Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”. The podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting. It’s that time of year again, man. Woo. Around this time of year, we like to give a spiritual update to each other and to you, good Ear Biscuiteer. How many years ago was it that we broke open the can of spiritual worms? Three years ago. Three years ago. Three years, in 2020 before the world changed. We came out of the closet, the spiritual closet, and told our story of who we used to be. Our background as evangelical Christians, and why that was no longer who we are and how we describe ourselves. It’s who we were at the time. And of course, the journey continues- Who we were at the time? What do you mean? Yeah, at the time that we, three years ago, talked about it. But we weren’t evangelical Christians at the time anyway. No, I said, “And we talked about who we were at the time.” Yes, exactly. Which was no longer Christians even, especially of the evangelical American white church variety. So- But my point is, it’s been, it’s been three years- It’s been three year. since then. So, every year we give a little update, you know? We protect a little bit of time for each of us to have our own episode where we can just talk about whatever we want to talk about when it comes to, like, our spiritual journeys, because it’s a journey. Things keep changing. Do you think it becomes less interesting every year? I have no clue. I don’t think so. I’m very interested in what you have to say today. I think that- Today’s your day, man. this one might be interesting. Not because what I’m gonna say is interesting, but because I am going to say some things that I’m kind of like questioned if I should be as honest about some of the things that I’m thinking because- Do it. because I’m afraid to lose credibility with people. Okay. But I’m just like, okay- Lose credibility with people. I’m just gonna go for it. All right, well, I’m not gonna judge you. So, kind of the way that I process this, you know, when we prepare for this episode is, I kind of look back through the year and I, you know, I don’t do super regular, like, daily journaling, but I do, when there’s something significant that happens or a thought that strikes me that I’m like, “I kind of wanna remember that,” especially as it relates to spiritual things in this process of the way I’m thinking about deconstruction and the way I think about faith. I have a little folder in my Evernote, the faith folder. Okay. Where I kind of catalog these things just ’cause I wanna kind of keep track because I am sort of changing and continuing on the journey. And then usually, because we do this in February, around Christmas, over a Christmas break, I start looking at this stuff and just kind of seeing, well, what patterns formed and what things happened. There’s a bit of a narrative that I think unfolded that I’m gonna try to lead you through, right? Okay, awesome. It could get a little tedious. Tedious? It could get a little tedious because I’m trying to connect the dots that have been connected in my brain. And also trying to be honest about like where, like, where things are going. And again, I try to qualify things when we talk about these things as, I’m just kind of throwing out some, like, giving you, as a person, as a human, as another human, just a data point from another human who is trying to figure out what they think about the nature of the world. Right? Not in a, I’m trying to change your mind, I’m trying to persuade you, because, as you’ll see at the end, I don’t know exactly what I’m persuaded of personally. It’s just kind of like as if we were friends sitting around a campfire and we were like, “Well, what are you thinking about spiritual things these days?” I would lightly toss some things out to the group for consideration. So, consider it in that way, okay? Into the fire that would just burn. If you don’t like it, just throw it directly in the fire. Just don’t throw me into the fire. Ooh, is that, is there symbolism in that? Talking about hell. Oh. Oh. So you ready? I’m ready, man. I’ll give you a, I’ll give you a quick preview. Even though I am definitely still not a Christian, I’m realizing that I am a person of faith, and I’m figuring out what that faith looks like. Okay. That’s the preview. That’s where I’m gonna land, just so you know. All right, now I know. Okay. You wanna promote something first before I get into that? Yeah. Let’s do any self-promoting- ‘Cause once I get going, and get it out of the way. it might be hard to stop. There’s so many different ways you can enjoy “Ear Biscuits” you know? You’re enjoying it in one way right now. It could be as a podcast, maybe you’re watching us right now as a YouTube video. You know? That’s cool. That’s a cool thing to do. You’re open to any of those ways. We wanna give you options. Audio comes out on Monday, wherever you get your podcast. And then what used to come out on Sunday on YouTube now comes out on Wednesday. So just two days later, we upload the video version of this to the Ear Biscuits YouTube channel. Subscribe to that. You can share if there’s a part of it that’s particularly poignant to you, there’s a way that YouTube will let you share this specific moment. Wow. Like the time code, but it doesn’t stop there. Ear Biscuits is also on Snapchat. Yeah, it is. It’s on Snapchat, like minisodes. So, like three to six minute, I’ll call ’em, “self-containedish” segments of the show that if you’re over there on Snapchat, look up “Ear Biscuits”. 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You may recall, if you have been following along on these episodes, last year I bought a Bible. Yes. Remember that? You bought a study Bible. Oh wow. And that was your new thing. And if you’re hoping that this year is an update on all the insights I gathered from all the Bible that I read, you will be sorely disappointed because I didn’t get very far. I don’t want to trash the Bible and say that it’s boring, but it’s kind of boring, especially when you’ve read it, like, you spent a lot of your time in your previous life reading it. And when you start from the beginning, especially, you know, that’s why, that’s why when you do, like, Bible in a year, there’s a reading plan that doesn’t just have you start from the beginning and try to get through the Torah because it’s so difficult to do. You were so excited about it. Well- It’s a moment in time. It turns out that it was a very important moment in time, and it did something. You know, the logic behind getting the Bible, and you know, the analogy I used last year was, “If you were raised in a religion where the “Lord of the Rings” was the text, and then you left that particular religion, but it had defined who you were in many ways.” And not just who you were, but who you are now, because who you were is the largest determine, you know, is the largest determiner of who you are now. And so, it would be like going back and reading about Frodo anew. Bilbo, Gandalf, and basically seeing, like, how did these things that I read and how I interpreted them, how did they make me who I am, and how do I see them now when I go back and look at them in a fresh light? But the Bible is not “The Lord of the Rings,” Link. It was not written for your entertainment. But what happened before I realized I was getting kind of, as I was slowly trudging through this, is that what it did do is it kind of thrust me back into thinking about some of the issues that were the things that I was thinking about when my deconstruction was beginning. Things that I hadn’t really thought about or revisited in a while, because my deconstruction in particular started, did kind of start at the beginning of the Bible. You know, a lot of people have an experience in the church or they learn something that might impact their understanding of Jesus, and then it kind of works backwards. For me it happened with my changing and my understanding of the beginning of the Bible and the nature of the Old Testament, which then kind of was the thread that I began to pull that eventually the whole thing fell apart. So going back to read those things kind of thrust me back into the latest in Christian apologetics. Which is, you know, again, apologetics is essentially the defense of the faith. And there’s a whole apologetics industry. And it has changed quite a bit since I last checked in and since I was a student of these resources, right? Because there’s just the content is so much more prolific and they’re just- You’re saying you were reading Genesis in the Bible, and then you started reading what commentary on that now? Right, but it quickly just became commentary about all of Christianity, and like, what’s the latest in the arguments that are happening about different aspects of the faith on the internet between, you know, Christians and atheists and progressive Christians, et cetera, et cetera. And I was just kind of blown away, not surprisingly. Was this a blog? Still happening mostly in the blogosphere? No. Has it moved to Reddit? I mean like, or Twitter, like, where, where- It’s everywhere, but the place that it is the most accessible is YouTube. Okay. Because essentially, you’ve got personalities- Talking heads. who have set themselves up as, “This is my position, this is where I stand.” And they interact with each other, you know, across disciplines and across perspectives, and it’s fascinating to me. I love kind of like watching it unfold because I feel like there’s a little bit of me in every single argument that I see, right? Because, you know, I was a very, I was a professional Christian. I was an evangelical Christian. When I deconstructed, I kind of went through what I would call a mildly angry atheist phase, which is common to many people who deconstruct. And then I kind of backed off of that and kind of went into an agnostic place, and I’m continuing to evolve. But you’ve got all these people that represent these different perspectives, and I just like seeing ’em interact. And also, having people publicly sort of change their minds is an interesting thing that I’ve seen happen too. You know, which is something that happened to me. I’d like to hear that. But as I kind of centered around one particular issue in reading about that, some things started to solidify, to become distilled, I don’t know how I would describe it, about faith in reason that have helped me kind of look inwardly and kind of figure out why I think the way I think, or help me organize some of my thoughts, which again, will get to what faith is at this point and how I’m leaning into that. And the event that there’s so much discussion about, of course, is the resurrection, the physical resurrection of Jesus, right? Because, I mean, this is the central event of Christianity. This is the thing that Paul says that, “If it didn’t happen, if Christ is not raised, then, you know, your faith is useless, and you know, we’re to be pitied above all people.” And of course, if it did happen, then there’s something to this Christianity thing. So it makes a lot of sense that people spend a lot of time talking about this, and a lot of apologists spend a lot of time defending it and trying to make a case for why it’s reasonable to believe that Jesus actually raised from the dead. Mm-hmm. So in kind of looking at their arguments, well, let me just newsflash, I’m still not convinced that Jesus rose from the dead. You know, that’s not what this is about. I’m not gonna go into why I do or why I don’t believe it, but I’m not about to, I’m not about to say that I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead. I was very much sort of confirmed in my suspicion from 10 years ago that I don’t believe that he did, and I don’t believe there’s a good case that he did. But one of the things that I’ve observed is that if you really wanna follow the argument, like if you want to actually consider the argument for or against the resurrection, there’s a few things that you have to have at least some working knowledge of, right? Like, you got to have a little knowledge or a little POV on the historical reliability of the gospels. You gotta understand what extra biblical evidence there is. You gotta understand a little bit about the history of first-century Judaism. You gotta understand first-century Roman empire and how the empire was interacting with the Jewish people, and how their laws were interacting and methods of execution and methods of burial, the early stages of the Christian Church and how it grew and the testimonies of the disciples, and all this stuff, right? And- That’s a lot. it kind of hit me that most people, and also most Christians, including me when I was a Christian, didn’t have a working knowledge of these things, right? There may be like, “Oh, my pastor talked about it one Sunday, or I checked in with a YouTube video or a blog.” It was more common back in the day where somebody who took the time to research all this stuff. Somebody who is a historian, somebody who does, you know, who can read Greek or whatever, they have synthesized this information for me in a simple to understand blog post that makes me feel confident that I’m a Christian who believes in the resurrection, right? But really, I wasn’t ever really following the argument. And I’m not even saying that even now, I’m really following the argument to the degree that a lot of these people these talking heads are. But yet, despite the fact that most Christians don’t really follow the full argument for the resurrection, the evidence for the resurrection, most of them, if not all, well, most Christians, believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. They believe that it happened. And it kind of hit me, I was like, “But why, okay, why is that?” Well, because they have faith. They have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, right? Because typically the way that, the way that it worked for me is I’m raised in a Christian household, you know, in a Christian community. I make a decision to become a Christian at a very young age, when I don’t have a real understanding of much. And then, as you grow, you begin to build the case for your own faith. And then maybe there is a point that you have a crisis of faith and you do some research in a particular area, but it’s just to kind of confirm the faith decision that you already made. And even if you’re, even if you’re like, you are the most informed Christian on the face of the planet, and you’re the guy that writes the book about the resurrection. The best that you can do, and I don’t even believe that this is possible, but let’s just for the sake of the argument, I’ll be generous and say, the best that you can do is make a case for why it is reasonable to believe or even probable that Jesus rose from the dead, right? I don’t believe that you can, but I’m just saying, if you make the case that it’s probable that Jesus rose from the dead, that it is the best explanation for why the early church got started and it is the best explanation for the available evidence, at some point, you still have to close the gap between probability and certainty with faith. Yeah, because if there is not proof 100%- You can’t prove it. So, at some point, you have to take a leap of faith. And that really got me thinking about this concept of faith, because I think there’s a tendency for people like me, who’ve not only deconstructed but deconverted, to just kind of just believe that you no longer have faith. That there’s nothing that I think that is a leap to something. That I only operate under reason and logic, right? You tend to start believing that. But the thing that I’m realizing is that, well, I’m still human, and I believe that faith is a feature of humanity for most, for, you know, for most people. But what is it? And so, the biblical definition actually in Hebrews 11:1 I think is pretty good. So, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That’s the ESV. The NIV says, “Now faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” And then, if you’re a King James, King James person, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And I think this is like in popular culture, this is kind of how we understand faith. We don’t really talk about it that much, but I actually think it’s a great way of describing the way that faith operates in the world. So my sort of, the Rhett McLaughlin version of this is, “Faith is a bridge we can use to travel from the limits of reason to a confident conclusion of what we hope to be true. Faith is a bridge we can use to travel from the limits of reason to a confident conclusion of what we hope to be true.” So if you’re a Christian who is well-studied in all the evidence for the resurrection, you still gotta get to the point where you kind of want to, you gotta wanna believe that Jesus rose from the dead to make that final leap to it. It’s gotta be this thing that you want to be true, and then you believe it to be true. But the desire for it to be true precedes the belief for it to be true. And again, I’m not singling out Christians because, again, I’m gonna get to the fact that I think this applies to most people, and it definitely applies to me. And I’m gonna talk about how I see that manifesting itself in me. Hmm, yeah. It seems like someone may say, “Yeah, but you can you can become convinced of something.” Like you can be you, you can make an argument. You may not want to believe that “Seinfeld” is the best television show of all time, but if you listen to enough arguments, you might become convinced of it, even if you didn’t want it to be better than “Friends” or whatever your problem is. Yeah, but that’s an opinion about a show that requires taste, right? I’m really just saying that it seems like, well, can I be convinced of something that I didn’t want to be true, but then I change my mind, and then I, it’s not really what I, like, so I’m just kind of, I’m just kind of pointing out that a lot of people would think that, I think that about some things. Yeah, but I think you’re talking about a preference. So- I also think when it comes to belief of something where there’s not 100% proof, I do believe that, like, people believe what they want to believe. Like it’s at the deepest level. Maybe it’s something they need- So, you’re agreeing? I am agreeing with you, but yeah, I was kind of exploring the other side of it. Well, I think a good way to figure out, like, what part of faith, you know, what part is the bridge is to think about what reason is. So, the reason is to think, understand informed judgments by a process of logic. So when people are using, now, first of all, humans are really bad, including me, we’re really bad at being able to parse between where we’re using reason and where we’re using intuition or where we’re getting into matters of faith. But one of the beautiful things about science is that science starts with a recognition that people are imperfect, especially individual people and individual communities, are imperfect and prone to value their own intuition too highly and also be led by their own bias. And so good science is about isolating the bias and trying to use as pure reason as possible, as pure logic as possible to come to conclusions that we can be confident in, things that we can prove. That’s why, you know, if you’re studying some chemistry, some aspect of chemistry in the United States and in China, well if the conditions are controlled, you’re gonna come to the same conclusions. But if you’re studying theology, you don’t have to be in China, you can be across the street. The Presbyterians and the Baptists are across the street from each other. They’re studying theology. They’re coming to vastly different conclusions about, you know, some fundamental things. And that’s because matters of theology get into matters of faith, which gets into matters of preference. It gets into things that you want to be true and moves beyond things that you can prove to be true. And this is a little bit of an oversimplification, but it’s one of the reasons that we have, we don’t have, I mean, yes, the past three years may challenge this particular view, but we actually do have one set of facts. There is a set of scientific facts that exist, whether or not you’re in the group that has ’em, or you subscribe to them, I think we all kind of agree that there is a truth out there that corresponds to a scientific reality. Getting to the bottom of that has gotten more difficult with polarization, et cetera. But the incredible diversity of faiths, Christian faiths alone, Christian denominations alone, but then add religions, it’s a testimony to the fact that people are coming to conclusions based on the things that they want to be true. Based on this faith decision that sends people in so many different directions, it doesn’t keep bringing people back to the same conclusions. It keeps splitting people up and moving people away from each other when it comes to these faith issues, right? I mean, we’ve personally experienced that, with growing up in a church, that there was a difference of an opinion that led to the formation of a new church. Yeah. Right? But a question that hit me, or an idea was, “What is it that determines what you want to be true?” What is it that if everybody kind of wants different things to be true, as is evidenced by all these different faith perspectives, what is it that determines what someone wants to be true? And I’m convinced that, in large part, it is a combination of circumstance and disposition. Okay. And this is why, for the, you know, even today but definitely for most of history, you just believed what your parents believed and what your community believed, and what the people in your culture believed. That’s why religions are centered regionally, right? Yeah. Because people are being influenced by a combination of circumstance and disposition, which tends to run in patterns regionally in groups of people. And I don’t think that there’s, I don’t think that this is, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I just think that it’s something to understand about, like, it’s something that I’m understanding about myself because especially as it relates to Christianity in my deconstruction. So there could be one view that I could take of myself, which is, “Oh, I was so brave in being in this environment where everybody believed this same thing and I decided to challenge it and follow the truth wherever it would lead. And then to break out of this community, because I had the courage to do it, the courage of my convictions to follow this, and I’m some enlightened person who stepped out of this type of belief.” I do not believe that that’s what happened, in any sense of those words. Because I believe that I came to where I’m at right now based on a combination of my circumstances and my particular disposition and how those things interact with one another. Right? Yeah. And I also think this has a lot to do with how individual Christians respond to what’s happening in the church when it comes to deconstruction in general, right? So, the church is registering that some shit’s going down, right? Lots of books are being written, lots of videos are being made, recognizing that a lot of people are re-evaluating on a fundamental level the faith that they were raised with. And there’s a few different ways that you could respond to that. Many Christians see it happening and immediately put those people in a box and say, “Those people are deceived. Those people are falling to the temptation of the world and worldly thinking and placing themselves above God.” And they basically just sort of dismiss those people and be like, “Well, we’ll pray for those people, but they’re lost.” Right? That’s a good amount of Christians would think that. I know some of those Christians, I also know many Christians who take it very, very seriously and actually move beyond just thinking about how it affects other people. But have let some of the information that has come out and some people’s stories and perspectives that have been put out there, and they let it challenge their own faith, and they actually do have some form of deconstruction of their own faith. They go back, they re-evaluate why they believe, what they believe. They re-evaluate, like, what parts of this are true. And many of them become a different kind of Christian, but at the end of the day, still will call themselves a Christian, still have faith in Jesus, still believe in the resurrection, whatever, right? Yeah. And then there are people like me and you who threw the baby out with a bathwater, so to speak, and we’ve completely left it behind. And again, I think that most of that has to do with circumstance and disposition of these individual people and how they’re interacting with this. So I’m not gonna get into talking about, because you maybe think, are you saying you don’t believe in free will, like from a deterministic standpoint? You just think that it’s just a combination of environment and DNA, and people just are gonna do what they want to, so nobody has any culpability for anything? I’m not saying that, but what I’m saying is that I recognize in myself and in a lot of other people that they’re kind of just, they’ve got the faculties that they have and they’ve got the disposition that they have, and new information comes in, and then they react to it to the best of their ability, and we come to different conclusions. And I think what that has done for me is that it’s helped me withhold judgment from people. Okay. It’s- ‘Cause what else are you gonna do? It’s created a softness towards others and towards myself. And when I say softness towards myself, I say, “It makes me even more suspicious than I ever was about anything that I actually believe.” Because I recognize that it’s not like I have some really, really tied-up, very, very reasonable, very, very illogical package of beliefs that I have assembled with great care and without outside influence. No, I’ve had lots of outside influence, and I’ve had lots of outside influence interacting with the way that my brain works. And that’s why I think the things that I think, so when I’m able to see myself in that way, I can step back and be like, all right, well can I, you hold things a little bit more loosely. Yeah. You hold your convictions about other people a little bit more loosely, and you hold your personal convictions a little bit more loosely because you recognize just how tenuous the whole enterprise is. Yeah. How much influence things you have no control over, how much influence it has over you. Yep. Right. And one thing, it makes me much less, it makes me want to be much less dogmatic in any conclusion that I come to, right? But what does this have to do with the question of my faith? So, again, going back to the assurance of things hoped for, essentially certainty of things that you want to be true, there’s two parts of that. There’s the thing that you want to be true, and then there’s the certainty of that thing. And I was thinking a lot about this analogy that I’ve used before of me jumping ship, you know, it’s the analogy that I captured on the front of, the cover of the album, of me, like, being in the ocean of uncertainty. And you see the ship of belief, which is, like, characterized like Noah’s ark in the background. Oh. And you took your shoes off for some reason. ‘Cause feet, you know, people wanna see feet. Some people more than others, but yes. Well, if you’re gonna jump in the water, you need to take your shoes off. Everybody knows that. Just keep your pants on. Yeah, ’cause what kind of shoes would you be wearing on your album cover? Exactly. Yeah. I think there’s more to this analogy that has been helpful in thinking about this aspect of faith. Because the way I characterized it before is that I was on this ship of belief, and at some point, I decided to jump off of the ship of belief into the sea of uncertainty. But I wasn’t just on this ship, just walking around on this ship, I was actually tethered to this ship by many, many different tethers. Oh yeah. And so I think this is, for me, this is the way that it worked, and that is, at some point, at a very young age, I made the decision to become a Christian. So, I, you know, I was essentially kind of born onto the ship of belief, right? Yeah. Did make a personal decision, a few, you know, rededication of when you are not sure about your salvation, all that. Multiple times, I like really refastened myself to the, you know, put another clip in and refastened myself to the ship. But I also did things like, you know, join the youth group and then went on a mission trip and then started a Christian band with you, and then got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and then started leading a bible study, and then went on a couple December projects and then went on staff full-time, and then married a Christian woman. And then started raising a Christian family. Led a bible study at that church. You do all these things, and every single time you do that thing to kind of throw yourself into the belief structure, you add another tether and you look around, and you basically got this web that you’ve tied yourself to this belief with, and it’s very secure and it’s very certain, it’s almost second nature. Yeah. For me, stuff started coming along and tearing at the ship a little bit. And with it, a tether would go, right? And over- Pew. and over time, it got to this place where all my connections to the thing that I wanted to be true fell away. And I just found myself standing on this ship of belief and being able to see it laid bare and to really look at it, and be like, “Do you want this to be true?” You know, I talked about that in my first deconstruction account, was that once the confidence in the belief went away, an examination of whether I wanted it to be true, and again, this is the kind of thing I can hear the old evangelical Rhett on my shoulder being like, “Ha, so it was about what you wanted to be true, I knew it all along.” He can say it, he can say that if he wants to, but I’m saying that I believe that everyone is following what they want to be true. And the point at which you decide to jump ship to either another faith or to no faith at all, is because you finally made a decision that there was another reality that you wanted to be true. More than the one that you’re currently tied to. And at that point, I jumped into the sea of uncertainty, and I’ve been in that sea of uncertainty for, you know, basically a decade. But the thing that’s been hitting me this year, as I kind of look through my notes and experiences specifically, which I’m gonna get to. Some, what I might call faith-building experiences, I have recognized that I’m not just floating in the sea of uncertainty. I actually look down and see tethers to other things that I want to be true. Okay. And I am in the process of grabbing onto that rope and pulling myself towards whatever ship, or island, or whatever it is that’s at the end of that tether of belief. So are you gonna tell us the tethers? Yes, I’m going to. I’ve got an order that I’m gonna kind of unfold this. But I’ve been having these conclusions about what is it that I want to be true. What is it that my faith is? And then I saw it articulated really, really well by none other than Rick Rubin in his latest book, which I’m going to read an excerpt from. I love that you read this book before me. You know, a lot of people have been talking about this book. There’s a few clips of Rick going around, some viral clips, because he’s, like, being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and he seems to be saying absolutely nothing, and people are kind of making fun of it. And people are talking about, “Oh, how he’s, you know, he doesn’t have any talent or whatever, because he himself said he doesn’t have any talent.” I don’t care who you are. For me personally, this book was a masterpiece. Like, I really think that as a creative thinker, this was because it’s not so much about my, it has nothing to do with my respect for his work or my knowledge of his work. I know a little bit about what Rick Rubin has done as a producer and the people that he’s worked with, and the albums that have kind of come outta that process. But to me it’s more somebody who understands a creative way of being, a creative way of living. Actually, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” is the name of the book. And I listened to about five hours of this, again, I do have the physical book, which I am now reading following up the listening. Let me see it. But it is the first pass of this book, I basically took in in one hike. One hike up a mountain in which I- Five hour hike. in which I thought that I might have to call someone for help because my knee started hurting so bad ’cause I have tendonitis. I thought I was gonna have to get airlifted off of this mountain. But I made it, and it was quite an experience. Do you wanna read it right now? ‘Cause I do have something I want to read. I’m sorry. I just saw something I have to read, the very first thing. “Nothing in this book is known to be true. It’s a reflection on what I’ve noticed. Not facts so much as thoughts.” Ooh, I feel that. And I actually think that that is a, I could have said that at the beginning of this whole thing that I’m doing right now because I wholeheartedly believe that the things that I’m going to tell you are not things that I can prove or things that you should even believe. Again, it’s a data point to take into consideration. But early on in the book, he says something that I was like, “Ah, man, this is like.” One of the things I’ve noticed in the past few years is that, and I think this has been the case always, but I’ve just kind of, as I’ve detached from a framework of faith, it’s been a little bit easier to notice when I begin to see some synchronicities happening in my life. And again, I think that we’re pattern-forming individuals and that it’s natural for us to see things and to begin to put these patterns together, whether or not they’re there or not. And I think that noticing these patterns can be helpful whether or not there’s some other force involved or not. But again, I’m having these thoughts about faith, asking myself, “What is it that I believe that I can’t prove to be true, and how does that interact with my life?” And then, and again, we’ve already said “That it is the evidence of things unseen, the assurance of things, hope for the evidence of things unseen.” And here we are very early in the book, just on page 31, he has a short chapter called “The Unseen.” Chapters are short. This one in particular, two pages. I’m gonna just read some stuff I highlighted. “The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world. Without the spiritual component, the artist works with a crucial disadvantage. The spiritual world provides a sense of wonder and a degree of open-mindedness not always found within the confines of science. The world of reason can be narrow and filled with dead ends, while a spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities. The unseen world is boundless. The practice of spirituality is a way of looking at a world where you’re not alone. There are deeper meanings behind the surface. The energy around you can be harnessed to elevate your work. You are part of something much larger than can be explained, a world of immense possibilities. Harnessing this energy can be marvelously useful in your creative pursuits. The principle operates on faith. Believing and behaving as if it’s true. No proof is needed.” Whoa. So I’m hiking up the mountain, I’m listening to this- “No proof is needed. No proof is needed.” And I’m like, “This is kind of remarkable in light of a couple of things that have happened to me over the past year.” Okay. So I read, and I think I talked about this last year or the year before, I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Big Magic,” which is a great book on creativity. And she describes the creative process in a very magical way. And again, anytime somebody starts talking about magic, all my alarms go off. I’m a skeptic. All the red flags go up. I’m like, “You’ve got no way of proving this, I’m not gonna believe it.” She tells a story in the book about how she had a very specific idea for a book, very specific. It was a character, it was an occupation, it was a location, it was a plot. And she abandoned the idea only to have it essentially done by someone else with all the same specifics being hit. And she ended up meeting this woman. And there’s a story about it in the book. But it’s based on the idea that these ideas, these concepts, exist outside of us. They are in the fabric of the universe, in the fabric of existence, and we have the ability to tap into them. Not a new idea. Obviously, it’s at least as old as the Greek muses, you know, in ancient Greece where they believed that there were these gods and goddesses who had basically the power to inspire all forms of art in and science and everything, right? There these timeless truths and melodies and arrangements of ideas that existed that you can kind of tap into if you’re a creative person. Now, this sounds like serious L.A. woo-woo, new-age shit that I’m not into, right? But it is an interesting way to think about creativity, and it’s an interesting way to think about ideas. And so I think the way I interacted with that book when I saw it was when I read it was, “Okay, hmm, yeah, there’s probably another explanation for this, like, I don’t know exactly what it is, but I feel like I’m hearing one half of this, and there’s probably a logical, reasonable explanation for how this actually went down.” But it’s cool to think about it in this way, and it’s inspirational, and maybe it will unlock something in the creative process. And as a creative person, as a creative professional, this is an inspiring way to think about creativity. Well, last year in the fall, no, it’s over, it’s over a year ago, so fall of ’21, I was on, and I’m not gonna, and I’m not going to say what these specific ideas are because in doing that, I run the risk of trying to take credit for the ideas, and I’m not gonna do that. And so I don’t want you to be thinking about specific ideas; I just want you to be listening to my testimony of how these things went down for me. Okay. The first thing that happened was I was on vacation and I had, I was in the middle of a conversation with Jessie and my brother and sister-in-law, and I had an idea for a series. It was a very specific series, and I kind of just wrote it down. And then I come back to work, come back to Mythical, and a team here at Mythical has developed the idea and developed the idea in a much more specific better way than I had just sort of like initially sketched it out and I never told anybody about it, right? I was like, “That’s weird.” But again, I was like, you know, still it’s coincidence, right? These happen, the coincidences happen. We all work in the same place, like, we probably talked about this, it probably just came up, and it’s just like, now I’m seeing it, now there’s this pattern. Yeah. Well, about three weeks ago? Yeah. So- I know what you’re talking about. So, you know, we are coming up with ideas for videos that we’re going to make that we’re very excited to show you. We’ll talk more about what that process looks like. And we’ve got a bunch of ideas we’re very excited about, and just, I’m so excited and I’ll talk about how this all ties into how excited I am about what we’re doing. But we’re trying to kind of land on an idea for, like, a video. I was actually here in the office, and I took a little power nap and I woke up and I had an idea for a video. And it was such what I would call a dumb idea that I was afraid to even admit to myself that I’d had that, it was just like, that’s a dumb idea. I’ll never mention that to anybody. But it’s weird that I had that idea. That’s what I remember thinking. And I was like, “I’m not gonna write it down. I’m not gonna tell Link about it because it’s stupid, it’s a dumb idea.” And then I think it was the same day? Same day, yeah. We have a meeting. You were at the meeting. Yeah. Jenna was at the meeting, I think, as well. Or were you not, you know, maybe you weren’t back, you weren’t back from your trip yet. But TJ, who’s leading this team, he’s like, “I got a,” he’s like, “I got a dumb idea, but I love it.” And he says the idea, and I’m like, “What?” Same idea. And of course- Very specific. and also, but again- And it was very dumb. I mean, we’re doing it. And we’re doing it. His idea was more, he had thought of it and developed it into like, and this is how we would do it. Yeah, he’s got more balls than you, I guess. Yeah, and I’m so appreciative of it. And it’s funny ’cause I told him after the fact, I was like, you know, everybody left, and he kind of stayed back for a second. I was like, “Hey, I wanna let you know.” ‘Cause he, you know, just started working for us. And I was like, “What I did in that meeting may make me feel, make me seem, like a completely psychotic, maniacal boss, in that I’m gonna be the kind of boss that when you have an idea, I’m gonna say, ‘I just had that idea when I woke up from a nap a second ago.’” and I was like,- “It was my idea.” “I realize how that, and I promise you I’m not going to do that, but I was literally, like, floored by the fact that I had this very specific idea that come to me in a power nap in another room, and then you come in and we have this meeting.” And he was like, “Trust me, I didn’t think that.” And so it was, again, it was this an additional experience. And then I go on the hike, and I read the Rick Rubin book the very next weekend. And he doesn’t just talk about it explicitly in that chapter. The whole book is essentially about making yourself the best possible antenna that you can be. Because the idea is that these patterns and these ideas exist, and you’re tapping into them. Again, this is some new-age shit, right? It is, yeah. But again, it’s inspirational. When I was listening to the book and now reading through it again, it’s like this is, the resonant frequency of this is my resonant frequency. But then, and again, I’m sorry that I’m gonna be speaking in, I’m almost speaking, like, in code- Vagaries. in vagaries, but we just had an experience this past weekend with some creative people where this principle of someone’s ability to tap into something that is definitely external, that is outside of them, was demonstrated in a really powerful way. And I was like, “Okay, all right, all right, Mr. Skeptic, you’ve kind of, why don’t you just, why don’t you just release your grip on this a little bit, because I’m so tempted to just try to understand what it is that’s going on. And maybe I’m just”- I think you can tell. I mean, just like the general principle of like, you know, having someone getting a sense of us, like it was a new friend we made, who was like, a very gifted musician, and was able to translate- He can translate- their experience of a person or us into music improvisationally. Yeah. It was extremely moving. Very, and also like very specific in shocking ways to the individuals who were present given the type, like, some of the music that he played. Right. But also there was a moment in which, like, an album cover that had been created a few years ago, for a moment that he had planned for in a specific month, while we were all looking at a specific thing. And then he played the music, and then showed us the album cover, and it was too much for me to handle. As Rick Rubin says in another chapter, “There become these things that you, that randomness doesn’t provide an adequate explanation for these things, and you eventually sort of just acquiesce.” I feel like… Yeah, there’s something unseen happening. Well, so again, now this is, as someone who was a person of faith, a person of Christian faith, it’s very different to be thinking about these things on this side of it, because I am so ready to admit that there’s nothing here, just so you understand. Like, I’m not trying to tell you that it’s true. I don’t think that it applies to you. I don’t think that it’s important that you understand it. I don’t think I need to convince you to agree with me. I don’t think you need to join a community in which we all believe this. I don’t think that this determines where I go when I die. I don’t think that I can prove this to you. I don’t think that this is a universal truth that applies to every single person. Those are things that I believe when I was a Christian. I’m saying there’s some shit going down that is, really has developed sort of a synchronicity and a frequency in the way that it’s appearing, in a way that is very much coinciding with where I’m at right now in my life. And one of the things that, like, you know, Rubin said was, “It’s believing or behaving as if it’s true.” The belief, the proof is not really the important thing, especially if it’s not harmful. Because I think that, I do, first of all, let me just say that I think it’s very important that we agree with things that are reasonable and logical, and provable. You know, I would say that for instance, you know, evolution, common ancestry, the fact that we’re all related, that we all came from the same organism, like, I think that’s provable. I don’t think that that’s an opinion. I think that that has been demonstrated significantly through many different scientific avenues, and I think it’s important to believe that. And I think that it is harmful to not believe that. And that’s gonna piss a lot of people off, ’cause like 40 to 50% of the population in the United States doesn’t think that’s true. But I actually think it’s harmful to ultimately not believe that. That’s a podcast for a different time. But I believe that because I believe it’s very reasonable and logical to come to that conclusion, and it can be demonstrated through lots of different methods. But the stuff that I’m talking about right now, I’m saying, it’s out on that faith bridge. It’s out on something that I’m not trying to prove to you, I don’t think I can prove it to you, but it is me leaning into some sort of exercise of faith. And it’s wild, because of the way that it coincides with the way that me and you have been talking and some of the things that have happened with us, specifically the way that we’ve been thinking about our creative destiny, for lack of a better word, and trying to continue to become more free in the things that we’re creating. And also, more soul-driven in the things that we’re creating. And not just do what I feel like we, one of the things we’ve gotten very good at doing over the past decade is creating a really, really healthy business through creative pursuits, right? We know how to, we know how to run a creative business very, very well. But sometimes business interests can be a counterproductive voice to creative pursuits. And they can be, they can compromise true creative vision and execution. That’s a conversation that we’ve been having and trying to free ourselves up to actually create from the heart, in a way that is very attuned to what it is that we feel, we are specifically positioned and equipped to create. And then you add this aspect and the fact that this principle has already occurred, even in the process of this new creative thing with the whole idea, the two ideas, the same idea being kind of dispensed at the same time. And I’m trying to reconcile all this. I don’t, again, my sort of skeptical, reasonable mind is trying to like piece it together. And I think that, you know, one of our friends, who was there this weekend, as I was talking about some of this stuff, I’m like, It’s very challenging to me because I try to build a framework that I can explain and I can justify, and defend, and I find myself moving into adopting a framework of creative thinking and faith, which is a word I don’t even like to say, that it applies to me. I find myself doing that, and it’s very uncomfortable. It feels risky, right? And it feels indefensible, and again, it feels incredible, like I’m literally losing credibility, right? Like with anybody. You’ve got the conservative Christians who would be listening, who would be saying, “Okay, so you still believe some stuff, and now you’re telling us that we believe some stuff.” And first of all, let me say yes, your religious faith isn’t something that I am, that I am becoming slower to, I am becoming slower to judge people’s religious faith because I do believe there are many people who have a religious framework and it is very helpful for them. Like I said, I think there can be harmful beliefs within that, right? I think if you think that someone’s lifestyle or someone’s existence is a sin, that’s a harmful belief, and I’m going to stand up against that. If your worldview embodies that kind of thing, I don’t think there’s an excuse for that, but if your worldview, if the aspects of your worldview, even a Christian worldview, are they contribute, they contribute to all of us and the wellbeing of all of us, then I’m not gonna argue with that. But for me, just this, I’m kind of, I’m riffing at this point because this is the point that I’ve gotten to where I’m like, “Ah, there’s some stuff happening. I can’t explain it. I’m leaning into it. I’ve never been more excited about, you know, my life in our career creatively.” And I did not expect these things to coincide. I always thought that these two things were separate. Back in the day, the way I saw creativity and the kingdom of God was the kingdom of God was something that existed, that we were contributing to on earth and trying to, you know, fulfill the great commission. And God had given us the gift of, whatever you wanna call the gift that we have. The gift to make people laugh, whatever, he had given us that gift so that we could use it to grow his kingdom. And I think that this is challenging that framework because it feels much more integrated and ineffable, and difficult to wrap your mind around because it’s almost like the act of creation becomes the experience of God. There is something where it is direct. It is a direct connection that I can’t take, translate, understand, and put into English so that I can get a group of people to understand it. It’s just something that is experienced in these fleeting moments, and all I can do is lean into it, and make myself more attuned to it. Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts about this, like our work and the relationship with belief. I think I’ll go back to all that as it relates to me. But I guess my one question I have, so are you able to say, you’re able to say that you have faith? Like you recognize that you have faith? Are you able to say what that’s in? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that was a part that I had written down I wanted to say and I completely forgot. So, thanks for asking. You’re welcome. I think, and I don’t think this has ever gone away. So again, the way that I interpret faith is what is it that I want to be true? That I am- What are you hoping for? living and believing as if it is true? Yeah. And even apart from these experiences, I don’t think I’ve ever let go of the belief that there is something beyond my understanding and there is an intention behind our existence. That’s something that I want to be true. In other words, I want there to be a deeper intention and purpose, and meaning behind our collective existence. And I don’t know, again, big difference, I don’t think I can prove it and I’m not trying to. I’m just saying for me, I just have to be honest with myself and admit that I do want that to be the case. I want there to be some magic, right? And I want there to be, I wouldn’t go as far as to say I want there to be a personal force behind it all, because I feel like that’s too specific, and also me trying to like, put a label on it, but whether you wanna call it source or God or whatever, there being some sort of intention that is involved in some way. You know, I talked at one point about is the universe, like some creative force that birth, literally, birthed itself as the universe, and all these pieces of matter, including me and you and everybody, it’s like the universe playing, you know, the way that Alan Watts describes it is, “The universe is playing hide and seek with itself.” And so being like, “Oh, I’m gonna make these two guys best friends, and they’re gonna have this parallel path, and they’re gonna create these things.” You know, it’s more fun and more fulfilling, for me personally, to believe that that’s, there’s some aspect of that that is true. I think that you’re describing, like, a connection. You’re hoping for there to be meaning and, like, an unseen realm that, like, that we can tap into. And you don’t know if it’s personal, if it’s a personal God, or whatever that is. But I think you’re describing an openness and experiences where you have received something. Do you think that you want, or have you started, have you ever made an intentional, like, salvo, like of moving towards that? Like, for some people, that may be prayer, you know? It’s like realizing that the act of creativity is something that you were just doing that, you seem to be describing that like you received a signal, like, the way that he talks about in his book of, like, being that antenna. You didn’t know those words at the time, but I think you’re seeing that that’s happened to you. You have experienced that. Have you turned that around to be more intentionally what for some people might be prayer or meditation or just like an acknowledgement? Yeah, but I don’t think that a lot of it was conscious. So, I mean, this whole book is about, is about your life. And again, Rick Rubin’s not the only one to ever talk about this stuff, but basically meditation, meditation is a part of it. Well, he’s talking about acting on something that you hope to be true through creativity. You know, it’s- But that’s an exercise of faith. Yes. So, to me, I guess what I’m saying is that- Is it becoming more intentional now that you’re coming to these realizations? Yes. And how? Yeah. I’m just curious. Yeah, well, okay, so for me, I feel like a huge part of this, I mean, obviously, me and you we create for a living. And so we’re like, we’ve been in this mindset for a really long time, but because we kind of create in this environment and it is this business, like I said, there are some things that have maybe caused us to not make as many connections in this way, because who’s got time for that when you’re running a business? But the process of doing my own music, which was not intended to be a commercial success, I knew that it would not be, going in. And it was incredibly personal, and it was also very spiritual. Yeah. It opened something. Yeah, that makes sense. It tapped into something. You know, and it’s funny ’cause you hear, and this, it happened this weekend because there was this moment that Jessie and I had together this weekend where I said something to her and she was like, “I wanna remember, I wanna remember what you said.” It was just a phrase. And then I said it back to her, and then it hit me. I was like, “That’s a song.” So you started, ♪ Singing it to her ♪ No, but I was thinking about it in the shower on yesterday morning, and I just like started singing it and the full melody of the song, verse and chorus, came to me. Well there you go. And I just recorded it into my phone and then picked it back up at the end of the day, and just finished the song. Nice. And it was like, I mean, that, I mean again, that can be just, there could be absolutely nothing inexplicable, unseen, supernatural involved in that process. I completely acknowledge that. But the framework of kind of leaning into this idea that, like, oh here, okay, this thing’s coming in, here it is, turn your satellite towards it and take it in, because it’s happening right now. I find that to be a very powerful act, and I think I’m okay with it being a spiritual act. It’s very intriguing to me because, you know, my Christian faith was so defined on what I was to do, and like my pursuit. Yes, it’s like, “Oh, you know, God is pursuing you, you just gotta answer the call, you just gotta open the door.” But for me, it really came to all right, yeah, I’ve opened the door, and now it’s like, what are all the things that I need to do? There wasn’t a lot of successful sitting and receiving and like, and there certainly wasn’t any surprise that I recall. You know, it’s, and- I think that was actually discouraged in our tradition. I think, you being alone and receiving something- And how can that be a dynamic relationship when you’re never surprised by what you could receive from the other, from the other? And that’s not all Christians. I mean, there’s charismatic Christians who a lot of people receive things or whatever, but like in sort of the reformed circles that we, it’s like you receive things to the Bible. We were very suspicious of anybody who received something, you know, that didn’t align with scripture. And so, it really stunts the process, and so you just kind of developed this inability to trust yourself, and you’re just like, “Well, I’m just a sinful instrument, tainted with original sin, that needs God, and that’s my only hope.” It’s kind of a catastrophic way to see yourself, you know, in many ways. Oh, yeah. So to answer your question, yeah, I am leaning into it, but it’s more about, it is kind of, it is sort of a trust, a very like slow moving, careful trust and faith that is rooted in stillness and listening. So one of the things that we’ve been talking about is, you know, we don’t operate like your typical creative professional. We run a business, our schedule traditionally has been very, very full. And our creative time has been scheduled. Which most creative people would say this is counterproductive because you can’t schedule these moments in which the song’s gonna come to you in the shower. But we are prioritizing more of a stillness in a more of a passive and receptive posture to let these ideas come to fruition. And we’re getting more protective about that, and we’re gonna continue to get even more protective about it. Yeah. And so, to me, that’s a big, that’s a big, that’s a big part of it. And then we’re also having discussions about what does it mean for us to use our creativity, not just to create things for people to enjoy, but also like, what, you know, what kind of healing can come about from the creative act. Yeah. You know? Yep. That’s a- Yes. That’s a discussion that is starting. Yeah, and even “Good Mythical Morning,” we’ve been talking to the team about giving more over to them so that, like, the maximum amount of the show can happen to us, I think? Even if you think of it in terms of this conversation, it’s like, the best thing we can do is just to be, like a, just to receive what comes from the show. And it might be, you know, it might be a dumb food combination or some silly game or whatever it is. It’s like the more we’re actually there for it the more that we can, I feel like we’re receiving something that we just, we turn around and authentically, joyfully, process it and exude it. Just throw it right back out. You know, it’s not like we’re not, we’re no longer making this show that like, we’ve got to give you something. It’s like we’ve prepped this thing that we gotta give. It’s like, no, we’ve created this playground, this environment, and this is what we’re focusing on now, is trusting people to create an environment where we can be and trust that what comes out of that will bring the most recent conversation, like you said, “Is healing to people.” And it’s been happening, it’s just, like, understanding that dynamic is very exciting even within the context of being behind that desk, because it’s like, oh, we can even tune it, the whole environment and everything about it, to give that even more, what people have already been receiving for years and telling us about, you know? People describe to us the experience of that show in a way that like, we’re still making sense of. Right. I’ll talk more about that next week in terms of, like, what that does to me on a soul level. But like I am, I have no clue what’s going on, but I know that it’s good, I know that it’s really good and I think that that’s my, you know, that’s my teaser for me next week. But I just feel like that, you know, that’s why we’re on the same page. We got this, there’s this resonance that’s like new, and we’re noticing it. Oh yeah. It’s undeniable. Yeah. And it’s, yeah, it’s, when you’re onto something, you can feel it. Hmm. You know? When you’re onto something you can feel it. I think we’re feeling it. You know so, and boy, that sounds mystical. It’s like, we’re the ones saying this type of stuff? Whoa, we have gone off the deep end, man. Yeah, I think, you know- We have gone off the deep end. I think it’s just embracing that fact. And so my rec of course is Rick Rubin’s book, which again, I think there’s so many good books on creativity and people, given the internet, people have very strong opinions about Rick Rubin apparently. But for me as a creative person, who is trying to tap into more of the potential that exists, some of these principles were just very resonant. Why don’t you keep highlighting stuff and then let me, let me read it after you, I’m just gonna read the parts you highlight. Okay, that’s smart. I’m gonna listen to the whole thing. Smart. It’s a record, see that Link? Oh, it’s not necessarily. Oh, you think it’s a booby? Oh, yep. It’s whatever you want it to be, man. This is a booby, and this is a booby without a nipple. Did I ruin it for you? Nope. It’s not something I will let you do. All right, I’m looking forward to hearing from you next week. In the meantime, join the conversation, #EarBiscuits. And you know, let us know what you’re thinking. How are you experiencing these things? Are we crazy? Call us, 1-888-EARPOD1. Hi, Rhett and Link, this is Honey. I’m from Maryland. I just listened to your episode about your biggest fears, so I know I’m a little behind, but so worth it because I now have a complete new fear of lizards detaching their tails. So I just wanted to say thank you because that consumed my entire night and I can’t stop thinking about it. Have a great day. To watch more “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of “Ear Biscuits” click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.