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Ep. 27 - How Blogging Can Ruin Your Life w/ Benjamin L. Corey
72 Plays4 years ago
In my experience, doing anything worthwhile means that sooner or later, you're going to lock antlers with old guard apologists - people so entrenched in tradition or ideology that they just can't seem to understand a different perspective. Sometimes it's hard to believe that you're even reading the same source material as them!
Benjamin L. Corey is an activist, theologian, blogger, speaker, and author of "Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus" and "Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear Based Faith." Over the years, Ben has challenged the long-held positions of mainstream American Christianity on issues of equality, tolerance, and what it means to emulate the character of Jesus. We had a great time talking about his run-ins with church bureaucracy, and managing depression and other mental health conditions using ketamine and other psychedelics. Enjoy!
Check out this article that Ben wrote about spotting the antichrist: https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
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Transcript
Witchcraft Accusations at Woobie
00:00:00
Speaker
Went on to Woobie up in the Adirondacks and dropped out after a semester because I was accused of practicing witchcraft. How did that happen? I need to know, were you burning in your room or something?
00:00:16
Speaker
No, it was far far less sexy. I was just asking questions and I was pushing back against some of the bullshit and finally the Dean of men called me in he said look here it says here in the Bible that Rebellion is the same as witchcraft and I will not have you practicing witchcraft here in my campus So I was kind of like it got something in my pocket for you and
Family Gatherings and Toys
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grown Up Christian. I'm Casey. And I'm Sam. And we are enjoying Memorial Day weekend, doing family stuff. My sister and husband and my nephew came into town and he's coming up on two this year. I think in August he's turning two. Oh, nice.
00:01:22
Speaker
My parents have been so excited that, that they're coming, you know, cause it's been hard to, they've gone back to Atlanta a couple of times to see him and stuff, but like, uh, you know, he hasn't been able to come here. And so like, they've been like steadily stocking up on toys. I think, I think they've been stockpiling toys since like, uh, you know, since I was in high school or something like that.
00:01:46
Speaker
You know, in Home Alone 2, where he goes to like, like he walks into the toy store and it's just like, whoa, yeah, like magic music playing. I feel like that was my nephew coming into the house at my parents place just like basketball hoop, you know,
00:02:04
Speaker
I mean, he's got like trucks and cars and all of that stuff. He's got this little lawnmower that you fill with bubbles and when you push it, it pumps bubbles outside.
Living Near Family: Pros and Cons
00:02:15
Speaker
My kids had one of those. That's like such a good toddler toy. Dude, he put some miles on that thing yesterday.
00:02:28
Speaker
man, it's uh, yeah, so my, my kids are, they're near both grandparents. So like, they, I mean, they love it. It's like the grandparents love it. It's, and it's funny because, you know, just as much as anybody does, we've never really seriously considered like moving from the area we're in. But every time we talk about it, we're like,
00:02:51
Speaker
man, it would feel like so like, if you if you live far away from your parents, and you have kids, and it's like, that's just how the kids grow up. It's like seeing grandparents every once in a while, holidays when they fly out, whatever, like, that's just kind of the life you get used to. But even even Jill and I were talking about it in the car.
00:03:12
Speaker
And we're like, hey, it'd be cool. Because we just would love the idea of living near the ocean, living on the ocean in a place that's generally warm all the time because Massachusetts just isn't fun for weather. And so we were talking about it and my daughter's just like, but then we wouldn't be near Grammy. We're like,
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like, that's the first thing she thought of. And you're like, man, that would be really like, feel so like terrible to, to make.
Bizarre Soccer Metaphor Critique
00:03:42
Speaker
I know people do it and they move. And usually it's like, I don't know, if you have to move, you move. But you know, I don't have one of those jobs that takes me somewhere new and says,
00:03:51
Speaker
This is where you need to go now, but that would be the hardest thing about moving is just taking the kids away from the family. That's all real close. Yeah, that would be tough. I think like I was, we moved several times when I was a kid, so I was a little used to it.
00:04:08
Speaker
But like my grandparents on my dad's side would usually like end up moving wherever we went. Yeah. So you know, my grandpa and my dad, you know, work together in their business. So it was like, if we if we left the state, they were probably coming along pretty soon, you know? Man, so I told you that my daughter, both my kids are in soccer. And
00:04:35
Speaker
They use this method, so they're teaching the kids how to kick the ball right. And I did soccer when I was a kid, and I don't really recall much about it. I don't recall anything I was taught. I did it for a little bit, just like most little kids do. But my kids, as they're learning how to kick, they pick a very strange metaphor to teach children how to kick a soccer ball.
Exploring Short-term Mission Trips
00:04:58
Speaker
and i'm curious as to what your thoughts are on it so they're like all right so they put the ball on the ground and they're like you know like you know what mickey mouse looks like kids and they're like yeah and like he's got the big ears it's like attend like that's like mickey mouse laying on the ground and when you run up you stomp on his ear and then you kick him in the nose like the soccer balls his nose
00:05:21
Speaker
And that's like, all right, stop on his ear, kick him in the nose. Stop on his ear, kick him in the nose. And they just say it all day long. And I'm like, should I say something? That feels a little weird, a little aggro, but. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. And the kids are how old? Four, five. Oh, man. Yeah, that's a weird way to teach it.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I just, it came up, I thought, I kept meaning to mention it because I was like, I wonder if anyone else had this experience of being taught to kick a soccer ball by pretending Mickey Mouse is laying on the ground and you just stomp on his ear and kick him in the nose. Curb stomp Mickey Mouse, you know, like we taught. Yeah. So dumb. I think it's stupid.
00:06:09
Speaker
Even one of the coaches was like, I know it's kind of weird, but I think it's funny. We're like, that's cool that you think it's funny. I mean, it's not even funny. But it's also definitely a weird thing to teach three, four or five year olds. But anyway, that's just me. I'm just one of those progressive piece of shit parents who was too sensitive. So
00:06:30
Speaker
Moving on, I don't really care to spend a lot of time on that. But I did want to tell a story that Jill and I were talking about last night, we were talking about short term mission strips. And of course, those have come up a few times on the podcast, because how can they not? They're a big part of the lives of evangelical youth. But my wife went on one
00:06:53
Speaker
in college. I think I don't think it was through Liberty, but Liberty kind of like promoted it. Yo, yo, who was part of it was Ergen Kanner. So for people who don't know or remember, Ergen Kanner was like a campus pastor who did I think he did the Wednesday night church service for Liberty.
00:07:17
Speaker
He was a disgraced pastor. He told a lot of lies and they caught up with him eventually. But before that, people really liked him. He was edgy. He was one of the... I don't know. He's just kind of like a dick really, but people thought he was tough and cool. He probably had like... He had kind of a biker personality, I feel like, in some ways.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, he was entertaining. I took a New Testament class for him because you're obligated to, and I took Old Testament first with another guy, and it was so boring, it was miserable.
00:08:00
Speaker
And then I took Ernie and Candor's New Testament class, which met for three hours once a week. So it was all in one shot. Yeah. And it was actually like not a bad class. I mean, it was kind of entertaining and stuff. And I think that was he was like one of the few like big, like high level staff members there that I actually like didn't mind listening to. Yeah. So when the story came out that, you know, his entire
00:08:25
Speaker
origin story was fake. Yeah, that was yeah, I was like, Oh, my word. Yeah. Trust no one. Yeah, exactly. Now I had it for a Christian history class, too. I mean,
00:08:38
Speaker
No doubt about it, the guy was smart. Like so, you know, he disgraced pastor for sure. He had a lot of knowledge in his brain. Like he could he could recite most of Christian, a large portion of Christian history without having to like review texts and things like that. He was smart. So I took the class with him and it was good. I remember learning a good bit. Of course, it's like catered towards like reformation period and things related to where evangelical Christianity was born out of. But
00:09:08
Speaker
regardless. So there's this missions trip and it's a cruise, a missions trip cruise. I don't... This is just getting a little troop, too transparently vacationing. Yeah, yeah. So when Jill signed up for it, I wanted to be specific that even at that point in our lives, she was like, I'm doing this to go on a cruise. Like I want to go on a cruise,
00:09:35
Speaker
I can just, it's cheap because it's like in the name of Jesus and she was able to just go on a cruise. But while they're on this cruise, they, oh, and Hawk, I believe Hawk Nelson played on this cruise ship as well that week. I regret not asking John Steingard about that.
00:09:57
Speaker
I probably still should. I might have to hit him on Twitter or something. At him on Twitter and ask if he remembers going on a Christian cruise with Ergen Kanner associated with Liberty University.
Ethics of Mission Trip Practices
00:10:11
Speaker
So the intent was to go to different islands and go off on the islands for the day and do your gear.
00:10:18
Speaker
your missions work, right? So you dock your cruise ship and a bunch of white kids just kind of trickle off and they go spread the gospel to a bunch of poor kids who are just waiting there to hopefully get something from these.
00:10:37
Speaker
People it's really weird. So serve God so but they hit a tropical storm and They only were able to dock once they were not able to like go to do anything But the one that's just so fucked up the the one thing they did when they landed
00:10:58
Speaker
And my wife and her friend refused to even do this. When it was presented to them as how they were going to share the gospel with the children that day, my wife and her friend were like, there's absolutely no chance we're doing that. They were handing out tracts to these kids that looked like dollar bills. So the kids think they're real money. And they're flocking.
00:11:27
Speaker
around the bus. Kids are throwing the money, the money looking tracks out of the bus while they're driving and kids are like running to pick them up only to be crushed with disappointment when it's like spreading the gospel. Oh, it's like, what the fuck? Kind of dark, right? Super dark. Oh my God. That is like,
00:11:53
Speaker
That's unbelievable. That might be one of the worst ones I've ever heard. Those are people at the top who are putting this trip together. We're like, what?
00:12:05
Speaker
What can we do to get people to like really go for these trials, make them look like money, then they'll come running for it. It's like to have a zero disconnect. I mean, to be able to not have like any human connection to like, they have to be sociopaths, right? To think that like, this is a good idea.
00:12:24
Speaker
Well, it's a means to an end, you know, like, it doesn't matter what happens to poor people's bodies. It's only matters that they end up in heaven and with eternal life, you know, so you can do that sort of thing because, you know, your intentions are great. Oh, my God. So it's like you dock a cruise ship, which obviously in and of itself screams. We have money and we're coming here to vacation and a bunch of kids get off.
00:12:54
Speaker
And they start slinging money all around. I mean, everything about that is just the setup. To have no understanding of what the optics of that are and to not see it as a problem is, I mean, I guess that's why
00:13:16
Speaker
we've dealt with colonialism for a lot of human history. They're just like, this is great. We're great. You're going to love it. You're going to love us. You're going to see this ship coming in from a mile away. And you're going to anticipate these people coming in. And they just really believe that they have such an inflated ego about it. It's so wild.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Depending on where you go, I mean, you could get real creative with it too. I mean, you could have some that look like meal replacement bars. How do you make a gospel track appear to be like clean drinking water? I know, that's a tough one. We could put that to use in the US even. Yeah. Flint, Michigan just winging fake bottles of water out. You open the cap and it's just like a message in a bottle. Yeah.
00:14:08
Speaker
Where will you go when you die? Which is probably imminent. Yeah, which is gonna happen soon because you don't have clean drinking water, but. Dude, that's like the worst example I've ever heard, I think. Yeah. I mean, that's unbelievable. I forgot about that. I remember her going on that when, you know, because that was right after we started dating. This was a long time ago. I mean,
00:14:37
Speaker
had to have been like sophomore year, sophomore year college for so that was, I mean, that was, I mean, that's, we're getting old now, man. So that was a good bit back. So I had forgotten all about the story, though. And we just, she rehashed it last night, because I mentioned we had a conversation with somebody recently, on an upcoming episode about short term missions trips. And that's when
00:15:04
Speaker
And that reignited that memory for her. I was like, oh yeah, I went on this cruise once. And I was like, oh shit, I forgot about that. Calling a cruise a mission strip is one of the most unveiled attempts of missionary work, of being a vacation, for sure. Yeah. It's like the mission's equivalent of used car lots sending you that ad that looks like a handwritten letter until you open it.
00:15:34
Speaker
Oh, you qualify for, you know, near near nothing financing on your used Corolla. Yeah. Yeah, it's. And of course, I'm sure I don't I don't know how many kids they took, there was like, it obviously has a limit because, you know, you can only fit so many people on a cruise ship, but it
00:15:54
Speaker
It was a cruise. I mean, the entire time they were on it, it was like they had, there was like shows and I mean, there's like, you had all the food, you had the deck, everyone just hang out on the deck and chill by the pool. Like it was a legit vacation. And of course you throw in the tropical storm where you couldn't actually dock and to only get off the boat once you literally, of course you couldn't really vacation hard in the middle of the tropical storm. Everybody had to be inside. There were actually people on deck
00:16:20
Speaker
She said it was pretty scary because the waves were actually coming up over the deck of the cruise ship and splashing the deck. It was a lot. Now, those things, the way they're weighted, it's not like they're getting tossed around by the ocean, but there was all the warning.
00:16:39
Speaker
to get off the deck. Kids were all on the deck thinking, this is cool, wow, look at all this watching the waves and shit. And they're like, if you get hit by one of these waves, you will be sucked out into the ocean, you idiots.
Boat Adventures and Motion Sickness
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it depends on the boat too. Like my parents went on one when I was a kid for a work thing. And it was like one it was just like one that went in between the Hawaiian islands, you know, they were on it for like four or five days. Yeah. And it was a small ship.
00:17:10
Speaker
So it wasn't like one of these giant carnival ships like that. And they said it was awful, just like tossed around sick, you know, like, they just had a terrible time the whole time they were there. I, I have never really been much for I've never done much on about, you know, gone out on like, on people's speedboats here or there or whatever. But
00:17:38
Speaker
I went on a whale watch once with somebody that owned a boat. This is when I was younger and they were like, they had a cabin below deck and they were just like, don't go below deck. If you're not used to it, it gets like the swaying below deck will really make you feel sick.
00:17:59
Speaker
And I didn't really get it and I had to use the bathroom and I was like, so I just wanted to take a piss in the below deck in the cabin, whatever. And just that, just going down there, taking the piss and coming back upstairs, I was finished. I had to lay down until we got back to shore. I was like, I'm going to throw up. I felt horrible. It didn't take, I took like, that was probably what?
00:18:24
Speaker
60 seconds of just watch because like watching everything shift from side to side like when you're on a boat and you're like looking out at the water you see like the boat going up and down it's like but having like the sky view or like of everything and looking out into the ocean you don't really pick up on how much you're bobbing up and down until you're like below deck in a cabin watching it shift from side to side like you're holding on to stuff as you walk you don't have any like
00:18:52
Speaker
Sea legs or whatever and you know, man I was like that was the most nauseous I've ever felt in my life without actually throwing up
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, I've never done well on boats and neither does April because we've tried to do a couple of different like, you know, day long fishing trips when we've been near the ocean. Yeah. And we get like queasy and sick every time regardless of what you take. And if you take like Dramamine or whatever it is, you know, for the motion sickness, like that's kind of like giving yourself the flu for the
Liberty University Hot Pepper Challenge
00:19:22
Speaker
day. Like you're going to feel like garbage from taking that too. Do you? I've never taken that makes you feel sick.
00:19:29
Speaker
It just makes you feel like tired and achy and awful. Weird. It's like you're, hey, we can get ahead of the motion sickness by just making you regular sick. Yeah. It's kind of like when you're feeling nauseous and you, so you try to take Pepto Bismol and it's just sort of like, well, uh, you can wait and throw up or you can throw up in two minutes and it'll be pink.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, right. I was always afraid of and then like, we talked about this when my kids were sick, but that feeling after it happens, when you're just like, it almost instantly feels back to normal. You're like, yeah, glad with that. So like, it's like, you want that to happen now as an adult when you feel nauseous. I'm like, can I just fucking throw up already and get this over with? Like, yeah, just fist yourself in the throat. Hurry it along. Well, that's actually like a thing where you know, you get like a
00:20:26
Speaker
I'm reciting like, uh, third hand information from a podcast here. So I might not be totally, what I've heard is that there's like a dopamine, uh, rush that comes after you throw up. Okay. So like that's, that's part of why, you know, uh, people who struggle with bulimia have, have trouble with it. It's like, not only do you.
00:20:54
Speaker
you feel like you've counteracted the bad food choices you've made or something like that, but you also get this rush afterwards that makes you feel even better. So it's like a level of relief that comes with it. And I think that's part of why people get so stuck in that cycle. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it makes sense. I'm sure there's other
00:21:20
Speaker
I'm sure that has maybe a little bit to do with why you just generally feel better after you throw up too, even without having it struggling through an eating disorder, which obviously has other factors involved too, other than just that was a nice rush after I threw up. Right, right, right. I think it's like a secondary thing and I am speaking totally out of turn here. You heard it from Dr. Casey, no. Right.
00:21:48
Speaker
I got that honorary doctorate like Dr. Glenn Beck did for Liberty. I don't think I told this story when I was in like this is a college for a weekend experience. I went to Liberty for just for college for a weekend. This is after I knew I was going to Liberty. I just did it too because Jill was there and I wanted it was like a free weekend to go down to Liberty and see Jill.
00:22:14
Speaker
When you do college for a weekend at Liberty, you're supposed to go to all the events, not events, but they do stuff on the dorms. You stay on the dorms and they have a meeting some of the nights and they try to get you involved.
00:22:33
Speaker
all of that. Like you're supposed to get the full experience of what it would be like if you were there. And I was skipping all of that because I already knew I was going to Liberty. I was just there for the free trip down and I was going to hang out with Jill and on my way out they were like, Oh, well, we have like this, this meeting that you're supposed to be a part of. I was like, that's fine. I already am like, I'm not really here for that. So I'm just going to hang out with my girlfriend. And they were like,
00:23:01
Speaker
You know, they do like just shitty college, like try to do like some team building exercises and they're always dumb. This one was someone was holding up like a habanero pepper and he was like, they're trying to get people to eat it. And they were like, all right, man, if you just eat this habanero pepper, then you can just like go. And I don't like peppers. I've never eaten a hot pepper in my life. And I was just like, okay, fine.
00:23:30
Speaker
thinking for some dumb reason that they wouldn't have been doing something that could have really hurt you. And I took this thing, bit it, chewed it up, swallowed the whole thing, seeds and all, and immediately my face sinks and they look, their jaws drop and they're just like,
00:23:49
Speaker
oh no he ate it and like oh he actually ate it shoot shoot and they start like panicking they're like we were just messing with everybody we didn't actually think anyone's gonna eat this thing like uh and they're like or we thought you'd spit it out it's like oh my god um
00:24:05
Speaker
So I go to the bathroom, my mouth is on fire, dude. I'm talking snot is just draining from my nose. I'm drooling. My eyes are red and just pouring out tears.
Interview: Benjamin L. Corey's Journey
00:24:18
Speaker
And I'm just running water, cold water in and out of my mouth constantly. I'm at the sink breathing in water and
00:24:27
Speaker
one of them like runs out to grab like a gallon of milk and they brings it I start like just drinking a bunch of milk and then they're like you are going to die tomorrow if you don't throw this up like oh that's such bad advice yeah they're like and I could already feel like my stomach was burning dude I could feel it in my stomach it hurt it felt like someone lit a fire in my stomach so I'm like
00:24:53
Speaker
But they're just like if you like basically their argument was if you shit that out the next day, it's going to burn your asshole and
00:25:01
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know anything. So I immediately start... That was the first time in my life I had ever been able to... The panic set in so much where it's almost an involuntary motion of fingers down the throat, push down as hard as you can, and I just vomited up everything. All the milk I just drank, the pepper came up, everything.
00:25:27
Speaker
Finally, I was able to calm down and I'd left and met up with Jill. I didn't even tell her about what happened. I don't really even know why. I was just like, oh, sorry, I was late. They wanted to have me part of the stupid thing on the dorm for a second. Dude, that's jumping in with both feet on the hot pepper thing. Habaneros are rough. And they taste bad.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's like a that's like a pepper you cook with not just eat, you know, like you use them for the heat. But I don't like I didn't even like peppers like that at all. I don't think I'd ever. It's like I just had no idea what I was doing when I ate that. But this because I had like, I don't know, certain like habanero food, like, oh, something habanero. And it's always just like a spicy food. And those are always too much for I can't handle spice very much at all anyway. So to just like to have eaten that was like,
00:26:24
Speaker
I can really recall that as the most pain I've experienced. I haven't had a lot, but that was up there. Yeah. That was one of those junior high kid things for me where I was like, I like hot stuff. This is going to be my personality. Yes. There's always that guy. There's always that guy. I was that guy. I was always eating hot sauce or whatever.
00:26:54
Speaker
I remember the grocery store near us had habaneros at one point, and I had just heard about those. I'd never actually seen one before, so I bought a pack of them, and I was doing that whole thing where I was bringing them places and like, dude, you want to eat a hot pepper? Yeah. They're rough, dude. They beat you up. I remember eating one. There was this kid that was kind of a bully.
00:27:18
Speaker
at school and he was dating my buddy Jesse's sister at the time or courting or whatever you want to call it. So we were at Jesse's house and I had some of these peppers with me and we kind of did like the whole like, oh man, are you up to it? You up to the challenge? Don't be a wimp, eat this pepper to the bully kid, right? And so he and I both agree we're going to eat one at the same time.
00:27:45
Speaker
So we eat them. It's awful. Like, burns really bad, everything. And then, you know, we're going to a basketball game that night. Like, we had to play basketball that night. And dude, I just like, I just gave myself, like, the worst stomach ache, coupled with, like, crippling diarrhea before this basketball game. And yeah, I think I managed to play worse than I normally did at basketball.
00:28:16
Speaker
The only thing that would have made that story better is if you actually shit your pants while playing basketball. We don't have time for this today, but your missions trip deal, I have a missions trip story that it's like legendary status with some of my friends and everybody's been asking me when I'm going to tell.
00:28:42
Speaker
my Mexico emissions trip story. I'll do that next week when we've got the time to adequately convey the humiliation. I'm looking forward to it. I'm very much looking forward to that. Our guest this week is author, blogger, Benjamin L. Corey.
00:29:04
Speaker
He's got two books, one's called Undiluted, recovering the radical message of Jesus, and the other one is called Unafraid, moving beyond fear-based faith. His blog is called Formerly Fundy.
00:29:23
Speaker
So he's a formerly fundamentalist Christian turned progressive Christian. He has had a lot to say. He's got an interesting story that a lot of it was news to me. I'd been following his work for a number of years. We get into that. I had kind of followed his blog almost from the start.
00:29:51
Speaker
to hear some of the twists and turns of his life was fascinating, some of it very difficult, but he's got an amazing journey and he was very open and honest with us about that journey and all the hardships and the ups and the downs.
Corey's Blogging and Belief Deconstruction
00:30:09
Speaker
It was beautiful, it was wonderful, and I'm super thankful for his honesty about all of it. I think it's going to be beneficial for a lot of people who have had particular struggles.
00:30:21
Speaker
through faith, post faith, whatever it is, there's a lot in here. And I'm thankful that he was so up for getting into the nitty gritty of some of it. So, you know, what do we want to tell you before we sign off and jump into it?
00:30:42
Speaker
jump into the discord, leave us a review on iTunes, give us a five star rating, do all that. It'd be really great. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, it's all available. It's all out there. And against his every whim just just started us a tick tock. So we're gonna
00:31:01
Speaker
We're going to give that a try. Deconversion Therapy has a killer TikTok. Their videos are hilarious. We're taking a page out of their book since they've kind of mastered the medium. Yeah. I have been resistant to TikTok forever. I don't want to use it at all, but I'm going to try even though I feel
00:31:24
Speaker
I guess everyone's on it now. Part of me still feels like it's not for me, but that's not true. TikTok's for everybody. So we'll take a quick break and then we'll jump into our conversation with Benjamin L. Corey. Hey, everybody. We are back with our guest, Benjamin L. Corey. Ben, thanks so much for hanging out with us this evening. It's good to see you. Oh, absolutely. No, my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me to come on.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah. So, Ben, you are, I mean, author, blogger. I got to know you through blogging years ago on Pathios. Pathios is like many people like me. After that was found, that was a big time catalyst for reevaluating some of your beliefs because there is a lot going on there.
00:32:17
Speaker
Oh, for sure. No, I mean, back in the I think I started in, oh, I think it was, you know, 2015, or, you know, late 2014, early 2015. And, you know, I was still in seminary at the time, it was summer.
00:32:31
Speaker
you know, was, you know, working at a church, although not getting paid and just decided, you know what, I'm going to start a blog today. And somehow wound up at Pathios. And I just I fell in love with Pathios because they were truly hosting the conversation on faith. And it was it was originally run by some just really amazing people. And it's just kind of
00:32:53
Speaker
Sad where things went after a while. Yeah, that was kind of weird too. For people who don't know, it got bought out by a conservative Christian group. Isn't that right? And then they kind of changed some rules about how things worked.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, I wouldn't so much say it's conservative Christian group. It's more that, you know, it was a private company who also owned some conservative stuff and there were some conservatives there. You know, they didn't have a problem with the liberalism. It was more that they it was too business to them. And that, you know, the folks who originally owned it, they truly just wanted to create this space where we talked about ideas. And with the new ownership, it was, you know,
00:33:35
Speaker
Oh, no, we need clicks, this, that. It just doesn't matter. And so they just lost the passion for quality content. Apatheos had been kind of an invite-only place where everything was kind of carefully curated.
00:33:51
Speaker
And it just kind of turned more to like a Christian blog spot. And so, you know, I tried to change it from the inside out and had worked there as the progressive Christian channel manager for a couple of years during their transition from old ownership to the new ownership. But after a while, I just had to tap out and go solo.
00:34:12
Speaker
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I can see that now because I thought that was my understanding of it was definitely a little off because when I'm looking at, like I expected to see some content changes and when that never happened, I was like, maybe I am wrong about how this played out because. Yeah. Well, for the, for the, I mean, they, as individuals, you know, they were on the more conservative side, but from my standpoint as an insider, they really didn't care, you know, about the con, it wasn't so much the content. They just wanted more clicks. Yeah.
00:34:41
Speaker
And so it just, you know, when you do that, you just continually sacrifice quality. And the more you do it, the more you sacrifice quality. And it just got to the point where it was so, you know, unpersonal and just kind of poorly managed.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah. So one of the things I find interesting about people like you who found kind of blogging at that point is, and you said you're in seminary, like doing it for that long within the Christian atmosphere, there's so much that changes over that period of time, especially if you're in a more progressive bent, you continue to like evolve and evaluate your beliefs and they change over time.
00:35:28
Speaker
So like, when you started, when you decided to start getting the blogging, was that, were you already making those shifts? And I guess actually a better place to start is the type of Christianity you grew up in. Sure. So I mean, my blog, formerly, you know, famously called formerly Fundy, so kind of started that whole
00:35:48
Speaker
whole term there. But yeah, so I mean, I grew up in, you know, in my early days, you know, I grew up in rural Maine, you know, the son of, you know, multi generation dairy farmers. And so we were, you know, very conservative, but I wouldn't quite say fundamentalist. But you know, certainly, you know, all the toxic, you know, evangelical stuff. But, you know,
00:36:11
Speaker
not all the way over to the other side. And it was when I was in high school that I got kind of tangled up with this organization called Word of Life Bible Institute. Yes, my life. Really? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So yes, I was a whoopee person. And that, that was how I got into fundamentalism.
00:36:32
Speaker
I actually did two mission trips with them when I was in high school, 1992 to Russia and Ukraine, and 1993 to Hungary, Romania, and Poland. They were amazing experiences, but then in 1994, after graduating high school, I went on to Wubi up in the Adirondacks.
00:36:57
Speaker
dropped out after a semester because I was accused of practicing witchcraft. How did that happen? I need to know, were you burning in your room or something? No, it was far less sexy. I was just asking questions.
00:37:15
Speaker
And I was pushing back against some of the bullshit. And finally the dean of men called me in and he said, look here, it says here in the Bible, the rebellion is the same as witchcraft. And I will not have you practicing witchcraft here on my campus.
00:37:30
Speaker
Oh my god. So I was kind of like, yeah, got something in my pocket for you. And I went home for Christmas. And I was like, there's no way in hell I'm going back there. So soon as Christmas was over, I joined the military. Do you think he was like, actually suspicious of you doing witchcraft? Or was it just like, I need to get rid of this guy. And this is how I'm going to justify it.
00:37:53
Speaker
No, he was just trying to make the point that in all these fundamentalist circles, it's the person that asks the questions like, hey, wait, wait, why do we do this? Why do we think this? I say in one of my books that they treat it like it's a contagious disease.
00:38:12
Speaker
and that everybody panics. I wrote this obviously way pre-COVID, but it's kind of like, oh my gosh, get a mask on this guy, or this shit's going to spread. And so he was much more trying to make the point that, biblically speaking, my rebellion was no different than sacrificing a goat to Lucifer.
00:38:34
Speaker
just an ideological contagion. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I wasn't even that smart that I was just like asking questions and pushing back against stupid rules. And like, oh, my goodness.
Military Service and Faith Challenges
00:38:47
Speaker
I remember when my wife was there, people couldn't like you can't hold hands. So they would like hold different ends of the same stick that they found on the ground outside there.
00:38:55
Speaker
funny. So no, that's really the kind of shit that we would do. Yeah, no, you're not allowed to touch if you're engaged, you can hold hands. If you're married, you can kiss. But you can't even get engaged without the Dean's permission. Like they have to like bless and approve everything. Wow.
00:39:11
Speaker
Um, you know and um, no like yeah, no touching it We had famously a third party rule that guys and gals cannot leave campus without a third party because Clearly if you're heading to the post office, you might stop off for some sex on the way um, you know, I mean it's uh It's kind of funny because in their attempts to um to to stop us from doing things They certainly put a whole bunch of stuff in my head
00:39:39
Speaker
Because I hadn't thought about half the stuff that they were worried I was going to do. Well, this comes up a few times, so we'll bring it up again. We've brought up the book, Preparing for Adolescence by Dr. Dobson a good few times. I don't know if you're familiar with that one, but he has this part in the book where he talks about when you're going through puberty, you're going to notice women, like girls, and you're going to think their bodies are attractive, and you might even find their feet attractive.
00:40:09
Speaker
And we're just like, yes. Yeah. And you're like, okay. That's, he's definitely single-handedly responsible for putting the concept of foot fetishism into a book. Definitely taught me what masturbation was. Really? I just wish there was better pictures, you know? See, I taught myself. Oh, that's funny.
00:40:34
Speaker
But so you have to see you left. I mean what a life and you how long were you in the military for I was in the military for 10 years. It was like was theology Christianity was all that something that was like part of your life during that time or did you kind of like drift into it afterwards.
00:40:52
Speaker
Well, it was an interesting time. During those years in the military, I didn't really go to church, but it wasn't so much that I was like, I'm done with church, I'm deconstructing. It wasn't anything like that. I was in the military for seven of the 10 years I was overseas with limited options as far as churches go.
00:41:15
Speaker
When I left Word of Life, I knew that there was just something rotten about right wing Christianity. But the thing is, oftentimes we leave these circles. We say, geez, this smells rotten. I can't stand it. I'm done with it. But we don't yet have the conscious awareness.
00:41:32
Speaker
that we have taken all of those patterns of thinking with us and even still so much of the theology with us. So even though at that point I had kind of a bad taste in my mouth for
00:41:48
Speaker
conservative Christianity, I was still very conservative. I still thought in so many ways, in some of the thought patterns and just didn't have the conscious awareness of it. So it was quite a long time after that. It was a few years after the military that I started my deconstruction.
00:42:06
Speaker
Okay. So what sparked seminary for you then? Because you, is that, yeah, what was the catalyst for that then? Well, you know, even, I mean, even with that experience, there's just, for me, there's always been something about the person of Jesus that I just can't get enough of. That it's always fascinated me. He's always seemed amazing to me. Everything about Jesus, I've
00:42:33
Speaker
I've just been totally in love with it. And that never went away. And so I loved church. I loved trying to teach Jesus. I loved all of that stuff. I loved preaching and speaking. I've often told people that if there's any decent skills that I have that have helped me be successful, it wasn't 10 years in seminary. It was my senior year in high school, I took theater and public speaking.
00:43:03
Speaker
You know, because there are plenty of other people that have all the same credentials I have, you know, but so I was really grateful for those experiences. But yeah, I just, I really wanted to serve the church. I didn't know what I wanted to do yet. I knew there was something about being a pastor that I both loved and hated, you know, or feared maybe. I think it was probably a fear of rejection preemptively.
00:43:29
Speaker
But I don't know, I just I love Jesus. I love what it was all about. And so, you know, just be that, you know, decided to go on to seminary. Yeah. Did your did your like spellcraft suffer during that period? Or did you balance it in seminary seminary was it? Yeah, the difference between Bible school and seminary is this night and day.
00:43:53
Speaker
However, so the funny thing is that when I first got to Gordon Conwell, I did two master's degrees at Gordon Connell, master's theology and master's in intercultural studies. And then I went on to Fuller and did my PhD at Fuller, my doctorate of intercultural studies.
00:44:08
Speaker
But, so when I first got to Gordon Conwell, I remember going for, you know, kind of the campus visit for prospective students. And I was actually still far more of the old pattern of thinking because, you know, the acting president of the time was a man named Haddon Robinson. And half the reason why I wanted to go was to learn to preach from Haddon Robinson, you know, who was considered, you know, one of the great preachers of 20th century.
00:44:38
Speaker
He mentioned in his speech that night that there were over 100 denominations represented. I was like, how the hell can there be 100 denominations here? How can you teach the truth and have that much diversity? What the hell is going on here? I was skeptical going into it.
00:44:58
Speaker
because the only thing I knew up to that point coming out of conservative Christianity and fundamentalism was that you go to Bible school to memorize the answers. I was not prepared to actually get a theological education, to wrestle with theology, to be formally trained in Greek and Bible translation. I wasn't ready for any of the stuff that comes with that. And that's what really blew my mind.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, we, so Casey and I both went to Liberty University, which is that's where we met. But I remember, so I got a Bible degree at Liberty. And of course, even a Bible degree at that point, probably not much different than Bible school, where they say, you know, they just teach you what the right answers are, what they think the right answers are. And then seminary,
00:45:46
Speaker
is still the same thing for them there. It's still like Southern Baptist. It's like you go there to learn. It's interesting because I know plenty of people who went to it. I know plenty of people who went to other conservative seminaries or other, even then people who went on to liberal seminaries.
00:46:05
Speaker
It really is, it's hard to work around it, you know, there is just a line of thinking that says, like, these, these conservative schools, theologically speaking, like Liberty, where it's like, if you go to seminary, and you're still just being told,
00:46:21
Speaker
They knew once in a bit right because it's not just like these are the right answers now write a paper saying the exact same things We want you to they give you some wiggle room But you get asked the crest questions the right way and at the end of the day if you're not walking away thinking about
00:46:36
Speaker
within a certain parameter like that, then it is a cause for concern, right? So you don't have a lot of people walking out of Liberty University Seminary publicly speaking about how they're accepting of the LGBTQ community or anything like that, right? And I always find that interesting because Seminary was like what I thought about going. It was on getting a Bible degree. What else are you supposed to do at that point? And it was like,
00:47:00
Speaker
Having that idea of just continuing to be told for the next four years what the truth is and not getting a lot of wiggle room there was always interesting to me. Yeah, no. On one hand, I would have hated that. On the other hand, I may have thrived and my life probably would be a lot better than it is perhaps because it all started to fall apart back then in some ways or fall together, maybe to reframe.
Corey as Teaching Elder: Controversies
00:47:28
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, even though Gordon Connell was a conservative seminary, there was totally that freedom. I mean, one of the best grades on the paper I got, the entire paper I wrote, like rebutting the professor, you know, but like, he's like, no, this is well done, well reasoned, you know, well articulated, researched. And so, you know, they appreciated it. If you had like, you know, solid academic research and to back up what you're trying to say.
00:47:55
Speaker
But I did start deconstructing there at Gordon Conwell. And I think the first big thing for me was it was within the first week or two of seminary, all of a sudden I'm sitting in class and it was either a professor or a student. I think it was a professor made a joke about the rapture and everyone laughed as if people who believed in it were idiots. And I was like, wait a minute, what?
00:48:22
Speaker
Wait, huh? I was like, I didn't know there was another option. How can you be a Christian and not believe in the rapture? And so, you know, started digging in there, you know, and finding out that it's not part of historical Orthodox Christian in the Bible. And that, you know,
00:48:41
Speaker
the first Christians would think we were nuts about that kind of stuff. And I think conservatism or fundamentalism's fear is that, well, we don't want kids to think our faith is like a house of cards, where if something unravels, it all does.
00:48:59
Speaker
But with the way that they try to force us to hold it together, it's almost as if they create a house of cards where they don't need to. You have Ken Ham, like, well, if this is not true, then what the hell else is not true? It must all be false. Where, man, I think that there's room to look at this card and be like, you know what? This card is beautiful and authentic. And you know what?
00:49:23
Speaker
This one was put in here by some jackass in the 1800s from England. And we just, for us, we just kind of think it's always been there. So let's go ahead and take that one out.
00:49:34
Speaker
But I just realized though, I mean, within my first semester at seminary, I was like, holy smokes. Half the tough stuff that I was taught as a kid is either not completely true or it is something that is just our opinion where there are other very reasonable, viable, biblical alternative views, which I was never presented, never told.
00:50:00
Speaker
I mean, we're taught that people who, you know, prayed in tongues were possessed by demons. And, you know, that all of a sudden when, like, you know, I have friends who are charismatic, I'm like, man, like, these people love Jesus. Like, huh? So I just realized that everything was up for questioning the very thing that they were afraid of, like they created in me. And, you know, long story short, you know, I got to the end of my first degree, my theology degree,
00:50:28
Speaker
And I just kind of said to myself, you know, I'm graduating, but I don't know if I know what I believe anymore. But what I do know is that I am still as interested in Jesus as I was on day one as a little kid first hearing about him. So I just decided to kind of start my faith all over again and to like literally like build it on Jesus, which, you know, it's kind of sad that that has to be some kind of novel idea.
00:50:58
Speaker
It's so funny. He says some inconvenient things, you know, like, sell all your stuff and, you know, give it to the poor and it just doesn't really jive with, you know, the traditional fundamentalist Christianity.
00:51:14
Speaker
Oh my gosh, man, if I could summarize what it was like after I got back, after 10 years of seminary, it would be like, well, boy, we're so proud of you. You went, you did 10 years. Get up there and preach. Tell us, what's the most interesting thing you learned about the Bible in 10 years?
00:51:32
Speaker
Well, I just was really taken aback by how Jesus was just so filled with compassion for people and taught us to welcome the immigrant and to care for the poor and to listen to that. And then they'd be like,
00:51:46
Speaker
you scripture twisting socialist get the hell out of here you know you'll never understand the bible because uh the holy spirit's not interpreting and teaching you you know so it's like you know what i'm done with you guys oh my god that's such a loaded thing man i you're triggering us no uh
00:52:04
Speaker
Like that idea that that's so far I hadn't even thought about that in a little while to be honest is like the idea like that It's like the whole I remember hearing that a lot now it's coming all back to me that it's the Holy Spirit that interprets Scripture as you read it and that a particular evangelical thing is that you know with that coat that that works really well with giving everybody the ability to
00:52:29
Speaker
to read the Bible. Evangelical criticism of other denominations is that the people don't read the Bible. I don't know if that's entirely true, but I would definitely say they don't put as much stock in their ability to understand it appropriately.
00:52:47
Speaker
What I've learned a lot about is that evangelical narrative is once that's instilled in you, I mean, I guess I shouldn't say it's necessarily just that, but like all narratives, if you have one that's instilled in you and it's very hard-lined, you can't read anything in the Bible without extrapolating that.
00:53:11
Speaker
Right. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I once wrote a post, you know, called Five Things You're Reading When You're Reading the Bible, just because there are so many different things that we read into it. You know, you have just a cultural context that is just so significant. I mean, how can you read a historical document, you know, that is, you know, talking about, you know, first century Israel without actually understanding first century, you know, Israel?
00:53:38
Speaker
How do you read about the Bronze Age nomads if you don't understand Bronze Age goat herders? Just how? But then there are other contexts, things that we read. I think a great example is hell itself. In English, we read the word hell and we conjure in our minds what we've been told hell is.
00:54:02
Speaker
And so we repeatedly read that into the Bible. No one ever tells you that there are three different words and just because English happens to suck in some ways, we render them all as hell instead of like the three different specific things that it's talking about, which is not hell. A word that didn't exist for almost like 400 years later in the understanding that we have it now.
00:54:26
Speaker
So we're constantly reading those things into the Bible without ever knowing it. But that's the way it is with language. We would do that with other documents, other texts too. And that's why historical scholarship is an important part of that process.
00:54:46
Speaker
Yeah, I really like I would say only like recently after I left the faith and all of that only only like recently did I even know that there was like large groups of people that didn't believe that hell was a physical place or that, you know, when you brought up a second ago,
00:55:09
Speaker
And there's just so many things that like, I think that was other denominations like baffled us because we just like couldn't understand how someone could read what we were reading and come out with a different interpretation. And it was always like kind of disturbing, like, wow, it's just, you know, it's people being misled. That was what explained every denomination.
00:55:34
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. I know. And that was kind of the way I was baffled to anybody that didn't think like us. But yeah, I think the hell issue is just a great example where it's almost like I saw it in one way. And then all of a sudden, I actually look at the book itself. And like there are common sense things that all of a sudden stand out to me like, you know, beyond just the linguistics part of it.
00:55:59
Speaker
In our version of Christianity we grew up in, of course, it's like, hey, the whole narrative boils down to you are a sinner, no such thing as a good person. If you were dying today and given justice, where would you go? So we have this whole narrative about hell and the necessity of Jesus on the cross. And so I look at the Bible and I'm like, so wait a minute.
00:56:21
Speaker
If that is the central theme, why is it not discussed at all in the Old Testament, at all? Why did God wait so long to tell us about it, if this is the case? And then even in the New Testament, of course, when you look at the early church, the early church, you look at the book of Acts, they don't go around preaching hell. They do go around preaching repentance, being returned to God. They do preach that there will be a judgment from God,
00:56:49
Speaker
But they don't mention hell at all in this early Evangelicalism. And so I was like, good heavens, how did we get this entire thing, this entire core theology, when it is not that way when you look at the actual book itself?
00:57:06
Speaker
Yeah, it almost required us to walk through the world with such a suspicion of everybody else who came to a different conclusion. And I think I still struggle with that even to this day is like when I see people thinking differently than me, like I know that's just a huge there's part of that's just a human thing. There is a human aspect of us where we where people think differently. And you're like,
00:57:28
Speaker
How can I get them to think like me? Like, of course, that's part of human nature. But I think there was definitely an increase because the stakes were so high, given the whole hell thing that, like, you were so confident that you were reading it right and that you understood it so properly. And that, I mean, just the slightest misstep.
00:57:48
Speaker
You know, they wouldn't say it like that. They'd be like, well, only God knows somebody's heart. But they, I mean, they put so much emphasis on like a few small handful of things that like the slightest misstep from those, even though God was the only one who knew their hearts, you were still worried about their soul. Oh, for sure. That was
00:58:04
Speaker
That's made me a big dick in college. I'm surprised I had friends, but I remember arguing nonstop. I'll never forget an argument I had with one friend outside. We were at a show. Like, shut the fuck up, Sam Shipman. We're at a show for entertainment, and you can't stop getting into theological
Engagement with Congolese Refugee Community
00:58:19
Speaker
arguments with people. And it had to do with missions. It had to do with
00:58:24
Speaker
a friend of mine said something to the effect of like, I just can't really buy into the idea that if people live somewhere in a place where they've never heard any of these things that God would send them to hell. And boy, did I have the right Liberty University answer for him. And
00:58:40
Speaker
For the heavens to clear, the glory of the Lord and no man is without excuse. Yeah, I mean, I blame us. I put that burden on every single person who wasn't jumping on a plane and going over there to tell them. And that's, I mean, what was it, John Chow? That's how you get people like John Chow.
00:58:56
Speaker
What I always found interesting about that though, is that they would cite Romans as saying, well, nature declares there's a God, and that's enough to judge you to hell. But if you respond in the best way you can, that's not enough to get you to not go to hell. It's enough to condemn, but not enough to save. No, the saving can only be with explicit knowledge. And I think Rob Bell famously asked, what if the missionary gets a flat tire?
00:59:25
Speaker
I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, for sure. Rob definitely got me in a lot of trouble back then.
00:59:33
Speaker
Yeah, he got a lot of us in the trouble. That's funny. He's a gay man. So did you ended up doing it? You were a pastor for a little while, right? Post seminary. Yeah. Well, I was part of a church plant where I was teaching elder. Um, so we, we called it teaching elder. Okay. Um, so I was, um, you know, didn't, didn't last very long. Um, in that obviously I started blogging and ruined my life. Um,
01:00:00
Speaker
But I mean, I loved it. I mean, we had, you know, I was married, you know, a daughter, you know, tight group of friends, you know, small group. It was just really, really finally like the community that we had longed for for so many years. But then, gosh, long story short, I mean, there was one day where it just all imploded. And it was largely over an interview that I did on Huffington Post Live. It was a TV show.
01:00:29
Speaker
on pro-life hypocrisy. Talking about the death penalty in Texas at that time, they were hitting some record numbers and I'd written a lot about pro-life hypocrisy. And man, things really went south. I mean, there was literally a Sunday where a woman stood up and was yelling and wagging her finger about, he said Christians should support a higher minimum wage.
01:00:55
Speaker
And she was so mad. It was like you would have thought that I had said Jesus had a daddy and his name was Frank. But I'm like, really? Then the other thing was, it was also when I was really, truly encountering and starting over with Jesus and becoming
01:01:16
Speaker
passionate about nonviolence when I realized that this is so very much what Jesus taught. And, you know, nice gun Casey, by the way, Shane and I love to turn that into a garden tool. We just talked to Shane. No, we love doing that stuff. I got a forge out back and an anvil and
01:01:38
Speaker
Um, I actually get, um, you know, get a bunch of guns from the state of Maine after they've been confiscated in crimes and still have the, uh, still have the, uh, evidence tags on them. And, you know, I kind of pray over them before pounding them to us. Um, but nonetheless, so, but on that topic though, um, I had suggested, I didn't need, did, we didn't even get to the point where we made a policy. We had suggested that maybe some of the people should leave their guns in the car instead of bringing them into worship.
01:02:07
Speaker
Controversial. That was, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, that one was controversial. That was literally met with, oh, yeah, I'll take my gun and my money and I'll go to a different church that wants both of us. Just treating you like you're a McDonald's that was rude to them. Yeah.
01:02:28
Speaker
It was just so discouraging, though, in that, I mean, I don't know. You know, this is a community that kind of sent me off to seminary. Back then, it was really, hey, look at this guy. He went to Bible school. Listen to him preach. Wow, it's so great. Here I go to seminary, get a PhD, and it's like, look, this is the dumbest guy you're ever going to meet, you know?
01:02:48
Speaker
You know, it's just if what they wanted was you to come back with all just to memorize all the answers They already had and be able to say them in a way that made them feel excited You know, they didn't mean actually come back and like teach the Bible and teach Jesus Because there just wasn't room for Jesus So so no the people up and left and took their money with them and the church kind of fell apart um
01:03:13
Speaker
And then we hit out for a couple of years with Congolese refugees, which was so awesome. We had found out that there was a nice Congolese refugee community here. This is rural Maine. And there was an article in the paper about how poorly they were being treated. And so decided to go to worship one day and introduce myself to the pastor and
01:03:37
Speaker
apologize for how they've been treated by so many in our community and really, really super nice guy and asked us to keep coming back. And so we end up just hanging out with the refugees and you know, worshiping in Ligala and which was really incredible.
01:03:55
Speaker
But then that kind of came to an end in that there's at one point the pastor had come to me He's like listen, we're refugees. We're all broke I need to go out of town for a couple of months to make some money for rent and heat and all that stuff You know, will you kind of you know lead things and take over things while I'm gone So listen, I'm not comfortable being the one, you know, the one white guy as the leader of a refugee community I said but here's what I'll do
01:04:20
Speaker
I know you got to go. I'm like, I will help you raise up. I hope you train a pastor from your own community. And I'll help you with that process. I will help you with the transition. I'll do whatever it takes. I cannot for any long period of time be the one guy in charge. It has to be with the intention that you guys are doing it all yourself.
01:04:45
Speaker
And so he's like, oh, that sounds like a great idea. He's like, they were meeting in the basement of a local church here in Maine called Grace Church, which is ironic in the end. And so I had never met anybody from that church before, the pastor, anything like that, because we just met in the basement later on in the afternoon on Sundays.
01:05:06
Speaker
And so he's like, well, I need to introduce you to the pastor who owns the building so he knows what's happening while I'm gone. And we sat down on the breakfast and shook the guy's hand. And the guy started putting cream in his coffee. He looked at me. He said, Benjamin, I'll Corey, I know who you are. I need you to tell me what you think about homosexuality. Oh, my God. I don't like for the love of God. You really do have all the wrong answers.
01:05:35
Speaker
And so I tried to just explain the theological tension and nuance. At that time, I hadn't even crossed over into fully affirming yet. I was still very much on my journey. But at the same time, I couldn't figure out why I was even worried about it. This was a Congolese community, very conservative. If you're worried that I'm going to influence them on that, that's probably not happening.
01:06:00
Speaker
Um, you know, but I didn't want, you know, I wanted to serve the refugee community, even though I didn't share all of, you know, their theological beliefs. I just really wanted to support the refugees. Um, but, um, he, uh, you know, we tried to have a conversation and, uh, basically he said, you know, I don't think that the elders would like someone being in our church who makes their living tearing down the bride of Christ. He's like, that's, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding.
01:06:30
Speaker
I'm like, I'm not tearing her down. She just behaves poorly in public. It's like, and so he just said, you know, I would really hate to have to like tell the refugees they can't use our building anymore because you're worshiping.
01:06:47
Speaker
Oh my god, that's super fucked up. They leverage that against you. So fucked up. And those were like his exact words. And his name was Dave, and he was an asshole. And I don't mind saying his name because if they didn't want to be in the stories, they shouldn't behave differently when the story was being written. I like that mentality.
01:07:10
Speaker
You know, this guy, you know, it was just it was stunning. And so here I was. I was so screwed because I just had this heart for the refugee community. And the last thing I wanted was to like just ghost them after like they had, you know, welcomed me in and made my family like part of their community. And but now it was the position where I had to I had to leave the community in order to protect them, because, you know, if
01:07:38
Speaker
Rule number one is do no harm. I didn't want to risk doing harm to them by worshipping with them as fucked up as it was. So that was the last time that I attended any church other than a random service here or there.
01:07:55
Speaker
Um, you know, but, uh, yeah, that was, that was kind of one of the last blows for me. Um, at least here in this area. So about what year, okay. So just to get a pieces to get a little bit, um, when you're, when your church imploded about what year was that like the church that
Mental Health and Psychedelic Treatments
01:08:12
Speaker
you had built up?
01:08:12
Speaker
That would have been right when I started blogging. Okay. So right around 2015. Okay. And, or maybe 2014, actually. And so probably 2015, 2016 was the time period when I was with the refugees. And then after that, you know, it was just toast. Yeah, so but you continued to blog and you were you were writing books at that time.
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, yep, I was continuing to blog. I just had kind of so much to say from Seminary and this and that. And, you know, I had my last book Unafraid that came out in 2017, Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith. And then in the last couple of years since then, I've kind of, you know,
01:08:57
Speaker
in hindsight, taking the sabbatical that I'm anxious to end. I just had gone through a divorce, which was really difficult. A lot of pressure on life and a lot of difficulty and loss.
01:09:15
Speaker
And so, you know, it's, you know, Unafraid came out, you know, just kind of going through a divorce and struggle with depression and things like that. But I've been, gosh, since January, I've been doing this new depression treatment called Ceprabido. It's actually ketamine, the new nasal spray they do for depression. No way. Yeah, so they came out. It's this almost this new angle of the role of psychedelics in depression treatment, which I am incredibly interested in.
01:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, I've been hearing a lot more about that lately. Seems like there's been more trials going on. I know psychedelics is still schedule one in the US, aren't they? For sure. The ketamine nasal spray is technically a tranquilizer, but it has some psychedelic edges to it. It's very limited where you can get it. You have to do it in the office and it takes two hours. You're hooked up to a blood pressure monitor the whole time.
01:10:13
Speaker
I initially had a lot of really good effect from that. There's something about psychedelics where you end up going into this place inside of you where you do a lot of the difficult processing and work that you needed to do in releasing that.
01:10:35
Speaker
And so, you know, that's been incredible about ketamine. But I'm also incredibly interested in learning to microdose mushrooms. So that is kind of the next thing on my horizon that I'm getting ready to play around with, which, of course, inspired by it. We were talking about that pre-show before we started recording. Here in my office, here in Maine, I have a picture of Doug Forcette on my wall.
01:11:01
Speaker
And so to fill you and Casey and any of you guys out any folks listening so I absolutely love the good place Yeah, all four seasons. I think on Netflix and so basically the good place, you know starting Kristen Bell and Ted Danson and
01:11:18
Speaker
The basic premise is somebody this woman ellen shell stops gets into the good place within a day finds out they have her mixed up with another ellen because she's really a shitty person there.
01:11:33
Speaker
And it's everything that happened since then. But in the very first episode, when she first gets to the good place, she's in the Archangel Michael's office and sees this picture. And she says, who's that? He says, that's Doug Forsett. And she said, who's Doug Forsett? He said, oh, Doug's the one that got the closest guess. Doug was a stoner kid that lived back in Calgary back in the 70s.
01:11:56
Speaker
One night he and his friend Randy got high on mushrooms and Randy said to him, hey, what do you think happens to us when we die? And he said, you know what? And somehow Randy just launched into this long diatribe where he got like 94% correct.
01:12:12
Speaker
And so this was a picture hanging in Michael's office. It says Doug for set Calgary closest guest 1014 72 And it just reminds me that you know, I you know, I love the Bible love Jesus love theology But I'm still just doing my best to make my closest guess just like Doug was Yeah, I love it. I need to get one of those. I need a Doug. Oh Yeah
01:12:37
Speaker
I do think that the psychedelics stuff is going to be like a whole new frontier of treatment for different things. I agree with you. It really is. There are so many new studies coming out, so many new studies. And other countries are already catching on to this. But I think the university, I think in Massachusetts was beginning a program to continue to study it.
01:13:04
Speaker
And so the role of psychedelics in treating depression has been a huge untapped resource and we are finally beginning to understand some things. I've been lately just soaking in any information in any study I can.
01:13:21
Speaker
psilocybin, you know, magic mushrooms. And I mean, gosh, what they are finding, you know, in those smaller doses, the micro doses, that has all of the impacts that some of other these things like ketamine have on depression. And for people who have, you know, what's called drug resistant depression, you know, which is technically what I've had, because it just doesn't respond to, you know, SSRIs or any of the other kind of medications.
01:13:47
Speaker
Um, and these kind of things can be incredibly helpful, you know, because we have so many I was just you know, I had a treatment this morning and I was telling the nurse practitioner that administers it I said, you know, I just feel like In our culture in our language, we have too limited of a way to describe depression. We just have that one word I'm like, well, but what what if I what if it's not just that what if it's that I have a lot of reasons to be sad? You know what, you know, what if it's I have a lot of grief
01:14:16
Speaker
you know a lot of losses that i've had faced um and those are like real reasons that you can't just medicate you know yes a medicine can help with some symptoms no medicine is going to ease the pain of like being banished from my community losing all my friends and my marriage falling apart this there's no medicine for that um and uh what i love about psychedelics um and i was never a recreational drug user so this is you know my
01:14:43
Speaker
Experimenting for depression has been my first experience with any of this. What I really love about it is that, just like this morning, I took my nasal spray and it was just a mini kind of two-hour trip where you just almost go inside your mind and...
01:15:02
Speaker
there's just feeling a contentment and then you start to process and I was just kind of flooded with thoughts and feelings today like you know what it's going to be okay like you you can overcome all these challenges like you're going to heal it's going to be okay and so it wasn't so much the medicine it's the mental process that you go through on some of these psychedelics that really I think promotes healing
01:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so excited, you know for the future of them and I'm excited to To do some experimenting with microdosing mushrooms here very soon. That's good. That one's like really interests me too because I mean there's like
01:15:40
Speaker
I never really had a party phase and the little bit of goofing around we've done with edibles and things like that. One of the coolest things about it that people don't really talk about that much is I feel like it's thought pattern interruption.
01:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's like there's so many things that you do That you never even consider another way of looking at it, you know simple things even you know, like like menial tasks, you know you you have those those thoughts that interrupt the pattern and all of a sudden you realize like oh man, like I I've never looked at it that way. This is so much easier This is more efficient and I feel like
01:16:22
Speaker
weed in particular, but like edibles, especially, I feel like you just have these unique thoughts that you just don't have with, you know, when you're sober. And that's where I feel like microdosing could be really cool because it's like, it's not a debilitating effect, you know, it's just that you're, you're, it's like you're changing the lenses out in your glasses almost.
01:16:45
Speaker
For sure. That's where I think microdosing could be great. I also think that there is value in a trip itself beyond microdosing because again, that's what I had with the ketamine this morning. With the ketamine though, the nasal spray is technically esketamine for the depression.
01:17:06
Speaker
But what they have found in some of the initial studies is that even if some people don't experience a real shift in their mood, they do experience a disruption of thought patterns. And what I can say, hands down, is 100% true, and I was as shocked as anyone that it happened, was I used to think about killing myself five times a day. I mean, no joke, there'd be days where I'd be like, all right, let's have our coffee.
01:17:31
Speaker
At the end of the day, today will have been a good day if I only think about hanging myself five times or less. I had to get through some days judging it like that. Well, after my very first dose of esketamine, it was like it shut the part of my brain off that wanted to kill myself. Since then, it's been several months. I don't think I've had more than a brief fleeting thought.
01:17:58
Speaker
totally shut off that whole thought pattern that I used to have around it. And there are a lot of other people who are experiencing the same thing, really thankfully.
01:18:06
Speaker
If nothing else, I'm deeply grateful that this treatment shut that part of my brain off. Wow. Man, that's wild. First of all, thanks for sharing that. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to talk about, and I think just you sharing that is really beneficial to people who might be struggling with the same types of things. I remember once listening to a
01:18:32
Speaker
The first time that I ever heard of microdosing, it was a woman who had kind of a similar story of constant thought of suicide. With microdosing, you don't even hit that trip. It's like day one, it's like nothing, day two, it's nothing.
01:18:51
Speaker
And it's just, but after it starts like kind of taking effect, she's like, I realized something changed the day that I looked out my window and saw a tree that I've seen every single day and never thought about. And I looked out and I thought, God, that tree is really beautiful.
01:19:07
Speaker
Yeah, she's like, I hadn't felt that way about anything in 10 years. And it was like, well, that was like, that's like moving. And so hearing like the experience and the experiences that people have with things like with with micro dosing, and it's, it's great. So like,
01:19:24
Speaker
It's just wonderful to hear that people are starting to be able to do studies on it. You've been unable to study it for so long, especially in mass. How many people in this country are microdosing? You can't even group them all together for a study because they can't let you know. They have to keep it a secret in some way.
01:19:44
Speaker
For sure. We can thank the 1980s war on drugs for these ridiculous blanket policies that permanently shut off looking at certain things and stigmatized certain classes or certain drugs or plants to the point where, no, we don't want to consider that because, well,
01:20:05
Speaker
It's already been classified as something, and so just as bad. And for me, I think where I got interested in microdosing was like, well, all things considered, I would prefer something natural versus synthetic. And so the ketamine is synthetic. I would prefer something that cheese is made. Thank you for magic mushrooms and weed.
01:20:27
Speaker
Um, but um, no, but much like you said in that story, um, you know the the Aketamine kind of stopped interrupting my thought pattern and I will say that the one time that I did um, try mushrooms the very next morning was the first morning I woke up and the the first thoughts on my mind were just positive and optimistic I I remember telling myself like whoa, this is what this feels like
01:20:52
Speaker
I just woke up feeling like not sad, woke up feeling not depressed. And for people to have real deep depression, it's that feeling when you first open your eyes in the morning that you're greeted with. And it's just so overwhelming because it's there from the beginning. And that one day after I first tried mushrooms for just to not have that heaviness there was the most amazing thing in the world.
01:21:19
Speaker
But yeah, with all the stigma, I was slow to try different things, but actually just this past Sunday was the 28th anniversary when my grandfather died by a completed suicide when I was 17 years old.
01:21:37
Speaker
Knowing that if you've had a completed suicide in the family, that your risk is doubled essentially. I knew that for me, I was going to leave no stone unturned, didn't care how much it costs or what I had to do to get a certain treatment, didn't care if it's
01:21:57
Speaker
Stigmatized and care, you know, whatever That you know, I was going to you know fight this with everything in me and I do start to I'm starting to feel glimpses of the old me come back and I just miss life. I miss I miss engaging with my readers I miss I miss living I miss being happy and I am just ready to kind of step back into things I mean this the first interview I've done in two years actually so
01:22:22
Speaker
Wow, man, that's wild. It's funny when you look, obviously, as someone who had been following your work for a number of years, I was obviously noticing the lapse in blog posts. It's like maybe six months. You had no idea what's going on with people.
01:22:51
Speaker
That's wild to hear. Part of it is you kind of become overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment. It's like, geez, I haven't said anything in six months. Why now? And it's like, geez, I kind of dropped the ball in my own life. And in public view of thousands and thousands of people. So there's no way to just discreetly step back in and be like, nothing ever happened.
01:23:18
Speaker
Yeah. Do you plan on writing about this and your experiences and stuff like that? Definitely. I'm so anxious to get back to writing. You know, it's such a difficult career and job in that being somebody who creates.
01:23:37
Speaker
It comes from a certain energy inside of you. And so when you're battling depression or when the stars on our line, it's not like you can't just show up to work and create because you have to. You know, you create because like you have no other you create because like I have no choice but to not let this thing be born that's inside of me, you know.
01:23:58
Speaker
And so I think that really compounded my grief and depression because it's like, OK, great. All right. I'm depressed, you know, gone through a divorce. You know, my, you know, my career has kind of been on pause, you know, and it just, you know, made it all the harder to create and to kind of
01:24:16
Speaker
step back into life.
Evangelicals and Trump: A Satirical Take
01:24:18
Speaker
But I'm desperately wanting to. And I really want to do some more videos again. I guess younger kids use something called TikTok. I have not been able to bring myself to get into as we're trying to like, I don't know, we hit different social platforms, media platforms. I'm like,
01:24:37
Speaker
How am I supposed to just hold a video like a camera up in front of my face and just say stuff and have anyone give a shit? I can't. Like the idea of doing that on the fly and trying to use TikTok is really, I'm struggling with that too, man. No, for sure. You're not alone. Maybe you should start out with some of the dances, the white girl dances where they do their elbows a lot. Right.
01:25:04
Speaker
Ben, while we're talking about creating and how things are few and far between, I do want to bring up the piece that you wrote. It's like a year ago, and then you made updates to it last June, and it was called for our listeners. I want to put this in our show notes because I think this is just one of the most... I'm obsessed with it. I think it's one of the funnest pieces I've ever read on the subject of end times to circle back to the start of the conversation here.
01:25:33
Speaker
where you wrote a piece called, Could American Evangelicals Spot the Antichrist? Here are the biblical predictions. And you take 30, I think it was 35, 34, 35 of the big end times passages.
01:25:47
Speaker
and spin them in a way that redirects the Antichrist onto their Lord and Savior, Donald Trump. So I was... Yeah. And that was, man, that was probably one of my favorite pieces that I've ever produced as well. And, you know, it started out totally different. And I just kind of woke up one day and I was like,
01:26:11
Speaker
Haha, wouldn't it be funny if I wrote a piece with a couple of characteristics of the Antichrist that made it look like Donald Trump? And I was like, okay, let's do this. And so I kind of sat down. I was like, well, all right, let me read up on all the Antichrist passages that evangelicals would say point to the Antichrist.
01:26:32
Speaker
I started just reading up on them and then I'm like, well, this post isn't being written today. This is good. This can take more research. I ended up spending a month on that one blog post researching it. It was not hastily thrown together or even that much spin in that this became a case where I freaked myself out.
01:26:56
Speaker
It would be like, if you made a horror movie and you were there when it was all filmed, but you still can't sleep at night because of the thing you made yourself. But no, I mean, I just started reading and looking at it just as a narrative. As they described this character in narrative fashion, I was just stunned.
01:27:21
Speaker
I couldn't even believe it. I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Okay. The Antichrist will literally rise to power with fewer followers. He will win through outside collusion and he will use deceit to gain
01:27:37
Speaker
That position I was like, okay and then oh Antichrist will like do this Oh He will uniquely profit off of that position in a way like nobody before him could profit off of it And then like you and then you just start going on and on and then you start reading in Revelation, you know, you know, you know and also in Daniel and I heard him speaking great things and things that were greater than his opponent and I'm like
01:28:04
Speaker
oh my goodness i'm like this is the weirdest shit ever um and like i mean it was just i don't know it was it was just astounding you go through the narrative and all i will say is i don't believe this stuff but
01:28:22
Speaker
If there is an antichrist, he's going to be so dang similar to Trump because this is truly like the article is actually describing like the characteristics of the antichrist. So if it's not Trump, it's somebody who sure as hell looks a whole lot like him. To your credit, it looks less likely every day that it is in fact Obama.
01:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because what's also astounding about it is when you're looking at it and I'm reading it and I'm like, it's pointing at all the types of characteristics that would make a person, quote unquote, the antichrist. And I'm like,
01:29:01
Speaker
with the belief that they're actually talking about something at that time, I'm like, it's kind of nice to know that those traits have always been around too, right? You're not like, this isn't the first time we've experienced something with someone who has this much objective moral failure.
01:29:17
Speaker
And that's another one of your points was like, the, like the moral failure behind this, I'll be like a debaucherous person who lacks character. And it's like, the amount of people who are just like, excused that he played it right, because it was like,
01:29:32
Speaker
He accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior to get people like Franklin Graham on board. And it was like, man, he played his moves right to get that 80% that he needed. And it fucking worked. It's still astounding, though, because I've got to tell you, even if I had been an evangelical when he came on the scene, and even if I had still been a Republican,
01:29:53
Speaker
I would not have been okay with that crap. I actually just talked to a military buddy of mine a few weeks ago that I haven't talked to in 10 years. The last time he had talked to me, I was a right-wing conservative. He's like, man, he's like, I'll tell you what, when Trump came present, the first thing he came to mind, I said, there's no way Ben's okay with this shit.
01:30:14
Speaker
Like, oh good, I'm glad, you know, I was hoping I wasn't, you know, just thinking, you know, trying to, you know, tell myself, don't worry, you wouldn't have gone along with them. But it was good to know that like somebody who knew me didn't think that. But there's just something unique about, never in my wildest dreams did I think the same people at Word of Life who were so concerned that you'd be walking three feet apart so as to not give any appearance of evil,
01:30:41
Speaker
Like and we're like, oh man, like clearly your repentance wasn't enough, you know If you were to tell me that one day these guys Would not just support somebody but support them with enthusiasm Yo, I mean just undying it. I can't even get the words out because it's still so shocking
01:31:02
Speaker
that the people who raised me that way would turn to him. And that's one of the ways I connected with my own piece there on the Antichrist, because where it talks about how the people of God will be given over and almost start acting like they're delusional. And it says they will hate the truth. And I'm like, man, this is happening right now, folks. And y'all always said it was going to be me and listening to that rock music that did it. But no, it was you and Donald Trump.
01:31:32
Speaker
It's funny. We've talked about it so many times, but I feel like the Trump years really showed with absolute clarity what's most important to those people. So many people that would say up and down that Christianity and their faith and stuff like that is the most important thing in their life. They're lying.
01:31:56
Speaker
Yeah over and over again you see him choose you know that that political ideology that lines up with the way that they want to live. Over and over their faith objectly over things in the bible it was funny to me reading your blog post was like there's so many different criteria.
01:32:17
Speaker
for the Antichrist and what he does and his characteristics and things like that. I was thinking back on it and I'm like, man, you know the only ones that we ever really talked about in depth at church and stuff were, well, he's gonna come on board and promote unity across the globe.
01:32:38
Speaker
Establish peace with his it was like all these things that are actually good and that was the things that we were worried about like anybody who talked too much about world peace and suffer like I don't know about that guy. Yeah, exactly. No, no, you're so right. No, those were the things that they majored on and
01:32:56
Speaker
And some of those who just, you know, weren't even in the narrative. But no, when you look at it, it's just, you know, truly amazing. But I mean, I had never seen a president before who was just so clearly fraudulent in his faith. You know, we have had presidents of both parties who I believe, you know, and I served presidents under both parties, you know, in the military, you know. And I believe, you know, that those,
01:33:26
Speaker
Men who served in those positions whether liberal or conservative truly loved America I think you know men, you know like George W Bush, you know Jimmy Carter very sincere and devout Christians equally So, you know very very much Christians And I just I never imagined that they would fawn over somebody who was so clearly faking it You know, this guy does not give a shit about Christianity. I
01:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that was one of the clear aspects of his personality to me is that it was just, to be able to, you have to trick yourself into believing that he cared about Christianity. I mean, you really, it's like, I'm sure there's gonna be some people who listen to this that are very bothered by that statement. I just, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around. Like, you know, it's one of the things that like, like you, Ben, I feel like there's a lot of similarities.
Corey's Faith and Future Aspirations
01:34:21
Speaker
in our connection to—because I'm still part of the Christian faith. I have a church, like a faith community, a church that I participate in. A lot of my ability to maintain a connection to it is because of my interest in Jesus as well, where it's just like the
01:34:42
Speaker
the truth to power, breaking down all the walls that religion creates. There's so much about him that I think is beautiful and necessary. And the people throughout history that you're the most moved by when you read not that
01:34:59
Speaker
Like your Gandhi or your Martin Luther King Jr. When they're talking about the path to peace, the move forward, of course it sounds like sometimes a little silly for a white guy who's only 33 to be talking about Martin Luther King Jr. as though I have any idea what it was like to actually be in his position. But when you hear his words and his speeches and his connection back to
01:35:26
Speaker
to Jesus. The power is there. The power is in that belief system, that idea. To me, that's truth. That's what makes the Christ the Christ, I guess. It's communicating that truth that comes deep from with our universe in some way. When you hear that from anybody at any point, it moves me, and then you hear
01:35:55
Speaker
someone like Donald Trump start talking and you're like, what? That's what you're confusing with Christianity. That's what you're confusing with the character that supposedly moved us to faith. It's definitely saddening. Yeah, no. I mean, no tree by its fruit. It's not good fruit. Yeah. But no, you're right. I've often said about Jesus to my atheist friends,
01:36:24
Speaker
If I found out that Jesus wasn't divine or this or that, I'm still going to follow Jesus because the way of Jesus, the way of living is the very best way I know how to live. And so even if I'm wrong about who I believe He is, because I too is still a person of faith and still very much believe in Jesus and all of that stuff, but even if that stuff we're not
01:36:52
Speaker
True. It could be proven untrue. I'm still going to follow him because I so believe in the way he lived, a life of compassion and empathy and service and things like that. So yeah, I'm on the Jesus train, not the Trump train.
01:37:09
Speaker
Hey, when you were talking about the church that, you know, the group that you had to leave after the deal with the Sudanese refugees, right? Congolese. You said you were a teaching elder in that church. Teaching elder in the one before that, sorry.
01:37:30
Speaker
Okay. Was there a, was there conflict between you and any of the other elders over some of your more progressive thoughts on things or were they all kind of like-minded? Okay. So there's no conflict when I was in the Congolese church. We were just hanging out refugees. They didn't even know who I was, which I loved. But so, but back in my regular church, you know, which was before that, was the conflict. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't direct conflict there. I,
01:37:59
Speaker
You could feel the tension, you know, in that one of the other elders owned a concealed carry company that taught people and helped them get their license to conceal carry weapons. And so even without saying it, like, you know, here I am like, you know, very publicly
01:38:20
Speaker
leading a charge online for thousands of people helping to convert them over to non-violence in the way of Jesus, you could feel the tension in the air with an elder that you knew was packing and spent his time teaching others to pack.
01:38:41
Speaker
So yeah, so it was rough. So and I knew that you know, I mean so the thing the difficult thing is I was I didn't want to cause any trouble I was processing my you know, my ideas and stuff like that online but in church and I was preaching sermons that there's no reason why anybody should have had an issue with them like it was I'm not trying to like, you know blow anybody's mind, you know, I was like straight up preaching Jesus like totally legitimately real deal Jesus
01:39:12
Speaker
And Jesus himself certainly created some of the tension. Because they asked me to preach through Matthew, it's like, okay, you asked for it, here's what it says. Yeah, pretty early on, you get to the center on the mountain, that's uncomfortable. Yeah, for sure.
01:39:31
Speaker
Man, well then I really appreciate your time and your story. This went in directions I didn't expect it to. I honestly was not expecting to go on to a conversation about microdosing. We thought we were going to have this conversation. If there's a next time let's just talk about drugs.
01:39:49
Speaker
No, I really appreciate it. And I'm really glad that the conversations were able to go that way. Because like you said, I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who both quietly or not quietly struggle with depression and, you know, suicidality and grief and all of that stuff. And so I just wanted to be really intentional about what life has been like and be really transparent about that in hopes that others out there will
01:40:19
Speaker
do whatever they can do to try to fight those urges and to push a path towards healing as well. But no, I really appreciate being on with you guys. It's good to reminisce and talk about things and hopefully we'll see you guys online here in the future.
01:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, as things are looking up, I'm excited to see whatever it is that you got, whatever you got cooking up, whatever comes down the pipeline. I'll be around for it. Awesome. Awesome. I'm excited too. We'll both figure out what that's going to be. No. I'm ready to get back to life. I miss living and I miss... That's awesome, man. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody, and we will see you next time.