Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 226: Rhett's Spiritual Deconstruction | Ear Biscuits Ep.226

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Even through some emotionally torturous times, it all came down to uncovering the truth. Listen to Rhett reveal all about his spiritual journey and the evolution of his beliefs in this episode of Ear Biscuits! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This episode is brought to you by Mazda. When you drive a Mazda, you'll find out why RSUVs won more 2024 IIHS Top Safety Picks than any other brand as of June 2024. Find out what makes Mazda different at mazda.ca. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Link. And I'm nervous. Yeah, man, this has been a long time coming. Actually, my name is Rhett, but I am nervous. Just a quick recap, we've been-

This week, you gotta catchphrase it. I'm off my game, man. I'm gonna be off my game all day today. This week at the round table? This week at the round table of them lighting. I am telling my story of how I kind of got to where I am telling my story of how I kinda got to where I am in terms of my belief and why I don't believe what I used to believe.

And of course this is all in a larger series that we're doing. The last two podcasts we called The Lost Years where we covered, you know, all those stories, filling in the gaps of how we got from being engineers to being YouTubers and the path that we took which was a little atypical and involved being missionaries for a while. Yeah, if you haven't listened to those

previous two podcasts, I recommend listening to those first but this one and the next one are gonna be totally different than the previous two because they're gonna be very personal in nature, very singular in nature. This is your episode and then next week will be my episode but can I just acknowledge the conversation that's happened, is happening, uh oh, I got a buzzer on my.

Link usually doesn't do the timer and so he doesn't know the system. So I turn the wifi off? You just turn the notifications off. Just wanna acknowledge how so many of you have joined in the conversation using hashtag your biscuits, just letting us know how you're processing our process. It's been extremely helpful and encouraging

because I mean, this represents what we perceived as a, I was gonna say risk, but I don't really wanna use the term risk. I just feel like it was just a big decision to share something that's, to be vulnerable in this way and to share these things that no one's begging us to share and we're not obligated to share,

but we just, as we've said before, two episodes ago, we've already went into why we're talking about it and I'm glad we're doing it. Like I said, it's been a long time coming. We've been talking about, you know, it'll just come up every month or every couple of months for many years. It's just, when are we gonna talk about

like the spiritual aspect of our lives and our faith journey, I guess you would call it. Now. Knowing that we always would, so. Yeah, okay, so before we get into that, I do have a couple of things to acknowledge. First of all, for those of you watching the podcast, yes, I do have my hair pulled back

into some sort of configuration. I don't know the technical name for this and I apologize for it if you are the kind of person, like me, who judges men who do this with their hair. I would call it a sad ponytail. Yeah. I think, you know, when you're, it just seems like such an interesting choice.

The timing's interesting because this is such a momentous. I have very specific, there's two very specific reasons why I'm doing it today. This is a momentous episode for you. Yeah, I'm doing it for two reasons, Link. Reason number one is my hair has gotten to the point where I can do this and then I started realizing why people do do this

because this podcast, I'm gonna be, I got notes as you can see, I've got my iPad out, I'm gonna be going through notes. I mean, I don't know where this is gonna go and I don't wanna be distracted by my big old bouffant falling down in my face and having to move it all around so it's just, it's tight, it's in place and I'm not gonna think about it. Now you might think about it,

but just stop thinking about it, okay? I wasn't even gonna mention it. Thanks. The other thing I wanna say real quick is that yesterday, Link and I were on the road pitching a project that we're hoping will become something and on the way back from, now Link has been driving. Why don't you wanna say what the project is?

Well yeah, we're trying to turn the Lost Causes of Bleak Creek into a TV show. So hopefully somebody will agree to that. But we're coming back from a meeting and Link has been driving because he's got the new fancy electric Audi and so he drives everywhere. Eventually I'll get a fancy car and then I'll drive too but right now we're just enjoying Link's new car.

So he's been driving around town and then yesterday on the way back from the other side of town, from the west side, we're at a light and Link just kinda takes off and it turns green and then he turns to me and says, I almost hit that pedestrian. Now first of all you gotta understand. Yeah, you and Stevie didn't see that I almost hit

a pedestrian. Cause I'm not driving. I don't have to pay attention to pedestrians. But maybe I do. When you turn right on, yeah. You don't have to explain it. You almost always hit pedestrians. Because I'm not driving. I don't have to pay attention to pedestrians. But maybe I do. Yeah. You don't have to explain it. You almost always hit pedestrians. I don't know why you're talking about this, but go ahead. Because last night, I got a message on Instagram. Uh, what?

Just seeing y'all in the Audi, you almost hit me, LOL, love the show. Seriously? Yeah. I almost hit a fan LOL, love the show. Seriously? Yeah. I almost hit a fan? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you almost hit. Almost killed a mythical beast?

Almost killed a mythical beast. Oh man, oh my gosh. So anyway. Oh my gosh. He's okay. I need to process this. He's a little shaken up. But not enough to send me a message. I wouldn't say a little, I'm a lot shaken up.

Link, you do this regularly, man. Okay, back to the task at hand. Oh man, see, this is when the spiritual stuff really matters, man. Right, right, exactly. We're talking about life and death. Exactly, okay. My goal today, first of all, I wanna let you know,

just like Link said, today's gonna be different. I'm gonna be doing most of the talking. Next week, Link will be doing most of the talking. And when I say most, I mean, like I've got these detailed notes that I've literally been like making for months at this point in preparation for telling this story. And so I just don't wanna get things wrong.

I wanna be able to move through this. It gets very detailed. I honestly don't know how anyone who doesn't come from a similar background is going to be interested in what I'm about to say because it kind of gets into the nitty gritty of Christian belief and Christian doubt about those things. And my particular, what we call a deconstruction story

of how I no longer consider myself an evangelical Christian. It's very detailed because the things that were happening in my mind and my heart is sort of a particular thread that you may or may not relate to, but it is my story and I'm gonna tell it. Like Link said, I'm nervous, I'm anxious about this. I mean, the last two podcasts, obviously we were nervous about talking about those years

and how people might perceive that because people come from so many different backgrounds. They have so many different points of view when it comes to this issue. Either you're in it, you were in it, and you're out of it, you have no way of relating to it. And that particular perspective that you bring to, you know, listening to our stories,

as I've seen in these Twitter comments that people have been making, people sometimes, they just don't know what to think about it, you know? Yeah. But the thing that I am, particularly with telling my story, the thing that I just wanna be very clear about is that

with telling my story, the thing that I just wanna be very clear about is that I am not here to judge where you're at currently, right? So when you tell a story and you're like, I used to believe this and now I no longer believe that and here's why, if you still believe that, then you may think there's implicit judgment in what you think. And I wanna say that that is not my intention.

And I'm just trying to be as honest about my own situation as possible and approach this with as much humility as possible. So that. It is gonna get detailed and I'm trying, I'd really try to condense it down. But this is like a years long process. This is, we're going back, I'm going back basically 20 years

and kind of telling a lot of different things that happen, but this is not gonna be as detailed as some of you might want it to be and it's gonna be more detailed than some of you want it to be. Okay, so. And I'm here to support you. Well thank you, Link, you wanna hold my hand?

If you need that, sure. I'm also gonna take notes, because I don't wanna interrupt you if there's something I'm thinking that I'll just jot it down and. And if I want you to hold my hand at any point, I will just extend it, okay? Yeah, just do that.

I'll know that's what that means. First of all, even though we kind of covered this in one of the previous podcasts, what it meant to me to be a Christian. Now I believed that Jesus was the son of God, that a personal relationship with him was the only way to be saved, the only way to go to heaven when you die.

And this belief defined everything for me. This was my worldview. It gave me purpose and meaning. And I lived with this knowledge of this spiritual reality, right? There's a spiritual reality that is constantly around us, kind of permeating every decision, every relationship, every conversation.

And I wanna emphasize how big of a deal it was to me. It was a relationship and I wanna say that because I've noticed that when I tell my story, often people kind of conclude that I was never a true Christian, right? And I'm addressing this up front for a couple reasons. First of all, I understand why people do this because this is what I did for many years

when I had friends who said, you know, I don't really believe that anymore. And I would be like, well, you must have never believed it. You must have never really had a real relationship with Jesus because according to my particular theology at the time, which was eternal security, which is once you're God's child, you're always God's child and you can't get away.

Once you have faith, you might fall away for a little bit, but you're always gonna come back and you're gonna be, you're sealed, you're delivered, you're gonna be saved. And that's a difficult thing for me now because I gotta be honest, it kind of feels very dismissive, right? And I don't think it really accounts for what actually the reality was and is.

And so the only thing I'm gonna ask is that you just don't reduce me to a theological footnote as you're listening to this story. because as far as I'm concerned, Jesus was as real to me as he possibly could be without physically manifesting himself in my presence. It was a relationship, we were in conversation. So with that kind of setting the stage, I'm going to get into the story kind of starting back with my college years. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic?

Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President president and welcome to crunchy roll presents the anime effect it's a weekly news show with the best celebrity guests and hot takes galore so join us every friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on crunchy roll or on the crunchy roll youtube channel okay i gotta say first of all you

remember okay dennis rod, I don't know, I wasn't planning on saying this. Okay, yes. Dennis Rodman used to have so much energy when he played for the Bulls that when they took him out of the game, he would go on the sideline and get on like an exercise bike.

I remember that, yeah. I feel like Dennis Rodman right now. You wanna be on a treadmill, brother? I just, I'm wired. I just, I'm nervous. I just, I'm nervous. Yeah, yeah, it's a. I wanna calm my breathing. When you talk about it for years, just the two of us,

when we talk about this moment for years, you might need to take a breath. But I'm not gonna hold your hand. The fact that you've got all these notes, I'm freaking nervous, because like, I'm not, my story's totally different. I know your story's different, and that's what makes it good.

And my approach is totally different. That's what makes it good, man. We're different guys. But I'm just so unprepared. Okay, this isn't about me, go ahead. Okay. You're back in the game, get some rebounds. I've always, thank you. I'm also gonna marry myself.

Dennis Rodman jokes for days. Okay, I have always been a naturally skeptical person. So even in the midst of a very vibrant Christian faith, I would have doubts. You know, I hear a little something about how the Bible came together, you know, how the 27 books in the New Testament were kind of put together

and the way that, you way that the canon came together and I'd be like, this doesn't seem as clean as maybe I thought that it might have been. I would think a little bit about the resurrection of Jesus and I'd be like, that's a tough thing, it's a tough thing but that's the whole point, it's tough, I have faith. And what I would typically do is I would have these sessions

where I would sort of re-derive my faith, but also I would do what I think a lot of Christians do is that when you have a doubt about something, you go and you read a Christian expert. We call it apologetics in Christianity, somebody who can basically defend the faith. These are smart people who have, who can, you know, they can read Hebrew and Greek

and they've been to seminary, they've written books and they spend their life studying this stuff. And they put out a lot of material that, and they're smarter than me and they are more knowledgeable than me. So what I would do is I would just go and I would find somebody who was smarter than me and they are more knowledgeable than me, so what I would do is I would just go and I would find somebody who was smarter than me and they would be like, oh no,

it's very reasonable to believe this, there's very good reason to believe this, and that would kind of plaster over my doubt in that particular area for a while. What timeframe are you referring to? Are you talking about adulthood or are you talking about as a kid? This probably started in high school,

was happening a lot in college and then has happened ever since. But in college, I met some people who were really interested in the book of Genesis and were specifically what you call a young earth creationist. So this is someone who believes that the book of Genesis is literal history

and that the implication from that is that the world is between six and 10,000 years old. That's when this whole thing began. Along with that comes the idea that Noah's flood, like Noah and the ark, that's a true story. And the entire world was flooded like, you know, a few thousand years ago, all the animals were on a boat and then every single layer of sediment that you see

with all the fossils and everything in it is a result of that flood. And this isn't a small group of people. There's a large group of people in evangelical Christianity who believe this, still believe this. I never thought about this. My parents didn't really care much

about these particular issues, right? It wasn't something that like we grew up being taught. Wasn't taught in our youth group. A lot was being taught. Yeah. On a multiple times a week as we were involved, but we didn't tackle this issue. But it was, I was like,

I haven't really thought about this. Let me look into this. And again, I'm gonna do this multiple times in the story today. I'm gonna tell you that I looked the story today, I'm gonna tell you that I looked into something and then I'm not going to give you an exhaustive or extensive, there's a couple places I'm gonna go into that

but here's not one of them because I just don't have time. But long story short, when I looked into this, I basically learned that no matter what scientific discipline you start from, the evidence points overwhelmingly to a world that is very old, billions of years old to be specific. And basically the world doesn't really make sense unless it's ancient.

I mean, there's so many things about the world that don't make sense. Now, just a couple of helpful books that were helpful for me. There's lots of places you can see all this stuff but these are both from a Christian perspective. First one was Creation in Time by Hugh Ross which kind of takes a little bit more look

at the astronomical aspect of this. And then another one that gets more into geology is the Bible, Rocks, and Time which is an incredible resource that if you're interested in this, I suggest that you read. But basically this was learning that there was all this evidence that kind of pointed pretty clearly to the Earth being old and then realizing

that there was a really large contingent of Christians who just denied that and didn't believe that. It was alarming. It was alarming for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, maintaining that young earth view, it requires sort of dismissing or reinterpreting a lot of evidence that has been gathered, right? And you got this sort of this big umbrella of Christianity

and the whole idea is that we've got the truth. The whole point is we have the ultimate truth, right? As Christians, you know, God has revealed the ultimate truth to us, this is what I believed, but yet within that camp, there are these two wildly different perspectives on basically the entire natural world. And I was like, something about this is alarming

because this isn't as clean as I thought it was. So I was unsettled, but I was still a Christian. I mean, I wasn't, the core of my Christian belief was still very much intact. Still believe that the Bible was completely true. And I believe that there was a pretty easy way to reconcile this old earth view, they call it, with a literal interpretation of Genesis and the Bible.

And of course, I still knew that evolution wasn't true. I knew evolution hadn't happened, right? Because what I knew is that Adam and Eve had to be real. Adam and Eve had to be real because so much comes from them being real. That's the fall of, that's where the fall happens. And the fall is the reason that we have original sin and original sin is why we need a savior.

It was like, you can't get rid of that story. Plus Genesis presents all this stuff straight from Adam and Eve and you go through all the generations, even the Gospel of Luke, the genealogy of Jesus features Adam. So if you don't believe in Adam and Eve, like where do you start believing it, right?

So I knew that that wasn't, I couldn't let go of that. There was definitely a pervading thought that I had that evolution is just something you stay away from. And if you don't wanna get into it, don't get into it. Just it's a problem and it's not right so don't worry about it. And not even beyond that,

I thought evolution just didn't make sense on its face. It seemed completely illogical. In fact, it seemed desperate. If you did start to think about it. It seemed like it's so non-intuitive, it was so non-intuitive to me at the time that it just felt like a desperate attempt for someone who didn't believe in God

to try to explain the wonderful creation that we had. You gotta have something. Well, if God didn't do it, you gotta come up with some rant, you gotta come up with something.. You gotta come up with something. And evolution was the best thing that they had to offer. And that was it for me. And of course I had read all the books about evolution not being true.

I was into that. In fact, I would sit down and I would argue with people and convince people who believed in evolution that evolution didn't happen. I loved doing that. You know what I'm saying? I can make people doubt that pretty easily. Mm-hmm.

Of course, I had never looked at the evidence revolution. I had read books about it written by people who didn't believe in it. That's what I had done. And I could roll those arguments out with the best of them. Then in 2006, I read a book called The Language of God by Francis Collins. Now, Francis Collins is currently the head

of the National Institutes of Health. He's a geneticist who headed up the Human Genome Project when they mapped the human genome there at the end of the 90s. The subtitle of the book is A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. This is the kind of thing that I lived for. I loved it when someone who was a scientific mind

who was respected by the world would come out and basically do this, make it reasonable to be a Christian, to show you that your faith was reasonable and smart people believe this, I ate this stuff up. So I got into this book, I dove right in. Now, pretty early in the book, Collins starts talking about the undeniable evidence for evolution.

Evidence that humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes. And I was like, well, hold up, y'all. What, this guy's a Christian? What? I know that's not true. And of course, because he's a geneticist, he's focusing on DNA and sort of the molecular evidence

for this. So one thing that he talked about was sort of earth shaking to me. And this is gonna get technical, so please hold on. And that is this idea that the second chromosome in people is a fused chromosome. So the second chromosome is fused. According to evolutionary theory,

we're closely related to great apes and most closely related to the chimpanzee. Now all great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes, right? But we, if you've ever been to 23andMe, you know this, we have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Now chromosome fusion, where literally like a pair of chromosomes fuses directly on top of another pair of chromosomes is not totally uncommon.

It happens at about one in 1,000 births, right? It can result in some issues sometimes, but it's not always the case. So if apes and humans are closely related like evolution suggests, then it seems that a common ancestor to both humans and apes had his or her chromosomes fused together, okay?

So, all right, do we see this in the DNA? Like what do we see in the DNA? Well, in humans, the second chromosome appears to be a fusion of two great ape chromosomes. First, there are two sections of chromosome two that correspond directly to two separate chromosomes in apes. Let me give an analogy if you're having trouble following this.

DNA is basically an instruction manual on how to build something, how to build an organism, right? So let's just simplify this and just say that this book is 24 pages long. And let's say on page two are the instructions on how to make a hand. And on page three are the instructions on how to make a foot.

And so that's what you see when you look at a chimpanzee. But then when you look at a human, you see that it goes from page two to page four and there is no page three. But then you look closely at page two and realize that it's page two and page three glued on top of each other and you see the instructions for the hand and the instructions for the foot on this long page two.

Does that make sense? Yeah. That's a simple explanation or a simple analogy for kind of understanding this. This is why our feet and hands are stuck together. Exactly. And apes are not. Again, this is a grossly simplified analogy,

but it does help to understand it. But furthermore, there are these things called telomeres at the end of chromosomes, which basically are these like redundant material that basically protects the DNA structure, right? And so think of it like you've got a header and a footer on a page, right? So there's always a header

and there's always a footer on a page. And if you were to take two pages and glue them together, in the middle of those two pages, there would be a header and a footer on a page. And if you were to take two pages and glue them together, in the middle of those two pages, there would be a header and a footer glued together, right? If you take two pages and you glue them on top of each other like a really long page, a header and footer would be touching each other. Well, we see two telomeres, two vestigial telomeres,

directly on top of each other in the middle of the second chromosome, right? So all the evidence is pointing to these things being fused. Now, the reason this rocked my world so much is because I was familiar with the argument that almost 99% of our DNA is the same as chimpanzees. Everybody knows that because the human genome

has been mapped but the creationist answer to that is, well, yeah, I mean, God is making, he's using the same building materials to make similar things. It's his prerogative how he does it. So of course, you're gonna look at this instruction manual and you're gonna see that, yeah, it's kind of the same and then it's sort of different in some key ways, like that's God's prerogative,

why can't he do that? But that doesn't seem like an adequate explanation to why it definitely feels like and looks like and seems to be very conclusive that we actually have the same chromosomes and they've been fused. That doesn't seem like consistent with the idea that this is just God's prerogative. But that wasn't the only thing.

I was so interested in this particular thing, this DNA evidence, because I'd heard about the fossils and all that stuff, but this DNA stuff just seemed, this is like how we decide court cases, right? And this is how we convict people. This is how we can find out if somebody actually committed a crime. This is definitive stuff.

And then I learned about retroviruses. So essentially there are certain RNA viruses that when you become infected with them, they actually insert a copy of themselves into your DNA. So you can look at your DNA and you can be like, oh, you got that virus at that time. And then occasionally these viruses or this sort of retrovirus inside your DNA

will be passed down to your children and that means it's endogenous, it's in your genes. Well, we actually see that we share these endogenous retroviruses with the organisms that we are closely related to and the more closely related you are to them, the more retroviruses you have in common. Now, let me, again, to take this manual,

this instruction manual analogy further. Let's say you look at page 19 of a chimpanzee manual and you see, oh, halfway down on page 19, there's a coffee stain, like somebody spilled coffee on the manual. But it looks like a copy of a coffee stain, like somebody, there was an original and there was a coffee stain

and this seems like a copy of that, like somebody ran it through a Xerox machine. And then you look at a human instruction manual and on page 19, you see the same exact copy of the same exact coffee stain in the same exact place. Why would God do that, you're thinking? And so then you think, well, it seems to me that the most logical conclusion is that these two manuals

come from a common manual, that there's an ancient common ancestor that is the ancestor to both humans and great apes. And this is what you see. And these are just two small pieces of DNA evidence. And I'm not gonna go into any more details, but let me just say that the main thing that this did for me is I had been told a lot of things about evolution.

I had been told things growing up. And now I was questioning those things because I had been told that there's no real evidence. This is a desperate attempt to try to come up with some harebrained theory to just explain things. And I'm like, but this DNA stuff is pretty freaking conclusive. I can't imagine another way to,

no, I'm not saying there aren't explanations for this. I'm not saying you can't go to a creationist website and find that they, it's not like they don't know about this. They have an answer. I've read the answer. I find the answer to not be compelling in the least. But let me just say, this made me just question like, all this stuff, you've been told all this stuff

like I've been told that there were no transitional fossils. There were no transitional forms. There's no transitional between this animal and this animal. Well, it turns out there's a lot of them. There's a lot of very convincing ones. I've been told that there were really no vestigial structures that there's nothing on your body

or an animal's body that's like a sign of something that's no longer being used. There's always a use for it, and we keep finding those use for it. Well, it turns out there's lots of examples of vestigial structures. In fact, there's many structures that there's no other way to properly understand them

other than them being vestigial, meaning that they're from the past, they're no longer in use. Essentially, every criticism of evolution that I had held onto to justify my unwillingness to believe in it turned out to be a misconception or a misrepresentation of the facts. And so after reading a bunch of books,

talking to a lot of people, not, listen, I didn't wanna believe this. I'd spent my whole life not believing this and not wanting to believe this. But I kinda was just faced with this that evolution was by far the best explanation for what we actually see in the real world. If you're interested in any further reading on this,

there's a really good Wiki entry called Chromosome Two, which breaks this down with resources, it's very well referenced. And there's a Wiki entry called Evidence of Common Dissent that kind of get into this and I'm gonna make some more recs at the end. But let me just say, I didn't wanna believe this. It was incredibly problematic.

And there were plenty of Christians who are very smart Christians, smarter than me, who didn't believe in it, who I could have stayed in that camp. But I just, in my heart, I didn't feel like it, who I could have just, I could have stayed in that camp. But I just, in my heart, I didn't feel like it, I felt like I had to follow the truth. I thought that the truth had to be more important than my commitment to my beliefs. It had to be more important than my ideology.

And I wanna say that about, there's these plenty of Christian apologists and Christian, smart Christian people, I would say just creationists who deny evolution. I don't think that they're being deliberately deceptive. I wanna be clear about that. I don't think these people are sitting around like, oh, we see these facts and we're gonna misrepresent them because we're gonna lie about this.

I think that they're good people. But I think that they're so committed to their belief system that they have become impervious to pretty straightforward information about this subject. But the thing that that did for me is I had placed a lot of faith, not just in God, but in these people who helped me understand why I believed what I believed from an intellectual standpoint, right?

I had a very real emotional, personal, spiritual relationship with God that I was practicing, but there was this intellectual foundation that I would, whenever I had a doubt, I would kind of retreat to this intellectual foundation, and all of a sudden, those people I'd been trusting in, I began to doubt that I had been shown the truth or told the truth about other things, right? So get to this answer in due time as you've planned it,

but I guess my question is, when you came to grips with evolution, was it just okay, now I'm gonna incorporate that into my faith. Exactly, it was. Because I know there's people thinking, well, you can understand and accept the process of evolution and still have faith, I mean.

Well yeah, so exactly. You're not an atheist all of a sudden, right? I was very unsettled, but then I was like, well hold up, I mean Francis Collins, the whole point of the book is that he believes in God because of what he's seen in the DNA. And he's a Christian, he's an evangelical Christian. And he believes in evolution.

He presented it as that was God's creative process was involved this stuff. Yeah. Not to mention, you know, one of the most respected and revered philosophical Christian minds of all time, C.S. Lewis was a, you know, was a theistic evolutionist. And so I knew I was in good company. No, so I was like, this doesn't mean I'm not a Christian.

This just means that I'm a little disappointed in the way that this subject has been misrepresented by so many Christians. But again, my goal was, let's stick with the truth. All truth is God's truth. I'm not gonna be scared of the truth. God's in control. He's the one who's established this entire universe.

I shouldn't be afraid to poke and pry to any of this stuff, right? So that was when I kinda got into this world of theistic evolutionist Christians. There's a good book that I read called "'Coming to Peace with Science, "'Bridging the Worlds of Faith and Biology." Guy who believes in evolution but is a Christian.

That was a helpful book for me. And then I got really involved, or I wasn't involved but I spent a lot of time at the website BioLogos, involved, or I wasn't involved, but I spent a lot of time at the website BioLogos, which is essentially a group of Christian scientists, and there's a bunch of articles there. It's still active, I haven't been there in a long time, but I checked recently, it's still there,

still doing a lot of things. But things get pretty complicated at this point. Like once I started looking into this, so I'm gonna give you the short version if you can believe that this is the short version. But basically what you run into is that there's sort of two camps within people who sort of accept evolution.

One camp believes that Adam and Eve are still real and that they are either a special creation or they're sort of the result of the process, but they're actually real historical people because they need to be real and historical in order for the fall and then the gospel to kind of make sense. Gotta be honest, I did not find,

all of those arguments felt really tenuous and just felt like you guys are, you know that you have to have Adam and Eve and so you're sort of inserting them in in a way that isn't, they're not really fitting as a little, you know, square peg round hole situation. I remember the Tim Keller book, Reason for God. Yeah. I remember discussing that

at that time and that being, as I remember it, his position. Yeah, and this is problematic though because I didn't, basically I was like, I just don't think there's a way that Adam and Eve were real as presented in the Bible, but like I said earlier, you know, they're presented in the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Luke, so.

What's the deal, y'all? You know what I'm saying? This was a problem, this was a problem. But what this did, again, I just felt like this doubt was kind of creeping beyond the point of creation and it was creeping into the Old Testament itself because that's the way the story goes. You got Adam and Eve and then you got a story

that begins with them and moves all the way down to Abraham and Moses and then David. You got, it's all part of a system. So again, I had been told, there was something I'd been told about the Old Testament and that was the Old Testament is always supported by archeological evidence. I'd heard that from so many Christians.

So like, you know, sometimes they see something in the Bible and they're like, well, there's no evidence for that. And then they dig a little bit deeper and they're like, oh, we found the evidence. Or they find, basically the idea that the Bible is always vindicated because the Bible is completely true and everything that it touches upon.

But when I really looked into it, I started realizing that that's not true. That's not really the case. Just a few things, I, touching on some quick things. Why is there no Egyptian historical record of the Israelites' captivity? It's two million people. They kept great records.

Why is there no record of them? Why is there no archeological evidence of the Exodus? Basically this massive group of people wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. They've looked for over 100 years. They've looked, no evidence. Why does the modern archeological evidence call Joshua's conquest of Canaan into question?

Why is there good reason to believe that the Israelites arose not out of conquest or force, but by simply branching off of the Canaanites. And those are just a few things, but there were some pretty major events that all of a sudden I was like, no, this isn't well supported. This isn't outside of the Bible.

These things are not well supported. I was even further troubled, right? And so I'm losing my faith in the Old Testament, but I'm also losing my faith in those same Christian thinkers who have said all this stuff that like, guys, this is solid as a rock, you can stake your entire life on these truths and they'll always be vindicated.

So I was in crisis at this point, but here's what I said. I said, does this Old Testament stuff really matter? Like, is this really what this is all about? Isn't the important thing Jesus, right? If this is about a relationship with Jesus, does this Old Testament stuff, first of all, okay, maybe there's no archeological evidence

for this stuff, maybe there's no historical evidence of, but you can't really make an argument from nothing. It's like just the absence of evidence is not necessarily an argument against something. So these things could have happened, we just haven't found them yet. But we can still have faith and believe them. And plus, like I said, isn't this just about Jesus?

Now, let me be clear. I was still living in North Carolina at the time. I was still leading a small group Bible study at my church that I had been leading for many years. And I still consider myself a Christian. And I was slowly letting people that I loved, including my wife, in on some of this stuff. And every time I would bring up a piece of it,

she would just start crying. And just superimpose that on last week's conversation in terms of timing from graduation to being an engineer to being on staff with crew. So where I'm at right now with this whole like losing faith in the Old Testament and the archeological evidence, we're probably talking about like 09, 10 at that point.

So right as we're kind of wrapping up, so this is, we had left staff by this point. But the early stuff about evolution, that was 06, right? So that was the year that we left staff. And then the few years before that, I was where I kind of spent most of my time just thinking about like the older, the younger stuff. I've spent a few years and probably five years

in that place. Again. So at least not being on staff, there's a little bit of a pressure release to be able to at least start to broach these conversations with Jesse. When you're in full time ministry, you have absolutely no impetus to actually explore these things because that's your well-being,

that's your livelihood. Why are you gonna threaten that? You don't wanna consider these things because you don't wanna be like, if I actually consider this, am I gonna end up having to not be a preacher anymore? Am I gonna have to drop out of seminary? Am I gonna stop being a missionary?

Yeah, or for us. And you've set aside so much stuff for that. It was your full-time job. Yeah. And it was, as we've talked about, we were so fully engaged and committed to working within those parameters to pursue our dreams, even not fully understanding that that's what we were doing.

Yeah. But I think subconsciously, you don't wanna really engage in anything that's gonna threaten that, but you couldn't help yourself. I mean it was just your nature to, this concept of truth I think is the thread and again it started like you said in high school, but it brought us to this point.

So back to what you're saying, you know we had left staff, we're making it on our own. You're still very much involved in the church. You're teaching people. You're having these conversations with Jessie and you get into a little bit of it and she breaks down. Every time. This was traumatic for her.

Every time I would bring it up. And of course I would wait until it had become unbearable for me and time I would bring it up, and of course I would wait until it had become unbearable for me and then I would bring it up to her. Cause I'm trying to respect her and it's like we're raising these kids and I know how important this stuff is for her. And she was very educated in all this too. We would argue about the young earth thing

when we were dating in college. Cause that was her perspective, her background. And it was not easy for our marriage. And yeah, because you don't wanna bring it up early because it's a tough thing to bring up. So it sounds like you start to bring it up when you like you said, you can't not bring it up. And then it's almost in a, you've reached a conclusion about something

and then you're spilling your guts to her and expecting her to, she's late to the process. Yeah. Which is actually even more difficult. Yeah. And you mentioned that thing about like, the concern was with truth. And I, listen, I don't know where this comes from.

This is my disposition. My dad was a lawyer and is a law professor. He's, you know, he's got a very specific way of kind of getting to the bottom of things. And I think, so it's kind of in my DNA to be concerned about truth. But I think ultimately it was like, again, my DNA to be concerned about truth, but I think ultimately, it was like, again, back to what I said at the beginning,

is the whole point is that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. This is the truth. You find the truth, the truth sets you free. Truth, truth, truth. The whole point of the Bible, but people defend the Bible and say that the Bible is inerrant, without error.

It is from God, it's written by God through people. The whole point of all that is because it being true is paramount, maybe more so than any other faith. The Holy text being true is such a, it's a linchpin, right? Now, okay. And just one more thing, you had mentioned there were two camps when you were talking about that, about the Bible being literally what actually happened

versus Adam and Eve being figurative. I don't know if you were coming back to that or not, but it seemed like, again, we're at a point where there's, how you just described, that's a certain subset of Christian faith that believes those things about the Bible. Yeah, and I think it's pretty fitting that at this point we moved to California.

2011, we moved to California. We immediately got involved in a church, an evangelical church, met some great people, made some great friends. And this is when I adopted what I'm going to call California Christianity to get at what Link was getting at here a second ago. In LA, even within the evangelical church,

I think there is this sort of, because you're in this incredibly diverse place with so many different perspectives, you really can't maintain a Christian faith in a place like this without at least some sort of realization that there's a lot of gray. It's not about having it all figured out. It's not about being completely certain.

It's about a relationship with Jesus. And this was like a kind of a breath of fresh air for me, honestly, coming to California with all these doubts. I found these Christians who had these doubts, Christians who saw the Bible differently, who were like, yeah, man, I don't know exactly what happened. Evolution seems like it probably did happen.

Adam and Eve might not have been real, but like, that's not my day to day with Jesus, man. You know, and so I have a relationship with Jesus. I wrote in my journal, 2011, my faith is still weak, but it is not gone. And possibly God is revealing a foundation that he can build real faith upon. Here are a few things that have hit me recently.

From an intellectual standpoint, I may never have certainty about my faith. That pursuit may be fruitless. It's becoming clearer that the significance of my faith or the so-called proof of Christianity is not found in a well-reasoned argument. Rather, it rings true the way a musical note would. It hits my resonant frequency."

And that was very reassuring to me at the time when we moved to LA. I was like, man, in this kind of crazy world with people trying to be all about themselves and this place that's all about making it an entertainment business, I've got my faith, I've got my relationship with Jesus, I've got my Christian community,

and I don't have it all figured out and it is gray, but it feels so true and it proves itself out to be true in my daily life. I tried living like this. I ran into a few problems. The music did not continue to resonate in your bosom? Basically, the foundation of my faith ultimately was still the Bible, even if I had sort of a more liberal

view or more gray view of what the Bible might mean and represent. And so every time I read the Bible, I saw issues with it. Every time I heard a sermon, I would have an issue with it. My experience with Christianity was basically inflaming my doubts and my questions. So the closer I got to it, the more I couldn't quite shake these questions that continued to linger.

And the question, the place that I had sort of put a barrier around and said, we're not going there. Sure, we can talk about evolution, we can talk about the historicity of the Old Testament, but where I'm not gonna go is I'm not gonna go to Jesus. I'm not gonna question Jesus, but I just couldn't help myself because I was like, my understanding of who Jesus is,

is not just based on my experience with him personally, but it's also based on what the Bible has to say about him. This is how we know what there is to know about Jesus. And again, when I looked into this, my world was rocked in a very big way. I'm not gonna give sufficient detail here. Lots of people have gone and done this who are smarter and more educated than me.

But basically, there are just as many views on this as there are people who study it. But essentially, I lived my whole life being sure that the gospels were historically reliable, almost taking it for granted. I mean, I'd read Josh McDowell's evidence that demands a verdict and Josh McDowell's new evidence that demands a verdict.

I had read Lee Strobel's case for Christ. I could spit these arguments back out to you on an airplane and make you think that, whoa, I should be a Christian. Why on an airplane, by the way? Because when you're an evangelical Christian and you sit next to a stranger, this may be the only opportunity you ever have to share the life-changing message of Jesus with them.

There were lots of conversations that involved airplane evangelism because it was just like his captive audience. Like you're gonna go this whole flight and not say anything? Right, what if it crashes? Now, but I took a second to go one layer deeper and to look at the answers to the Christian answers

that I had been given all my life. And that was when I realized that this Jesus thing was very, very messy from a historical standpoint. There's a few books that do a good job of outlining some of this stuff. One of them is Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman, who's a professor of New Testament at UNC, who incidentally, Jessie was in his class

and she used to come home every single day and then we would come up with ways to go back to argue against him, ironically. Me and you were actually involved in a Campus Crusade initiative on the campus of UNC to kinda combat what he was doing because he was having so much influence on the students. So I understood Bart Ehrman had been the enemy for so long

but what I started to realize is that he had a very similar story and I thought that he dealt with the subject matter in an honest and even-handed way. There's also a book called The Historical Jesus Five Views, which kind of runs the spectrum, runs the gamut on how you can see this. But basically what I just saw is that there's so many people coming at this with an intention to uncover the truth,

to find the truth, and they're coming to these wildly different conclusions. This isn't like science. You know, somebody does a scientific experiment in 1985 in China, and then somebody does the same scientific experiment in 2019 in California. If everything is controlled, they're gonna come to the same conclusion.

That's not how history works, and it makes it very difficult to come to definitive same conclusion. That's not how history works. And it makes it very difficult to come to definitive conclusions about things. But essentially in the end, by far to me personally, the most compelling and seemingly reasonable view was that the gospels appear to be a mix of religious propaganda as well as actual history. So there's definitely some history in there.

I think Jesus was a real person, so does Bart Ehrman. But I don't think that as he is presented there is completely reliable. That's what I was thinking at the time. So what did you believe about Jesus? You reached a conclusion about the person of Jesus at that time when you were researching that. I had a picture of Jesus that was the picture

that I had always had of this person who did these miracles and died on the cross and rose again and died for my sins and was God in the flesh. All the things that were important to believe about him. But I had doubts about those things being true, but I didn't have another picture of Jesus. There was no other picture of Jesus. So you read all these books,

you did all this research about Jesus, but your conclusion was not really a conclusion at that point. Oh yeah, I was still in process. And so this was incredibly unsettling, right? This was way more unsettling than anything that had happened so far, because this was Jesus. This was the core of everything.

This is who my relationship was with and all of a sudden, I've got very serious doubts about him. And I think that anyone that you would have conversations with, and you did initiate with not only Jesse but with me and with other people that you confided in over this decade of going through this. If you were talking to someone who was still very much

committed to their faith, it was like much more solid. I think the response, maybe it's not spoken is, well, yeah, as long as you hold on to Jesus and it's like, you can't let go of that, you can let go of everything else, but you can't really let go of what you believe about Jesus raising from the dead and paying the penalty for your sins instead of you.

Yeah. It's either you go to hell or he does, which he already did and came back is the belief. So it's, you can let other stuff go and maybe not panic. And again, I'll share my perspective on interacting with you more next week, but at times that was part of it. Yeah, because what you believe about Jesus is paramount, but what you believe about Jesus is stillount, but what you believe about Jesus is still based

on what is presented in the Bible. If not, where else are you getting it? I mean, some people might be like, well, I'm getting it directly from God, but that's not what Christianity teaches. It's coming from God and the Bible and they don't contradict one another. So when it became clear to me that it wasn't something

that I could have the same kind of faith in it that I've had, I had a meltdown. I didn't do anything crazy externally, but there was a lot happening internally. At this point, I said. Do you remember a time or a place associated with this? Well, I've got a couple of journal, another journal entry that I go into

which is sort of the next stage of this thing but not particularly but I do remember saying this at the time. I was like, God, you are bigger than all of this, right? I'm just this little human who sees through a glass darkly. I got this finite mind and I'm trying to understand the infinite mind, the creator of the universe, seems pretty arrogant, actually, you know?

And I was like, is God just sitting there watching me do all this research and eventually he's gonna give me some satisfying answer and then all of a sudden I'm gonna have faith? That doesn't seem like a relationship. That's not how you conduct a relationship. I don't make my wife fit a certain criteria. I don't ask her a bunch of questions about her past

in order for her to qualify to be, you know what I'm saying? It's like I experienced relationship with her on a personal level. And I just felt like I was just completely in my mind and I made this whole thing like scientific and intellectual and also it seemed like I was just completely in my mind and I made this whole thing like scientific and intellectual and also it seemed like I was being arrogant because I was waiting for God to fit my expectations. I was creating God in my own image

as opposed to God creating me in his image. I had flipped the script on God and was waiting for him to like be my little trick pony that does all the things that I want him to do in order for me to believe in him. There's a verse that kind of gets into this. Which was answers basically. Isaiah 55 says,

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, "'neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. "'As the heavens are higher than the earth, "'so are my ways higher than your ways "'and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" So God's saying, I'm bigger than you. Right. You just, there's certain things you just can't get, dude.

Yeah, and at this point I was like, okay, you know what? I think this is probably where faith comes in. You know, it makes sense to me that this might be where faith comes in because I am sitting here trying to prove this stuff out, but shouldn't I just have faith first? And then maybe these answers will be given to me by God. Isn't this what faith is all about? I mean, the whole point is it's evidence

of things not seen, right? And so your next step was, there's no way for me to know, but I'm gonna try a different route, which is I'm gonna, maybe faith needs to come first. Yeah. And then we'll open up, maybe that'll lead to something. Yeah, I can believe in the Jesus that I believe in, because that's what the Bible says.

I can believe in the biblical Jesus, even though I have reasons that from historical perspective to doubt that I can still believe in it and overcome that. And this is when I ran into some problems. So the first thing was, how does this differentiate me from any other faith on earth, right? One of the things that makes Christianity unique

is that, you know, it is the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through the Son, right? You don't get to the Son through somebody else. You don't get to the Son through Buddha, right? But also evangelical Christians tend to be pretty critical of other faiths. Mormonism is a perfect example, right? If you're in an evangelical church

or certain evangelical churches, you know, they teach you that Mormons basically have it wrong, that Mormons, Mormonism is a bastardization of Christianity, right? It's not just another Christian group. And lots of Christians will write books that explain how all the things that Mormons believe about Joseph Smith and these things that happened

are not true and here's why. The Book of Mormon is not true and here's why. So they can be very critical of that faith. But yet, if you say those things to a Mormon, they will say, well, I have a burning in the bosom that proves to me that these things are right. So you can tell me that these things seem wrong and you can show me certain things,

but I believe them to be true and you can't change that because I have this sort of seal and sign from God, this indication that this faith is real and this is all true. And I was like, isn't that what I'm doing right now? Now I'm just saying that I'm just gonna have faith that things are real, damn the evidence. So how does that make me any different, right?

And ultimately this kind of faith felt a little cowardly to me, to be honest. It felt like what I was saying is, yeah, there's some conclusions that I really don't wanna come to. And the way I'm going to avoid those is just by having faith. But ultimately you just can't make yourself believe.

You just can't make yourself have faith. This was a torturous place for me, right? And I was there for a very long time. There was lots of praying. There was lots of reading the Bible, which would inflame some of the same doubts. There was lots of talking to Christians openly about what was happening.

I wanna be very clear that I didn't go into a cave somewhere and come to these conclusions and never run them by. I didn't want to leave this thing, man. This was my life. This defined everything for me. This was the foundation of my marriage. This was the foundation of the way I was raising my kids. I didn't want it to go away.

It was the orienting purpose-driven worldview that was basically defined everything about me. But yet, I'm having this, I'm going through this process, I'm talking with people, I'm talking to my wife, she's crying. Talking to me. Yeah, I was talking to you the entire time about this stuff.

You didn't cry, thank you. I didn't cry. But the major shift for me occurred when I asked a question I never asked. I've been very, very afraid to ask this question and that was, what if I'm wrong? What if I opened myself up to the possibility

that maybe I have been wrong about this? I wanna be clear, I had never done that. Even in all these things that had like shaken me, right? All these doubts that I had, I still was sort of, there was this Christian core that was completely protected through all this that I wasn't willing to let go of. But I was like, what if I am wrong?

Can I just live like that for a little bit? I'm pretty good at kind of giving myself over to things. I can watch a movie and get lost in it. I can read a book, I can get lost in it. I can read a book from a different perspective and I can adopt that perspective for a little bit to see what it feels like. And I decided that I was gonna do that.

It's like, let's just consider what it would mean if you were wrong. What would that mean about the Bible? And when I was honest with myself, the Bible began to make a lot more sense to me personally as a product of humans rather than God. It seemed less and less like God's message to people and more like people's best guesses about God.

And in that it became a lot like any other holy text. And when I came to that conclusion, or I was, and I wasn't fully there, I was just considering what does it feel like to think this? It led to a few more questions that I'd always been afraid to ask myself. I'm gonna read these because I wrote them down. These are just a few of the questions I'd always avoided.

If I don't have to believe that God ordered his chosen people to slaughter men, women, and children by the thousands, then why would I? If I don't want to believe that every religious experience of any person who is not a Christian is ultimately illegitimate, then why would I? If I don't have to believe that anyone who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus, i.e. the majority of people who have ever lived

are going to spend eternity being literally tortured in a fire, experiencing never-ending pain and suffering, then why, no pun intended, in the hell would I believe that? And if I can somehow accept the idea that hell exists because of God's holiness, why would I believe in a God who would choose to create that particular world where people have no choice whether or not they're going to be born, but then once they are born,

if they don't adopt the correct understanding of God, he will punish them forever. Why believe in that God if I don't have to? So where did this leave me? Because the answer to those questions are that you have, there's a lot of fear of what you might lose or experience. But there are some things to gain.

If you go to the other side. Well it's funny because I had spent a lot of time in my head, a bunch of like intellectual processing of all these things, right? Philosophical stuff. But at this point, as I felt this sort of traditional faith slipping away, I started worrying about some pretty practical things.

Like, how is my marriage gonna stay together? What am I gonna teach my kids? This is what I've been teaching them. What am I gonna teach them now? What am I gonna do? Where am I gonna turn? What's gonna replace this? This is community, this is purpose, this is meaning.

Where am I gonna find something like that? And a verse came to mind, John 6, after Jesus has kind of talked about him being the flesh and he's kind of basically given the whole idea of communion at this point. And it's a difficult teaching and a lot of people walk away because they're like, he's talking about eating him and drinking his blood, this dude's nuts.

And it was a difficult teaching, people didn't understand what he was getting at and they walk away. So Jesus asked the 12, do you want to leave too? Simon Peter replied, Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. And that's what I said.

I was like, listen, I got nowhere else to go. What am I gonna become? Now, let me make it clear. I was in a state of panic at this point, but I was like, I can't let this go. There's too much wrapped up in this, right? But this is where being in Los Angeles did allow me to ask a different question

and let me explain that. First of all, I have no doubt that many people will probably not even listen to this story. In fact, I've seen it on Twitter. I've already seen people say, you know, I don't wanna listen to their personal stories because I don't wanna hear somebody talk about leaving, which that hurts me that you don't wanna listen

to the story, I'm just trying to be honest. But I know a lot of people will come to the very, very easy conclusion, guys, there's nothing surprising about this. You were Christians and then you went to Los Angeles and you lost your faith. It's a story as old as Los Angeles. This isn't surprising. It's like, what's the Los Angeles. This isn't surprising.

It's like, what's the big deal? This is super simple. But I'm trying to represent that this wasn't, this wasn't some thing made, this wasn't some flippant decision. This wasn't like, oh man, I wanna be cool and accepted in modern culture, so I'm gonna shed all this stuff.

The reason why it hurts is because- It's a dismissal. That assumption is a dismissal. It's an assumption of your true motives that you don't wanna state which are, hey, you just wanna sow your wild oats and you want, or you wanna be cool or you wanna, you wanna be able to face your friends

who believe different things or like they have different lifestyles and in order to be successful out there, you gotta make some changes, okay? I mean, watch any award show now and see how the entertainment industry is pushing change in perspectives and changes in the way people act, if not believe.

And so it's like, hey, I get it. If you guys wanna go out there and you wanna pursue your dreams and if that's really what's most important to you, then yeah, you gotta give up your beliefs. I mean, you gotta make a choice and it seems like that's the easy thing. You guys made the choice and it,

again, it's like no one's said that out loud to us, but I have to- I've seen people say it. They've typed it maybe. I've seen it typed. I saw it typed after our first two episodes. Somebody was like, what's the big deal? It's clear what happened.

They went to Los Angeles and they lost their faith. It happens. And I'm just trying to, first of all, hopefully if you've listened to this point, you at least acknowledge that this was a process that was in many ways independent of where I was at, but also way more personal and torturous and it wasn't a calculated business decision.

It wasn't like, I don't know, that particular accusation hurts a lot. When people say you were never a Christian and when people say you changed because of LA, those things hurt a lot because of how untrue I know them to be. So there's an aspect and I will get into more of this. So I think we'll come back to it.

But your point for now is that there was an aspect of you changing because of LA. Yeah, and this is where LA comes into play. LA did allow me to ask a new question. And that was, why am I still doing this? And I'll be honest, I would not have asked that question if I was in North Carolina because when you're in the Bible Belt, you're embedded in Christian culture,

there are dozens of reasons why you would still be doing it. I mean, why rock the boat? Why disappoint your parents? Why disappoint your friends? Why get yourself out of this community that you have? I have been going to the same church since I was in ninth grade. I would say technically your whole life

because that church came from another church that we both went to our whole life. Exactly, I've been with the same group of believers forever and now I was leading a Bible study. I had preached sermons on Sunday. You know what I'm saying? There's all kinds of reasons not to leave. Why damage your reputation?

Because honestly, in the Bible Belt, as many people know, if you've left the faith in the Bible Belt, it ain't easy. There's a lot of pressure to stick around and stay in there. But what I realize is that I've been pulling on this thread for a really long time, right? Let's call it the sweater of faith, which is not the armor of God.

This is a Rema Glavline concept, the sweater of faith. I've been pulling on this thread and it had sort of like turned into a vest and then a midriff and then a halter top. And now it was a string bikini. That's not appropriate. And I was like, I'm gonna take the bikini off. Really not appropriate.

It's just an analogy. Okay. And I was in LA. Yeah. Men in bikini tops, just, you know, there's lots of places you can go to see that. Go to the convenience store. And I took it off and I called this.

How did you take it off? Well, I have a journal entry, thankfully. That's great, okay, give it to me. It has nothing to do with bikinis. This is from 2014, okay? I understand that it is unreasonable to expect Christianity to be a set of scientifically verifiable principles.

It is a faith, implying that some sort of believing without seeing is involved. And more specifically, Christianity is a relationship with Jesus and relationships are not well defined or experienced scientifically. However, I don't think it insignificant that the deeper I have dug into Christianity

with a thirst for the truth, the more difficult it has become to have faith. In fact, for me, it has become impossible. And that was kind of the reckoning for me, right? That was jumping ship to use a better analogy than taking off a bikini. You see, I kind of saw Christianity as this boat in a very stormy sea.

It's stable, there's a lot of other people on it. It's got a destination, you're gonna get through this. It gives you something to hold on to. It gives you stability, it gives you purpose, it gives you direction. It gives you something to hold on to. It gives you stability. It gives you purpose. It gives you direction and it gives you community. And when I jumped ship, I didn't jump to another boat. I jumped into the water

and I pulled my wife and my children in with me. I jumped into a sea of uncertainty. And that's where I've lived for about six years. And we're gonna spend some time talking a little bit more about where we're at now. I do wanna talk about it now, but we're getting more detail in like a subsequent podcast, maybe in a Q&A or something.

But I wanna kinda talk about what this has been like without getting into too much detail. And I know, because we're already pretty long. This one's gonna be a long one. Right after I jumped ship, I kinda went through a period of anger. I kind of went through a period of anger. I was very mad at the Christian leaders and thinkers

who I felt deceived by. I want to be very clear about this. No one that I was in personal contact with, pastors, Christian friends, elders in my church, none of them disappointed me or let me down. I did not have a personal like tragedy. A lot of people have like a traumatic spiritual experience in a church. I didn't.

I only got good things from the church. We talked about this a while back that like, listen, I'm a straight white dude. You know, you get a lot of things handed to you, especially within the church, if you fit that profile. In some churches, being a straight dude is the only way that you can teach. There's plenty of churches right now,

churches in Los Angeles, that people would consider progressive, where you better not tell them you're gay. And if you're a woman, you probably won't be able to preach. It's 2020 and this is still the case. Just wanna be clear about that. But for me, this had been, I got so much out of this. I was riding high.

I could have ridden this train to the top, man. You know what I'm saying? But, and nobody disappointed me personally, but I was angry at the thinkers. I was angry at the people who had written the book saying that evolution didn't have any evidence. I was angry at the people who had written systematic theology books who basically made it seem like

this was all pretty simple. And I kinda, the pendulum swung for a time into atheism. I was like, this is all bullshit and I'm gonna be the enemy of this stuff. I'm gonna be an anti-evangelist. That's what I was thinking at the time. Of course, we're still very private about all this so it wasn't like I said this to anybody publicly.

And that anger actually subsided rather quickly. It's interesting, I kind of had my moment of anger and atheism and then that was replaced with kind of an openness and a curiosity. You know, it's interesting how liberating this one aspect has been. I think the biggest change that has happened to me in my life is that I've lost my appetite for certainty,

specifically certainty about things I don't think you can be certain about. I think Christianity, my struggle with Christianity, for me, a big part of it was I had to keep aligning my thoughts and being certain and kind of re-deriving my faith and why this was reasonable and being sure about this and knowing exactly what was gonna happen when I die and all this stuff.

But when I was like, I don't think I can be certain about these things. It's like when a person, I've heard this happens, I haven't done it yet. When you stop eating meat, you lose your appetite for meat, a lot of people say. I stopped being certain about things, I lost my appetite to be certain.

I didn't wake up with a sense of panic. I thought there would be panic. I thought there would be chaos. Especially for someone who that's how you lived your life. And I thought there would be fear. You were so attached to it. Right, but it's been the most liberating thing that has happened in my adult life.

I'm not kidding. I'm not trying to paint that, listen, it's not like I'm about to give you some philosophy that I live according to now that gives me community, purpose, and meaning. I don't have that, okay? I think there's a giant sort of shift that's happening culturally,

and I think that we may be arriving at that sometime, but it doesn't exist right now for me, but what does exist is an openness, is this curiosity. Listen, I still think that belief in God is very reasonable. I think that the idea that the universe is ultimately purposeful, it's headed towards some ultimate purpose,

not only is that comforting, but it kind of feels, again, it feels right to me when I just look at the history of the world, and where, you know, but I don't know it to be certain, and I don't know anything about this source or this God that might be behind all this, and I'm kind of beginning to think that I don't know if you are supposed to know a whole lot about it.

to think that I don't know if you are supposed to know a whole lot about it. So I would call myself a hopeful agnostic, meaning I don't know, but I hope. I hope there's something. And a question that I've gotten from some people who are close to me and love me is what do you think happens after you die? I don't know.

I'm reasonably certain that you don't burn in hell because you were intellectually curious and honest, to put it bluntly. But honestly, I'm more interested now in what happens while I live. It's not so much what happens after you die, but what happens while you're alive. And I'm trying to answer that question,

but it's one of the reasons I'm in therapy. It's honestly one of the reasons that I get up every morning and do 20 minutes of back exercises, honestly. It's one of the reasons that I think more about what I eat because the only thing I know that I've got is this life. You know? But the other thing that has kind of happened because people ask me about, you know, your marriage,

your kids, we'll get into this in more detail, but Jessie has her own story. there's been a lot of crying but she's in a similar place now and this process because we were, now this whole process ruins a lot of marriages, I've seen it a lot because sometimes people are like, I can't go there. Not going there, it's over.

This was the whole foundation. I mean, yeah, we made vows. If you read, we wrote our own vows for our wedding and they were very much about Jesus. But now it's kind of like our marriage has hit a second wind where it's not so much about a structure that we both sort of assent to that tells us what our marriage should be like, but it's like,

hey, it's pretty cool that I get to go through life with you. I love you. And that has actually been a pretty good thing to concentrate on. And that has actually been pretty, a pretty good thing to concentrate on. And with the kids, you know, I think for me, the idea that purpose and meaning and sort of like orienting your life in a certain way

all came from the Bible and from church. I actually, because none of that went away. You know what I'm saying? Like I still have, I still have, I still wanna be the same kind of person that I've always wanted to be. I wanna be the same kind of husband. I want the best for my kids.

Meaning like your morality? Yeah. Is still like you, Yeah. You don't, the moment that you jumped ship, you didn't start looking to cheat on your wife. Right. As an example. Exactly, it wasn't like all of a sudden,

and I'd always been told that, and I had many Christians who I respected said, man, if God wasn't real, I would be out doing drugs right now. I'd be out sleeping with whoever I want. And I'm like, I don't actually think you would. I think you actually have an innate desire to be a pretty good person and to live a life

that is good for you and the people you love. And a lot of people will attach it to a structure and an explanation like Christianity. But I think very few people actually find the purpose in their faith. I think they have purpose and then they bolster it with faith, that's my personal opinion. Or even another way to put it using the, like the marriage example, do you think that your motive

to be true to Jessie was not just out of love for her, but out of love for God. You know, out of respect for, you know, so now you being true to Jessie is out of love for her. It's aligned. Like I'm. Yeah, and it's not, it's not a fear of God. It's a love for her and it's a fear of God. It's a love for her and it's a fear of, listen,

there's a lot of shit that happens when you do stuff like that in your life. There are natural built-in consequences to doing the things that are traditionally considered to be sinful according to every religious tradition. It's not like you just, if I didn't have this, I'd be out doing all kinds of crazy shit. No you wouldn't.

It's like, first of all, my best friends now are not Christians, but they're faithful to their families and they're faithful to their families and- They're not horrible people. They're not horrible people. And I think that's what we thought was without the Holy Spirit indwelling you, you're, I mean, you're just going off the flesh, so to speak, you're going off of your own desires

and you, I mean, that's the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person. I think that's from a young age, I think that's the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person. I think that's from a young age, I think that's what we felt but I think the thing you were. That's a particular view of people that we had in our particular reformed, Calvinistic, everyone is totally depraved and anything good that is coming from anybody is either because

of they're created in the image of God or they have a relationship with God. I think too, I wanna get back to that being a subsection and everything that you've talked about being applied to the whole of Christianity or faith or anything like that. But before that, you were talking about, you were moving to the kids

from your relationship with Jesse. I kinda went back to the relationship with Jesse. So when you were talking to the kids from your relationship with Jessie. I kinda went back to the relationship with Jessie. So when you were talking about the kids, you were talking about raising them in a way to be whole people, to be good people. I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I think you were getting it.

Well, I think the biggest thing about kids is what I have sort of observed and being very much embedded in the church for a very long time, is there's kind of this idea that it is your responsibility as parents to make sure your kids turn out all right. And that it's up to you,

you better teach them the right thing. If you don't, they're gonna be screwed up. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't teach your kids good things. But what I've observed is that, you know what, my kids actually teach me a lot. I think that kids, I think that kids orient themselves in the world

much more readily based on your behavior than the specific things that you tell them. I don't think that having a information session with your kids indoctrinating them is what's going to make them into a good person. I'm not saying we're not constantly talking about issues of morality and ethical things, philosophical things. And we talk about that at every time.

Our family is like very much always talking about these things. But the interesting sort of freeing thing is, is that when my kids have a question about God or the deeper purpose of the universe or what happens when you die, we explore those things as people, I'm not here as some authority

that's gonna point you to this ironclad thing and that's gonna make it okay, because you know what? It's not gonna make it okay. Just because I can point to this book and tell you that you should believe this, I am proof that believing those things isn't necessarily gonna make all those

deeper thoughts go away. And so in getting my kids comfortable with sort of living intention and being okay with not having all that stuff figured out, but it's like, but what can you have figured out? And what does lead to a fruitful, meaningful life? Well, you know what? A life devoted to others.

A life devoted to yourself is going to fail. I can't explain, I don't feel like I have to explain the dynamics behind that for it to be true. And so. But you do explain it. Sometimes you talk about being a parent as if like, you are who you're gonna be and I know that's not what you're saying,

but I think what you just said is clarifying that you are, you're a teaching. Well, I am saying that to an extent. I know you are. I am saying that to an extent. I think we have a little bit of a different approach, but that's fine. Well, I think I would say that the latest child psychology basically suggests that kids are sort of,

they're gonna be a certain way, but. But you're talking about selfishness versus self-sacrifice. You're talking about what it means to love. You're talking about what type of person do you wanna be? Yeah, and also, the thing I try to get my kids to do is process the consequences of their actions. It's just like, hey, Shepard,

is process the consequences of their actions. It's just like, hey, Shepherd, if you, I just asked you if you had mom's phone and you told me no, but you do have mom's phone. Let's talk about why you did that. And let's talk about what it means to be a person who's willing to lie, who's willing to say something that's false about this. And so it's like, what is going to happen

if you become a person who can't be trusted? What's that gonna do? What kind of life are you gonna live as a person who can't be trusted? And for me, that just is that tangible, like nitty gritty getting down to the details of like, what does this mean? What are the ramifications of your behavior?

For me, it's, and listen, listen, I know that I've read all the Ravi Zacharias books and I've seen him speak. I know that the whole idea is, well, where's the morality come from if it's not coming from a moral law giver, God himself? I think that that argument is marginally compelling, but I don't think that is conclusive.

I think the point is I don't think you wake up and make decisions to be a good person because you've got this moral law giver. There may be a moral law giver. I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, but I think that it's a much more natural and organic process than there's a book, I read it and now I know what to do.

I think that's why those core qualities of what makes a human good exist in cultures everywhere. You find a culture in the middle of the Amazon that's never been exposed to the gospel or any sort of religious system outside of what they believe, are they gonna think that murdering is great? Probably not. They didn't need Hemarabi or Moses to tell them that.

So. But I guess I'll move on to one other thing. Whatever his name is, I don't think that's how you say his name. Hammurabi's code, I don't know how you say his name. I was curious, personal question, when it comes to therapy, does anything come up, I know you talked about anger

and you also talked about how it wasn't, there wasn't an inciting incident outside of your own intellectual exercise and research. But do you find that there's baggage? That there's things that you need, you know, things that you need to heal from. Maybe that's, or now that your perspective has shifted, is there any of that?

You know, again, and I feel, I kind of feel like an asshole for saying this because I know that so many people, so many women and so many people who don't fit the mold. And we talked about like the LGBTQ plus experience of people in the church. There's a lot of stories of trauma because as people were sort of developing their identity

and self-actualizing, they were doing it in an oppressive environment and that's damaging. But again, because of who I am and what I look like, I pretty much just benefited. And so I don't look back at my experience with the church in a traumatic way. I just feel like, oh man, I was very lucky. And I actually, we talked about it last week,

I got, professionally, I got a lot out of it. I was able to develop professionally and live my dream out. For me, most of my therapy is related to, just sort of the realization that everyone's personality is essentially constructed over their child, their inner child. And it's a way of sort of navigating

and moving through the world. It's a protective shell. And so for me, it's like, why is that your shell? And what is that child underneath saying, feeling? Do you feel like? So it's more early childhood stuff and it's not trauma, it's just figuring out. But do you feel like everything that you,

having constructed that shell, that the belief system that you had was a, became a part of that, became another layer. I haven't processed it but definitely yes. I haven't gotten to any of this in my therapy yet. Again, it's like the thing that you're talking, your whole story is so much in your head, you know? It's like when you talk about being devastated

and like those moments of there being a crack in the dam and then when you decide to jump ship, you allude to it being a torturous time, you said. That there's moments of it being really scary. But it does seem like the story is very much in your head. You know, that it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know. So maybe there's stuff under there.

And I understand that that's one of the reasons that a lot of people won't relate to what I'm saying because they're like, why is this? I've, there's Christians that I know and love who when I talk to and I tell them this story, I just kind of see them just look off and quit listening. Because it's just like, why is he spending all this time talking about the second chromosome?

Right. Like why is that important to him? And what does that have to do with God? Yeah. And for me, it has everything to do with my story. Because it's all related, you know? Again, the whole idea is that this foundation is truth. And so, but in terms of,

again, the whole idea is that this foundation is truth. And so, but in terms of, I feel like my attempts to like focus on the relationship and focus on faith was my attempt to get out of my own head and get into my heart when it came to my perspective on God. And to lean into the relationship. But again, it's that inextricable relationship between facts and feelings.

You can have an incredible experience with somebody relationally and it can feel completely emotional and physical, but yet there is sort of a scientific representation, a naturalist understanding of what's happening between the two of you. And I think that there's this foundation that I just kept coming back to.

And every time I came back to it, and the interesting thing is, it isn't like the Christian apologists are saying, they don't make the argument that I was trying to make in my head. They don't say, don't worry about this, just have faith. They say, because they know they have to. No, this is defensible.

Here's why. Here's why evolution didn't happen. And here's why you can trust and I can even prove to you. I know a guy who wrote a term paper in college on why the resurrection is an undeniable historical fact. Those things being true are sort of what the founding fathers of the faith, you know, especially those guys in the early church

who were like figuring out how to think about all this stuff. They were doing intellectual work. It wasn't just happening in the heart. They were laying a philosophical framework that we've built our faith on. And I think that we've got more access to information about that process than we've ever had. And it deserves some scrutiny.

And I actually think it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. That's my personal opinion. I could be wrong. But that's where I'm at. So two things, I wanna end on like your label that you apply to yourself, but I did wanna ask, how do you process the anticipated criticism of everything you shared?

I don't know. I know, I'm a three on the Enneagram. And one of the characteristics of a three, which is an achiever, is you wanna be liked by everybody. And being misunderstood or misrepresented is a direct assault on my ego. And I know that that's gonna happen. But it's just part of the growth process,

being okay with it, being okay with people mischaracterizing the things that I've said, people dismissing the things that I said, obviously there's gonna be a lot of people who say that, oh, well, it's clear he was never a Christian, he didn't really, he had an intellectual understanding, but he was never in a relationship with Jesus because he couldn't have been.

It's not consistent with my theology. That's, again, like I said, that's tough, but I think it's only tough because I'm an egotistical asshole sometimes. I think if I'm truly humble, then I shouldn't let those things bother me. You know, it's just like, yeah, that's gonna happen. But I don't know how I'm gonna process it.

I actually, I've seen that you've engaged a little bit with people on Twitter and for some reason I just haven't. I just haven't had the emotional energy. I've been thinking a lot about this story. I think I will engage with people if they have questions. I think we will engage with people if they have questions. And you know, after you tell your story, which I'm excited to hear your story

because you're so different than me. Yeah. Especially for this type of stuff and this experience. But it's very much intertwined. And I think we made a decision for you to go first and I think that's very helpful for me for people to understand my story second. Yeah. But go ahead.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know how, I'm definitely, because I want everybody to like me, which is a flaw, it's not something I'm proud of, I know that some people won't like this. A lot of people won't like this. A lot of people are gonna be offended. A lot of people are gonna be offended. A lot of people are gonna say that I misrepresented the facts

a lot of people are gonna say, because listen, if you agree with everything I said, then you know, how could you still have faith? So it's like, I understand that. I remember we had a good friend, we had a good friend who had a bunch of doubts and I remember how we treated him. And I loved him, but I remember when he started talking

all this stuff about how he was doubting certain things, I was like, I remember asking, I was like, what are you gonna teach your kids, man? I do, I remember that now. And I remember thinking things like, man, I guess he never knew Jesus because the Jesus I know, I would never think those things. And I know that's how,

I know how I would have processed hearing this story. And it, again, it's just, it's difficult for me. I'm glad that we still have a relationship with him and that we've talked through it since then and that he was patient with us in a way that now we're asking for people to be, you're asking for people to be patient with you and I'm asking for people to be patient with me.

Yeah. Patient not in waiting for someone to change their mind but just to still be loving. He was still very loving to us even though it had to have been written all over everything we said and our faces. Yeah, for sure. Do you?

We should wrap things up. Okay, so I think my last, in a desire to put a bow on something, are you happy with the label that you've given yourself of hopeful agnostic? I mean, is that, are you happy with that? I don't know how to answer I'm happy with it. I mean you can. It's just where I'm at.

I am happy. I am happy. Is it a destination, I guess is? For me, I am open to revelation from God. Like I haven't lost, it's like, listen, there's some things that- Should I step back? There's some things that I am, I don't think I'll ever believe again.

Like I'm not ever gonna believe that the earth is 10,000 years old. Like that car left the garage a long time ago. I don't think I can have a worldview that doesn't embrace the reality of evolution, that every living being on the earth is related to every living being on the earth. And I actually think that's beautiful, even from the perspective of there might be a creator.

And I know that I could go into the desert or I could go into the office and have a crazy religious experience that all of a sudden I come back and I'm like, I got something for you. And I'm not closing myself off to that. I'm not some pure naturalist. Because listen, if anything that,

if my story represents anything, is that I'm willing to change my mind. I had a fate that was so solid. I had, this was so deep. This wasn't this Sunday morning thing, man. This was a lifestyle. This was in my blood. And I let it go because I did not believe it to be true.

I'm gonna follow truth wherever it leads without fear, without fear of uncomfortable conclusions. And if that means that, oh, and you know what? You're gonna have an encounter with God that is going to send you to some new place or send you all the way back, then so be it. But the thing I don't wanna do is I don't wanna, I feel like the curiosity and the openness

that characterizes my life right now is something I don't wanna let go of. And I don't wanna be, in fact, a quote from Ravi Zacharias that I used to say, I'm gonna butcher the quote, but he essentially talked about being, you don't wanna be so open-minded that your mind is like a sewer just letting everything in.

You know, eventually you gotta bite down on something. So I recognize that you just can't be passive, but actually, I don't know, I have had some experiences and come to some conclusions, but I'm not ready to share all that at this point. But I would say that if anything, it's just sort of confirmed the direction that I've been going,

kind of away from the faith of my childhood. That's my story. Thank you for sharing. I do have recs. Make a rec, then tell me it feels good to get it out. First of all, it does feel good to tell this story. You have to wait a little bit. Yeah. I'm gonna sleep well tonight, story. You have to wait a little bit. Yeah.

I'm gonna sleep well tonight, Link. I didn't sleep well last night. I've already mentioned a couple of these recs, but I'm gonna say it again because they relate to what I just told you about. Again, the Wiki entry on chromosome two, read it. It's a short one, it's super easy to understand. It's a better explanation of what I just said.

The Wiki entry entitled Evidence of Common Dissent, which is a long one. Again, people might be like, why are you pointing people to Wikipedia? Well, Wikipedia is actually a great reference for these kinds of things because it's all footnoted and referenced and you can go to those resources if you wanna dig deeper,

but it's a great comprehensive up-to-date list, sort of a living list of the evidence for evolution. But if you are a book person, whether you wanna read or listen to it, I do recommend Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne, which is a pretty sort of easy to read explanation if you've never kinda dug into the subject.

And was, you know, I was already on that train when I read that book, but it's, I just thought he did a great job of putting it together. So those are my recs. Thanks for listening to this long podcast. Hopefully Link will go even longer. We'll see, hashtag your biscuits.

Thanks for being a part of the conversation and for hearing us out. We'll speak at you next week.