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- [00:00]
Monty
After my immediate deconstruction, I honestly walked away from religion entirely for a while. I was so tired of the dogma and the hurt and the hate that was so contrary to what I grew up thinking I was believing or thinking like that Jesus stood for. And as I started to even engage in conversations and entered the deconstruction space online, one of the very first accounts that I followed was Brian Wrecker, who is a writer, a former evangelical pastor who really speaks about issues of Christian nationalism, inclusivity, as well as current events that we're experiencing. And he's also been my most requested guest for the show. I've had so many people send me messages or stories talking with and collaborating with him. He also has a book coming out this September called Hellbent, and we've invited him on the show today to tell his story, his view of faith, his journey with it, and as well as what his book really covers as far as removing fear as part of our motivation for faith. On today's episode of Flipping Tables. Brian, welcome to the show. You are my most requested podcast interview and I'm really excited to actually get to meet you instead of just follow your content. I've been following you for a long time and thank you for being here, man.
- [01:19]
Brian Wrecker
This is so cool, Monty, thanks for having me. I've been following you too. So this is fun.
- [01:23]
Monty
It's. It's an interesting, it's interesting to see the deconstruction explode in a way that I wouldn't have predicted as far as there's so much conversation around it now. And you're an ex evangelical pastor and I, I don't know anything about your early story. So what, what was your growing up like? How did you end up becoming a pastor in the first place?
- [01:48]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, so, funny thing about my deconstruction is that evangelicalism was not the first thing I deconstructed. I grew up Independent Fundamental Baptist, so for me, becoming an evangelical in and after college was like a big progressive move at the time. I felt like I. That was like my first step of deconstruction actually in some ways. So, yeah, ifb, I went to Bob Jones University. That's where my parents went as well and met. I don't know know if you're familiar, but I know you're a liberty girly.
- [02:23]
Monty
Bob Jones. Yes. I was like, man, Bob Jones is even more conservative than Liberty.
- [02:28]
Brian Wrecker
Right. For those who don't know, at Bob Jones, we thought of liberty as the liberal school, like a thousand percent. Liberty was like for compromised Christians, basically. So that. That was us over at Bob Jones.
- [02:42]
Monty
Yep. With the different sidewalks and sit next to the same sex and.
- [02:48]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, I mean, some of that was. There were some overblown, you know, rumors that weren't totally true, but it's true that there were. There were certain hours in which men couldn't be in certain areas that were like the girl sidewalk area. So there's some truth to that, for sure. We certainly couldn't touch it all. Couldn't hold hands, couldn't kiss, couldn't go off campus with the opposite sex. In fact, you had to have a pass to go off campus at all. All kinds of rules around what you could wear. Had to wear a tie every day. Girls had to wear pantyhose every day. No jeans. They've loosened up a lot of these things now from my understanding, but they're still super conservative. But, yeah, that's how I grew up.
- [03:24]
Monty
That's a lot. Okay, so you move from the Fundamental Baptist to evangelical. What was kind of your. I guess your moment where you felt called to preach? What was. What was your story? Moving into ministry?
- [03:39]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. So, I mean, as a pastor's kid growing up, my dad is a church planter. He's planted. This is kind of crazy. He's planted three Fundamental Baptist churches in New York City. He still pastors in Manhattan. They meet in a school. So I grew up in Queens, New York, New York. Yes. Son of Fundamental Baptist pastor. And, you know, as a pastor's kid, I'm always being asked, like, are you going to be a pastor like your dad? And I always said, no, I was not interested in that, actually. And I think it was because the fundamentalism was. It was quite severe. Very much fire and brimstone preaching. You know, it was the vibe where I was getting saved, like, every week and then, you know, multiple times when it was a revival, you know, series or whatever, we would have our yearly revival meetings and evangelistic meetings, that sort of things. Fire and brimstone? No, no. Christian rock, you know, So I tell people when I try to, like, anchor them in how conservative it was. Like, Stephen Curtis Chapman was, like, seen as, like, liberal and compromised. Right. So we only had pianos. That was. That was the thing, you know, anything was worldly. Anything that looked normal was worldly. So for me, I was even raised, like, Disney movies were worldly. And because they had worldly messages like, follow your heart and be true to yourself, which is, like, very dangerous. Totally everything. You know, fear mongering about, Pokemon, about all of it. You name it. Harry Potter, Whatever. And so that was my whole world and none of that. I liked that stuff, though. I was a kid and I. In New York City, even though I was homeschooled, I had neighborhood friends and so I played video games. I watched Cartoon Network at my friend's house even though we didn't have cable. I liked pop culture. And fundamentalism was ugly to me. And so, no, I didn't want to be a pastor like my dad. But at Bob Jones, I fell into kind of the group that was more rebellious. And by that I just mean they were like, not absolute fucking freaks. And maybe they actually were, but compared to the. We call them Boges. A boge was somebody at Bob Jones who was like, all in. The thing about Bob Jones, if you're out there and you went there, you know what I'm talking about, there are narcs everywhere. And so you kind of get an eye for who you could trust and who is gonna turn you in because it was impossible to actually obey all the rules. And so what you learned to do is strategically be sneaky. That's what fundamentalism and any kind of high control, legalistic religion leads to. Not a pure heart. It leads to being a fucking little sneak or being a narc. One of those two, really. And so there were narcs everywhere and you learn to be sneaky. But I fell into a crowd that, like, was a little bit more safe, a little bit more normal, knew things about pop music and stuff like that. And they were more like evangelicals, basically, who were made to go to Bob Jones for whatever reason. And I, even my senior year, I started going to a church that had a drum set and played CCM music, which was my big rebellion. They had a blacklist of churches you weren't allowed to go to, which was basically all the churches except very fundamentalist churches. And so I was going to a blacklisted church and I was like, this is so refreshing. The pastor's wearing jeans. You know, he. Oh, my God, he. He could maybe have an occasional beer and he's not going to get fired. To me, like, so life giving.
- [06:58]
Monty
Yeah.
- [06:58]
Brian Wrecker
And the sermons were all about grace. The sermons were about love and God's mercy and about what Jesus did for you, not just all the rules that you have to follow, which was fundamentalism. And so for me at the time, it hit me as like a total breath of fresh air. And so that was my transition into evangelicalism. And because by that point, I mean, you know, growing up as a pastor's kid in a ministry family, Going to Bob Jones, being in church four times a week, I knew the Bible. That was what I knew. I knew what pastors did. And so even though I didn't want to be a pastor, I really just didn't want to be a pastor like my dad in fundamentalism. And when I got a different vision for it, I actually got really excited about the possibility of ministry in this more free sort of way where I could wear jeans and we can have, we can have a drum set. So evangelicalism was very appealing to me as somebody who grew up in fundamentalism. And it took me some years to see the cracks there as well. And so, yeah, I kind of just dove in headfirst. After I graduated, I joined the Marine Corps actually, which is a whole other side quest.
- [07:56]
Monty
I didn't know that about you either.
- [07:59]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, that's a whole other thing that kind of has to do with probably the fact that I didn't totally conform to a lot of masculine sort of patriarchal norms. And I was kind of maybe trying to prove myself in some way. So I became a Marine officer also. I knew that I wanted, at that point I wanted to do ministry, but I felt like the last thing I needed as a homeschooler. Go, go. Went to Bob Jones. I was in the bubble, you know, we literally called Bob Jones the bubble. I knew that I needed some life experience before I just like went to seminary and started pastoring people. And I had that like, that where with all the wisdom to know that. So I joined the Marine Corps. And while I was in the Marine Corps, I got very involved in my evangelical church. And basically when I got out, my plan was to go to seminary and plant a church. But actually the church that I was a part of was like, hey, can you help us launch a site when we know you want to do ministry? And so literally I did four years and kind of transitioned right out of that and helped launch a multi site campus of my church in eastern North Carolina.
- [08:55]
Monty
Wow, that is incredible. I'm also so surprised to hear that you grew up ifb, which is so strict in New York City because as part of my deconstruction, I lived in New York for eight years in Queens before I moved here to Nashville.
- [09:09]
Brian Wrecker
Oh, no way.
- [09:10]
Monty
Oh my God. I'm a Queens girl. And I was like my let's go Mets. Yes, exactly.
- [09:15]
Brian Wrecker
I'm wearing a Yankees hat right now.
- [09:17]
Monty
Don't look, don't look. But New York was such a part of my deconstruction because I was there during my phase of becoming More free. So it's so interesting to hear that you were in still this strict paradigm in the city that is so vibrant and it's so diverse and it's so free in a lot of ways. I had no idea you were from New York.
- [09:38]
Brian Wrecker
And that did contribute. You know, it is. I was like, sheltered on one level, but I was also in New York City, so I was exposed to other things, even though my family was incredibly sheltered. You know, I, my, my neighbor across the street, like, my, my neighborhood is incredibly diverse. My best friend was Dominican. My other friends were mostly black in the neighborhood. We were in a primarily black neighborhood. The church actually that my dad passed, still to this day, my dad's church is way more diverse than even most progressive churches are. Like, my dad's church is not all white, even though he's a fundamentalist, because he's. He's often been in immigrant communities. Um, yeah. So I've always been around a lot of diversity and been exposed to different walks of life, which probably did. I had maybe a more open mind than most fundamentalists as a result of my upbringing in the city, for sure.
- [10:27]
Monty
Because I grew up in the opposite spectrum where it was all white people, only white people, the same type of white person. And it wasn't until college when I went to school in Virginia, even at Liberty, where I experienced diversity, even in that limited sense for the first time. So you open this site with this church and you start ministering. What was your ministry like and what was the moment that you were like, something's not right. When did that pivot happen?
- [10:54]
Brian Wrecker
So 2012 was when I started pastoring. We launched that site. I was 25 years old, just a few years, you know, out of graduation. Had done the Marine Corps thing, started pastoring in at 25, 2012, and things were really rosy and like, I was really, really happy for a few years where things just seemed like totally synced up. Everybody was really kind. It was a great community, super tight knit. I felt very supported. I was able to preach and start getting at bats and opportunities to lead. That was making me feel really encouraged, starting to stretch and expand my gifts in that way. And really, 2015 was probably the first. So three years in, probably was the first moment of reckoning. Because up until that point, I mean, I was raised super conserv politically. In fact, like I said, I was homeschooled. And we would listen to Rush Limbaugh every single day for social studies.
- [11:50]
Monty
My dad did too.
- [11:51]
Brian Wrecker
That was my social studies, like three out. My mom listened to she didn't miss it. If she, if she was going to be out, she'd put a tape, she'd record it, and she'd listen to it later on cassette.
- [12:01]
Monty
Oh my God.
- [12:03]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. I mean, I learned what a blow job was from Rush Limbaugh, like talking about it during the Lewinsky Clinton scandal. You know, my dad had explained it to me and I literally, to this day remember the speech that he gave me where he was like, character counts in the White House. And you know, I still think about that.
- [12:19]
Monty
I remember that too. I remember that speech and my dad like had me write a letter to Clinton about abortions and about immorality for the same reason. But that was like a phrase I remember hearing was character counts in the White House.
- [12:33]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, I think they were all saying that back then. Stopped saying it recently. Yeah.
- [12:37]
Monty
Amazingly interesting how that's not. I don't hear that anymore.
- [12:42]
Brian Wrecker
So I was, I was conservative politically because I was quite thoughtless. I had only been exposed to really one side of things and I didn't have progressive friends. I had never been. I mean, I, I was around slightly less extreme friends, but they were still basically conservative in their worldview. And so 2015 was really the first time that I was confronted with a crisis of conservatism with when Donald Trump became the front runner. That was really. I remember the Sunday that after he had announced his cand and he right out the gates was like using incredibly anti immigrant and racist rhetoric against Mexican people. I don't know if you remember that in his, when he announced his candidacy. It was gross right off the bat. And I literally, I thought he was going to be a flash in the pan, like, oh my God, what a joke. The guy from the Apprentice.
- [13:30]
Monty
Haha.
- [13:30]
Brian Wrecker
We're going to think this is funny for a few weeks and he'll go away. I used him as a sermon illustration. I forget exactly what. But in my mind this was safe fodder that we're all on the same page here. Like, this guy's a buffoon. And a few weeks in and then a few months in, I realized not only is he the front runner, but like people my church are excited about him, my parents are getting excited about him, and this is the direction. And I'm like, huh? Like surely this is gonna pass. I still was hopeful it was gonna pass. I was at the time, this is so embarrassing. But in 2015, I liked Rubio. That was like my guy because, you know, he said some very pro immigrant things that were in contrast to Trump. Like Trump was Demonizing immigrants. And Rubio was. Was, you know, with his sort of background, was kind of saying some things that were pro immigration. He was one of those compassionate conservatives, you know, which, in other words, like, they. They refused to say the quiet part out loud, and Trump did. So I'm actually grateful to Trump because Trump helped me see all of conservatism for what it was, helped me see the jokers like Rubio for what they were as well. But I was blind to it at the time. Seeing all of my, you know, all of the conservative people I know basically line up behind Trump was the first breaking part moment for me where I realized, morally, I'm not in the same place. And that made me realize I had a lot of work to do. I had to do some digging. And really, I don't think I would have vocalized this at the time, but now looking back, what I would say is when I saw all of evangelical Christianity lining up behind Donald Trump, basically the underlining feeling was, well, what else were they wrong about? What else they lying about? Because if they didn't have the moral discernment to see through this, like, wait, hold on. Like, this is the most obvious thing I've ever seen in my life. Like, I don't know everything about everything, but that guy is evil.
- [15:18]
Monty
I know that about the circus tent of red flags, like, so much.
- [15:23]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. And if you couldn't see through that, I was like, why am I trusting your moral discernment about all these other issues? And I just accepted so much, like, without doing that investigative work myself. And so that was a little embarrassing, but it caused me to really do some work. And, like, politically, I mean, watching all of conservatism lined up behind Trump to include, like, the Rubio, like, Cruz, I don't remember this. That year, like, Trump literally, like, insults Ted Cruz's wife, and then, like, he goes and endorses him. I'm like, wow, there. This is like, you guys don't believe anything.
- [16:00]
Monty
Like, you don't stand for anything. Just power.
- [16:03]
Brian Wrecker
Right. Meanwhile, Senator Sanders was making a whole lot of sense talking about universal health care. And so in 2016, I'm watching Bernie Sanders make more sense to me, the person who's literally not just being labeled as a socialist. Like, Democrats hate being called socialists. They're like, oh, no, we're not socialists. Bernie was like, yes, I'm a socialist. Like, he owned that label. And I was like, wait, I've been told my whole life socialism is the most evil thing in the world. This is the only person who makes any sense right now on the plane field? And so that was really interesting to me. Basically, by 2017, I had done reading, I had done some work. I was listening to a different set of voices. And I was a leftist, basically.
- [16:44]
Monty
So I had made it hard.
- [16:48]
Brian Wrecker
I did. And it was really the first time that I thought about it deeply. And so my. That was really the first step of deconstruction evangelicalism. It did start with politics and kind of taking apart conservative, realizing that there was nothing compassionate about compassionate conservatism, that it was rooted in stinginess and believing that you can't give people nice things or they're just going to take advantage, they're going to game the system. We can't just give people health care. They're going to take advantage of everything. And it's like I started to realize, no, no, no, actually, when people's. When people's needs are met, we actually do better as and like, people deserve that. These are human rights. Like, what is wrong with us? And it was frustrating to me that people in my church were so like. And I didn't feel comfortable talking about this too, because as a site pastor, I was kind of in this structure of other people. So I would try to weave these ideas into my sermon, try to, like, get ideas about, hey, we don't have to hate foreigners and immigrants. Hey, actually, Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, which includes all kinds of neighbors. And I, as. As I would talk about these things, I would grow more and more frustrated with where evangelicalism was at. But for the next five or so years, I. Well, really up until 2020, I felt like I was doing good from challenging a broken system from within.
- [18:00]
Monty
Yeah.
- [18:00]
Brian Wrecker
So that kept me going until it didn't.
- [18:03]
Monty
And then what happened when it no longer. You were just like, I can't do this anymore.
- [18:09]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. So 2020 was, I think, a breaking point for a lot of us. The great resignation, you know, they called it for a lot of pastors. And for me, I had already been like, kind of fighting uphill battle for a few years, but I still had so many friends, so much love in the community, so much support, and really, it was hard to fathom just walking away from all of it. But the pause that 2020 gave us, where we had to walk away from all of it like I was home. And during that time, the Christians were on their worst behavior. Like they were. They were acting up worse than ever before. The people in our church didn't want to wear masks when we went back. And all this stuff was happening. You know, I was. There was a racial reckoning throughout the country. I was learning more about anti racism. I was preaching about white supremacy and systemic racism and people were angry about that they weren't receiving. And I started to realize, first of all, when Covid was done, I didn't want to go back. And second of all, I. Out of integrity, like, I was realizing in myself that I was censoring myself and I was preventing myself from really going deep on certain issues because I knew that even though I could push on the. Excuse me. I could push on the edges a little bit. Like I could say, hey, let's be nicer to immigrants. Let's, you know, we should care about poor people. I could do stuff like that, but I certainly couldn't affirm queer people or I'd be fired. There were certain lines I could not cross and I was, as a result of that, kind of holding back from allowing myself to really fully listen to my conscience. And so I. I did, at the end of 2020, October 2020, I. I put in my resignation and we did like a pastoral hunt. Found another guy to replace me. I didn't want to like, make a scene. I wasn't like going and saying like, you guys are all a bunch of, you know, I was like, quite about it. I pulled myself out 2021, I moved away and yeah, kind of the rest is history from there. I started posting shortly after that.
- [20:03]
Monty
Yeah.
- [20:04]
Brian Wrecker
Got my sermons removed.
- [20:05]
Monty
I'm trying to remember when I followed you. I want to say it was 2022, I think.
- [20:11]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, so, yeah, so that's.
- [20:14]
Monty
It was, it was early.
- [20:15]
Brian Wrecker
I took a year. Right. So when I first. Actually in 2020, when I first put in my resignation, I went back to seminary. My initial idea was I was going to finish my M. Div. At the time I had a master's in ministry. But I was like, let me get a. Let me finish my M. Div. And really read. Come back to ministry with a more progressive mindset, kind of rethink some things, take some time to reconsider what kind of a minister I would want to be. But during that process of deconstruction and moving away, my marriage ended. And when that happened, that was like a second breaking on top of that initial deconstruction, breaking. Loss of a community, loss of my pastoral identity, loss of really my evangelical identity and even faith tradition felt very unmoored. And then when my marriage fell apart, I quit seminary in. That's 2022, I dropped out. And I actually, at that time was thinking, yeah, I'm not going to probably pastor again. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. I got like a recruiting job. I was just trying to figure it out. But I did still have these passions. I thoughts I had been a part of this whole thing and I had been preaching against it and I didn't even feel like I was saying what I wanted to be saying while I was a pastor. I was holding back. And so I just started venting online, I guess. And yeah, it was in 2022 when I started just kind of posting. I was screaming into the void. I didn't really expect anything to happen with that, but I think because I didn't have anything to lose. I had already, yeah, I didn't have a job at that point in ministry. I had already been kind of, once I came out as affirming my old church, removed all my sermons from the website and sent out an email that I was a heretic to everybody. So, like, I didn't have anybody that I could offend. So I felt very free to just speak my truth, which I think resonated because I do. I know so many pastors that have kind of come out of it, but they don't necessarily go full tilt on all their opinions in a public way because they're still so enmeshed in many relationships where they know it's going to offend people. And I mean, it, it does offend my parents, certainly, and other people. But I don't know, I guess I just got to a point where I was just wanted to be me. I was so tired of being constrained to not be able to because the conservatives don't mind speaking like they proudly. They're waving MAGA flags. Why am I ashamed?
- [22:28]
Monty
Yeah, they'll say the most horrible things on national television. Like the girl on Piers Morgan who was like, yeah, I'm a racist. And I was just like, dude, like, we don't need to be shocked. You're saying The N word. 100%. Freedom of speech. Freedom of speech. What do you want to say, Karen? What, what is it that you want to say? Because I know exactly what it is you want to say. And it's not good. It's crazy and it's crazy. I think the shift, and I agree with you that I think one of the positive things about Trump is that we now see this movement for exactly what it is because everything is so blatant and up front and Christians are acting how they've always wanted to act. Now and it's cool and chilling.
- [23:08]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. I don't think Bush. I mean, fundamentally, ideologically, the conservatives have. Since Reagan, I mean, they've had. This has been the same ideology. It's just now there's no more. It does seem like there's no more pussyfooting around it. They're not gonna be snowflakes. Like, they're just. They're saying the quiet part out loud, and it's like, thank you for that. There's a real call. In fact, man, there's a guy I don't know if you interact much with, this one joker, Nathan Finocchio. He interacts with my stuff a lot. Do you know who that is?
- [23:35]
Monty
No.
- [23:36]
Brian Wrecker
So he's the president of something called Theos University, which is like a seminary that's like, not a real seminar. It's like an online thing. But it's very popular amongst evangelical pastors because, you know, they're not big on education in general.
- [23:49]
Monty
Yeah.
- [23:52]
Brian Wrecker
They love, like, a fake seminary that's basically about church growth and teaching you how to be a good evangelical pastor, not how to engage with, like, real critical scholarship of the Bible or anything like that. And so anyway, he. He's like the president of that, and he'll engage with my stuff a lot. And just. He's an asshole. Like, literally. I posted about Gaza the other day, and I'm not kidding, I'd pull it up, it'd probably take me too long to find, but he was basically like, brian, I'm going to carve your name into the marble floors of the hotel that Trump builds in Gaza after he kicks all the Palestinians out. This is the president of a supposed seminary saying that. And so I literally said, like, the callousness. Somebody else was like, you're so call. And I was like, so callous is this guy's whole spirituality, unfortunately. And he liked that comment.
- [24:36]
Monty
Yeah. They're so proud of when I said that.
- [24:38]
Brian Wrecker
Like, absolutely. Hell, yeah. It's. It is like a weird. Like, they're reveling in it, and it's like, to them, that's true spirituality. We're standing for truth by being the most heinous dicks imaginable. And, you know, I appreciate you telling me who you are.
- [24:55]
Monty
Yeah. Like, thank you for. Thank you for the announcement. And also, again, none of this was ever about faith. It was never about serving Christ. It was a window of opportunity and a brand that you used to gain power. And as you like, you know, you went through this huge period of massive change. What were some of the hardest topics or did you struggle really coming out of conservativism into a more progressive, leftist idea? Was there anything that really took you a while to work through or that really surprised you when you left evangelicalism?
- [25:28]
Brian Wrecker
So not a lot of the big things that we've been talking about, like, you know, how we treat the poor, immigrants, queer people, all that stuff was kind of fell into place pretty, pretty smoothly for me. The biggest question was really Christianity itself, like, is that going to be a part of my future or not? That was really the biggest surprise was kind of where I'm at now as someone who is actually still trying to exist within the Christian space. I was not. I really did put on the table not being a Christian was an option. It had to be an option. As a part of my deconstruction, I tell people all the time, like, if, if you think that, like, that it would be bad to not be a Christian, like, it would be worse, like you'd be doing a bad thing to not be a Christian, then you're not really being intellectually honest in that decision because you're already kind of morally waiting staying as a Christian as a better, more moral option than not being a Christian. And it's like, if that's, that's the case, then that's just still coercion. Like, I don't believe one of the coolest things about not believing in hell. Talk about this a little bit in my book. Like, this thing is not about being right about, like, oh, good, I'm the right religion and I believe the right things about God. I passed the test and I got all the metaphysical God questions right. And so I'm not going to be punished. Like, that idea. And maybe people wouldn't say it quite that graphically, but that's literally most people's spirituality, Christianity, that's the paradigm they're living in that will keep you from being intellectually honest. And it really makes your spirituality about believing the right things as opposed to living the right way. So for me, the total shift has been rediscovering a Christian spirituality that still works for me and finding that I'm still vibing with the way of Jesus. And I still feel no reason to say, oh, I'm not a Christ follower anymore, while really redefining in many ways what that means for me. So that would probably be the most surprising thing that's happened. I did not know where it was gonna land. That's one of the reasons I dropped outta seminary. I was like, I don't know if I'M a Christian anymore. I don't know if I'll continue to be a Christian. And I think even studying and like paying for seminary and being a part of this system is keeping me from being objective about it. I was tired of that because as a pastor, something I like to tell people, and pastors do not reckon with this enough. Pastors, for all their theological study, are the least likely to be objective about any particular theological issue because they've got too much at stake. Their jobs are literally on the line. They can't change their minds. And so I wanted to be free from that. And so I had to really break ties in some way and think about it. It. And so finding it again in a new way has been the most surprising thing.
- [28:00]
Monty
That's incredible. And so. And this is a good segue because you do have a book coming out September 30th called Hellbent. What is kind of the premise behind the book? What caused you to write the book? Give me a little bit of backstory about that. Oh, look at it. He's got it. He's got it right here. He's like, I've got the book right.
- [28:17]
Brian Wrecker
It's actually not the real book. This is a dummy copy.
- [28:19]
Monty
But the title and the font is so incredible. It's so nice. It's so good. I can't wait to read it.
- [28:24]
Brian Wrecker
It. Oh, I'll. I'm going to get you an advanced copy. I should do that. Remind me.
- [28:28]
Monty
Thank you. Love to.
- [28:30]
Brian Wrecker
Absolutely. No, you need one.
- [28:31]
Monty
I always say that if you're wondering what you would do in Nazi Germany or Jim Crow, you're probably doing it right now. Last year, we know that there were 900 anti LGBTQ harassment claims filed, and those are just the reported cases. Yet we have Republicans out here calling PBS groomers for daring to post about Pride, meanwhile staying real quiet. It when it comes to the fact that there is a case of Catholic priests suing to not have to report claims of child abuse because instead of being reporters to protect children, they claim it's a violation of their religious liberty to have to report. When I went to groundnews.com I saw that there were less than 50 sources reporting on this story. And it was a complete blind spot for the right. They weren't saying a word about it. This is being brought to the Supreme Court by the Beckett law firm, which is also bringing two cases to the Supreme Court that would allow religious institutions to not pay unemployment and to prevent books that acknowledge gay people exist to even be in classrooms claiming it's a violation of religious liberty to acknowledge that people exist. So when I look at information like this and I'm trying to find out who's covering what, where is the resources coming from? I like to go to ground news.com and if you use groundnews.com tables, you can get 40% off their vantage plan, which comes out to about $5 a month. And what I used for this story was their blind spot feature, which shows me who's covering what. What is the left missing? What is the right missing? What's not getting accurate coverage? Because our silence isn't just about what we allow to happen. Our silence also says who we want to protect and who we're not protecting. This episode is also brought to you by Intravenous Solutions, Nashville's premier IV therapy and wellness center. IV therapy can help you recover quicker from heavy workouts or illness, treat the symptoms of dehydration, and improve sleep and give you healthy, glowing skin. Skin. Being on stage several times a week, I can say that IV treatments help keep me on my feet and are a lifesaver. I've also recently in, in an attempt to really restore my health, has started doing ozone therapy with Intravenous Solutions, which has been a game changer in my energy, my sleep, and my chronic inflammation. With four locations in Nashville, Hendersonville, Franklin, and their brand new location on second Avenue in Bankers Alley Hotel by Hilton, it is so easy to get high quality care all week. So come party in Nashville and beat the hangover. Intravenous Solutions. You can give the code Monty10 at checkout for a 10% discount on services.
- [30:56]
Brian Wrecker
Okay, sorry, what was the question again? I was so.
- [30:58]
Monty
It was like. It was really about.
- [30:59]
Brian Wrecker
What's it about?
- [30:59]
Monty
Yeah, what. What's it about? What led to the book? Give me kind of the. The elevator pitch, if you will.
- [31:05]
Brian Wrecker
So I began to deconstruct hell while I was still a pastor. That was something that always bothered me. I don't know, you. You were raised similar enough to how I was raised. Were you familiar with chick tracts? Did you guys.
- [31:15]
Monty
Yeah.
- [31:15]
Brian Wrecker
Were those.
- [31:16]
Monty
Oh, my gosh. I'm getting ready to make a reel about chick tracts and like how I used to have to out and like all of that stuff because even though our church denomination was Southern Baptist, my dad very much raised us with like IFB principles. So the church was more liberal than we were, if that makes sense.
- [31:36]
Brian Wrecker
So you remember the. I mean, those, those tracks are like horrifying.
- [31:39]
Monty
They're horrifying.
- [31:40]
Brian Wrecker
Drawing that the God figure in those tracks he's like this big faceless giant on a throne, big white, glowing guy.
- [31:47]
Monty
Yeah.
- [31:48]
Brian Wrecker
And he's kind of always pointing away from himself and saying, get the fuck away from me, you dirty sin. You know, and just throwing people in the hell left and right. So that was kind of the image of God I was raised with. And that, that while when I moved to evangelicalism, like I said, it was so refreshing because like, oh my God, we're talking about grace, we're talking about love, we're talking about mercy, we're not fear mongering, we're not doing the hell thing every Sunday. It took me a while to realize that even though we were talking about love and Jesus's love every Sunday, it was still the same underlining story that was undergirding everything we were doing. It was just more behind the scenes in evangelicalism than it was in fundamentalism. And so hell still was frightening to me. And you know, I, when I came to, to faith in God, Evangelicals love to talk about relationships with God. You know, it's not a religion, it's a relationship. But the reality is when we entered that relationship, Monty, I don't know if, if you remember when you first made a decision to have a relationship with God, God, Hell was a part of that decision.
- [32:46]
Monty
Hell was the reason. Oh, if you don't do Hell was burn in hell for eternity. I was five. Of course I'm gonna pick the relationship with the scary God. Like, of course I am.
- [32:56]
Brian Wrecker
It's obvious and you can nuance it all you want. And when I say this, like the Christians who are still in it, they have theological justifications for, oh no, it's, it's actually a self chosen thing because of separation from God. And you're, they do this whole thing, but at the end of the day, it was a coercive decision. And hell haunted me because. And it kept me from even doing. I knew as a pastor one thing I was really shitty at, I was really good at preaching grace. I was really bad at evangelism. I never led anybody to the Lord while I was a pastor. Not a single time. I didn't do it because the whole story, I didn't know how to do it in a way that wasn't coercive. I couldn't get there, I couldn't figure it out. And hell was at the center of that story. And so it really boggled my mind. It always bothered me and I was always working on it on the edge edges. And it, I think it was 2017 that I finally did like a deep dive where I. I like, read everything I could get my hands on about hell and fully kind of basically deconstructed it, but I didn't know how to. I talked to the lead pastor about it and I had. I had shifted first to annihilationism before I shifted to universal salvation. That was kind of my first step because actually most of the images for hell in the Bible are about death and destruction, not about torment or torture. Now, I believe that those images of death and destruction are not talking about an afterlife death and destruction. They're talking about the way that our actions do return on us in this life and that when you sow violence, you reap violence. Death and destruction falls on us as a consequence of our actions. That's how I would see it now. But at the time, my first step was to shift to an annihilationist position because I just could not.
- [34:34]
Monty
Can you define that for people who don't have a religious background so that they know the difference?
- [34:38]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. So eternal conscious torment is the classic Christian position, which means that people who are not Christians are going to suffer for eternity in torment. Whether you believe in literal flames or not, it doesn't matter. A lot of them believe in literal flames. But Tim Keller famously said that the flames, he believed them, were. They were metaphorical. But he said that is of no comfort whatsoever because separated from God, you will eternally, endlessly fall apart. Still pretty bad.
- [35:08]
Monty
Yeah, still pretty bad.
- [35:09]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. Eternal suffering, that's eternal conscious torment. Annihilation is not as popular of a position. It's a very much a minority position. Jehovah's Witnesses believe it and a few, you know, different Christian sects. Some theologians, like John Stott did embrace it. But that basically means that if you're not a Christian, you're not going to suffer. God's just going to destroy you. So you're just. You don't receive resurrection life, eternal life. You're just, poof, gone. You're. You're out of existence. You're dead, you're destroyed. So that was a more compassionate position, at least, because it's like most, you know, in my mind, the way I thought about it. Yeah. I mean, if you're. If you're not a God person, you probably believe that's what's going to happen to you anyway. Like, you're going to die. It's like, okay, so it's like, yeah, I mean, you're going to die. That's what they believe anyway. So eternal life only through Christ. That's A little better. I still didn't love it, but at least it was better than the eternal suffering. And I thought there had. Here's the thing. Our whole worldview as evangelicals is based in punishment. And so here's what the pastor said. This is actually insane. Are you ready for this? So when I told my lead pastor, because our statement of faith said that unbelievers will suffer in hell forever, which is not what I believed anymore, I was like, okay, I believe in annihilation. They're just gonna poof, right? And so I was like, okay, I have to talk to him about. This is an integrity issue. So I told my lead pastor. I had a whole meeting. I was so nervous. I was, like, sweaty. I was like, I just want to tell you I've shifted my position on hell. I'm convinced by this annihilation of position. And you know what his first question was? He was like, okay, but. So you don't believe they're gonna suffer forever, but you still think something bad's gonna happen to them, right? And I was like, yeah, totally. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Because that's key. Because here's the thing. If something bad's not gonna happen to them, what's the point in being a Christian at all?
- [36:46]
Monty
Yep. How do you coerce them into it? It's either the fear of punishment or they abuse, poverty, and desperation to convert people. People like, God's gonna bless you if you just follow him. You're suffering because you have unrepentant sin in your life. Oh, my God. So. So your exploration of hell, where did you end up?
- [37:06]
Brian Wrecker
So I. I kept moving at. And by the time I was actually stepping away from pastoral ministry, I was. I was more of a universalist. But even then, while a pastor, I did not feel comfortable to preach that because I knew. I even talked to the. The lead guy at the time after. He was like, you know, you believe something's bad's gonna happen to them. I. I was like, hey, could I talk about this annihilationist thing? Because I think some people are very uncomfortable with hell. This could actually help their faith, you know, because they could know there's other options. And he was nervous about communicating that because people could perceive that as compromising the gospel. You're watering down the truth and that sort of thing. Evangelicals, they feel like they have to be strong on punishment in order to be, like, standing up for God. So, yeah, I mean, as soon as I stopped pastoring, for me, that universalism was a big part of it. But I had to do a little work because my worldview was also rooted in punishment. And so I had to. The questions I had were the same ones that I get asked all the time. Whenever I start talking about, hey, I don't believe there's a hell. There's a handful of questions that I always get. And this formed the idea behind my book. People ask me, if there's no hell, then what's the point? Why become a Christian at all? If there's no hell, why did Jesus die? If there's no hell, then you know, do you even need to become a Christian? These kind. If there's no hell, what does it mean to be saved? And so I realized there's. There was a book that needed to be written because Love Wins was Rob Bell's book that hinted at universalism. Great book. But it pulled at the thread of hell and said, hey, maybe there's no hell. Hey, maybe everybody's in. Hey, maybe this isn't all about that. But it didn't answer the questions, well, wait a second, we built a whole fucking Jenga tower on there being a hell. You can't just pull out those bottom blocks and say, hey, there's no hell. The whole thing crumbles down. And so, so in my book I really show how, first of all, hell is the foundation of evangelical spirituality. And the first part of my book I basically just lay out, here's what happened to us. Because what I've realized is that for most Christians, their whole spirituality is rooted in punishment and punishment avoidance. And we need to just own that. Because if you want to discover a positive life giving spirituality of love, you have to first dismantle this, this spirituality that was rooted in trying to get God to like you and hating yourself too. Because who I am is worthy of punishment. You believe that about yourself. You believe that about yourself and other people that other people are worthy of that you can't really love your neighbor. You're trying to convert and colonize your neighbor. And so I basically dismantle, hey, here's the spirituality we inherited, here's how it doesn't work. Then I dismantle hell. And then I say, well, if not like what? How can we reconstruct a Christian spirituality of love? Because I don't think that's what you Jesus was about.
- [39:42]
Monty
Yeah, I don't think so either. And I was thinking about. It's so interesting that it goes this way because I was thinking about this this morning as part of my deconstruction, having that one, the crisis moment of am I walking away from this entirely? Because it has to be an option that's on the table. And I really did for a couple years. And one of my biggest issues was when I came out of a violently abusive physical relationship and I learned what gaslighting was because I didn't have the terms. I learned what gaslighting was, and I learned what, like, narciss. Narcissistic manipulation looks like. And I'm like, if. If I go to my partner and I say, you're gonna love me or I'm going to set you on fire. That's not a loving relationship. That's abuse.
- [40:27]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah. And I just literally, I lay that exactly out.
- [40:29]
Monty
Is it really funny?
- [40:30]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, it's so true. But, yeah, I literally lay that exact example out. And then on the other side of it, they call that love. So that's like the ultimate gaslighting. It's a redefinition of love.
- [40:39]
Monty
Exactly.
- [40:39]
Brian Wrecker
And, and what it does, it justifies anything you can. If. If that's love. You can call anything love.
- [40:47]
Monty
Yep. I just don't agree with their lifestyle.
- [40:49]
Brian Wrecker
Parents disown their queer kids.
- [40:51]
Monty
Yep.
- [40:51]
Brian Wrecker
Right. I mean, but like the most heinous shit you could possibly imagine. And a Christian will call it love because it's. It's meant to help somebody avoid hell. So parents will say, like, yeah, you can't come to Thanksgiving to their queer kid. And they'll call that love.
- [41:07]
Monty
And it is because it's the punishment rebrand. And when I learned the language of, like, darvo and narcissism and gaslighting, I was like, that is the whole premise of this relationship that I've been taught. So if God is participating actively in narcissistic manipulation and gaslighting and all these things, that's not a good God.
- [41:29]
Brian Wrecker
I don't want it.
- [41:30]
Monty
Like, I don't want to participate in that. And I love that your book addresses that because it really is the core, more of a very violent ideology because it leads to violence and it excuses violence.
- [41:43]
Brian Wrecker
Absolutely.
- [41:44]
Monty
And when you were.
- [41:45]
Brian Wrecker
When your God is punishing, then you can be punishing.
- [41:47]
Monty
Yeah. Because you're just. You're doing what God told you. You know, God commanded us to commit genocide, you know, or whatever topic you picked that day when you were, when you were compiling this and working through this, what was the, like, some of the things that you learned that really shocked you in this exploration of hell and the, the. The theology behind hell.
- [42:08]
Brian Wrecker
So my exploration of Gehenna, I mean, so I only really have one chapter that goes deep on what does the Bible actually say about hell. I do not want to overwhelm people with, like, theology and jargon, because, honestly, like, a lot of people reading it, they're not trying to do seminary. Like, they want to get free. But I will say I was surprised by how much I resonated with Jesus's message of Gehenna and to where, like, I actually want to. I need some churches to invite me to preach some of the hell to texts, because I think when you reframe them, it's. It's a really, really practical warning for this world. So Jesus, the people say, preachers are always saying, Jesus talks about hell more than anybody. You ever heard preacher say that?
- [42:48]
Monty
Yep. Oh, yeah.
- [42:50]
Brian Wrecker
And what Jesus talks about more than anybody is Gehenna. And so if Gehenna is talking about an eternal torture chamber, then Jesus talks about hell more than anybody. But if Gehenna means something else, then Jesus didn't talk about hell at all.
- [43:00]
Monty
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:01]
Brian Wrecker
And that metaphor, Jesus didn't make it up. That metaphor was used first by Jeremiah. And when Jeremiah talked about Gehenna, he is talking about how the Babylonians came and sieged Jerusalem and burned the temple to the ground. And Jeremiah said that unless you change your ways, unless you start honoring the poor and the widows and doing the things that God told you to love, then you are going to be thrown into the valley of slaughter. You're going to be thrown into Gehenna. Gehenna was a field outside of Jerusalem. It became synonymous with a cursed place. And the idea was he wasn't talking about punishment in the afterlife. He was talking about, you're going to get chopped down by Babylonian sores and pierced by Babylonian spears and set on fire by Babylonian flaming arrows. And that's what happened. And the bodies were in fact, piled in the field of Gehenna, just like Jeremiah said they were. And so the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed hundreds of years before Jesus. Jesus. Then fast forward several hundred years in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus uses the same metaphor and says that unless we change our ways, unless we honor the poor, Gehenna is coming again. And do you know what happened 30 years after the ministry of Jesus? Exactly that. In fact, the historian Josephus says that bodies were again stacked in the field of Gehenna after Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple for the second time. Time. And so do you know when the. The. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark were written? They were written in just within a decade of the destruction of the temple.
- [44:37]
Monty
Yep. So you're going to Tell me Matthew wrote to destruction.
- [44:40]
Brian Wrecker
Yes. These were wartime gospels. And so like we, we over spiritualize the Bible and we forget that these are real people dealing with the same kind of, that we're dealing with, worried about the same kinds of things. The safety of their homes, if they're going to have food on the table, if their governments are stable and able to provide for them. And, and of course, the temple was the center of their religious and social and economic life and its destruction was a total mind fuck for the Jewish Diaspora. And so Matthew writing to people who literally are reeling from the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, this just happened a few years ago. Of course, when he's writing about Jesus the prophet, he's going to give him words that say, hey, here's why that happened and here's how it happened. So whether or not Jesus even said that, it makes perfect sense to me. So yeah, I basically reinterpret the Gehenna passages as warning warnings on the lips of a prophetic. Jesus is a Hebrew prophet, just like the other ones who came and said, hey, unless you stop doing the bad, bad shit's gonna come back on you.
- [45:37]
Monty
Yes. You will reap what you sow.
- [45:40]
Brian Wrecker
Yes. And so I, I think of another Jeremiah, Modern Day Jeremiah, Dr. Jeremiah Wright. A few years ago he preached a sermon where he talked about chickens coming home to roost. And he got in a lot of trouble for this after 911 where he said, you know, and listen, I'm not justifying the 911 terrorist attacks, but Dr. Jeremiah Wright said, we're sowing violence all over the world. And he goes and says, here's what we did in the Congo, here's what we did in the Sudan, here's what we did in South America, here's what America did. We bomb here. We bomb here. We bombed babies here. We bombed babies here. And he said, the chickens have come home to roost. That's the meaning of gehenna. That's what it means. That's what Jesus was saying. You're gonna sow this out, it's gonna come back and we're still doing it right now. We are sowing hell. Yes, actively. And it's gonna come back. Like, we look in our streets and it's like, why do we have homelessness? Why do we have poverty? Why do we all fucking hate each other? We're sowing hell in the world and we're reaping hell in our home. We just are. And like, I think of climate change even, like, yeah, we're just, we're just putting it out there. And we don't think that that's ever gonna come home to roost.
- [46:42]
Monty
Yeah. Like, we have, like, so many, especially in the United States, like, just wanna deny that it's real. Just completely strip resources bare and think that nothing bad is ever going to happen, as if there's no end to it.
- [46:56]
Brian Wrecker
And think God's on our side.
- [46:57]
Monty
Right.
- [46:57]
Brian Wrecker
That's the thing that Jesus was saying. You think God's on your side. Hell is coming for you. Not in the afterlife, in this life.
- [47:05]
Monty
Yep.
- [47:05]
Brian Wrecker
And so that, to me was the biggest maybe surprise I studied hell was just how relevant those passages still are once you anchor them in. In reality. One of the biggest problems with Christians is they don't understand a goddamn metaphor. Like, once you, like, are able to see the power of a metaphor when you take a beautiful metaphor and you say, well, like, you make it woodenly literal, you rob it of its meaning, and you actually. It makes it toxic and usually harmful. But if you can reclaim that metaphor as a spiritual principle in your life, that's what spirituality is. It's about how we live. And so when people ask me, like, why it be a Christian Christian, to me, it's just about trying to live like Jesus and trying to reclaim that. And this is a journey. I'm not saying that I've nailed it down, but if your Christianity is about the next life instead of this life, I think you're missing it.
- [47:53]
Monty
Well, and I think that spirituality should always be growing. Like, the. The point of spirituality is how do I become better to myself, to the world around me? How do I become more healed and whole? How do I share that healedness and that wholeness? Like, I. If your worldview and your spirituality never changes in your entire life, it means you aren't learning or trying anything. And it's scary.
- [48:20]
Brian Wrecker
Yeah, I mean, most of my growth has come from failure. Yeah. Same, you know, shit stops working. And that's the other thing I like about the way of Jesus. And I get into this in my book just a little bit. You know, there's another cool metaphor about, like, you know, Jesus descending into hell and then ascending on the other side of that. And it's this very archetypical story of death and resurrection. In fact, you know, born again is like one of the main metaphors that Christians use for salvation, but the most common one in the New Testament is to be like, to die with Christ and to be raised with Christ. And that process of, like, death and resurrection is the ultimate sort of our typical pattern for spiritual growth that I've experienced even in my deconstruction, destruction, I've experienced death and resurrection. In my divorce, I've experienced death and resurrection. And I'm sure there's more deaths coming and we resist them. We tried not to let death happen, but it's really like when those aspects of our identity that we're grasping onto for life die, we find new life on the other side. We usually resurrect as a more authentic version of ourselves. And it's fucking hard and miserable. But that's, I think, the pattern of growth.
- [49:26]
Monty
Ah.
- [49:26]
Brian Wrecker
So, yeah, they don't call it death for nothing.
- [49:28]
Monty
It is, seriously. And it's so hard and it's so hard to look in the mirror and it. Admit I was wrong or I, I up, whatever it is. And I will say in this space, you know, as we continue to grow in this space that you're at now, what is, what have you seen really grow and change and be enriched in your life since deconstructing and finding this new space for faith?
- [49:54]
Brian Wrecker
I mean, it's just, it's so great not to have to hide anymore and to. Yeah. So I, man, there's so much I could say. I've learned so much from the queer people in my life.
- [50:06]
Monty
Me too.
- [50:07]
Brian Wrecker
I, I feel like I owe great debt to the people that have loved me on the other side of deconstruction and have trusted me, despite the fact that I spent so many years in a system that was harmful to them and not only in it, but leading within a system that was harmful to them. And so as an ally, what I see in queer people, these are people who have had to fight tooth and nail to be themselves and are still so rejected by so many people. And so every time they simply show up as themselves, it's like an act of resistance, which gives me, I think it increases my faith and gives me courage because it's like if they're going to be themselves at such potential cost, then I have no right to hide and cower. And so I'm learning what it means to be, to be myself. And I think in a day when I think there's a lot of really dangerous narratives around masculinity, a lot of red pill manosphere garbage. A lot of that is, is guys who are so afraid of, of, of being themselves. Because who we are is not. None of us are these perfectly rugged masculine figures. You know, they're suppressing things within themselves and they're lying to themselves. And it's mostly projection. Like People critique me, and I can always just see the projection in it. And there's so much fear and inability to, like, own these parts of yourself that you think are bad, but you've. You've excised them. You know, you've done what bell hooks calls psychological mutilation to yourself because you're refusing to allow yourself to. To be your whole self. And I'm. I'm realizing ways that I have done that in my life. Like, for instance, when I joined the Marine Corps, and I didn't even want to, like, what was that? You know, and so, yeah, I think that I'm still, you know, it's. It's a journey, and who knows who. Who will all become. But I think allowing myself to have that same courage that I'm seeing in. In so many of my queer neighbors has been, like, one of the big areas of growth for me.
- [52:14]
Monty
That's incredible. And what's, you know, in the space that we're in, and we both work in deconstruction and we see what's happening around us as a result of harmful, quote, Christian movements. What is your hope for the future here in America.
- [52:33]
Brian Wrecker
Man? It's pretty bleak, dude. I don't know. I go back and forth on this. Me too. I didn't think Trump was going to win this time around. I really didn't. I think thought. I thought we took some steps forward, and there was a lot of, I think, very understandable cynicism in the wake of his victory. I saw different Christians or even non Christians, this thing, you know, reflecting on. I saw a few reflections. You know that famous Martin Luther King quote where he says, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
- [53:02]
Monty
Yes.
- [53:03]
Brian Wrecker
And I've always loved that quote. And it was interesting. After Trump won, I saw a few people saying, hey, maybe we need to retire that one. Like, maybe. Because maybe it doesn't. Like, maybe that we. We thought that it would and it. It won't. And I. I don't have, like, a firm belief in that or not. I think it's up to us to bend it. Like, I don't know that it's just going to bend it itself. I think that however, I'm. I find hope not from some, like, bullshit belief in, like, some deuce ex machina thing that, like, God's gonna swoop in and a second coming is gonna happen and the whole thing is gonna get fixed. I mean, that would be awesome. Like, I'm pretty agnostic about the idea of a second coming. I think it's probably a metaphor, but hey, I can, I, I can vibe with it. Like, if the real ass Jesus broke through and said, we're gonna fix this, I'm not gonna say no. Like, you know, you can come fix it anytime, big guy. But until then, I, I look to, there's, there's other pictures for the second coming. And the one that I resonate with most is probably, yeah, one of my favorite passages is in Matthew 25 where Jesus says that you'll, where you'll see him is in the least of these. And so I like to tell people, when people ask me if I believe in a second coming, is that Jesus says he's going to come to us again and again and again and again, usually in the place where we least expect it and the people that we're most likely to overlook. And so I see Christ at work in the church and in the world, in the places that have been most persecuted and marginalized, marginalized and ignored by the church to include, yeah, queer people, women, minorities of every kind. And there's a ma. So, like, I still love Christianity because of queer liberation theologians and black liberation theologians and feminist and womanist theologians who are speaking about God in new ways, indigenous theology who are speaking about God in ways that are not defined by white male God. And so I don't know if that's a hope for Christianity necessarily. I don't know that those people will ever be centered and listened to. But I do, I think that, you know, I'm always excited. I hear from folks in my DM sometimes who are like, hey, I, I, I, I like, you make me want to be a Christian again. Or I had kind of walked away from my faith and like, I'm back, and I'm back in a progressive church and I'm loving it. Or I'm, I've heard from several people recently said I just like applied to seminary because you, like, inspired me to like, want to study this stuff for myself. And that is really encouraging to me because I think God is beautiful, like the idea of, for everybody and it's been used for so much harm. But I think if you can reclaim that for liberation, there's a lot of power there, especially when it's come from the margins when you're able to say, like, when, when, when somebody is marginalized, able to say, hey, you don't own God. God is for everybody. And in fact, the Bible's pretty clear that God's on my side most of all. I, I just find that so beautiful, man. And so that makes me not want to give up on it. And if I could just have any part in like helping. That's one of the reasons I'm still a Christian, is because I want Christianity to be better. I mean, there's going to be billions of Christians and so like, if they can be a little bit better and if my voice can help with that and even like a little bit, if, like, if as a result of this, like hell is less central, punishment is less central in Christianity, I think that'd be a good thing for the world. I don't know if it's a hope for that to actually happen because the bad ones are so powerful. But I see flickers of it always. But it's always amongst the least of these because that's where Christ says he's going to be in.
- [56:33]
Monty
Yeah, I agree. I agree. And it is, it's bleak, but it's also. There's a lot of hope. There is a lot of. I find there's so much increase in the number of voices and the voices are getting louder and that gives me a lot of optimism and voices like you, who've been a couple years in this space. And so the book comes out September 30th. And where else can people find you? Hear you, hear you talk more about your faith, your belief book. What are the best places?
- [57:04]
Brian Wrecker
So definitely Instagram. I'm really bad at cross posting on most of the other socials, so Instagram is definitely the best one at Berer. But I also post on substack. I do meditations. Most Thursdays I try to put out some sort of meditation. I'm not like, it's not everyone necessarily, but I in those meditations lately, I'm going through just the life and ministry and stories of Jesus because there is just so much beauty there. And when you like reclaim that without the lens of punishment and dogma, I want to be clear about something. I don't care if people are Christians or not. I know. Like, I was like so encouraged by the fact, like some people are like, oh, I'm coming back to church. I'm coming out of the faith. I don't like, I'm not like less incurred if somebody's like an atheist and they're happy and like they care about people. Like, and I care about people being good humans. I don't care if you're a Christian or not. But I do love it when people decide to find their humanity within Christianity because again, I think that if Christianity could be better, the way world would, you know, overall Be better if Christianity was less evil. I don't care if you're a Christian or not. My girlfriend's not a Christian. Some of the best, most moral values based people I know are not Christians or are even atheists. So. But I do think that there's incredible beauty in the life and ministry of Jesus and I love finding it there and pointing it out because I think for some of us there is like a tragedy that like when you like so much of Christianity was robbed from us by, by the dumbest and worst people.
- [58:33]
Monty
Yeah.
- [58:34]
Brian Wrecker
And I just, I love to say, like, you don't have to lose Jesus if you don't want to.
- [58:38]
Monty
Yes. Like, I want people to heal the damage and take what they need from it. It's like, and if you, if you don't need or want to be a Christian or call yourself a Christian, don't do that. Like pick the weeds, keep the flowers.
- [58:54]
Brian Wrecker
So we'll have such a hard time with that. It, it is like almost baked into most people's understanding of Christianity that like, if I'm, if I'm saying I'm a Christian, a lot of people automatically assume that means that I think you should be a Christian and that like you're fucked up a little bit if you're not a Christian or that I think everybody should be Christians. And part of the problem there is that hell and punishment are so central to the Christian imagination. But when you reclaim Christianity as a path of love and transformation, a spirituality that. About your growth in love in this world, in the way of Jesus, that's all it is. That's my path. You could call it something else. You could find the same shit somewhere else. But I think you can find it in Jesus. And so I'm not gonna culturally appropriate somebody else's thing. I've already like studied this book and that's like my guy. So, you know, life is too short. I don't have, you know, I'm just gonna stick with that. Yeah. But that doesn't degrade or denigrate any of the other traditions, you know.
- [59:51]
Monty
True, true. Thank you so much. I can't wait to read your book. I can't wait.
- [59:56]
Brian Wrecker
I'll get it to you soon. I gotta talk to my publisher and we'll get an advanced copy your way.
- [60:00]
Monty
Thank you. Thank you. And again everybody, his book comes out Sept. Sept. 30. It's called Hell Bent and you can find him on Instagram Erecker. I highly recommend listening to his talks, his journey. It's so inspiring and of course, we'll have him back on closer to the book release and really dive in a little bit more. But thank you for being here.
- [60:19]
Brian Wrecker
There's so much more we can talk about.
- [60:20]
Monty
There's so much more we have so much to talk about. Thank you so much for joining me today. Remember that his book comes out September 30th. Make sure you pre order it. We will have him on as a guest again closer to that time and really dive in to that book. I hope that this message was healing. I hope that it keeps you curious again. These conversations are never meant to convert anyone. I want you to be free to believe what you want to believe, but I want you to feel free to ask questions more than anything. And as always, if you would like these episodes ad free, you can consider joining and becoming an accomplice on my Patreon, which is just patreon.com forward/monty mater. And there's going to be some more tiers popping up there for Bible studies and then some exclusive live streams. Thank you for your support and I'll see you next week on Flipping Tables.
- [61:05]
Brian Wrecker
Sam.