EB 324: Rhett Bought a Bible – Rhett’s Deconstruction 2 Years Later

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, we are continuing what is now the annual tradition. This would be the third annual? Yeah– How do you do anniversaries like that? It’s the third time. The third time? The second update. Let’s say it’s the third anniversary. The third anniversary of our going public with our deconstruction stories. Well, it was two years ago. So that’s the two year anniversary. Two year. See, the numbers confuse me, and I know they confuse you. What? These engineering degrees, man. We’re only talking about the numbers two or three. So, come on, let’s pull this together. Two years ago, we talked about all of our spirituality leading up to the present day, including our spiritual deconstruction from the white Evangelical Church, to be very specific about it. A lot of people, because we talk about it as a, you know, our deconstruction anniversary or whatever. That’s not technically true, because some people think, oh, so two years ago, when you guys told your story, that was when you deconstructed. No. I mean, as I’ve said many times, my deconstruction happened about 10 years ago for me. And, you know, I stopped calling myself a Christian in 2013-ish, so that’s getting close to a decade of not being a Christian. But it took us a long time to gain the nerve to actually share that. And it happened two years ago. If you didn’t listen to those, or if you want a refresher of it, that series is called ‘The Lost Years’. It was four or five episodes. You shared your story, I shared my story. We also shared all of our, you know, our spiritual backgrounds growing up, our involvement in Campus Crusade for Christ as college students, our involvement as staff members working full time with crew. And then we called it ‘The Lost Years’, because that was the part of our career development that we, up until that point, we had not talked about publicly, which led into talking about our spiritual deconstruction. Yeah, you know the word. Deconstruction. And then last year, and yeah, so that was right before the pandemic hit, and then it just kind of seemed like a year later we gave an update. So we’re gonna do that. You know, that doesn’t mean we only talk about spiritual things once a year, but each year we want to give each of us an opportunity to sort of say, hey, this is where I’m at. This is how I’m continuing to process, because the process of what’s happening in our spiritual lives is something that unfolds. And this is like the definitive update for me. We’re gonna start with me, and next week we’ll do Link’s. Yeah, and I’m looking forward to this, because, I mean, we see each other so often, and we’re having so many conversations, and we’re, you know, we have so many, so many things come through our lives that, first of all, make its way onto the show, but second of all, don’t. They’re more private that we still talk about. Some of those things are spiritual in nature, but there always seems to be really pressing matters, and then just your life kind of gets away from you. So it’s like we don’t sit down and talk for an hour, an hour and a half. It’s like, hey, so give me your spiritual update. You know? It just kind of comes out in bits and pieces. So I’m looking forward to hearing more of this bonafide update. And I was about to say, and I’m also looking forward to giving mine, but I’m honestly not. So we’ll see what happens a week from now– Let’s get started, ’cause as you might imagine, I’ve got quite a lot to say. Yeah. I’m all ears, man. I’m always, I approach these, the first one and the second one, and now the third one, I approach these with the certain amount of trepidation, because what I have found is many of the things that I say during these podcasts are then… Sound bited? Sound bited across the internet, through multiple platforms, for people, with people, or by people who agree with me, and people who don’t agree with me. And so as I calculate, I end up writing down quite a lot that I want to get to because I’m trying to calculate what I’m gonna say, because it will either be used against me, or it will be, you know. It is what it is, but I’m just letting you know. I don’t necessarily look forward to this either, because these episodes, there’s a level of scrutiny that is applied to them that I’m not exactly interested in inviting. But it is what it is, and it’s now, it’s just happening annually, I guess. Yeah. There’s a heightened awareness of people listening in, and different groups of people listening in. It’s not just you talking to me, where we can get lost in that conversation on a normal ‘Ear Biscuit’. Which you can’t– And also, you know, there’s this weird balance with these things are very personal, but yet we have a public platform where we share personal things that we, you know, we’ve never really, we’ve talked about that and thought about that, but there’s a weirdness to that. There’s a weirdness to this like, okay, I’m experiencing these things, and I’m in process, and I’m not, I haven’t come to all these definitive conclusions or anything, but I’m sharing them, and I’m putting them out into the world. And then they are used by other people to either form conclusions, make conclusions, to combat other people’s ideas, defend ideas that maybe I didn’t even want to be defended. It’s just a weird, there’s a weird dynamic to doing this. But let’s not spend too much talking about that, ’cause I do have quite a bit that has happened– But there is a positive side too, right? I mean, there’s a reason that you’re ultimately deciding to still do it. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. I think that the response that we have gotten anytime we’ve been vulnerable about these spiritual things has been so encouraging because this is a deeply personal thing to millions and millions, billions, most people on the Earth, and most people in the history of the world have had some sort of religious conviction that probably changed over time. And so when people talk about what their religious convictions are, there sort of spiritual perspective and how it’s changed over time, I think there’s just a, it’s part of the human experience. And I know for a fact that our story resonates with a lot of people who have come from a very similar background, have experienced similar things. But again, I don’t do this. I try not to do this. My natural disposition is to try to persuade, and try to convince. I have an Evangelistic personality. I don’t like that about myself necessarily. That’s something I’m actively trying to change so that I can kind of get out of the convincing business as I get older. So this is more of, hey, this is what’s going on with me. Do with it what you will. Right. Shoulder shrug. Okay, so, at the end of last year, the end of 2021, I actually told my wife. I said, you know, I kind of feel like I’m just, I don’t have a huge appetite for spiritual things right now. Like I just don’t, maybe that’s just not gonna be me. Fast forward to the beginning of this year, so literally just a few weeks ago, and I’m ordering a Bible on Amazon. Okay. So, just. Okay. Just to give you a little preview. Not that I didn’t have a Bible– The Amazon Bible. Is it Jeff Bezos red line edition? What’s the Amazon, what’s the– The Ben Franklin Bible. What’s the Amazon brand for batteries? I don’t know. What do you call the batteries that you can get– I would say Kirkland, that’s the Walmart version. You don’t get the Amazon batteries? Amazon Basics? Yeah, I got the Amazon Basics Bible. No you didn’t. No, you’ll understand why I got a Bible. I already had plenty of Bibles, but why I got a specific Bible. Okay. Just a little tease, just a little tease. So how did I get here? Okay, so since deconstructing, and really deconverting, you know? I didn’t just deconstruct, I deconverted, I’m not a Christian anymore, which has been almost a decade for me. I have dabbled in a lot of spiritual things, right? Spiritual in quotes. But that kind, that has all kind of happened outside of any sort of system. You know, I haven’t, I didn’t like, oh, I wanna see what Buddhism feels like, like officially, you know? I’ve read a lot of interesting stuff, and I’ve read a lot of spiritual writers. I’ve been really attracted to people who kind of take Western and Eastern philosophies and kind of bridge them, bring them together. People like Eckhart Tolle. I’ve been very encouraged, and there’s been some realizations that I’ve had while reading spiritual writers. I’m not gonna go into what all that has been, but it’s been significant, and it has been characterized more as realization rather than revelation. Right? So I make that distinction that these are more realizations than revelations, because revelation is something that feels like you’re getting something from somewhere else. Like you’re literally getting something revealed to you by God. You know, it hasn’t been anything on that level. It’s more like epiphanies. Like, oh, never thought about that. But that applies to something that I can only apply, only describe as spirituality. I know that’s pretty amorphous, but. But I have stopped short of going too deep into anything, right? Because the more structured and systematic a spiritual system gets, the more suspect I become of it, right? So take, for instance, you know, we live in Los Angeles. So we’re in Southern California, where if there is a religion of this region, it is New Ageism in general, right? People who buy crystals because they think that the crystals have specific spiritual powers or whatever, and bring certain, you know, there’s literally a metaphysical power to these crystals. Like you leave it in the moonlight to charge it with energy, right? Lots of people, as you can imagine here on the West Coast, believe this. You Might trip on a curb and land in a crystal shop. Yeah. Now I don’t believe that is true. Like I, you know, it might be, but in many ways it begins to resemble the same sort of metaphysical convictions about things that you can’t really be sure about that I ran away from when it comes to Fundamentalist Christianity, or Conservative Christianity. Yeah. And so I’m just really suspect of systems. So I’m not about to become like, hey, I’m the new age guy, and I’ve got this crystal around my neck that’s giving me this spirit of clarity. Again, I’m not saying definitively that that’s not true, because what I am saying is that I can’t believe that. You know? I am incapable of believing that, because there’s something about me that makes me incapable of buying into something that it feels like you’ve taken a bridge too far. You got up to a certain place, you followed rationality and logic it to a certain place, and then you had to make a big jump into some metaphysical reality. And when you make that jump, I’m kind of like, cool! If that’s good for you, that’s great. But I don’t believe I can go there with you, because there’s just something built into me that causes me to, I get up against this wall, and I’m like, I can’t go there. Even if it seems fun, I can’t do that. I can’t go there. But the interesting thing– You thought you might, but you determined that you can’t. Well, I kinda, I’ve been very wary of leaving one religious system. I didn’t think that the next stage was joining another religious system. Yeah. But the interesting thing is that my search for purpose, meaning, has never waned in the process. So even though I became very unsure about what my world view is, in terms of how I think about spiritual things, and whether or not God exists, and if God does exist, what is the nature of God? What is the nature of God’s interaction with me as a person? How real can it be? How substantial can it be? Substantive I think is the word I was looking for. I have never, I feel like I can’t draw conclusions about those things, but I haven’t lost, I didn’t say, and none of it matters, and I’m not interested in it. What I realized is that there is what I would call a religious disposition in my personality at the same time. So this is, you know, so talking about that, my desire for purpose and meaning never really waning. That’s why I was such a serious Christian to begin with, right? That’s why, and I think I speak for you in this as well. That’s why I was really all about my faith in high school when my friends started being all about partying, and sex, and everything else, the stuff I was thinking about, but I was really like, no man. If this is true, if it is true that Jesus is the connection to God, Jesus is God, and there is a spiritual reality that exists. If that is true, that’s way more important than Friday night! You know? That’s way more important than having a good time. And so my life has been, my religious life when I was spiritually a Christian, and a current Conservative Christian, you know, I took it very, very seriously. And it’s why college was characterized by just being involved in a campus ministry, and basically my entire social life and all my activities being centered around that, going on staff with Campus Crusade with you after we graduated, basically becoming missionaries, training people to share Jesus throughout the world, because it was the most important thing that there was. Yeah. You know, it was a very simple, logical argument that resonated with both of us. And I think I’ll end up talking about, I know I’ll end up talking about my story next week, so I’m not gonna do that here, but just exploring the why for me has, starting to do that has been enlightening. You know, I think it’s, yes, it resonates with my personality and your personality in different ways, but to a similar result of being very fervent, almost being like a zealot. We were like high school zealots. Yeah. It was also something that was very, indoctrinated is an aggressive word, but we were strongly educated in these. It was drilled into us, you know? So I wonder, like, do you understand what it is about yourself that, like even now with more distance, that made you latch onto it? ‘Cause I don’t know if it’s the same reasons for you as for me. I don’t know. I don’t know. And I’m not– But when it comes to ideas and it comes to, like, right and wrong is something that very much resonated with both of us. I just don’t know if for the same reasons. I think that the, again, I may be deceiving– And being right! I may be deceiving myself, but the thing that I have always thought is that whatever is true, no matter how uncomfortable it is, I’ve had this inescapable draw to it, meaning that– It’s the principle by which you’ve had this instinctual draw to it, but you’ve also had this logical assertion that, like, this is the principle that I’m living by. This is the highest principle to live by. And we definitely. For whatever reason, something being true. Whether or not it’s true makes all the difference in the world to me, right? Again, I’m not saying I’m some perfect, rational being. I’m a product of my environment, my circumstances, and my genetics, just like anybody else. But for whatever reason, that combination of factors has led to a place where, if something ends up not being true, it becomes very difficult for me to believe for convenient reasons. But it also puts you on a, it sets up a moral high ground that’s, like, could potentially be a superiority thing. It’s like, I know we both took pride in where we’re coming from. Keep going though. So I’ve retained this religious disposition. I retained this, for a lack of a better word, skepticism, right? And in fact, that skepticism, that was like, if this is, you know, what is true is the most important thing. It’s ultimately how seriously I took my faith is the reason for me that I deconstructed. Because I kept going back to the foundations, and I kept going back and being like, okay, I’m really, I’m putting everything out. I’m leveraging so much on this. So much is rooted in this. If this is not true? So I would go back and I would try to make it true, and if I was introduced to new information that seemed like it couldn’t fit, I would find a way for it to fit, or I would find a way to push it away. And it was just constant battle of reorganizing and rearranging my faith. Relaying that foundation, making sure the foundation. I was constantly inspecting the building of my faith, and being like, oh, there’s a little crack there. Let’s replace those bricks, whatever. And then of course you know the story, I’ve already told that story. I got to a place where I could not, the foundation itself was made out of the wrong material is what I thought, and I basically demolished the whole building. I deconstructed. That’s where the whole idea comes from, right? You’re tearing it down. But I’ve realized that there’s been these two parallel, seemingly conflicting forces in my life for a really long time, and that is my relentless skepticism, and then my persistent desire for ultimate meaning. Those two things just refuse to die, right? And so, you know, they’ve been in my personality in kind of relative conflict for a long time, but I think the, I’ll call it an epiphany. That’s probably too strong of a word, but I’ll call an epiphany. The thing that I’ve realized. You can call it an etiphany. This year is that, it’s just asking the question. What if I don’t deny either my skepticism or my spirituality? So simplifying those terms. What if they can inform and enhance one another? So that, as I look at 2022, you know, one year at a time, one step at a time. That is the thing that I’m focusing on. So that seems like, what do you mean by that? So let me try to explain it. So one of the things that I’ve done in trying to figure out how these two things meet in me and inform one another, the skepticism and the spirituality, is looking for people who I think are kind of writing that line. Looking for other people out there who seem to embrace both of both of these things. Right? So one person that I found, and I can’t remember how I found all the stuff I’m gonna talk about. So be it. But one person is Maria Popova, who runs the website The Marginalian, which was formally called Brain Pickings. She changed the name because, I mean, I guess brain pickings? Sounds gross. Yeah, I think she finally realized that. Marginalia? Marginalian, The Marginalian. I wasn’t familiar with this term, but marginalia is, like, you’ve got a book, and there’s margins, and it’s the stuff, it’s the process, it’s the writing, it’s the notes, right? That’s marginalia. It’s stuff that is peripheral to the stuff that you’re reading, and then kind of the connection between you and the material that you’re experiencing, right? You know people who write a lot of stuff in the margin. Yeah. I usually just make notes on my computer. Huh! Marginalia. And let me explain how she describes her work so you can kind of get a picture of her. She is exploring what it means to live a decent, inspired, substantive life of purpose and gladness. And, this is from her website, Marginalia is a record of my own becoming as person, intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically, drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling. A private inquiry. I can’t say that word, inquiry. Inquiry? I can’t say substantive or inquiry, and she uses both of them in a very short span of time. A private inquiry irradiated by the ultimate question, the great quickening of wonderment that binds us all. What is all this? Okay. That is some beautiful language. First of all, she’s a great writer. I love her. So it’s kind of a fun, it’s heady, but it’s openhearted. It’s a… It’s not critical. In her inner, mm, it is critical. It is critical, but it’s not closed. Okay. Okay? So in her interview with Terry Gross on being, she talked about the bridge between cynicism and hope, and I felt like that’s it. This bridge has slowly been constructing itself. Maybe it’s always been there in me as just a part of the way that my soul works, right? My brain, whatever works, is that you don’t wanna go off on the side of cynicism to the place where you’re just like, this, you know, none of this matters, and there is no meaning in this, just full stop. That is a position you could come to. That’s not a position that I want to come to, right? It doesn’t sound appealing. It sounds depressing. And also. It doesn’t sound happy. And maybe this is not the rational me speaking, but it doesn’t seem true to me either. Like my experience with the world is not that there is no meaning, regardless of how I feel about the ultimate source of the meaning. The idea of a world without meaning just, it doesn’t compute because things actually do mean things. Stuff means stuff to me, you know what I’m saying? Every day I experience a sense of purpose and meaning. It’s just intrinsic to who I am. So the idea that beyond me, in a greater sense, there is no meaning is kinda like, well, there’s meaning right here on my little individual level. So it kind of makes sense that there’s meaning beyond my individual level. I’m not a, you know. I’m a product of the Harnett County public school system, and an engineering degree. So I don’t bring a lot of knowledge to any of this stuff. This is a lot of just instinct. So I haven’t done a lot of reading from people who know about this stuff. Just a disclaimer, as I, you know, there’s no formal education that actually informs any of the thoughts that I have. But… Don’t worry, I’m here. Yeah right, thanks. This really resonates with me, this idea of this bridge between cynicism and hope, because you’ve got that one side, the cynicism side, the skepticism side, and then there’s the hopeful side that, again, I can’t just go off that side of the bridge to the island of hope that just exists in a place where you just live a life of faith, and none of the difficult, inconvenient facts or truths matter. And listen, I’m not trying to care. This is for me. I’m not saying that people who are Christians are on the island of hope and have no discernment. I’m not saying that. I’m saying, for me, the reason I got off of that island in the way that I was experiencing it is because in order to maintain the foundational truths of Christianity, it became impossible for me to maintain those truths, and some other truths that I felt like had become inescapable. And so I find myself in this bridge between those two things. But what I’m finding is that’s a really interesting place to live, and there’s a lot of people who’ve been living there for a very long time, throughout history, right? I’m talking about a couple of contemporary people. One of the things that Maria talks about, she’s so well read. And, you know, in her book, ‘Figuring’, which I just started reading, which is like, you know, I go in terms of how long the Audible book is versus how many pages there are, but it’s 21 hours. So this is where you buckle up, buttercup. You know what I’m saying? She’s doing a lot of figuring. But she kind of, she traces all kinds. It’s kind of like Bill Bryson’s ‘A History Of Everything’, but with a sort of a spiritual, not even a spiritual, just more of like, it isn’t just the information, it’s sort of processing and connecting information. It’s fascinating. But she’s so well read, and there’s so many people throughout time who have struggled and wrestled with this stuff, and come to really interesting conclusions, or just really interesting ways of living, right? But the second person that I recently came across that I wanna talk about, and I wanna talk about his book. Found this book. Show and tell, I’ve got books. He’s reaching for a book. Holding it up, here it is. Spoiler alert, this will be my wreck. This is Richard Holloway, ‘Stories We Tell Ourselves’, and there on the bottom, ‘Making Meaning In A Meaningless Universe’. Uh-oh. So this dude is freaking incredible. Let me just say that. I think I found one of my favorite people on Earth. Really? Yes. So let me tell you about Richard Holloway. Let me hold the book. And then I’ll talk about his book. I’m just gonna see if there’s a picture of him. Yep, there it is. Okay, he’s– He’s old. He’s old, he’s balding, he’s wearing glasses. He’s very old, I think he’s like 87 or something– He’s clean shaven. He was the Bishop of Edinburgh from 1986 to 2000, and the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1992 to 2000. He was the Primus, huh? The Primus, yeah. Wynona got herself a big, brown beaver. Yeah, yeah right. That’s where Primus comes from. And he left those roles in the year 2000, having become agnostic. Woops! So he was in the Episcopal Church, and he was a controversial, very progressive figure. He secretly married a gay couple, which means performed a wedding for a gay couple. I was telling my kids about this. I was like, this guy married a gay couple in 1976. And Shepherd was like, he married a gay couple? Like it was a throuple. No, that means he performed the wedding, and at a time when this was not very accepted, right? So super progressive guy who has always sort of bucked against the system. And to the point where his agnosticism made him have to leave the church, right? All along the way, he’s written all these incredible books. Such a thoughtful person, and then he’s written a bunch of books since leaving the church. This is the first one that I’ve read, and I love finding somebody this thoughtful, and also somebody who I feel like, man, if I was smarter, and more experienced, and could write, then these, this is, it feels so in tune with the way that I see the world and process the world. Obviously this guy comes from a different time and place, but rarely do you run into somebody where you’re like, oh man, like, the way that you think about this is, like, so resonant with the way that I think about truth. Okay. And I’m gonna ask a question that you don’t have to answer right now. I just wanna hang it out there, ’cause you’ve got a plan of how you wanna go through this. But the question on my mind is, and before you brought up this book, I was thinking it. And so I guess we are headed in the same direction here. My question is what’s the difference between searching for meaning and searching for truth, and when you say there’s a tension between, or the last author you mentioned, there was cynicism and meaning, right? It’s like, okay, is… Well, it was cynicism and hope. Cynicism and hope. And then you talked about the search for truth. How is that different than a search for meaning? I’m curious. To me, the meaning is on the bridge between the two. Stated simply. The meaning is not on one side. The meaning is on the bridge between the two. Meaning is, as the truth and the hope, as I interact with things that are true, and truth exists, you know, technically, objectively apart from me, but hope is a very personal thing. It’s my sort of what I want to be true, and what I want my life to be like, and how I want to experience things. But I can only, I personally can only do that in the context of those things that are true. So being on that bridge, for me, is where the meaning takes place. ‘Cause truth can be something like, the wood that makes this table is poplar. Okay? I don’t know if that’s true or not, by the way. That might be fake news. It might be oak. I don’t know a lot about wood, even though I have a, just part of my brand. I don’t know a lot about it. I’d like to know. I’d like to think that I could smell it and know what it was. Is that truth meaningful to me? Well, it would be meaningful to me if I was a, if it was directly related to my experience. In other words, if I had to make a table and I wanted it to look like this, then what kind of wood this was would mean something to me as I apply it in my experience. So you’re saying there’s not a, you’re not making a choice between I’m gonna opt, I’m gonna give up on a search for truth, and I’m gonna now embark on a search for meaning. ‘Cause I do think that– No, no, no, no. Our experience has been, you’ve been convinced that things were true in the past that now you believe aren’t true, but, you know, you based your life and your meaning on what you believed to be true. So I think? I’m gonna answer this question directly, because I’m gonna talk about what it means to me, and what the pursuit of truth looks like, and why. I’m gonna get to that. So I’m gonna answer that question. The thing that’s so fascinating about this guy, besides just all, the things that have influenced him to the point where he’s gotten are so similar and relatable to the things that have gotten me to where I am, just on a less deep and educated degree compared to him, is he talks a lot about, so this idea of stories we tell ourselves. This is essentially thinking about the human condition and then re-examining the Bible itself as a story that people told themselves. So essentially our experience with a world, every single thing that we experience, the colors that we see, the sounds that we hear, the things that we feel, none of it is as it actually is, right? You know, colors don’t actually exist. The colors only exist in our mind because this is certain wavelengths of light that are reflecting off of different things, and different frequencies, and our brain is making sense of it by creating a color palette in our brains. Okay, yeah. Same thing is true of the sounds that are coming into my ear. My brain is making, I am making meaning from my environment right now. Every single thing that I experience only makes sense from my perspective because I’m here to experience it. Right? And the point he is making is that as people experience things, like in the case of the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament, you’ve got the Jews who are experiencing all kinds of crazy shit, right? And there’s all kinds of persecution, and there’s all kinds of hardship that they’re going through. Yeah. And at the time that they’re writing the Bible, and they’re write, you know, it wasn’t written at the time that it represents. It’s not like, you know, the Torah which represents, you know, the tradition holds that Moses wrote it, which is almost assuredly not true and Moses probably didn’t exist. But setting that aside for a second, it was the idea that it was written in a certain time, but it was written about the past. It was writing about the past, but it was really also writing about what they were currently experiencing. Right? So looking, he talks about the story of Daniel and how it related to what the Jews were going through at the time under Roman rule, wasn’t necessarily so much about what was happening in Daniel’s time. Okay, so more as a parable written as history. And then even he talks about, you know, he talks about the creation story, but he also talks about Jesus himself, right? Which again, we don’t really know. We don’t actually know definitively too much about the historical figure of Jesus, or some people believe he didn’t even exist. I think he did exist, but I think that the Jesus that we have in the Bible is a sort of idealized figure that was a story that was told, because it was the story that the people who were telling it needed at the time. Right? And this is true of every religious writing. Everything that we, every story we tell ourselves, right? And so he looks at the Bible, which is like, if you know the historical context of what the writers were going through at the time. If you know the cultural context in which it was written, it illuminates the texts in a way. And I’m not talking about back in the day, like K Arthur would come to Campus Crusades Christmas Conference and talk to us about, you know, her study Bible, and how, because that’s bringing an ideological framework and applying it to the Bible from the outside, and saying, I’m coming to this understanding that this is God’s inherent word, and I’m applying that framework to it, and then I’m drawing conclusions from it. And then sometimes it’d be like, oh, and here’s a little cultural context if it helps with our ideology, right? If it reinforces what we’re already thinking. I’m talking about taking the ideology, taking any preconceived commitment to what this is, throwing it out the window, and exploring it on a really critical, in a really critical way. Not to just tear it apart for the sake of tearing it apart, but to actually figure out why they wrote it that way. And it becomes this thing that becomes incredibly informative to me. And this is where I’m gonna get to answering your question. So that’s my rack. I think, I mean, I just think it’s a great read. I don’t, I mean, I don’t know. If you’re a Christian or a former Christian who thinks about these things, read Holloway’s ‘Stories We Tell Ourselves’. I’ll just leave it at that. But, you know, because there is a spectrum. Okay, let me get, let me get, there’s so much going on in my mind right now, but let me get to why I bought a Bible. Okay? So after reading, and interestingly, the conclusion that he comes to at the end, which I don’t think is any sort of surprise, is that after about 20 years of being outside of the Church, he’s beginning to call himself a Christian again. Really? Yes. So that’s part of the story of this book? Yeah. Okay. Now, does that mean he believes in God? Probably not. Does that mean that he has changed what he thinks about the truth of the Bible? Like he has shifted his framework back to believing that it’s God’s word? No. It means it’s a recognition that he wants to identify with the story, specifically the story of Jesus, because he feels like it is the, that story is what he needs in his life. Again, because I’m not trying to demean. I know this is uncomfortable for anybody who, this would have been very uncomfortable for me to hear as a Christian. I’m not saying that Jesus is essentially Frodo, but I am kind of saying Jesus is essentially Frodo. So I don’t mean that he’s just a total fictional character and that’s it. But I’m saying that, like, conceivably, if I today said I’m starting a cult, and our writings are just ‘The Lord of The Rings’. That’s it, okay? The trilogy. All three, even ‘The Hobbit’. Yeah, yeah, let’s throw ‘The Hobbit’ in. ‘The Hobbit’ is kind of like the Talmud. Okay, but we can get that as well. I think you’re gonna have to throw in ‘The Silmarillion’. ‘The Silmarillion’ is like the Apocryphal writings. That’s like the Gospel of Thomas. So I don’t know, the son was involved. We don’t really understand. The son had to finish it ’cause he died. I think it’s more of just the commentary. I haven’t read it. Don’t make that face again. No one will read it. What’s the face? That face. This face? It makes you look really old. Really? Yeah, yeah. You don’t wanna do that. You’re getting too old to actually look that old. I look old? Yeah, so. When I do this? If I told you, and I have been accused by many of potentially being a cult leader– No one will read that book, but it can be part of it. Everybody can just refer to it, but no one ever reads. If I told you I was starting a religion, and our scriptures were ‘The Lord of The Rings’, and various, you know, other writings. You could probably piece something together. I could have a pretty awesome religion. Yeah. Because there’s meaning in it! Just because Middle Earth doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful as a story, and impactful, and actually life altering, and life changing. If you say, listen, in my friendship, I need to be a Sam. You know what I’m saying? I need to, I can aspire to be, to learn from flawed characters who embrace their weaknesses. And I’m not trying, listen. I’m not saying that the Bible is the equivalent of it. I understand that there’s history, there’s real history in the Bible. I understand that Jesus was almost most likely a historical figure, and that he said some of the things that are in there, but there’s fictional elements of it. But I’m saying it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much, to me. If you believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead for your sins, and all that, the it’s all gotta be true. At least really big parts of it have to be true. I’m saying, for me, it doesn’t have to be true to be meaningful and impactful. And here’s– And I don’t think it’s that offensive to a Christian, because as a Christian, I was like, well, that’s what’s true of The Book of Mormon. That’s just made up by somebody. That’s what we thought. That’s what we believed. And that’s what, you know, many Christians currently believe, so it’s like? But no Christian reads The Book of Mormon for edification, because it’s such an infringement on the true Orthodox Christianity. But they have to acknowledge that other people do. An entire other religion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although much of it is just copied straight from the Bible, right? I don’t know much about, I don’t know much about it. I can, you know, I’m not gonna talk about Mormonism today. But I think that that, you know, that is how I’m looking at the Bible, because, using ‘The Lord of The Rings’ as an example. Let’s say I was raised in a tradition, I was raised in that cult, ‘The Lord of The Rings’ cult. The Fellowship is what we called it. Oh cool. Which was a good name. And we all had rings, you know. There’s so many awesome things that you could do with this, right? And I was raised in that, and I developed, I went through puberty in that context– Not limbus again. I came to age and into young adulthood, and then became a father, and became married, all in the context of the Fellowship. And then one day I was like, oh shit! This is just a made up thing that some dude wrote? Oh gosh! And so then I have a choice. I could leave it and say, I never wanna read anything about that again. I don’t even wanna watch the movies. I don’t even wanna watch a movie with Elijah Wood in it. Or. Your loss. Or I could say on, hold on, hold on, okay. I don’t think it’s true, Yes, some dude with three syllables for a name wrote it, but you know what? It is the way it is– Four really, if you include the T. It is why I am who I am. So can’t I go back and read it again? Can’t I go back and read it again, over and over again from a different perspective, and not just be like, oh, Frodo’s a real guy, and I’ve gotta, I’ve got my own ring, and I gotta, but be like, why did he even write this like this? Like, why did he make these choices? Because this is, my DNA has been probably literally impacted by being saturated with this. Yeah. So I’m gonna go back, and I’m not just gonna abandon it. I wanna go back and examine it in a new light, with the new way that I think about this. That’s why I got a study Bible, and I got the Harper Collins Study Bible, which is definitely not gonna be recommended in your churches, unless you go to maybe a mainline church, because it’s the sort of like– Harper Collins is a publisher. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So? But it’s not like the Zondervan Study Bible, is what I mean. It’s like a secular, critical, you know, dudes at the liberal divinity schools, Harvard and Yale, et cetera, are the ones doing the commentary. It’s not… The people who are writing the comment, my understanding is the people who are doing the commentary and the insights are not, they don’t come to this with the idea that this is the revered word of God. So there’s not that level of respect. They’re just like, this is exactly what we think was being said. This is why these two texts are not the same. This is why this part’s here. So you’re getting full, unabashed, sort of like critical application of the scripture. Because I’ve already gone through all the other, you know, I’ve done, I’ve got all the study Bibles where they come at it with a conservative view to begin with. I’ve got those on my shelf in my house. So this is my first one that’s like, okay. All the information that would’ve made me squirm in the past, it made me question things, so that’s just part of the deal here. Okay! And so the Holloway book, is that what ignited your appetite to go back to it? Because you’re actually excited about it, it sounds like. I am. So Maria Popova. She ignited, she gave me the framework for thinking about the bridge between cynicism and hope, and realizing that, oh, I’ve been going back and forth, and like live in the confusion, right? Live on the bridge, and be embracing both of these things at the same time. That’s exciting. That’s where the meaning comes from. Then you find this guy from my exact tradition, not exact tradition, he’s Episcopal, but exact disposition and appreciation of these stories, but also come to a lot of the same conclusions that I’ve come to in terms of agnosticism. And then he’s basically like, oh, and by the way, ’cause he’s like, these are the stories that people live by. And then at the end he’s like, the story I live by. And he basically says, I live according to the story of Jesus and here’s why. It’s a great chapter. It’s not gonna be as, it doesn’t, nothing is as definitive and neatly tied up as we, as former religious conservatives, are gonna be okay with. You know what I’m saying? We’re still learning to live in the tension. But, yeah. That was where I was like, I gotta get this. And he also references some really good scholars, and I looked up those scholars, and then those scholars had written stuff about, I think he actually, he actually references maybe the study Bible in the book. Anyway, that’s how I got to getting the Bible. And you told me that you just got the Bible, so I assume you– It took like five weeks, because apparently study Bibles are, especially critical study Bibles, not in too high demand. I got it used– It’s written by atheist scribes. And they begin writing the moment you order the Amazon Basics Bible. And they’re kind of just, it doesn’t really matter to them. They’re just kind of going off of memory, and they’re looking at the last one, but they’re not, they don’t really catch that much of it. They’re not trying. There’s nothing really to preserve. One of the things that I kind of skipped over a little bit that I wanna go back to. One of the big, the middle section of this book, he talks a lot about William James, who is, you know, really like the father of modern psychology in a lot of ways. I’ve heard a number of people mention him. Michael Pollan talks about William James in his, not his most recent book, but the previous book, ‘Your Mind, what is it? I can’t remember. Not the most recent one, but the previous one. ‘How To Change Your Mind’? ‘How To Change Your Mind’. He talks about William James, and he had an experience when he was, and Michael Pollan, like, I think when he did mushrooms, he had an experience where he quoted William James as he was trying to sort of quantify his experience, where he said, I don’t know what I think about anything metaphysical in the world, and all that stuff beyond my own experience. But as William James said, this experience has caused me to, I’m forbidding myself to settle my accounts with reality. This whole idea of closing your accounts, or settling your accounts with reality. Resisting that urge, ’cause it is the human. It is the human disposition to be like, can I just get all this stuff wrapped up? This philosophical shit? Can I just get it wrapped up, boxed up, and set it in my garage, and just be like, that’s what I think about that. And I don’t want to keep going back to it, because it’s tiresome! And whether you’re an atheist, you know, and you say, I don’t believe in anything beyond the natural world, and all these religious people are just fantasy thinkers, or whatever. Case closed, I’m done. That’s what I think for the rest of my life. Or whether you’re just like, I subscribe to the religion of my youth, and that’s it. And don’t confuse me with any information that’s gonna make this difficult. There’s two extremes. He’s basically saying, don’t settle your accounts with reality. And the way that he’s doing that is by leaning into the story of Jesus, and saying, listen, I’m not trying to say that this isn’t true, or is it true. I’m letting its meaning permeate me as I study it and as I read it. You know what? If there’s a God, maybe a God will work through that. I’m sure there are Christians out there who’ll be like, well, at least he’s reading the Bible again! God can work through that. And maybe they’re right! I’m not trying to say that they’re not. Yeah, let’s talk about your plans. You’ve finally gotten the Bible. Is it leather bound? Is it hardback– It’s hardback. Okay, nice. Has it got nice margins for you write in? It doesn’t have my name on it. Because this is, I mean, this is a study exercise. This is not reading a book or listening to an audio book. You know, this is a study Bible. You actually anticipate that you’re gonna sit down and have a quiet time? Well, that would be probably not the greatest way to describe it, because a quiet time, or a devotional, is more like a, is more meditated– I haven’t said that word in such a long time. And more like, it’s like a prayer kind of thing. No, I’m not. I’m not going to, I’m not saying I’m reading the Bible. What are you gonna do? I haven’t exactly figured out. I think you’re not, what, I cut you off. You said I’m not reading the Bible as a communion with God? Yeah, I’m not doing that. Right, okay. So you’re doing it as a– But I’m not not doing that. Okay, what I’m saying is that that’s not, I’m trying to, I’m not going in. I have found that not being afraid of whatever’s around the corner is the best way to live. Okay. Okay? Every time I start getting, like, building, what’s around that corner? That’s no fun, and it just keeps you from going around the corner. Just go around the damn corner! What’s the worst that could happen? Somebody just punches you right in the face, you get shot. Yeah, okay. So describe that corner. Like, there’s a study Bible on the corner. To me, there is no corner. So, what I’m saying, I’m trying to eliminate the corners in my life, right? And so what I’m saying is that I think I want to develop some kind of plan with it, so that there is a path, right? But I think the path is loosely read through the entire Bible. Oh wow, what? From beginning to end. No, don’t. Don’t, that’s not a good plan! It doesn’t, I’m not, I’m not talking about the Bible in a year, which I’ve done that. I’m not talking about that plan. I’m not talking about, like, the Bible in a year, where it’s just like, oh. I’m talking about, like, there’s a bookmark in this Bible, and it moves when I read it. It’s gonna get to Leviticus pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. But what I’m gonna be most interested in, this may disappoint some of the Christians listening, is gonna be what they say about it. Right? I’ve read Leviticus. I have slogged through it. And I’m not saying I’m not going to, but I’m going, I think that it’s actually, when you believe that the Bible is God’s word, and you get to Leviticus, you’re like, really God? You know what I’m saying? Like, if you bring that perspective to it, you’re like, what? He said these things? I wanna melt my face off! I just didn’t know what you were gonna say, but I didn’t think you were gonna say I’m gonna read through the Bible from start. I thought maybe you’d say, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna do something. I’m gonna start with Jesus, and then I might skip around. I might do a little Jobe. I might get a new perspective on creation. Well, here’s what I’m saying. I think I’m gonna start with Genesis, because, not just because it’s first, but I’ve always been fascinated with it. And it is, you know, my difficulties with trying to reconcile it. That makes sense to me. And then when I get to that I might be like, hey, let’s go. I’m gonna go to the New Testament. What I’m getting at is I want to go through the whole thing, at least book by book. And it might be, oh, I’m gonna do some old, then do some new, whatever. I’m not saying it has to be straight through in order. What I’m saying is that the only plan is that I have the Bible and I will read it. And I may go long periods of time without reading it, but because I’m not doing it out of a religious conviction, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, so I just wanna let you off the hook here. You’re not making a commitment to read through the entire Bible. No, what I’m saying is– To yourself, to me, or to anyone listening. A year from now is my update. It might be, hey, I’m still in Genesis. I’m not setting up an obligation. I’m just saying, oh, the epiphany that has happened is that there still is a way to experience this book that was so formative for me. There’s a new way to engage it that can be exciting, ’cause the thing is, is that when I hear people start talk, when he got to that section of the book and he started talking about what the guy who, I mean, it was probably a guy, just because it was so long ago and that’s patriarchy, who wrote Genesis, like, you know, which was probably an adaptation of an oral tradition. So you go back to the first time the guy started telling the story around the fire about, you know where we come from? Well, in the beginning, you know, it’s like. Dramatic pause. And so. As I, what? Make this up? As I tell myself a story that we’re gonna tell ourselves? That’s the interesting thing. He says, isn’t it kind of, this is implication. Isn’t it kind of awesome to think about it being a campfire story that a guy was just kind of, just like, I see the way things are, and I’m gonna kind of try to make sense of it. Like, that’s powerful. It’s the same way that if I was like, I’ve gotten really interested it in this ancient tribe that has this incredible tradition, and they’ve got these scriptures, and I’m interested in that anthropological kind of stuff. And so reading it in that way, but because it’s so applicable to me personally, my background, there’s this, I don’t know. There’s a lot of motivation right now. Who knows what will happen in a month. But there’s a historical and critical analysis that I assume that the commentators who are making this a study Bible, they’re actually writing little snippets and, you know, giving their commentary on these passages, that they’re, do you know yet if their main goal is to illuminate meaning for the reader, or if it’s to provide critical analysis? So what’s your approach there. It’s definitely not to. Again, I think a lot of these questions that you’re asking, and I understand what you’re asking, are coming from the framework that we bring to any of this type of thinking about things. Right? Well, I’m also just thinking practically, once you get this study Bible from a totally different perspective, that it could be a temptation to latch onto the criticism of it and to tear it down, versus define meaning in it from a different vantage point. Well, again, I still think that’s coming from your old framework, but here’s what I’m gonna say. Because what we always assumed is that the guys who were, quote on quote, being critical about the Bible didn’t respect it, or outright didn’t believe it. Yes. So we’re so binary in our thinking. You’re either all in, or you’re an atheist. And that’s just not how many people at all actually operate, right? So I think that these, you take, you know, most what we would have called liberal scholars, which I would just call critical academic scholars. You don’t make the decision to be like, ‘what am I gonna do for a living? I’m gonna be a Bible scholar’ if you hate it. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life, that you would decide to devote your entire life. That’d be like, I’m a biologist, but damn it, I hate animals! You know what I’m saying? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s people who are fascinated with religious thinking, religious tradition, and they’re probably fascinated by it because that’s their own disposition as well. I think the term literary criticism is ringing in my ears, and I might just have, because of the reasons that you stated, I’m applying the wrong definition of the word criticism to whether it’s just ripping something down. But I am curious in these Bible snippets. Is there edifying? No, of course not. Think about this. But then that’s gonna be your task, right? ‘Cause you said that’s, you’re doing it to get some meaning from it, right? I’m not, no. I’m not taking any agenda into it. Okay. What I’m saying is that leaning further into the truth, with the only intention to be to get further and closer to the truth, the meaning will happen. I don’t have to make it happen. I don’t have to seek it. What I’m saying, and I’m gonna talk, I’m gonna get there. I guess I wonder is that an academic meaning or a spiritual meaning? Like, what are you looking for here? I’m saying that there’s no difference. I’m saying that you’ve created a dichotomy in your own mind, and I have too, and most people have as well, that there’s two types of truth. There’s truth that is somehow not spiritual, and there is truth that is spiritual. All truth is spiritual. My definition of spirituality is all encompassing, right? It is anything that enriches, and enhances, and deepens my human experience. And that may include metaphysical things that I can’t quite nail down. I am open to that. But it may just include learning a fact about this table. And so I’m trying to break down that dichotomy between what, and I’m gonna take a little sidebar here to talk about another book that I know you’re familiar with, and then come back at the end to talk specifically about that, the idea of what leaning in the truth looks like beyond the Bible, ’cause I don’t believe that, you know, I’m leaning into truth about the Bible, right? Because I don’t see the Bible as true in any particular sense. Any particular religious, dogmatic sense. But I’m like, oh, but I can learn this historical thing about the Jews who wrote it at this point, or the guys in the new Testament who wrote this. I should have teased this, because… It’s so tease worthy. Yeah. There’s another book I want to talk about, and then I’ll bring it all back together at the end. This book, ‘Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt In The Church’, is a book, it is a compilation all about deconstruction from different authors. A couple of months ago, we saw Mythical Beasts tweet this at us, and I had not heard about it until then. And there’s a reason that they tweeted us about this particular book. But it had been published for almost a year. I’m surprised that we hadn’t heard about it until– It was published like the middle of 2021, I think. Okay. By the Gospel Coalition. But we heard about it weeks ago. Gospel Coalition is a group of, you know, the reform tradition pastors and churches, kind of a network. They publish things, there’s a website, they comment on things. There’s articles at the website. I think when we went public with our deconstruction, they talked about us a little bit. They’re very, very much Evangelical. Yeah, yeah. And very reformed, which both our background is reformed Evangelical, so we’re very familiar with this way of thinking. But in the introduction. The first thing written in the book. This is the guy who edited it, Ivan Mesa. I think I’m saying that right? The first sentence in the introduction. I had never heard of Rhett and Link. I have, that’s me! Okay, yeah. You’re starting with a backhanded. It’s not even backhanded. Well, it gets worse. So like, who are these? No, I don’t know if you picked up on something else. I never heard of Rhett and Link, the duo behind ‘Good Mythical Morning’, their daily YouTube show with more than 16 million subscribers, and ‘Ear Biscuits’, hey, we’re doing it right now, their podcast, until I learned of their public deconstruction story. The two of them, who as of December 2020 are the fourth highest YouTube earners, making 20 million a year, with a little footnote here, shared about how they moved from crew staffers and missionaries to unbelievers, or as Rhett now describes himself, a hopeful agnostic. Okay. And. Never heard of these guys, but they’re rich! But not only that. If you look at the footnote next to how much money we make a year, it says Rupert Nee Ryan. Oh, Rupert Nee I guess is who wrote it? Ryan Kaji, nine, earns 29.5 million a year. Ah, so I, I don’t know if this was the implication, but it was almost like, to put things in perspective, a nine year old makes more money than they do. You know, it’s like? Yeah, why was that the footnote? I don’t know. It feels a little like a backhanded thing, but I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn’t. That it was just for context. I don’t know. You know what? This book is, I’ve read, I’m actually on three quarters of the way through. I wanted to get completely done before this. We actually talked about doing a whole episode that was just about this, but I just think that that’s kind of boring, and a little too insider. I have a copy, and I’m gonna talk about this next week. Okay, so Gospel Coalition, we’ve sent you guys some money. We bought two copies– A little reluctantly. Here’s a fascinating thing about this book to me. But we’re so rich, Rhett. Yeah, so rich. I mean, we’re not as rich as that nine year old. Yeah, I wish I could be as rich as Ryan. But here’s the thing. Ryan Toy Review. This was such a fascinating book to me. Again, every chapter is by a different author. But he goes on to say, I mean, you should finish the introduction. Well, the comedians have for years been a staple in many homes with children and young adults, with videos ranging from epic rap battles, to testing the world’s hottest peppers, to getting shot with Nerf guns, so it wasn’t surprising that their public announcement unsettled the faith of many. And then he goes on to talk about other people who deconstructed. Jen Hatmaker, Joshua Harris. What is deconstruction, kind of setting a little bit. The book kind of takes every element of deconstruction, whether that be, and first of all, let me say, there’s a lot that I kind of agree with. I don’t agree with the conclusions, but I agree with some of the observations, right? And the fascinating thing for me was this is a book that, in an alternate universe, I have written a chapter in. Maybe I’m giving myself a little too much credit, and they wouldn’t have accepted me, but in an alternate universe, we never left the church. And of course we did what we always do, and we try to just succeed as hard as we can in whatever we’re doing. I definitely thought that in the parts that I’ve read. That, you know, ’cause each chapter’s written by a different person. It’s basically an essay where they choose every angle they can come up with to undermine The process of spiritual deconstruction. And in the world where we never left staff or crew, and you know our ministry developed into, like, directly combating deconstruction in this culture, because we were always about being on the front lines. What’s the biggest thing that young people are dealing with? Let’s take that, and let’s take them out at the knees! You know, that was the way that we thought about this stuff. And so it was fascinating to be like, well, that’s what I would’ve said. Well, that’s exactly what I would’ve said. That’s exactly how I would’ve said that. Now the parts that I agree with, when it talks about, you know, there’s a chapter that talks about disenculturation, the idea that did you deconstruct Christianity, or did you deconstruct the cultural context for your Christianity? And so, yes, there’s a lot of negative stuff about Evangelical culture. You can be critical of that and you can deconstruct that, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, the baby being Jesus, and he was a baby, and Ricky Bobby prayed directly to him. And so I, hey, listen, I agree with that. I agree with that. Now my conclusion is not any different. I’d rather attend to ‘Talladega Nights’ cult than a ‘Lord Of The Rings’ cult– And the movie is the material, and maybe the director’s commentary. I agree with that. And the reason it doesn’t change my mind is because that’s not why I deconstructed. For me, the problem was the foundational truth of scripture. I just failed to believe them. But there’s a chapter about the tendency for people to move from one fundamentalism to another fundamentalism. Very, very common in deconstructing, is that you leave sort of a fundamentalist Christian mindset, and you move into a progressive Christian mindset. And a lot of times the progressive Christian mindset, and the progressive left in general can have the same sort of inflexible fundamentalist thinking that you have on the right. I completely agree with that! I don’t like ideological thinking. I don’t like group think. I don’t like policing the way people think about things, and the way people talk about things, and you see that on the left just as much as you see it on the right. I will say, this entire thing, I believe, is written to people who are not deconstructing. It is written to give to people who you are afraid might, to bolster them against ever considering spiritual deconstruction. It bolsters that. I mean, yeah. It’s for people who haven’t gone over the edge yet, really. There’s one about race, which talks about, yes, acknowledges racism in the Church, but says, hey, listen. Just because people have abused and misused Christianity in the name of evil and racism doesn’t mean that you should deconstruct. I agree with all that. But the one thing– Heading people off of the pass. It also talks about how, scientism is the word they use, but basically science can’t explain morality, which I think that, you know, there’s great natural explanations for morality that they kind of just gloss over. But anyway. I agree with some, I disagree with some. Obviously I disagree a main conclusion of the book, but the thing I wanted to talk about, and then bring it back to how it relates to kind of how I’m moving forward in 2022, is the first chapter, which is written by a guy named– Trevin Wax. Trevin Wax, there are names. Doubt your way back to truth. Ivan Mesa and Trevin Wax. They’ve got cool names. This is coming from two guys with cool names, so congrats for that. I will cite chapter three. Deconversion is not as counter cultural as you think. So, hey, this isn’t the cool thing to do. Yeah, which I agree. I agree with that. Yeah, don’t. Don’t do it ’cause it’s cool. Don’t do it for those reasons. In the first chapter, deconstruction is characterized as essentially a selfish act, right? Rather than a thoughtful reconsideration of one’s faith. Let me just, I’m gonna read some quotes. I’ll just put the book down, ’cause I’ve written them down here. What if you are not the dispassionate pursuer of facts you perceived yourself to be, but instead are shaped by assumptions and presuppositions that you’ve never challenged. Another quote. I don’t believe you are faithless. Your faith has merely shifted away from God and his word, and towards yourself and the story you’ve crafted, in which you now find meaning in significance, or which you’ve crafted in which you now find meaning in significance. And finally, you are no longer sure about the God of Christianity. Are you sure of the self you place at the center of your deconversion story? This is a very common way of seeing people who are deconstructing. This is how I saw people who were deconstructing before I could deconstruct it. When we had friends who started to waiver, we would say, listen man, you’re making God in your own image rather than realizing that you’re made in his image. You’re picking and choosing, you’re making a religion, you’re becoming your own God. And that’s what deconstruction ultimately is, right? I understand why you believe that, but I find this to be pretty ironic for a number of reasons. So, first thing is, this is a very effective strategy for people who are deconstructing, or people who are thinking about deconstructing. Because in my experience, deconstructing people tend to be very thoughtful and questioning of themselves. I had this exact same concern for years. But I find that most deconstructing Christians have a lot of doubt in their own reasoning, and that’s precisely what led them to where they are. They began to take a critical look, not simply at Christianity itself, but also to their adherence to it. So in other words, the deconstruction process began as self doubt, or at least that was a part of it. So when you begin to think, I remember writing, and I talked about this in my deconstruction story. I specifically wrote that I did not just want to become my own God. I did not want to replace, I didn’t wanna make God in my own image. I didn’t wanna make a God that I was comfortable with. Deconstructing people are very conscious of this, and that’s why when you tap into that, it is a very effective strategy to get them to come back into the fold, because they’re very conscious of being self-centered and relying on their own instincts, because that’s the thing that they begin questioning that even begins the process to begin with. Yeah, and you know what that effective strategy is? Shame. It’s one word, it is shame. Yeah. Slathered on. Yeah, I agree with that. But maybe, this is a little bit more dismissive. I don’t disagree with it. No, no, no. I feel it. I completely agree, I’m moving to the next point. I’ll talk about it more next week. My other issue with this is it assumes that the non-deconstructing Christian is the more selfless person. Right? That they are not following their own instincts, but rather submitting to and following God. Now, as someone who doesn’t, who no longer believes that that’s how the world works, and I don’t actually believe that you as a Christian have the spirit of God in you in a way that I don’t, and you have discernment from him that I don’t. I actually think that we’re both doing the same thing, which could be characterized as selfish, if that’s the word you want to use for it, and that is we, as a product of our environment, our circumstances, and our genetics, all factors. We are making a decision about pretty much everything that we think is the best for us, right? That’s what humans do. We take all the information that we have, and all the instincts that we have, and we just make a decision that we feel is best for us at the time. Now, Christians, and specifically the guys who wrote this book, are basically farming that out, which I believe is a decision that they’ve made to make a decision to say that they believe the Bible is an inherent word of God, that they’re gonna be Christians, that this is what they’re gonna believe, that they’re gonna be reformed, whatever it is. And then they’re saying that this is God. This is me submitting to God. It’s sort of a Jedi mind trick of farming out their own choices to an entity that is God. That’s how I see that, right? I think I’m doing the same thing, I’m just not farming it out. I am saying, yeah, I am making this decision. And I know that a lot of this may not even be decisions that I have control over, because I don’t even know how I feel about free will, and determinism, and all that stuff. You know, am I just a subject, a victim of my own circumstances and genetics? I don’t know, maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way. So I take issue with that fundamentally, that they are somehow different. But also, again, it’s sort of broadly categorizing people who deconstruct as people who are selfish and self centered. That’s the implication. It’s also kind of just explicitly said here, but the most interesting thing about this, to me, is that for me personally, the thing that was the most difficult process, a difficult element of my deconstruction process was the de-centering of myself. Let me explain that. De-centering myself from the story of the universe, right? Now, this is an old story. This is how Christianity has interacted with new facts for a very long time, right? The Church is always the last people to get on board with unsettling facts that challenge their perspective. The heliocentric view of the world, meaning that the sun, or the view of the solar system, meaning that the sun is the center of our solar system, versus the geocentric view, which is that the Earth is in the middle and everything’s rotating around it. Of course, for many generations, everyone believed that the Earth was central, because we’re like, of course, this is this what we see. This is from our perspective. We’re the middle of this. That’s what the Bible taught very clearly, and it’s what the Church believed for a really long time. And the reason that it took them hundreds of years to accept it, and people were killed because of this, is fundamentally because it’s taking humans off of the center, off of the throne of the universe. And it’s saying, no, no, no. You’re not as special as you thought you were. You might just be a lucky branch on the evolutionary tree, right? Because that’s the second piece of it, is evolution, which the church has still not accepted, right? Some Christians do believe it, right? And to me this is so significant because believing in evolution was the first card to fall for me. Now, disclaimer, I know that there’s lots of Christians who believe in evolution, however, most don’t, and many of the ones that do, I don’t really think have followed it to its logical conclusion of what it actually means and how it relates to the creation story, that kind of thing. But, you know, this was so difficult for me because, as a Christian, everything exists for you, right? Now, yes, and God, right? But God set you apart as special. You’re not related to the animals. You’re a special creation! The animals exist for your pleasure. God’s pleasure, yeah, but your pleasure. I mean, that’s what Genesis talks about. The Earth was made for Adam, and then, Adam, these animals are not good enough. Let me give you one that you can actually have sex with. Here’s a woman. You know? And so all these things are created so you can have dominion over them. And then everything that, the entire sort of ancient New Eastern view of the world and the cosmos, of it being very, very small, and it being this disc of an Earth with a dome over it, and the water’s below, and the water’s above, and the firmament in between. It brought everything down and very, very close. They looked at the dome, and they saw the stars hanging from it, and it was just, I don’t know, that’s just right up there. If I had a, if I was strong enough, I could throw a rock and hit it. You know what I’m saying? It was small and you were big. And with every successive scientific revelation, we get smaller, and smaller, and more insignificant in the scheme of things, and that is very uncomfortable for a Christian mindset. You know, Christians, many Christians don’t wanna believe, are very resistant to the idea of aliens. Not because we haven’t necessarily seen any, which is the reason that I don’t know if they exist, but because what does that mean about Jesus? So they have another Jesus? Did Jesus go to them? Is that the other sheep that they’re talking about in the Bible? I have other sheep. Well, it must be aliens. You know? You gotta fit it into your worldview. So I think what I’m saying is that the traditional Christian perspective is actually more self-centered than a perspective that sees humans as another part of the universe. Now I’m not talking about individuals. I’m not saying that Christians are more selfish than non-Christians. I’m not saying that non-Christians are more selfish than Christians. I think that your level of selfishness is largely unrelated to your religious convictions and conclusions. There’s a lot of selfish inside and outside of the Church, and there’s lots of reasons that contribute to people being selfish, right? But I’m saying that the philosophy of Christianity is a more human centered philosophy than a naturalistic worldview. The naturalistic worldview puts you in concert, puts you in connection, interconnection, with everything else. There was a big bang at the beginning, and matter has organized itself, or was organized by some entity that I can’t really identify into what it is now, but we are star dust, and so is the elephant. And the earth isn’t really any more mine than it is the elephants, right? And just because I’m smarter, and just because I have more self-awareness than the elephant, I should be able to do whatever I want to? No! So the philosophy is more selfish, and it just feels like there’s a complete failure to see that in this accusation that the person who begins to break away from that traditional Orthodox way of seeing the world, Christian way of seeing the world, is somehow selfish. And I’m like, hey, man. The most difficult part of this process for me was realizing that I wasn’t as special as I thought I was. So it kind of, so that specific accusation rings very, very hollow to me, and is pretty dismissive, you know, along the way. But I wanna bring it back. Bring it back. To what I was talking about earlier, and that is this idea that leaning into uncomfortable truths rather than recoiling from them is always more illuminating, and ultimately more spiritual. And I want to use evolution as an example again. You know, when I was a Christian, and before I started believing in evolution, I saw evolution as first a desperate attempt to explain the universe apart from God, right? It was like, you gotta come up with something, so maybe they just happened spontaneously, and everything’s related, and, well, I don’t know. Making stuff up, right? I also saw it as a direct threat to the way that I understood the world. I saw it as a direct threat in terms of the veracity of scripture, but also a direct threat in terms of my place in the universe, as this is for me. The world is about, you know, God created humans to be in relationship with him, and everything else that is under that is for us. And I, first of all, I never really understood it. I never honestly considered it, right? And then when I finally did honestly consider it, it was the first card. Everything began to fall apart. But on the other side of it, that truth, that truth of the interconnectedness of all things, of every single thing that I can touch and see in the world literally being related to me, every animal that I can see literally being my cousin, that’s a life changing truth. That’s a life changing truth. That sense of interconnectedness changes the way that you interact with other people. It changes the way that you interact with the environment, the world. It changes the way you see yourself. It changes the way that you see the responsibility that we have to maintain this whole thing that we’ve got going, and the fragility of it, right? So. I think what I’m saying is that, you were saying, what is this leaning into the truth? Are you leaning into the truth for meaning? What I’m saying is that leaning into the truth, for whatever reason, there’s going to be meaning that comes from that. Especially if that’s just your disposition, is to find meaning in things, right? We’re meaning makers, we can’t help it. From the very beginning of our consciousness, we’ve had this, we went from thinking that there was something moving in the bushes to, you know, ascribing agency to things. We were like, okay, it didn’t rain today. Well, God must be upset with us. Let’s dance. Let’s pray. Oh, it rained. It must have been because we danced. It must have been because we prayed. This is what we do, we can’t help it. We can’t help but be meaning makers. It’s in our blood, it’s in our DNA. It’s who we are. And so what I’m saying is that I want to learn more, and lean more into truth, and not because I’m looking for meaning, but because truth is interesting to me, right? Knowing more about something, and having it more accurately described, and not being scared of where it’s leading has only been a positive thing for me. And I use that, finally accepting evolution, and then being like, okay, well, what’s next? My whole process of deconstruction was kind of like a card would fall, and I would be like, oh shit. And I’d be like, okay. Well, God, you’re in control. You have the power to stop this at any point, but I’m gonna turn over the other card, you know? And I would just keep going and keep going. On the back end of that, what I found is that the process of deconstructing and the truth that I now hold to have been some of the most beautiful and life altering. Are they as orienting as Christianity was? No, they’re not as orienting. Because that’s what a religious system does, is it orients your thinking, and it systematizes your thinking in a way that brings a certain level of comfort and control. You don’t get that when you step outside of a religious framework. I’m very willing to admit that. But again, being on that bridge between hope and cynicism, I think that’s where the meaning happens. And now, whereas, ’cause, yeah, I’ve accepted the interconnectedness of all things. I’ve accepted that I am a, you know, I am a lucky branch on the evolutionary tree. Couple of things could have gone a little bit differently and we could be a couple of neanderthals sitting here talking, right? It was a matter of circumstance, and that’s okay! That doesn’t make you, that actually makes, in my mind, that makes this even more significant. I’m like, well damn! It’s like, we got to this point? Like, we’re here? At the end of all this crazy shit that’s been going on, we’re here right now? Experiencing a life? Being able to consider it and look back on on it? Like, that’s significant, and that is meaningful. And as it relates to the Bible, it’s like, okay, well, hey, I’m not going at this thinking that I’ve got to, maybe I’ll find God in the letter, in the words of the Bible. Well, maybe I will. I’m not saying, I don’t wanna be closed to either side. But what I’m saying is that there’s a whole layer of truth to the Bible that I never considered because I was afraid of it. If you started talking about critical about the Bible, it was so, and so I just, and then when I finally deconstructed, I was like, that stuff is triggering. I can’t read the Bible without getting triggered, and getting uncomfortable, so I’m just gonna put it on the shelf and not read it for a few years. And now I’m saying, no, I’m going back. And I’m saying, I’m not afraid of any, I’m just going, and I’m just looking at it, and I’m looking at everything you can know about it. And the truth is gonna appear, you know, and the meaning will come. I don’t have to control it. I don’t have to come in with this preconceived idea. And last thing I’ll say is I understand that this is a, this whole process, this whole conversation, it’s an incredibly privileged viewpoint, right? You know, that’s one of the things that you read about when you think about the Jewish people who wrote the Bible, and what they were going through. They were going through a bunch of, man. And this is true of basically anybody who’s put putting together a religious tradition. It is usually out of necessity, and out of trying to somehow get through what they were going through. I mean, and also, you think about African American spirituality, right? And you think about how there’s this really ironic thing that happened where, you know, African slaves took on the religion of their oppressors in many different ways, and there’s Black Christian spirituality now, and they have a tradition, kind of all, and it actually talks a little bit about this in this book, but a tradition of their own that, considering that and, like, sitting there and deconstructing that, that’s a position of extreme privilege for a couple of guys who are number four on the Forbes money list. Yeah. Just under that nine year old. I have the ability to just sit here. I don’t have hardship in my, and this is a philosophical exercise for me. I recognize that. It’s not one in which I’m going through this incredibly difficult thing personally, where I’m crying out to God, right? Right now I live in such a position of privilege and excess that I can explore these things like a college professor. So I’m not saying that this is something that I am trying to apply to everybody, and everybody should do, like, some people are going through something so difficult, and the way that they see and understand Jesus has been indispensable for them. I’m not trying to take that away from them. I’m not interested in taking that away from them. You know, just like I’m not interested in taking, changing the minds of the Christians that I’m still friends with. They want to hear what I have to say about that, or what I think about some conclusion they come to, I’m happy to discuss it, but this isn’t designed to deconstruct other people’s faith. I’m just saying, this is how it happened for me, this is how it continues to happen for me. And I recognize that I’m able to do this just simply because I’m in a very specific privileged position. Yeah. I think people, some people may write you off and say, okay, you’re basically saying you don’t have any need for Jesus, like as a personal savior. So I don’t expect Rhett to get anything from him going back to the Bible, especially that version of the Bible. But you know what? It’s less about the version of the Bible, and more about what his needs are, and is he open to having those met, I think is the criticism that, you know, that’s the story that people will tell from one vantage point. And I, and you know, and I’ll go back to what I said before, with the accusation of this is just a self-centered pursuit. I know for a fact that this conversation is only going to reinforce that perspective, if that’s what you think. My perspective is that we’re all doing that. We’re all synthesizing and making personal decisions, and there’s lots of different factors. It’s very complicated and it’s very muddy, and I’m not gonna fault you for coming. And I have done that. I’ll stand up and say I have faulted people for coming. The thing I will say is if you subscribe to a system or you actively are discriminating against or belittling marginalized people, I’m gonna stand up for those marginalized people, right? That’s one place that I’m not gonna compromise, but when it comes to your personal choices about what you end up thinking about the Bible, and what you think about Jesus, it’s just like? I know that you can’t make someone believe. You can’t make me believe something. I can’t make you believe something. Beliefs are things that happen spontaneously based on circumstances. You know? Which, you know, I think is ironic in one sense, because this is all, you know, this whole thing is being written from the reform perspective, and the very first introduction talks about the parable of the sower being a framework for understanding this. And it’s just like, there’s a part of me that’s just like, hey, if you really are reformed, and you believe that there are some people who are elected to be children of God, and some people who are not, by the way, the vast majority of people. Well, why write this book at all? Why not just say that in a tweet, you know? I digress. Well, and I’ll share next week. Yeah, you’ve given me, there’s a number of things I wanna springboard off of– You gonna buy a Bible? If so, you should order it now. It’s gonna take a month and a half to get here. You can photocopy mine, but that will probably take you a few weeks. I have a few. I have a few at home still, thank you. And thanks for sharing. I think this is good. You didn’t, you know, you didn’t give me enough answers to know what I’m gonna do with the rest of my spiritual life. You know, ’cause all I do is just whatever you tell me. That’s what people say about me. Well, but here’s the thing. I’m coming up with things that I know you’re not gonna do. That’s true, that is true. You’re not gonna read the Bible– I am not buying this Bible, I am not. So you’re on your own now. Oh yeah. Yeah, I love it. My rec is Richard Holloway’s ‘Stories We Tell Ourselves’. Love this guy. Check out Marginalia as well. I think it’s themarginalian.com, and listen. Read this book, you know? Send the Gospel Co, well, maybe find a way to steal some. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I think that if you are, this before you lose your faith is sort of a fascinating study of the way that the Evangelical Church is trying to process what’s happening. And it’s it, like I said, I think this is about the best attempt that can be made right now to attack this thing from every single angle, but it’s kind of amazing how ineffective it is for me personally. I’m sure it’s gonna be very effective for some people. I’m just saying that if you’re at a place that I’m at right now, it’s just like, oh wow. Well it’s, again, it’s not after you’ve lost your faith, it’s before your lose your faith. Yeah, I agree. Before you fall backwards into something that you’re probably gonna hit your head on, read this book. That’s what the cover says– And listen, I’m not making light of the people who wrote this book, because I said for a fact, I don’t know what I think about the multiple, you know, universes, multiple worlds theory, whatever you call it, but there is a Rhett who tried to, maybe got rejected, but tried to contribute to this book. Definitely. In another universe. Absolutely. And so I do not fault you, for this is exactly what I would be doing if I had not left my faith. I’d be trying like crazy to justify the way I think about it, and trying to keep the youth from thinking differently. And that’s what this is. Hashtag Ear Biscuits, let us know what resonated with you from Rhett’s update. Thanks man. To watch more ‘Ear Biscuits’, click on the playlist on the right. 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