Jeff grew up in his words “a very religious household.” He attended a large Southern Baptist church.
In college he fell in love with the seriousness of Calvinism after reading John Piper’s Desiring God. He left seminary early to become a minster because he felt time pressure to be “on mission” for God.
After three pastors he knew died by suicide in one year, Jeff began deconstructing his faith.
Today, he is agnostic and finds therapy and mindfulness helpful in his life.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mary Oliver
A Book of Luminous Things
Quotes
After a lifetime of having all the right answers, now I don’t even know what the questions are.
[You are told] this is your position on [multiple things]. Everything was given to you. This is what you believe.
For the first time, I was really able to sit down and think: What do I value?
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Attribution
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11 This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheists podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Check out our merch store on T public you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items. You can find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. Jeff 1:12 On today's show, our Lean interviews David Ames 1:15 today's guest Jeff, Jeff grew up in his words a very religious household. He was a part of a very large Southern Baptist Church. In college he fell in love with the seriousness of Calvinism. After having read John Piper's book desiring God. Jeff went into the ministry, he was very serious about it. And it wasn't until several pastors that he knew committed suicide that he began to ask deep, deep questions. Eventually, he deconstructed his Christianity and now calls himself agnostic. Here is our Lean interviewing Jeff. Arline 1:59 Hi, Jeff, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Jeff 2:02 Hey, Arline. Thanks for having me. I've listened to a lot of episodes, and have enjoyed it immensely. So I'm honored and thrilled to be on the show. Arline 2:12 Yes, I'm excited to hear your story. And I'm glad to have met you recently. We're both part of the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. And yeah, it's been good times. So the way we normally start is tell us about the religious environment you grew up in? Jeff 2:27 Yeah, so that is the that's the big question, isn't it? Um, I definitely grew up in a very religious home. My parents were nominal Christians growing up. My dad was raised sort of Methodist, my mom was raised Roman Catholic. She's Italian from Long Island. And so both of them definitely grew up. In Christian homes, more or less, neither of them, what you would call Evangelical, they were converted later in life, and made sure that we were basically in church every time the doors were open. So I grew up in large Southern Baptist Church, and Carolina. You know, our pastor was the president of the SBC. At one point, it was a very large and influential church. And we did everything that there was to do my parents were both Sunday school teachers. You know, I was in Mission friends as a little kid, and royal ambassadors, Vacation Bible School, I mean, you name it, if they had a program we were doing. I was a very sensitive child to all these things. And I remember, I think I was probably about 789 years old, somewhere in there when I first was baptized. You know, I first told my mom and dad like, this is something that I really want to do. And I did, and there was there was even I think, I think there was a second baptism Arline 4:15 me to Southern Baptist Church in two baptisms. Um, I understand. Jeff 4:19 Yeah, so you know how in some of your Southern Baptist churches you they have like the altar call, and folks can go down front and like kneel down on the stairs to pray like it's some special sanctuary. So I was a teenager. Probably like, 13. If I had to guess 12, something like that. And my best friend Joel and I were sitting next to each other, and we're like, we're gonna go down front and pray today after service. So we make our way down the front aisle, and Joe breaks to the right to go pray, and I get intercepted by the pastor. Oh, no. He grabs my hand and it's like You know, what do you want to what are you coming down front today for and I'm, like, get saved. And I'm full blown panic because we're playing around in church and I knew my found out that they were going to be various. And so rather than ever admit to it, I went through with the entire thing from my heavenly man to counseling, to getting baptized, just so I didn't have to tell my parents that I was actually playing around in church. So obviously very, very much in in the church, you know, grew up in youth group. A lot of fun stories, you know, I could tell about that it was, there was there was a lot of good times, it wasn't all bad or anything like that. There was also a lot of turmoil in that youth group. I mean, we went through at one point, I counted, I think we went through six youth pastors and about eight years. Wow, yeah, there was just some was our fault. Some was their fault some folks never needed to be working with to begin with. I understand that. But you know, and then larger church scandals that went down that I was too young to really understand at the time, but it was just a very, very large church and a very kind of traditional, but also chaotic experience in a lot of ways. I was saved again, or for the real, you know, whatever you want to say, when I was probably about 15, I was dealing with a lot of depression, and a lot of suicidal ideation. And it was a youth group night one time. And it's like, everybody's eyes closed, you know, if you want to get saved, stand up and leave the room, or whatever. And so I did out and youth pastor came and found me. From that point on, I took things very personally and very seriously. You know, I wasn't just a cultural, you know, like, youth group kid after that point. It was very, very important to me. And, you know, if you could go back and read my journals from that time, you know, I did the one I'll never forget, it was like, it was a black book. It was like David Nasser, I think was the guy's name. Arline 7:31 The missionary guy. Yes. Jeff 7:36 And that was like, hardcore. Hardcore self introspection, and like, living off for Jesus type thing. You know, I definitely like DC talk Jesus freaks, I had that book and read it and was like, no, these people, they, they did their best, they gave their all, blah. And so, but all of that with typical high school kids stuff, you know, I transitioned out of a public high school to a private Christian high school when I was a sophomore. And so there was a lot of upheaval over that, you know, losing a lot of friends back from my regular school. And finding out that in a private Christian school, it's a lot of the same stuff. It's just, they had more money, and they were a lot more intelligent about hiding their offenses. So things didn't necessarily change in that way. But because it was a Christian high school, there was like a whole nother layer on the cake. You know, it was just one more filter for everything to go through. And it was, it was, again, good times balanced with a lot of turmoil. And, but being a Christian high school, you know, we had chapel every week, twice a week. I can't really remember now. But, you know, I took these things so very personally, and so seriously, that I always had this kind of inner guilt and inner turmoil of repentance and wanting to come back to the Lord every time I strayed, you know, type thing, and it was just over and over and over and over and over again. And this desire of wanting to just return to the Lord, you know, very seriously after every offense, kind of, I think that's probably when I really dealt with depression for the first time. In a really dark and despairing kind of way. So much to the point that I was writing poetry about Suicide and I left a journal out one night, and my parents found it. And they brought it to me in the next the next morning. And we're like, What the hell is this, like, what is going on. And I couldn't tell them the fullness of it because I felt all this pressure to be a certain way and to not own types of things. So I got whisked away to the doctor, and you know, they they prescribed me with Zoloft or something like that. And that helped for a while, but it didn't really deal with that, that perpetual cycle of, you know, straying from the Lord wandering, you know, getting into just normal high school stuff, like, I wasn't doing anything excessive or weird. It was growing up, and tremendous guilt over and all these other things. And so you take that, and then you combine all that guilt with all that religious upbringing and all that language. And just this idea that this is deadly serious, this is life or death stuff on the line on a day to day basis that you get the recipe for for college, and really the next probably 15 years of my life. So I went to a small Christian school, just north of Greenville, South Carolina. And I majored in Christian studies. I was, I sort of had that, you know, call from God type experience, like you need to go study the Bible. And at the time, I wanted to be a New Testament teacher, professor, whatever. But that was a that was a big transition as well, that was a big culture shock, a shock to the system to go from this nominal Christian High School, and mega church that had all these issues to go then to a Christian university, that for all appearances, had its act together. Later, things would come out that they weren't all what they seemed. And there was other scandals and stuff that I could tell you about. And I could tell story after story after story after story from all of these places from all these years. But as I was thinking about it, and preparing for this, I realized none of my stories are really unique. They're just representative of the broader Christian movement, right all day, different manifestations of that. So I get to my, my college, North Greenville University, that's where I live. And for the first time, discovered these Christian celebrities, you know, these pastors, other than, you know, like your typical Southern Baptists, like John Piper, like, Sinclair. You know, these various folks discovered Calvinism in the, in the cafeteria, no less. Arline 13:41 Huh, me too. It was a camp, campus ministry, people sharing the gospel and like, doing all the things Yeah. Jeff 13:49 Yeah, exactly. And that, for me was like, you know, red meat, too. I was just starving for something serious. I remember being upset when I first read desiring God, not because of the content, but because I felt like this type of Christianity had been withheld from me. That's a cue mean that there is this superficial, like Southern Baptist existence that I've been living. And all the while like this book was came out. I think, maybe I was three or four years old. So this has been around my entire life. And I never knew that there were people that took it like this did seriously. I felt like I'd been shortchanged by the church. And so I really dive head over heels into this. You know, at that time, there was a there was a student at Bob Jones. I can't remember his name, but he had his own CD ministry called desiring God audio. And he went to his website, you could fill out a form and he would make you copies of John Piper's sermons and mail them are free that now this is like pre big internet pre superfast Wi Fi. He distributed more sermons more of John Piper sermons than desiring God did. And actually had an agreement for a long time that he was allowed to do this. And then he outpaced them to the point they're like, Hey, we never thought you're gonna get this big. We wouldn't really like to be the primary distributor. Arline 15:27 Yes, that's, wow. That's fascinating. Jeff 15:31 I listened to that's all I listened to in the car. For three and a half hours of school. I listen to John Piper, on Romans on Hebrews. Arline 15:39 Oh, yep. Eight years enrollment, I think eight or nine years it took them to go through Romans. Oh, Jeff 15:45 and I took these guys seriously. Whether it was Piper sprawl or Ferguson or da Carson. Call washer. I'll never forget the first time I heard the shocking youth message. Paul Washer, I'm driving down the road. I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. You know, I almost lost it. I was like that. Here's someone that gets it. This man. He sees I Arline 16:11 missed that one. Oh, no, I missed that one. My big one was the message of John Piper's and Beth Moore's that passion whatever year that was, that was the big like, Oh, these young people are wasting Oh, I guess it would have been his wasting. Don't waste your life before the book came out. Yes. Jeff 16:28 Don't waste your life. Yeah, there's a you don't need to know a lot of things you only need to know. Arline 16:34 Yes. Do not pick up seashells. Yeah. Oh, Jeff 16:39 Lord. So I took these guys dead seriously. You know, I thought they were they were genuine. I thought that they were serious. I'll never forget listening to this sermon on John Piper, in which he's encouraging people not to waste their lives. And he gives the example of his ideal retirement. When I finished pastoring, Bethlehem This is Piper saying, I'm going to buy a one way ticket to a closed country in the Middle East, get up on a street corner and preach. What's the worst that can happen? They kill you. And you're over 65. So you get a discount on your airfare. I really thought that he was, you know, serious. Like I'm still waiting on Piper to buy that one way ticket and go be martyred for Christ because you say this to impressionable. And they then follow your example and go devote themselves to some missions work or to you know, inner city work or whatever it is and give up on you know, basic life needs, like health care and like and all these other things. Where's your where's your ministry? Eyebrow, you know, your seemed like, kind of forgot about that. But so I took this very seriously. And unfortunately, along with Calvinism and with with these heady teachers came a lot of arrogance. I'll never forget being in my my advisors office. And we were talking about NT, right? The bishop of Durham NT, right. And I said, You mean NT wrong. My professor was actually a he had actually applied to be NT rights doctoral student and basically like his personal assistant, so that joke went over like a lead balloon. Arline 18:46 Yeah. Yeah. I remember in t right. There was the whole like, he and John Piper, like, wrote about the same. I don't even remember what it was. But yes, he was on the list of, you know, theologians you do not read. You don't take seriously, they're not, you know, whatever. So he was definitely one of the ones I learned a lot from when I was on my way out, even though I didn't know I was on my way out. But I was like, if John Piper kept telling me no, and now I don't know that. I love John Piper. Who should I go read? Rachel Held Evans into you? Right? Like, there was a list? Yep. Jeff 19:21 Yeah. So but back then, you know, we looked at if you didn't have that endorsement from these together for the gospel, you must be a heretic, right? Yes. Arline 19:33 But you're leading people astray. You're you're not quite teaching the Bible properly, you know, fill in the blank with all these different things that they would say. And really, it was like, it didn't feel culty at the time, but looking back, I'm like, they were literally telling us who we can listen to, and who we can't listen to or read or, you know, whatever it Jeff 19:51 is. Yeah, and, you know, with eternity hanging in the balance. Yes, exactly. This isn't child's play. They, you know, they made it seem like they were so serious and so invested in these things. And I'm not calling into question their, their integrity on that regard. Those guys they are, you know, I've met some of these folks in person. And um, yeah, it's just crazy because it leaves you with all this mental baggage. Yes. And it's hard to untangle these things, especially when it starts when you're so young. And it's reinforced for so many years. So I graduated and went to the seminary. By this point, I had decided that I was going to be a pastor. So I graduated, graduated college, and headed off to seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And at that time, I don't know what it's like today. But at that time, it was just still on the heels of the conservative resurgence. There were still faculty members that, that were kind of grandfathered in, that were vastly different positions. Not necessarily teachers, but I worked in the library. And you know, there was folks that worked in the back offices of the library that were what we would call liberals, you know, liberal Baptists, not conservative evangelicals. So it was a very different experience. Working for the school, I saw some of the behind the scenes stuff. And some of the, you know, I could tell stories from from churches and from universities and colleges that would just make your head spin. But it was, it was around that time that I started to see some of these things were in congruence. And you could say a lot of things. And you could preach a lot of things. And you could purport to believe a lot of things. But when the rubber met the road, where was What were you really doing? What were you really upholding? And it seems in a lot of ways, it was the status quo that was being upheld. It was a religious culture that was being upheld. And it was, I just couldn't put up with it. I ended up quitting after one year of seminary and just like, this is just, I'm just spinning my wheels, I'm wasting my time. Oh, wow. There's there's stuff to do. There's, I have to be on mission, right? I've got to go do all these things. And so I stepped out and began looking for a church to take on. And it was around this time, it was around 2008 2009, something like that when the first person that I knew D converted deconstructors wasn't even a term that. Yeah, it was just a friend from church, who admitted to, you know, our small group that he was having a lot of doubts and a lot of questions. And he was he sort of filled us in at the tail end of it, he was a very personal, very private individual. And so he didn't share a lot of this with us. On the lead up to it, it was more like we kind of caught him at the tail end. And I was very concerned for him, and really wanted to understand what was going on with him. And so I tried to set up a meeting, hey, let's get coffee and, and talk about what's going on. I really want to kind of get my head around this. And I remember that the morning that we were supposed to me. I had envisioned it would just be he and I and we could sit down and kind of work through some of this stuff. And I could really get his perspective. And an ended up in probably five other men from the church showed up. And it just kind of was like, we're not going to discuss this. We're just going to grill you on everything. And I was like, Guys, this is this is not helpful. Like we're not at all getting at what's going on. And we're not really understanding his side of the story or really, and so I never did circle back around to that. And I never did figure out what was it that motivated it. What were the things that he was dealing with, and I really regretted that in a lot of ways that I never was able to at least hear him Give his side of things without an entire panel of other guys, you know, coming out and saying, Yeah, offering them all the counter arguments or whatever. So fast forward a couple years, and I find myself at the church that I ended up pastoring for about seven years. When we first got there, I went through sort of an elder training program, you know, at this church was about a year long and kind of got to know the pastures and got to know the people and, and came up to make sure that I was a good fit, et cetera. You know, it wasn't it was very different than just being hired on and, and saying, you know, here, come on board, it was, again, you know, I wanted to keep finding folks that were very serious about these things that were very intentional about these things that weren't just playing around and weren't just culturally engaged in on Sunday mornings, and not throughout the rest of the week, like I wanted to find, you know, that kernel that remnant that true, you know, true. So I completed that elder training, and I was ordained in 2012. And the week after I was installed as one of the new elders who was five of us at the time, four or five, the head, lead pastor stepped down, admitted to some personal failings. And in order for him and his family to heal, he had to take a step back. And he made it very clear, he wasn't leaving the church, he was just stepping down from ministry for a season. And then less than a week later, he left the church. Arline 26:52 How could you stay at a church like that, without knowing everyone is talking about you, everyone wants to know all your business, not in any kind of way that might be kind or helpful, but just the gossip and the unkind words, oof, I couldn't do it, Jeff 27:06 ya know, and it's, it wasn't tenable. I mean, there was no way to really do it, we all kind of believe that, that's what was going to happen. So really, I should have read the room, I should have looked at what was going on. And just, I should have just been like, this is not a healthy place, when, you know, as soon as you install a new elder, your lead pastor steps down and leaves. And not just that, but then in like the fallout, and in the following weeks and months, I bet the church probably lost 30% of its membership. And I really think that there was so many people who were terrified of that man to do anything. They knew that if they tried to leave, if they tried to resign their membership, that they were gonna get blacklisted they were gonna get, you know, all these arguments, you know, there's there was never a rational, there was never a good reason to leave the church. Never. I never saw it one time, everybody was always treated in such a way as this is not right for you. This is not right for your family, we are telling you, you need to stay you need to work through these things, whatever it was. And so I think that when he left, folks finally, so, you know, the door was was a jar, and they ran. And I was blind as I was just so I was so hopeful. I was sighted, you know, I thought, here's a place that I can really put into practice all these things that I've learned over the years. And so there was no way that I was going to leave at that point. Although looking back hindsight being 2020, that was exactly what I should have left. Yeah. So we worked through those issues. And we, we moved on. I shouldn't say we worked through those issues. We swept all those issues under the rug, and on. And I kind of got into the rhythm of preaching on Sundays and counseling folks, and you know, just doing things that pastors do and a small church started a family. We now have five kids. And so you know, there was if that tells you anything, there was a strong type of Quiverfull mentality amongst some people that certainly wasn't the overall position of the church, but there was definitely a very strong more as better. There was a very strong drive for a family integrated church, right. We didn't have Sunday school for kids. We didn't have youth programs. It was it was a family integrated church. It was basically it was one step above a house church and So, oddly enough, you would think that a church like that would be someplace where you would get a lot of support. With someone with young children, it was just the opposite. We were almost totally on our own. We didn't have anyone to help us with the kids. Even during and we had, you know, some of our kids were were difficult when they were real little. And the trope that we always heard was, well, we don't want to make it worse, you know, something's happening. We don't want to make it worse. We don't want to intervene, you know, we went to, and they were trying to respect our parenting, which I guess in one sense is good. But when you're already overwhelmed with a ministry, family and other stuff, we were just kind of really looking for help and not finding anything. And add on to this, that ever since the beginning of the church, we just kept shrinking, right, we just kept losing folks left and right. And all of this really compounded to make my mental health much, much worse. And the depression that I dealt with, back in high school, really came back in full force. Most notably, right after we lost our son, James, my wife was 22 weeks pregnant, and we went in for a checkup. And it's hard, it's stopped, and never did find out why I'm so sorry. Yeah, so we went through through that. And that was probably where my mental health really took a turn for the worse. And we, we were granted a sort of a mini sabbatical to recover from that we went to this place in Tennessee called chalet retreat ministries. I think they're out of business now. But it was a place where you could go and very cheap housing, and it was a beautiful part of the mountains of Tennessee, and they had a counsel their own staff. And we have one counseling session. With this gentleman, that was the only time we ever talked to anybody about this whole process of of losing a child, which, you know, for something so monumental, that takes a lot of work to get through. And we didn't have really any support through that time of you know, other than folks bringing us a meal or two or saying that they're praying for us, we had nobody to really help us. And it was during that time, I really discovered Martyn Lloyd Jones. Spiritual depression. So you can see I'm constantly trying to like how do I get back right? I'm, I've reached this this low point, either, you know, in high school, or in college, or now in ministry. And it's always like, alright, Lord, like, bring me back. Like, let's this is, you know, this is all that man, we've got to return, we've got to get back to that stasis. And so I'm, I'm not just doubling down, tripling down, I'm quadrupling down, like every time something happens, I am coming back, you know, hands out, arms open, like, Lord, please, please help bring me through this. help my family etc. But so that's, that's kind of up to where things got real difficult. So that was 2015. So for the next four years, my mental health just really tanked. And all the while dealing with this in a in the environment of this, this ministry. I can tell so many horror stories from that time, but none of them are overly unique to me. But suffice to say, after another three, four years, the church ended up closing. And from the very beginning, it wasn't never a large church. It was I think the largest set ever was was about 120 folks. And from the time that I got there, when when it began hemorrhaging members, it never grew again, it just shrink, shrink and shrink shrink. Until finally in July of 2019, we had our last meeting. And it was a it was an odd time I was I was so ready to be done. That I was excited. I was glad that it had closed and that I had kind of fulfilled my obligation. It was like, I didn't let anybody down. I didn't quit. I didn't resign, I didn't have some great moral failure or whatever disqualify myself. Yeah. But I was, I wasn't in a good place at all. And it was, it was shortly after the church closed in October of 2019, that the third pastor I knew, in the year committed suicide. Oh, my gosh, there was two in the spring and then one in October. And the gentleman in October, he left behind a wife and two young kids. And one of the focuses of His ministry was mental health and suicide prevention. And that hit me like a sledgehammer. Yeah, I, I had dealt with these things for so long, when when this gentleman took his own life, left behind his family. It was just, I could not any longer find within myself, that desire to come back. I remember praying, you know, maybe not praying, but I remember telling God, essentially, I'm done like I have, I've looked for help for so many years. And I know that that these gentlemen did as well for so many years. And it's, it's just not coming. Where is it? Right? Why am I here? Again, since I was 15, dealing with this stuff. And here's one more guy that didn't make it. And this was, you know, this, yeah, this was definitely the first crisis, that I did not reach bottom, and then say something to the effect of like, I'm really, like, we're gonna double down, we're gonna really put our nose to the grindstone and do this, again, I just said, I'm done. I'm done. I can't, I can't do more, I can't keep going through this cycle. And so I would say, that's when my deconstruction really began in earnest. And at first, it felt like, you know, a huge weight had been lifted. It was very much a feeling of peace and calm. And this is, this is wonderful, this is the best thing I've ever done. And I think it's, you know, just that sort of any big change in life can bring about that sense of newness or whatever. You know, it's not the kind of honeymoon phase. And that was good. That was cathartic in a lot of ways. But it also didn't really help address the root issues. And in a lot of ways, you know, it kind of cut me off from any sub type of foundation or mooring that I had at that point. And I, I just began to drift I was after a lifetime of having all the right answers. Yes. Now, I don't even know what the questions are. Right. You know, I was, I was talking to my therapist the other day, actually, which I highly recommend and find a good therapist. Don't talk to your family, about all this stuff. I mean, sure, talk to your family, but don't don't use them as your only source of of help. So I was talking to my therapist the other day, and he was we were talking about a was a story about a gentleman who had been released from prison. I think he was overseas. And he had been been held in solitary confinement, and for whatever reason, he was allowed out and was allowed to come back to America. And he was talking about how prison and all this time had taken from him. Not just his freedom, but it had taken away his mental agency, and and couldn't think for himself anymore. He was told what to do and what to think, you know, all the time. It took away his bodily autonomy, because here he is trapped in this so he can't get out. He can't do what what he wants. And it took away years of his life, right as he was in confinement. And no, I'm not saying that, that being a pastor in a church is anything like being in prison overseas or anything like that. But it immediately flashed across my mind when I heard this, that this is in in a lot of ways what a high control religious environment does to you. It takes away your mental agency, it tells you what to think about everything. It takes away your bodily autonomy because it tells you how to live in in every respect. And when you get out you look back and realize that it took away a lot of years of your life to and not only that, but when you do get out especially If it was from a place that was very controlling, or a group that was very exclusive, you lose all your relationships. You lose all of your community. You know, if you're a pastor like I was you lose your employment. You lose all your cultural markers, right? What are you going to do on? On every Sunday? You know, we were in church, Sunday, Wednesday, Tuesday nights, sometimes on Thursdays, and then I was preparing to preach, you know, every day, otherwise. And so it takes away holidays, right? What do you do with Christmas? What are you going to do with Easter? What are you going to do with all these other things. And it can really erode your sense of purpose. And so going through all of this, you know, I was just adrift. I didn't know what to do or what to think. And for a long time, I didn't want to think about anything. I didn't want to deal with these hard questions anymore. I just needed to give them a break. So I spent at least a year, year and a half, just sort of coasting through life, just doing whatever, and not thinking too much about anything, but I have a very overactive mind. And it would not let me rest in that way for very long. I could not stop thinking about these things. But what about eternity? What about heaven? And hell? What about, you know, you name it. And so I tried finding other ways to think about these things, you know, I tried reading philosophy. But my honestly, I'm not smart enough. And my brain was just too exhausted. I just couldn't. I tried reading, self help books, like from a stoic perspective. You know, Marcus really is simply things that you kind of popular. And that never really did it for me. I wanted to for that to work, you know, I wanted to have that sort of Mana, right? Take these things by the horns. And that was appealing to me, but it never brought any sense of peace, it never, never really helped me. get over that hump. I will say one good thing about that time, was it, it really gave me a chance to step back and assess who I wanted to be, and what my own values were. Right, because after a lifetime, in church, I was told, these are what thing these are the things that are important is your position on abortion, right? This is your position on whatever, you know, everything was given to you. This is what you're to believe. This is what makes a good person, this is what makes a bad person etc. And so for the first time, I really was able to sit down and think like, what do I value? What is What do I think is important in in life in general, but but interpersonally right, what are what character traits do I esteem, you know, kindness, and creativity and intelligence and thoughtfulness and all these other things? More so than being right, you know? Or having all the answers or being righteous or holy, or whatever, you know, it was, it was definitely a time for me to kind of consider what was important to me, what mattered under my evaluation. And it was, so this that's probably about 2000. This probably about 2021. I'm dealing with these things and kind of trying to figure out what is what's important to me. And I was at a used bookstore one day in town. And I just kind of meandered over to the poetry aisle, and found of this book on the shelf was called a book of luminous things. And she says love Milosz was a Polish poet. And he edited this book, an international anthology of poetry going all the way back to like 500 bc of the current day. Oh, wow. And I paid $1.54 It is the best money I've ever spent. It certainly wasn't an immediate fix. It wasn't a cure or anything like that. But that book exposed me to all of these people, all of these authors, these poets and writers from you know, literally spanning centuries, from all over the world from different backgrounds and walks of life. expose me to these people. That that showed me that dead white men theologians weren't the only folks that had ideas worth listening to. Arline 45:04 Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. 100% Everything you're saying, yes, Jeff 45:08 that's really obvious to some folks. And that was totally revolutionary to me. I had been so indoctrinated to think that if you weren't a dead white Puritan, or a living white theologian, or you know, someone you didn't have anything to say, Yeah, you had, maybe well, we'll give you your token black guy here there, you know, but otherwise, you better toe the line, these are the folks that have the answers. And expose me to the fact that these questions, folks in China, in 500 BC, you were thinking more clearly and better about them than I was today? And like, what, what is going on? And it really just, the main question was, as I read these different authors, as I saw, in their writing, these folks encountered the big questions of life, they encountered the natural world, they encountered relationships with one another, they encountered that inner dialogue, the relationship of their own mind, if you will. And they did it in a way that expose more of the loveliness of the beauty of the world, and of kind of the wonder of the just the fact that we're alive, and get to experience any of these things than any theologian I've ever read or met. And what really was so shocking to me, you know, as I'm trying to get my head around this stuff that some of these folks are gay, some of them are lesbians, some of them are Buddhist, or Muslim, or whatever. And they're, they're not Christians. They're not southern white evangelicals. Like, how does this work? How do these unbelievers look at the world with more of a sense of wonder, then the preachers and professors and writers that I've been in reading and listening to for so many years, he says, the editor explains it. Yeah. Just very concisely, in the introduction to this book. He says, in a way, poetry is an attempt to break through the density of reality into a zone where the simplest things are, again, as fresh as if they were being seen by a child. I love it. Yes, these will say about entering the kingdom. They like little children. Right? And that's what what that book and what that mindset showed me. And that was utterly transformative for me. One of the folks that I encountered in that book was Mary Oliver, Arline 48:03 when you were talking about books that were life changing. I was like, my new Bible. This is what a covenant is devotions. Like, I just have it that's my Mary Oliver's Yes, devotions. It's just so many years of the most beautiful poetry she and Billy Collins are my two go to heavy people that are that are good, good for me, good for my soul that don't know what the right word would be. But yes, they're just good for me. Jeff 48:29 The first time I read Mary, I was in love. I mean, yes, she had a better understanding and a better way of showing the glory of of the world and the being and of the human experience. And just the natural world than than any theologian I've ever met. Any young earth creationist I've ever encountered. You know, you think about like, Mary Oliver, in one of her books, she wrote an entire essay about a spider that lived in the corner of a stairwell in a house that they rented for the summer. And all of the different cycles and the things that it did during the weeks that they rented this house. And I remember sitting there reading that book, and just being utterly floored at how much attention and awareness she brought to a simple little house spider. And like, one hand, you've got this lady that's, you know, she's from from the perspective that I was brought up with. She's lost, right? She's got a depraved mind. Yes, He's incapable of seeing the glory of God. And yet if you believe in God, she's describing his glory and creation better than anyone I've ever heard or seen. Yes, something did not compute Right. And, and reading her. It really changed the way I looked at the world the way I looked at other people. And it's funny that you said that was that's like your new Bible, because I literally I wrote down while I was preparing this. I imagined that the way that her works spoke to me is the way that the Psalms speak to a lot of people. Arline 50:17 Yes, absolutely, yes, I can see that. Jeff 50:21 And as a result, you know, I so wanted to see, like she saw, I wanted to be able to sit down and look at the little spider in the corner and just be, you know, in, in, in wonder of this little creature, doing its thing. Arline 50:46 So where are you now? Like, what do you have a label, you don't have a label? Jeff 50:50 I would call myself an agnostic. Yeah, I'm definitely not an atheist. I heard a fun illustration the other day that someone said, you know, the looking for life in the universe. It's like going out into the ocean and filling up a cup of water. And looking in the cup and saying, oh, there's no fish in the ocean. Yeah, universe is like the ocean. Right? It's so expansive, that our minds are so limited. And our experience is so limited that to grab a cup of water out of it and say, Well, this is all there is, you know, I'm very cautious to because I was so convinced that I had all the facts for so many years, because I was so arrogant. And knowing that I was right. I'm just not interested in that anymore. Like, Mary Oliver, she says something like, I have a lot of perhapses and a lot of what ifs. You know, and that's, that speaks to me. And this, this idea of, you know, for so many years, being in church for so many years. feeling like I was trying to squeeze myself into those confines, like, you know, a tight shoe. You know, relaxing out of that, and relaxing into uncertainty. It felt like being in a warm bath. Right? It was, it was just for the first time I was at peace, I was at ease, I have to have all the answers. I didn't need to know even what all the questions were. Yeah, and just discovering these folks, these authors I wanted to see like they saw I wanted to, to have that sense of wonder in the world again. You know, I think she says there was a poem that she wrote that was instructions for living a life. Pay attention. be astonished. Tell about? Arline 52:55 Yes. Yeah. Like, that's exactly what she's done and what we can do. Jeff 53:01 Right. And so, another happy Providence, I was in that same used bookstore. And from that, that book of luminous things, and the International anthology, and then from Mary's writing, I kind of gotten exposed to, you know, this idea of awareness, this idea of just really paying attention to what's around you, not being so distracted by things. And I wandered over into another section and I discovered another book about mindfulness meditation called wherever you go, there you are by Jon Kabat Zinn. And that exposed me to meditation into mindfulness practice. And that gentleman, Jon Kabat Zinn, he has been teaching this since like the mid 1980s, in clinical settings, and in hospitals, and in prisons, and doctor's office type settings, to help people reduce stress, dealing with anxiety to deal with chronic pain. And it was, that was the next step in my journey was was beginning to sort of practice mindfulness. And that was really the key that unlocked the door for me to get out of my head, right. Past and to get on with life. Because I mean, up to that point, I was I was very bitter. I was very angry with God in a lot of ways. And it was it was getting out of that stream. I think he says at one point in the book, he says, mindfulness doesn't stop the water from flowing. But it allows you to sit on the bank and observe it, right? Yes, you're not being carried downstream anymore. You're able to just sit and say like, oh, this is what's going on. And and he's especially non religious, at least in the beginning of the book, he definitely does get more into the Buddhist philosophy as the book progresses, but at the very beginning, he shows how like this can apply to any worldview, it doesn't matter. This isn't shutting things out, it's not shutting things off. It's trying to see very clearly and deliberately, it's trying to change your position towards yourself and to others and, and really bringing an intentionality to things. And it was, it was realizing that that's what I've been doing for so long are trying to do, right, trying to find some sort of peace of mind. Whether it was through all the religious cycles, whether it was rigorous prayer, whether it was constant. Bible study, right? journals, books, you know, you name it, listen into every Piper sermon, you can get your hands on, you know, that's really what I was looking for. Was something to quiet that inner turmoil, something that say that this is okay, that you're okay. And that that life is gonna be okay. And I never could find that in religion. I never could find that that sense of peace in in evangelical Christianity. And, and really, the more I thought about it, the more I'm convinced that, that the modern evangelical movements greatest failure is the way it disconnects us from our body and disconnects us from our mind. Right? You've got purity culture, like when I was when I was in youth group, right? We did all the things I hadn't the purity, we'd had the ceremony, we were gonna save ourselves from marriage, blah, blah, blah. And so you're disconnected from your body, even as you're developing even as you're going through adolescence. You're not taught to understand even what's happening, that rigorous self denial that comes with that in the rigorous pursuit of holiness. You know, I talked earlier about how I control religion takes away your mental agency, it takes away your bodily autonomy, it tells you what you're supposed to think and what you're supposed to do, and, and we're taught not to trust ourselves. Right, we're taught not to trust our body, you know, you hear about, and thank God, I'm, you know, really grateful that I didn't have it any worse that I didn't have to go through any of these, you know, real traumatic events, like sexual abuse or anything like that. Survivors do with but you know, you hear those stories, and how much of that could have been prevented? If folks would have just listened to their gut, right? As a creep. He's doing whatever around my kids, this is wrong. And we need to find something, you know, we didn't get out of the situation. But we're, we're trained for so many years. Don't trust your instincts. Right? Don't trust your gut feeling. Don't trust your mind. Right Question everything. Don't don't trust anything but what the Bible says or your pastor, right? He buffets his body to make it a slave, right to bring it in. And yeah, so yeah, putting that all together the. So Mary, you know, and these poets showed me that there was a better way to see the world. Mindfulness Meditation, started to show me how I could sort of enter into that world. And the first time I ever sat down and tried writing a poem was probably probably last fall last November, I think it was. And I realized that if I was going to sit down and write anything, honestly, if I was going to try to replicate what I had read in these books, and had read of various folks, if I was going to enter into that, it required me to be really vulnerable, right? Because that's what we love about these, what we love about Mary or whoever is the way they look at the human condition as they're experiencing it. And they tell us about it very plainly. They tell us very honestly about what is going on, and what they're dealing with. And, you know, a lifetime and church had taught me that. That's a really dangerous thing to do. That is a very dangerous thing to do, because not every time and there were some good experiences over the years, but for the vast majority of times when when I opened myself up to folks, it backfired big time. So that was very, very difficult for me to to be honest with myself and to be honest with others. And but I was able to say like if I'm going to write something if I'm going to try my hand at this Then I've got to be willing to at least be real with myself. And then with whoever reads that connected me with other folks. I know you interviewed grace from hyssop and Laurel, Oh, yes. I submitted some stuff to there and got in that magazine and connected with some of those folks and just seeing that, here's this community of people. Really, the thing that's, that continually strikes me as I've, as I've moved out of those spaces, is my whole life I was brought up with this mindset that, that we're the in group and everything out of this is not right, it's not these aren't good people. We have the right answers, we have the truth. They are lost their their their minds are depraved, you know, radical depravity, etcetera, however you want to say yeah. And the more I've, I've moved out of those religious spaces, the more I have seen that, actually, those folks, the world, quote, unquote, does relationships. They do honestly, they do integrity, they do all of these things, in a lot of ways better than any church I was ever a part of. Yeah. Yeah. The way that that high control, religion isolates you, and dis embodies you, and causes you to question your own mental faculties causes you to question your own worth and goodness, in order to you're making a really big exchange, you're trading off everything about yourself for acceptance into this community. And the more you do that, the harder it is to break free from it. The more you're in that system, the more you fear, people who are outside of it, the more you are, you know, you add in a healthy dose of persecution complex, right? We're told that we're gonna be persecuted for Christ. Blessing Are you and you're persecuted. And when folks say all sorts of nasty things about you. So it's like you're priming this pump for thinking like, Oh, we're going to be oppressed, we're going to be oppressed, whatever. You throw in fear of how conviction about end times things, right? We could go on and on. It's no wonder the modern church is imploding. I mean, because folks are starting to see that, wait a second, things really aren't that bad, right? We'd really have it that but so they've either got to manufacture things and make them bad. Or they've got to see that maybe things aren't quite what we've been told. Arline 1:03:06 And used to, you know, the next generation could be like, you know, they could be homeschooled, they could be kept within the church, they never had to interact with anybody outside, like in the world, Quick Quote. But now, parents have to work really hard to keep their children away from the internet, their children away from, like, there's just it's information is so much more accessible, that I wonder how you know, how it'll go with each generation, to just be able to know, okay, this stuff my parents grew up with just isn't true. Like, I can just Google this and know that this isn't true. And each generation seems to not buy into the fear mongering of a lot of the older generations. And I think it's great. I think it's great, Jeff 1:03:55 I think our hope is really in in the next generation is in the folks who are teens right now, and maybe a little younger, who are going to grow up without these cultural blinders on? Yes, and they are going to see that, you know, the, the world is getting hotter. And that a lot of the systems that we have in place that privilege the few at the expense of the many are not in everyone's best interest, that religious dogmatism is almost never helpful or healthy. And you know, that just a sense of, of awe and wonder at the world and that this, this experience of being alive is too precious to trade for fitting into some very strict and rigid culture of the 19 and 20th century The Evangelical Church I mean, it's just not going to survive with the amount of information that we have. Like you said, the the ready access to it. You know, it's when you can get on Netflix and watch multiple documentaries about the damage that high control religion does. Yes, what's on your phone and watch it. I mean, I don't know what kids are gonna be watching this thing, they probably don't care too much, Arline 1:05:29 probably more teenagers, but still, like, they have access to all the things. And they have different values. The next generation has different values, like the things that are important to them, or, you know, equity and everybody having the things that they need. And I feel like the next generation also knows they have a voice. Whereas in the past children and young people weren't necessarily listened to. And now it's like they can get on Tik Tok, and influence millions of people in a way that some young people used to not be able to do. Jeff 1:05:58 Yeah, it's, it's amazing. And so I am, you know, kind of land the plane, if it were, I'm hopeful for for my kids. You know, there'll be going to church later today. We could we could have a whole long discussion about that. But oh, yeah. Yeah, it's not what it was. Right. It's different. And I think they're seeing that there's options, right, they're seeing that it doesn't have to be the way it used to be. And that's true for for all of us. Right. That's, that's one of the biggest takeaways from this whole deconversion deconstructing experience is that we can expand our horizons, right, we can look out ahead and see that this way isn't so good, you know, maybe, maybe we need to correct course, we can see that there. There are better ways of engaging with with one another and with the world. And with ourselves, right? That's one of the biggest takeaways for me is I started buying that book that Jon Kabat Zinn, wherever you go, there you are. Every time I see it in the US bookstore, I just grab a copy, you know, dollar, $2, whatever, and then just give it away, because it's not the panacea, right? It's not going to solve everyone's problems or anything. And it's not going to be a great fit for every individual. But the more we recover our own agency, the more we recover our own inherent worth, the more we sever those, those chords that kind of hold us back, right? That's what they that's what high control religion wants you to think, is that you don't have any inherent worth. Right? You're a radically depraved Senator, that God had to murder his own Son to save that you don't have any inherent goodness, that you can't trust yourself that you can't trust, your intuition, your instincts. You can't listen to your body, right? It's all these things. Yes, everything. And the more you experiment with that, the more you realize that that's just not true. It's just simply not true. We have an amazing power within us to to heal ourselves. Not talking, you know, like woowoo, Crystal rubbing or anything. I have been brought back from the brink of a full blown panic attack by sitting down and watching my breath for five minutes. Arline 1:08:45 Yes, yes. Coming back into your body. Yep. Jeff 1:08:48 It didn't take anything special. There was nothing supernatural about it. It was just getting out of my head for a second. And being passive observer realizing what was happening, not investing in it, and moving on from it. No, God involved. Arline 1:09:08 I know. That's, that's the huge thing is you realize, like all the supernatural stuff that's unnecessary. We have. There's so much that we can just do inside our bodies. And yep. Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for the beautiful recommendations from Jon Kabat Zinn and Mary Oliver to poetry from 5000 years ago. I really appreciate you being on the podcast today. Jeff 1:09:30 Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Arline 1:09:39 My final thoughts on the episode. He and I had a lot in common. Like I knew there were other people in the world who listened to way too many John Piper sermons in their lives. But I didn't realize how many of us there are in learning that there was some guys selling CDs Nice to people to listen to John Piper sermons. Oh heavens, I just, it's amazing how the small number of white male American Christian pastors can have so much influence. Even before the internet, like so much influence all over the United States. I guess there was radio, I kind of forget about radio. But I loved hearing Jeff's story, all the different things we had in common. And I can understand them being agnostic and open to possibilities. I think for me, the idea that there are gods and goddesses at least the way I've ever been taught about Gods and Goddesses, just seems like a big jump. But when you're out of high control religion, you can think about the world however, fits best for you. And if it's not harming you, it's not harming others. And it seems when people get out of religion more often than not, at least in my limited experience, people's lives get better. And the way they treat people in their lives get better. So maybe that'll have a ripple effect. Also, Mary Oliver, Jon Kabat Zinn, any type of book, like a book of luminous things that he recommended, where you can just get beautiful words inside of you like, yes, that was something I missed after it converted. I didn't know the word daybook. I didn't know you could buy books that were just like short little readings. I just knew the word devotional, but just Oh, getting beautiful words inside of you. It's just, it's just wonderful. So I'm glad Jeff has found all these different sets of beautiful words that are able to change his life without having to have some kind of supernet natural entity, be part of that. And no kind of high control religion. Oh, anyway, Jeff, thank you again, for being on the podcast. This was wonderful. I'm really glad we were able to do this. David Ames 1:12:07 The secular Grace Thought of the Week is embrace the mundane. As Jeff talked about, within Christianity, every decision that you make every choice, every action seems to have eternal consequences. And the weight of that can be exhausting. We are human beings and our decisions, of course have consequences but not the eternal time. They are mundane human. Embrace that mundanity. Until next time, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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