need, though. Yeah, exactly, and so the real shock and awe one of the biggest things that was difficult to accept about orthodoxy, if I could pick one, was just that I'm not responsible for this anymore. The church changes me. I don't have to understand the church to accept the church.
Jeremy Jeremiah:That's such a powerful point, nico. I resonate with what you're saying so well, because I came out of Protestantism. I came out of a very stringent theological construct of Calvinism. Even to this day, nico, to back up what you were saying, I do believe you had an easier transition based on what you were saying. I know, even all these years into my orthodoxy, I still have Protestant hangups. I still, you know, struggle. You know, with certain passages that I had one interpretation of my entire life. You know that I now see completely differently from the Orthodox phronomon, from the fathers, but it is. It's tough to overcome, you know it's very, very tough to overcome.
Jeremy Jeremiah:And I think you know, one of the most beautiful things I picked up, nico, based on your story of yourself and your wife coming to Orthodoxy, is you both came to Orthodoxy on your own terms, if you will.
Jeremy Jeremiah:You came in the way that was necessary for you and you had that space to do that. And thank God for Apollos and and and the priests that you were speaking to in those early days, and then for your wife. You know what beautiful wisdom that priest gave you when he said leave her alone, right Cause evidently that's what she needed. She needed to come into it on her terms, in her way, and, and in many ways, I think that goes back to what you said originally, nico, when you were talking about your daughter. Someday, if she ever has a you know, a challenge of faith, she'll have to go through that on her own, you know, and and to be able to rely on the church and and and the um. The beauty of orthodoxy to, to hold on to us is, uh, is a beautiful thing to to have well, and to that ends, like, if I can shamelessly plug here, she recently came out to our parish.
Nikko:Uh, um, dr eugenia genie constantino came out to our parish. Dr Eugenia Jeannie Constantino came out to our parish recently and she wrote the book thinking Orthodox. And for I'm actually of the minds now that people should read this book as they're coming into Orthodoxy, because it kind of reconciles the idea of like, well, these Orthodox are just all about mystery and they don't care about any of our academics. And it's like I've got bad news for you. To a certain degree that's actually true. We don't care Because you have these brilliant, brilliant minds like Dr Constantinou who are telling you like I'm a theologian, I'm studied and I know that this stuff doesn't matter because it's to some degree. Yes, all that reason is there, but we're not looking to reconcile reason and faith, we're looking to grow close to God. And so if you can't look at someone who's mentally disabled and give them a direct path to be inside of Christ's body without intellectual ascent, you're leaving them behind. If children cannot have a direct path to Christ without an intellectual ascent, you're leaving them behind. And another bit of information that she gives that I absolutely love recently she came out with on her podcast. She said you guys need to go to your priest more often, and I know that that's what everybody hears from us. You know, like, ask your priest, ask your priest. But there's real wisdom in that because she talks about it, because your priest knows who you are. So some information that is given to you in one situation may not be applicable if you pass that wisdom on to somebody else, because it's unique to your situation. And so, jeremy, what made me think about that is when you're talking about like God calls us in our own way. He works with us and so he does all these things and he knows us so well that he just guides us so subtly and so gently, and so you can take so much of that pressure out too.
Nikko:That comes out of Protestantism, where it's well, what if this is the last moment that you had to know the gospel? And especially with TikTok encounters and apologetics, I keep telling them I'm like you don't think that there's a God that cares infinitely more than you do about that individual? He knows way better than we do. You don't think he's working right now to save every single one of us. That's insane. It's not your job to dictate that now's the time for them to come to salvation. Your job is to be ready, if that's how you're chosen at that moment, how how God chooses to allow that to happen. And so you have all these encounters where there's so much pressure and, and coming to the Orthodox side of things, it's like half the time. I'm just trying to offer you relief from that. God knows. God saves. He's the only one that does. Christ saves, he's the only one that does.
Nikko:So if no, please no, no, no, no, no, please, please. I don't want to derail you, but if you take it at that level and you really believe that, you realize it's not your responsibility. We're just here to help execute his will. So he's going to design that the way that he wants to. We don't need to like intervene on those situations yeah, I was.
Nick:I was just simply going to say and I think you kind of already answered it is that, seeing that you went through the crucible of atheism right and and and being then coming to orthodoxy, you have that unique perspective for atheists specifically, and with tiktok, etc. You, you know, you are trying to spread the awareness of orthodoxy in a meaningful way. What does that look like when you, you know, maybe when you butt heads whether it's in the comment section or in person with someone right, because you were on that side of the fence at one point like what, what kind of insight or what? What do you, I know?
Nick:you kind of already have answered it, but maybe there's something else there that that we haven't heard.
Nikko:No, I think there is a lot to be said for that, nick, because, to be honest with you, like when I encounter these people, sometimes the message that we get to bring to them is completely and totally confusing. Because, to go back to Western versus the Eastern front, they're sitting there going well, look, the Bible supports slavery, and it's like man that is a complete straw man to the situation that I live in, and I don't even feel that way about it, and in fact, I'm not even upset about these passages that you find severely upsetting, because I understand that some of these things are symbolic and they're allegorical and they have these aims that you couldn't even begin to understand without being educated in them. So I'm not telling you that you and the church are on equal level when it comes to interpreting scripture, and that is a huge thing, and that includes Protestants. We get down to this other end where it's like hey, you guys are just interpreting this completely different than the entire first, second, third, fourth century Christianity represents. And on top of that, there is real merit inside of the scripture no one's denying that. But it's this whole dichotomy that you're drawing that doesn't exist. It's a both end situation. Scripture can be beautiful, but you can't do it without the interpretation of the church, because the church brings it to life.
Nikko:The church is the living organism, and that's not to demean the living nature of scripture in many ways, but much rather that it lives because it is the story of the church, and they forget that that Old Testament to new, it's the church throughout. It's all the stories about saints, and there's a reason why God didn't just hand deliver us a book down from heaven, but much rather gave it to us through men, and he himself incarnates. It's a very important thing. He takes on flesh so that we can understand and choose. He comes to work with us, and I can't push that in hard enough.
Nikko:So when I talk to atheists, half the time it's like well, you know, look at this ridiculous thing that's going on inside of the church. And it's like, well, first of all, we don't do that and second of all, we would agree with you. I actually find this equally frustrating. I don't think that this is a good representation of Christianity and to boot, on top of that, I think that this is actually a problem with something completely different. I love to tell this analogy If your wife comes to you and she says, well, you loaded the dishwasher wrong and she starts yelling and screaming, do you really think it's the dishwasher that's causing all that issue? I don't think so.
Nikko:So you have this whole thing that like, yes, we can point to the higher theological issues, you can point to the problem evil, you can point to the suffering that men go through and all these different things.
Nikko:But I don't think, because I personally have an experience and maybe I'm biased in that way, but I haven't experienced that I was mad because some people hurt me, not because the overarching theme or doctrine was there, but because human beings are imperfect. And so we get down to this end where it's like, hey, I get it and I'm not even selling you that this is going to be easy. By the way, entering into Orthodoxy is the hardest thing that you're going to do, because our message is not the prosperity gospel, it's pick up your cross and struggle up the hill, but the good news is we'll have all of us, all of us together. We're all one church, we're all one buddy. The saints are still praying for us to struggle in through this process, and so you don't get to have this end where you're left behind, but certainly it is the greatest challenge that you'll ever have in your life and none of us can even bear it, but we have to try.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Nico, you you mentioned I'm sorry for stopping you there. You mentioned Dr Eugenia Constantino. Myself I'm a huge fan as well. I love her podcast, nick, and I have been blessed enough. She has also come to our parish a number of times and has spoken even to our young adult group, which was really great. But she is a tremendous blessing and resource to the church and that's really awesome that she made it up there.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I'm going to name drop someone else who's tied to this, what you were describing there, and that is Father Josiah Trenum. And he said one time and I absolutely loved it and it was a challenging thing to hear I'm saying this to a fellow TikToker who for a long time we spent all of our time, nico, you know, basically arguing with Protestants and Roman Catholics you know, mostly Protestants in my case and he said the church does not need you to defend her. And I was like yeah, yeah, that's so true, but man, I want to defend her. You know what I mean. But it's so true and I think Dr Jeannie says the same thing in Thinking Orthodox. So true, and I think Dr Jeannie says the same thing in Thinking Orthodox. She talks about and I felt pretty called out.
Jeremy Jeremiah:You know she's like all you guys online, you know, having all these arguments, and I'm like, yeah, that's that's me. There's a lot of wisdom to be said there. You know that that God is is sovereign, and God is using all these various things. Nico, your life demonstrates it, right, these these circuitous routes and who would have ever have guessed that a former Jehovah's witness is so instrumental in your life? You know, in some ways bringing you to orthodoxy and and yet that's how God works. And so I just really appreciate, nico, what you said there in terms of all that we need to do is pray that we are ready so that when God wants to use us, that he can, and that we're there to be that vessel if God so chooses, that vessel, if God so chooses.
Nikko:Well, and to use that as a little bit of a segue there, when we talk about online orthodoxy, it doesn't actually exist. I think that that's an oxymoron you can't possibly look at a photo of an apple and be filled. It just doesn't exist in reality. And so the hard part about a lot of these situations and it was funny because you detransitioned first in my opinion, you just started to come back from the online sphere, and I have too, because I'm just like half the time, I'm just generally not interested in having all this like conflated chest bumping and unfortunately, I see a lot of the converts getting involved in that, especially the new ones, and even inquires and and catechumens and my honest advice out of that whole situation.
Nikko:And you know many of the people, priscilla being one of the people that I talked to consistently God bless her but, like these people that are coming into the sphere and everything like that, it's hard to express to them, but it's like you're actually hurting your progress by doing this and there are so many other things that you could be focusing on, and so, yeah, we can spend time doing this and, to a certain degree, there are benefits to it, in fact, every single time. What kept me for a long time on TikTok was every single time I think about ah, it's just going to delete the program, not even. Well, I'm going to call it a day, it call it a day, it's not going to be a thing anymore. And then I would get a message from somebody and they said hey, I really appreciate that, like I had this argument with you and everything like that. But I'm starting to see where there's some merit and everything like that, and so glory to God for those occasions.
Nikko:But it's also such an embattled place and with the modern day, like culture that goes into that the, the cooking, the W's, all these silly things that I don't, frankly, care about in all honesty and tier list ratings, all these silly things that they do on Tik TOK to each other in order to, like, elevate or demean each other, and it's just like, no, I mean, you're not really benefiting that from that at all and you're not really getting to experience orthodoxy at all.
Nikko:Like, if you forgo even one service to jump on the TikTok, you you've made the wrong decision there because, like, you're going to be so much better off.
Nikko:And then the other thing is it feeds you, it helps you to sustain that energy If you are going to go into that environment, to be peaceful and to not have emotional reactions about things and not to become incensed by all these things that other people are saying. And that's the other thing that, like, I love about church history. Like you can get into this and I can sit there and go before Nicaea 325, the church was basically Aryan, but yet you still have stories in church tradition about the layman throwing Aryan priests out of their parish because they say we don't want to hear from you. And it's like orthodoxy lives on in the sense of this very real, grounded ability to be inside of the church and to live the sacramental life, and I don't remember where I heard it the other day, but it always sticks in my head as, like you know, orthodoxy, the church, is a sacrament that so happens to have an institution. It's not an institution with sacraments.
Nick:Interesting. I like that. Awesome. Yeah, I really like that.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Where did you hear that, Nico? Where'd you hear that?
Nikko:I don't remember actually, yeah that's great.
Nikko:I like that a lot, but I mean this whole, this whole concept of like theoses and everything else that the church is trying to give to you, is just this concept of hey, be involved and really be here and love people and everything like that. So I love having my godchildren, for example. I love having that excuse. I'm not going to spend time taking a TikTok video today, because I'm actually going to go hang out with my godson and his children and his wife. We've got things that we're going to do and so it's so much better and it's so much more of a relief.
Nikko:And then the other thing is we all have real problems inside of life that are plaguing us right now, and so there's many, many different difficulties and it's like, how much more effective am I in my time if I come to these things and actually, you know, pray and find solutions and really struggle against them?
Nikko:And then if I am going to come to, uh, to tick, talk and try and share something, I do have something to share.
Nikko:I have a little bit of grounded information, because a lot of people and you know to be honest with you, this is this is a straight criticism of that I die.
Nikko:I think that I'm willing to say that a lot of people who are spending hours and hours and hours and hours on TikTok are not reading the fathers, are not reading spiritual books that they could be spending time on, they're not spending time in services. And I'm not saying that you can't do that and I'm not saying that there's nothing that comes out of that, but much rather that the quality is lost in doing those types of things. So, like if I had one tick takeaway, it's that if, if you find yourself in sense like I'm sure me and Jeremy have a ton of times even with the same people back back a year or so ago that if you find yourself incensed by these things, it's actually probably about time to get off and spend a week away and really take that same amount of time that you would have been spending and try and dedicate it to a book or something else 100%, nico.
Jeremy Jeremiah:I tell you the time, you know that you mentioned, cause I did, I stepped away for a while and I, I didn't miss it. I missed you, I miss people. You know what I mean. I miss Josh, I miss, I miss talking with some of the people on there, um, but I, I didn't miss it, you know, and I've kind of dipped my toe back into it a little bit recently, um, but yeah, it's um, you know it's interesting, cause I and I want to talk about this, nick, and I have talked about this a lot as well, even with other people in various interviews, and that is and it's kind of befuddling, and I think it's even befuddling to the clergy at the parish we're at, and I've even heard it expressed around.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Orthodoxy in general is, despite everything that you just said, nico, which I agree with 100%, there are so many people. If we were to at our parish, if we were to have people raise their hands, how many of you are here? Because of something you saw online? I don't know what the number is, but it's high. Oh, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming, ironically, ironically right, and I think it's partly why and, nick, I want to get your thoughts on this too but it's partly why, nico, we're doing this right now. It's literally why God Witnesses Radio exists and why we're so grateful that you've come on to talk about your story, because we do believe.
Nick:For better or for worse, people are being exposed to orthodoxy through mediums like this yeah it, hearing all of this because you know I was never in the tiktok world, um, like you guys, but it really is starting to feel more and more like the matrix, like we've detransitioned out of the matrix, but we got to go into the matrix every once in a while to try to see who we can rattle right.
Nick:Like guys, this is a simulation, but if you get too caught up in the matrix, you know you start believing that this virtual reality is reality. That's when it's time to unplug again, right, and I I think, ultimately, that orthodoxy is the the uh, the fullness of the faith and it's that true, mystical and incarnate experience of christ himself and his church. So I I don't know it's. I think it, it's helpful, but it's also difficult that orthodoxy isn't all about the mind, right, because it's so easy to get caught up in the philosophical constructs, comment sections etc. But ultimately that's not where the bread and butter, the meat right Of orthodoxy is. It's the in-person, like you guys have been stressing.
Jeremy Jeremiah:No, it's so true, nick.
Nikko:I think that you could get to the degree, though, that I would say the online stuff is good for two things. Number one it's good for the people that I can't experience it any other way, because we're still new enough in America where that's still a problem. So I would say it's better to listen to Orthodox content and watch live stream services than it is not to at all. Yeah, so if that's what you've got, sometimes you know we were the dogs that eat from the crumbs of the master's table. That's just how it works.
Nikko:And then, number two is an introduction, but to really hone in on what I mean when I say that, if you find yourself as a catechumen and you're spending all your time online defending orthodoxy, you're probably in the wrong straight, because that's just not something you need to do.
Nikko:And then, second of all, like I discovered, especially with atheists, if you're going to have that conversation, you really need to do it from a place of love, and that's more interested in making them secure. And I've talked to Jeremy about this before. I don't know if you remember me saying it, but I'm convinced that the Yaya that's at our church, you know the old one that takes care of everybody and really knows about their week and their day and loves them to death. They're far more effective apologists than we'll ever be, and it's just simply because they come forward and they, they love them, and so the likeliness that you're going to listen to someone who's really invested in your life and is showing it just day in and day out and is always happy to see you when that person says, ah, you might not want to do that or oh, you want to go over here, you're 10 times more likely to listen to them because they've already shown how much they're willing to sacrifice and being invested in you.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Yeah, and that they really care. They actually care, yeah, yeah.
Nikko:Yeah.
Jeremy Jeremiah:So so true, Nico, so true, but yeah, I mean, oh, no please no-transcript.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Yeah, you know, nico, as we. You know, I want to be respectful of your time and I'm not sure how long you know you want to go. I would like to hear a little bit about you know, maybe bringing us up to full speed where you're at now. You know you've become a reader at your parish, which is, you know, a beautiful thing, if you wanted to talk about that. But something that I loved hearing you describe this is going back a little bit.
Jeremy Jeremiah:You talked about how, in the military, these core values were, in a sense, kind of challenging you, because you realize that the, the naturalistic, materialistic world didn't have a good explanation for them. It reminds me of cs lewis, because lewis talks about this. You know, it's it's one thing to say. You know, philosophers can kind of easily do away with things like well, why don't we murder people? Right, atheists sometimes can offer something that can, you know, maybe suffice as a somewhat of an answer on some level.
Jeremy Jeremiah:But lewis talks about. He's like, well, okay, fine, but what about loyalty? How do you explain loyalty? What about the idea that in every culture, everywhere, always bravery and not cowardice is respected, right, right, these deeper truths? Or he even talked about, even in polygamous societies, the idea that sure, you might have more than one wife, but you can never have another man's wife, right? These are these values that are so deeply embedded in us, that are not so easy to overcome from that atheistic, naturalistic perspective, and I just was really struck by that, nico, I think it's a part of your story that is so unique, and I hadn't heard it put that way. Most people go into the military at least in my experience with people I've known go into the military as atheists and come out as psychopaths, not the other way around. So I'll leave it at that.
Nikko:Well, to be honest with you, we'll put the reader thing to bed pretty quickly there, cause, to be honest with you, I don't have any crazy stories about that. It was very organic for me. My priest just asked me one day and it's something that I enjoy participating in and I just haven't I there, couldn't have been. It was almost like reading my prayer book when I started. You know, I just get to do it in front of the parish and do that as a service now and there.
Nikko:There I will tell you that when you join into that type of circle, the hard part is is there's an element of performance to that that you want to give adequately to the people that are in the parish with you and ultimately to God, and so that that does interfere with being as intimate with it. Like you know, I can't when I'm reading the six Psalms, I can't break down and cry in the middle of them. That doesn't work out very well because you know I don't. I don't want everybody else to hear that and I don't want to make it into a performance. So there there is an aspect of that I would say in in being a reader. But other than that it's it's been an absolute blessing to be a part of that and everything. And and it's helped with the Greek especially cause you know Greek priests make good corrections about where where you're mispronouncing Greek and Nick is.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Nick understands that at least I I do as well. Nick's a tenor in our choir and he's actually a wonderful musician. But, nick, you've got a lot of experience with that idea of because, it's true, I felt it a little bit. You know, just in my limited you know, if I'm reading something for the church, it is You're kind of wanting to perform it because you don't want to mess it up, and it is hard to still but remember, you're praying, you're praying, you know, and to have that intimacy, and I think that's why it genuinely is. It's a service, right, it's a service. It is a sacrifice, it's a manner of almsgiving to give of your time in that way and at the same time, like you said, nico, it is at the same time an absolute blessing to be able to do that.
Nikko:Well, I'll tell you a secret In my parish, on the side of the door, the main center entrance there's an icon of St Nicholas. So when I'm struggling to be focused, I just focus on him and think about how he would try and pray, and then that's what I go to and it actually helps a lot. But anyway, to disp dispense with the, the, the reader thing, I mean it's a, it's a great blessing and everything like that. But I don't have any crazy stories because of that. I mean, there is a gentleman who taught me how to read of blessed memory and he is a wonderful individual and that did come from that. But I would say that that's almost separate. He just happens to teach me how to read. Maybe we can talk about him sometime. But there was um a lot of occasion where what were we talking about?
Jeremy Jeremiah:I just lost my train of thought uh, just you know how, oh, almsgiving in the church and, yeah, sacrificing.
Nikko:Well, it's funny because, speaking real quick to kind of tie the two things together, interestingly enough I recently there's a gentleman on TikTok he goes by the Byzantine Marine and he got out of the Marine Corps and it was really crazy because it just so happens, he's actually trained by one of the guys that I trained and was also infantry and everything like that. So another story of a Marine coming out into orthodoxy and he actually, his, his family, is Hindu, believe it or not, and so he he's come to orthodoxy. Glory to God for that. And I, on one of my journeys recently, when I went back home to Denver, I ran into him at St Catherine's and so happened to bump into him and that was a really, really fun time. But he, he and I talked very, very intimately about all the different things in the Marine Corps. That like just makes sense. We said that they jive.
Nikko:You know there's like there's a lot of these different things that you wouldn't think, but for us they like perfectly line up.
Nikko:So you know, like your priest is like your platoon Sergeant, he's the guy that's in the trenches with you and really is helping to give you direction and everything like that. And then you have a bishop, that's the commanding officer and he's directing things from a little bit further away and everything like that. But if you ever really needed anything, you know, if it was important enough, you could bring it to him and it would be taken of serious credibility and all of these different things that go on, where sometimes it's like, hey, I disagree with the priest, but the priest is the priest, so we're not going to fight with him. I'm not going to argue with him in public. I might. I might bring this to him privately as a concern, but I would never undermine him in public, and so on and so forth and so like. Even the way that, like the altar boys, the acolytes come out is kind of like drill for us Marines. So all of these things, all these symbols, all these representations, all this this this clean presentation, this idea that you really want to.
Nikko:You want to show up not just because you're trying to present well, but because it reflects a deeper honor towards things. All of those things make sense to Marines and so when you start talking about particularly in the infantry not to castigate any other members of the military services, but particularly in the infantry you kind of have like a gang mob mentality, where it's kind of like this is the family, you know. So we sound like a little bit like mafia at times, I suppose. And it's like this thing of like you don't steal from family, you help each other out. You're only as strong as the weakest link. And so it's this beautiful integration into orthodoxy where, hey, everybody in this congregation with us, everybody that's sitting inside of this nave, they're all our problems and we're all each other's, and so we get to help each other out and pick each other up and everything like that. And the goal is getting there to be close to Christ. The goal, that's the mission. And so we're, we're headed in that direction, and so it doesn't actually help me to degregate you. And, yeah, we might bring forward some of your shame, sometimes in the Marines, not in such polite ways, but it may sound like to everybody else that I I despise you in some way or something like that, but really I'm just trying to get a hold of you so that we can fix the problem.
Nikko:Really, the guy who's pointing the way to your issues is not even your enemy, and this is something that I tell people all the time that comes from that atheist background. I love Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, because he says these things that are really really deeply true about Christianity in a way you couldn't even fathom there's only one Christian and he died on the cross. God is dead and we've killed him. It's that the door is locked from the inside. You're creating your own suffering. So you say that there's no God for you. That might actually be true, because he allows you to walk away. He's not chasing you. He'll wait patiently for you to come back, but he's not chasing after you, not in the fashion that he's trying to drag you back, but he's always waiting and he's always pointing the way and he's always giving lights and everything like that. He'll signal you all day long, but he's not going to come in and grab you by the belt and force you to do something you don't want to do so, you're closing the door. It's not him.
Nikko:And then the there's only one Christian. He died on the cross is a good example of the fact that we're striving for this thing we can't achieve. We're not Christ and we're not going to be in that fashion. We're not going to be perfect here, and it's only by this grace that we experienced that he's given us through his uncreated light, that we even get close to that, that we can even become co-heirs. And so it's this beautiful message of like yeah, here's this guy standing outside and naysaying us, but he has a clearer picture of christianity in some ways than some of the people that have become involved in it and so said oh sorry no, please continue.
Nikko:And and so, in all those fashions, and everything like that, all that atheistic experience and everything like that, all that atheistic experience and all that marine corps experience all this stuff just really prepped me to be inside of the church. And so, jeremy, to your point again, like when you're talking about that, like god brings us in his own way and he knows exactly who we are and what we need, what's going to speak to us. It was almost like one day I woke up and realized it was true. It wasn't like, uh, I need this check off and I need this and I need this. It was just suddenly like I wake up one morning I'm like, well, shoot, I feel like it's the right thing to do to pray, so I need to know how to do that. And then the next thing is getting a prayer book. And then the next thing is like I'm having these deep experiences with this and it's meaningful. And, oh, this isn't really even emotional for me. This is just like I have these things that I'm actually suffering through now, but they make sense enough so that I can bear that burden and so that that transition of like well, in the Marines, a lot of things are extremely tough and brutal at times, but they make sense because at the end of the day, once you get to the other end, we always say the stuff that you talk about isn't the things that you did that were easy. You're not going to talk about all the times that you hung out and had lunch and got to kind of gaff off for the day or get off really early. What you'll talk about is the time that you went to the mountain warfare training center and climbed up this 10,000 foot peak and everybody was suffering but everybody was laughing together and figuring out how to make it work. And you know, this guy was doing this silly thing, or this guy was falling behind and you managed to pick up part of his load and help him, or he managed to pick up part of your load and help you.
Nikko:And you have these real brotherhood bronze and people don't realize like you can get that inside of orthodoxy. If there's a sin that you struggle with and everything like that, there are people inside of your parish that want to help you. My, my experience as a God parent has been infinitely more blessing a blessing to me than it has to my God children, I think, because like it's kind of like actually having my biological child. It was like just two years ago. She's born and all of a sudden my entire life perspective has changed and I just see all this wisdom that comes out of just having these interactions with her and the kind of love that you have for your children and I hope that I can pass that on to my God children and everything like that.
Nikko:But it becomes obvious that those relationships can be just as real and you can have all the love in the world, but you still have to choose that at the end of the day you still have to kind of push into that and lean into it and really get involved in it, because otherwise it just doesn't merit the same things. And so like I can't express how great it has been to be part of even just fellowship. Fellowship, I mean like we're getting together and I'm sure you guys have similar stories and we're like we have one person that organizes us, like oh hey, ancient faith is having a sale, let's buy a bunch of books together and we'll save on shipping, you know, like all this other stuff. So like it's just these little tiny things. We're going to get together during the week and everything like that, like um Nico's good with gun safety, where he's going to teach our kids about gun safety, silly little things like that, yeah, but it's just incredible because it's a real family.
Jeremy Jeremiah:It really is. It's powerful, nico. You know, one of the most eye-opening experiences I remember coming to Orthodoxy was when I realized that the Bible verse out of Revelation where Christ says behold, I stand at the door and knock. When I realized that he was talking to Christians, because in my whole Protestant evangelical life he was talking to non-Christians and he was knocking on their door You're right. And and they realized, wow, like that is life changing, cause, like, as you said, nico, it's, it's, it's a choice, it's a decision every single day. You know, are you going to hear the call right now?
Jeremy Jeremiah:And I loved beautifully, nico, how you talked about the different parts of the church. Like from Paul in first Corinthians, we're all the body of Christ, but we make up different parts. Some of us are the hand, some of us are the feet, et cetera, and we all have our different, different skills. And I'm going to let Nick have the last word here, but I want to leave you with this I don't think the book's been written yet, but maybe you're the man to write it, nico and that is a study of how orthodoxy and and and the life of the church reflects the military structure and rigors and values. I think there's something there. I love that analogy that you kept drawing back and forth.
Nick:I see it, I would say yes, but I that the military reflects the heavenly reality, right, kind of to give it a platonic little twist, in the sense that the only reason why the military or any institution orders itself in a certain manner is because that's how, you know, the heavenly order and reality is. But anyways, that's a small, small little twist on what you said, love it, nick.
Nikko:I think that's an extremely orthodox thing, if I can, because I loved it. I was actually having a conversation last night and someone said well, how often can we serve the liturgy? And it's like, ah, you don't serve the liturgy, we get to serve the liturgy. The liturgy is ongoing. God has always worshiped and God has always praised. We get to partake in his church. So, like you know, we've been talking about it a lot. But, like, the beauty of this thing that we're bringing and trying to get to people, even online, is that like hey, there's this fullness of truth and we get to be a part of it. And, like Jeremy, you really rang true with me when you were saying I stand at the door and I knock.
Nikko:The ones who don't know are not the ones who are guilty, it's the ones who know. The ones who don't know are not the ones who are guilty, it's the ones who know. And so it's really, really hard to express to people. But it's like I'm not offering you something easy. If you come to the truth, you're going to struggle even harder. And it's that idea that you get out of iconography, where you have this beautiful veil that's placed around Christ, this emanation that's coming and you'll notice, from light blue to dark blue it's getting darker. Well, the closer you get, the more you struggle and the harder it is to see your way through, and you would get that, taught that all the way throughout life. You know, the closer you are to something, the less purview, the less paradigm you actually get to see out here, and so a lot of times they don't understand that.
Nikko:Like, hey, if, if I invite you to orthodoxy and you come to believe that it's true, get ready, because it's hard, because, like when I, when I came out of atheism, I was like Holy cow, I just started, like I just got to the door and I just opened the door up and I'm just getting started on this gigantic journey. That's insurmountable and I spent all this time in my life getting prepared for that and so was it a waste? No, but I can definitely tell you that I wasn't even really along the path. The deeper questions of life are still coming and so many of the other things that had to happen in order for that to occur were necessary. Yes, but, man, do you feel like a little tiny dwarf when you stand at the foot of the mountain and realize like I have a long way to climb and it's a very serious thing, and I don't even know how I'm going to make it. The next step.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Wow, nico, it's. It's been such a pleasure. Um, thank you so much for for joining us and really just imparting your life experience and wisdom. It's greatly appreciated and I hope and pray that our audience is being edified by this. I see from your name there on the Zoom that I believe your patron saint is the same as Nicholas. Would you to end this off if you don't mind. Would you mind telling us how did you come across? How did you pick St Nick for you?
Nikko:So it's funny because this will actually lead to why I got on TikTok too, but anyway. So I started studying and I learned that St Nicholas is this great theologian and great bishop, st Nicholas of Myra in the church, and I thought to myself, wow, that's really where I want to aim as an academic and a skeptic, and all these other things that I didn't realize don't matter as much as I thought at the time. And then I started reading about the things that he did for children and the story about the betrothal and the dowries and leaving money in people's socks and then scurrying away in the night in order not to be seen, and so I realized like, well, I actually really like him for those things more than I really like the academic bishop, the area slapper or puncher, as we all well know and love, but much rather that he had all these subtle things that he did. Where you know I've been, I've been blessed with a lot in my life and the capability to do a job that I really enjoy, that that does well for me as far as financial means and everything else like that. So a lot of the things that I like to do now is like I just get on and get it on Tik TOK, and I watched somebody say, well, I really want to read this book and get it on TikTok.
Nikko:And I watch somebody say, well, I really want to read this book. And then I'll message him like, hey, I can get that book for you, cause I think that that's way cooler than even trying to have an interaction about any theological conversation and everything like that, because that's the nice part about being in the church, right? Is we have this wealth of theologians behind us. Dr Constantino says anything better than I, thousand times better than I would ever say it, and then you have the church fathers who are a thousand times better than that. Amen. So no need for me to. Let's just get you the right information. Let's line you up with the right stuff. I don't need to talk.
Jeremy Jeremiah:That's great. That's great. Well, nico, if, if and I know it's if it's not clear already, nico is not as active on TikTok as he used to be, but the occasional video does appear now and again. Nico, where can our audience find you or if they're interested in reaching out to you?
Nikko:How would you like them to find you? Tiktok's definitely the best way to do that right now, because it's the only really outward facing stuff that I have. I am trolling around in Discord groups and stuff like that, cause I like to participate in those. I even have a Protestant one that I'm a part of, if you remember, a true Christian, or Mike oh yeah, how can I forget?
Nikko:Yeah, yeah, so so I I'm actually on his discord as an admin and everything like that, so I hang out and help him out, but um, primarily the uh tickiktok. If you uh message me on there, I'll figure out what other ways we can get in touch if that's something that people are interested in, awesome, awesome great we'll have the links in the description okay, perfect, perfect, all right.
Jeremy Jeremiah:Well, this has been clouded. Witnesses radio thinking like the saints oh sorry, sorry were you waiting on me I was, I was oh, I'm so sorry, I'll do it again real fast yeah, yeah, this has been cloud of witnesses radio thinking like the saints nico. God bless you audience. Thank you for listening this long um. We hope that you guys enjoyed this, and god bless thank you, next one.
Nick:Thank you, see you.