Welcome to Ear Biscuits.
I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link, this week at the Round Table
of dim lighting, it's part four of,
I think what we're calling
four total episodes,
in our Lost Years/Spiritual
Journey series.
I hope we're calling it four
parts if it is part four.
Well, there may be other parts I mean,
Well, yeah, we,
Begin the conversation.
That's what I was getting at
So in part one and two, we
discuss what happened externally
between college and becoming YouTubers.
And then in part three, you discuss
what happened more internally with you
in terms of your spiritual deconstruction.
And here we are at part four,
it's my turn to spill my guts.
And I've, I'm gonna spew my guts all over
these notes I've taken
because yeah, just like you,
I really, I wanted to,
this is a great exercise
for me to organize my thoughts.
I think, as I share,
I think there'll be elements
of it that I'm still,
it will be kind of obvious
that I'm still processing.
So I think it's been a very,
it's been very good for me
to prep for this episode.
I feel emotional, I think,
just in general and also nervous to share.
Well, before you get
into it, I will say that,
having shared first,
I mean, the thing I told
Jesse when I got home is like,
I was like, man, "I just feel like this
"giant weight has been lifted off of me,"
like, because it's, it's--
Because we talked about it?
Or just because there was--
Well, it's just I feel
like there's this story
that I've had that is so personal,
and you kind of carried
around and you know
how much it has impacted who you are,
but you know how kind of
touchy it is to talk about it?
Right.
And you just get it out there,
like I started realizing
how much emotion I had,
kind of attached to it,
but it was actually more
kind of after I had done
it, that it's sort of like
kind of released a little bit.
Did you weep in the shower?
I don't remember weeping.
But no, it just I, what
I'm getting at is--
But you did take a shower.
It is super emotional,
and I will say also that,
bunch of you are already
kind of using #EarBiscuits
on Twitter is probably the
best place, that's where,
Yeah, thanks for sharing your responses.
That's the easiest way to kind of find
what people are thinking and
how people are processing,
we've been reading some people's
stories and a lot of people
have clarifying questions and--
Yeah if they have follow up
questions for us, #EarBiscuits
If you just want to share your experience,
or your response--
If something comes up in
the middle of Link's story,
like pause it, write that question down.
We want your questions,
we're not trying to like
close the book on this process.
We don't know how often we're
gonna revisit this subject,
but it now is a part of what
we're doing on Ear Biscuit,
so we want this to be
an ongoing discussion.
We are still in process.
Yeah.
And we want you to be a part of that, so.
And also, I wanna thank you
for sharing these episodes,
this particular series
with people that you think
it will resonate with, or it becomes
grounds for conversations
with friends or former friends
or whatever your situation
is, thanks for sharing
what we're doing here with people
so that means a lot to us too.
All right, let me get into it.
I think I'm, I was
trying to figure out why
I was so nervous and Christie
really helped me process this
and I think it's that I don't
wanna disappoint people,
for some reason.
I mean, not only dedicated
Mythical Beasts who may find out
that my beliefs don't align with theirs,
but also, my friends
both past and present,
and my extended family.
I mean, this is not something that I've,
there's been an occasion for
me to discuss this with them,
and I just because I just didn't want,
I don't wanna disappoint them.
So, it one thing I wanna
say, I don't intend to,
and I hope that no one listening
feels implicated in my story.
I'm grateful for the path that I've taken,
for the pain and the joy and the mistakes
and the thrills associated with it.
Because I don't think
there was any other way
for me to get to here.
And I know that I'm extremely fortunate,
because I know that there's so many people
who've had deeply traumatic experiences
associated with their
own spiritual journeys.
So I'm grateful I'm still in process,
and this is my story up to this point.
And I am gonna go back,
I wanna start by telling
a couple of stories, just
to give you snapshots of
just to help you feel
what it was like to be me
growing up in an evangelical
Christian environment.
So I'll just go ahead and
get into the first story.
In 1988, I was 10 years old,
and Buies Creek First Baptist Church,
the church that I'd
gone to my entire life.
I didn't have any memories
of not going to this church.
It's also the church that
you started going to,
and with your family when you
moved here in first grade.
They were holding a revival,
which is a series of nights
where you get together and
there's speakers and it gets real.
Didn't happen all the time,
but it did happen this year,
and it was called Contact 88.
I had the T shirt.
Oh, it was red, with like,
a cool 80s font, Contact 88.
It seemed more like it was
about, extra terrestrials
getting to know us,
Right.
But it was really about
making contact with God,
I think.
And an Irish guy.
Was he not Scottish?
Or was he Irish?
Well, as you know, I'm
trying to blur the lines
between those two things these days, so.
In my memory, the dude was Scottish.
Okay, Scottish.
So this preacher that came
in from out of town, I guess,
way out of town, was preaching
at least on this last night,
like the culmination
night, this is the big one.
People go and make decisions this night.
He gives a sermon and he explains that
every person who's born into this world
is born in a sinful state.
Even before you've done anything wrong,
you have a compulsion to do things wrong.
You have this selfishness,
you're in sin, put that in quotes.
And, God, who created you,
is being perfectly just, just cannot abide
by these shortcomings
that we have baked into
who we are as humans.
So that's gotta be punished.
You gotta, and the punishment is not just,
it's not a minor punishment here.
Because it's, if you're anything short of
God's standard of perfection,
well that shortcoming
needs to be paid for.
It's gotta be taken out on somebody.
So that's when it came to this concept of
eternal separation from God.
And I'm pretty sure there
was a mention of like,
eternal torment in some fiery hell, right?
So as a 10 year old, just
imagine 10 year old Link.
I was still sleeping with a Pound Puppy.
And this was a big deal.
This is something that was
talked about in our church,
but it was different in revival.
You were really listening.
And sounds like this is a big deal.
I mean, eternal damnation?
That's scary.
And especially if it's
coming from a guy who
came all the way from Scotland or Ireland
to tell me about it.
I do think he was rolling his Rs
which I think is a Scottish thing.
Yeah, it was enrapturing.
Yeah.
But it scared the shit out of me.
I just love his accent.
How could it not scare you?
But then he explained, that
God is not only perfectly just,
He's also perfectly loving.
And He wants to make another way for us to
have a relationship with Him
and not be eternally separated
or currently separated from God.
And it turns out God's solution is that
He sent His son to come to earth, Jesus,
live a perfect life, never
deserve an ounce of punishment,
or God's wrath, or hell or damnation,
but then willingly take
it on himself, anyway.
And He was executed, hung on a cross,
crucified, died and paid the penalty
instead of us as individuals
paying the penalty,
and then He rose from
the dead, He resurrected,
and now He's seated at
the right hand of God and,
He's listening to this sermon right now.
And he also is God.
And he also is God.
That's an important part of that, too.
And that happened, that happened some
1988 years ago at the time.
Well,
All you, yeah, give or take.
Give or take 33,
Oh, yeah, so you got,
so then he, Scottish dude
explained, all you gotta do is
accept the fact that
he took the punishment
that you deserved.
And you also have to
get up out of your pew
and you gotta walk down
here in front of everybody,
by the way.
But man, I was so scared, and I was like,
I knew other people, I knew
you had already done this.
Well, can I just say I
remember being at Contact 88
and I remember seeing you just get up,
and you know what I was thinking?
I was like, it's about damn time.
I mean, I was like, "I
did this when I was six."
Yeah,
I was like, what, I mean,
why is he taking so long? ,
You thought you were a little Scottish,
Does he not understand the gospel?
Like, you don't have to be double digits.
Were you waiting to be double digits?
Because I was like, I
don't know what the age of
accountability is, but all I know is
I don't wanna die and go to hell.
I was a bit of a late
bloomer, and I thought,
I think that was my age of accountability.
Yeah, I think everybody's
age of accountability
is different, especially if
you're still sleeping with a Pound Puppy.
It's like a free pass.
Yeah, I went, I remember I--
By the way, we're using
a lot of Christianese.
Yeah,
The age of accountability
is the age at which
if you aren't a Christian and
you die, you won't go to hell.
Because--
Or just before that.
Yeah, because you're not
old enough to process.
You can't make the decision for yourself.
And it's nowhere in the Bible.
It's just something you
kind of have to come up with
theologically because
if you don't have it,
it's pretty bad, the kid's going to hell,
Well, I understood it that day.
Right.
And so I got up the
gumption and I went forward,
and I remember that they
paired you off people
and I got to be led in
a prayer by Amy Moore.
Nice.
This girl, I was 10, this
girl was like in high school.
It was amazing.
And she said repeat
after me and I accepted
what Jesus did for me, and from,
and at that point, I'm like,
Jesus rose from the dead,
He saved my life, I'm glad I
don't have to worry about that
hell thing anymore, and I
owe this guy, everything.
This preacher or Jesus?
Jesus.
Okay.
And I really like Scottish people.
Now,
That might be Irish--
But I don't wanna talk to
them because they are scary.
And I was like, "You know what?
"I'm doing this, this is my life now.
"I got it all set up."
And I'm singing in the choir next week.
I sang in a choir with a bunch of adults,
the next, on the following
Sunday, still wearing
our Contact 88 T-shirts, I was beaming.
I was a little bit jealous, I was like,
"Maybe I should have waited,
I could sing in the choir."
I wanna fast forward
to high school and tell
a second snapshot that
was just very formative.
You wanna tell that story
before or after a break?
Let's tell it after a quick break.
We'll have a quick break.
Go to mythical.com and
get this sweatshirt,
also get this Ear Biscuits mug.
We've been told we're--
We're not making any more.
Limited supplies, there's down to
less than 100 of these mugs.
And we're not doing it again.
I mean, this is it, This
is the Ear Biscuits mug,
at least in this current form.
So if you want one of
these, and you don't wanna
complain about it after it's gone,
you gotta go to mythical.com and get it.
So in high school, everything,
we were still very involved
in church, and in youth group,
I mean, if I had to rank
the things that I associated
my identity with, yeah, I was
a soccer player in high school
and, I was pretty amazing at it.
I don't know what else I
would say besides that.
But that would be number three.
Math Olympiad.
Math Olympiad but number
one would definitely be
that I was a Christian.
Everybody knew that, that
like, we were really involved
in our youth group, we had
friends who weren't involved,
but like our closest friends were and
we were truly devoted
to God as high school.
We clowned around, but we were devoted.
And we understood it not
just as a belief system,
but as a relationship with God.
Like you said last week,
that was something that
we were actively pursuing,
talking to God through prayer
in a conversational way,
really figuring out how
the Bible applied to our everyday lives.
And we tended to, you'd boil it down to
some oversimplified things
or at least in action,
like we didn't cuss, not
in public, at least, right?
We didn't fool around
with our girlfriends.
Or we felt guilty about
it when we did at least.
That's more, yeah, that's good.
We definitely did not drink.
Oh, that was an easy one.
That was an easy one, I mean,
that was, it was illegal.
Yeah.
That would be extreme.
I did listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers,
but I felt bad about it,
and I was called out on it
by some of our friends in the youth group.
But, one Saturday night,
our friend Trent, who was not
involved in our youth group,
I'll just put it that way,
his parents were out of town
that weekend, so he threw a party
on a particular Saturday night.
You know what story I'm gonna tell?
Uh huh, I remember this night.
So he threw this party
and I decided to go,
I was 16, was able to drive
myself and I told my mom
I'm spending the night
at my Trent's house.
She was fine with that.
You did not go to this party at all.
I wasn't there for any and then left?
You may have been there earlier
but my recollection is that
you were not there at all.
But you could have left early.
That's my recollection, but we know how
recollection goes around here.
I definitely know what
happened after you left
if you were there.
And that's, they broke into
Trent's parents liquor cabinet,
or I think they just opened it,
and started drinking stuff out of it.
It wasn't chained.
Trent's older brother was
there, that seemed to,
make me a little more comfortable,
but I wasn't gonna drink
because that wasn't me.
I mean, we were, we, I
had to preserve my witness
is what you call it.
When it's like, your reputation
as someone who's like,
God is enough for me, so
I don't have to search
for other ways to be happy.
Was like this message that
you were trying to send,
I think to our friends,
that's what we wanted to do.
But after a while, I just
I was like, you know what?
Screw it, I just wanna have a little fun,
I'm gonna drink for the
first time ever, and I did.
A lot.
And the majority of
everybody there was drinking
and I got drunk.
I didn't do anything
specific that I regret,
besides maybe the decision
to break the law and it was,
lie to my mom and, but my, I was just--
You probably did some annoying things.
I'm sure I did a lot of annoying things,
that was very silly, and
that didn't feel too great.
So I remember when the
party had died down,
and everybody was like,
everybody was crashing
wherever they were gonna crash.
I crashed in this guest
room with our friend Jason.
So we're like, trying to go
to sleep and I just remember
staring at the ceiling
and feeling so guilty.
And I said out loud to him.
I was like, Man, this guy,
I'm supposed to be an example
to him as what it means to
have a relationship with God.
I'm like, I just want, I just feel so bad.
What I did, that's not
me, man, this isn't me.
I just remember saying, "This isn't me,
"I'm just really sorry I did this,"
And he was like, "Hey,
man, just go to sleep,
"you'll be all right."
Just go to sleep.
Next morning, we woke up,
and Jason was in there,
scrambling eggs for everybody.
It's just a new day.
It was like nothing had happened.
But for me, it was like
my life had changed.
I just, like it was that
big of a mistake in my mind,
and Jason said,
"You should suck on some pennies."
And I was like, "What?"
He said, "When you go home,"--
He had all the secrets.
"On the way home, you need
to suck on some pennies
"so your mom doesn't smell
liquor on your breath."
She just smells money.
And so I had to get home because
I had to go to church.
And, my head was pounding,
had a hangover, felt horrible.
And I opened my ashtray when I
got in the truck to drive off
and that's where I kept
all my loose change,
and I got a handful of pennies
and threw them in my mouth
and sucked on pennies all the way home.
I felt so bad when I got home, I told mom,
"I just can't, I don't feel good,
"I can't go to church today."
She's like, "Okay, fine."
And then, but we did have
to go to Nani's for lunch
because you don't miss Nani's for lunch.
And I could not get off
the couch, I felt so bad.
So I'm laying on the
couch and after lunch,
we're all sitting in there hanging out
and I'm just laid out, and I
remember my mom looking at me
just saying, "Link, you
look like you're hung over."
And I was just like, "I think
it was something I ate."
What does that mean?
I think it was pennies, I ate pennies.
I just sucked on them, I didn't swallow.
That was all she said.
We never, my mom and I've never
talked about it since then.
This is not one of those
things that comes out,
What you gon' listen to this?
Sorry, mom.
But that afternoon, you came by,
and we got in your car,
and we were hanging out,
and we did what we would always do.
We were 16, 17 years old is
that we would just drive around
and talk and listen to music.
Right.
I remember we were doing that this day,
and I knew that you were gonna find out
that I had gotten drunk the night before.
I mean, if I didn't
tell you, somebody else
is gonna tell you, and that,
it would be better for you
to find out from me.
That was tough, I remember we were driving
and I told you,
"At Trent's party last
night, I got drunk."
And you looked at me
and you slowed the car down,
and then you pulled
over on the side of the
two lane country road
that we were driving down,
beside a field.
And I looked at you, and you looked at me
and you said,
"Get out."
Oh, wow.
And I said, "What?"
You said, "Get out man."
And I opened the door,
I got out,
and just picture an
extremely wide cinematic shot
of a guy standing on the
side of the road beside a car
in the middle of nowhere,
Harnett County, just fields
and a few farmhouses in
every direction you look.
And you drove off.
Yup.
And I just stood there.
And,
I knew how to get home,
because we had driven
all these roads, but it was
at least six miles away.
But you were a good ways out.
It was at least six miles,
maybe eight from my house.
I started walking, 'cause,
you just you didn't stop.
I mean, you went straight
down that long straightaway
and then you disappeared over the horizon.
And I just started walking home.
And I started thinking about
the decision I had made
and it was like the biggest decision,
I guess I would have
described it at the time
as an act of rebellion.
I don't know if that's what it was,
but it was a big mistake in my mind and
I just started crying,
like weeping, tears just
flowing off my face.
And just walking in the grass
on the side of this road.
I remember now it was hard
to see where I was going,
if I was gonna step in something.
And I remember looking up,
how far do I have to go
to even clear this hill?
And then I saw you coming
back over the hill.
First I saw your head,
then I saw your shoulders,
and then you cleared the
hill and you were walking,
you weren't in your car you were walking
on the side of the road and
it was kind of awkward
because it's a long ways,
okay, I get it you're walking.
But we finally did, we met,
we were walking towards each other.
And,
I don't remember exactly what I said.
But I know it was basically,
"I'm so sorry for what I did."
And I, it wasn't that
I had, I wasn't sorry
that I disappointed you,
it was that I was so sorry
that I disappointed God.
And,
I mean, I don't think we, I
don't think there was a hug,
I don't think there was a handshake.
I think that our MO at
the time was, like just,
we knew what we both
felt and what we thought
about what had happened and,
I interpreted it as,
like a physical representation of
not only the fact that
you loved me as a friend,
but that God forgave me.
That, I think it was,
we tended to think a lot
in terms of symbolism,
and so I don't know how much of that
was going through your
mind, but I think that
it really hit home for
me, I just felt like,
this is a big deal, there is
a lot of disappointment here
but I'm not, God hasn't rejected me.
I'm already forgiven.
And we walked back to the car, we got in,
and we drove off.
And yeah, it was just a
picture of forgiveness,
and I think it was really powerful.
And I mean, the thing is
we were devoted to God
and we were devoted to helping
each other stayed devoted.
It was so important to
us, and we were steeped,
we were steeped in the
teachings that our church
and our family gave us
and the experiences we had
within the church.
So then when we went to
college, and got involved in
Campus Crusade for
Christ, all of a sudden,
everyone in that group
was also devoted to God
in the same way.
Everybody wanted the same
thing, it was actually,
it was exciting because
it was so much easier
for me to be who I'd lived my entire life,
aspiring to be somebody
completely sold out for Jesus.
I think we in Episode One, we painted this
opportunistic approach
to like our involvement
in Campus Crusade that like
really served our career.
And I just, there was
absolutely and I do think
we talked about it, there
was a parallel path of like,
spiritually and personally,
this is how we wanted to live our lives.
This is a perfect scenario
for that, it was--
Yeah, we weren't there.
We weren't there first
and foremost, to try to
become comedians or have an audience
because we didn't even
know that an was option.
It was like this is what we want.
These are the people
that we wanna be around.
So the things that we weren't doing
and the things that we were
doing may seem a little odd.
Like I mean, it wasn't any partying ever,
in like the traditional
tropish collegiate sense.
There was a lot of group dates going on.
If you were interested in
somebody, there was like
the way to be as pure as possible
about approaching dating.
I was really good at organizing those.
I could have a men's Bible
study take a women's Bible study
out for just a night on the town.
And, as long as you're in
a group, it's like you--
Nothing can happen.
You stay out of trouble.
Christie and I never kissed
until we were engaged to be married.
And that was my decision.
That's not something that
anybody forced on me.
That wasn't the actual,
like the specific teaching
of anybody--
Because I did not subscribe
to that particular.
You know I had
Interpretation.
I had come off a relationship
in my senior year of high
school, freshman year of college
that I felt like I had made mistakes
in not being self controlled.
And I was eat up with
guilt associated with that
and I just did not wanna screw up
my relationship with Christie and,
because I saw that has so much potential,
and I wanted to please God,
and I wanted to do it right.
You know how I think.
There's a best way to do everything,
there's a perfect
execution of of everything
and I'm gonna try to, it's
safest if I stay within that.
Especially when it comes to
disappointing God or not.
So yeah, it may seem odd to you--
But you were a great hand
holder, I'm assuming.
Like I was so calculating, I was like,
I'm only gonna go out on a
date with her once a month
and we're only gonna talk once a week
and I want her to, I don't
want to get in the way of her
being devoted to God and I want God,
I wanna be devoted to
God and her second and,
I felt for the old me reading
back through my journals,
but and I'll read one in a
second, but I just wanna,
I wanna say that yeah,
I was extreme because of
just the way I interacted
with the environment and the teaching.
But it was thrilling to
be, like we said before,
it was thrilling to
answer a higher calling,
to connect with God and to go through it
with really great friends.
It was the most meaning and satisfaction
I'd ever experienced in my
life, within that context.
As I prepped for this, I did go back
and I read through my journals.
And whenever I would journal,
it was always in the form of prayer.
I was writing a letter to God because
it was hard for me to pray.
But if I wrote it down, at
least I could concentrate
and I could get my thoughts out,
and it was at least my side
of the conversation with God.
You did that too right?
Yeah.
But I wanna read an excerpt
from this one journal entry
from, this my junior year,
so January 20th 1999, okay?
So this is what I wrote,
"Lord, I'm frustrated about us.
"I just feel guilty
that it's not clicking.
"Like I'm just bad, or
wrong, or lazy or something.
"I'm tired of feeling pressure and guilt
"to spend time with you.
"Lord, I would quit trying altogether
"if I didn't know how stupid
and mindless that would be.
"To whom shall I go?"
Which was like my paraphrase of
a Bible verse, meaning, where would I turn
if I turned away from God?
And it wasn't just that journal entry,
like the vast majority
of my journal entries
over those years, it was
actually heartbreaking.
They were filled, and I'm talking like
80% of anything I would
write, it was filled with me
apologizing for disappointing God.
A lot of guilt, a lot of
shame, a lot of frustration
for not being devoted enough.
And I didn't really appreciate or recall
that internal struggle that I was having,
I'd kind of forgotten
that until I went back
and started reading through the journals,
and I was a little bit shocked.
It's not that I journaled all the time.
And I do think there's a
factor of I would journal
when I felt like I really needed,
my relationship with God
needed a kick in the pants,
like I really needed to, buckle down.
And so, and then if, maybe
if things were going better,
I just didn't journal.
Maybe that's another explanation.
But it was a lot of,
a lot of my private
experience, I think was,
was kind of defined by
that level of shame and frustration.
And I, again,
I don't wanna imply that
the main teaching from
crew or our churches,
the church that we grew up in,
was really super legalistic.
I don't think, they were not
super legalistic, there was not
a constant emphasis on
following certain rules.
The emphasis was on having like,
a personal relationship with God.
But there are factors associated with
going about that relationship
that the way that
I internalize that, was
that I was failing at it.
That I didn't have what,
like the people who
it was really working for had.
That I was very hard on myself.
Well, I would say that
we were on a spectrum.
So I would say that compared
to just the general population,
we were legalistic without a doubt.
Oh, yeah.
Because we did have a bunch
of rules that were sort of,
interpretations of the Bible that,
and applied to our specific
situation or a specific culture
that kind of led to
things like not kissing
your girlfriend until you're
engaged to be married.
But I do think that most of this is just
the way that different
personalities interact with it.
Because, yeah, for me, I was
having all those intellectual
thoughts and doubts, and
that's a lot of the stuff
that I would be writing
about and thinking about.
But when it came to,
and of course, I felt
like, Oh, I'm prideful,
and I'm lustful, and all the,
the ways that I thought I was sinful,
but I think I kind of gave
myself more of a break
than you did just because
that's my personality.
I don't think I was hard
on myself that I sinned,
I was hard on myself that I didn't
have a quality of relationship
with God where I was
motivated to connect with Him, to pray,
to do like the spiritual
disciplines, like study the Bible
and pray and the things that
I felt like were a true test
of intimacy with God, like
our, the human's role in that,
I felt like I just, I was
trying to pull myself up
by my bootstraps.
I was trying to conjure
something that I didn't,
that came naturally to
people who had like a
true connection to God.
I also think you were perceiving
that that was happening with people.
And I think that everybody
has their own struggle.
I don't think it was like,
Sure, right.
But it's interesting that,
and I think we had to
have talked about it.
But I kept going back to it so
much in my journal that like,
it's just something that I
couldn't shake because of,
and I'm starting to understand myself now
in a way that I never have,
and so I can see things
that I've learned about
myself now in terms of like,
an unhealthy view of
being a perfectionist,
being a one on the Enneagram,
if you're into that.
I do think it was
me being disappointed in myself more than
people telling me that God
was disappointed in me.
And then in, when I graduated,
Christie and I got married,
there was another level
of pressure because then,
the teaching was I was
to assume the role of the
spiritual leader is what it was called.
Initiate prayer with your
family and like, make decisions
and make sure you're doing as a family
what God has for you.
That was difficult for me.
And then, after a couple
of years, we joined staff.
And just to clarify,
that was very much the,
this definitely isn't necessarily the,
sort of the standpoint of a lot of even
Christian churches at this point, but,
very much the sort of the
branch that we were in.
You got egalitarianism and
you got complementarianism.
And so we were, we were
complementarian, meaning that
there women and men have
specific roles, right?
And so in the household,
the man is supposed to be
the spiritual leader, he's the
one that kind of everything
falls on to make sure that
his family is following God.
That was our interpretation of
some New Testament passages.
When we joined staff of Crew,
now my spiritual identity was
also my professional identity.
I was fully committed to God,
but also now financially,
completely dependent on all
these people who believed in
what I believed in, and
they believed in the work
that we were doing when we
raise financial support.
So I put even more
pressure on myself because
I had these people investing in our work,
and I was doing I was a
professional Christian
at this point.
Shouldn't I be good at it?
Should I start to have a little
bit of a Scottish accent?
Yeah you should.
But I had this nagging
sense of being hollow.
That, I just, it was always
there, couldn't quite shake it
and around this time,
that's when Rhett started
talking about the age of the Earth
and the validity of evolution.
We started talking about those things.
What you started talking
about them with me,
I was, I didn't have, I don't have doubts
and I don't sit around
as I'm falling asleep
or in my spare time just like
having logic battles in my mind.
It's just not,
I have the battles I was having
was, I'm not doing this good enough.
I just devoted all of my energy there.
But whenever you would bring something up,
first of all, I knew
like, I'm not gonna panic,
you made the joke of like,
Jesse would start crying
because it was perceived as such a threat
and I totally get that.
It was, I was like, I remember
having an internal dialogue
of okay, just don't
panic, be cool about this,
just be a sounding board for what
Rhett wants to talk about because,
I'm not gonna fall for the trap of like,
well, you know you can't go there,
because it might lead to something.
So, I mean, I started listening.
And, when you read Francis Collins',
"The language of God" in
2006, I also read that, and,
I was like, yeah, it's like, I'm convinced
in the validity of evolution.
And I remember,
an unintended consequence
of reading that book was
I just had this sense, and we discussed it
that there was an island with
God on it and it was shrinking
as science discovered more and more
and it would ultimately
lead to a place where
the waters of science would
cover the top of the island
and there would be no more God.
That's actually what we were
taught in terms of this,
if you start looking into
evolution, it's a slippery slope.
That's what they would say.
And I will say ironically,
we're not doing Francis Collins any favors
between my story and your story.
I'm not trying to give us
that much credit like this is,
so many people are gonna
listen to this but,
a lot of people like Ken Ham,
the head of Answers in
Genesis are gonna be like,
"I told you" and he's
got an Australian accent.
But he's gonna say I told you, you can't
believe in evolution, look what happened,
if you do it, if you believe in it,
then it's all Francis Collins' fault,
Well, I'm very grateful.
But I think it, because that
wasn't his point in the book,
the shrinking island thing,
but it's something that
we discussed and that,
because, we just started asking
these questions of like, well,
if Adam and Eve never existed,
doesn't Paul say in the
Bible that the whole point
of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection,
was to undo Adam's Original Sin?
And then I'm like, I don't want to get,
I'm just like, I'm a
professional Christian.
I don't, I'm panicking inside.
So I'm like, there are
answers, you can find them,
anything you wanna believe,
you can find something.
Right, because--
And I started to find those things.
Because as I said,
Because I was very resistant.
I don't wanna give short shrift to this,
if that's the correct word.
I know there are lots of
Christians who accept evolution
as it's taught, as it's
understood by scientists
and still believe in Adam and Eve.
And there's a way that
they reconcile that.
I'm very familiar, you don't
have to tweet those books
at me, I very familiar with that argument.
I just think there's some
other issues going on.
But so yeah, you can accept
both of those things.
And I took comfort in that.
Because I'm sitting here
on staff, man, I can't,
it's like, what am I gonna do?
Just like, become homeless?
There was too much at stake.
So I kept the most
threatening questions at bay,
until after we left staff.
And so in 2008, up until 2011, I mean,
we were starting our career as YouTubers.
And in that timeframe,
where we were developing
this new career, I was also developing
a growing spiritual disillusionment.
And there were two parallel paths for me.
One was the intellectual path.
And then the other parallel
path was the experiential,
what was happening to me in
my heart in my circumstance.
So I'll talk about both of those.
First, I mean, intellectually,
the discussions
that we had, they continued,
I think they accelerated,
it was the next thing,
and again, you can kind of
superimpose Rhett's talk on top of mine,
whenever he mentions,
dismantling his view,
it was also my view, of the Old Testament.
The early stuff in the Old
Testament, it can't be literal.
Becoming convinced of that
and then continuing to read
the Old Testament, it's
like the Old Testament God
mandated a lot of
actions that troubled me.
I just, it's like,
you worship a God, I mean, there's some,
I mean, I'm not even talking
about head scratchers,
I'm talking about like,
Oh my gosh, this is frightening.
Our view of the Bible
started to dismantle.
We were having lots of
conversations about it.
I wasn't chomping at the bit to go home
and report all of these
conversations because,
I didn't know, I thought
it was a thought exercise.
I didn't know where it was gonna lead and
I didn't wanna,
I was like, man, I wanna
process this with Christie,
but I don't wanna scare her.
So I talked to her about,
for every one time,
every eight times we talked,
I might talk to her about it
once just because it was a
lot of other shit going on
in our lives, I don't wanna
add that into the equation.
But then the experiential, parallel path
was ever since graduating from college
and leaving campus crusade as a student,
like I got, Christie and I
got involved in the church,
different church than you.
And it was a small church.
So they had an immediate
need for someone to help
lead the music.
And because I'd done
that at Campus Crusade,
they asked me to do it,
and I knew I could do it,
but I was reluctant.
And increasingly more over time, but,
it was the right thing to do.
I was like, I can really,
this is how I can contribute at my church.
Leading the praise and worship music.
So I was like the music
leader at my church,
up until moving to Los Angeles.
But there were a lot of places that I was,
I guess I was having an
internal existential crisis,
but I remember it being very
palpable every Sunday morning
because I would get on
stage and I would pray,
and I would lead the music
and I would say some things
to help contextualize the songs
that we were singing so that
people in the audience could
really connect with God.
Yet, I found it virtually
impossible for me
to be able to connect
with God in that way,
through music on a Sunday morning.
And I remember I would
try harder and harder.
I'd like clamp my eyes
shut and really concentrate
on the words that I was
singing that were moving people
emotionally and spiritually out there.
But for me,
it proved,
it was like there was a brick wall there.
I just couldn't get there.
And that was really frustrating.
And I think there was a lot of,
yeah, there were
practical aspects to that,
and it's like, I am a
performer, you're on stage,
you know people are watching
even if the goal is to
not be seen and kind of step
out of the way so to speak.
That's probably still a
factor and then when I start
thinking about it, it's like,
I don't know, it's just,
I remember after church every
Sunday, I would tell Christie,
"I'm not who they think I am.
"They think I'm clamping my shut because
"I'm having such a meaningful experience,
"but I'm clamping eyes my shut
"because I can't find anything."
And I would talk to a few people about it,
like I would mention something and it was,
it's just, it's a hairy
kind of thing to get into.
So it's, and that really
started to come to a head
like the six months leading
up to us moving to LA.
I felt, I just I started
saying things like,
"I just feel phony."
And the conversations we were
having, again in parallel
were I mean, it was the one two punch of,
I'm not experiencing an intimacy with God,
and then I don't, I'm starting to question
the foundations of everything
that this is built on.
So they, those two paths
fed each other for me.
Well you know there was an,
just to add a little color to this.
Speaking of our conversations,
We also had another kind of conversation,
and we had it pretty often.
Do you remember we would
be sitting in that office
in Lillington, or even
our office in Fuquay.
And we would be like,
man, I just feel like,
we really haven't been
focusing on the Lord,
and like, a lot of things
are happening and like,
I just feel like we
need to just recognize,
Yeah,
How we got where we're at
and seek the Lord's guidance
and me and you would just
sit there and pray together.
Yeah, we would.
And the first part of the prayer was
It was always like, Lord, man, we suck.
Yeah, it's like, you've given us so much,
you've given us our heart's desire,
but like, we have this career.
There was a lot of guilt.
There was a lot of guilt,
there was a lot of shame.
But even in the, the
reason I'm adding that
is because I'm just remembering
in the midst of the again,
as I hope I made clear, but
in the midst of the doubt
there was for both of us,
I know you're talking about
how you were struggling
with the connection, but,
it was still paramount,
it was still central
and it was still kind of
what everything was based on.
And when we felt like we
were sort of moving forward
without giving God the credit,
without consulting Him,
we felt bad.
And we would like check in
on each other and then pray.
For like at least 30
minutes, we would just pray.
Yeah.
And when you feel I mean, like,
praying with somebody was
such an intimate thing.
It was like, the reason
why we didn't do it was
because it was like, yeah,
it was this intimate thing
that it was so super vulnerable.
We were both naked.
No, but it was like, I mean, it was like,
we weren't gonna cry together
or something like that,
but it was, again, it was so important
that we were willing to do that.
I mean, I remember when
I was dating Christie,
like, we wouldn't pray together.
Ironically, like when you
get married, it's like
now you're the spiritual leader,
but we talked, about how--
We were taught not to pray--
Don't pray together, because
that's more intimate than,
I don't know, a sexual act.
Well, because we heard
stories about boyfriends
and girlfriends praying together and then
making out right after because
they were so connected.
Yeah.
Those prayer kisses, that prayer tongue.
That's speaking in Tongues right there,
Oh, I knew I'd find that joke!
I'd find it.
So I just felt,
I felt fed up with this
phony feeling every week.
And I felt like it was on
me but I started to question
if it was,
if it was worth it.
And I started to think, it looks like
we're gonna move to LA
at least for six months.
And if it doesn't happen, I'm
just gonna have to step down.
I just can't, this is not authentic.
This is not good for anybody.
I didn't, I wasn't saying I
was gonna leave the church,
but I was gonna, that would have been like
maybe the next step?
And I meant that specific church.
It wasn't, I didn't know what I believed,
but it was just like, I
mean, we were just having
constant conversations,
and then we moved to LA,
and I was so relieved because it spared me
all of these awkward and
painful conversations
that I felt like I was
about to have to have
with my pastor who was
a really good friend,
again, throughout all of this,
I'm not trying to
implicate anybody because,
I bet anybody listening,
I just think about this
like, man, I wish you
would have said something.
It's like, I know, it would have been
probably a gracious response,
but I know it would have been,
but it's like I didn't wanna get into it.
And so it was, and tell my family
that I wasn't going to church or
I wasn't serving in the church
the way that I was anymore,
like things are different, you
just don't wanna get into it.
Because you become a, I don't
want to keep cutting you up,
but when you express doubt
in the midst of church,
a lot of times people say,
"Listen, if you've got doubts,
"that's part of the experience,
"and talk to people about them."
And we did, we talked to a lot of people,
but it's still, the fact
remains that, when you
raise the kinds of questions
that we were having,
you do become a difficult
and complicated person
for a church body.
And a lot of times those
people, especially if
they're not satisfied with
the answers they're getting,
they kind of get pushed out because
I got the flock I gotta worry
about, this little crazy sheep
that's asking all these weird questions,
it's taking a lot of time.
Right.
So I understand logistically
why that happens,
but I think you were
a little bit scared of
becoming someone's project.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah which is very much my experience.
Yeah, I had one friend
besides you that I confided in
who didn't go to that
church anymore because
he was going somewhere else,
but I had some resources,
and of course, Christie
but moving to LA was like
a big relief because I could
sidestep the whole thing,
and just like you said, we
both got involved in church
out there, and I was like, "I
bet it's different out here."
And, but we went to what's
still like an evangelical church
because that was our point
of reference, and I was like,
I'm not gonna make mistake
of, I ain't gonna be on stage
or anything like that.
I'm just gonna receive--
Well they had professional
musicians on stage.
Yeah, I could have made it.
LA church is a different deal, it's like,
I don't know, I mean, you're
great, but I don't know
if you would have made the
cut, just to be honest.
I would have made the cut.
And the guy had an accent too.
He was British.
And just like you--
Much cooler than you.
I was hopeful that it
would be like, a time where
I could remove the pressure,
but I could experience
and then I could experience God.
But I was very skeptical by this point,
because of that parallel path.
I no longer believed in the Bible
as the inerrant Word of God.
Again, you presented a
lot of these resources.
It's not like, I don't wanna say,
I don't wanna go through all of that.
Yeah.
I was, I think in retrospect,
I was slowly crossing
the boundary from belief to
disbelief just like you get,
it's a very permeable
place, and it's not just,
for me, it wasn't just like
this one thing happened,
but I just started to realize one day,
I must have overnight,
experienced some subtle shift
that I was just ever so
slightly on the other side
of a boundary and I was looking
at it from the other side.
And my growing list of problems with
the Bible and evangelicalism,
all of a sudden,
all of that lit those problems
that popped up over my
whole life to this point.
They had much simpler explanations
when I was looking at it from the outside.
And again, I was teetering.
But like the teaching of hell,
I just wasn't, I was letting go of that.
Plus the discrimination of the LBGTQ+
communities within the church,
that had troubled me for years.
And you, I know that.
And all of a sudden, you're
like, hold on, it's like
I can accept
everybody.
And then we were discussing Jesus.
And as you said in your
story, it was like,
again, I don't wanna
get into the arguments
that started to sway us, to believe that
he probably didn't raise from the dead
but it's always just this
probably or, you just can't know.
And I started to feel it was more likely
that he didn't actually
raise from the dead.
And I just found myself
believing that as the cumulative
conclusion of all the reading
that I had also been doing
and the conversations
we've been having for years
by this point.
So my entire belief
system was very tenuous.
And I realized, I know about my,
you got the two words belief and system,
and I know enough about
myself to know that,
yeah, I thought a lot about the belief,
but I cared a lot about the system.
As a perfectionist, I took a
lot of comfort in knowing that
there was, if I'm just
signed up for all of this,
I know I'm safe eternally,
I know that as I just have, I trust that
if I don't know everything
that I should believe
or everything I should be doing at least,
it's all there, and I'll get to it.
And it was, it felt very secure for me,
someone who I think, really value that,
really needed to know
that I was doing it right.
And then I was safe.
But I think by this point in my life,
the beliefs, the questions
associated with the beliefs,
I was so uncomfortable
with the basis of those
and now the practical outcome of those
that it overcame my interest
in keeping a system.
I remember we were
taught, we would hang out
with some friends and we would
discuss some of this stuff,
what we were going through,
and there was one guy
who was great guy.
He's a Christian who
said, "I actually don't,
"I don't wanna hear what
you're talking about,
"because I don't want to lose what I have.
"And I think you'd probably convince me,
"and this is working for me and my family.
"So I love you guys, but I just,
"I gotta bow out of this conversation."
And I got that, I understood it.
I wasn't, I don't think I was
hurt by that, but I couldn't,
because I was that way for a long time
as we were talking about it.
But I couldn't live like that anymore.
I felt like, I just,
I had to face the the facts
or the compelling arguments
that I had never been
willing to look at because
of what I needed, I was
getting from my faith.
But again, all those
things started to shift,
you start to think about
the billions of people
who've sought God for revelation,
and they've gotten nothing
or they've received profound revelation
that is in direct contradiction
to the profound revelation
that somebody else has gotten.
I just found myself
starting to believe that,
just like you said that,
humans have a way of trying to,
we gotta make sense of things.
And so this is just, I just
found it most reasonable
to believe that the
Bible represented humans
trying their best to explain God.
And it was one of many
well developed explanations
across many religions.
And they were all accompanied
by sincere experiences
to validate them.
Church, to say the least, church became
a place of frustration,
not comfort for me.
Why was I working so hard to
make Christianity work for me
if it wasn't even true?
And I think it's because the
alternative was so scary,
I mean, it was all I knew, it was,
you gave the analogy of the ship and then
jumping into this water
and it's like you even
look over the side of
the ship and you're like,
Man, it's like everything
I've taught is at it's,
it's real ugly down there.
But at a certain point,
you kind of find that
you're in midair falling into it anyway.
I mean, it's that you
can lead a horse to water
but you can't make him
drink, you can lead,
you can't make someone
fall in love with you.
You can't, if you find
yourself falling out of love
with somebody.
Bonnie Raitt.
I must have replaced the
Bible with Bonnie Raitt.
Well, I yeah,
I completely relate with
and agree with everything
that you're saying.
And I think that, I thought
a little bit more about that.
The boat analogy and the fact
is that, and I think this is
one of the reasons that
our friend was like,
"Hey, don't don't rock my boat."
Is because it is a boat, if
the boat's not fake, right?
You know what I'm saying?
It's like it is a
system, it is beneficial,
it has helped millions of people,
it's helping millions of people right now.
It has stood the test of time,
so have other religions,
but yeah, it's because
people are like, hold on,
if it wasn't real, well,
what about your life change
and your growth?
Well, no, there was real life
change, there was real growth.
There was real community, there was,
all these experiences
were real, in a sense.
We're just saying that we think
that they were most likely
happening in our minds and
in everyone else's minds,
which are incredibly powerful things.
It doesn't mean that
the change isn't real.
It's like some people that
I know when I tell my story
they'll be like, "But
listen, I know it's real
"because of what Jesus did in my life.
"Let me tell you my testimony."
I'm not denying that
your life hasn't changed.
And that's what I'm saying.
There's sincere experiences to validate
All kinds of things.
Every belief system.
Yeah.
And so I just, I respect
it, but I just can't,
that's not compelling me,
this horse to drink that
water at this point.
Another way is that it
doesn't make it true.
It doesn't make it true.
It might make it true or feel true to you,
but it doesn't necessarily
make it universally true,
just because you had an experience.
So at this point,
I mean, again, we must
have been discussing this
because you use the term like
you conducted an experiment,
and I definitely remember
using that term at the time,
I think it was a way to say
hey, I'm just gonna ease,
I'm gonna ease into believing differently
and see what happens.
It's not, it can just be private.
I wrote in my journal, November 5th 2013.
Again, this was addressed
to God, but it's the last
journal entry that I've written.
Like I, I don't--
Whoa, really?
Well, that's not,
actually that's not true.
For a long time it was.
This is what I meant to say
it was the last journal entry
that I wrote addressed to God.
Oh, okay.
And this is not the beginning,
this is a part in the middle.
And I think I wrote this as
kind of a record for myself too,
you can see in the way I wrote it.
It was just like, I wanna
know that this was the point.
This is the date.
Point my life when I got,
when I felt this way.
And I'm glad I did because
I wouldn't have known
it was November 5th 2013.
Here's what I wrote:
Since moving out here,
and that's to LA, and
combined with Rhett sharing
his evolving perspective,
I have slowly given up
trying to be the
Christian that I feel like
I've been trying to be all these years.
I've concluded that I'm
not going to do the things
I've always done, the right things,
the spiritual disciplines
and expect different results.
Intimacy with God, or even more
directly, I'm gonna give up
feeling guilty for not being
better and doing better
at Christianity.
And this experiment
has felt good, freeing,
for the most part, everything except
feeling like I'm letting
Christie and the kids down.
At this point, I'm not sure if God exists.
And you see my mindset
at that time it was,
it seemed like I was just
saying, "I'm gonna stop
"feeling so guilty for
the things I'm not doing
"to try to be a good Christian."
And so it sounds like I'm like,
but I'm just gonna be a Christian,
Imma let go and let God.
And I do think that's
what a lot of people who
may be hearing in my, maybe
how they're responding
to my story is that like, we
all go through these times
and the struggles you're having.
That's common to every person
who's like very serious about
pursuing Jesus.
But I think what was really happening was,
that was my true experience, even though
I sincerely sought God my entire life.
But it primed me to be open
to dealing with what I felt
were the intellectual
things that I didn't list
in this journal entry,
but I think that's what
held the weight to make the decision.
That's what eroded the foundation
and it was very important to me.
And like I said,
it felt freeing.
Like I didn't, I was
surprised that I didn't
experience a sense of extreme loss.
I was afraid of what it would
mean for just like you said,
would mean for my marriage
because I had believed that
a Christian and non
Christian can't stay married.
Like do I?
But I actually,
I just couldn't live, I
couldn't pretend anymore
and so one of the things that
I called it into question
was if that was true.
I never would have done it if
I thought it was still true,
that was gonna lead to divorce.
I would have just, put my
head down and and trudged on,
but I actually believed that like,
our marriage could still be vibrant.
I had no clue how that would work, though.
I believed that I could still
be a great father to my kids
and that they would be okay.
I felt like my kids will be better people,
I could influence them
in the best way possible
by being as honest with them as possible,
for appropriate to their ages.
Versus trying to give
them, what I believed was
a false sense of security
in teaching something,
much less because I wasn't gonna give them
the fear version that I had gotten.
So I felt okay about it.
But I still went to church
with Christie and the kids
because I didn't want to be that guy.
Like, I had judged hard
the guy who would not
go to church with his family?
Like, what a jackass!
It's what I felt like.
I was like, "So I ain't
gonna be that guy."
Right.
But it was so difficult.
Because again, it was
a place of frustration,
not a place of comfort for me,
and anything that was said,
I would always try to
derive what it was based on
and I was like, "Man,
this is all shifting sand
"that you're building all this on."
That's how I would feel
I would get frustrated.
I remember on Easter
Sunday, we were all sitting
in the minivan and I was just like,
"I don't think I can go in there."
And Christie was crying and
we ended up taking the kids
in to the youth group and
coming back to the minivan
and just sitting there in the parking lot
and just bawling our eyes out.
Christie, it was, she'd
been, I think it was,
she was still one year after
her brain injury, which again,
it was like an extreme low point for her.
I was saying, "I don't
think I can go in there."
And she was saying, "I don't
think, I cannot go in there."
We were grappling with,
how our beliefs were changing
and it was something that
we were talking about much more
than when I referenced it earlier.
Like one out of every
eight times we would talk.
Now this was something that we
were talking about a lot now
I was not keeping it from
Christie or the kids.
But she was in a place,
like the most difficult thing
was happening in her brain
and in her body and suffering
from post concussion syndrome,
which she still suffers
from many years later.
It was an extreme low point
for her and it was like
she was wrestling with
it, but she couldn't,
there was much more at stake for her
than there was for me at that point.
So I,
I would go to church with them, and then
I would just explain the
things that I have trouble with
become a part of our
conversations that we'd have
as a family, because I was just like,
I just want to I want
everybody to be able to start
to think for themselves
and not have something
shoved down their
throat, and I don't think
anybody was doing that,
so I felt okay with it.
In the church and in
our conversations, but
over time,
I eventually stopped going to church
and then my family ended up stop going,
it wasn't too long after that.
But you know the thing that happened was,
the specific issue of the,
LGBTQ
issues and how
the church was a welcoming
place and a loving place,
but then when you really got down to it,
they weren't accepted as couples.
There was, you couldn't be married there.
And that really ate away at me.
I mean, and this is a long time coming,
and these are many, we had
been having many conversations
for many years about this
issue and wrestling with it
ourselves, but as we made
meaningful connections with
people here, like I'll
just give Stevie and Cassie
as an example, like not
just working together,
but being friends and loving them,
and understanding how they
love each other and how,
and yeah, many other couples.
And I just couldn't sit in the seat
knowing that they couldn't,
that they couldn't get married there.
I just felt like it was
a betrayal of my friends.
And then of what I believed.
So that was, and so then I didn't go back.
I'll add to this,
especially in a place like Los Angeles,
I mean it might if you're,
there's plenty of evangelical churches
where you would know
just unequivocally okay,
this is not necessarily
a gay friendly place.
Even though they may be loving
and say something like love the,
love the sinner, hate
the sin, the old cliche.
But especially in LA--
And in LA, they wouldn't say that.
They would never say that.
But that's the belief.
Well, what I'm getting is, in LA,
the churches and the
people leading the churches
are smart enough to know that they cannot
have an outwardly anti LGBTQ stance
because they wouldn't
have anybody show up.
And there's plenty of LGBTQ
people who go to these places
on a regular basis.
And they don't even know
that if you dig deep enough,
if you put the pastor in a
corner, if you backed him or her
into a corner and said, "Do
you believe that marriage is
"only between a man and a woman?"
They would say yes, because they have
a particular interpretation of the Bible
that leads them into that conclusion.
Now, there's plenty of
churches that would say,
"No, we're pro LGBTQ."
So, I'm just saying that that
is a thing that you kind of
run into in LA, it's like,
all the outward signs are
that this is a super loving
and accepting place, and
it is a loving place.
We're not talking about a
bunch of bigoted people.
But when it gets down to it, the theology
sort of leads them to a place that
they're not completely
accepting and affirming.
And that's kind of the situation
that you found yourself in.
Yeah, and I think that, well
I know that also resonated
with my family and was a
major contributor to saying,
"You know what?
"Let's just ease out,
let's ease out of this,
"or let's, well, let's step out."
And that's what we did and
we lived happily ever after.
No, I mean,
I guess some people are thinking,
could we have found a more liberal,
LGBTQ affirming church?
Yes.
I think you looked around and it was just,
There is a church that,
when I go to church,
I go to this church
That is, yeah is an affirming church,
But you don't really go.
But don't really go, I'll
go sometimes, Christmas.
I think for me,
I was like, "I'm just not ready
to go to church in general.
And I may never be.
I'm just not ready to enter
back into a specific system
of belief, even if it's
different and it aligns with
the practical applications
of that belief system
are exactly in line with
how I wanna live my life.
Just like, maybe I'm
still just too close in,
or have been in it so long that I just,
I feel like I need more
distance from it, I just can't.
And, there's a lot of like,
at least all the places
that are, that meet,
that check those boxes,
they're like very, what's the word?
Ecumenical
Right.
And it's like, okay, that's
like a high church thing,
and it's like, I don't
think I would thrive well
under that system because yeah,
as much as I love systems,
I do think that as I'm
beginning to learn about myself,
and as I read those journal
entries to you, and like my,
my internal dialogue,
I think you're seeing
as I am appreciating that,
I put a lot of pressure on myself and
I don't interact in a healthy way
at this point in my life with
a robust belief system.
Yeah.
So, I mean, you ended up
saying you applied the label
of like, hopeful agnostic to
to where you were right now.
And, I mean, if I were to put,
if I were to label myself,
I think I would say I'm an
agnostic who wants to be hopeful
I think
I have made a decision to be open.
I do want that.
I don't want to be I just,
I don't wanna be an atheist
so I'm hopeful that I can be hopeful.
I know that it--
Why don't you wanna be an atheist?
Because I'm not convinced
that God doesn't exist
and I don't want to,
if God does exist, I wanna
be open to that connection.
That's just not, it's not how I think.
Like to come down hard
on something and like,
but I think that, left to my own devices,
from a practical
standpoint, I would end up
as like a practical
atheist where it's like,
You know what?
I do feel like it's easiest
for me to believe that
when you die, it's just like Dana Carvey,
my Wayne's World doppelganger.
I'm replacing the Bible
with Garth and Bonnie Raitt,
it seems.
I remember years ago when I
was listening to WTF podcast,
Dana Carvey was talking about
how he believed that like,
when you die, it's just
like the experience you had
before you were born,
do you remember that?
So I'm like, "Yeah, that's, oh,
that's actually comforting."
And I actually I find
it easy to believe that
for some reason.
It's not, I'm not compelled to believe it,
but it's just an easy
place for my mind to rest
Well, and you don't have to believe it.
I think the reason I'm
not an atheist is because
it just feels too definitive.
Right.
Agnostic is the label that
literally means you don't know
and I hope I'm always and
when it comes to these issues,
I hope I'm always, I don't
wanna become dogmatic
about anything.
Yeah, but I don't want to
become complacent either
because I do think that it
is easiest for me to believe
that everybody believes
whatever they wanna believe,
Like, your innermost desires.
Maybe that's, it could
be something primal,
like survival and security.
I mean, there's so many
different things, but,
we have a way of finding
what works for us.
And I think that's instinctive.
So just to put it bluntly,
you believe what you wanna believe.
It's like, I find it easy to believe that,
I find it easy to believe that
because so many people have had so many
earth shattering experiences
that are in complete
contradiction then it's like,
that probably means that
God's not personal.
It's like it makes more--
Or maybe God is personal,
and that God is just great
at relating very specifically
to a lot of different people
in a very personal way
that makes sense to them, I don't know.
But you know what?
I'm open to that, that
would be a very loving.
Isn't God capable of doing that?
Again, I'm not gonna sit
here and try to invent
a new belief system of like,
this is what I believe specifically.
I just want to do the work to stay open.
But not to get, like you said, dogmatic
and I know that that takes work.
It takes an investment
of time and priority
for me to not just sit
back and just kind of be
just go with the flow of
like, I'm not looking.
Again, it's not looking for the next thing
to latch on to and believe
and start to follow,
but it's being open to
what, how God may exist,
and may want to connect with me.
I think the main thing
is, I don't want to judge.
I don't want to condemn, I
wanna be as loving as I can.
Maybe that sounds trite,
it does but so what?
I wanna be as loving as I can, and,
I do feel like over the past few years,
my capacity to love, has grown.
My capacity to love myself
and others has expanded
a lot more in the last few years,
and I take that as a good sign.
I just don't think that God,
if God exists, or however God exists,
I just can't believe that,
me being open and sincere and
as loving as possible,
and as honest as possible
is disqualifying me from receiving
God's love.
I just, I can't accept that.
And so, I have hope that that's true.
Because I can't, I cannot
just decide to be or believe
something that I don't.
And I'm just--
That's not gonna stop a lot
of people on the internet
from trying to convince you though.
Yeah, and I feel like because a lot,
I feel like a lot of what I say
could be boiled down as neurosis.
It's like,
but the intellectual, I mean, it's a two,
I think the one made me
receptive to the other.
And I just think it's got
to be, and that's truth.
I just don't know how
people will respond to
what I just said, though.
When I'm like, I wanna
be open, I don't know,
I'm an agnostic, I just
want to focus on love.
And then I'm like, "But the
reason I got here is because
"of what I was convinced
that was no longer true."
Well, I could tell you how
I would have reacted to it
when I was a Christian.
And I would have been sad for you.
And I think there's
gonna be a lot of people
who are sad for us, and
there's lot of people
who are gonna feel sorry for
us, and they're gonna be like,
"I just, I can't."
I asked a close friend,
I was like, "So do you
think I'm going to hell?"
And he was like, "I don't, no I don't.
"I think what you had was
real, and it still is,
"and you're this and you're in a process."
He didn't say, "I think you'll come back."
I think maybe it's forwarded
on the other side and.
But it's like
I appreciated that in one sense,
I guess in the other sense
it's like, I don't feel
like I'm gonna go back
and assent to any of the,
like the specific beliefs about the Bible.
So I mean, that's where I'm at,
and that's the conclusion
of my story to this point,
but it's obviously not the
conclusion of my journey.
And I'm immediately thinking about
how people are responding to it.
And I'm just trying not to do that.
Yeah, well--
But, I wanna be a
conversation that happened.
Yeah, well, maybe we can help.
Listen, I'm not trying to be,
I'm not trying to dictate
how the conversation
should go from here, but let me just say
just a couple of thoughts that I have
about the conversation that will happen
as a result of these stories kind of
going out to the public.
Most people and I totally
get why this is the case,
are going to interact with our stories
in whatever way makes sense according to
their predetermined worldview.
Right.
So if you are a Christian,
and you're not a Christian
that has had a lot of
doubts, or you're just like,
100% sure that you're
right, you're most likely,
you're gonna filter us
through your theology,
just like I was talking about
at the beginning of my story.
So you may conclude that
well, you guys were definitely
never actual Christians, it
was an intellectual thing,
that's specifically
addressed in the Bible,
and, God's gonna say he never knew you.
And if that makes you,
I understand why you have to believe that.
I don't accept that, but I
can't make you change your mind.
And then there's a lot of other situations
that people may find, but
you're gonna make it consistent
with your predetermined belief.
The only thing I ask
about it, and I hope that
this was clear and Link made
it, I tried to make it clear
and Link tried to make it clear that
we're just kind of telling our story,
trying to be as honest as
possible about what transpired
in our lives that kind
of led us to this point.
And I would love if the
conversation would be,
tell us your story, right?
Or, you don't have to.
Like I said, I know people are gonna send
a lot of arguments,
probably especially to me,
because I'm the one that
talked about all the,
the specific arguments about evolution,
or Old Testament archeology
and that kind of thing.
So people are gonna try to
send resources and books,
have you heard of this?
Have you read this article?
And I'm not saying don't do
that, some people won't be able
to help yourself because
I wouldn't have been able
to help myself if I was in your shoes,
But I would just hope that you would just
actually try to consider our
stories from the point of,
Hey, we're just humans,
trying to be honest.
We're your online friends
trying to be honest
and just consider the story on its face.
Don't just immediately--
Try to fix us.
Try to fix us or try to make
it fit into your system.
Because I think that that's,
I think that the world has got
so much polarization
right now people are like,
"I'm right, you're wrong, that's it."
And more than ever, and it's interesting,
we're so much better
connected to one another
than we've ever been but
we're also so divided.
And it's this just horrible irony
that's kind of the nature
of the information age.
And I just don't want that
kind of conversation to
happen in our community where people are
throwing rocks at each other
and insulting one another and call it.
Listen, there's gonna be people
from both ends of the
spectrum who are gonna get
engaged in this conversation,
please see people's humanity.
See our humanity and
don't just resort to just
putting your feet into
your trench and just
holding your position.
Consider somebody's viewpoint.
I also wonder if people's takeaway is,
like, dang Link, if it weren't for Rhett,
you might be in a better place,
He really brought you down.
It's absolutely true that,
and that I wouldn't have been
grappling with these issues.
I probably wouldn't have
been grappling with issues,
I probably wouldn't have done it.
Because as a hard time as I was having,
I still didn't want, it
was still ultimately,
this so very safe for me
and I really need that.
But I'm very grateful that
your personality is different
than mine in that way that,
it was my active choice at every turn
to actively engage in the discussion.
And I didn't, we shared
so much of our lives,
and our spiritual journey
was so similar that
we had the exact same language and so many
of the same experiences.
We went on all the same
church trips, and we were
party to all the same prayer groups and,
so whenever I really benefited in kind of,
I hacked the system in a lot of ways,
I feel like yes, I trusted you,
but it was almost like trusting.
Your response to it was very
trustworthy as my own response
because our journeys were so in lockstep.
And then I but I, there was
pivotal points all along the way
when I would have to pick up
those books and read them.
It wasn't just the Francis Collins one
because it started to
get real and it was like,
I gotta read this stuff for myself.
That'll transition to
my, well, I'll let you
respond to that, because I think that
people might say it's your fault.
It is.
No, I mean, no, I'm
very conscious of that.
I think that, I mean, interestingly,
the other way around.
I mean, like, in any sort, in
any testimony that you give,
that you hear somebody give in the church,
it usually comes down to a
person who shared the gospel
with them, right?
Like it's, people share the message.
And for better or worse, it
also works the other way.
It's like, I'm a key figure
in your anti testimony.
It's just, it's a fact--
Anti testimony.
And I think that yeah, people
will be upset about that,
people will be mad at me.
I don't doubt that but--
I'm letting you off the hook.
Because, again, I'm grateful for it
and I'm fully responsible for it.
Did it make the conversations
that I have with Christie
even more difficult?
Yes.
Because it was, I was
presenting these beliefs
that were a threat to her,
they were genuine questions
to me, but they were also tied to you
whispering it in my ear.
And so we had to work
through that as well.
It's like, well, is this something
that you're grappling with?
Or something that Rhett is grappling with?
Ultimately, it's something
that I'm grateful that
legitimate questions are things that
I actually wrestled with.
I think I need, and that
goes back to my intention of
working to be hopeful because I feel like
it does take work for me to
engage in those questions,
the difficult questions in order to become
more of who I actually wanna be
because that's not an easy thing to do.
All the decisions were yours.
Absolutely.
All I did was just present information
as I was processing it.
And at no point was I trying
to convince you of anything.
And at no point was I trying to like,--
I was the only person you
could talk to who would listen,
I was just confiding in you
You really talk yeah.
I was confiding in you.
But, and I think that I did not want to
in my session here. I didn't
wanna retread the reasons
that you gave, the arguments
that were compelling for you.
That was because you gave some of those
and you gave resources but
I also didn't wanna do it
because I didn't wanna
share a story that was,
whenever my beliefs started
to pivot, I described
those in like a timeline
fashion, but I intentionally
didn't describe what is it that made you
believe that Jesus didn't
raise from the dead?
What is it that made you believe that
you couldn't, that you
saw Paul differently or?
All of their arguments,
I didn't make them because
I feel like
as a listener, it's up to them.
It's up to you to look
into that if you want to.
But I've also, I also feel
like I was giving you an out
if like, Hey, this is working
for me like our friends said,
it was like, if this is working for you,
then yeah, I don't wanna be
the one to screw it up for you,
like Rhett did for me.
But I do invite you and I'll make a wreck.
I found this book called
"Why I Believed: Reflections
Of A Former Missionary,
written by Kenneth W. Daniels.
I feel like I'm on Reading Rainbow now.
I mean, this is a freaking
self published book,
Ken published the book.
It's very highly rated,
but it's very specific.
It was perfect for me because it was,
Ken was like a Bible
translator who like raised
finances just like we did.
And, but he's such a thorough thinker.
He's kind of like the two
of us combined, because--
This is the guy that I want to be.
He taught--
In terms of how well he
researched all of this.
He talked in equal parts
about his own experience of
deconstruction.
And, he's quoting his own
journal entries in here
so you really understand
what's going on in his heart
as well as his mind.
And so if you relate to the specifics of
coming out of evangelicalism,
especially if you were in
the ministry, or if you are
in the ministry, and you wanna have them,
you want to read something that has
a more personal touch than that.
This is a profound book for me.
So, Ken, thank you for
publishing this book.
But again,
if you don't wanna get
into it, don't read it.
Don't read it just so you can dismiss it.
Don't read anything, just to dismiss it,
just don't even read it, if
that's what you're gonna do.
But again, you gave resources last time,
and that's another one to
add to the list this time.
Well, I appreciate your story.
Because, I mean, my guess is that
more people will relate
to your story than mine.
I just, that's my,
in my experience, when I talk about
the things that happened
with me, again, like I said,
a lot of people just are
like, "You're crazy."
Like, why do you think about these things?
Or at least, well, he lost me.
Yeah, and
So it's like that meant a lot to him,
but I don't think it
matters that much, really?
And I think yours was very personal.
And it was about what you
were kind of experiencing
on a practical level, which I think
more people will relate to.
I would just say again, as we
begin to have a conversation,
listen, the next podcast is not,
we don't know what it's gonna be about,
but we're gonna take a break
from this subject matter.
But, I think that this
stuff, this spiritual stuff,
is now a part of Ear Biscuits.
It will be something that we talk about,
whether we talk about our past,
And we want to answer more questions.
I know that there's lots of
questions that people have
related to these stories.
I can only imagine.
So ask those questions,
we'll try to be as clarifying
as we can and if you make
us think about something
in a different way, we'll let you know.
I mean, we want this to be a
process, we want this to be
a conversation, but we're
gonna let those questions
be generated, and then we'll
continue that conversation
at another time.
Yeah, so #EarBiscuits.
And also again, I'll encourage
you to share these episodes
with people that it would
it would resonate with,
or spark more conversations
between you and your friends.
So, share it, we'll
speak at you next week,
Probably about something else
About something else.
And then we'll see if we most
likely will come back to it.
Thank you.
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click on the playlist
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