(upbeat music) – Welcome to “Ear Biscuits,” the 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, I’m nervous again. (laughing) – Of course you are, man. I’m nervous for you. – We’re doing what we said we would do, which is to give a one-year follow-up to our deconstruction stories. And we have talked about some, you know, we’ve talked on and off about our sort of continued spiritual journey, but we haven’t gotten into it specifically and exclusively, and also personally and individually in the way that we’re gonna do over the next two episodes. – Yeah, just to recap, one year ago from this release, you know, minus a couple of weeks, we decided to launch our lost years series where we explained about our experience growing up in the evangelical church, about being fully committed to our faith, you’re already yawning. Is that a defense mechanism? – I’m tired, I’m bored of you already. – Hey man, I know this is, this is your episode. I’m gonna let you do all the talking. I’m only gonna ask some questions here and there, but when I do interject, I would just ask that you not yawn in my face. – Yeah, I’m sorry. – I think it, I think it’s nervous yawn. – Oh, I’m sure it is. Oh, yeah, I yawn, I feel like I have to get more oxygen. – Okay. – When I get nervous. – So you’re not bored with me. – No, I’m just a little bit nervous. – Okay. Apology accepted. Anyway, what was I saying? I was saying that– – We told our stories a year ago. – About how we, you know, how we became professional Christians. Well, you know, we were on staff full-time with Campus Crusade, we talked about all that. There were two episodes just to go through all the stuff in a span of time from college all the way through leaving our engineering jobs and joining Campus Crusade until leaving. Like we filled in all of those gaps in our career, stuff we never talked about before. And then now we knew that that was basically setting the table to then say, to go into more depth about each of our spiritual journeys. And so at that time, you went first, then I went second. And so we’re just gonna repeat that. You’re gonna go first again. – Is that good or bad? – I think that’s good. It’s good for me. I think you’re, you’re breaking the seal. You know, we’re different people. We have, we process, we’ve gone through so much of our lives together, but we process things differently, and you know, our friendship has stayed intact. Our love for one another is strong as ever. And I’m here to support you today as you give some sort of update. – Appreciate that. – I don’t want to supercharge this any any more than it is. And I’m curious how you’ve approached this and how you’ve thought about it, but I’m actually not gonna ask that question. I’m just gonna let you take it from here, unless you think there’s something else to fill in the gaps to bring people up to speed. – No, because I will, in the course of what I’m gonna try to say today, I’ll end up filling some of the gaps and talking a little bit about this, but yeah, the only thing I’ll say to kind of, before I get started is that I have a lot of notes, in the same way that I did when I did it. Like typically, you know, this is not, this is not a scripted podcast. This is just two lifelong friends talking about life for a long time. And we rarely if ever have any sort of notes or outline that we’re going off of. But whenever I talk about this, and this is the ironic thing, I just want to acknowledge just up front is that, you know, when I was a Christian, when it was in the church and when I was a professional Christian, there were a number of times that I had to give a talk or even dare I say preach a sermon. I preached a couple of sermons in my day. – I dare you to say it. – And I find myself approaching these episodes like I would getting ready to give a talk. And I don’t mean like a pre like a preachy sermon, but I’m just saying that like you want to make sure that you got all your stuff together. And so I’m going off notes as if I’m giving a talk, and so I just apologize if the tone is a little bit different or readier than normal, but I just feel like it’s my way of getting the right information out there. – Go for it. – We ready? At some point we’ll stop and have a little ad break, but just keep that in mind. Okay, so again, a year has passed and the way I kind of approach this is I want to talk about some things that as I’ve reflected on telling our story, at the time that we told it, how I’ve kind of processed both the response but also the way 2020 unfolded. And then as I’m gonna spend a lot of time on that, but then I will eventually get to sort of the update where I’m at spiritually is kind of what I’ll end on, which we’ve touched on a little bit on a few episodes, but I think we’ll get into it a little bit more deeply. So going back to the initial sort of like laying it all out there a year ago, putting it out into the world, the initial reaction, very, very supportive and encouraging on the whole, like I would say the vast majority of people, even people who disagreed. – Yeah. – Were super supportive and encouraging. But my response to the minority of negative responses was very informative about who I still am and how much growth I still have yet to do. So I, you know, we have both received a lot of negative feedback. Doing what we do for as long as we’ve done it, being in this totally democratic platform where you can put whatever you want to on this place and have whoever wants to say anything say whatever they want to without any sort of check and also with anonymity, we have, I don’t know, we never like talked about it that much, but we have developed a thick skin. I mean, let’s just be honest. – Well, I’m gonna, I’m not gonna admit to changing my hairstyle years ago because I got fed up with the comparisons to Velma from Scooby-Doo, or Thelma, whatever her name is. – Well, ’cause you look just like her, and I think it is Velma. – Yeah. – And I kind of look like Shaggy, so that’s not that big of a deal. And you talk like Scooby-Doo. (laughing) (imitates Scooby-Doo) But so we got a pretty thick skin. – You’re right, people will say anything about you. – Everything that can be said– – They’ll misunderstand you and misconstrue lots of things that you intend as an artist, as a creative person. – An artist, we do consider ourselves artists. We have created some art, but– – Could be comedians, talkers. – Everything that can be said about our videos, everything that can be said about our style of humor, everything that can be said about what we look like, every aspect of what we look like, every aspect of our bodies, our hands, our feet, literally, literally anything that can be said about any part of us has been said publicly. And I’ve just kind of gotten over it. – And if you think, well that’s probably great, then you’re not thinking about it enough. – Yeah, but the one thing that telling my story, my deconstruction story in the fashion that I chose to tell it, that one thing it invited that I have never really experienced is a critique of my mind. Right, so I chose to tell my story, which centered around sort of, it was a largely sort of the unraveling of my intellectual underpinning when it comes to Christianity, right? And I condensed about a 20 year process into 90 minutes. Therefore it was not exhaustive, and it was not meant to be a dissertation or some sort, you know, that was not what it was meant to be, but that was how many people interpreted it. Because I told this story with these steps and I used some examples and I actually talked about some of the things that were convincing to me that sort of changed my view. And so what that did naturally. – People poked holes in it. – [Rhett] Yeah. – But what you’re saying is that given the nature of the presentation, it was presented with holes in it. – Well, I’ll say two things. It was presented with holes so that any sort of like, hey let’s take this and break this down and show all the places that he’s wrong is I wouldn’t say it’s a totally fair way to treat it, but I will say, I mean, listen, I understood that by saying these things, I would be open to criticism and my thought process would be open to criticism, even if you’re seeing sort of just snapshots of my thought process. – So are you complaining about that? – No, the point that I’m making is that I was just reminded that like, oh wow, you’ve actually grown a pretty thick skin about what people might say about the way you look or what people might say about the things that you do on the internet. – How funny you aren’t. – Yeah, I know I’m not funny to a lot of people, but what I’d never done because I’ve just been doing dumb stuff on the internet for 10 years is sort of said hey, I’m putting my mind out there in this way and have people critique it and critique my thought process, and that my pride was wounded. And I was just reminded that I still got a lot of pride. I got, I have pride in the way that I think about the way that I think. So ultimately, I think that was a good thing. It’s like, if I can keep having those edges sanded off. – The feedback is a good thing. – That’s good for me personally. Now, you know. – You heard it, bring it on. – So one of the things that, now I know more so than you, I’ve been, and again, I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that a lot of the critique and a lot of the conversation about our stories was kind of centered around my story because I was, my story was much more open to critique because it was, yours was very personal. And who’s gonna argue with your personal experience, right? You told us some stories, told a lot of stories, and it was personal and it was super relatable. And I was kind of saying this thing that is like here’s the, here’s how the faith began to fall apart for me specifically. So I have against my better judgment most likely, I’ve read some of this stuff, right. I’ve read the blog posts, the Facebook posts, and watched some videos. And again, I haven’t watched anything all the way through. I’ve kind of gotten the gist of some things. – You generated a lot of content for other people. – It did, it did, but one of the things that I noticed was that it seems that the sort of general evangelical conclusion about us is that we were never Christians, right? That’s where the majority of evangelicals have landed. That it’s like, okay, this is how I interpret this. And this has been pretty fascinating for me personally because this is exactly what I would have said about us, you know, 15 years ago, if I were to watch and hear the stories that we told, I would be like, “well, I guess those guys were never Christians,” or they are still and they will come back to full faith and full relationship with Christ at some point in the future. And I was thinking about that and thinking about the way that I used to think about things like this, and it was very much, it was a commitment to Christianity. It was a commitment to the Bible, but more so than anything, it was, it was commitment to an ideology. It was commitment to a system of ideas that, yes, have their roots in the Bible, but me and you both came from a reform background. You, like, you came from like a specific, like your church was specifically like, “Hey, we are reformed.” And my church was like, “we’re not a reformed denomination but this particular expression of this non-denominational denomination is reformed,” right? – Yeah, post-college, newlywed, the churches we were involved in, yes. – Right, so we basically, even though I was uncomfortable with it, I kind of subscribed to sort of Calvinism light, you know, like what John Calvin taught. So you’ve got the P in tulip, which is per perseverance of the saints. This is a deep cut for those of you who don’t have any experience with this. – At least you skipped to the P. You left the tuli on the table, that’s good. – Essentially it’s this once saved always saved thing that, again there’s a biblical support for it. There’s also some biblical, there’s some stuff that might bring it into question, but the general sort of consensus of the churches that we came from and the sort of the part of the evangelical church that we came from is that once saved always saved. And so I just find it interesting that, you know, you hear a couple of guys who talk about their experience with Christianity, how they were all in for Jesus. They recognized that they were sinners in desperate need of the grace of God that comes only through accepting the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. And we made a decision, in my case multiple decisions just to make sure it’d take, it had taken to accept Christ. And you say “those guys were never Christians” because that is what you have to believe. The power of ideology. But the thing that I really want to get into is the timing of us telling the stories. – So before you move on, so I mean, you’re obviously asserting, and I will, I’ll agree from my perspective too, that experience that yeah, I believed I was saved. I mean, period. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t look back on that experience and, you know, I’m very critical of myself, but I don’t, I just don’t think that, yeah, I don’t, I don’t look back at my former self that way. And that’s what you’re saying too? You think you were as real as you could be? I mean, did we miss something? – What I would say to committed evangelical Christians who are listening is the way that they feel about their relationship with God and the way that they experience their relationship with God is I would say, as well as I can without being in your own, without being inside your body, I would say, I get it, I relate, I understand, I had the same experience. And now I think very differently about that, and we would have fundamental differences as to what we think was actually going on at that time. But I’m saying that I understand that if you subscribe to, if you’re still in and you subscribe to this particular ideology, you do not have a choice but to believe that we were never Christians or that we still are, and we will return someday. That’s all, that’s all I’m saying. So I’m not, I’m just saying it’s interesting that that’s where people landed, and the power of you can actually, the way that has been discussed in a couple of places, the way that we have been described as like, you know, you can kind of tell when you listen to them that they never really came to a saving faith. They never really repented. They never really understood grace. It seems like it was cultural. It seems like it was, maybe there was an intellectual commitment, but it doesn’t seem like they had given their hearts to Jesus. And as somebody who made those same arguments to lots of people, who talked about it’s not about a religion, it’s a relationship. It’s about a group. It’s the gift. It is the undeserved gift of God, grace through faith. That’s the only way. That’s what I believed. That’s what I lived. That’s what I experienced. And to be told, no, you didn’t, I’m not mad at those people for saying that. I’m saying I understand that when you have, when you’ve completely bought into the ideology you have no choice but to believe that. Just an observation. But the timing, the timing of our story, what are the chances that we told these stories at the onset of 2020, just before the world fell apart, and listen, I’m very grateful that we were able to do this at the beginning of what has ended up being basically the most difficult world for the, or difficult year for the world at large in our lifetimes, right? – Oh yeah. – Some people have suffered a lot more. Me and you have had the privilege of being in the position that we are and having the jobs that we are so that we were able to get through this year relatively unscathed. A lot of people didn’t and the world didn’t and the world is still suffering. Two, two things about that. First thing is having been open and vulnerable about our spiritual journey gave us an opportunity to then speak open and vulnerably about the things that happened in 2020. – Yeah. – And you know, two guys who have been in the public eye for a really long time, who had kept this most significant thing secret and off limits, we had kind of become experts at navigating interviews without talking about the elephant in the room, which is like, “but weren’t you guys like Christians? And not, not just Christians, but like big Christians, like professional Christians? Didn’t you guys write like some Christian songs for kids that were on like DVDs that were in constant rotation at Christian bookstores?” Yes, yes, yes, and yes, but not talking about that, it was this weird thing that as we continue to get more vulnerable on this podcast and just in life in general, continuing to try to balance that, not sharing that thing. And then what became a year where there were certain things that our nation and our world faced, where the expectation was if you are a public figure with an audience at all, you’re going to speak into these things. Like you can’t really get away. In 2020, you couldn’t get away with just staying on the sidelines about a lot of things that we went through as a nation, but boy, it made it a lot easier to engage in that conversation having gotten vulnerable. I don’t, it would have been weird to not have had that conversation at the beginning of 2020. I honestly can’t imagine our interaction publicly with the year that was 2020 without having told our stories. – You know, I’m surprised that we’re, just as a, this is a side note, that we were, that we’ve been as successful as we’ve been and gotten to the point in our careers we have without being vulnerable to that level, because that’s kind of a big part of being an internet personality. – We wrote a whole book that was about us. I mean, let’s be honest. We wrote the “Book of Mythicality” that was full of stories about us. It was memoir-ish, but yet it didn’t talk about any of this stuff. Because we weren’t ready. – And I do think there was feedback like, okay, they have more to gain by sharing this story than keeping it to themselves. And you know, the people that are suffering are the ones who are, their faith is, you know, is not strong enough yet. So they’re, they’re capitalizing on a vulnerability for their own, to boost their popularity even further at the expense of people who are floundering spiritually. And it’s, you know. – I’ll talk a little bit about that in a little bit. – Okay, we’ll come back to that, but okay. I’ll just wait then if you’re gonna talk about it. – But the, but the, the bigger significance – I’m grateful that, to your point, back on point, I’m grateful that the timing worked out the way it did, that we were able to talk about that. And then it led to the conversation in the episode we had about Ben, I mean. – We couldn’t have had that, I mean, again. – I just felt like it was so important. – The biggest episode of “Ear Biscuits,” and that’s not what this is about, but like, yeah. – We had no clue. – Had no clue that people were gonna watch it to the degree they did. – But it was important for us to process that and to make it, for people to take it how they would, for us to process that aspect of our lives and how our spiritual journey had an impact on one of the most important relationships that we had growing up with our other best friend. – And we can talk all about Ben and Ben’s death, but to talk about Ben’s death without talking about what we were trying to do during his, with him on his deathbed and trying to bring him to a decision for Jesus, and the way that we processed that now would have been a totally different story. – And, yeah, to be, to be in this medium and not be able to be true to yourself will eat away at your soul. – Yeah. – And that’s, that’s why I’m grateful for it. – Yeah, I mean, it feels, I don’t know. I would have exploded. – Yeah. – I would have exploded this year. – I, I feel emotional about it just because I’m, I’m grateful. I mean, it’s, I got a lot to process in the next episode. I’m not gonna, but I’m grateful for it. And yeah, everything that we’ve gone through as a world and as a nation that I, you know, I’m grateful that we were able to bring more of ourselves to that than before the lost years series, we were, I felt like we were ready or capable or had the, had the confidence to do. – Yeah. Right. But I think that the bigger significance for me was the way that my story, in us telling our stories, intersected with the evangelical church’s response to 2020 in general. – Hmm. Okay. – And I am going spend a fair amount of time talking about that today, but first. – Oh gosh. – Let’s sell a feel good Mythical Morning hat. – This is a cool hat. I mean, if I put it on, I’m just gonna look stupid ’cause I don’t want to mess up my hair. – Oh, is that what it is? – That’s what matters most. – Okay. – Let’s not forget that. Feel Good Mythical Morning, it comes on a hat. It comes on a hoodie. It comes on a shirt. It comes on all types of things. – I think that’s called a six panel. – This right here, my friend is, I’m super proud of what this represents. – Feel good, man. – That if you get, you watch “Good Mythical Morning.” – If it feels good, do it. – I don’t care. – That what you’re saying? – No. – If you’re saying if it feels good, do it? Are you a hedonist? – I don’t care who you are. I don’t care where you are. If you watch “Good Mythical Morning,” I believe that you will leave feeling better. You might feel nauseous, but you will feel so much better in other ways that it’ll counteract it. And that’s why we want to put it on a hat, and why you might want to wear it on a hat or a shirt or a hoodie, because “Good Mythical Morning” makes you feel good. No matter who you are or what you believe. – Yeah, and fittingly, this stuff does feel good. I mean, I don’t know about that hat, but like the hoodie feels really good. Like we pride ourselves on soft shirts and hoodies, sweat shirts, I’m just saying we want things to feel good. Why else wear something if it doesn’t feel good? – Mythical.com. – Okay, my story in a nutshell, just to set the stage. Grew up in a, just in case you haven’t, you’ve just decided to not go back to the original story. – Why wouldn’t they do that? I think they need, they’ll do that. Go ahead. Go ahead. – Grew up in a Christian home, made my own decision for Christ at a young age. Starting in high school, got very serious about my faith, along with this guy right here, which continued through college. Then after I got involved in campus ministry, then after college, we eventually went on staff with Campus Crusade to train students in evangelism. Now my understanding growing up, and also well into adulthood was that what the church believed, which was largely based on what the Bible said, was true. And many things that the world, those outside the church thought, the things that they thought were true were actually lies. Right, so what we had inside the church was the truth and what the world had was lies. And more specifically, when it came to the Bible, everything that it touches on, it is true. It is true then, right. So anywhere that science and history and archeology et cetera appears to contradict the Bible, either that is not an actual contradiction or the worldly philosophy or perspective is wrong. Like that’s kind of what I was rooted in, right. And then, but I was also very curious and I constantly sort of rederived my faith and would go back to the beginning, because as you get exposed to other perspectives and worldviews which is kind of impossible not to in this day and age with the internet, you continually sort of check yourself and go back and try to rebuild the foundation and make sure like, okay I want to make sure that this, is that I can, I can derive this, I can explain this. I can communicate this to myself and others, right. But over the course of my adult life, I came to think that Christians might actually have it backwards. I, when the secular scientists, historians, archeologists, et cetera, questioned the truth of something in the Bible, they most likely were right, right? That was the process, it was a slow and steady shift. And then coming to that conclusion, which I finally got all way on the other side of that, coming to that conclusion gave me permission to question what I kind of call the underlying cosmic principles of evangelical Christianity. Namely people are born into a broken relationship with God and if they don’t reconcile that relationship through Jesus, they will spend eternity and unthinkable torment in hell. And when I started thinking like that’s not even something that I want to believe, I had given myself the permission to not have to believe it because I didn’t, I no longer believed the underlying sort of ideas that led to that, right. And at that point is when I was like, okay, no longer consider myself a Christian. And that happened, I can’t remember what year. I said that was when I went back to my story, but you know, at least several years ago. Now, a lot of people pointed out that it seemed like the two of us were not rejecting Christianity per se, but we were rejecting evangelical Christianity. – Okay. – Right? And maybe more specifically Southern evangelical Christianity. And I’ll say, I somewhat agree with that because that is what we had and that is what we experienced, that was our story. And that is what we rejected. But I will also say that, you know, I don’t think that Jesus rose from the dead. I don’t think that God’s ultimate true manifestation is in the person of Jesus. And so I would say that that puts me safely outside of the Christian camp, philosophically, right? – I believe so, yes. – So I would also say that. So I have also come to that conclusion. That’s my, that’s where I’m at right now. That’s my thinking about it. Having said all that, I will say that most of what I’m gonna say today is intended for the evangelical church, and more specifically the white evangelical church in America. Because again, that’s the world I come from. That’s the world I know. That’s the world I left. And I am going to say some things that are difficult to hear if you are in the white evangelical church. And again, I do not say any of this to be like, to like get back at anybody for saying anything about me. Again, I’m grateful for the criticism that I received. I am pre-grateful for the criticism I will receive for this. – Oh, pre-grateful. – It continues to make me a person who cares less about the opinions of others, which is a healthier person. And it may be hard to hear this, but I not lying when I say that I say these things out of love. And I say them with a true hope that they will ultimately have a positive impact. You just have to take my word for it. Okay. Now I haven’t been part of the evangelical church for several, many years, it was like six or seven years probably, but you know, before we told our stories, there’s a lot of speculation about us that we might be, still be evangelical Christians, because there was lots of public evidence of that from our past, you could pull it up. – Cumulative, yeah. – You could come to that conclusion, and the actions of white evangelicals in the year 2020 served as a strong confirmation for me personally to have publicly disassociated myself from the church. Now, again, I left because I came to what for me was an inescapable conclusion that the church had a spurious relationship with the truth. And I feel like that spurious relationship with the truth was borne out in 2020, but it’s more than just a spurious relationship with the truth. I think the church demonstrated that it has a spurious relationship with justice as well. So on the issue of racial injustice, and I’m gonna pull some data from the Public Religion Research Institute, this is all– – Shout out. – This is all straight from there. White Christians are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African-Americans. White Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with the following statement: generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that makes it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class. Author Robert P. Jones, who’s also associated with the PRRI, created a racism index that was generated using 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice. So basically this is a racism test. (chuckles) White evangelical Protestants had the highest median score on the racism index, as Jones summarized. While most white Christians think of themselves as people who warm, who have warm feelings toward African-Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity. I don’t, having spent most of my life in the white evangelical church, I don’t need these stats, but you might need them in order to understand that racism has a very comfortable home in the white evangelical church today. And also, newsflash, and people who know their history know that this is, this is not new, right? It isn’t like 2020 made the church racist. The church has been, the white church has been, has held up racist ideas and defended racist ideas and perpetuated racist ideas for hundreds of years. The church, contrary, now what we were told, what we grew up thinking is that, you know, the only reason that slavery ended was because of the Christian abolitionists. But what that fails to account for is the only reason that slavery continued for so long was the white Protestants who were justifying it and doing it, right? And, and not only that, not only were they instrumental in the justification of slavery, the church was instrumental in the justification of segregation that followed slavery. And Sunday morning remains the most segregated time of the entire week in America. 2020 just pulled the curtain back. 2020 just pulled the curtain back on something that lots of people have known for a long time. – I will say, you know, you kind of alluded to it. I’ll just say, you know, I’ll refer to your Medium article “Letter to a White Man,” because that’s where you explored your own experience and you wrote the letter to your former self. I think that, again, you made a statement earlier that like, given my experience and your experience growing up when we did, where we did, including in the church, but just when and where we did in general as as white guys. Yeah, I know a lot. This rings true for me from personal experience and you know, being close to it to the point where I personally, I personally am sorry for being so close to it and unwittingly involved many times, more than I even care to reflect or completely understand, because it’s scary to think about, but I talk to my kids about it, you know? – Yeah. – So just wanted to throw that in there. My, this rings true from, from my personal experience. – And the reason this is such a tricky thing is because as a white Christian, I didn’t think that I had racist ideas. In fact, I felt I had been inoculated to racist ideas because I believed in a gospel that was for everyone. There was no slave, there was no free person. There was no man, no woman. There was no race. The gospel, it doesn’t discriminate, and I thought that because of that was true, therefore racism can’t really exist. But what I failed to see until I left was that so many racist ideas were not being challenged and actually we’re being perpetuated within our church in ways that we were blind to. But when it comes, we come back to 2020. As opposed to being on the front lines of calling for racial justice in America, white evangelicals reliably deny or minimize systemic racism. And they also point out the problems with racial justice, racial justice protest, rather than acknowledging the problems that are being protested, right? What, and this is what I talked about in my “Letter to a White Man,” what does the typical white Christian, white evangelical Christian say about the protests? Ah, violence is never the answer. That, right, that’s the first thing. And a lot of times the only thing they say, but, okay, yeah. Violence is not good. We don’t want violence. Violence is not productive most of the time, but what are people upset about? Can we talk about that? No. Well that’s, well, that doesn’t exist. That’s what we heard from again, if you’re a white evangelical and you’re like “well, I don’t believe that,” well, a lot of people you go to church with do. Simply put, white evangelicals have been on the wrong side of the fight against racial injustice. Okay, what about COVID? Let’s talk about COVID. Let me just stop and acknowledge that for many of you who are already down the rabbit hole, who have, who subscribe to a Christian nationalism and have mixed, you know, Trumpism and Jesusism together, nothing that I say is going to be compelling. In fact, and everything that I say is going to just confirm to you that I have completely departed from the truth and now live in a world of lies. I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the person who sits next to you in church who knows better. COVID, despite clear evidence showing that mask wearing helps slow the spread of COVID, white evangelicals are the group least likely to wear a mask in public, least likely. If you throw a dart at a demographic in America, who’s least likely to wear a mask? White evangelicals get that award. Although the COVID mortality numbers are within the range predicted by scientists at the start of the pandemic, and hospitals have been, as predicted, overwhelmed in many parts of the country, white evangelicals are the most likely demographic to deny the seriousness of the pandemic. White evangelicals are also much more likely than the average American to question the efficacy of vaccination in general, and more likely to believe false information about the COVID vaccine. All this is added up to being one of the key reasons that America has had such has had such a tough time with COVID. In short, white evangelicals have been on the wrong side of the fight against COVID. I don’t want to get into too many more details. I’m not trying to give you evidence and argue if you don’t believe, if you don’t believe that COVID a real deal and you don’t believe in mask or whatever, I’m just saying that this is what, what is born out in America. So in summary, white evangelicals, largely, not all, again, not all, but largely, and more than anyone else, represent an intersection of science denialism and racist ideas that have made them an impediment in the fight against both COVID and racial injustice. And instead of worrying about the poor and the black and the brown (sighs) who are more likely to suffer from both the pandemic and racial injustice, white evangelicals have been preoccupied with their own personal freedoms, spending more time and energy talking about their own persecution rather than those actually being persecuted. Sorry. I don’t, I’m not exactly sure why I get emotional about it, but I think it’s because I was such a part of it for so long. – Yeah. I mean, yeah, I just, I can think of, I can see myself there and so I don’t. It hurts and it’s, it’s embarrassing. – Yeah, there’s a lot of shame. – Yeah. And it, yeah. Yeah, and it’s just not, “oh, look at how good, look at how righteous we are now. Look at how woke we are now.” It’s just not, I mean, it’s like, because I’m not thinking about, when you say that, I ended up thinking about my former self. – I’m talking to myself. – Yeah, and it’s um. – Yeah. But perhaps the single issue that best captures white evangelicals’ dubious relationship with truth and justice is their overwhelming allegiance to Donald Trump. Do I want to talk about Donald Trump? No, I do not. I’m so glad that I do not have to see him in the news cycle. You probably don’t want talk about him either, but we can’t talk about 2020. We can’t talk about white evangelicals. We can’t talk about the last four years without talking about Donald Trump. By far the most reliably supportive group for Donald Trump, Donald Trump holding steadily at around eight out of 10, eight out of 10, that’s a lot. You tell me there’s an eight out of 10 chance it’s gonna rain today, I’m like “I’m bringing my umbrella.” Eight out of 10 of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump, both times around, 2016 and 2020. And I can think of few people, not just presidents, but just few people in general who are less Christ-like than Donald Trump. I mean, okay, right? It’s not, I’m not, this isn’t, I’m not being farfetched. Yeah, he has enjoyed more evangelical support than even George W. Bush, who was actually an evangelical. Right? And let me just say again, I hesitated putting this in there but listen, I’m no longer in a part of the church, but things could have fallen different, a little bit different and I could, I could still be in the church, right? If the multi-world theory of the parallel universe is true, there’s billions of Rhetts that are still in the church. Let me tell you what those billions of Rhetts are saying right now. – You’re annoying them, that’s for sure. – Well, no, the Rhett that is out there in a parallel universe who is still in the evangelical church would not have gone along with this Donald Trump bullshit. I can tell you that right now. And I lost so much respect for so many people who did. Now for me, the most personally disturbing thing is the way that Christian, talked about this before, Christian nationalism and Trumpism have kind of combined to create something that carries the name of Jesus. Literally, if you look at the Capitol protest, you see there’s Trump 2020 flags and literally Jesus 2020 flags. I don’t think he was running for president, but there’s a flag that says “Jesus 2020” right next to a Trump 2020 flag. Not uncommon at all to see that, but they’ve combined to create something that carries that name of Jesus, but looks nothing like the Jesus that I have seen in the Bible. Journalist Carol Kuruvia did a good job of contrasting the words of Jesus with those of Donald Trump. So I’m gonna do that just quickly, just take this in. Jesus said “love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.” Donald Trump said, “when people wrong you, go after those people, because it is a good feeling and because other people will see you doing it. I always get even.” Jesus said “for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “Truly I tell you whatever you did for the one of the least, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Donald Trump said “I’m putting people on notice that are coming from Syria as part of this mass migration that if I win, they’re going back.” I could go on about other things he said that would contrast with that. Jesus said, “those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Trump said “sorry losers and haters but my IQ is one of the highest and you all know it. Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure. It’s not your fault.” – I’m not laughing anymore. – That’s almost funny. – Yeah, but I’m not laughing anymore. – Jesus said “do not store it for yourselves, treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Trump said “part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” Okay, she actually did a lot more. That’s all I’m gonna do, I could go on. Cheating on his pregnant wife with a porn star then paying her off, bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, bragging about being able to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. Again, this is none of this is new. You’ve heard it from so many people. – I would say, I’d be tempted to say, “you know what? It’s a little late for this. Isn’t it?” And that’s, that’s just the shocking thing is that it’s not, there’s still so much. The allegiance is still there. – Right. – Now. – Yeah, the allegiance is still there. Now, listen, I know many evangelical Christians who recognize these quote unquote flaws in Donald Trump, but they say that he stands for their interests and he stands against something that’s worse than him and therefore supporting him is justified, right? That’s the position by many people. Now, personally, I find it hard to square Jesus’s words to turn the other cheek with an almost obsessive insistence that civilians be able to carry an AR-15. I find it hard to square Jesus’s words about feeding and clothing the hungry with separating children from their families at the border. I find it hard to square Jesus’s words to the rich to sell their possessions with supporting tax policy that concentrates wealth in the top 1% and gives corporations the rights of individuals. I can’t make those two things line up very well, but even then, there are still people who say, “listen, look at what he did with the judges. He got three conservative judges on the Supreme Court. He got hundreds of federal judges appointed, you know, good constitutional Christian conservatives and therefore all in all, he’s done good even if he’s a bad, flawed person.” Here’s what I say to that. My friend William Matthews made an astute observation about this desire for Christians to have power, for their interests to be represented in the quote unquote kingdoms of the world. And in Matthew chapter four, you may remember this story, after Jesus had fasted for 40 days, Satan took him to a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to him “all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.” Now there’s a lot to that story, but the idea is that Satan himself was saying that like, where I exert my power is in the traditional kingdoms of the world. And he’s asking Jesus “are you interested in exerting your power there?” And that was the temptation that Jesus said no to. And it seems to me, when I look at white evangelicals in 2021, they have fallen to the temptation that Jesus himself resisted. Here’s one way to say, here’s one way to see it. If you’re a white evangelical in America in 2021, you’re no longer represented by Jesus. You’re represented by the MyPillow guy. I mean, that’s what I would think. Because that’s what I see. (sighs) So again, so thankful that I was able to say that I’m not a part of this group heading into 2020, but I want to address another aspect of the story. One of the common responses to our story was a sense of like fear and panic that the two of us were leading kids astray, that these YouTubers who have this big audience that has a lot of kids in it are causing these crises of faith to happen all over the place, right? And that in turn led to a lot of people talking about how churches and parents need to do a better job to train and educate young Christians to protect them from people like me and you, right? – Yeah. – I have an alternative theory about why so many young people are leaving the church, because they are leaving the church like never before. I was gonna say I’d like to take credit for it, but I’m not gonna say. What I’m saying is I don’t think it’s because of me and you and here’s why, and I say this, I mean it, I say this out of love and respect, because I do believe that there is hope for the church. Your kids are not leaving the church because you didn’t train them enough. Your kids are leaving the church because you trained them well enough to develop a sense for truth and justice. You let them read the words of Jesus and they got it. And they’ve recognized that the church doesn’t seem to be interested in those words. They’re not leaving because they don’t know the truth, they’re leaving because they do. This isn’t necessarily something that they would articulate. This is something that is happening on a soul level, because me and you didn’t give any, we didn’t give people new information that they never considered. There wasn’t anything revolutionary. There wasn’t anything even particularly insightful about what we had to say on our podcast, honestly. Nothing that we said was, it had all been said before. But I think the thing that we did is we demonstrated that it is okay to question, it is okay to question at all. Your kids were already questioning it. Because it’s pretty questionable, okay? It is. And now they’re seeing that leaving the church might not ruin your life. In fact, you might find a new life. – You know, when Lando was nine years old, one of his favorite people on Earth was his teacher from last year. And she’s a lesbian. She has a wife, they have two kids. We went to Legoland and we happened to run into them. This is before the pandemic hit. And it was, you know, I got a kick out of Lando seeing his teacher, who he loves so much, in a different environment, you know? You know, it’s that, there’s always that funny exchange between a student and their teacher out in the wild, and it feels weird, but his love for her was so strong that it had the power to overcome that weirdness. And like, they, we got a picture together and we would see each other in line. We talked to each other and like, you know, it was amazing just that he has that type of relationship with his teacher. If I would have instilled in him what was instilled in me, he would have not, he would have felt deep down within himself that he didn’t have permission to love her. That was my experience, you know, because, and I know that that’s, you know, you can pick that statement apart easily because, well there’s a difference between love– – Love the sinner, hate the sin. – Yeah, but I know what the experience is like and I know how I looked at people who were, who weren’t straight, but the thing is, and to your point, Lando knows, he knows what it’s like to love somebody. That’s not something that– – It’s inherent. – And it’s not something that I had to teach him. And the fact that he’s free to love her is a beautiful thing that I– – And to love her fully. – To love her fully, yes. – When you love, ’cause again, I’m not saying that Christians who, there are Christians who believe, based on their commitment to the Bible and to their interpretation of the Bible, that being gay is ultimately wrong, but they say that, or gay acts are wrong, but the person is lovable and can be redeemed, et cetera. But the thing that that mentality– – It just doesn’t work out that way in your heart. – You’re invalidating a huge part of that person’s identity and existence, and also, in your teacher’s case, the relationship and her family is not a valid or legitimate family. And therefore that’s not full, it’s just not full love. – And he, and I didn’t have to teach him that. – Yeah. Right. – He knows, he knows what full, wholehearted, true love for somebody is. And I’ll leave it at that. – So if you want your kids to stay in the church, again this is unsolicited advice. I don’t know if anybody’s taking it, but this is not hey, I want all your kids to leave the church. That’s not what I’m saying at all. If you want your kids to stay in the church, you don’t need to change your kids. You need to change your church. If your kids can’t find Jesus, the Jesus that they know from the Bible, the Jesus that you’ve taught them about. If they can’t find him within the walls of your church, you know what, they will go looking for him elsewhere. And that may not be what they say they’re doing. That may not be how they articulate it. It may not be how they describe it, but I believe that that’s what’s happening. And it’s interesting because, you know, people made assumptions about, about me and you, and they’re making the same assumptions about their kids. Let me explain. So a lot of people assume that we left the church because there was something out there, something outside of the church, whether that’d be fame, fortune, cultural acceptance, whatever that we ultimately wanted more than Jesus, right? Like we fell to the temptation and we went after that thing instead of Jesus. And you also think that your kids might want something out there, something outside of the church more than they want Jesus. I think it might be simpler than that. I think maybe your kids who left the church just wanted Jesus and they saw that you wanted something else. They see that the church at large seems to want something else. Because in my experience, and just looking at it, and again, regardless of your conclusions about the nature of the historicity of Jesus and the specific words that are in the Bible, but if you just take the words of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus at face value, you have to do some very athletic, very athletic mental gymnastics to find a way to reconcile the way the white evangelical church looks in America today with any of those words. I just can’t put those puzzle pieces together in a way that makes sense. Okay, I stepped into a giant pile of bull crap and we’ll see how that airs out on the internet, but let’s move on. (laughs) – Okay. – In an effort to kind of finish this up with where I’m at spiritually, right? So I’ve covered some of this ground, but just by way of just kind of putting it all together. You know, when I was a Christian, I was obsessed with having it all figured out, like understanding my faith, rederiving my faith over and over again, it was a relationship with God. But the way that I fed that relationship was with knowledge, knowing scripture, knowing more truth, teaching, that kind of thing, especially in the traditions that we came in, came from, you know, it’s a very mind-based tradition, sort of the more reformed you get in the white evangelical church, the sort of mind-based intellectual it gets. And the more you kind of move into more of a charismatic Pentecostal experience, it gets a little bit more heart-based. And I never really had that. I went to those kinds of churches at times, but didn’t have, that wasn’t my personal experience. But today, I see spirituality as an openness to things that transcend my conceptual understanding, but are still deeply meaningful, right? And I think that most people, now some people don’t, some people are like “I don’t need, I don’t need faith. I don’t need religion. I don’t need spirituality,” full, full stop. I think that the majority of people do need something that they might describe as spirituality. And you know, religion sort of represents a human effort to systematize those glimpses of connection that we have with something deeper, that leaning into the mystery. And one of the reasons that it’s so effective at it is that it happens in community, right? Religions, religion happens in community. It is like community and culture together kind of meets faith, and the places where it’s more embedded in the culture and more embedded in the community are the places where it is the strongest and like last the longest, right? And there’s this really interesting thing that’s happening all around the world, but it’s happening in our country as well as that, you know, more people are moving into a new religious category every single year, and that is the religiously non-affiliated. And there really isn’t a community for that and I think that my prediction is that those chickens are gonna come home to roost. And this idea that everybody’s gonna be disconnected and just religiously unaffiliated is not as, I don’t think it’s a sustainable way to move forward. And it may take a generation or two, I don’t know, before things come back around. And I don’t have any predictions as to what that is, but I kind of feel myself in that group right now, but as it applies to me personally. – You’re going to start a church. – No, no, I’m not. I’m very much not going to start a church. But as the way that I kind of think about Christianity now, and again, this is all like, I’m just kind of opening up my mind and heart a little bit and just saying that this, these are some, this is some of the way that I think about it today. – But are you saying, just a point of clarification, that you think that the, when you say it’s gonna come back around or to roost, you’re talking about the church will change to a point where then people will be willing to go back in? – That is one of several options. That’s one of several options. I’m just saying that I don’t think that religious unaffiliation is a sustainable condition for the average person. – Hmm. – And, and I’m not, again, that doesn’t mean that it means a return to traditional understanding or traditional religion. – It might just mean a resurgence in 4-H. – I’m just saying that if you, and if you look at the human makeup, right, if you just look at the composition of a person and you had a way to break them down, you would find something within them, or just it’s something that you would interpret in the whole that is a need for a connection with something beyond themselves. – A social bond, a social component. – Well. – A relational component. – It might be that it’s strictly biological and it can be satisfied with human connection alone, but I just don’t, for me I think that it feels deeper and bigger than that, and so– – But you’re saying that you personally are missing and some experience. – No, no, well, I’m not missing it. I’ll get into that. – Okay. – So okay, so I think a lot of people in the West including me, you know, we think about religion in a deeply personal way, meaning that we think about it in terms of our individual experience or individual destiny, our individual soul, and Christianity is very individualistic, right? And there’s a lot of reasons for this. Some of it has to do with how much Greek philosophy influenced the writing of Paul, but it’s been reinforced over thousands of years as the West has become even more and more individualistic. I mean, there’s the, you know the printing press where everybody had their own Bible and that kind of thing and it kind of, the authority kind of shifted away from just a few people reading. But this personal relationship that we talk about in Christianity, it’s not something that you find much in Eastern religion. It is kind of a Western phenomenon, right? There’s a much more of a collective sense of identity and also religious identity in the East than there is in the West, but there’s this other aspect of the way Greek thought has influenced Christianity. And that is this distinction between body and soul, right? And this distinction between God and his creation, and there tends to be this idea of separateness from God and separateness of soul and body. And then I think that that leads to, it continues this dualistic thinking leads down this road where there’s a distinction between the church and the world. And this is just an observation about the church. And if you don’t know, if you’re not in the church, you may not know that this is what most, all evangelicals believe. You know, and this is what I believed, which is the church and the people, the Christians within the church literally have the spirit of God inside of them. And everyone who isn’t a believer is ultimately left to their own devices. That’s another thing that makes it hard to validate someone else’s experience. When I believed that I literally had, so there’s three parts of God, you know, the father, son, and the Holy spirit, and when you make that decision to become a Christian, the Holy spirit in dwells, you, you literally have the spirit of the almighty God within you leading you, guiding you. And when you’re not a Christian, you don’t have that and so you’re just a human left to a human’s devices and human’s way of thinking. It’s one of the reasons that Christians tend not to trust people who aren’t Christians. It’s one of the reasons that Christians tend not to trust authorities, like, you know, the scientists and what’s the government up to now? – Or a plumber without an ichthus fish on the back of his truck. – Yeah. – I mean, well, it is a secret code that I think does go that deep. – Well how can it not? – There’s God, Holy spirit’s in you, Holy spirit’s in me, okay. – If I think that I’ve got the spirit of God in me and I think that you don’t, how? That we’re in, we’re kind of in a different place. – Oh yeah. – Right? That’s consequential, I think that’s consequential for humanity, and I think it’s one of the reasons that, I think it’s one of the reasons that you can interpret, and I do interpret a lot of the actions of Christians in 2020 as supremely selfish, right? You know, again, regardless of what you think about a mask, again, the whole principle of the mask is that it’s not full-proof, but that it, to some degree, depending on the nature of the mask, which is important, it slows the spread of COVID. But what does it do? It mostly prevents the spread from the person wearing it, right? So it is a supremely selfless thing to wear it. And it is a pretty selfish thing not to wear it, right? When it comes to the vaccine, again, the whole idea of vaccination is that the collective gets vaccinated to a certain rate in order, you know, individuals get vaccinated at a certain rate to protect the collective. And for every person who says “well, I’m gonna see what happens. I’m gonna see what happens with other people” or “I’m not doing that,” again, whether you think that vaccines are safe or not, like if you think that they’re not safe, you’re still putting your own safety and security above the collective, because you know that without it, I’m just saying that it’s a selfish act. – And I’ll even say, I mean, we’re talking about having the spirit and then looking at those that don’t, and what that does deep down. I’ve never thought about this, but I do think it does have an impact. It alters the equation in how you love somebody. I mean, or it’s something that you have to navigate, you know, it just, you know, if you really think about it, how it impacts the nature of loving somebody, and you might say, “well, yeah, I want I want them to be in dwelt with the Holy spirit as well. And I’m motivated by that,” but there’s, it’s dicey, right? There’s another side to that psychologically. I’m just, I’m just raising the question. We, you know, we don’t have to, we shouldn’t get into it, but I’m just observing that it, it’s a complicating factor to someone who believes they’ve been dwelt with the spirit to love somebody who’s not, like wholeheartedly. – And I think that the thing that I’m seeing is that it’s not just difficult to fully love them. It’s more difficult to trust them. I think that that’s what we’re seeing in our country, is there is an inability to trust people who are outside of the church. That’s why it’s been fascinating to me that when you talk to an evangelical Christian in light of 2020, they think that the biggest problem is that they are being persecuted. They think that the biggest thing is that there is this socialist Marxist movement that is out to get them, to eradicate Christianity from the earth. to literally like if you were to ask the average evangelical Christian, like what are the chances that being a Christian will be illegal in 25 years? I think you would get some, I think they’d say pretty high. I remember thinking like that. I thought that it was all headed towards this place where Christianity was gonna become more and more illegal. – There are biblical interpretations that take you to that place. – Right, and we all, everybody who’s living always thinks that they’re in the end times, of course, but really what I’m getting at is this dualistic individualistic approach to faith is something that I have had my fill of. I’ve did a lot of that, right? And so naturally as I kind of moved, continued to try to lean into the mystery and be a spiritual person and move towards spiritual things, I’m naturally a lot more attracted to more inclusive ways of thinking that focus on interconnectedness of humans with each other and with the earth, you know, with nature in general. So that’s what I tend to explore right now. And I know that sounds sort of ambiguous, nebulous, whatever. Ultimately what I’m saying is that faith systems that are built on an us versus them, or it’s like, I have something and you need it, versus we’ve all got something and we’ve all got a connection to not only each other but to something beyond us. I feel like not only, I’m personally more inspired and attracted to that right now, but I also think it’s better for the world and where we’re at as a species. Now, when I told my story, I used the infamous analogy of saying that Christianity was a ship in the ocean and that I jumped off of the ship into a sea of uncertainty and I dragged my wife and my children with me. I talked a little bit about this on the Christmas episode, about how I regretted that analogy for a number of reasons, chiefly is what it made it seem like I was saying about my wife. I was making it seem like my wife and my kids, but especially my wife had no agency, that well, whatever the guy decides, the girl has to go along with it. It’s like, and I regret even implying that because my wife Jessie has, (chuckles) just go to her Twitter account if you’re interested in seeing her exercise her agency. (laughing) LosFamgeles, L-O-S-F-A-M-Geles. – I hope she adds that to her Twitter bio, exercising my agency. – Meaning that Jessie has her own story. I think she’ll tell it at some point. And Jessie is, she is, to characterize what she went through is some sort of me leading our family down a road to question Christianity and her coming along for ride is a, is a very large misrepresentation of what actually happened. I may have been the first person to ask some of the tougher questions, but she has had her own distinct journey in many ways much deeper and more significant than my own. And she’s challenged me in a lot of ways and also been really instrumental in my own personal spiritual growth. So it isn’t about me leading my family into despair, but I also regret the analogy a little bit because I didn’t fully explain what, you know, having reflected on it, the point that I was trying to make was also that the ship on the ocean of uncertainty that seemed to have a purpose and seemed to be like, there’s a bunch of people on that ship. I believe that was an illusion of certainty and security. I don’t believe that the ship existed or that it was just a collective of people who decided to gather together, and I don’t believe that it actually represented the foundation that I thought that it did. That’s why I jumped. But I was recently listening, you know, one of my favorite philosophers is Alan Watts. And, you know, he’s like a ’60s-based writer, professor, I don’t even know really what his background was, but he’s just, he’s just a trippy dude who says a lot of things that sort of expand your mind and make you think about things differently and I enjoy listening to him and just, again, just like having my mind kind of like challenged and expanded because of the way that he sees the world. And I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily a spiritual practice to listen to Alan Watts. It is somewhat, but for me, it’s kind of just fun. – It’s certainly a philosophical practice. – Yeah, right, and it is an expansive way to think. And he does talk a lot about things that I relate to as I consider where I come from and where I might be going, spiritually speaking. – He’ll filter the Western point of view through Taoism, Buddhism, he’ll kind of give you a primer on those things. – And that’s it, and so he was talking specifically about this and he used the same analogy of jumping off of a ship. Or he may have said a rock, but what he was saying is that if you read the Bible, the analogy is used for Jesus and just the faith in Christianity, it’s a rock, it’s a foundation, it’s a steady, stable thing that you need to be on. You need to be rooted. You need to, you know, you need to be planted in a sea of uncertainty so that you can kind of withstand all the things that life would bring at you. And he was saying in contrast to that, you know, Buddhism kind of represents jumping off of that foundation into a sea of nothingness. And he says the only way to survive in the sea of nothingness is to swim. And the only way to swim is to relax. You know, if you’re drowning in the ocean, a lot of people say that if you can’t swim, don’t just go crazy, you’ll sink if you just start trying to tread water, the most humans float, if you just relax and float, your head will stay above water. And I was like, man, this is a, this is a kind of, this is a great way to sort of reinterpret and reapply my analogy because I don’t feel like I’m in a sea of uncertainty. I feel like I’m free. Right? I would mostly describe where I’m at right now as there is a sense of lightness and a freedom, Ironically, that is the way many Christians, especially people who have, you know, we didn’t have the privilege of having like a hardcore testimony like some people, you know, every once in a while when people did testimony time, you got like the guy who was like, I was in The Church of Satan, and I was a biker and I killed a boy. (laughing) – Oh gosh. – And then I found Jesus and now there’s a sense that a burden has been lifted off of me. And when you grow up in the church, you don’t get that. You don’t have that crazy, I was crazy and did all this stuff, and now I got Jesus. But the way a lot of people describe the moment of coming to faith there’s a sense that a burden has been lifted off of them and there is a lightness and they feel free. I’m not arguing with that, especially if you’ve got a background where you, you know, you were all about yourself and then you gave yourself to something else. But I just find that to be ironic that the, for me, the leaving and also being vocal about my leaving has been the sense of freedom, the sense of lightness, the sense of not being burdened, the sense of being open, and the sense of not feeling threatened. I think one of the things that was so true of my experience as a Christian was that everything was a threat. Everything was a threat. You think this? Well, that might be scary. You might be out to get me. You might be bad for me. – I know where that leads. – Yeah. – Kind of a thing. – And what I have found is that, you know what, when I jumped out of the ship of Christianity into the sea of nothingness, (chuckles) which still may be a bad analogy, it’s not like my moral compass was on the ship. I think a lot of people live with the understanding that, well, no the compass on the ship. If you leave the ship, you don’t have the compass anymore. It’s like, no, you, you still, you got it. It’s actually, unless you’re just biologically predisposed to be a horrible person, most people have a pretty intact moral compass. And that sense of truth and justice that your kids naturally have, that your kid, that Lando naturally has. And it’s been interesting to navigate the world in a way that it doesn’t mean that my guard is completely down. I still, in fact, one of the things that I’ve gotten better at recognizing, especially through therapy, is malignant narcissism. As someone who is at least somewhat narcissistic myself, you know it when you see it, but malignant narcissism and the idea that somebody is ultimately about themselves above all things is something that any organization, any system is a breeding ground for narcissists to rise to the top. And the church has no exception. The story of the mega church pastor who falls from grace, which is just, you know, every month or every year there’s gonna be another big story like that. It’s a case of malignant narcissism being rewarded in the church. And I think that I’ve actually gotten better at recognizing people who are out for themselves and people who actually are a threat to me, my family, and my wellbeing. And then to realize that a lot of the people that I thought were threats, and a lot of the ideas that I thought were threatening are not. And that is, I don’t know, man, I’m just having a lot more fun as a human than I did before. And that doesn’t mean that I’m– – Dirty fun? – Doing a bunch of wild things that would, that would blow your mind if I told you and you know, compromise who I am and you know, end my marriage, no, far from it. And, but I will say that, so the idea that Christianity is kind of about, you know, it’s foundational, it’s a rock, you kind of got it figured out and you go from there, moving away from that into a more open place that doesn’t have a system or a structure, I don’t know, this may be a season, because I also don’t think necessarily that a systemless way of going about things spiritually is sustainable, which kind of gets back to what I just said which is this whole religiously unaffiliated. So I don’t know what this means for me personally. Right now, it means that I’m reading a lot of different things, listening to a lot of different things, and having what I would describe as significant spiritual experiences. And again, a lot of these things are not things I want to talk about explicitly. They’re kind of ineffable and I feel like you can take a little bit of the magic away from them when you start trying to explain them and put them into human words. But I do think that spirituality is best experienced in community. And I think the idea that I’m just some guy who like listens to something on my headphones by myself and that’s my spiritual experience is not the end all be all. I think one of the things that the church does very very well is community. And I think that we need community. We need connection. And I think that any true religion, any true faith, any true spirituality is going to be about benevolent connection between people. It’s not gonna be about hierarchy. It’s not gonna be about one narcissistic dude making all the rules in charge, which happens in systems a lot of times, but true benevolence in grace with, from one person to another. And like my wife and I experience that you know, as we have spiritual experiences together. But again, I think that ultimately, and I don’t know when this will happen, but I think that it’s got to happen in the context of community. But as soon as you apply labels and systems to it, humans get involved and end up doing the things that humans do, which is they establish the hierarchy. They reinforce the patriarchy, the narcissists rise to the top. So there’s some interesting conversations going on and have been going on for years about what does this mean for the church? Like if the church, you know really wakes up from its, from the nightmare, and again, there’s lots of people who would say “listen guys, you’re just still talking about the evangelical church or Protestants or, you know, there’s actually a lot of people who call themselves Christians who are already where you’re talking about and come be a part of that community.” I’m not saying that I won’t, I’m not saying that that’s not gonna happen. So far, I haven’t gotten to a place where I feel like I could comfortably reenter that kind of environment that is saturated in Christian language, ideas, and imagery, and not just go back to the individualistic, dualistic way of thinking about things. So maybe there’s a community out there where you can kind of experience the openness and the expansiveness and it’s about connection with each other and something beyond your collective self, ’cause I’m not interested in saying, “Hey, I’m gonna go be a Buddhist. I’m gonna go and be a part of a tradition that I have no knowledge of.” And you know what I’m saying? Like, I don’t think the answer is to go find another system or subscribe to some new faith and become like a inductee into some other, you know what I’m saying? Like that doesn’t feel right right now. So I don’t know, a lot of it is up in the air, but I don’t feel an emptiness right now and I don’t feel like this great desire to immediately define what it is that I’m experiencing, to try to invite other people into it. I’m not, I’m trying not to be evangelistic about it. I tend to be evangelistic in general, meaning that I try to share and persuade. And I’m trying not to do that with what I’m experiencing and probably the fact that I don’t, you can’t even really put your finger on what I’m saying about it was probably helpful to that end, but yeah, that’s kinda where I’m at right now, is there’s just this anticipation that we’re all moving in a direction. And I want to, you know, I want to be where the magic’s at. – Oh, okay. That’s a good place to end with, magic. You’re gonna become a magician. – Yeah, right. – Well, you know what? Well thanks for coming in, Rhett. We will talk to you again a year from now. (laughs) I mean, how do you feel at this point? – (sighs) I don’t know, man. – Okay. I appreciate, you know, I appreciate you pulling all your thoughts together, and you know, I think he put a lot of, a lot of care into it and I appreciate the honesty in the way that you’re processing it and yeah, I’m here if you want to talk some more. But I mean, to that end, I mean, next week I need you to hold my beer, all right? – Yup. – You know, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it. And I think that, you know, as you’ve talked about your experience, I’m gonna kind of pick up from that spot, you know, like the last section and just kind of run with it with my own experience and just process, you know, it’s been a difficult year in a number of ways. So dealing with suffering, loss, there’s been a lot of tests, you know, tests of faith I might call them. I definitely would have called them that in the past. – Yeah. – So, you know, I want to, I’ve got some experiences I want to share and process, you know, in terms of my spiritual journey. And if you’re willing to join me, that’ll be next week. So I’ll give it a go. – And, you know, like I said, we’re not always gonna devote an entire episode to talking about these things, but we’ll keep, we will keep talking about these things in general as well, and want to, and your words on the internet about this conversation and entering into this conversation are encouraging. And again, it’s not, it doesn’t have to be encouraging. It could be a critique. It could be a question. – #EarBiscuits. – Just get involved in the conversation. – And incorporate so that we’ll, it’ll be easy for us to find. – And my rec, I’ll end with a rec. I’ve kind of already made it, and I think that that is gonna be Alan Watts. There’s a number of ways that you can find his work. One of the ways is if you just go, Alan Watts as an artist on Spotify and someone, I know that his son is involved in like maintaining his foundation. – That’s AlanWatts.org and .com I think. – Someone has taken some of his, he just did a bunch of lectures that were recorded. Somebody has taken some of his lectures and put them with music on Spotify. And again, if you’re just looking for a mind-opening, expanding experience, it’s just a trip to listen to this dude and the way he chooses to think about things and chooses to communicate about them. And I highly recommend it for anybody who just is up for that kind of experience. – All right. You did it. Go take a shower or something. I don’t know. – Do I stink? – No, I’m just, I’m just trying to just give you just something to look forward to. – Okay. All right. Well, lunch. – #EarBiscuits, y’all, we’ll speak at you next week, get ready. To watch more “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits,” click on the playlist to the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best. (funky music)