Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re discussing what’s it like after you put out a series like the Lost Years series, what has our experience been like since sharing everything we’ve shared. And now, fielding a lot of responses and including a lot of questions because that’s what we asked you guys to do is tell us, use #EarBiscuits, let us know how you’re processing it and if you have any questions for us. So we knew we were going to do what we were calling a follow-up episode and this is it. At least, this is one of them. Yeah, I would say this is one of them. Let’s just say it’s one of them. And we may get to some questions. But I think one of the conversations we’ve been having is as we’ve processed how we’re, how we’re processing the reaction, it kinda just led to the decision to take today’s episode in a slightly different direction but I’m not saying it won’t end up in a place of answering questions but we’ll talk about that. One quick thing we do wanna cover is if you’re listening to this, you might know that the podcast comes out every Monday in audio form but through the power of video, we are also recording every single episode with a video camera have been for quite some time and then the following Sunday. So a little bit less than a week after the podcast comes out, the video version comes out at youtube.com/earbiscuits. So if you wanna see us talk and not just hear us talk. If you’re like listening you’re like, “Man, they’re referring to a photo.” Or “Man, I don’t know exactly how to take what he’s saying. “Maybe the look on his face would help me understand it. “Oh, he was actually smiling when he said that.” Right. Or “Yeah, he was crying at that point.” Well, in some people– If you wanna see us smile and cry, then go to the “Ear Biscuits” channel on YouTube. Then also made reference to my hair during my episode where I told my story and then– But you’re done with that. Regretfully, I watched a little bit of that and it was like, “Well, it was an interesting decision.” I’m not saying I’m not gonna do it again but– But we’re not gonna talk about it now. No, we’re not gonna talk about it now. Because it’s not the thing we– I’m not even gonna tell you what my hair looks like today because you’ll have to watch it on YouTube to figure that out. That’s not why they’re here, man. No, well, at least 0.4% of the listening audience is here for my hair. But that means that 99.6% are here for other things, like maybe your hair. My hat and my jacket. You wanna get a load of my hat and jacket. Well, Link has on a hat and a jacket. So, do you– You can almost see it. How do you wanna get into this? Because that I do think it’s, the brief conversation we had last night– I called you in a panic. You called me in a panic. No, you didn’t call me in a panic but you’re like, “Hey, we should talk about “how we’re gonna approach this thing because.” I think that’s a good place to start because we were each individually pulling questions and comments that we wanted to address or respond to. At least that was our plan. Yeah. Well– And it turns out, independently, we were having our own, our own struggles with how we wanted to have this discussion today. Right, so when I called you last night, I had just gotten out of therapy. He’s busting out the barn doors. I don’t know if you’re experienced, those of you who go to therapy. I mean, for me, I always go in thinking, why am I doing this? Like, I got nothing to say, I got nothing to talk about. What am I gonna do? Just makes the, like, I always lo myself back into this place where I kinda just feel like it’s unnecessary and by the end of it, I’m like, “This is why I go to therapy.” Well, as a side note, this brings up something very pertinent that I’m not gonna talk about right now but I will talk about later in this episode. Continue. Oh, well, that was a tease. So the first thing I started talking about was Jessie and I had had like, basically, a fight about, of course, we’re redoing the pool area and so this is typical cliche married couple construction project arguments situation. But I kinda had this sense that there was something going on beneath my concern about the construction project that was fueling the intensity with which I was arguing about this and standing up for things like where grills will be or where grill will be. I’m not like you, I’m only gonna have one grill. I’m not going two grills. You’re already losing. But oh, it’s a nice grill. It might be one grill better than both of your grills put together. Well, I think– That’s at least what I’m going for. You were waving the white flag at the design phase and I’m all for it. So, I was like, you know, I’m been feeling like kinda tired and sort of worn out and it isn’t like, we’re not– Working hard. Well, I will say this. We’re not working as hard as it can get for us. Like, we’re not touring, we don’t have a major project besides our own going things that we’re doing but I’m like, and just usually, I would be like have a lot of energy but I’m like, I just feel a little bit beat down and I started trying to process that and that was when I started realizing that this, the process of our stories going out there and then them sort of people interacting with them, interacting with the stories, interacting with us, it’s been a very emotionally draining thing. Now, I wanna clarify that. It’s also been awesome. Just because it’s been emotionally draining doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been great. I mean the amount of encouragement that we’ve received from people on both ends of the spectrum regardless of whether or not they, people who started not being a Christian and became a Christian, people who were Christian or non-Christian, people are still a Christian, no matter what your point of reference is for the story, we’ve received so much encouragement and just kind messages and thoughtful comments. And that’s been great, hearing people’s stories. But for me, the thing that I realized I was kinda focusing on, this is not too surprising, was the small percentage of people who I kinda felt disapproved by. Disapproved of, okay. By them. And, you know, I don’t wanna talk– Not giving critical responses? Yeah, well, people who, I mean there’s some responses that are just critical and not thoughtful and those are really easy to just be like, okay, I’m not gonna let that affect me but there are some that are critical and thoughtful. And the way my personality interacts with that is I just have this like, I get immediately defensive, right? And so what I wanna do is I wanna come on the show and I wanna go through the questions and the critiques and I wanna enter into some sort of like defense of my position. I wanna justify the conclusions that I’ve come to, right? But maybe beyond that, there was also people who kind of did like a takedown, essentially, of like my story or whatever and my story was kinda easier to do a takedown of because I kind of presented like this very specific process that I went through from an intellectual standpoint, so people kind of key in on things, be like, well, here’s the thing I took issue with here and here’s the thing I take issue with here. And then there were people interacting with the people who had those kind of critical responses who didn’t know who I was, didn’t know who you were, didn’t listen to the podcast but immediately were interpreting me through the lens of this person who’s being critical and I felt, and this isn’t one person, there’s a number of people have done this, and I felt super defensive because I felt like I was being misrepresented, right? And so I just realized that, and I didn’t even understand that I was dealing with this until I started talking it out and just this idea of wanting to be like, well, this is what you, I didn’t say that or you just said this about me or you assumed this about my process or you’re being critical of me and the way that I thought about this or the resource that I suggested and I have all these answers that I wanna get into. But then I very quickly just started realizing that I just don’t want this podcast to devolve into like a defense of the position that we have, the conclusions that we have come to, for a number of reasons. Number one– I’m most curious about what the, if you’re gonna number them, what are your personal reasons because I know, yeah, I agree that one of the reasons is that’s not what this podcast is. Yeah, right. Well, I’ll say yes, it’s not what the podcast is. It’s like this isn’t some defense of any, this isn’t a place to come on and defend and conjecture because that’s not what everybody’s here for but also, we’re not qualified to do that. I am not an expert in any of the stuff that I talked about. I’m just an interested layperson who was, who had their faith basically turned over by just looking in to some of these things but I’m not then qualified to then tell you what you should think about it because when I start thinking about my process, like it wasn’t easy to revisit a lot of those things because sometimes, you’re like, well, in the past I was very interested in this particular thing and I looked it up and I was convinced of something but if you ask me why were you convinced, I can’t immediately recall why I was convinced. A lot of times you’ll become convinced of something but the specific reasons you were convinced, you’re like, I gotta kinda read that resource again to get back to that place because that’s just the way the human mind works, right? Doesn’t mean that I didn’t come to a conclusion and didn’t move to something else but anyway, the idea of getting into this like tit-for-that defending a position, it just felt like he would be very unhealthy for me, personally, but it also felt like I was just very quickly just kinda moving into this place that it was about me and it was about my ego, which is a consistent problem for me, right? I mean I talked a little bit about being a three on the Enneagram. And one of the weaknesses of the three in being an achiever and a performer is you want everyone’s approval. And so the idea of throwing something out there, throwing a bomb out there like we did and being like this sacred thing that is the most important thing in so many people’s lives and was the most important thing in our life, we’ve discarded it for the most part, that’s throwing a rock into a hornet’s nest and some of the hornets will come out and sting you. Yeah, and I just realized that I’m not haven’t been dealing with that in a healthy way because my response to that has been, well, let me tell you why I’m justified. Let me prove to you why I was right about this thing and it’s like, no. A, that wouldn’t be effective. It’s not like that’s gonna change anybody’s mind. But B, that wouldn’t be good for me. Yeah, and I think that as we’ve talked about on this podcast and like I just said, that’s not how we’ve built this thing. This podcast, and I was really glad when you called it to hear you say that because I didn’t know why, when I was looking back at the questions that I was, I was kinda stuck or kind of troubled by it but that helped make sense of it that yeah, this this podcast is a conversation between us sharing our experiences and our perspectives on things with each other. And I think, whatever people wanna take from that as a listener is they’re free to do that but if we start turning towards the microphones and the cameras and we start saying, you know. A little bit of that made sense. It’s like, hey, these are the resources. If you’re interested in some of the things that either one of us talked about, these are the books you can read if you’re interested in that, if you’re into it but you’re not gonna sit here and go through all of these arguments about, okay, now, let’s do a podcast dedicated to Jesus and all of the takeaways from our research about that and the conversations we’ve had and let’s start doing something that’s like, that’s challenging or that has an agenda or puts out a specific perspective that then we’re hoping to change people’s minds. I think it’s more of, I mean even when we would, in previous episode when we would just give relational advice or life advice and half the time, it would just be for the fun of it, we would often say, listen, we’re not experts at this. We’re just sharing our lives and our perspectives. Take it with caution and sometimes, with grain of salt. I mean we’re just people. We’re friends having a conversation that we welcome you to be a part of it but we don’t wanna be prescriptive and we don’t wanna start arguing on a soapbox about anything. So yeah, it started to feel like it was, the temptation was there to be very defensive with some of the questions. And yeah, because of the nature of your story, it generated a lot more of those questions that weren’t personal in nature but they were intellectual in nature or they were philosophical or just belief-oriented. They were they were separate from you as a person and it does invite those kind of conversations and I think having starting to address those now would just perpetuate that and that’s not what we’re after. Yeah. For me, I think that I felt a lot more, I mean you felt, you talked about how you felt relief and how there was a lot of positive ripple effects from this podcast too and you could talk more about that but I would say, I mean that’s predominantly what I’ve experienced. Definitely, the relief of getting it out there and I knew it but I didn’t fully appreciate how sharing so much of our conversations at this desk, at this table, but not sharing that had kind of really eaten away at me. It really made me uncomfortable to seem like I was being real but then I wasn’t being, it wasn’t like a full disclosure. So, I think I have experienced some lightness associated with getting that out there. And like you said, I definitely did as well. It wasn’t until I started thinking about this follow-up, which we were like ask us questions, make comments and respond to them and then I just started finding myself kind of keying in on the critical ones or the gotcha questions. People asking a question because they think that by me and trying to answer it, they’re gonna they’re gonna get me and they’re gonna catch me in some illogical thought process, you know. Right, whereas with my story, it was so, it was told in a way that like if people were critical of me, it could have been taken as a personal attack of a personal experience, not just some external assessment of a belief about something. Well, and I think that that’s a thing that’s difficult for me is that even though I kind of told a story which was like these are the things that I read or learned that then made me question what I had always known, some people interacted with the points, right? Some people might be like I think your conclusion here was incorrect or I think you’ve given too much credence to these critical thinkers, people who are critical of the Bible versus people who believe it, whatever. But the majority of people find some sort of fault with me, right? Well, it was something in your process, something in your pride, something in the way that you see things, you ultimately want it out, you just didn’t know it. Like trying to find some way to explain it based on some deficiency in me, right? Now, first of all, you may be right about that. But that’s kinda beside the point. What I’m talking about right now is it’s difficult to not take it personally even though it’s, it’s difficult for people to not make it personal. And I’m not saying oh, like oh– And it was your personal process. I think the things that you said can be separated from you but for you, they weren’t. Yeah, well, I wanna be clear. I’m not complaining about this. Like, I expected, I actually expected it to be much worse than it was. Like I said, the vast majority of people, whether they’re Christians are not, have been very gracious. I think the thing that I was reminded of is just how big apart my ego plays in anything that I talk about, right? It’s just like I’m obviously, I was trying to be as honest as I can when I tell my story but I also kinda want to be the hero of my own story, don’t we all? And in telling the story, I’m also telling it in a way that justifies my decisions and my conclusions. And there’s really no other way to live life in one sense but that can be also done in a very unhealthy way. We’re gonna take a break here in a second but I wanna talk about how that tendency to basically find personal fault with someone who’s deconstructing is something that we relate to really personally as well. I’ma tell little story but before that, there’s a bunch of leashes. We’re gonna sell leashes. We’ve got leashes, collars. If you got a pet, go to mythical.com, look at the stuff that you can get for your pet. Well, look at the pattern on that, Link. I don’t think we’ve ever had the privilege of doing this. Look at that. But the pattern that is behind us is the pattern that has made its way onto this actual leash. Yeah, put “Ear Biscuits” on your dog or any other type of animal that needs to be leashed. There’s also a collar, a big one and a smaller one, which Jade is currently wearing. She’s at the groomer, she’d be in here right now. Mythical.com, rep your pets. Rep you boys on your pets. In terms of my experience, I would say, I mean I shared my story for me. I shared, when I reach the conclusion, it’s like I want to be hopeful, I want to do the work to remain engaged in a faith journey and not just to be, not just sit on my laurels and go on with my day-to-day life and there’s so much that I could get distracted by that I would just never get back to it. I actually feel like sharing my story was a big, this is a big part of my journey because it just helped me process things for myself and I would say kinda jump start or kinda reinvigorate my own process because for a number of years, I just kinda put it on a shelf, you know? It’s like I’m kinda stuck and I don’t, you know. But then the thing that I started to realize as I prepped it and then as I shared it, started to come out and even afterward as I’ve talked to people about it, I’ve really benefited from understanding myself even more and I can get into, I’d like to get into some of those details but at the same time, at a parallel path, the fact that again, secondarily, it was something that resonated, either your story or my story or both of them resonated with so many people that we didn’t ask people, I don’t know maybe we, I don’t think we asked for people to share their stories, I think we acknowledge that it was happening along the way but I didn’t anticipate that a lot of people would just use it as an opportunity to start to share their own stories to the extent that they have and share how they related to it, to different aspects of what we had to say and I was just, I would just, I didn’t know how to, I would just heart a lot of these things because there were so many and I wanted to reply and say something but, practically, it just wasn’t really possible but I just wanted to say that my experience was just being blown away with how our stories were helpful because when you hear somebody share something and there were people saying, I “don’t feel alone “now that you shared.” And, again, not just me. They were responding to you sometimes, me sometimes but it just means, it means so much that people were moved by it, to not feel alone, to be moved to share their own stories and to just to start that conversation with their friends on the internet and off the internet. I was like, “Wow, I actually think that it’s helped people.” And I really didn’t know that that would happen. Maybe it seems obvious in this internet culture of sharing. That’s like, yeah, when you share and when you take a risk, it helps people but I never associated that with what we were considering doing. And so, I just remember being in my bed one night and I was just looking through all the stories and I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that it did make a difference. And, again, I didn’t know that was gonna happen. I don’t think I would have said I’m doing this to help people. I think I was doing it as, because I felt ready to do it and I felt like it was part of my process. So, I guess I was surprised maybe more than you would have thought I would have been. Well, I mean I wanna talk about how I interacted with all that and like, what how that while it was helpful, it also increased my anxiety. I wanna get to that because I think there’s a whole conversation to have there but I don’t wanna skip over the interactions that we’ve had with our our old friend. And– Yes, I mean– We talked we talked about him a little bit in one of our stories, maybe your story. I can’t remember but yeah, there’s been a number of people that we’ve reconnected with but when we mentioned him, we were talking about how we were on the other, we were still, we were on the front side of it and he was kinda going through the process that we’ve described. To recap. So, this is a very close friend of ours growing up who was a fellow very strong Christian, who, in the early 2000s, basically started to have somewhat of a deconstruction and we reconnected with him. Well, first of all, since our deconstruction, we’ve connected with him and we kinda, we know where we’re each other or at but we told him, “Hey, we’re sharing our stories publicly. “Would love for you to listen,” or whatever. So, that we’ve been kind of talking with him since then. He was able to uncover some of our old correspondence when Link and I were getting ready to go into the ministry to work with Campus Crusade to do evangelism training. And we were running some things by him as someone who was in a different place but then, what he was doing, actually, we spent some time with him, he was going back and like writing in his journal about the interactions that he was having with us. And in reading so many of the responses to our story, especially the responses from– Oh, you’re talking about public responses. Yeah, yeah, so reading public responses to our stories and specifically, responses from people who are, basically, their only response to what we said is this is just very sad. There’s no like, it’s basically just like I’m praying for you, guys, this is very sad. I hope you find the faith, those kinds of responses. He was a very, very reminiscent of the way that we interacted with him and it just reminds me how much where we were at in life and what we were doing was informing our responses because we were literally raising support to go on staff full time. And I had probably, you were in the very middle of it, I was coming to the end. This giant sort of left turn in your life where you’ve thrown, you’ve left your previous job and you’re putting it all on the line for Jesus and then you go and you talk to a friend who you really respect and we probably, we had the deepest sort of intellectual conversations about our faith even in high school with this guy. We talked about things on as deep of a level as we could at the time and in high school, I remember those conversations starting. So, we just always kinda had this sort of philosophical thing going with him. And then for him to have these really deep questions that were kinda tearing at the roots of our faith, I remember me and you talking to him and then talking to each other and it was just like, I think the way you described it in a text to him the other day was like, we just had, there was zero openness to what you were going through. There was a complete inability to turn the questions that you were asking yourself onto ourselves because there was way too much at stake at the time. Yeah. What are we, gonna suddenly stop races at port and tell everybody that who just gave us all this money that oh, by the way, guys, I’m really questioning the foundations of this whole thing. It’s like I’m not gonna go there. So, I’m not even gonna allow that thought to enter my mind. Yeah, so, in my recollection was we were as polite as we could to be in trying to help him turn a corner, to double back and that was it. ‘Cause that’s what we were supposed to do. So, it wasn’t an actual conversation. And he felt that and he knew that. He was also gracious because in his journal entry, he basically said, “I completely get “where these guys are coming from “because it’s where I came from.” And that’s why, and so– Yeah, I think he said that he did to others what we were doing to him. And so all that to say that any sort of dismissive comments that we’re getting about our story, which again, is a very small minority, it’s more than justified. We deserve every bit of it because we’ve done it, we’ve been there and that, and I remember thinking about him in thinking about I was like, “Where did you go wrong?” Like, I think he hung out with the wrong people. I was trying to figure out, I was trying to get to the bottom of why he, someone who had a very real strong informed faith was suddenly questioning it and I was just like, “Where did he screw up? “Let me find that. “Let me find where he screwed up.” I never could figure it out. So, anyway, I just wanted to acknowledge that, that we’ve done that and we’ve been there. Yeah, so, I think there are people who are coming to our defense when they see people say, “It makes me sad.” And I saw someone make the point I don’t think people realize when they say that it makes them sad when someone else shares their personal story that that’s manipulative. But I get it. I understand why it makes, if you have a certain worldview, and it made me sad before for other people, so– Yeah, 100%. But I do think it’s helpful. I think it’s helpful and listen, I’m not saying this but I think this could be, this could help those of you who have said this is sad to understand why it’s not, it’s difficult to not take that as an insult because if I were to say it’s sad that you that you’ve based your life on something that’s not true. That’s offensive, that’s an insult, right? To say that to you. I’m not saying that but if I were to say that, that would be offensive, it would be insulting, it would be dismissive. And so, I think the same thing is it’s sad that you guys are moving away from this thing that I know to be true and it’s sad that your eternal destiny is in question. I understand where you’re coming from and according to your worldview, this is pretty much the only response that you could have but to communicate it in that way and not understand why that’s insulting and dismissive and people are gonna perceive it in that way, hopefully, I’ve shown a little bit of light on that. I think another thing that we didn’t anticipate was that people, not that people were gonna come out of the woodwork in order to text or email or try to Facebook messages even though we’re not on Facebook anymore, about things is, well, it’s not that that surprises but they would then reach out to our wives or our extended families. And so, that was something that, I don’t know if it would have changed how or if we would have done it but it’s not something that we specifically anticipated. It’s like, I mean Christy would get a bunch of messages from people she hadn’t heard from in a while and I know they come from a place of really caring but it’s like, now, she’s got a field questions from people that are like, it was basically like, are you okay? Are you guys, okay? And I was like, Christy, you know, the thing that I’m realizing is that, when I tell the story of us in the minivan, like in tears, not going in a church and trying to figure where we were and where we each were and all those type of things and the anguish from that particular story I told, well, that was two years ago. It’s like, we’re in a different place than that. We’re not sitting, we don’t have the minivan anymore and even if we did, we’re not sitting in it weeping every Sunday. We’re in a much healthier, healthy is not the right word but like we’re in a good place and people, when you share this story and if the last time they talked to you was three, four, five, six, seven years ago, it’s like, well, they don’t they don’t know when that was so it’s like, did this just happen? You know? And really, the first thing Christy learned was the first question she would ask a response to the people that she would engage with was have you actually listened to the podcast? ‘Cause a lot of people, they would hear from someone and they would have concern but they wouldn’t have listened to it themselves. And so that’s an important point. It’s like I’m not gonna engage if you don’t really know all the details already. I can’t sit here and retell you all these on Facebook. So, even from a purely practical standpoint, it’s kinda like, there’s a handful or maybe more than handful of like, oh we got a… I find myself in a conversation with someone and it’s like they’re bringing some assumptions to the table that like we’re in trouble. Yeah. And that’s not the case. Yeah, I didn’t anticipate, I mean, I should have thought about it but I was thinking about a lot of things leading up to us talking and I did not anticipate, given the nature of a small town and a community of people who, at least in the circles that my family runs in back home, it’s like, we’re talking about a Christian circle of people, a very well-connected group of people. Both my family and Jessie’s family. So it’s like the amount of people who have kinda come up to them saying things, making assumptions, again, having not listened to the podcast in many cases. Yeah, I feel like I could have prepared them better. I feel bad about that. I think that’s been a source of some anxiety for me as well as I’ve thought about this because they knew that we were gonna talk about it to some degree. Some more than others. They’re back there on kind of the frontlines. It’s like we’ve been dealing with a lot of the online stuff. Nobody comes up to us on the street. But nobody in LA. Yeah. But they’ll see somebody at the grocery store. You’re not sitting on a restaurant and a grocery store and somebody’s gonna come up to, you know. Yeah, so, I guess we could have done better on that front. But I wanted to talk about what you were saying with the number of, the way that I interacted with the number of like stories that people were telling and a number of people who related. Now, my initial reaction was one, this is awesome, this is super encouraging. Like you said, there’s a few times where I was just reading people’s stories, it was very emotionally, it’s a very emotional thing. It’s like people have been through some shit, man. Yeah. In contrast to our stories. Like I said, it was very difficult to kinda move out of that world but that world we benefited personally from that world in a lot of ways that other people have a lot more trauma depending on their background. And some of those stories are just heart-wrenching. But the way that again, so there’s, Just sort of my heart reaction to it which is this is great and then there’s my head reaction to it which is like what are we gonna do with this? I’m always thinking about what the next thing is that we’re gonna do and– Yeah, I thought about that too. When you got all these people sharing this story and there feels like there’s this momentum and there feels like there is this, we’ve all kind of left something that was very organized and was a very particular movement into this thing that it’s just pretty nebulous, what is this life after Christian faith. Yeah, are you talking about thoughts that enter your mind like, well, should we organize something? No, no, no, no, no, no. I wanna be clear, I wanna be clear. I’m too old and just wise enough to know that that would be a horrible idea. I’m not talking about a Rhett Link church. I’m talking about like a specific, like, oh, let’s complexion of this podcast to have some programmatic addressing of some of these things. I would say in a more general sense, it’s just asking the question of is there a project associated with this, right? Mm-hm. That’s one question that enters my mind, is like is there a project? I don’t know what that is but you got all these people, they’ve got their stories, there’s this momentum, we’ve tapped into something and so I feel this pressure to sort of figure that out. At the same time, I’m feeling this pressure to like you said, this has sort of been a kick in the pants to like sort of re-engage spiritually. For me, that’s been true but it’s also, kinda the way that it’s registered with me is I threw out this deconstruction story and talked about what I don’t believe anymore. I talked a little bit about what I do believe now but what I do believe now is held with a much lower level of conviction and passion. Because it’s more of a position of openness and curiosity but I don’t wanna be in that position perpetually and never embrace anything, right? But there was this sort of like, people like, you just, again, you just threw this rock into the hornet’s nest and now, you got these hornets flying around and some of them are coming up to you and asking, well, what now? You know? Mm-hm. And I’m not trying to put on the mantle of some spiritual leader. That’s the last thing that I want to do because that’s not, it’s very much the last thing that I ever want to do. But there is this part of me that’s just like, well, you should find some answers. You should find some answers and then you should relay those answers. And again, I just feel like that is rooted in my ego. I don’t think that that’s rooted in anything good. I don’t think that there’s, I think it’s very much about a personal, personal interest and personal self-justification. I don’t think that there’s any, I should be leaning into that. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be personally seeking and being open and being open to whatever is next for me, which I think that I am but doing that because I want to then present myself to a group of people who are listening is a, and the interesting thing is– It’s a trap. Ironically, that’s what ministry is for so many people. That’s what any position of leadership is but I’ve got a lot of friends who are pastors and I’ve had a lot of friends who are pastors and some of them in their most honest moments have relayed to me that there is this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t know, that’s probably not the right terminology but there is this idea that now, I am the one that you are coming to for answers and so I must create the answers. I must have the answers. I must live the life. I must have the appearance of having it figured out because that is what you expect of me and I think that a lot of pastors are just kinda stuck in this– It’s tough. Hamster wheel of appearances and kinda, and the church, in a lot of ways, has set it up that you can’t screw up. You can’t be a human. You can’t have imperfections especially if you’re in leadership, especially if you’re the pastor. Right. Yeah, I feel for them. But I’ll draw an analogous scenario for us. I was on a Valentine’s date with Christy and first of all, there’s a story that I’m not gonna tell now. Maybe I’ll tell it next week when it’s like, when we have more space for this so don’t let me forget. I got this funny thing that happened. But that’s kind of my point. I was in a dinner and another weird thing happened that I’m not referring to, and I made a joke to Christy at dinner and I was like, “Oh, you know I’m going to talk about this on ‘Ear Biscuits’.” And it was like, she was like, “Uh-uh, are you serious?” It’s like, and it wasn’t that she didn’t want me to share a funny story. It’s just that we’re on a date. This is about me and her and if I’m sitting there, the moment something happens, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I got a ‘Ear Biscuit’ story.” Then that robs the intimacy of the moment. It’s like, well, we just had a funny moment, you know? We experienced a funny moment that you can then have on an audience later. And I was like, actually, I was just joking because I that was my joke, Christy, well, that was my defense. It’s just a joke but I’m talking about it on “Ear Biscuits” right now. No, I’m talking about– Talking about. Talking about it but I’m not talking about it. Okay. But maybe next week, I’ll share another story but not this one because it’s off limits now. Because that’s a sacred, precious. Just between you and Christy. But my point, I hear your point when it comes to like, am I gonna pursue? Am I gonna like, let’s just say it’s find an answer to a specific spiritual philosophical question for yourself. Are you gonna find that question just so you can turn around and prove that you have an answer on “Ear Biscuits”? Like that’s dangerous, that is a trap. You know, it’s like– It’s a trap for certain personalities. My personality, listen, it’s a trap for me and it’s one of the ways that I interacted with responsibilities in the church, right? It’s like, yeah, of course, I’m gonna lead a Bible study, right? And, of course, every once in a while, if they asked me, I’ll preach. Give a talk on something. And I think there’s a, ironically, the way and, of course, our experiences with the evangelical church but the way the evangelical church is structured at this point is typically men who are Type A personalities, who would otherwise make great CEOs make really good pastors in the system that is currently set up. And they’re charismatic leaders, not charismatic in the theological sense but just winning personalities. They’re smart, they’re insightful, they know how to relate, they know how to tell a good story. And they quickly find hundreds, if not thousands of people who want in and I think it just creates a really unhealthy, I know for me, personally, if we had a stayed in ministry, I’m sure that we would have taken some sort of path in leadership and I think I operated in a really unhealthy place for a really long time. I know I did, I described it. A as a worship leader. Yeah, but the interesting thing is that to get back to the what we’re gonna do with this momentum or whatever it is, and this is kinda what I was talking about in therapy last night is finding a way to just lean in to the personal nature of the process. But it not being about a movement. It not being about being right, being justified, being the Bible answer man. You know what I’m saying? And having an answer and having a reason for everything because very quickly, almost immediately, that just becomes about me. It just becomes about me wanting to justify myself and to get your approval. The whole process that I’ve been going through in therapy is leaning away from that and being like it’s not, no, no, no, it’s not about people’s approval. It’s not about what people think about you. It’s about figuring out what is actually happening in your heart. So, so my desire for when we talk about these things on the podcast is just it to, I’m not saying we shouldn’t answer a question or two, at some point, even now, I don’t know, probably not now, we’re almost out of time but I want the tone of that and the purpose of that to be, hey, I’m not an expert, just a couple of guys trying to figure out life, trying to move closer to the truth, doing our best. Yeah, for me, like I said, the process of share my story really helped me, almost internalize some conclusions about like realizing things about who I was and about how I interact. Like, the way that I interacted with my faith and my belief system and what that meant about me as a person then, what it means for me now and, well, there’s one tweet from Holly that I wanted to read. She said, “I, too, was raised evangelical “and I’m an Enneagram one,” like me. “I struggled my whole life trying to be a, “quote, better Christian, and it wasn’t until after college “that I realized I was exhausted “from living with this internal struggle.” This process of putting this out there has really helped me begin to understand to a new level my own internal struggle and that there is absolutely a level of exhaustion that I did not know that was there associated with my perfectionism, my underlying anxiety. And again, I know that there’s a lot of anxiety there and I and it’s not all from my experience within the church. It’s from a lot of things. And so, it really provided the occasion for me to say, you know what, I am going to go to therapy. I’m not just gonna talk about it. We’ve talked about it a lot. Christy and I have talked about it a lot. Some of our closest friends, we’ve talked about it for years and it almost felt like I was practically going to therapy. But that’s also– But that’s so wrong. No, that’s so Link. Yeah. You have this, and I can’t come up of maybe other examples. I was like, I’m not opposed to it, I just– But you have this tendency that I’ve noticed throughout our lives together that like, sometimes, just like when somebody close to you kinda starts doing something or is interested in something, you’re just like, yeah, yeah, I’m, by proxy, interested. I am, by proxy. So, I think you’ve been experiencing the benefits of therapy because the people you’re closest with have been going. You pick up on a lot. Right. And it’s not like we don’t read and discuss a lot of the same books. But last night, ironically, the same time you were at therapy, I was at my first therapy appointment and I don’t think without going through this process, I would have pulled the trigger on setting up that appointment. A first therapy, I’m gonna sit here and give you a play-by-play but, one hour is not a lot when you’re trying to get it and when you have as much as I have that you’re trying to get out. But I’m very excited to have taken that step and to me, it’s a tangible step for me, personally, as a result of, to follow through on the commitment that I made to myself and just share it at the end of my story that was, I do wanna work at understanding and loving myself more and explaining my capacity to love others more and also to pursue faith. To me, those things are connected. I don’t think if I can’t start to love myself more, I don’t know if I can receive any love from God, if that love is there to be received, you know? So, again, I’m just getting started but I’m very, I’m excited. I know there’s a lot of pain associated with therapy and I also know that I have a lot of, that there’s this fear that’s somewhere in me that then, on the underside of that, there’s things that I’ve been afraid to explore. But my hope and my excitement to grow and to work at it overrides the fear that I think that maybe has always been there. And I think this process has helped me realize. So. And again, to hear, like Holly’s tweet that like she related to that, it was just hearing that somebody related, then kinda doubled back on itself and helped me understand myself even better, hearing it in somebody else’s words. It’s like, well, this is how I feel and this is the words that I would put it in of being exhausted. It’s like, wow, yeah, that is me. So it’s already come back and I just feel, I’m grateful that we’ve done it. Just for me, personally. I cannot own how other people process it for them, that’s on them. Well, if we are gonna answer a question, I think you’re kinda getting very close to it already. A question that I saw a number of times was why, why tell this story? It may be even more specifically, there were people who were like why tell this story? What if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong and you’re leading an untold number of people, depending on the popularity of this podcast, down the wrong path? Do you really want that? Do you really want that on your shoulders? You wanna be responsible for that? I think that most of those comments are coming from people who haven’t been listening to the podcast and I don’t just mean the episodes, I mean the podcast as a whole. Yeah. Because I think that anyone who’s been on board for any length of time has sort of seen this coming because we have gotten increasingly personal and so listen, some people are like, I would never do that, I would never talk about what is happening to me in therapy and have thousands of people listen to it. Listen, I get that, I respect that. And I don’t exactly know why this is the way that we’ve chosen to do what we’re doing. In some ways, this podcast has become therapy, it has become very therapeutic, right? Because we talk about, I talked to my therapist in the way that I talked to you guys, on here, right? It’s just very much like, you kinda just start talking and see what happens. And I don’t know if there’s just this increased desire for vulnerability and being able to just communicate that with a wider audience, I don’t know what the motivations are and I don’t know exactly how we got here. I just know that, like you said, the idea of continuing to kinda pull back the curtain and be like this is just two guys trying to live life and figure it out and if you wanna be on the conversation, listen in on the conversation of two guys who’ve known each other forever, who are best friends, who work together, who are husbands and fathers and now, people who’ve deconstructed from their former Christian faith. You wanna be along for the ride, then let’s do it, let’s do it together. But because it had gotten, the tone had gotten so vulnerable and there was so much about self-disclosure and because it was so related to our careers, like we can’t honestly talk about why we do what we do as an actual career without talking about how we got here and telling the full story and we honestly can’t tell the full story without putting our perspective on those years into perspective, which then requires us to tell our story, personally. It all kinda fit together. But I think another answer is that we are discovering that when you are vulnerable, it opens you up to more love and more empathy, for, again, for yourself and for your best friend and for other people. What I just described it like, I share my story for me, it helped other people and then that response helped me. It’s just the way, people look at it like a show and yes, we have to set boundaries for ourselves and we have to be like the thing we talked about a few minutes ago, about like whether it’s on the date or like our version of being the preacher but, so yeah, we have to be protective and we have to set boundaries and we’re gonna learn that as we go but we’re able to, and I’m grateful that we’re able to have an honest conversation in front of a microphone that we would have if it wasn’t here. We’ve talked about how we have them a lot more because they’re here than if the microphone is not here but then we also, what I’m saying is we’re conducting an honest friendship. It just happens to be recorded and I’m just, what people do with it is their business but I we also experience a greater capacity for connection with, and love with an audience because it’s not just some people sitting in chairs listening, it’s individual people who were then contributing to a conversation. It’s not like we’re going on television. It’s a different thing, you know? And the nature of the conversation has been really refreshing. And I wanna read this one thing. On the Discord channel of the Mythical Society, which is, if you don’t know, that’s our fan club and yes, you gotta pay for it, I’m not promoting it but I’m just saying it like, I was just so encouraged by this one exchange and I’m not gonna read the whole thing but there was this 16-year-old guy who was, he was processing our “Ear Biscuits” and he just shared that he’s had a devout set of beliefs, the specifics of which aren’t pertinent, and that he was impacted by our conversation and there was parts of it that kinda shook him up and he was just sharing that, not with us but just in the Discord. And then a response from one particular mythical beast, I just wanna read part of it. Well, I’ll read the whole thing. “I remember being there as a teenager “so I definitely know what you’re going through. “My best advice is just to trust yourself “and to remember that there’s nothing wrong “with questioning and researching on your own “and coming to your own conclusions. “Remember that no matter what your religion teaches, “there is nothing wrong with questioning or having doubts “and that whatever conclusions you come to “or choices that you make, “make sure that you’re making them for yourself “and no one else. “You may have people try to guilt you “into making a certain decision or believe in a certain way “because they want you to believe the way they do. “I know I definitely did but ultimately, “no one but you can decide what you believe.” And then the response was, “Yeah, that’s what I need to hold on to.” And then there was some more there. And it says, “If you need support, “I know there are a ton of people in this server “who would be happy to talk or listen “and if there’s anything in particular “you’re struggling with, “we might be able to provide resources.” “Again, I really appreciate it,” was the response. And I think there are a couple of things there. It just seems like that’s the message that I talk to my kids about, you know? And it is such a big deal to say okay, you have to make these decisions for yourself. No one can make these decisions for you. They can but you really need to make these decisions for yourself, no matter what it is, you’re gonna be loved and supported by this community, which is my second point that I’ve just blown away that that one example is repeated again and again that there’s so many people in our community and then it gives me hope for humanity at large that there’s that level of love and support for people that, even if you’re not talking about the specifics of what do I agree with you on this or are we on the same page or are you right or are you wrong? But it’s love and support and encouragement to deal with those things in the most healthy way possible. These issues that are so important. And I was just grateful for that. And that’s why we don’t, we don’t want the conversation to devolve into an argument, right? Yeah. About the finer points of theology. And again it’s not that I don’t think, I just wanna be just really clear. It’s not that we don’t think that you having your own answers as close to the truth as possible is not important. As I hope, I demonstrated in my story, it’s like because those answers are important is why I don’t believe like I used to believe, right? It isn’t that those theological points and examining those things are not important, they’re very important but the moment that they become a source of contention between people and the moment that you take love out of your interaction, you’re missing the point, regardless of what side of the issue you’re on. I think that just the idea, because basically, what you’re talking about is that the most, and this is a cliche and corny but the most important thing is love, right? It’s like what is my ethic or what are my ethics at this point? It’s love. and I actually think that asking that question in any given situation, what is the most loving response? What is the most loving way forward in this situation is a pretty good guide. And incidentally, that’s very consistent with what Jesus taught, you know? Faith, hope and love, the greatest of these is love. I think that regardless of where you’re at and where you come down on these particular issues and what you think about the nature of life and the nature of eternity, you’re not gonna go wrong if you kinda fall back on that. What is the most loving thing that I could do in this situation? And like Link said, I think that it’s been super encouraging that the vast majority of the conversation has been loving and respectful. We have an incredible community, we value that a lot and that’s the conversation that loving conversation is what we want to continue to engender. And it’s not about two guys who are, listen, we may have engineering degrees but we’re just, we’re YouTube comedians. That’s what we are. We’re not authorities on any of these issues. If you’re coming to either one of us to figure out what you think about your faith, there are much better sources. And so, that was that was not the intention at all in telling our stories was you to be convinced, that we were right. It’s just very much hey, this is what our process was, this is what our story was. You should be doing your own investigation. But we just wanna be about love. It’s that simple. And on that note, can I recommend a children’s book? Sure. I was reading this book to Lando. He pulled it off his shelf and this is my Recs in Effect this week. It’s called the “The Three Questions” written and illustrated by Jon, J-O-N, J. Muth, M-U-T-H. “The Three Questions” is based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, it’s a short story that I had never read. And so as I was reading this children’s book to Lando, I was just moved. And it’s very pertinent to the conversations that we’ve been having and it was just like, it felt like a faith moment, I’ll be honest that I was, I mean like Lando started looking at me weird because I was like tearing up and I was like, “This book, this is amazing.” There’s some wisdom in this and I didn’t realize that it was based on a Leo Tolstoy a short story until we were done reading it but like I could sense that there was some depth to this thing. So, you know what, I’m not gonna tell you about it but I recommend, if you, Lando’s nine, he was very much into it but you don’t have to have kids to read it. I actually recommend this children’s book adaptation instead of just listening to on Audible or reading the Leo Tolstoy short story of the same name, though I do recommend that story as well but the way that it’s turned, is more modernized and it’s a little bit more existential is, it’s very powerful. So, that’s my recommendation. Will you read it to me? A kid’s book. Will you come over to my house to read it to me and tuck me in tonight? Gladly, yeah. Good. Yeah. #EarBiscuits, let’s continue the conversation. And listen, we’re gonna answer some questions at some point, so I don’t want everybody to think we’ve just completely thrown all your questions aside. We’ve still got a bunch of them. We’ll get back to them. We’re just trying to zero in on the tone of how we’re gonna approach those. Thanks for listening. To watch more “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits”, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.