The Sean McDowell Show - Psychedelics & Spirituality: A Gateway or an Illusion?

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

There is a renewed interest in psychedelics today. Many proclaim their physical and spiritual benefits. Yet, is there a dangerous side to psychedelics that is often ignored? Can Christians use psychedelics as part of their faith? Joe Welker is a pastor who also writes on the intersection of psychedelics and religion. He talks about his personal journey of deconstruction, his experience with psychedelics, and his current research about their effects.READ: Joe Welker Substack (https://substack.com/@joewelker)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowellTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=enInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why is there such renewed interest in psychedelics? Do psychedelics really open up a portal to another spiritual dimension? And can use of psychedelics be wedded with a Christian worldview? I sent out an ex a few months ago asking for a thoughtful Christian who could help wrestle me with these questions. And that tweet slash ex led me to our guest today, Joe Welker. Joe, thanks for being willing to come on and talk about this. Sean, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. Let's just start kind of with your background in psychedelics.

What drew you to talk about this? Do you have an experience with psychedelics? Let's start there. Sure, yeah. You know, I grew up in the church. My dad's actually a pastor as well. So I grew up with a pretty, I would say, standard, you know, mainline Christian upbringing. And I liked it for the most part, didn't have big problems with it or anything.

In college, I had somewhat a stereotypical, uh, deconstruction, I guess, as the kids call it now. Um, we just called it leaving Christianity back then. Um, but, and I actually, uh, and I was at Chapel Hill and I, I infamously walked into Bart Ehrman's class and he was part of, part of that. So, uh, and I really liked Bart still, but, yeah, so I was kind of a classic case of what parents are warned about, about taking Bart's class.

And so I started exploring different, I just had different spiritual explorations, really wanted to see what else was out there. It was at that time I kind of got into psychedelics, kind of late college. I had already been a fan of the jam band, Fish, and all that, so I was like already ready to go. And that was, cause that's all part of that,

that kind of music scene. And you know, those first experiences were really wild and something I would have never come across in church, right? And just, you know, a word that I thought about a lot, that I thought a lot back then, and I still would think about that time was it felt authentic somehow. It felt deeply, the deep experience. It was both weird and breaking open my whole default perspective. And it just, it seemed like it was going into places that, oh, Christianity just what couldn't go or wouldn't go.

And so, I moved to California, Los Angeles area and kind of stereotypically did California and like spirituality with being universal and spiritual, choosing my own religion and all that kind of thing. Consciousness exploration was anyway, that was a big part of what my early psychedelic journey was about, trying to find my true self, trying to learn what I could from Eastern religions,

a lot of DIY spirituality, right? I had an experience early in my 20s that kind of spooked me from psychedelics for a while. And I won't go into the details, but I did get banned from Malibu Creek State Park. So I'll just leave it at that. But... Fair enough.

So I took a long break. And, but I was still kind of in the psychedelic spiritual milieu for the next five, six years. And I was, um, you know, still really like listening to podcasts. I was a big Rogan fan, right? Um, just really, really into, um, people figuring out, out, you know, their own sense of spirituality, either from those experiences or through lots of different religious perspectives.

Now, eventually I did come back and I got invited to an ayahuasca ceremony out in the California. And that time, the invitation to Ayahuasca was a little bit different than what it had been earlier in my life, earlier in my 20s, which again, it was like consciousness exploration, freedom, authenticity, all that kind of stuff.

This one was, Ayahuasca was approached to me as something about healing. And, um, I had gone through a hard breakup. I had a strange relationship with my parents at that point, um, more my fault than their fault. And, um, you know, I, the, the ways that the whole, the whole, uh, ceremony of ayahuasca, a, I didn't even realize you could do it in ceremonies. Right. Like I had done psychedelics kind of with friends and, um, you know, the ways that the whole ceremony of ayahuasca, A, I didn't even realize you could do it in ceremonies,

right, like I had done psychedelics kind of with friends and things like that, but I didn't realize there were groups that were holding ayahuasca ceremonies. And so I got invited to this place and I honestly had to great some really hard and dark, but really great experiences at first. And I honestly had great, some really hard and dark, but really great experiences at first. It was very heart centered is sometimes what people call it,

very hard opening. I had even some benefits from that as far as, you know, quitting alcohol and helped spurn me to start trying to heal my relationship with my parents and things like that. Long story short on that, I really felt convicted through all my different spiritual wanderings and journeys.

I had been looking for something of a religious home, but like a lot of people hated the idea of dogma, hated the idea of doctrine, was a spiritual seeker, but realized, okay, there's something useful to religion here. There's something that, like... You know, I had a very Jungian view that now, that Jordan Peterson is now kind of popularized through the sort of, like, religion

as manifestations of psychology across cultures. And there was something true about all of them. And so, um, and, with ayahuasca, it sort of tied it all together for me is like, okay, there's a way to now maybe we can do this more and better religiously. And so that's when I felt like I wanted to go to seminary or divinity schools, it turns out for me. I was actually a Unitarian at the time. So that was part of my walk back into religion. Um, and so I, I applied and got into Harvard Divinity School as a Unitarian, uh, covertly

studying psychedelics because this was still 2018, early 2019. And you couldn't like Michael Pollan's book had just come out. So you couldn't really, Michael Pollan's book had just come out. Yeah. So you couldn't really talk about it openly too much, but you could just, you were starting, it was starting to be a little more acceptable. And you're referring to how to change your mind by Pollan, right? I am.

Good. Just keep going. That was, that was a book that, it's a kind of a cliche, but you funny thing did happen though, I had gone, I started using Ayahuasca a lot, or rather, I started using it a lot, and I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital.

And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital. And I, but the funny thing did happen though, I had gone, I started using ayahuasca a lot or go into a lot of different ayahuasca experiences leading up to going to divinity school. And the last one I had, what was, I wouldn't say it's a full conversion experience, but it was the

first time. Um, cause I had been started trying to heal my relationship to Christianity through some of these ayahuasca experiences. I had been so distant from it for so long. Again, kind of like, again, part of the stereotype of like, I want to choose my own religion and be my own spiritual person, anything but Christianity though. Cause I already know I don't like that. Um, cause I had already been there, there done that but I realized I wanted to try to to heal something with that

Well, the my last I was experienced before I went to the Divinity School No, I heard this phrase came in my mind child of God, right and it felt really like because one property of psychedelics is because one property of psychedelics is feelings of profundity while you're on them, feelings of deep meaning and insight, you could hear that phrase and it would be more meaningful than you've ever heard that phrase again. And there's something about that that made me say,

I was even like, oh man, I am a Christian, deep in my bones. It was kind of annoying to me to have to come with that. So I went to the school and was a, I would still say I was a pretty metaphorical Christian at that point. I wasn't really trying to follow Jesus per se. Wasn't sure how I felt about him.

But I was like, I know I want to, I know I want to be, be Christian or want to learn more again about Christianity. But I can't, can't let go that it's just all like this Jungian sort of metaphorical thing. And then so yeah, I've been talking a lot. I don't know if I should pause there. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, okay, great. And so my first year at Divinity School, this was right before COVID. I was starting to like get involved

in local psychedelic groups. I even started something at the Divinity School. I was finding there were a lot of people who were getting more interested in trying to study and take this seriously, but also were not, uh, talking about it openly just yet. Again, this is 2019, 2019, 2020. Okay. Yeah. Now once COVID hit, if you were in the psychedelic world, um, you would remember that like a lot of, there was all of a sudden it's like everybody

had time to do the project they had been putting off, right? As we all did in COVID. And a lot of psychedelic stuff started happening during COVID, a lot of online kind of meeting groups and different projects. I actually started working as a project manager for a group of ayahuasca churches that were organizing around their religious freedom rights,

trying to make their practices better, all this. So I got pretty well acquainted with how things were working on the backend and the sincerity of some of the people and some of the earnestness that was there. In addition to just the earnestness and all the people and friends I had made over the past, the years prior to that, that were, you know, they were really meaningful

in a lot of those ceremonies. There was a lot of sharing the different traumas we had been through in a way of those ceremonies. There was a lot of sharing the different traumas we had been through in a way more open and vulnerable than maybe we had had a chance to before with most people in our lives trying to really work on stuff. There was something that felt authentic about that. Sure. And so all this was going okay. It was going pretty good. I did start having some, I don't know, they weren't even total misgivings, but there's certain things when you start experiencing some

cognitive dissonance because thanks to people like Michael Pollan, who is, uh, one of the most, um, probably these the biggest storyteller and a marketer for the psychedelic movement. Um, you, you know, you would have had all, you would have enough data and lines that you, you could know what to say. Well, these are perfectly safe. Well, these are except, you know, you should have a guide, but, you know, they're basically safe besides that. Or if you have, there's no such thing as a bad trip, just a challenging experience, would be one thing we would say. There would be, you know, if you do develop long term, mental health issues from it, well, you just had a pre existing condition. And so it's not you can't blame the psychedelic for that you just had a preexisting condition. And so it's not, you can't blame the psychedelic for that. You just had a preexisting condition.

There are problems with each of these ideas that maybe I can talk about later, but there were lots of things like that that started making contact with my on the ground experience with these different communities. Again, with earnest people, well-meaning people, but it was harder, began being hard to ignore that there were a lot of people

who did have ongoing, some kind of mental health issues that I couldn't pin my finger on. I still couldn't diagnose them from, from where I am. But there was something not right there. There were a lot of, um, I started learning. There was a darker history to psychedelics that had been covered up a little bit and had not been fully discussed that there were, there were a lot of people who had, um, had really dark and hard problems with psychedelics and that there were a lot of people who had really dark and hard problems

with psychedelics and that there were serious risks. And it might have been, might be a minority of people, but some people really have life-altering, life-ending problems that arise from these. And that starts to brush up against the self-mythology that I had been participating in that, you know, these were the future of religion. This was better than old school, like the old traditional dogmatic religions,

that there was love and light, you know, something that sometimes people will say even within the scene. Like it's all, it's kind of making fun of the sort of like rose colored glasses that we, that people can have. Like it's all good vibes only kind of thing. It got harder to sit with that when there were people that were clearly worse for wear. And so, and at that point,

risks had still barely been studied. And to this day, risks are really understudied about psychedelics. There's a lot that people don't know. And I will say Michael Pollan's book did a poor job communicating that, that I think it really gave people too much confidence on the relative risk and that many people have had lives

harmed because they overestimated just how safe these substances were. Part of this is exacerbated because there's a lot of survivorship bias who, I mean, and it kind of makes sense that if you're in psychedelics, you probably have only, either only had good experiences or any challenging experiences you've had, you've known how to make sense of them

and come out on the other side. There's, it logically doesn't make sense that if you've had, if you have had a really harmed life from psychedelics, you don't want to be in professional psychedelics with a bunch of other people telling you how amazing you are. And actually you didn't have a bad trip. You just had a challenging experience. And so starting to realize there were distortions

to my truth seeking process, just by the nature of the social setting I was in. Not any, and some of that's like not any one person's fault, right, it's just kind of the way groupthink operates. And so some of this was starting to disquiet me, but I still really wanted to make it work with, especially with Christianity. I was getting a little more into Christianity.

In fact, I had one more, one last, and still my last ayahuasca experience, was this experience of... I had a visual of Christ in the storm, like in a boat just by himself in the storm, and he was like absorbing all this white light into him. And it was something about that was like, it felt deep. Again, I say it now and it doesn't sound like that deep,

but it felt really deep and profound to me at the time about the calming presence of Christ, about in the midst of whatever chaos I was going through, that Christ really was there absorbing chaos on my behalf. And so I didn't, and I say that, did not say Christ was actually there, because I'm metaphysically not sure about that, but just saying that was my visual. And I was deeply still trying to make sure, make all this work.

Well, COVID ended, and I went back to school and I took a class on Thomas Merton and that really profoundly changed my life. I'm sure you're familiar with Thomas Merton, 20th century Catholic mystic. And there was so much about him that resonated that, and he still resonates with me as somebody who was deeply much about him that resonated that, and he still resonates with me, as somebody who was deeply curious about other religions

and other faiths and treated them with a spirit of generosity and charity. Someone who had a journey that felt really similar to mine as he talked about in Sevastory Mountain. But moreover, he was incisive into spiritual matters and in a way that I just had was unparalleled Moreover, he was incisive into spiritual matters and in a way that I just was unparalleled anything I'd come across in any of my psychedelic, my own personal explorations or my reading.

He just had an insight and a way of cutting through a lot of stuff that was what it stopped me. I mean, it changed my life that whole semester. I can still picture myself in that class. And so it was around that time that I was also, and through him and through other experiences I was happening, you know, by that point, I had become more confessional of a Christian.

I had left Unitarianism, took about a month in the UCC, the United Church of Christ, and then came back to my Presbyterian upbringing. And had, by that point, I was like praying with church ladies over Zoom and found there was a lot more like purity and love and joy and like learning how to pray through a bunch of sweet church ladies. And the simplicity of the gospel and the beautiful simplicity of the body of Christ just

in a local working class Boston neighborhood. And so by that point, when I was meeting Merton, I was also trying to be a disciple of Christ more seriously. Instead of DIY spirituality, I realized I needed to let Jesus be the boss instead of me. I had to really learn how to subsume what I wanted in my preferences and try to do things the way that, you know, a lot of other people, a lot of spiritually wiser people before me have done

and started realizing I had a lot of other people, a lot of spiritually wiser people before me have done and started realizing I had a lot to learn. And I had a lot to learn about what Christian mysticism was because mysticism was something that was always thrown about and still is a big part of psychedelic culture. And it's often described in very thin ways, I think, or just very universalist ways through perennial philosophy. Aldous Huxley in particular, having that influence,

this idea that all religions are, you know, all psychedelics are at the core of all religion, mysticism is at the core of all religion. You know, Thomas Merton, I don't know if he would totally reject that idea, but he was a lot more specific, shall we say, in Christian mysticism. And his writings would point out about how, it's really a disciplined life, it's a scriptural life, and it's really actually not about experience chasing.

The irony is that I thought I was a mystic before through all this stuff, but he was saying you actually don't want to trust your experience quite so much. There's a lot of layers of things between how you are thinking of God and yourself. And so that started really wrestling with that. In fact, I put out a piece during that class

about like, I argued with Thomas Merton from beyond the grade in an open letter about why I thought he was wrong about psychedelics because he had written a couple of things. I started coming across the things he had written during the sixties about psychedelics. And I was like, but he just didn't get it. If only he had tripped, he would have really gotten it.

That's great. And yeah, and then there continued being more issues from there, but maybe I'll take a beat, see if you have any questions. Oh, this is great. I love the story you just shared. Appreciate your openness and honesty about it.

By the way, for people that are watching going, what is DIY spirituality? It's do-it-yourself spirituality. That's the key. And psychedelics and new age, you see this common thing of just kind of tailoring your own spirituality as opposed to tailoring yourself to a truth

outside of you, a more confessional faith. Now, I do want to, I have so many questions for you, but I read Michael Pollan's book, How to Change Your Mind Over Christmas, like twice, and I was talking with my wife about it, and I have doctors in my family running by, I'm trying to understand this. One of the big things that stood out to me

is how there has been a movement going back, as far as I can tell, maybe in the 50s, where he uses words like evangelism and the gospel of LSD to promote this on the culture. So there's a group of people who have a strategy and they are intent upon convincing the culture to believe this. Now I'm not putting any mal intent. That is not my point. I think what you said earlier is what they think is right and they think is good. So this is not about intent.

But is he right about that? And are there certain truths that are hidden from us as we look at the wider culture because of a narrative that's maybe being pushed in different circles. Oh yeah, I mean, that, I would say that's absolutely true. And he documented that length. And as you said, the feeling is from the psychedelic perspective

that these drugs were unfairly maligned in the sixties. That, I mean, and Paul repeats this, and I think it's a way too simplistic view of history. He kind of blames it all on Nixon and the drug war and the sort of Christian backlash. But it's true that there was, though, just to stick to your question, that there were a lot of people... In don't know, in the sixties, it was a little more, I would say it was an oddly more honest, um, I think that were more, it was more sincere in certain ways. There were strategists, but there that it was more, um, the, the strategy

started emerging when psychedelics went underground, um, for decades. So in the nineties, is that kind of when it went underground? The 70s was the last time there was a... For a while, the 70s was the last kind of legal psychedelic trial. They mostly ended by the late 60s, but there were a few... So the 70s and 80s and 90s, they were almost all moved to underground scenes. Now, there would still be people, as they would say,

keeping the flame alive, especially in the Bay Area, doing underground therapy and different experimental forms of psychedelic therapy and things of that nature. I've read some of their books and, you know, they were trying to, again, highly experimental forms of therapy, combining with lots of other different forms of therapy together. In the 1990s, though, is when this figure, Bob Jesse, who is also featured in Michael Pollan's book, he emerged through this Council of spiritual practices, and that's when the more concrete strategizing

started emerging, realizing that there was a way to, for culture to start to accept the spiritual components of these, as well as potential therapeutic, but for the culture to accept these, we had to go through science in order to, And so, you know, I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point.

And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point.

And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a bad name and the like, so it's, you know, like, and they felt that again, they had felt like it was really unfairly maligned for so long, you know, this was what you had,

this is what they had to do is to come up with research that could be done through, you know, I can't remember the exact phrasing they used, but basically they had to put on very high profile research that couldn't be, you know, through, and they ended up doing it through Johns Hopkins and Roland Griffiths in particular, who had been a renowned scientist and other,

earlier in his career, And they used his reputation to get controversial research restarted. They had an early study and came out in 2006 that attempted to study and verified what they would call the mystical experience that really set off all the modern research that we know about now for the past 20 years. The strategizing continued with, from there, you'll hear figures

like Rick Doblin, who's also featured in that book. You've probably might have heard his name before, has been very open about this is what he calls political science and that they understand the politics of the situation. And so one reason that veterans were used for MDMA therapy in particular is because that's a very popular political group. And nobody, you know, still to this day, myself, nobody, nobody's against veterans getting healing, right?

Nobody, veterans who have suffered tremendous PTSD, I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't want people to get that kind of healing if it's available. And so there's aspects that there are still, there's still truth and there's still signal, shall we say. I still believe in the long run that we will suss out kind of true medical uses for it through more balanced research.

But yeah, the fact is that this was all strategized for particular, for the political cache of certain groups and certain studies. Now there have since been lots of studies that I don't think are trying to be political per se or trying to do that. But they are, they all, all they do, this whole environment is all emerged and sort of formed by this larger, this larger emphasis on PR. I mean,

for especially in the mid 2010s, like the, the, the, the great Satan to that group was if there was a backlash on psychedelic research, if there was a PR backlash. And so when abuses happened, those got pushed aside. Those didn't get highlighted in Michael Pollan's book or in the Netflix series. When, when more and more stories of harm came there was a lot of emphasis to not talk about it. It was really only starting in around 2023 that they

started talking about risks more openly. And even then, Pauline has talked, Pauline talked about this with Bob Jesse at a psychedelics conference. Even then talking about risk was pitched to the psychedelic community as good PR, realizing, hey, if we don't talk about risk at all, there's gonna be an even bigger backlash. And so we need to be smart about how we talk about risk

in order for the public to continue, to continue supporting psychedelic research. So it's, in that sense, it's very cynical, a lot of the process. And I have to say, the more I reflected on it while I was figuring out where I, you know, as I was wrestling with a lot of this over the past several years, it doesn't necessarily

lead to principled science doesn't necessarily lead to first principles truth seeking. When, when the when there is such a strong culture of whatever this is all has to serve the mission. This all has to be good PR. That leads to a lot of smaller problems and as it turns out larger problems. So that's a large part. And through different sources like there's a podcast, fairly obscure podcast by James Kent called Dose Nation that really went into a lot of the dark side of psychedelics.

And he is a former psychonaut himself or deeply embedded from the scene going back into the early 90s. You started getting a sense that the perception had been really one-sided and colored one way. And I personally could no longer, just for me, just for me and my own decision-making, realizing I could not trust the science

that had been presented to me. I mean, how could I know what was the true risk of engaging in these? How could I really know what I was getting into or what I was encouraging somebody else to get into. The science simply was not as good as advertised. So it seems like you're saying there are some positives that are proclaimed, but there's also a dark side. And I'm curious how you balance the two of these, because for me, I think

it's really interesting. There was a New York Times article about the very veterans you're discussing a few weeks ago, talking about some are at the point of just like brokenness desperate go down to Mexico Maybe it's ayahuasca or some of the psychedelic and it helps them Like I look at that and I had a discussion with my co-host of a separate podcast I do he was much more amenable to a medical use of this Since I had read Paulins book and he says in his book He's like there's a movement towards medicalizing marijuana and then it's reached the wider culture

We need to take similar steps with psychedelics. I'm like timeout I think there might it's like once you've let the dinosaur out of the cage You're not getting it back in. Now part of what Paulin argues is he says, well there were abuses in the 60s, these are bad trips, and if we just do in a controlled environment then it's much more positive. And that feels to me like we did Jurassic Park and then now we're doing Jurassic World. This time we'll get it right. So I guess my question is, how do you balance the negative and balance the positive? I guess one more thing is I read a book by Rod DeRere, Greek Orthodox, called Living in Wonder.

And it's all about this interest in the spiritual, in the supernatural and the spiritual today. And part of his journey to faith was through psychedelics. this interest in the spiritual, in the supernatural and the spiritual today. And part of his journey to faith was through psychedelics. And he says at the same time, he has strong concern about using them and warns people. And he said something effective, if we don't recognize that positives come out of this sometimes, we're going to lose all credibility. So how do you balance that in your own mind and research and experience? No, and that's absolutely true.

And it's something I always want to try to balance. It's hard when you feel like the message has been so positive for such a long time and wanting to balance it out with a negative, but it is true that there is signal. There's certainly true that people have gotten healing, right? Like I've known plenty of people who have. I don't think every story of healing is bogus or anything like that at all. I think that's a, it's certainly something that is worthy of long-term study.

I think what's, and I even think, and I still think from a Christian ethic, we can support healing through these substances. However, there are just tremendous amount of caveats with that. There's actually a recent paper by Thomas Carroll, who is a Catholic doctor and PhD from Rochester, New York. And he is on the psychedelic renaissance from a Catholic perspective. And again, from a medical doctor perspective, which I am not.

And essentially, what he's boiled down to is they are the mystical experiences that is inducted through psychedelic use really makes the medical use from a Christian perspective hard to wrestle with. In the long run, there are some psychedelics being, novel psychedelics being studied to try to remove the trip, so to speak, to try to make it less psychoactively potent, but still perhaps have some of the other properties that are healing. And that from Carol's perspective,

that would be fine. But it's really difficult when there's, because the spiritual properties are particularly disruptive and impactful on one's mind and will and hermeneutics and decision making. And there's a lot that's really it's that's that still is to wrestle with. I mean, my I think I also still think that God, you know, God, you know, obviously can and does work through however he wants to work. And so even if we feel that these are, you know, some people feel like they're portals to demonic activities or negative entities or however they call it, there still is a possibility that God is offering healing through some of these. What I, what I changed my mind on, no pun intended, was that to continue to use psychedelics for spiritual development, I don't think maps on with Christian spirituality.

I do think that as we continue researching and as this psychedelic research continues going on, which I expect it will continue going on for decades, that will hopefully give us more time to suss out the signal from the noise and determine, okay, what's actually, how, what do we actually know about the calculus of risk versus harm, first of all? Because people have been harmed in controlled settings and clinical trials,

that they were told are perfectly safe and abuses still happened, and long-term negative experiences still happened. But we still don't have a good idea how often that happens. What's the prevalence of that versus other things? And so, as we suss out over a long period of time, what's the genuine medical use? I do think there are ways to help people maybe make meaning from their psychedelic experiences in a Christian way, without saying that therefore you can continue exploring

as a psychedelic explorer, and that's something that is consonant with the Christian tradition. I think there's a lot of reason why it's not consonant with with Christian spirituality So tell me a couple of those reasons why you have big caution. This would be more biblical or theological reservations with Christians using psychedelics for the most part without the very nuanced caveats that are possible. What tensions are there spiritually or theologically speaking for Christians?

Well, the first biggest and obvious one that for many people would be sufficient reason is biblical prohibitions on pharmakea, which is translated as sorcery or witchcraft. So whenever whenever we see sorcery or witchcraft in the Bible, it's usually pharmakea that's being translated, the Greek or sorcerer or a witch is often a pharmacos or a pharmacou. And so this is almost always associated. There are multiple meanings in the Greek corpus about what pharmakea means. But in the biblical context, it almost always has to do with drugs for spiritual purposes, the use of drugs for spiritual purposes.

And no matter which section, which broad section of scripture you look at, whether it's Old Testament in the law or the prophets or in the New Testament in Galatians or with even the Book of Acts, you know, one of my pet peeves is when people say the Bible is clear, because it's often not clear when we say that, but the Bible, and no offense if you enjoy saying that, but the Bible is overwhelmingly consistent, I would say, that pharmacia is associated with darkness and evil,

and even in a Christian ethic, I mean, this is in Galatians 5.19, pharmakea is listed alongside of practices that a Christian should not engage in, that are just, even as we're navigating, as we know, we are navigating constantly as Christians between what's the ethic of the gospel, how to not be antinomian

while also not being legalist. Paul gives, you know, these group of practices that, okay, this is a good radar for whether you're living in the spirit or not. And Pharmacy is listed with that alongside all these other places that I mentioned in scripture. So that's the basic reason. But I would say there's a lot more reasons,

including when we dig down into why is bad, why is pharmacia an issue? And a lot of it boils down to idolatry and to manipulation. So with the problem, one of the problems with pharmacia in general is that we are engaging in through the use of drugs for spiritual purposes, we are entering in and trying to manipulate the spiritual world

to our advantage, right? And some people have seemed to be successful doing that ostensibly to some success. However, there is an aspect of that which is, that's a power that perhaps is not meant for us is one aspect of it. Another aspect is that, these one aspect of these drugs for whatever reason is they

simulate profound meaning. Like I mentioned before, um, they feel like you are having a deeply, I'm not going to say a hundred percent of the time, but they reliably feel like you're having some profound meaning. In fact, one of the Hopkins studies said, you know, these are, this is a top five. Experience of somebody's life on par with the birth of their child. Steve jobs used to say that top two or three experience of his life. Yeah.

And, and I would, I used to tout that too, as like proof of concept that these were, um, spiritually powerful things. But then I started questioning, is it actually, is it proper and fitting that that should be, that should feel as meaningful as the birth of my child if I am blessed to have children? Is that earned in a certain way? I kind of understand why people say that. I understand why I felt it,

why they were the most powerful and profound experiences for me at one point. But then sometimes as time go by, you realize the profundity that you felt at that moment, maybe didn't have the same lasting power. In the meantime, you might've been making big life decisions based on that, but also because of the profundity, they make it quite prone to idolatry.

And I wrote about this in a Christianity Today piece and some other places. But this is something Thomas Merton called the Illuminism, the idolatry of experience. And it's something that can happen with all kinds of mysticism, but particularly these experiences, is you start associating God with the feeling you had of God while taking these substance, which is not the same. God is God and I can never fully fathom or experience him.

And I think most people would say that, but also you start having these experiences can have a tremendously outsized impact on your life, even if you're not regularly tripping. Like myself, you start shaping your life to figure out how to promote them, figure out how to use them, how to spread the good news, as it were. So those are a couple of experiences. Another thing that was really compelling for me from Thomas Merton about issues with this was what he wrote to Aldous Huxley in the late 50s, which was talking about the freedom of God. And the problem that, and this ties also to Farmakia and what we see

in the New Testament. If you remember Simon the Sorcerer in Book of Acts, Simon who practiced pharmacia apparently. He senses power from Peter, the apostles, and he wants in, he offers money for it, and he receives one of the strongest rebukes that there is in the Book of Acts, which is,

you thought you could buy the Holy spirit with money. This is essentially what it's pharmacia is trying to do. Or in psychedelics for, I would say Christian purposes, it's almost inevitable that you feel like you're, you are in some way trying to control God by saying, I'm going to take this and then I'll have my God experience. And Merton was saying saying actually true mysticism and true grace Remembers God's freedom and God can choose to come or not whatever you're doing. Like it like it once you start associating

Some act or some substance or some anything and this doesn't have to do with drugs, but just anything we do as Christians It's a reporter reminder Once you think you can make God come to you and just summon him up, that's a tremendous problem on grace. It's not really respecting God's freedom in the matter. And so that was really, that was a really impactful thing. He was also in that same vein because of all these different reasons and some of the risks I talk about

and the unknown state of the risks. But we know some percentage of people are harmed. We know however overall safe they are, or maybe, that we know there is some percentage of people that are going to be worse for wear, and, or are going to overdo it. So even if we, maybe people, somebody is listening to this and is saying,

well, I know for me, I have it figured out. Like I've got a good practice. I know I'm not, I haven't lost my mind. I know it's helped me, it know for me, I have it figured out. Like I've got a good practice. I know I haven't lost my mind. I know it's helped me, it's healed me, and I can unite it with my Christian practice. You know, there are a couple of things in Corinthians in particular that started informing me, especially when talking about causing somebody else

to stumble, right? So if we start promoting this and you know somebody else is gonna get hurt or somebody else is gonna be a problem for somebody else to stumble, right? So if we start promoting this and you know, somebody else is gonna get hurt or somebody else is gonna, it's gonna be a problem for somebody else, that's obviously causing somebody else to stumble. And as Paul reminds us, the Christian ethic is self-sacrifice for the sake of other people, not, well, you do what you, you know,

you should sacrifice on my behalf. You know, I'm sorry that you're gonna be hurt, but I'm gonna have a good time. And there was something dark about that too with thinking about, for me, parable of the lost sheep. When Christ obviously reaches out for the lost sheep, goes finds the lost sheep, no matter if the 99 are good, if there's one who's not, he seeks them out.

If I were to continue promoting psychedelics as a Christian path, knowing people would be hurt, percentage, just as a believer in math, then I'm saying it's kind of an inversion of the lost sheep. It's saying well The lost sheep are a rounding error as long as we're having a as long as we're connecting to God It sucks for the people who are gonna have long-term harm from this But they just don't they you don't want to demonize the drug. Do you you don't want to be a hateful person? Do you? and so Realizing too that there is an element of pharmacia, both in scripture and both as we sometimes see in culture.

There's an element of, and also we see it in medical research and medical research abuses that have nothing to do with psychedelics in general. There's a book called The Occasional Human Sacrifice by Carl Elliott that's talking about modern day whistleblowing and medical research. So it had nothing to do with psychedelics at all. But just pointing out that there was a lot of unethical medical behavior that boils down to people, some scientists deciding there's an acceptable amount of human sacrifice for the name of human, for scientific progress to be made.

But we don't, but the people who being studied and given that are not privy to that same benefit of whether they're not really necessarily asked whether you're happy to be the human sacrificed on that. And so there's a lot that just, all things together. And sometimes I also have to remember like, what's the alternative? Because I remember when I was just so deep on this, and I even I was really wrestling with all saying all this that I've said, and still not really wanting to give up psychedelics and still wanting to like still have it be my personal practice and maybe I could privately do it. I kind of started feeling like the rich young man in the gospels and being instead of instead of rich with wealth my

my possession that I couldn't give up was my was what I thought was my connection to God through psychedelics. And it just kept nagging at me that actually, in the true taking up your cross and walking with Christ, that has to be given up too. If it's in the context of everything else, I really needed to give that up as well. And instead, what Merton talked about is a mysticism, he called it is-ness, like I-S, is-ness. Basically, mysticism, instead of trying to be turned on,

which he saw as inauthentic spirituality and inauthentic mysticism, instead of trying to have big experiences and be something you're not or change your state, change your way of being. The mystic tradition, the Christian mystic tradition, is a lot about accepting grace as it's given to you, about accepting yourself as God made you,

accepting yourself as you are and accepting reality as it is. And it's a lot simpler that way than the different burdens of trying to make psychedelic spirituality work, which involves, it does involve a lot of work, involves a lot of planning, involves a lot of particular, you have to structure your whole life at times around how to make this work versus the simple joy of the gospel even on a mystical level. Joe, those were some fascinating insights how to think about this biblically. I want you to roleplay with me here for a minute. Imagine you get contacted by the one and only Joe Rogan, who has been probably talking about this and popularizing psychedelics as much as anybody. And he goes, Joe Welker, I want a different take on this.

Come on my show. And he says, you've been talking about this. Give me your take on Joe Rogan. How would you respond in that setting to somebody who's so evangelistic and enthusiastic and has been promoting it? First, I would say, Joe, it's strange to hear from you because I was listening to you in 2010 when you were talking about fleshlights, but, you know, and I was back then. And anyway, I don't know what I would say.

I would be open to the conversation. I doubt that would ever happen, but how I would respond to his particular perspective. I mean, all I can do is tell my story, right? All I can do is explain the different things I've seen, kind of what I've shared with you. I think, again, there's something a lot, Again, there's a there's just something a lot.

There's just the there's a certain logic in a weird way with. Again, we talked about earlier, but whether it's DIY spirituality or individualistic spirituality, where maybe you as an individual, if you're just an individual, not in the church, you're just doing your own thing. You can take risk into your own hands. Okay. But it's, it's, it's just different when we're in the church. It's just different when we're representing Christ. It's just different when we are a body of Christ sacrificing for each other and sacrificing the things that might give us pleasure or that we might enjoy or that seem important to us. I would say it's just different as a Christian. I don't know how you'd respond to that. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, I wish that conversation would happen someday,

but who knows? So one of the reasons I wanted to do this show is because I've sensed just numerically, when you look at the studies, culturally and personally, an increased interest in psychedelics. So just, I think it was last week in the Wall Street Journal, there was a story about how a number of kind of millennials, Gen Z-ers are not using alcohol, but they're showing up at parties and using mushrooms to get kind of a hit, but without alcohol because they think alcohol is bad. So that's interesting. Just this week, I reached out to a friend of mine who's been an atheist for 15 years and we hadn't talked to him.

I was like, hey, how's it going? He's like, you won't believe it. I started taking psychedelics and I believe there's one in this cosmic consciousness. And I was like, oh my goodness, we need to get coffee and catch up. There's this sense that it's like we're kind of back in the 70s and this fascination in psychedelics is just emerging. Do you sense that? And if so, why do you think that might be happening now? Oh, it's yeah, definitely since it although I, I think we're actually at an inflection point where people are starting to have more questions about psychedelics. But I definitely sensed it in the past 10 years, for sure. You know, I think it's in broader trends.

sure. You know, I think it's in broader trends. As people have gone away from religion, and for many good reasons and, and, and otherwise, you know, people, again, I can speak to my experience of wanting something authentic. And what what is more authentic than your own experience, you could say I don't, I'm not Sola Scriptura, but I'm Sola Experientia, right? Like I say I don't I'm not so less scriptural, but I'm so like experiential, right? Like I am. I don't know what else I can trust, but I can trust my own. I mean, this is what you say. You say I can trust my own experience or I know that I had this. There is, I think also a real need or a hunger for,

um, I mean, there's a, there's a perpetual need and desire for transcendence, obviously for healing too. Um, there is a desire for community, um, that people are missing desire to connect with nature and a hyper digital world that sometimes can come about through psychedelics. Um, there's a sense that some, whether it's for, for bad or for good or for good you can have a sense of spiritual revival I mean this is the story you're relaying from your friend obviously is something that I experienced I mean I had it's hard to

extract what it's hard to imagine what would have happened to me without that those being part of my experiences in terms of my my ultimate Christian path but I also know a lot of other Christians now since in the past few years, like Ashley Landy, who wrote a memoir about, called I think, The Thing That Made Everything Okay Forever, about her experience. There's a lot of, there are more and more people

who have just like the 70s actually in the Jesus People movement, people who started off in, through psychedelic experiences, having some experience of realizing there was something spiritual, there was something more. And maybe that's part of the hunger and part of the thirst is, you know, we do have a materialistic society.

We do have a sometimes reduction society. We do have a reduct sometimes reductionist, reductionistic way of viewing things. And psychedelics can say, well, there's something more than that. Now, there are a lot and there are, again, a lot of people who then transition from that into saying, OK, well, maybe, maybe the church has something to offer. And maybe there's maybe there's something. There's more wisdom in these old teachings about spirituality than I realized. And so I think those are some of the reasons maybe.

Yeah, that's helpful. It seems to me it's probably a coalescing of various factors. There's communication means today that people can spread the message and the gospel of psychedelics in a way maybe not in the past. Books, podcasters, people who believe in it like Joe Rogan. I think there's an awareness of just the brokenness and emptiness of secularism. We are just promised this secular utopia and like you've said a few times we have this deep spiritual yearning for authenticity. a few times we have this deep spiritual yearning for authenticity. I would argue even mental illness has risen. We've seen this in recent times and relational brokenness and anxiety. There's so many things just driving us to a solution to this.

Probably kind of a perfect storm that have come together behind it. Do you see a similar push? You've talked about how in kind of the wider culture, do you sense a push within the church to embrace and adopt this? Or is this still viewed as being so outside? Because I remember going back a decade, a handful of friends of mine started kind of getting on the bandwagon of promoting marijuana to the church.

Not a lot. It hasn't taken, but oftentimes it's by somebody who just, it really helped them in their own personal life and wants to help others, so I get it. I haven't sensed or seen that. Do you see that bubbling up in the church at all? Well, this was part of my journey

and when I became a whistleblower on a Johns Hopkins trial that involves some folks who were from the, again, it kind of was we talking about earlier about all these studies and the strategic nature of it and the PR push to get the wider culture to accept it. Part of that has been targeted, I believe, at religious people to get them to embrace. And there have been small pockets of people, small pockets of Christians, I wouldn't say there's a wider push at this point, from what I've

seen. But there are small pockets of of Christians who are trying to harmonize this. And, you know, I can't get into the details right now, but I wrote about some of this in my sub stack about my experience with some of that. And my experience of seeing how this, again, this example of a study that gave a lot of Christian clergy psychedelic drugs, gave them psilocybin mushrooms, of Christian clergy, psychedelic drugs, gave them psilocybin mushrooms, was part of this overall PR strategy aimed at what I believe the church.

And again, it's long and a complicated story, but that's all on my sub stack for those who want to go on a deep dive on that. That's interesting. I saw you have a ton of articles there and you're right. If you want to persuade a certain segment of people, you want to show that it has scientific credentials but if you get church authority behind it supporting it, that's going to give permission. I remember years ago Time Magazine had an interview with a abortion doctor who said

he did it out of love for his neighbor. I was teaching high school and I asked my students, I said, why are they interviewing him? And the reason is because at that time, I don't know now, time wanted you to think that you can reconcile the two of these and just that interviewing itself is powerful rather than Lila Rose or Scott Klusendorf or somebody who is a Christian and represents the mainstream view reasoning against it.

So one huge takeaway from this is just I want people to be aware of there's a lot going on behind the scenes. There's a PR campaign. The science itself can be affected by profoundly biased by worldview good intention or or not. And don't just believe everything you see and everything you hear. Now if someone stayed with us, Joe, to this point, maybe out of curiosity, maybe they're a seeker, and they go, Joe, I'm actually using psychedelics, and they're fine. They're helping me.

I don't have the bad experience that you had. What would you say to somebody in that state and also maybe why they should consider a Christian worldview? Oh man. I don't want to give a cop-out answer, but you know from my pastoral perspective, it really depends on the specific person. I mean, there's more context to any individual's life and what's going on with them, where they're coming from, um, what their relationship to the church is, um, what are their specific needs? What are their specific reasons that they've gotten into psychedelics? I mean, I think I would share some of what I've shared here before. Um, I, again, I can,

I think probably the most effective and just the most honest thing I can do is just talk about my own experience and also witness that like those, like my sweet Zoom church ladies and a million other little things like that in the church in my return to Christianity and return to Christ, I've gotten a lot more out of the simple and the the easy scripture and prayer. I mean, that's really like, they sound it sounds reductive, maybe to some psychonauts, but like, trying to invite people to try to

have a relationship with, with that if they if they are, if they are interested in the in Christianity, if they're feeling called by Christ. For some people are just not going to be interested in that at all. But I think what's coming to mind also, I mentioned Jung earlier, Carl Jung, who's a lot of, there's some irony because a lot of his concepts became deeply influential on the psychedelic Movement on the New Age movement as well But he was actually against psychedelics in his limited overlap that he had with them

he talked about how you need to beware unearned wisdom as he talked about and the long story short of his reasoning was he was all about dream analysis. And that's a way to analyze the unconscious contents of one's psyche. And he was saying dreams are basically the natural way that we are given. And he wouldn't say God given, but we could say God given way to process our unconscious contents as looking at our dreams and figuring it out that way. Kind of giving you a bite sized amount of unconscious contents as looking at our dreams and figuring it out that way. Kind of giving you a bite sized amount of unconscious contents.

Whereas psychedelics from a pure materialistic standpoint, perhaps they are just flooding your consciousness with unconscious contents, like a waking dream kind of thing. Perhaps this is bringing up a lot of stuff underneath the surface. They're probably bringing up way more than we are designed and meant to handle on our own. That's why perhaps a lot of people end up having

some struggles and some long-term health issues with it. I would say to the person who's still engaging, over time, it might be okay for you now, but you might eventually run into problems. Um, and sorry, one second. I got it. I have to edit this out cause I, something just came up on my, okay. I'm so sorry about that.

No, you're good. Keep going. No worries. All right, so That's some Christian music pop in my It's good but distract and so Young was talking about how There's too much. It was too much for you to process It was likely just too much for you to process by having psychedelic experiences bring all this out. I would say there's a similar thing,

taking that same idea and also applying it to spiritual concepts where I've gotten, A, scripture has just been a lot more alive for me than it ever was from before earlier in my life. And scripture gives us, I guess enough that we can handle at one time. I mean, we could, we'll go our whole lives, never mastering scripture, never mastering the Bible, never fully understand it will never, you will never exhaust it as a spiritual resource. Um, and it will, uh, and so that's what I would hopefully just

share and witness with that person. No, that's great. I don't think it's a cop-out at all because people can be motivated to be into psychedelics for a lot of different reasons and have different experiences with the church. And there's probably some overlap, but let's meet that individual where they are. Now, I heard you on an interview with a couple others talking about your story, like a two hour interview on this topic, and someone in there shared, I don't think it was you, how now they'll just lay down

on a couch, close their eyes, and have like their spouse read Revelation to them, and it's this crazy like vision that's almost mystical. And I'm like, I don't know that I've thought about doing that. Now, he wasn't'm like, I don't know that I've thought about doing that. Now he wasn't saying this, but it would concern me to say to somebody who's taken psychedelics, oh, you think you get a trip?

Come over to Christianity and you can get a better trip. That would be a profound mistake. I think the reason someone should be Christian is because it's true. Jesus is God and there is real spiritual healing found in Christ. When we experience that, then there's powerful experiences we have. Like it could be Christian music, listening to Amazing Grace. I was sitting in my car a while ago and I was just,

I literally sat there and I was moved to tears. It can be reading the scriptures like you said in different ways. It can be in prayer. There are powerful experiences that you can have as a Christian, but let's not play the game. It almost sounds like purity culture that would say, oh, you think sex in the world is good? Come over to the church, you'll have better sex.

I'm like, wait a minute, that's not the motivation and reason to come over. But let's ask the question, if God is the one who designed this and we experience it as he does, there is a certain flourishing that we experience. So you're nodding your head, I'm assuming that you're agreeing with me on that general point. Let me ask this before I wrap up. Did I miss anything? Anything I was supposed to ask you? Just any important points you want people to know about psychedelics or thinking about them Christianly or concerns or did we cover it? I think we covered it. I could go on and on about this topic.

There's always more to discuss and more to talk about but and I'm sure I didn't say everything perfectly or with perfect oh my goodness don't worry about that you know I I appreciate you having me on and I appreciate the opportunity and yeah thank you well I think my audience will realize why I invited you on you described being in Bart Ehrman's class, you're like, I really like that guy. You talked about people who are promoting you know, psychedelics, but they're doing it because they think it's good even though you differ over it. So that charity, I really appreciate. Folks, comment down below if you want me to have Joe back

and if you're like, here's an angle that we think you should go tied to psychedelics. Let me know, is this the kind of topic you want me to explore more on this channel? Are there other guests that you would recommend on this channel that I should talk with? Let me know if this is helpful, because personally I found this one of the most interesting interviews I've done

in a long time. Do I have a last question for you? You mentioned a sub stack. If people want to follow you, I've done in a long time. Do I have a last question for you? You mentioned a sub stack. If people want to follow you, or are there other book recommendations you have on this? Yours or somebody else's? Yeah, like I said, I have two sub stacks.

I have one that's just my sermons reproduced as essays, but then I have another one called psychedelic candor. So if I have more on this subject to write, that's where you would, you would find my writings on that. I mentioned it before, but I could mostly plug my friend Ashley Landy's book. Um, the thing, the thing that would make everything okay forever. I think I'm getting that title right. Um, but it's a, it's a memoir about her experience that, um, from being a psychedelic person to Christ and a lot of it resonated for me

There's a lot of other books on out there that but that's the main one. I would I would recommend that's great I love it. You said your dad's a pastor, right? So pastor son leaves the faith into psychedelics Unitarian Church fast back to the faith. Now a pastor, come full circle, man. There are way more angles in this story. Even your account of deconstruction, maybe we can come back to.

Folks, let me know if you want to have him or Ashley on to explore this further. And before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other shows coming up on all sorts of topics, apologetics, worldview, and culture that you won't want to miss. We're gonna do one on near-death experiences in a few months when atheists have near-death experiences.

That promises to be fascinating. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. We have a full distance program. And a lot of what we talked about today, spiritual warfare, theology, understanding the Bible, are the topics we'd love to equip you. That information is below.

Joe, wonderful job. Really appreciate you carving out the time. Thank you. Thank you, Sean.