Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”, a podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re going to be talking about our relationship to Christmas and how it has evolved over time as we’ve evolved as people. Yeah, it’s an interesting touch point. It’s interesting for me. This is kind of an exercise of looking through the lens of Christmas and seeing my former self maybe in different stages and then my current self. That’s how you see this going? Yeah, I mean, you know. This conversation, I mean. Talking about, yeah, or just life. Yeah, I mean I think I wanna talk about the way that I used to think about Christmas and then as I was sort of transitioning out of personally considering myself a Christian, like what that was like and then what it’s like today. And how that continues to be in process. Yeah, this is gonna be interesting. Who knows where this is gonna go? One quick thing before we move on though. Is it a podcast where two lifelong friends or is it the podcast where to lifelong friends? I don’t listen to any other ones with two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. Because I think I’ve been saying the but I could have sworn you said a. Oh, did I? Okay. I’d like to retract my a and replace it with the the. I don’t know. It was very quick. The, I might say the. You swallowed it a little bit. I didn’t really know. I mean, but you made me think, hold on, is it a or the? What have I been saying? I think I’ve been saying the. We have to go to the tape. Do we want to say the? Let’s say the? The. I might say the, I reserve the right to say the. Back to Christmas. I mean this year in particular and this approaching holiday season, I mean, yes, we’re gonna be talking about Christmas and there’s gonna be- I’m sorry to interrupt you but you said two phrases that make me think of Christmas movies. You said the lens of Christmas and I was like that would be a good Christmas movie then you said back to Christmas and I was thinking about a future, like a time travel movie. “Back to the Future” Christmas edition? You had to go back to Christmas for something. I really wanna make a Christmas movie, man. We should make a Christmas movie. Well, the idea we came up with for Christmas movie, it just didn’t, it didn’t come together. What was that idea? It was called, it was it was about a gift. It was about a gift that you, it was a husband got a gift for his wife. He wanted to get her the perfect gift. It’s called “The Perfect Gift.” Yes. And I still think it’s, I think we could update the idea and still make it. I don’t think it was a horrible idea and a role for Jeff Goldblum, remember that? Yeah, he was- Not that he would have ever said yes. No, he was attached. I wanna make a Christmas movie, man, ’cause I got to make a rec later on and I was like I’m gonna rec sort of like an under the radar Christmas movie. I got a great recommendation for Christmas movie. It’s my favorite movie of all time. Yeah, we know “Elf” so I’m not gonna steal that but I’m not gonna recommend a Christmas movie because there’s just not, I mean it’s hard to find the ones that are good. When you ended up going really quickly to “Die Hard” as a Christmas movie, which is not a Christmas movie. It just takes place at Christmas, it just shows you, there just haven’t been enough good Christmas movies made. We can give it another shot. Come up with something else or tweak that one. And just another aside about Jeff Goldblum, I think this is something that I just read on Reddit as I was falling asleep. Jeff Goldblum has this practice whenever he meets somebody at a party, well, the way it was described was in a tweet from somebody who was semi-famous, like a journalist and who would mingle at parties and he would know some people at parties but he was introduced to Jeff Goldblum for the first time and the guy was introduced to Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum’s first response was, “Oh my god, of course!” And it makes you feel important. And he was like, I just didn’t know how but I guess Jeff Goldblum had read one of my articles or something, you know? He seemed to know me but then, I happened to hear him being introduced to other people at the party and every time, he would say, “Oh my god, of course!” You got to love that, man. Yeah I mean it’s a little manipulative but it makes you feel good. It’s smart, it’s smart. It’s makes you feel good. People wanna be important. I thought about maybe I should do that or come on with my own version of that and then I’m like, you know what, you have to be Jeff Goldblum. Well, I just think you have to change it. You have to be Jeff Goldblum. Not only change it from what he says in particular. Oh my god, of course! But you have to change it, maybe that was just that night. Maybe when he’s looking at himself in the mirror before he goes out, he’s like what is it tonight? Oh my god, of course! And then he goes with that. Well, I think once you land on that one, you realize it is the holy grail of introduction responses if you’re Jeff Goldblum. I mean, or someone else who everybody at a party wants to talk to. Like, not even just because he’s a celebrity, because he’s Jeff Goldblum. What about, yes, finally? I mean that- Been waiting to meet you. That has- No, that doesn’t work because if you’ve already met the person, doesn’t work. Oh my god, of course is the best but I’m just saying you don’t wanna overuse it. Back to Christmas. Sorry, you were saying something. Christmas this year along with everything else this year is strained and strange. It’s just a lot of traditions are having to be altered ’cause the holiday season is the time of tradition but everything’s got to change. At least, for me, in my household, we will not be going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I actually think by the time this comes out, Thanksgiving has already happened. Yeah, it has. And I did not go home and I’m not going home for the Christmas holidays or New Year’s or any of that stuff. It’s sad so I’m mourning the ability to do that. I am really relieved that my extended family understands and actually even before we told them, I kinda felt like are we breaking the news to them that we’re not coming home? But when we had the discussions, it was like, “Oh yeah, we already knew that you guys weren’t gonna be able to come home.” It’s just, you know. I don’t wanna get into what the COVID numbers are like now versus in a couple of weeks from now. Well, they’ll be higher in a couple of weeks. Oh, gosh. I mean it’s heading in the wrong direction right now. I’ve got loved ones that I wanna protect and I just can’t have, I can’t be the one that increases their risk. Hey, listen- I just can’t have that on my conscience. I don’t necessarily wanna go here but I will go here because I know people feel differently about this but it is just a fact, an indisputable fact that some people this holiday season will get on a plane, go across the country to be with their loved ones and someone will die because of that. I’m not saying- Right. I’m just saying that it’s a fact, that’s gonna happen. You can do with that what you will and so for me, it’s like- That can’t be on me. I don’t want to be a part of that, you know? I think next year is gonna be different. I think we’re gonna be through this but I don’t want the risk. I’m just really glad that they were expecting it, they were on the same page, they were understanding. I mean that doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be sad and it’s gonna hurt when New Year rolls around and we still haven’t seen anybody. It’s gonna hurt but that’s our plan. The last two years, I actually think this will be the third year, yeah. So the last two years- ‘Cause you’ve been going home for Thanksgiving. We’ve been going home for Thanksgiving and not Christmas because we, and I discussed this in this venue, we had made a point that you know what, we wanna start forging our own- Swords. traditions here in our home base so that, I’ve really started to look forward to what when my kids are coming back home for the holidays to me and Christy and then hopefully, at one point, we got grandkids coming in. We want our home that we set up and the traditions that we have to be the focal point of this next layer of tradition, you know? if you keep going home, it’s kinda stalls thing out and that’s kind of the decision we made so we give them Thanksgiving and then we don’t give them Christmas, at least until we can establish something and that actually is part of the complexion of this conversation, I think, is this being the third year, we’ve got these COVID complications and limitations but still, the Neal family were trying to forge what Christmas looks like for us in California because traditions and habits and expectations aren’t formed in just a year or two and we’re only in year three so we’re still trying to figure all that out and then you factor in everything that, yeah, you were talking about just in terms of like where I’m at spiritually that journey and how all of that really seems to come into sharp focus around Christmas for obvious Jesus as a baby reasons. Would you say that you home in on those things? Did I say home? No, I’m just saying that you said sharp focus. You’re really the verbiage police today. No, I’m- The, the, a. You didn’t say anything. It’s just throwback, it’s a throwback to our conversation. I thought I said- You did not say anything. Oh, I thought I said. Yeah, and this Christmas is gonna be especially interesting because we’re gonna spend it together which we have not done. You’re talking about us now, me and you. As families, we will be spending, I’m not saying that we’re necessarily gonna get together on Christmas Day but- We haven’t made plans- We don’t know exactly what’s the ins and outs of this are but the family that my family is going to see is your family, right? And so, and we haven’t done that before because we typically do go home to North Carolina for Christmas and have the traditions that we do with my family and then with Jessie’s family. They all kind of live really close to one another and they do, obviously, they want us to come back but they also probably know that given our disposition when it comes to the pandemic that we will not be. And yeah, so it’s gonna be strange because we haven’t, we don’t have these traditions that we’ve done as a family on our own. There’s only been one Christmas in all of our time in California where we didn’t go home And it’s like Jessie’s birthday is a week before Christmas and then what we typically would do, we would celebrate her birthday and then like that weekend before Christmas, usually, get on the plane and go to North Carolina. So being here for the whole time and then also, usually, we tack on like a trip for ourselves as a family after we get done with the Christmas and the New Year stuff. Like right at the beginning of the year and you’ve this as well, it might just be me and Jessie going somewhere together like for a few days but none of that’s gonna happen. There’s just gonna be a whole lot of being at home through this whole time and I really don’t know how to prepare for it. We’ll make the best of it. At least we do have our families that we’re in this quarantine pod situation and that helps. and then our friend Mike and his family. We’re gearing up to make sure that like we’re in a safe situation to pod up with them. I’m pretty sure they’ll be here for the holidays and so it’ll be like our three families. Yeah, so I think it will be a good time being safe together. I’m looking forward to it. Oh, it’ll be a good time. But we’ve got to kind of invent our, I mean first of all, I’m very excited about the food, of course, and I wanna play an integral part in the preparation of the food. I’ve got several ideas. Oh, yeah. That I’ll actually get into when I do my rec later on but. I plan to feed you, that’s what I’m saying ultimately. And I could still contribute music on a playlist. Yeah, you can have a playlist. You had a great playlist the other night. That worked, right? Yeah. You know, I was able to, whenever something needed to be said important, I stop the music. Yeah. And then when it was over, I started the music back and then people were like, oh I like this song. It’s like, your music’s a little too loud, can you turn it down? Oh, sure, sure. And while I was outside frying up the chicken for the Nashville hot chicken sandwiches, I was listening to the music outside as well. I had it pumping outside so I was hearing the playlist just by myself and I was- Kinda bopping? I was kinda move in a little bit. You’re kinda moving? And Mike brought me a couple of drinks which made everything better. Yeah, there you go. So, we all have our part to play. Okay, well now, I’m just thinking about that. I might dress up like Santa. Maybe could get, I don’t know, somebody could dress up like Santa. Well, I kinda think- We could do a nativity scene. I feel like in our pod that, Mike is probably the- He’s got the whitest beard. He got the whitest beard. We got this- We’ll talk about it. Last year- You wanna be an elf. Last year, when you guys were here- That’s what you like so much. I’ll do it. With Mike and Mike’s family and Jenny, we got matching Christmas pajamas. We all wore matching Christmas pajamas. Well, is that happening again? It should. Do I have to buy the same pair that you already have or are we’re going all new? I’d like to just reuse what I have but I haven’t thought about it. You got to see if you can acquire it. I guess something that’s a close approximation but a little bit better. But is there gonna be a nativity scene? Are we gonna have like a little Baby Jesus? Are we gonna have like goats and sheep? Back home, there was, you drive by a church and they would have built this like three-sided shack made out of like pallet wood and then there’d be people dressed up like Mary, Joseph and a baby. There’d be a frigging- Hold on, you’ve been a part of a live nativity with me. I’ve not been a part of a live nativity, like been in it? As a youth group. Very young. Hold on, weren’t you Joseph? I could have sworn that you were Joseph and I was a shepherd. I may have been Joseph one year early on, yeah. Yeah, it was cold. I just remember it was cold and I was like, man, I just got on like- I don’t remember- I don’t have enough clothes on. I thought it was inside. See, I’m not even remembering this right. There was a live nativity at Buies Creek First Baptist Church that the youth did. And Maria Matthews was Mary. I think that was a play and it was inside. There was like a Christmas cantata. Okay, well, I could have sworn there was a live nativity. There was not a real baby though. I haven’t done it as an adult because now, I would be an amazing shepherd with my beard. You’re too tall. No, no, no, I’m too tall for Joseph. Let’s get real here. I’m too tall for Joseph, that would be a distraction but having one tall ass shepherd or one tall ass- Wise man. I think you’d be a wise man ’cause they’re walking from a long distance. They’re following that star. Yeah, a wise man. I wanna be the one with the frankincense. And if you wanna be right about it- Or I wanna be the merman. The Wise Men is not gonna show up for like years, right? He didn’t show up when the baby was born. Well, now, you’re getting into some of the, some of the complex questions around the historicity of the nativity story. Let’s come back to this. We’ll talk about in a second. Let’s come back to this. We’ll talk about all that but first, we do wanna let you know that whether you’re traveling or not this Christmas, you can get a travel mug- Look at this thing. from mythical.com. It’s tall, it’s cylindrical. It fits in any cup holder in your car and travels with you. You might get excited about a travel mug and you wait for it to show up, you unbox it you wash it or maybe you just put your beverage in it and you’re like screw it, I’m just gonna drink it. That’s my version of washing it. And then you put it in your car and it won’t fit in your cup holder. Not with this one. Big fail. This thing will fit. It’s got a nice secure top on it that pops open and it pops open in a way that you don’t have to touch the place where your lips go. And it’s open in a way that it doesn’t hit you in the nose when you drink it. Yep, see that? We thought through all this. See that? It’s nice. Now, it’s hard to read what it says but it says “Good Mythical Morning”. But you knew that anyway. With Rhett and Link. And maybe you like it that way. I like it that way. Mythical.com. Get yourself a travel mug even if you can’t travel. Okay, Christmas. I kind of- ♪ Christmas ♪ I sort of see this- ♪ Christmas ♪ I kinda see this as, for me and I think for you as well just because we’ve been on really similar journeys. I mean, there’s some different stages and of course, the first stage is what Christmas is like when you are a Christian. Let’s roll out. If you have idea of stages, just get roll out to stages just so I know where you’re going. Okay, stage one is Christmas when you’re a Christian and when I say Christian, I mean a Bible-believing, in our case, evangelical Christian that takes the Christmas story 100% literal truth. That’s stage one. Stage two is a Christian who is struggling with doubt engaging with Christmas. Stage three is someone who would no longer call themselves a Christian engaging with Christmas. And you might think, isn’t that the all three stages? I think for me, there’s a fourth stage which is- Well, but you can maybe be suspenseful about that. There’s a fourth stage. Okay. Yeah, I’m just gonna say it’s the way that I am hoping to engage with Christmas now. Mm, I’m very- Which maybe be surprising. I’m very interested in this. I think in anticipation of this conversation, a number of thoughts come up for me, some of which I don’t wanna process here, honestly, because I don’t want this to be the first place that I processed this type of thing because it implies inviting people to weigh in or help me figure things out for myself and I’m making the decision that I’m trying to put some boundaries on what I’m processing publicly and privately and so some of that’s coming up here but I’m still very excited to talk about this. And we tend to we tend to approach these type of things and think about them in different ways. If you look back at our deconstruction stories, they’re unique to each of us in the way that we’ve grappled with our faith and that we’ve moved forward in our journeys. I take great comfort in the fact that we are moving forward in our journeys and that we have different approaches. I really enjoy the fact that like I haven’t thought about these stages that you just mentioned so I’m kinda, but I have my own thoughts that I’ll pepper in there and might choose to keep my mouth shut at other times but we’ll see how it plays out. And I do, anytime we talk about, and we what about spiritual things more freely since breaking the seal with our conversation earlier in the year about our spiritual deconstruction and these are sensitive topics that mean a lot to a lot of people. People hold these things very near and dear to their hearts for obvious reasons and so, just disclaimer as we talk about these things, I just wanna be very clear that nothing I’m gonna say or I’ll speak for Link as well, is meant to be prescriptive. This is not advice. This isn’t how we think you should approach Christmas. This isn’t what we think is right for you. This is our process. This is just our personal story of what it was like at those different stages. You may relate to some of it, you may not. You may disagree with some of the conclusions. I’m not trying to get you to come to a different conclusion. It’s just this is a story. That applies to every conversation we have here but with a sensitive topic like this, I’m glad that us said- Yeah, I feel like- ‘Cause it’s like we’re literally just processing our lives in this venue. Well, sometimes we do give prescriptive advice to people if they ask for it. Sometimes, if they don’t ask for it but it’s usually about things that don’t really matter. Right, that’s when we feel most comfortable. If we can help it. So we’re gonna stay a little cagey but honest. Okay, so again, for what still remains to be the majority of the life that I’ve lived so far, I was an evangelical Christian. Someone who believes that the Bible is the inerrant, that means without error word of God and so that means that the Christmas story itself of God taking the form of a baby human, of a virgin becoming pregnant with that baby human and that baby human being God himself and also God’s son in the form of Jesus coming to the Earth to offer a pathway of reconciling people to God. That’s what we thought and we thought that’s what Christmas is for an evangelical Christian. It is the story of Jesus’s birth. And is it Jesus’s or is it Jesus birth? I’ve heard pastors say it both ways. Don’t get hung up. I’m gonna say Jesus’s just because you can tell that I’m saying it’s possessive. The story of Jesus’s birth. And I think it’s just an interesting thing in our culture in America. I guess this happens in other places but there’s like this longstanding thing that happens between, like there’s the Merry Christmas people and there’s the happy holidays people and there’s like this battle line that’s drawn and like people get mad at Starbucks if they don’t say Merry Christmas or whatever, right? And this is a relatively recent sort of cultural battle but I remember what I can relate to about this is I remember as a Christian and listen, a Christian who was like working for a Christian organization full-time, like taking it very seriously. I always thought that this little cultural infighting about the whole Merry Christmas thing, I was like why are y’all getting so upset about this? Yeah, I mean- I’ve never related to it. I think another way that we might’ve put it was, ’cause I agree that was my assessment at the time, was like this is not a good look. This is not the- This is not the battle that we should be fighting. What is your desired outcome from this battle? That some atheist somewhere would say yes, you’re right. Merry Christmas. Is that what we’re trying to accomplish? It felt like a turf war, like protecting your turf and again, I was like very much on board for Jesus is the reason for the season. ‘Cause it rhymes? It looks great in a store window. Yeah, a couple of months ago, we were we were driving past this, all my family was in the car and we drove past, I guess it was October and on automobile lot and they got the showroom with like the big glass windows and they paint all their windshields with prices but they painted their showroom windows huge across all the windows. Like if you had really take the time to back up or really take in the whole thing, across the whole thing, it said Jesus is the reason for the season and then it was October. They had never taken it down. So I’m like- Well. Well, kids you know what? It’s fall. Jesus is the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for fall. And technically, that’s true. It maybe right. I mean from that perspective. So yeah, so we didn’t really get in on that bandwagon and to me, it felt silly when I saw Christians getting really concerned about that particular issue. Even though for us personally, Jesus was absolutely the center of Christmas, which was the main holiday that we were personally celebrating. Yeah, and the way that I relate to- There are other holidays that are happening around then that other people celebrate, you know? So just say happy holidays just to acknowledge that other people are celebrating other holidays is not a bad thing. That’s just called being considerate. Right, it seems very Christian, actually. So I just never got that. I’m glad. I mean there’s lots of things I’m like I wish I would’ve done it differently but I never fought that fight. Yeah, but the thing that- I never insisted that somebody else celebrate something that I’m celebrating. Right, right but the thing that I can relate to when it comes to this maybe holding Christmas in a precious way is the secular treatment of Christmas, just traditionally, right? So you’ve got like okay, you’ve got Charles Dickens as an example, right? So you’ve got “A Christmas Carol” or really anything that centers around the spirit of Christmas as it relates to anything other than Jesus. So you’ve got Santa and gift-giving and- Well, gift-giving, you could say that the tree, some people say the tree is Pagan, some people say the tree is Christian, some people say gift-giving- You can come and do all these things for your individual purposes but what I’m saying is that like, I wasn’t one of these anti-Santa Christians either and not in like a Santa is just Satan rearranged in the same letters, right? Like there are Christians who think that and think that Santa is this secular distraction. I didn’t think that either but what I did think is when I would see a Christmas movie, let’s say “Elf” as an example, your favorite movie. Best movie ever. I could appreciate how awesome of a movie it is, not necessarily my favorite even in my top 10 but a very solid Christmas movie. I could appreciate it and appreciate all the good principles that it kinda, that it reinforced in the spirit of Christmas but as a Christian, I would kinda stand aside and say yeah, that’s a real nice story but you guys do know that Jesus is the reason for the season, that the whole point of this holiday is to celebrate the fact that God became a human, came down on our level and gave us a way to be reconciled to him. You do understand that’s what’s it about. Well, and it’s one thing to imply it in all of the Hollywood Christmas movies but I mean, in a lot of times, it’s blatantly stated that the reason for the season or they may put it in different terms but they’ll blatantly say that like the spirit of Christmas is family. It’s like good tidings. Right. It’s I’ll be home for Christmas, it’s getting together. It’s that type of stuff. And I didn’t want people to change their movies. I wasn’t thinking like, “Elf” would have been a whole lot better if like, if the, what’s the elf’s name? You should know this. Will Ferrell. Well, what’s his name in the movie? Buddy. If Buddy would have become a Christian during the movie, like I’m not talking about like, I’m not saying I wanna have like Kirk Cameron type movies. I wasn’t into that. No, no, no, we hated those. We hated those. We hated those movies. We hated movies that were explicitly Christian and had but- Because they weren’t artful. Yeah. Most, all of them. Again, it felt like it was for the audience but anyway, or it was preaching to the choir, whatever. But I still had this sort of judgment in my mind that was like, yeah, you guys almost get it but you don’t really get it. You’ve created all this holiday accoutrement around Christmas in order to make it seem meaningful but you’ve missed the heart of it which is this is about Jesus y’all. And so, it’s all pointless, ultimately. If you’re gonna miss the heart of it, then all this stuff around, it really doesn’t mean anything. I was very sensitive to putting my values and expectations onto other people that I didn’t think I had any realistic expectation that they will be interested in that. But I’ll tell you what I did do. Yeah, I mean, as a kid, our evangelical upbringing was like the center point of our identity. I mean, and then I think for me, there had to be like looking down my nose at other people or just maybe feeling sorry for people who are just missing like the real point of what needs to be celebrated at Christmas and what I’m experiencing and celebrating. It was more of a bless their hearts kinda thing. Yeah, there was a depth in the experience that I was having that I felt like, by comparison, from my evangelical perspective looking at other people, just thinking, okay, it’s just a bit, it’s a bit shallow. Yeah, I mean like family and love and service and all these good things are, they’re very meaningful things but they’re not as meaningful as God coming to Earth, humbling himself as a baby. Like that’s tremendously inspirational and a lot of other things. And then when when Christy and I got married and we started having kids, it’s like, okay, now, it’s my opportunity to, I’m in charge of creating new traditions and finding the ways that we’re gonna keep Jesus at the center of our focus. And so one of the things we did is we would, we made up our mind that we were gonna always tell our kids that and maybe we need to put a spoiler alert on this but- I don’t- You know what I’m about to say. If there’s somebody listening that you don’t wanna know certain things that- About the man, the secular man of Christmas? Yeah. We’re gonna reveal the truth about the secular man of Christmas so if you have a little ones who are listening in on this conversation and you want the miracle of Christmas to remain alive, tune out right now. This what’s happening right here was never a problem for me because I decided. I think this was a Link decision. It’s like, you know what, our kids are always gonna know that Santa is just is fake but we’re still gonna have, we’re still gonna surprise them with presents on Christmas morning that weren’t wrapped in under the tree. There’s gonna be some unwrapped stuff that’s gonna be there when they run down the stairs and I still wanna have that scene because it’s so exciting and I don’t wanna take that away entirely. But when the weatherman is like we’ve spotted Santa on the radar. I’d be like, kids, that’s BS. When Lily’s five years old, she never thought, there was never a point where she thought and she knew that she wasn’t supposed to tell other kids and unlike you who told me way too late in my experience that Santa Claus was fake, she did not do that to her friends at a young age. Well, the funny thing about this is that I never made a decision one way or the other. I always, you know me, I like making things up, making my kids believe things that aren’t true just for my own personal entertainment. And so Santa, it fits the bill there, right? And so we would- Your Santa probably was real crazy. Well, the thing is is that- Like he’s got three eyes but one of them has an eye patch. But think about my kids though. My kids are just like me and I didn’t, the reason I didn’t think Santa was real when I was a kid wasn’t because an adult told me, it was because- Are you saying you’re smarter than me as a kid? Well, no, I think about things in a different way, let’s just say that. I was like this can’t be real. I embraced the wonder and joy of life and I don’t question it. And so my kids did the exact same thing. There was never a moment where I had to break a truth to them. It was more just like at some point, at an early age, they were just like, “I know Santa is not real. I know you’re giving me these gifts.” I had made a- But it’s fun to play along. I’d made a decision to actually proactively tell them and like burst the bubble before it would hurt too bad. The reason why I actually felt really good about saying this is a protection from, even for my kids at their youngest age, I’m removing some of the temptation to focus on the wrong thing. It’s like remember, we’re focusing on Jesus here. We can have the presents and the reason why we have the presents was because presents were brought to Jesus because people knew that he was God incarnate and they were they came to worship him as a king and they gave him gifts. And so, you just try to couch everything through the lens of Jesus, right? That’s a Christmas movie for Kirk Cameron. Right, through the lens of Jesus. And I felt good about that. Now, I don’t feel bad about it now but I just, I was kind of a stickler but I remember feeling like this is something tangible that I’ve done that impacts my family’s ability to focus on what matters most. Well, and some people- And I think that that was my role. And some people might say just another reason if this is your perspective. Another reason to clarify the fact that Santa is a made up thing is because you don’t want it to be like, all right, there’s two things that are true, child. Jesus is God’s son and God in the flesh is the Christmas story but also, there’s this dude named Saint Nicholas who comes and flies around, hauled by reindeer and gives you presents. Flying reindeer and comes down your chimney. At some point, I’m gonna break the news to you that one of these two things is not real. And the way I’m gonna do it is by saying one of these is not real, you choose. Right, yeah. No, but you don’t- Yeah, and so for, I think, for some Christians, it’s like hey, let’s tell our kids the truth, and again, this is the truth according to a Christian, that hey, this story is real and this story is sort of the secular cultural story that we tell ourselves with sort of a fairytale like the like the Tooth Fairy, whatever Easter Bunny, you know? And they never believed the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy really either for kind of the same reason. Easter Bunny is- I have this principle like you know what, I don’t wanna have to break it to my kids that I was lying to ’em. I don’t know that that’s how kids but is say- I never went there ’cause I lie to my kids all the time but the Easter Bunny is the worst holiday mascot because what does the Easter Bunny do? I mean the Tooth Fairy has a very specific thing. It’s a transactional relationship. You give him the tooth, he gives you money. I understand how that works. I know when it happens. Are you picturing The Rock or something? You’re saying he. Well, I’m saying he because I played the Tooth Fairy in a video I’m very proud of. Do you remember that video that we made? I can’t remember what it’s called. Spot the differences? Spot the differences, whatever. But the Easter Bunny, no one says, hey, let’s go outside and find the eggs that the Easter Bunny hid. We do away with that mirage. We say no, the parents are going outside. What is the role of the Easter Bunny? I think to be eating his chocolate, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s a weak ass, weak ass holiday mascot. I will say there was another factor in saying that Santa Claus wasn’t real but they still got the gifts because then I could take full credit for all of the gifts. I understand that. I think that was an ulterior motive on my behalf. But yeah, there was this, I mean I was, we had so many family to visit that We didn’t go to the Christmas Eve service. We didn’t actually have a lot of like Christmas time traditions but we did have some, like we would read like from the children’s Bible like the Christmas story from a young age. I’ve got this video of Lily before she could read, we had read it to her so much that she had memorized the Christmas story based on this children’s picture book and it’s cutest thing because she would act like she’s reading but she just memorized everything that we said per page. And it felt good to know that one of the first things she memorized was the story of Jesus humbling himself and coming to Earth in order to be her savior. I just felt like I was, okay, I was like this is my job as dad and Christy’s job as mom is to instill this knowledge in her at a young age to where she knows that God loves her and cares about her and went to great lengths to not only demonstrate that but to make that relationship possible. So it felt really good and it was it was validating that we’ve got this system, I’ve got this belief system that I’m all in with and I’m very, every benefit associated with it. I felt like I was, at the time, that I was only experiencing the benefits. I think I’ve processed in my other story that like there there’s another side to it for me but at Christmas time, it felt good. It’s like okay, we’re not losing sight of the point. Yeah. Most of our touch points related to church. We were very involved in our church. You were very involved in your church as well but during Christmas, we were very involved in church including like being involved in the program to the point where every year, Jesus, Jessie, my wife, would put would play Mary in this like play and I think maybe for the first year she did it or one year she did it, like Locke was Jesus but other years, it was other people’s babies, like a real baby. She would sing. Ah. Like, she’s like this one woman show as Mary. And you’d light candles and it would be a big moment. The Advent and then there was that album, that dude, what is his name? Is it Andrew Peterson? Is that his name? I don’t know if that’s the- I don’t know. I don’t know if, there’s this guy. He’s the Christian musician who came out with the album that has become the all the songs that Christians play. It’s been like 15 years ago and it’s just like… It’s not “Mary, Did You Know?”, that’s the old school. This is like it’s the one about like Mary in the… The whole album is a Christmas album and it’s the one where like all the things that people singing and evangelical churches come from. And I think this dude’s name is Peterson. And you know these songs for 100% sure ’cause you were a music leader at your church. You just didn’t maybe make the connection to the album. I was the hip. I assume they’re still, I know they’re still playing them because when I went to a Christmas Eve service at my old church like two years ago, it’s still playing the same songs. So what is your point? I’m just saying that, that was just a complete sidebar but my point is is that all our touch points were related to like the Christmas Eve service and the things leading up to Christmas that we did as a church and it was all very meaningful and it was all very personal and impactful and we were involved as a family. Well, let’s move on to stage two, right? Because as we’ve established, that mentality and that approach did not continue. For me, I struggled with doubt pretty much my entire adult life as it related to my Christian faith but probably about 15 years ago or so was when the doubts began to get kind of crippling to the point that engaging in like Bible reading as an example, would inflame my doubts, right? So if I would go to the Bible to have my doubts addressed, some of the other things that I had read about these particular things would enter my mind and it became this thing where the more sensational the story, the more difficult it was for me to believe and I feel like the Christmas story kind of brings together a lot of different elements, right? So you’ve got some things that are, let’s just be honest, difficult to believe. Virgin birth, the idea that there’s a star that is settling over the town of Bethlehem that is leading the Wise Men to the town which seems to indicate that the authors didn’t really understand the nature of stars and how far away they actually are and how that’s not how stars work or maybe it was a special star that was just happened for this. Listen, everything that I’m gonna say right now, which is sort of like my doubts that I have about the story, I am well aware that there are plenty of evangelical traditional Christian explanations for all these things. I’m not discounting those. I’m just saying that for me, when I engage with the Christmas story from a historical perspective and some of the issues that there are there related to like the Herod and the governor of Syria Quirinius or the census and these things that like you can kind of call into question from a historical perspective and the way that they line up or the fact that the Christmas story, the nativity story is kinda added to Luke and Matthew but it’s not in the earliest gospel, the Book of Mark so it kinda lends itself to this idea that the legend of Jesus was growing as time went by and so they were adding things like hey, let’s add this story that shows how he fulfilled prophecy. Again, this is the secular view of these things. And I began to see some of those answers and some of those explanations to those difficult passages less as a good answer and more as what felt like this seems more desperate, right? It’s not satisfying to me and so when I would engage with the story, I would be thinking about all those things. It’s like I’m thinking about the critical view of this story which is not a fun way to engage with a story, right? And so, Christmas became a time where I was kind of two minds, right? There was some serious cognitive dissonance going on because there was a real appreciation for the idea of Christmas and the idea that God would become one of us and would make that connection in a way that I had not seen demonstrated in any other faith system, right? And there was all the stuff that went along with it and those songs that we sang from that album that I can’t remember. They were incredibly meaningful even in the middle of my severe doubt about these things When I would read the story and these doubts would be inflamed, I could still move on to singing the songs, singing the hymns, thinking about Jesus and it would be very moving and very impactful but there was a few, a good number of years there where the doubts were so strong that engaging with the story of Christmas was bit of a train wreck inside my mind. Yeah, I can understand what you’re saying. I think in my process, Christmas didn’t bring up as much but it didn’t, it wasn’t as difficult because there was more like the traditions that we had and the amount of family we had to visit, it was easier to get distracted and I felt like I tended to focus on the expectations that I had placed on myself to make sure that like we’re remembering that Jesus is the center of this and we’re doing some things and we do have some, we have the Advent calendar and we have traditions that we’re doing with the kids but it was easy personally, I think, as there were starting to be doubts for me just to go into distraction mode ’cause there was so much else going on anyway in terms of gifts and family and food and everything else that is the secular reasons for the season that everybody falls back on. Right. I definitely remember you talking about albums. At a certain point when I was, I mean our conversations were pretty constant and so my, I was more resistant at first because I didn’t wanna shake things up but as as I started to come to grips with my own doubts and my own experience, I remember at Christmas time, I would listen to Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas albums. Like for a couple of years, he would release one every year so there’s like this four-disc box set that as a family, it’s still very much a tradition for us to listen. This is the album that’s playing in our house constantly and I would recommend getting it if you’re a fan of Sufjan’s earlier stuff. His stuff now- I can’t get into it. It’s like- I tried to get into it- I don’t know what you need to be under the influence of but- Well, it just went, it went- It’s very electronic. He went electronic and I’m just not into that. So this like acoustic homemade, feels like four track in his own house like playing horns and having people who can’t sing start to sing along with him and like- Yeah, it was awesome. It’s really awesome but I remember like thinking okay, if Sufjan, he’s singing these Christmas songs because he’s got a Christian faith. I don’t know his story but like he’s got this faith in Jesus and I don’t know, I’m not gonna put a label on him. I don’t know what label he is applies to himself if any or how that’s changed over the years but he made, he released meaningful Christmas music that was meaningful to me and I thought this guy, he seems really progressive, he’s an artist, he’s cool. I think maybe this is my future. Maybe there’s something in his relationship with Christmas and with Jesus that like I could be like, I could take a cue from Sufjan Stevens, you know? It’s interesting, it’s like I’m not gonna read as many books as you, I’m just gonna start listening to this guy and he started saying if he can- The thing about music though, I think, this is an interesting point and I agree with it and relate to it personally because music kinda transcends the intellectual doubts that you might have and you’re dealing with this stuff that’s kind of up here in your head space and there’s a rational sort of battle that’s happening? Music connects with your soul in a different way and this is why I can still listen, even today, I don’t consider myself a Christian, I can listen to “Be Thou My Vision”, one of my favorite hymns and cry. You know what I’m saying? So, yeah there’s something that transcends that mental barrier in music anyway so I think that was, and I think it keeps, honestly, it keeps people around for longer. There’s something about just singing together. I mean what other venue do you have in your life where you go and you get together with a bunch of like-minded people and you sing songs that are just the most passionate things you could possibly imagine? I mean that doesn’t happen. Christians got that one down pretty good. I mean, the closest thing that I can think of is when we went to our friend’s house and we did the sing along last year. Oh, you didn’t even come to that. You guys didn’t come. You’ve totally missed out, man. Thank you. But like, we just sang. It was like singing together. I was like, man, singing- That was a Thanksgiving thing, I think. Singing together with other people, it’s just something that should happen in more places. But anyway, I digress. So there was that period where there was that cognitive dissonance happening and it was just like I can’t engage with this but I love my family And I still love God and I’m trying to figure all this stuff out. And then there was, again, I told all the story, I don’t remember the exact year. It was after we moved out here when it became like official but still, more than several years ago where I was like okay, it’s official, I don’t believe this anymore. Like I cannot honestly call myself a Christian. I’m not going to pursue this, I’m not going to engage with this, I’m not gonna go to church anymore. It wasn’t that clean but there was a point in which that was who I became. But you still got Christmas rolling around every single year, right? And it’s weird. It’s weird when you have like, hey, we’ve been doing this every year and it’s been just saturated in meaning. It’s been saturated in the most sort of consequential and important meaning that it could possibly have and now, you’re just gonna become one of those guys that’s just getting through the Christmas season on some good tidings from the Christmas movies? For somebody who’s had a really deep spiritual experience, those Christmas movies, again, “Elf”, great movie, doesn’t cut it. If you’ve had that depth of experience- God is not a character. Will Ferrell is awesome but he is not God. And so, it’s like you come to that time and there’s this like, man, the depth of experience and the depth that this had associated with it that permeated my life personally but also permeated the lives of my wives and children. Wife and- Watch out, man. My wife and children. Our family, that’s an easier way to say it, is not there. How do you engage with that? I think about the realization that that children’s book that we had, it’s like one year you pull down the Christmas decorations and the Christmas books and like that book that Lily memorized that you read with Lincoln some when he was younger that like you realize that like you can’t find it in the box anymore or I don’t remember ever deciding to not pull it out of the box or not to read it to Lando but it’s like yeah, it’s just kinda like you realize, you know what, Lando never read this book or and I remember, I think I do remember Christy finding it and reading it to Lando at a young age and it was like, it wasn’t this communal experience that it was before because we were in this transitional time. And again, it kind of the Christmas season brought it into focus and part of it is while you look at the other, there’s still a lot to be distracted by and we’re still going home for Christmas and there’s a lot of logistics involved and it was once we moved out here, so, it didn’t feel like this painful moment. It was just like all of a sudden, you realize that book’s not coming out of the box anymore, you know? And I do think, for me, that, and that still, even now, like I’m at a different phase than I was that was like everything seemed to be changing much more rapidly in terms of my worldview and my belief paradigm in my allegiance to the evangelical worldview. You get to a point and it’s like you come to grips with that’s not me anymore and it’s not changing as fast but there’s still this residual in the back of my mind, I think. I guess I would just call it, there’s an experience of guilt. It’s like because there’s this questions. It’s like when you let, as you put it in your story, you jump ship you let go of something but you don’t have anything specific to grasp onto. It’s like we’re not now ascribing to some other religious belief system. Well, and- So, I do think for me, there is a bit of, yeah, it’s like did I make the right decision? Did we as a family make a right decision? It’s like, there’s these little questions. It’s like, I’ve tried my best to embrace uncertainty as a positive but there’s still moments of struggle and I think it happens more around the holidays when you realize that like something that was extremely meaningful in a practice that you have with your first child is not part of what happens with your third child and are are they missing out? Have we done them a disservice? And then I kinda have to rederive what brought me to this point and also, look at our children and how tremendously fabulous they are and how proud I am of them and start to just have this reality check that like okay, these feelings of guilt or obligation, sometimes, I think I would describe it as I’m feeling judged by my former self because the position I’m in now in the way that I interact with Christmas is something that, again, I said earlier, I’d feel for people that they didn’t have the depth of experience that I have and now, I’m in that position. Mm-hm, yeah, and I mean I definitely relate to that. I mean, guilt is not really my, that’s not my thing as much. Always my thing. But there is a- And I’m not blaming it all on evangelicalism either. It’s a Link thing, it wasn’t created by the church. It was just how- Exacerbated by it. Yeah. I think that the, really what you’re getting at is one of the things you’re doing is you’re highlighting the importance of religion, right? You’re highlighting the importance of a spiritual life and so, because if that meaning is to be had from something, if you can find that meaning and that purpose in something, well, that’s one of the reasons that religion exists. That’s one of the really, that’s the main reason that people stick around for it even if they don’t quite believe it in full, right? If they have some doubts, they’re like but the alternative is just I don’t believe anything and interesting that you bring up that quote from my deconstruction story where I talked about jumping ship and it was a very dramatic line and it has been played in many different videos that critiqued our deconstruction stories. There’s one of my favorites is one speaking of Kirk Cameron by Mr. Ray Comfort who works with Kirk and he kind of goes through and breaks down our story and play some very sentimental music and almost some like music that sort of like impending doom the whole time as we tell our stories and many things are taken out of context. It’s very entertaining but one of the things is that line about I jumped ship and I took my wife and my children with me and it’s just like, people quote, like it’s so sad, he took his wife and his children with me. I think I regret saying, it was a little bit of a dramatic thing to say. I regret saying it because I think the better analogy is I jumped out of a ship and there’s not another ship like that that you’re jumping into, right? But it doesn’t mean that you have no meaning, you have no purpose and you have no principles in your life. Those those things are still intact. The source and the- It doesn’t mean that you’re drowning. Yeah, the source and the philosophical foundation of those things is coming from a different place and it may be a place that you, as a Christian philosopher may say it is illegitimate, I would disagree. I’m just saying that like it isn’t like I’ve been swimming in this ocean of uncertainty and my family is going nuts but that’s how it was interpreted. But I mean I agree with what you’re saying in the sense that it’s like, all right, you approach this and there’s, the puzzle pieces are in place. Like every time you come around to Christmas, it’s just like we have a puzzle, we know where the pieces go, we can sell our kids This is how it works and then all of a sudden, you come to the holiday and it’s like the puzzle doesn’t, can’t fit together in a very satisfying way anymore and so you don’t- The central assertion was don’t forget what matters most. Yeah. That was our experience in phase one. Yeah. And then in the doubting phase, well, now, we’re talking about phase three now. We’re still in phase three. Okay, phase three of you know what, I haven’t replaced that matters most with something else specifically but we’re just getting through this and honestly, I’m not suffering, my family is not suffering. It’s not a horrible experience. But you’re hearing the echoes of the old Link saying- But I’m hearing echoes, yes. There is no meaning here. This is pointless. The things that we would have thought about people who weren’t Christians before when we were Christians and you find yourself in it and you’re like, man, like I still really love my wife. I still really love my family. We stand for very similar things. We’re not different people but we don’t know how to reconcile this story in the same way and so you find yourself becoming the secular person that you felt sorry for and you’re like- It’s about the food, the decorations. I’m getting through Christmas on the accoutrement. Service and family and love. But in an effort to transition into stage four, which is which I don’t like saying stage four ’cause it sounds like cancer. Phase four. I actually personally, again, this is not prescriptive, I’m not saying this for anybody else. This is for me. I actually do find phase three to be inadequate for me, personally. So the idea that Christmas is just about those things, just about the gift the giving and the receiving and the good tidings and great joy unrelated to Jesus, just the secular side of things, just watching “Elf” or seeing Tim Allen be Santa again, I do find those things to be inadequate. Like I didn’t wanna be stuck at phase three. In other words, I didn’t want to become a completely non-spiritual person who was like that’s all just mumbo-jumbo and I’m gonna just build my life on rationality completely and it’s just a natural existence and that’s it and that’s, now, lots of people have done that. More power to you if that works for you. For me- And by the way, people have to other religions and then they have, so then they have new holidays that they don’t have to come to grips with Christmas on other terms, they have other holidays that are in place of it that have depth of meaning that- But they’re not as good as Christmas. I’m just kidding. But something interesting has happened to me and I think, I mean it’s been happening over the past few years. This is not super new but when we broke the seal earlier this year. Boy, when we were telling those stories about our deconstruction, we had no idea what the hell 2020 was gonna bring. We had no idea that people were gonna no longer care about our deconstruction story as soon as they found out about COVID-19. Maybe it was a blessing. I think it was a blessing. From that perspective. It’s not a blessing for the world by any means. but we had a really interesting, I’m using the word interesting a lot and I hate the word interesting so I apologize. We had a unique perspective on the way that we would approach our past faith for the bulk of our career, right? We’re kind of a like a little bit embarrassment about how serious we were and how far we went in and the fact that we were missionaries. I mean not necessarily embarrassment but like this is gonna be difficult to explain and I’m going to say where I’m at now and so there was almost an avoidance, a secrecy. I’m sure some of you who have been fans for a long time could sense that. They’re like, “Oh, they don’t talk about their past.” And I think that it actually influenced the way that I dealt with it personally. It inhibited my own personal freedom to explore spiritual things because I had such a weird relationship with it and I was this public figure that had this past that I kind of couldn’t explain and didn’t wanna go into the details of but when we made the decision to tell the story in its entirety without apology, it broke a seal for me, personally. And it what it did is it kinda, it was like something within me got the okay to be like all right, you can move on now. You don’t have to be in this place. This is just a guy who used to be a Christian and doesn’t believe that stuff anymore and that’s who you are, you can actually move forward to whatever’s next for you from a spiritual perspective. And one of the things that has happened and this is, I don’t know where, I don’t know exactly where it’s all going spiritually for me but I said to him when I told my story that I had an openness and I did. I have an openness, I did and I do currently have an openness towards spiritual things and one of the interesting things that, interesting again, one of the things that has happened is sort of a reengaging with the person of Jesus in a completely different way and that is I used to think about anything that, if I go to the Bible and I would read something that Jesus said, again, I was sort of overwhelmed with well, let’s bring in the critical lens, let’s bring in the perspective of the Jesus seminar onto this text. That’s not a fun way to interact with Jesus, right? Or a particularly useful way, personally, when it comes to like your own personal edification. There’s been a couple of good books that I’ve read this year that I’m not gonna go into but have sort of changed my perspective on how I can engage with Jesus, not as someone who is God in the flesh that is the only way to be reconciled with a vengeful God who has to punish somebody. I’m not holding on to any of the old stuff but just looking at what Jesus said and did as a spiritual teacher and being like there’s a lot there, right? And even engaging in the Christmas story, not with a preoccupation about whether or not it’s historically true or based in fact but is there a truth there to be gleaned? Is there something that you and your family can actually get from interacting with it? Taking it at face value without getting into this game of trying to figure out whether it’s real or not, which is a little bit ironic because if you think about the stories that Jesus, I mean, first of all Jesus taught in parable, right? He taught in story, he told stories, he made analogies. And the fact that no one is ever recorded in the Bible as responding to one of the stories that he told with but did that really happen? Okay, yeah. No one was like, “But hold on, hold on. This thing with the Samaritan, did that really happen? Did it happen last week? Did you see it happen? ‘Cause if you didn’t see it happen, I don’t believe it.” His point was is that truth is not, I think, truth is not something that is just contained in this factually historical verifiable vessel, right? Truth comes in a lot of different forms and I can listen to, I can watch a movie, right? I can watch a movie that is from beginning to end, fiction and still find truth in it. And I’m not, listen, I’m not saying okay, the only way I can engage with the Christmas stories by just saying it’s a fairy tale and that’s it but I’m saying that if I quit, if I turn that part of my brain off that is just constantly trying to judge whether or not Jesus actually said this or whether or not this actually happened, whether or not somebody was a virgin and got pregnant and we’re just like, let’s set those things aside because I’m not gonna reconcile those things. I mean I have a very strong opinion about some of those things and some very strong doubts but is there a story to be heard there? Is there a lesson to be learned there? Is there a truth within this? And I think that that is very freeing for me personally. Does that translate into like something going into stocking? I mean, is there a practical, there doesn’t have to be for like Christmas and maybe this is, maybe my question is revealing about my own issue which I can get into but, so maybe it’s not a fair question. Do you even think about it that way? Like- No, it’s not really what I’m- Are you saying at Christmas time, you’re reflecting on the story but you’re doing it in a way that it can be edifying to you, your interaction with Jesus can be edifying for you as opposed to it being something that you’re trying to judge or tear something down? Yeah, that. Because you’re either not gonna interact with Jesus at Christmas time or you’re gonna have a negative interaction or now, you’re trying to say I’m gonna have the positive interaction that I’m able to have And I’m actually, I’m at a point where I can have that and that’s what I’m gonna have. Well, and I think some people would say, guys, this is where, this is where the enlightenment screwed things up because if you go back to pre-enlightenment and pre sort of modern thinking about things and pre-rational thought about things, this is how people engaged with the stories of Jesus. There was not a preoccupation with whether or not these things happen or not. There wasn’t this tendency to want to verify and completely wrap your mind around these things but there was a spiritual interaction with them and I believe that there are still many Christians who would say hey guys, this is what my faith looks like right now. Yeah, I guess my old mindset creeps in because it’s like the way I interacted with it was God became human in order to save us from ourselves. Well, even that, okay? Right, so when we look at the story of Christmas from a Christian perspective, you’re right, it’s God emptying himself, becoming a baby, again, I don’t know how this works. I don’t actually believe that’s what was happening but according to the story, becomes a baby, becomes sort of the complete 100% God, 100% human that then is the only sacrifice that can be made in order to reconcile everyone who will call on the name of the Lord to God, right? But isn’t there a different way to, isn’t there something else to appreciate without that having to be true, right? For instance, since you mentioned this exact thing because I was thinking about this earlier. I don’t know the nature of God. I don’t necessarily know anyone can understand, grasp or know or talk about in a understandable way the nature of God. I think that there are, if there is a God, there’s probably an experience of that God is somewhat ineffable, meaning you cannot communicate it in a way that would make sense because it’s happening in a different place on a different level in a different way than human language can express. But the idea that God would want to be so close and so involved and so much a part of humanity that he would become one of us is a beautiful concept that makes me think about the nature of God in an open and edifying way. Does that make sense? It doesn’t have to have happened as described for me to be like that, in the way, I’m glad we talked about music. I didn’t know that’s what’s gonna happen but a song resonates with you. There’s something about- In a soul level. There’s something about music that you connect with and you wouldn’t say that song is true and that song is false but you would be like this song, I feel like I begin to actually resonate and synchronize with this music because it connects with my soul and this doesn’t. I feel like that can happen with a story as well and so, for me, there are elements of that idea because I mean, if anything, the concept of God being in everything and God being available within someone, the universe, the fabric of the universe being whatever you wanna call it, that’s something that’s still very intriguing to me that I wanna be open to and I wanna lean into and I feel like I can find that in the story of Christmas. That’s all I’m saying. I think our former selves would be saying right now, I mean, you just can’t, you can’t invent, you can’t just invent the terms with which you interact with Jesus. I mean, you’re missing the point. You’re just inventing a new way to interact with Jesus that is just picking and choosing what you want that’s gonna be inspirational for you. I think that’s what our former selves would’ve said. Of course, that’s what I would’ve said. But I don’t think, and it doesn’t matter what anybody’s saying. I think for you, you’re making a decision because I do think that the decision has been, is there gonna be any interaction with Jesus, you know? Or am I just gonna move on and say that was in my past. Having being spiritually open, I think, is, I hear, that’s what I see in what you’re saying that like you’re choosing to approach Jesus in a way that you can. And who is anybody to argue with that? Even if they think you may be missing the point or doing it wrong. Well, think about “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Let’s keep going with this music thing. I’m really glad you brought it up because… I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie. Seen the movie? I’ve heard about it. I’ve seen images from it. So, the way that they communicate with the alien beings is in the form of music because music, again, represents this ineffable thing that’s happening on a different level of consciousness that the language barrier between whatever they would speak, in whatever we would speak can’t, we find music and that’s how we communicate, right? I think that’s a beautiful picture because I do wanna address the criticism that our former selves would make. Of course, my former self would be like, dude, you’re just a new age bullshitter that just thinks whatever he wants to. And there is absolutely nothing that I can say to convince that person who thinks that that that’s not what’s happening but what I would tell my former self is that I think that there is a preoccupation with categorizing and systematizing the deepest truths of the universe in a way to make them understandable and applicable and there is some merit in that but what I’m trying to be open to is the idea that whatever God is can be something that I can experience without having to turn around and explain it and categorize it and be able to recreate it and package it and write it down and speak it to someone else. And I think that, ironically, I think that some of the things that Jesus said when you kinda come to some of the things that he said from a fresh perspective seemed to indicate that he was hinting at some of those things along with a lot of other religious leaders who’ve lived and said similar things, the Buddha being one. Ultimately, what I’m saying is I have found it to be especially freeing to take that post-enlightenment, human has to figure everything out hat off and be like what is it like to engage with God in the way that I would engage with the ocean? I don’t go into the ocean and ride a wave and preoccupy myself with the physics of what’s happening. I just do it. I just experience it, right? And I think if there is a God that God is probably like that. And so, when I think about the Christmas story, yes, it is something that somebody wrote down 2,000 years, ago. Yes, it is something that does get down into some very particular truths about things but what is it like to read a story that has that kind of significance and that kind of staying power and read it from a fresh perspective with taking that hat off? What kind of new things will you see? Well, one thing you’ll see is okay, I’m looking at Mary and Joseph in a different way. I’m thinking about the fact that this is a pregnant woman who isn’t married who is seeking refuge. How relevant is that in the world that we’re in right now? That draws out my empathy, not only for them, but for people who might be currently in our world, in our society dealing with the same things and I don’t have to just focus on the but is this the Son of God period? Does that make sense? Yeah. You can find new things in it. Yeah, so I definitely see how as you describe this phase for you that it’s how you’re practically approaching the spiritual openness that we both talked about at the end of our stories. So, I appreciate hearing it as it’s food for thought for me as I continue to, to aim for spiritual openness myself because that is important to me. I think when when you describe your tendency to wanna judge the Bible and like going against that tendency in order to move towards openness and a spiritual experience, for me, I think the task that I’m working with is it’s judgment as well but it’s a judgment on myself. And I’m on a journey. I think that’s where I’m at in my journey, I think a lot of it comes up at Christmas that I’ve alluded to that like it’s trying to move past self-judgment because that’s how I, that was my interaction, a lot of my interaction with how I came up, right? So it’s shedding that judgment so that I can actually have an open and honest spiritual pursuit. And I’ll leave it at that at this point but I think that that’s where I’m at. Yeah. Again, I’m very grateful to be where I’m at. I’m happy to be on this journey. I don’t feel that I’m flailing or are struggling. I don’t have a tremendous amount of, I’m not battling with doubt just because those questions come up around Christmas time again. I would not characterize it that way but it’s, I want to be answering the question and continuing to make positive progress in my spiritual journey and so part of that is shedding the self-judgment and understanding when that comes into play and kinda putting that in its place. Yeah, ’cause I mean it’s not easy. I don’t have the same exact hang ups but it’s not easy for me, right? Because I feel like I stagnated for quite some time and it’s weird that it took us talking about it for me to be like hey, I can pick up a Richard Rohr book and read it and know that we don’t exactly agree on everything but the way he talks about Jesus is again, it resonates. And if I remove that judgment, that okay, well, but I got to figure out how this lines with this system. No, I don’t. I don’t have to figure that out. And who is God? Who am I to think that God has to be categorized or even understood? And so, I don’t know. I can’t, I can’t turn around and tell you what, and you being anyone listening, what you should do because I can’t tell me what I should do. It’s a disposition, right? It’s a leaning in an openness more so than it is a this is the prescribed path. And it just feels very different and I’m sorry when I get into it when the things I say don’t make sense but I kind of feel like that’s the point, right? The closer I get to it, the more I can’t talk about it. Okay, well, and we don’t have to talk about it anymore. So, I mean if that’s the phase, that’s it. Then we’ve gone through them. Maybe there’s another phase. Who knows, man? Phase five. Okay, let us know- You got a recommendation? I do. Before we wrap that conversation up though, just let us know your experience in whatever phase you’re currently in. #EarBiscuits. How you think about Christmas and the holidays. I do have a rec and I may have talked about this at some point but the website that I use for a lot of my meat tips. Oh! Amazingribs.com. We got a left turn. It’s not really a left turn because it goes back to I really wanna do like a standing rib roast because I think that’s a great- Amazingribs.com. That’s Meathead. It’s Meathed. Meathead Goldwyn, I guess, is his name. And this dude is just the authority when it comes to barbecue and again it’s Amazing Ribs ’cause he started, I guess, with telling people how to make ribs but it runs the gamut. You wanna know how to smoke, bake, brine a turkey, whatever? Any kind of piece of meat, you wanna know exactly how you should do it from a scientific standpoint. I mean he has like a a chemist or somebody that he consults like a local professor who goes into the details of like this is a myth. You don’t need to do this but you do need to do this and here’s why you need to do it. And so for someone who wants to appreciate sort of the technical side of making mari with meat, it’s a lifesaver and he has incredible recipes and I’m hoping to follow at least one of them for Christmas and you will be the receiver of that bounty. Yes! Amazingribs.com Happy holidays! Merry Christmas. We’ll be catching next week. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. 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.