← Let's Give A Damn
Loading summary
Transcript105 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello and happy holidays. Friends, welcome to the let's Give a Damn podcast, a show where I have conversations with incredible artists, activists and troublemakers. People who give a damn and who aim to lead the planet much better than they found it. I'm your host, Nick lapara. Thank you so much for being here today. This is the last episode of 2025. Wow. What a year. What a fucking year. Before I introduce this week's guest, a quick reminder that you can show your support for let's Give a Damn by joining our Patreon for the price of a cup of coffee per month. You can also follow us on social media that costs $0. You can share this episode with friends in person and online that also costs $0. You can buy some of our merch on our website let'sgivadam.com or maybe you're an organization or company that aligns with us and you'd like to sponsor some episodes. Friends, there are so many ways to support and I invite you to explore which ones are right for you. You can reach out to me with any questions@helloetsgiveadam.com I would love to chat, frankly. We have big plans for the podcast and for the rest of the let's Give a Damn platform and community in 2025, and I really want you to be part of it. So don't miss your chance to jump into this damn giving community in some way. My guest this week is a tremendous human. Brian Recker is a public theologian and a speaker and a writer on Christian spirituality without exclusionary dogma. That simply means that Brian is a much different kind of Christian than most of the quote unquote Christians you may know. Because sadly, most of the Christians you know probably helped put Donald Trump in office. They support policies and politicians that want to take away your social services. They want you to hate immigrants and brown people and trans people, and they support the terrorist state of Israel as they commit genocide in Gaza after decades and decades of apartheid and occupation. These are the Christians you mostly know about. I've been very open on this podcast about how I am a Christian, audible gulp. Which is very hard many times considering who my fellow Christians are and all the horrific things Christians have done in the past and are still doing in the present. Which is why I'm very glad to be figuring out this faith and whoever God is, this God thing, alongside friends like Brian. Because the faith that we embrace is all about love, inclusion, liberation and peace. During this conversation, among other things, we discuss his brand new book, Hellbent in This taboo shattering book, Bryan takes an honest look at the Bible and reveals what has been true all along. Hell isn't a real place and God's universal love is radically inclusive in this life and the next. The truth is by removing punishment from the center of the teaching that again, most of you have heard about over and over again, Brian reimagines the core questions of the Christian faith, such as why Jesus lived and died and what it means to be quote unquote saved. So why this conversation on a podcast about giving a damn? Because I believe so many horrible things that have happened in the past and in the present happened and are happening because so many people believe in hell. Because the people that are doing those bad things and have done those bad things believed and believe in hell. Hell. The fear of hell, the fear of an angry and all powerful God makes people do some crazy and horrible. Especially here in the so called West. If people stopped believing in a terrible God that sends people to eternal conscious torment, so many things in our society would get better. I also think it's important to have these conversations because it's going to take all of us, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Baha', is, Sikhs, and people who don't have any faith adherence at all. The to organize, build community, revolt and move us all closer to collective liberation. And for all my non Christian friends out there, I kind of hope at the very least that this conversation helps you realize that we are all not batshit crazy. Before we begin, friends, a quick reminder as always that you can email me anytime and for any reason@helloetsgivedam.com you can ask questions, reach, recommend future guests, tell me how much you love or hate the show. Anything goes. I just love hearing from you. And don't forget, if you prefer to watch your podcasts instead of listen to them, we're on YouTube as well. And now let's get right into my conversation with the wonderful Ryan Wrecker. Let's go. Ryan Recker. Welcome to the let's get a damn podcast.
- [04:55]
B
What's going on, Nick? Thanks for having me, bro.
- [04:58]
A
Absolutely. This has been a long time coming. I feel like I'm saying that more often. There's just a lot, you know, scheduling with guests and there's just so many things going on in the world. But this truly is like something we've been talking about for months. And then the book came out and we tried to do it closer to the book launch and life, life has been lifing. So here we are. This is the right time for it to happen.
- [05:20]
B
It's supposed to be. It's my meant to be. Exactly.
- [05:22]
A
Exactly. So glad you're here. And for those not watching this on YouTube, for those listening, you will not notice, you will not know that we are wearing the same exact hat. The let's Give a damn trucker hat. Every time I go out, every. And I wear this most days, I'm kind of like a walking billboard for let's Give a Damn. But every time I go out, I mean, no. And I'm not exaggerating. No less than five to 10 people will call it out. It is. It's ambiguous. People don't exactly know what I mean by let's.
- [05:55]
B
What are we giving a damn about. Exactly.
- [05:57]
A
No, no. And there's.
- [05:58]
B
Where do I start?
- [05:59]
A
Yeah, exactly. There's so many things, and there's probably a lot of people that I wouldn't agree with ideologically that also like the hat, but I like that it sort of evokes a response. And there's been plenty of times where I get to like, sit and talk with someone for. For quite a while about it. So I love the hat. Thank you for. Thank you for indulging me and. And wearing it on this podcast.
- [06:21]
B
I'm ready to give some dams.
- [06:23]
A
I know you are. And you. You already do.
- [06:25]
B
You know who doesn't give out dams is God.
- [06:29]
A
That's right.
- [06:30]
B
That's right. He does.
- [06:31]
A
That's what we're going to talk about today. A different kind of damn that he does not give out. This is going to be, you know, this is going to be an interesting conversation because everyone knows that I'm a Christian on this show. I talk about it very often. I'm very open about my faith. Most of the listeners are not. They're not Christian. There are some in the mix and there are many other faiths, and there are people with no, you know, sort of no sort of evident faith background. But I think this applies so much. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on was because for those of us living in what is traditionally called the west, hell, the existence of hell in our minds, and this is the existence of hell in our belief system has caused so much of the shit that we're dealing with right now.
- [07:22]
B
Totally.
- [07:23]
A
I. I completely believe that. I believe that if we had not made hell, you know, one of the main things that we kind of hold people captive with, they wouldn't go around being the assholes that they're being by reading the scriptures, reading the Bible literally, and then carrying that out in the world. And so that's why I'm so. I think this applies so much to. Damn givers all over the place. So excited to get into it. But before we get too deep into your book and hell and all of that, I want to get to know you a little bit more. We know each other, but the folks don't know each other. And there's probably many things about your story that I don't know, so. So if you could just take a few minutes, Brian, enlighten us. Who are the people, places, and things that made you who you are today? Yeah. How did we get here?
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, man. A long and winding road. I'm a son of an independent fundamental Baptist pastor in New York City, actually. So my dad is still. He pastors a fundamentalist church in Manhattan. He's planted three fundamentalist churches in New York City in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. And so I grew up fundamentalist. The. The world, I mean, there's different fundamentalist sort of spheres. And Bob Jones University was kind of the mothership hub shaping the ideology that I grew up with. So some of your listeners may be familiar with Bob Jones. They've made the news at several, you know, occasions over the last few decades. Because they have a history of racism. They were very slow to move on, ending segregation within their school. They. They had an anti interracial dating policy until the year 2000 was when they changed their anti interracial dating policy, which is really insane when you say it out loud, but that was the world I grew up in. And I went to Bob Jones following my dad's footsteps. It's like where they wanted me to go. And I didn't really have a rebellion in high school. I kind of was homeschooled and just was going with the flow and began. I think I like to say my first deconstruction happened at Bob Jones, where I deconstructed fundamental and found more mainstream evangelicalism. Bob Jones was a very unappealing place. It was a bad place. And even though that fundamentalist world was all I grew up with, being confronted with it on a larger scale, seeing all those fundamentalists congregating in one location, it was just bad vibe, man. And it really turned me off to the movement. And I latched onto several evangelical voices to my shame and embarrassment. I. People like Mark Driscoll, John Piper. These were voices that, you know, around 2005, 2006, helped me see a pathway out of fundamentalism while still being able to hold on to a lot of the theology that shaped my identity, my worldview, and also would continue to allow me to experience belonging with the, in the relational networks I was a part of, which were all connected to church and Christianity. And, you know, I reflect. You, you and I, we talk about Piper. I don't know if people in your listening to this would know who, like Driscolla. Do they know who that is? Like, would people listening to this know who that is?
- [10:40]
A
They might. I'm sure some of them do. I mean, Driscoll himself has made the news. You know, he's, he's pretty widely known even outside the circles, I think, as a pretty bad dude. So probably some.
- [10:50]
B
As a fucking asshole.
- [10:52]
A
Exactly.
- [10:53]
B
I, you know, it's funny, in many ways, he carries a lot of the same fundamentalist DNA that I grew up with in the way that he holds beliefs rigidly with certainty, expresses them with, you know, black and white, exclusionary, even violent rhetoric. But he, you know, he projects himself as just like a regular guy. And so fundamentalism, what I was in, we had to wear suits and ties. My dad preached only out of the King James Bible. Women didn't wear pants, they had to wear dresses. We didn't listen to any secular music, certainly didn't drink beer. Teetotalers to the extreme, et cetera, et cetera, etc. All these things that were like, fundamentalism is all about separatism. And so being exposed to somebody like Driscoll, who he was, you know, he wore jeans and a T shirt. He was a regular guy. He would say damn. Every once in a while, even from the pulpit, he talked about how he would drink beer. And so in many ways it, it was like a more human approach to still being able to hold on to some of that theology that again, shaped my worldview and identity from a very early age, while being able to experience a bit more humanity and not feel so separated from. From culture at large. So I dove into evangelicalism and that felt really like a huge progressive leap for me, which is funny to, you know, for some people when they hear that. But for me, it was a really expansive world compared to the fundamentalism I grew up in. And it took me a few years to recognize that, yeah, my evolution wasn't done yet. That was just the first deconstruction and, and fast forwarding. I mean, I got really involved and became a pastor quite young within evangelicalism. Once I saw this vision for pastoring where you didn't have to be like a total weirdo, it was very attractive to me because I grew up as a pastor's kid, you know, there was always that Sense, maybe I would do that, but I had to have a vision of it that felt more like me. And seeing that in evangelicalism, I got sucked into that. And it was really the 2015 elevation of Donald Trump to the front runner status in the Republican Party. That was the first time that the rose colored glasses started to shatter for me with evangelicalism, when I started to realize that where I was at, just even morally, was on a really different page than this movement. And it was quite startling for me watching many of the leaders that I respected get behind Trump. My own parents, like my dad, who explained to me during the Lewinsky Clinton scandal what a, you know, how character matters in the, in the office and all this stuff. That same person is now defending the Access Hollywood tapes as locker room talk. And I was just like, you know, it felt very confusing to me. And I realized like, that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in evangelicalism where, you know, they're willing to trade out a lot of their moral positions for power. But I think for a while in 2015, certainly my. My sense was like righteous indignation that this is not who we are. You know what I'm saying? I was just like, this is not who we are. And really my journey from 2015-20, slowly coming to that realization that this is exactly who we are. And that that's what it took for me to come to that place of actually resigning and stepping away from pastoring in 2020. Recognizing like this movement is not something that I can change from the inside, and I shouldn't even be trying to because it doesn't deserve my voice or my leadership. And out of integrity, I needed to remove myself from it completely. And once I was out from under that institutional pressure and that relational network where so much is expected of you in order to just belong, and so much is lost when you do separate yourself from that, not just financially. You know, you lose your salary and your ability to get another salary within that network because that's where all your professional connections are, but also just relationships. You know, that these people that I had done life with were going to look at me as this backslider or, you know, a liberal compromiser and that sort of thing, which is a really hard pill to swallow. And I think, yeah, that's what I think is the hardest thing about deconstructing for a lot of people is just recognizing that these people that you have been close to are going to think bad thoughts about you, and you kind of have to just eat that shit.
- [14:58]
A
Sandwich a little Bit, Yeah, I, I, I went through it. I know exactly what eating all those shit sandwiches tastes like. I still got the, still got the residue some days. Okay. So there's lots I want to jump into there. Let's back up to. Your dad is still a fundamentalist pastor. We call it church planting. Because you said he's done. He has three churches that he started.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah.
- [15:23]
A
Which I always thought church planting was sort of a weird thing, but, But I was in that, that world as well. It was a weird phrase. Are you, do you have a good relationship? Do you have a relationship with him? Or what is. What does that look like? If he's still, like, super in it and you're super not in, in, you know, in very. If he stuck with it this long, he really fucking, like, believes it.
- [15:43]
B
Well, yeah, he's built his entire legacy on it. You know, at this point, he's in his mid-60s and he's still pastoring. He'll probably. I keep wondering, like, was he ever gonna retire, or is he gonna literally, like, just drop dead in the pulpit one day when he's like, 95? Like, just preach till this, the whole. Until the wheels come off, you know? And yeah, he's still. They meet in a school. He still gets there early and sets up chairs every week. I mean, that's his whole life. That's his world. And it's, you know, it's really hard to question something that you're that deeply invested in. And I don't really have that expectation for him to do that. I don't argue with him. I don't challenge him on those things. I don't find that that's helpful in general. I don't think people change their mind from being argued into a position, especially not from your kid. Like, no parent has ever changed their mind because their kid gave him a real good argument. Like, that's just not how it works. We change because we want to change. And so until it stops working for him, until the system he's in stops working or making sense to him, he has to choose that for himself. So I don't try to change my parents. I relate to them as my parents. I've had to set boundaries at various points. You know, when I stepped away and when they realized, like, my kids were not going to be being exposed to what they would call the gospel, which I don't consider the gospel. I don't think it's very good news to tell a kid that, you know, by default they're going to hell and something radical has to change for them. And they have to believe what you believe, or else they're going to suffer for eternity.
- [17:09]
A
That's.
- [17:09]
B
I don't know, it just doesn't really seem like good news at all. But they feel sad that my kids aren't being exposed to that message. And so they have tried to, you know, weave it in in their grandparent time. And so I've had to set some boundaries around that. Like, hey, when you're around, I don't want it to feel like a missions trip and that sort of thing. And so our relationship is strained for sure. Like, he doesn't like that I do stuff like this. You know, even one time he said, he, he, he, he berated me that I was going on podcast, talking about, talking bad about Bob Jones. Like, he was defensive with Bob Jones. He was like, the Bob Jones, which you owe so much to, that it's actually the. Your very life, your origin began in Bob Jones. He was talking about the fact that he met my mom there. And I'm like, wait, so I can't critique it because my parents met there? Like, that is a really weird thing to say. And also, I didn't even know you cared that much about this institution. But he takes it all quite personally. And I try to remind him that none of this is personal, that I'm on my own journey, just like he's on his own journey. And this isn't like a personal thing about him. This is about me being authentic to what I believe and what I think is right and what I think is causing harm that needs to be called out. And so I've gotta be true to me, just like you gotta be true to you. And, you know, he's kind of received that, but it has led to, like I said, quite of a shallowness in our relationship.
- [18:25]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. And speaking of Bob Jones, for those listening that are hearing the words Bob Jones University for the first time, you think, you know we're talking about. You don't. You don't fucking know. I'll tell you my little history with Bob Jones. And Bob Jones is a very conservative school, but there were schools that were even more conservative. I don't know if, like, Pensacola Christian College was ever part of, like, if you knew about. There were schools that even got more conservative than Bob Jones. But I almost went to Bob Jones back in, wow, 2008. I was offered a full ride. Yeah. So I graduated high school 2002, but then took five years, traveled the world, worked all over the worked everywhere. And then I was like, well, maybe I need to go to school now. And I got a full ride without even asking. They just like liked me and they were like, we'd love for you to come here. And I almost went just because I was like, at the time, I was like, you know, I was a, I was poor, I was, you know, didn't really know what I was going to do next. And so I was like, yeah, maybe I'll go. And I went and visited and I have, I have lots of friends who went to Bob Jones. And again, y' all that are listening, you don't even know. I mean, like, you can't wear denim in certain, at certain times of the day, the girls can't wear pants.
- [19:41]
B
They have to wear pantyhose. Well, I think they've changed some of this actually. Their student body has really dwindled. But when I was there, the girls had to wear pantyhose every single day. I had to wear a tie every single day. Girls would get demerits. Even if, you know, my, my ex wife, she got demerits all the time for skipping out on pantyhose because she would wear floor like ankle length skirts or dresses to avoid having to wear pantyhose. But if they noticed that your ankles were unhose, they would still get you, bro.
- [20:08]
A
And, and you mentioned the whole, you mentioned like they did not start letting black students go to school there until the early 70s. So from 1929, I think was when they were founded till the 70s, if you were not white, you couldn't go there, or if you were black or brown, you could not go there. Then they started letting black and brown people attend the school. But it wasn't until, as you pointed out, 2000 that they let that. They let that they allowed interracial dating. So for 30 years, if a black girl and a white dude wanted to date, they couldn't. It was not just like frowned upon or it was forbidden.
- [20:50]
B
Yeah. I mean, this school, they reasoned so absurd and evil. They reasoned about this. They said it was to, you know, because they had a responsibility to these parents who were sending their daughters there. So it was like a sense of protecting the daughter, the white daughters, basically.
- [21:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. Because dangerous black men, of course. Yeah, yeah. If you, in fact, if you go Google, go Google Bob Jones University Interracial dating. The. Their statement, they have a statement from many years later. They talked about it. I think it was in 2008. They put out a statement at probably other statements as well. It's just full of. It's just so shitty. I. Look, I typed it up again today just thinking about Bob Jones in preparation for our call. But anyway, I did not go there. I almost did. I ended up going to. Why? Ended up going to John Piper's school in Minneapolis instead, which was a different kind. I mean, it was a different flavor of bad. It just wasn't, you know, not quite as strict, probably.
- [21:45]
B
I mean, we looked at like, even Liberty University, who's, you know, they're kind of seen as like, even a bit of a fundamentalist, very strict evangelical school. We saw them as liberal compromisers. At Bob Jones, they were like the loosey goosey ones, for sure.
- [21:56]
A
Well, yeah, because they had, they had Christian rock concerts. Sure, they were still conservative on this, that and the other, but when it came to, like, music and. Yeah, lots of other things, dating all the stuff, they were, they were, yeah, they were super progressive. They were super liberal. Even though, I mean, even though Liberty University is. They're all Trump supporters and they, They're. They're very maga. Up and down.
- [22:21]
B
It's such a good example, though, of how, like, I mean, we all have a starting point and you only. It's easy for us to like, look back and be like, man, that is so insane. How could I even go like. Sometimes I'm like, I can't believe I ever went there.
- [22:33]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [22:34]
B
But that was the world I was raised in and it wasn't abnormal to me. It was. This was normal. That was normalized. All the rules that they had were, like, not that different than the kind of rules that I grew up with in the first place. So none of it felt incredibly foreign to me. It felt quite familiar. And now in retrospect, it's, you know, it's quite ghastly. But, you know, I think it's good to have grace for our past selves. Like, you don't get to choose those initial ways that you're socialized, but as you grow up, you do. You get to choose who you become and you can reflect back on that and you've got to evolve and, you know, so I can be a little embarrassed that it took me as long as it did or that I went there ever in the first place. But ultimately sometimes you just have to be confronted with certain things and be exposed to new ways of thinking and being, and then you have the opportunity to change.
- [23:22]
A
What do you think? What do you think you have and I have and others have that changed and progressed quite quickly when confronted with realities and truths what did we have that others don't? Because it is, it is kind of wild that it took me like I was, I was in very homophobic, for example, if we just take homophobia, very homophobic circles. For a long time now, I don't think I ever was, I was always, always, always, always uncomfortable with it. But I stayed there for years and years and years and years. I worked with these homophobic pieces of shit, you know, quote unquote leaders for so long. And I didn't leave, but at a certain point I did. And again now, like you said, I try to be kind to myself. I have a, I have, you know, just quite the past working for some of the largest evangelical leaders alive. I worked with, you know, John Piper and Don Carson and Mark Driscoll and all. I worked with so many of these leaders that have written so many harmful books and shared so much harmful theology. I worked close by them at different, at different times. And so I try to be kind to myself. But back to my original question, like, what, what do we have? Do you think that that helped us? Yeah, like, because I, because I, I don't have any darlings. Like I don't have any golden cat. Like as soon as I'm faced with a truth, this is how I've always been. But as soon as I'm like, as soon as it's there and it's like, oh my God, that's like, I just, I don't care to say, yeah, I changed, I, I'm changing my mind. But other people, like maybe your dad's whole legacy.
- [25:04]
B
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I mean, I, I think human beings are just incredibly complex. So there's all kinds of things happening. So I don't know that I could attribute it to any one thing, but so part of that is probably the way you're predisposed. Like you, you, you're the guy who gives a damn. You know, like you get hot about things and you care deeply about things. I do think in general, like, that there's a lot of safeguards to keep you from being reflective about that stuff. Like, for instance, I also was uncomfortable with the way that the movement I was in viewed queer people. I though thought, hey, that's just the way it is. Like, that's what the Bible says, this is what God says. And even though I don't like it, that's a problem in me. So I had self doubt. So what kept me in it for a long time was that the parts of me which were uncomfortable with what I was a parting with what I was a part of. I didn't know how to listen to those or trust those parts of me. So I shut down even my own intuition which said, like, yeah, I don't. My intuition says I don't listen. Like, having to believe this about queer people, but I have to, right? And so I didn't know how to sort out, hey, what if actually that part of me was right and these are wrong? I didn't know how to do that for a long time. And so that's a skill that is actually very intentionally shut down in these spaces, because the system really depends on you suppressing those intuitive voices and listening to the authority figures who are tend. Tend to be patriarchal white men, right? Who are the authority figures who are shaping who you're allowed to even listen to. And so for me, that growth happened when I learned that I was allowed to listen to more voices, first of all, my own. But beyond that, black and brown voices, queer voices, immigrant voices, voices from the margins that have been critiquing these systems for a long time, which I didn't know I was allowed to listen to those. And so for me, it had to stop working. I only let myself listen to some of those voices when Trump was really the moment, because it was like, oh, these people who have been telling me gay people are bad, women can't lead. The Bible has no errors. And by the way, our interpretation of it is the only one that makes sense. The people who are saying those things also then said, hey, Trump will be a great president, and I might not have known everything about everything, and I was actually quite politically naive and disconnected, but I knew enough to know they were wrong about that. And that gave me permission to ask, well, what else are they wrong about? And begin to listen to the voices that have been denied. So it's almost like the system had to stop working. It had to die at some level, and only then can you begin to challenge it. But that is different for everybody. Sometimes I think, like, if. If you didn't see it in 2015 when the access Hollywood tapes came out, then I'm like, you're never going to see it. But that's not true. Some people literally, just yesterday or two days ago, from his anti Rob Reiner tweet, the. It broke for them, right? They. They had been Trump supporters, and then they saw Trump go on a deranged rant against a beloved filmmaker who was stabbed to death in his home with his wife. And Trump made that about himself. Like, how ghastly is that and for some people, even though they've been tracking with him this whole way, overlooking, to me, it's like, I wasn't surprised by that at all. I'm like, of course he said that. That's exactly the kind of thing he'll say. But for some people, that was their moment. And I can judge them and be like, why did it take so long for you? I saw this back in 2015. But for some people, they'd say, oh, no, no. Like, I saw it much before. I mean, look at George W. Bush. Was that any better? Like, I saw through that, or, you know, we all have. We all have our moments, and we can be judgmental about other people that don't catch up with us, but at some point, it has. It has to break, it has to die because it is a death, and nobody wants to die. So there's a lot keeping us from accepting that death. Because it's one thing to just say, oh, I think Trump is a bad guy. Now, if that's all it was, maybe that would be easier. But this goes deep. This is to say, oh, this whole system I was a part of is absolute bullshit. And they've been feeding me shit, and I've been swallowing it for years. That's a hard thing to own up to. So changing in public is incredibly vulnerable. It involves saying, you know, I've been complicit in some things, and that is. That's hard. So, yeah, I don't know that there's a magic formula for that.
- [29:26]
A
Oh, I think it's. I think you're right. There is no magic formula. I didn't mean to. For anybody listening. I wasn't trying to get Brian to say, hey, Nick and Brian and all of us were more special or we're more, like, talented. That's not what it is. I think it is. I think for you, it was. For you, it was Trump. For me, it was, you know, a variety of other things. But at some point, I had to, for the first time, really say out loud in front of people, in front of someone, in front of a community, say, I no longer. This is bullshit. I no longer believe this. And you don't have to either. And then when you try it out, it gets easier and easier and easier. When you're faced with truths and realities, to be like, oh, yeah, that's bullshit.
- [30:10]
B
Right?
- [30:11]
A
Because you're so right that those. Those that have never been part of. And not even just Christian, those that have never been part of fundamentalist religious groups might not know how ingrained these Things get into you. And as you pointed out, if you ever did doubt something, if you ever doubted, like how we're treating queer people or how we're treating this, this group and that group, and, oh, I want to, I want to, I want to accept them more. I want to, I want to bring them in. And then you're told, no, no, this is. They, they, they, they, they take it. They take advantage of language from the Bible that talks about being persecuted for your faith. Well, of course this is going to feel comfortable. Jesus was uncomfortable when he was being nailed to the cross. Of course this is going to be bad. Don't be a doubting Thomas. Like, there's all these things that they throw at you that just reinforces it. And then you're like, oh, yeah, I do feel like I might be wrong here. But that's just, that's just the enemy. That's just the world trying to get in there.
- [31:07]
B
There's a lot of workarounds. They have to tell you. Yeah, I will say this, you know, another thought I just had, Nick, one benefit that I have, and maybe you have too. Similarly, I think that growing up in fundamentalism actually gave me a leg up in some ways because people who grew up in cults or incredibly high control religion that is quite separate from society. In other words, it's like super weird, like Bob Jones. It's fringe. I didn't grow up in mainstream Christianity. I grew up in a very tribal niche of it. And as a result, I almost had no choice but to deconstruct that just to be even normal and enter kind of the more mainstream evangelicalism. Having done that and almost being forced to do that because the other option is, you know, keep wearing the suits and be an absolute fucking freak. And that was just never going to be me. That's not who I was. So I had to break out of that. But once you deconstruct one system, you kind of recognize that we're all socialized in these different ways. And it gives you, I think, the ability to recognize, okay, if I broke out of this one, why would I lock in to another one? Like, I have the ability to choose. I have the ability to, to, to use my moral discernment. Now, I didn't get there immed, but I do think breaking from that first one gave me probably more strength to break from the second one than I think somebody who grew up in more mainstream evangelicalism, which was a bit more comfortable and maybe didn't have to do that initial break out of fundamentalism, maybe it's like you don't have the muscle for that deconstruction. Because deconstruction is not just about changing a few theological beliefs like, oh, I had this punitive vision of God and now I believe in like a nicer God. It is, it is uprooting identities. The way that the systems you were born and socialized, you recognizing that these things are not just default the way the world is. It's not reality. The white, the white male patriarchal world that I grew up in, it's not just reality. That was a system that was constructed. And when you, I think, get a muscle for that and you've exercised it, you're. You'll get better at it.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more. And a great reminder that you shared a few minutes ago for all of us, for me, it's reminding me today that no one, maybe there are exceptions, but I'm going to for the sake of being in the spirit of this conversation today, no one is beyond change. Like we, we have to have grace for ourselves and for others as we all think. I mean this is so hard. Life is so hard. And we do have so like capitalism and these systems have, have caused us to believe so many harmful things. And even in Christianity, even for those that aren't Christian, if you live somewhere in the so called west, you have been affected by Christianity. It's all around you. And so you know my friend Katie Bogan, who's been on the podcast as well, great human Jewish woman, hot chef. Yes. With yes, the hot chef storyline. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'm following, I'm tracking. She and I text all the time about it. It's so funny, but Katie the other day posted on threads that after 11 years of talking with her father, who is Jewish, about the occupation and about apartheid and about the last couple years, the genocide. After 11 years of having intentional conversations about this all on his own at like a dinner the other night with her present, he looked at their friends in front of her and said, you know, Katie has been so patient with me and you know, I'm now willing to call this what it is. It is a genocide. This is, this is like a horrible empire, the state of Israel. And after 11 years of work, now my natural inclination when I see something horrible that I got quicker, that I understood quicker, is to be like, dude, fuck you. 11 years, 11 years. 11 years it took you to realize that what's happening is just a horrific occupation. And this was stolen from the Palestinians over and over again over the past 76 years. And before that, with the British under the Belfort Declaration, like, this is such a. 11 years it took. And then there's a voice inside of me, and this conversation just reminded me to be like, dude, slow your roll, man. Like, it takes people time. And I can be angry all the time. I can be angry all the time that people aren't changing quickly enough, whether it's about God and religion or about Israel or about ICE or about Trump or about whatever. The thing is, I can be so angry that, like, how do you not fucking get this? Like, it's so obvious. Just look at it. And then you see, like you said, there are some people that, 10 years into Trump's horrible. Whatever the fuck he's doing here since he came down that golden escalator ten years ago, two days ago, when he badmouthed Rob Reiner, may he rest in peace, that's when they got it. And again, I want to be like, are you kidding me? But it's okay that they got it then and now they're going to change and hopefully continue changing.
- [36:29]
B
Because, dude, I mean, when you think about it, like, there's things right now that we're stuck in and we're probably ignorant of and complicit. I mean, I know I'm complicit in all kinds of things. Like, and I still am. And at some. I'll probably, in 10 years, look back on even the way I'm living right now and be a little embarrassed about aspects of it. You know, I mean, that's just. We're on a journey, and that's not to just let ourselves off the hook, but I think especially in terms of how we view others and how we give grace to others. I was reflecting on this because I. I try to have a gentleness not only to my past self, but also to evangelicals and where they're at now. But I can be snarky and cheeky and a bit of a jackass, too. Like, I have that in me, and I'm only human. But I. I had just actually posted something where I, you know, I kind of referred to, like, an evangelical leader as a piece of shit, and I ended up deleting it because, you know, I don't think it's bad to say that. I think that that's kind of, you know, I don't mean it in any kind of literal way, but it's a dehumanizing phrase. And ultimately, I'm wanting to, like, extend grace to people. And I was reminded. I was reminded of this, like, worship song I used to sing, like a hillsong song. You know the one, I'm sure, where the. In the bridge. It's like, break my heart for what breaks yours. You know? You know the one?
- [37:44]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [37:45]
B
I was. I was like. For some reason, that came into my mind, and it. It made me feel. In that moment, I was just overwhelmed with the sense that, like, what's happening in the evangelical movement breaks God's heart. That the God, as I believe in God, a God of love, a God who desires liberation for all. God's heart is broken by a movement that would hijack the very concept of the divine, to baptize bigotry and to fuel white racial resentment against people. And ultimately, in the name of Jesus, rather than care for the very people that Jesus said would be stamped by the divine image, and we would see Christ in them. The least of these, the hungry, the stranger, the imprisoned, all those same groups that Jesus said, this is where I am most present in the world, in these vulnerable people. And where you meet God is in the face of the last, lost, left behind. Those exact people are the ones that are being scapegoated, vilified, demonized, imprisoned. And that's happening in the name of God. And in that moment, I was not just filled with anger at the evangelical movement. I actually felt a lot of sorrow, and I felt that God is sad about this, and I want to be sad about it. And so these are people that need to have their eyes open. You to use spiritual language. Like, there is a spiritual blindness, and I want to see scales falling off of eyes.
- [39:09]
A
Yeah.
- [39:09]
B
The reality is nobody has ever been shamed into change. Now, that's not to. I'm not like, on you. I often can use shaming language. I just know that the way that I changed is ultimately through love. And that's how. I mean, when I try to parent my kids in, like, when they're having a meltdown, they're acting inappropriately or they're, you know, one. You know, one of my kids is like, hitting their brother or something. I can't just say, like, what's wrong with you? Like, who does that? Like, what. What's. Like, why are you so violent? Why? Why? You know, that's all shaming language. That does not make them better people. That. That often causes them to freeze, to buckle down in the. In the behavior that they're doing. And maybe shame could get some level of, like, behavioral change on the surface, but it doesn't actually change the heart. And so I. I don't know, I was just reminded of that sorrow in the heart of God and I want more of that in myself. I want that compassion to come out in my life. I think if we're going to have a way forward for, for people. But it's hard.
- [40:05]
A
Yeah, it's so hard. It's so hard. So you left so kind of trump woke you up in a lot of ways to all the shit that was going on. And then in 2020, you said you stopped, you stopped being a full time evangelical pastor. And now if people go find you, which I hope they do, you know, you're, for lack of a better term, an influencer, a content creator. You have a lot of these important conversations. You have hundreds of thousands of of followers on social media. One thing I've loved is watching your, even before I knew you from afar and now that we're friends, like watching your platform grow and how it resonates with people. So like, what we're gonna get to your book. We're gonna spend, we're gonna spend the rest of the conversation on the book, which I think is just so important. And I'm so excited for people to buy and read it and devour it. But what's, what was the journey like from like, okay, I'm not gonna be this like full time pastor anymore. But you still stayed in. You didn't go. Which would have been totally fine. You didn't go get a job in finance. You didn't go.
- [40:59]
B
Oh, I did. I did disappear for a minute. So when I dropped out, I went back to seminary to finish my M. Div. And I thought I was going to re approach ministry from a more progressive angle. But in the course of deconstruction, I mean, when you start deconstructing, you really just, you experience a series of losses and you don't know where that's going to end. There it is a real slippery slope. And that's why it's scary. Whenever you break from a system, so much of who you are is integrated in that system. And one of the things that was developed and that grew from within that system was my marriage. And I ended up losing my marriage over the course of the year following leaving ministry and deconstructing. And when my wife and I separated, I dropped out of seminary. And I was thinking in a very like kind of a dark, discouraged place that there wouldn't be a future of ministry for me. So I got a job first as a recruiter. I was, I got a bartending job. I got a recruiting job. And then I got a project management job. I was just trying to get something to. That could make sense so I could be a single dad and take care of my kids. And I didn't think ministry would be an option. And really, it wasn't until probably about two years or so after I. I stepped away that I started posting. And a lot of that just had to do with the fact that having lost my community, I didn't have a lot of people to process this stuff with. And so I was literally just externally processing my deconstruction, my thoughts on evangelicalism, and I was just doing it online. I don't know. I think I had already. Yeah, I had already kind of broken with those relationships. I think there's a lot of pastors that do make these breaks, but they're not confident to speak out these things because they are still quite connected to the people in those systems, and they don't want to offend them. Because when you talk about. It's crazy how, like, my old evangelical friends are, like, personally offended when I speak up for queer people as if that's about them. It's not about them. It's about my journey. It's about the queer people that are marginalized in our society. But I think that, you know, people know that, like, those relationships will be offended. And so I think some people don't speak out for that reason. But they had already kind of distanced themselves from me. I mean, I went through my divorce and I was kind of blacklisted. And so I just felt a freedom to be honest and vulnerable. I had already kind of hit rock bottom in some ways. And so I was just very open. And I think that's what connected with people was, oh, here's somebody who was like, deep in the system of pastor, a white, straight, evangelical pastor who the thing stopped working, and now he's talking about the harm of that system. And I guess that was interesting to people. And yeah, so in the course of that, I had a lot of thoughts in me about evangelicalism, but hell has always been one of the big ones for me because I consider myself still a Christian. I did consider for a moment whether that label still applied to me, but I've decided to stubbornly hold on to it. But I've never really have doubted my belief in God. But who God was had to change because the God that I believed in didn't work for me anymore. And I realized as I struggled with just the problems with the spirituality that I grew up in that I inherited, that I even preached, and that wasn't working for me anymore. So many of the problems in my own spirituality went back to hell, to the punishing God that I believed in, to the exclusionary system that I was handed, where you were either in or you were out. So many of the problems went back to that. And I realized in all the conversations I was having with people, and I was having countless conversations with other Christians and deconstructing Christians or people who used to be Christians, who are still struggling with what could this all have meant? And in those conversations, I would just hear it come up a lot. And when I would talk about the fact that I didn't believe in hell, one of the most frequent questions I would get, people were confused. They were like, if you don't believe in hell, then what's even the point of being a Christian? Like, how does this even work? Because it was so central, so fundamental to the Christian story that that idea of exclusion and punishment. And so that really got my wheels turning. And I recognized that if, you know, if I was going to say one thing and if I had a book in me, it really was about the way that hell isn't just a belief that we should break up with. It's not just something we should change our minds about. It's not just a few Bible verses that we should reinterpret. It was because it fundamentally robbed us of a healthy spirituality and it twisted and corrupted our spirituality, sowing disconnection alienation, and punishment instead of connection and flourishing at the foundation of our spirituality.
- [45:19]
A
Yeah, let's jump right in then. But let's define a few terms again for those that maybe aren't in this world. As we begin this conversation about, or, you know, keep continuing this conversation about your book, but specifically our. About your book. Right now, I'm going to ask you to define a few terms just so people know at least where you're at. Right. Because these terms don't mean the same thing for all people. I guess the first one is this hell that you're trying to get people to not believe in. When you say hell, what do you mean?
- [45:48]
B
Yeah, so different denominations have different approaches to hell. For me, I tried to take a very broad approach. The traditional Christian belief is eternal conscious torment. And it's the idea that everyone who's not a real Christian, however you want to define that in the. In the evangelicalism and fundamentals I grew up in, pretty similarly, they viewed it as anyone who was not born again, which meant that they didn't put their faith in Jesus as the exclusive way to heaven. And so, in other words, you had to really believe that Jesus was God, that he died on the cross for your sins. And typically, there was also this atonement belief that you had to believe that Jesus died on the cross and took your punishment. And so at the core of really what I'm trying to deconstruct, and there are maybe some people didn't get this exact story, but for the most part, the story of Christianity that most of us inherited was a story of punishment. So in other words, God had to punish you. You were born worthy of punishment, but Jesus took your punishment. And if you believe in that, then Jesus can be punished instead of you. But at the end of the day, somebody's got to be punished. That was the paradigm that God's hands were tied and punishment had to be bestowed on someone. So either you're going to go to hell, or Jesus experiences your hell for you on the cross. That was kind of the paradigm. And so that's one of the main things I'm poking a hole in is this idea of hell being rooted in the character of a punitive God, really a God who has to punish you. And that also there's this exclusionary binary idea that there are, in order to be saved, there have to be people who are damned. And so there's going to be insiders and outsiders. So that. That's part of the Hell paradigm. And so really, however different people approach hell, there are people who are outside who did not believe the right thing or receive, you know, the sacraments in the right way or whatever the case that caused them to be in a different category spiritually. And so it's. It becomes less about spirituality, becomes less about a positive growth in love, like a life transforming in love, which I think spirituality is ultimately about this life and who we're becoming. But if hell is looming in the afterlife, then that really does overwhelm any. This worldly story. And you'll see this. It creeps into their spirituality and their priorities. Because you might even say, I mean, Christians will say, well, of course this life matters. You know, love matters. Loving people here matters. Growing in the fruits of the spirit, that matters. But at the end of the day, if you don't believe the right thing and you're gonna go to hell, it doesn't really matter how loving you become, how many good deeds you do, how much social justice you do, even if you, like, put an end to the genocide or have all that, you know, you could stop a genocide. And all those kids who don't Die because of your actions of justice. If they don't believe the right things about God, they're still going to go to hell. So at the end of the day, believing the right things matters more than even genocide, like any of it. And so it becomes just very toxic belief. It's like a black hole that sucks in all the other spiritual priorities and crushes them under its weight.
- [48:46]
A
And there's such a supremacist side to all of this, right, that Christians are, we're the best. Not just the best, but we're the, we are the way. For some reason this, this, this God that we had this very punitive, like angry asshole God is a Christian. And if you're, if you belong to any other faith background, they're wrong. You're right. And so when you were, when you were just saying that just now, I had flashbacks to, you know, working for John Piper. And one of the big things that the John Piper world created was this idea that we have to tell. There's a verse in now I'm blanking on where it is in the Book of Mark about basically the Son of man will come back when everybody on earth hears about, here's the gospel. So their big thing was we have to tell everybody, which doesn't make any sense because at any given time, no matter where you are, I mean, right now, hundreds, thousands of people are dying right now and hundreds and thousands more are being born. So like the idea of telling everybody on earth is just an insane idea. But that was their whole shtick was like, we've got to get missionaries, AKA colonizers to go to all these far reaching places around the world to tell them about the gospel because if they don't hear it and they don't accept it, that's on. It's our responsibility to tell them. And then it's their responsibility to listen to some random white guy that pops into their culture that says, hey, you've got to follow my white God and sing our white hymns and go to our white church. And that's how you actually stay out of this eternal conscious torment that we're talking about. So there is such like a supremacist. That was one of the first things that like popped out to me when I started waking up was like, oh my God, you think you're the best of the best of the best, even though you're your people. The Christians have been murdering and slaughtering and raping and pillaging since the beginning of, you know, beginning of our existence. We've caused so many Horrific things to happen. But forget all that. If you don't do it our way, eternal conscious torment for you. That supremacist view is just so fucked up to me.
- [50:54]
B
Yeah, Christian supremacy is very much tied to white supremacy. In fact, Christian supremacy baptizes white supremacy as holy. And it's even, you know, within the world, the gospel centered sort of reformed world, John Piper world, and you know, Tim Keller, those guys, there's a lot of people who would say that they were anti racist and that they hate white supremacy and that white supremacy is a sin and they would even, I mean, when I was a pastor, I was involved in some of the Black Lives Matter marches and so I was finding Christians that were anti racist. But what you, what you wouldn't see is them to disavow Christian supremacy. And so they might say that white supremacy is a sin, but they still believe, like you said, that everybody needs to hear their version of the gospel, that they are the ones who hold the keys, really the answers about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. And the problem is when you believe that and ultimately the gospel that they're saying was a European, western white version of the gospel. And so you might think that you're against white supremacy, but you are actually fueling it and you are giving it not only like ideological and spiritual justification, it was in fact this hell dot doctrine that, that fueled colonialism. I mean, the doctrine of discovery was the Catholic papal doctrine that basically said colonialism is justified biblically because those cultures are pagan, those people are dying and going to hell. And so us colonizing them is bringing them civilization, it's bringing them the gospel. And so, yes, over the course of this conquest, are people gonna die? Sure, our civilization's gonna be destroyed. Sure, there's gonna be some collateral damage, but right now they're gonna die and go to hell. At least when we colonize them, they'll have the opportunity to hear the gospel and then they can die and go to heaven. And so they justified the colonial project with, I mean, when you hold. Again, when you hold the keys to heaven and hell, you can justify anything to include the slave trade. I mean, the slaveholders justified the exact same thing that. Yes, I mean, kidnapping these people from Africa and dragging them across the middle passage where millions are going to die en route, this seems horrible. But right now they're all going to die in Africa and go to hell. At least if we take them, we can give them the gospel. So they told themselves that they were doing a good thing.
- [53:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, I Mean, they went as far as converting all of these slaves, right? And then counting them as, like, look at all these converts that we have. When it's like half or more of them, they were Muslim and they were, they grew up in Muslim households and in the Muslim faith. Faith until you kidnap them and brought them over and they were enslaved. They're going to do whatever the fuck you tell them to do. So you didn't convert anybody. And they would just add, you know, like, they would, they would say, they would use that as proof that we're doing a good thing. Look at how many of them now attend the little churches that we built for them, even though it was just for slaves. They're just for enslaved people. But, like, they would count that as their, to their numbers and they would use it to prove their point that, look it, look it. If we left them over there, they would be these, like, savage Muslim, you know, Africans. And we brought them over here and now they have jobs and they have food and they have security and we built them churches and they're Christian. And so look at the good that we did. Yeah, I, it's horrific. When you look back on the, the horrific things that we have done, not just in the name of Christianity, but for the sake of the conversation today and us both still identifying as Christian, the things that Christians have done. How did you have somebody. I don't want to cut you off.
- [54:20]
B
No, no, go ahead, go ahead.
- [54:21]
A
Well, I was going to say. So I asked you to define hell. You did. Now, what about God? Because God, that's a huge one. I still, 10 years, 11 years into this, leaving my past life behind and on, you know, on a very regular basis, trying to figure out, like, I'm so attracted to God. Like, I love, I love God. I, I can say that, like, now, again, my God is not a Christian God. It's a universal God. I don't believe it's a. I don't believe it's a person. I don't believe it's a, like, it's so much bigger than anything we've ever tried to force feed people inside of the four walls of a church. But I still have, I still have largely, I still have no clue. Like, when people say, okay, who is God for you? What is God for you? I still have a hard time. I, you know, I call, I call God, you know, universal love, and I call God a variety of things. And I'm very, like, attracted to following God because I have felt, I mean, it is. God has helped me, still helps Me so, so often in life. And so anyway, God, what is, how do you, how do you define God? Such a small, such a small.
- [55:36]
B
My old God had to die. The God I grew up in. You can Google this at home. But my first mental model for God was formed by Chick Tracts, which is a gospel track with, it's an illustrated gospel track. And at the end of these gospel tracks usually some poor dirty rotten sinner would die over the course of the comic book and find himself standing before God, who is this thousand foot tall glowing white man in a throne with like a face, he had no face, like this faceless, glowing white person. And he would typically point away from him and say, depart from me, I never knew you and send that poor son of a bitch to hell. And that big punishing authoritarian was God. This is somebody who, you didn't want to be on his wrong side. He'll send you to hell. And so although, you know, that was a childish image and I grew away from that image to more loving images of God, but that still, I mean at the end of the day, if hell is a part of your paradigm, that punitiveness, you might say, well that's a metaphor. It's not really a big guy and it chair but like you still kind of feel like there is, you know, and it's hard to, it's hard to uproot that completely. And for me, early in my deconstruction, especially getting rid of hell, I, I was attracted to less, less relational, sort of more, yeah, I guess, views of God that were more spiritual. So the idea of connection itself, of reality itself, a universal spirit of love, not so much a guy. I however, though lately I think having given it some time to, to heal from some of the wounds of like a patriarchal sky daddy God, I am able to step back into some of those more personal metaphors. I mean, Jesus's favorite metaphor for God was Father. But it's important to know that that is just a metaphor. God is not an actual father. The idea of source and you know, there is a sense in which there is an authority to who God is, but not because of a patriarchal dominance, but because when you go against the way of love in the universe, we are made for love and connection. And when you step out of that, I think there are natural consequences. So I don't think God is a punisher. I do think that reality itself shows us what we're made for and that when we build societies that don't value the image of God in one another and instead we build hierarchical systems of domination that when we do that, bad things happen actually as a result of our actions. And we could attribute that to God and see God at father almost, and even use punitive, maybe even metaphors to describe what's happening. But I don't think that God is a punisher. You know, I think I want to say, it's like, I got this from, like, Pete Holmes. You probably have heard that he, like, quoted the road, the manager for ACDC or something. And it's like, I forget the guy's name, Barry something. He said God is the name of the blanket that we throw over the invisible mystery or something like that, to give it a shape, you know, because there's something ineffable about God, a universal spirit of love. Rohr says God is reality with a personality. And I like that quite a bit. But for me, the nature of reality is love. And so it is the loving nature of reality. God is the loving nature of reality. Is. Is maybe one definition that's helpful. I also, you know, I think that we're all connected. I think that whether you know it or not or are aware of it or not, we are all deeply interrelated, interconnected, interdependent. And I think that connection itself, that is God. It's almost as if, like, we are all in this big dance, this interdependent dance, and God is the name of that big connected thing that we're all a part of. And because there it is all relational, that that thing is less a thing and more of a who. So that's why we relate to God relationally, even though it's not a big guy. You know, there is an itness, I think, to God rather than a pure who ness. But because love is experienced through relationship, I think that if God is love, then we experience God as a who. We experience love through relationship. And so I think that's where that personal language can come back in. So I don't know. I just said a lot of words. Those are just ways that I think about it.
- [59:53]
A
No, but this. That's good. And that's exactly where I'm at, where I'm. I'm open to viewing it in all kinds of ways. And I love. I love that quote, that. Yes, I first heard it from Pete Holmes. God is the name of the blanket we put over mystery to give it a shape.
- [60:08]
B
It's like he had a viral clip or something. I was like, oh, that's good. I'm writing that down. It's just stayed in my brain forever. Ever since I, I heard him say that 100%.
- [60:15]
A
And I love that imagery. And for me, you just put a name. You just named what. One of my favorite things about believing in God is if I believe in a universal God that is connecting all of us, I think that's going to change the way that we live, change the. How inclusive we try to be, how much community we try to build. Because if I truly see you and all kinds of people in all kinds of different groups, even the people that I loathe and hate or think that I loathe and hate, definitely loathe. I hate hate. I struggle with that word. But the point is, if I start seeing everybody as part of my family, we're part of this human family and there is this love, this mystery that we call God, so that we can give the mystery shape, that's gonna change how I approach every day with my family, with my work, with my neighbors, in the place that I live, the places I don't live. Why should I care about. Why should I care about the genocide in Gaza? I'm way over here. Like, why should I care about what's happening, who, ISIS kidnapping across? Like, I'm here, you know, I've got, I've got my little thing here and. Because there's nothing connecting us, who gives a fuck? Like, you know, but it changes when you start seeing God, a loving God, not a punitive God, not a. Not a punishing God, when you start seeing God as something slash, someone that is working to unite us all. You know, that to me, I'm not saying you can't be hopeful or positive if you don't have any view of God, if you're an atheist or if you're agnostic seeker or if you're part of another faith. But, like, for me, that really, as someone who runs an organization called let's Give a Damn, and I'm trying to figure out ways of giving a damn more and more and more and more. One of the only things that keeps me sane is me being able to believe in a God that is, that is for the people, places and things that I'm giving a damn about versus it just having no meaning at all.
- [62:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, God is a metaphor. God is a story. And it matters how you use that story and what story you're telling with God, I mean, unfortunately, God is used to. The concept of God is used to do the exact opposite of what you're saying very frequently because God is a very effective tool to also baptize the hierarchies and power structures that divide us and that say that some people are closer to God than other people and are therefore more worthy of ruling and having and hoarding than other people. And this is where power goes, because this is what God is like. We're the ones who get to speak for God. And so I always, you know, there's different kinds of gods that they say a lot more about us than. Than about God, often the way that we use God. So I'm. When somebody's talking about God, I always am just asking, well, what. Yeah, what are they using God for? Who's benefiting from this use of God? Is it benefiting everybody? Is, are we seeing God and everybody? If not, it's a really small God. You.
- [63:37]
A
Let's define one last thing. And my thought at the beginning of asking that was there be like, you know, which is stupid because you can't really define these things tightly. But it was like, let's define these three things pretty quickly and then we'll.
- [63:48]
B
Go, oh, yeah, I don't have. I guess you should have told me in advance. I would have written little Simple Things, but I don't.
- [63:52]
A
Simple things. No, no. But I like how it's. I like how it's happened because it has brought us into, you know, the book. The last thing I want us to define, though, it's come up a few times, which is, you know, you're a Christian, but you're a universalist Christian. And so this is something. And so am I. The best thing that ever happened to me, the best, like, literally one of the best things that's ever happened to me is to. Well, honestly, the one, the one main thing that's keeping me in Christianity, the fucked up, you know, thing that is Christianity is the fact that I tack on universalist Christian before it. And then when people ask, I can define, like, hey, I don't like, I feel comfortable and I feel. I feel good. I feel like this is my community in Christianity again, as fucked up as it is. But I don't believe what we're doing, what we're saying, the way that we're doing is the only way. I don't believe that. And that's one of the only reasons I can still, like, go to Mass and I can still partake in these things is because universalism became. And, you know, you mentioned roar already. There's others that have really helped me become that person, because I would not, if I didn't. If I didn't encounter universalism in a real way, something that I wanted to really grasp onto. I don't think I'd be a Christian because it'd be really hard seeing what's going on and then still being like, you know what? I still show up every day to the ex Episcopalian church and we're the only way. Like that would be pretty fucked up to me. So universalism, what does it mean to you and how. And how does it affect this idea of trying to steer people away from believing in eternal conscious torment and how liberating that is?
- [65:34]
B
Yeah, so, I mean, I think Jesus had universalism in his spirituality, certainly.
- [65:40]
A
Absolutely.
- [65:41]
B
And I think for a lot of universalists, it is the idea that all people will be saved in some sense. In other words, not go to hell and go to heaven. So even the very word universalism, I often don't use it. I mean, I do use it in my book because it's helpful in this conversation. But for me, it's not even about the afterlife. I think that making spirituality about the afterlife is a big mistake. The idea that, oh, everybody is going to go to heaven, I don't think that's what it's about. I'm agnostic as to what that even looks like in the afterlife. I don't believe in a punishing afterlife for people who believe the wrong religion, certainly. But I don't know that there's like literal streets of gold either. I do believe that we all came from love and that we will return to love. But for me, universalism is about the fact that God is not far from any one of us. I don't think that you have to be a Christian to know God. I think that we all are connected to God, whether we are aware of it or not. That God is in you and God is with you. God has always been with you. Salvation, for me, is a metaphor which really is to describe that experience of awareness of the love of God that has never left you and couldn't leave you even if you wanted it to. That is what. What that means. And so for me, universalism is this sense that you can't gatekeep God. Evangelicals do not have a monopoly on God. Christians do not have a monopoly on God. There is no guy that can say, I can show you the way to God. There is no way to God. God is with you already. And when somebody's talking about they alone have the way to God, they are actually taking you further away from God. In some ways they're trying to draw you into their scheme, their hierarchy, that God is with you. And so I think becoming aware of the love and the presence of God is a part of what spirituality is all about. And unfortunately, hell based exclusionary spirituality often leads us away from that presence and leads us into rules and legalism and really a sense of superiority. I think the more that we are feeling like we've got the way we're the superior ones, the more we're doing that, the further we are from the heart of God, which is for all people who are. So yeah, hold on, I'm going to throw in a couple more terms really quick that I can define really quickly. So I talk about spirituality a lot and the way that I define spirituality is how we relate to ourselves, God and other people. It's about relationships. And so the reason that I still call myself a Christian, I'll often say, is that although a lot of the Christian theology I'm quite either agnostic on or potentially a heretic on, I still call myself a Christian because I still follow the spirituality of Jesus. In other words, when I see the way Jesus relates to himself, God and other people, I want to relate to God, myself and other people the way that Jesus does.
- [68:22]
A
I love that and I share that definition of spirituality. The very first quote you have in the book, before even the table of contents, is from one of my favorite humans. I assume our favorite humans, James Baldwin. This quote, salvation is not precipitated by the terror of being consumed in hell. This terror itself places one in hell. Salvation is not flight from the wrath of God. It is accepting and reciprocating the love of God. Salvation is not separation. It is the beginning of union with all that is or has been or will ever be. That's so fucking.
- [69:06]
B
Isn't that great?
- [69:08]
A
It's so great. It's exactly what you've been sharing and I want this so badly. What I'd love for you to. We've got a few minutes left here. I. What I would love for you to do is, you know, I've. I've interviewed.
- [69:18]
B
We.
- [69:18]
A
I've done 290 of these episodes and probably for some reason along the way, people with books started coming my way more, you know.
- [69:29]
B
Well, we all want to sell our books, Nick.
- [69:30]
A
What can I say? No, totally. But I love books. We're a family of readers. We have so many hundreds and thousands of books in our little New York City apartment. They're everywhere in our apartment. So I love books. But one of the things I would love for you to do. Oh, what I was saying is I didn't want to go through the book it's fantastic. But what I would love for you to do is you know the book Hell Bent how the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a spirituality of love. And I don't know if it's your intention or if this would also be your intention, but let me, let me add to the subtitle, which is like not just the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back, but I think it's holding society back because Christians dominate so much. I mean, look at our, look at our, I mean in society, yes, we have these huge mega churches all over the place, just, just soaking up resources for their massive staffs and their massive budgets. And then there's homeless people everywhere. Then you, that's just like on a neighborhood, like city level.
- [70:34]
B
Oh yeah.
- [70:34]
A
Then you have, you have all these politicians, so many of them, so many of them go look at the last bills that have been introduced in Congress, in the Senate and then up to the like, go look at these bills and if you go look back at, at what faith these politicians have that are proposing some of the most horrific, horrific, horrific bills. Marjorie Taylor Greene with one of the more recent ones just continuing to go after trans kids. Like if you look at it's Christianity behind it. So I think it's. So this book is so important, I want everyone to read it because I think that whether you are a Christian or not, or whether you have any faith background or not, Christianity is everywhere you look. If you live anywhere in the so called West. So what do you, if people really get this, if people read your book, really get it, start to embody what? Start to embody this James Baldwin quote. What real salvation looks like. What real, what real God looks like. And with kind of shedding our beliefs in punitive God, punishing God, hell God. What, what, what's the vision here? What could society look like?
- [71:43]
B
Yeah, so I was raised being told that I deserved hell by default. In other words, I was born worthy of damnation, suffering, torture really because of my sin. And not just me, but everyone, I was told that's what people deserved. People are sinners. People deserve to be punished by default. Something has to change in them. God is going to punish people. That's what people deserve. We are worthy of that, worthy of punishment. Now I believe that I'm worthy of love. I believe that I am fundamentally, I didn't have to do anything to earn this. I was born, I am fundamentally worthy, deserving of care, compassion, my basic human needs met. And not just me, but everyone. I believe that people are fundamentally worthy of love and I do believe, and studies have proven this, whether you believe people to be fundamentally worthy of punishment or fundamentally worthy of love does in fact change the way you treat them, change the kind of society that we want to build. It is no surprise to me that a bunch of people who believe that people are fundamentally worthy of punishment have built a very punitive society, a society where we would rather criminalize and jail homeless people, even if that costs more money than housing them. We do not even have a criminal justice system. We have a criminal punishment system. We are an incredibly punitive society. We don't want to see people rehabilitated. We don't want to see people restored. We want to see people punished. In many ways, I still do believe it matters what you believe about God. Not because you have to believe the right things about God or you're going to go to hell. God's going to punish you. If you're wrong about God, if you get the answers on the God test wrong, you're fucked. No, no, no, it matters what you believe about God, because what you believe God is like shapes what you're going to be like and shapes what you think the world should be like. And I believe God wants the flourishing of everybody, of the common good of humanity and to include non human creatures. God's desire is not for a gated kingdom of the saved with the damned outside of that. God's desire is for shalom, the flourishing of the whole big connected thing. And unfortunately, Christians are not longing for that. They are not because they don't have a God that believes that they have a punitive God. And so it's no surprise to me that if they have a God whose future is a minority in a gated community with the vast majority of humans who have ever lived suffering for eternity, it's a pretty short leap from there to Alligator Alcatraz. And I have had people, when I've talked about universalism, say, you know, even bring up illegal immigrants and say in heaven there's going to be no illegal immigration. They're not climbing that wall into the pearly gates. They're, they're cast out into hell. They see these lines so, so clearly and so strictly drawn. And this is so devastating to our relationships at every level. On a very personal level, it sows alienation into the way that we view people to include our own children. If we believe them worthy of punishment, we're not going to connect with them in the appropriate ways. In our neighborhoods and communities, when we see people struggling, we will assume the worst about them. Rather than assume that people actually are they. I mean, studies show that when people have their basic needs met like that, that bottom level of Maslov's hierarchy of needs, food, shelter, warmth, when people are taken care of on that level, they do better as people. Most crime is fueled by poverty, not by just, oh, these are just terrible people. But when you have a low view of people, you believe people are worth, worthy of hell. We are not going to care for them in the way that God intended. And as a result, we end up with this very punitive society built on competition and hierarchies. And yeah, so I do ultimately believe that this perspective of shifting from a punitive God to a God of love and compassion who is there for everybody is a really fundamental shift in just the way that we perceive the world and the kind of world that we want to live in and the very purpose of spirituality. Because Jesus. I mean, a lot of the book is about the ministry of Jesus. Jesus did not come saying, I am going to die as a sacrifice for your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die. Jesus came and said, this is God's dream for the world, to liberate the oppressed. He came to preach good news for the poor, to tear down these hierarchies where there aren't different kinds of people, rich and poor, but actually that we are all in this together. That was God's dream for the world that Jesus lived and died for. And unfortunately, I don't see Christians fighting for that.
- [76:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, preach so good. Fun. Fun. Ish question, you know, because, like, I don't care much about knowing what happens in the afterlife or if there is one. Like, I kind of hope there is one. Just because I kind of love life and because I love life and love God and love people, I kind of want there to be something more. But I don't need for there to be. However, in our home, we like to, you know, I have, I have a. My partner is not a Christian anymore. I am. And our kids are somewhere in the, you know, they're, you know, I'm not forcing anything on them. We. And also my. My partner is not like, anti Christian. Just, you know, the church in Christianity hurt her so badly. And so I totally understand it. But so in our, in our home, we kind of like, yeah, we have fun with these ideas and we don't take. We don't take it too seriously, but we talk a lot about, like, it would be great if, like, I think reincarnation would be awesome and reincarnation kind of reinforces a universalist. If it's not about heaven or hell or the afterlife, but there is this idea of, like, God is reconciling all things to God's self. Right? The bad, you know, the good people and the bad people and everything in between. Like, I, you know, I'm a better. I'm not a great person, but I'm a better person than a lot of other people. I'm a. I think I'm a better person than Netanyahu and Trump and. Right. I'm. I'm. I'm further along. I'm better than them. But what if that's because I'm on my seventh go around and they're still on their, like, second, and so they're super terrible, and I've just had more lifetimes to, like, figure it out.
- [77:59]
B
Right.
- [78:01]
A
And so anyway, we talk about reincarnation. We have fun with, like, what it. What the future sort of could look like. How do you. Yeah. What do you think about. Do you spend any time even thinking about that? And if you do, like, what do you imagine? What do you hope it would be? Whether that actually happens or not?
- [78:16]
B
Hmm. Yeah. In some ways, I mean, I'm quite agnostic about it as well. When I think about reincarnation, I think about how even if, like, on the spiritual level, you know, maybe, like, my exact soul doesn't become embodied or in flesh and like, a new body with the same soul on, like, a very material, material level, which I believe. I believe the material is spiritual. It is unquestionably true. Like, I'm gonna go in the dirt. My. My body is gonna decompose, and I'm gonna push up flowers, and I'm gonna. Those flowers are gonna have parts of me in it. Right now. I have parts of other people in me. I'm breathing. I'm breathing in those who have come before, and they're sustaining me right now. Like, nothing goes anywhere and nothing is wasted. And we're all a part of this in a very ma. And that, to me, there's a kind of eternity there. And I do think that as we push this whole thing forward towards love, towards connection, towards flourishing, it all matters. And I don't know how God works all that out for me. Like, the thing that challenges my faith is not so much like, oh, did Jesus really rise from the dead? Or is God real? Like, stuff like that are just, like, little metaphysical questions that. That I don't think matter all that much. The things that, like, get me, like, feeling kind of doubt or, you know, challenging my faith are like, yeah, are, is there a future for the human species? Are we going to, like, irrevocably fuck this whole thing up, you know, because then it would be like, oh, but like, does it matter then? Because if, if we, if we go extinct. And so even then, though, I have to believe that, that, yeah, that life itself matters and life itself is a gift. And that, to me, has to be enough. Leaving agnosticism about, like, if there's some sort of metaphysical, like, afterlife. That being said, a lot of my hope rests in the fact that I can't shake the belief that there is a God of love. And if there's a loving God, my, my hope in the future is not so much about, like, particular Bible verses that say what's going to happen as much as in the character of who God is. And so I just trust that all things are going to work together for good, like the Bible says. And I let those questions be got for God. And I try to live my life the way that Jesus showed us to live with, live our lives.
- [80:27]
A
Love that 50, maybe 60 years from now, if you, if you have a Dick Van Dyke type of body, you're going to die many years from now. And, you know, we're. We're friends, we're not BFFs yet, but, you know, for some reason, 50, 60 years from now, you ask me to give your eulogy at your funeral. And so all of your, all your friends, your kids, their families, everybody that you've affected, that your work has touched and changed their lives. They're all gathered to, yeah, kind of celebrate your life and talk about all the ways that you changed them. What would you hope that I would get up and say during your eulogy? How do you hope people will remember your life and work?
- [81:24]
B
Sheesh, man. Coming with the heavy questions today.
- [81:29]
A
Small questions, small questions.
- [81:32]
B
I think I believe that life is about love and connection. And if it's not, then it's not really about anything at all. And so I would hope that I helped people feel loved and connected to one another and to something greater than themselves. And if people said that Brian helped me feel loved more than I would have without his relationship, his connection in my life, I think that would be enough for me. I think when I was writing this book, I certainly felt some sense of, boy, I would love to be a part, one small part in making hell less of a foundational pillar in the Christian faith. You know, although I'm a universalist, and I don't think it's all about Christianity. Christianity is the largest religion in the world. There's over 3 billion Christians. And if they were less punitive and actually trying to imitate, you know, know, the world could really use 3 billion people deeply imitating the life of Jesus Christ. Like, like I think that would, that would change the world. Unfortunately, the center of Christianity is not deeply imitating the life of Jesus Christ. It is believing the right things about Jesus so that you can go to heaven when you die instead of hell. And that is, I would love to. That's really what my book is about, is trying to pull us out of that. Because that paradigm that I just described, describe it gives you a really unhealthy spirituality that causes you to enter the world as a colonizer, not a lover. And so if I helped people ditch unhealthy spiritualities and follow Jesus in a more authentic way, or not follow Jesus, but actually pursue connection and love in an authentic way, that would mean a lot to me too.
- [83:26]
A
That would be a great legacy. Truly hell bent how the Fear of Hell holds Christians back from a spirituality of love Friends, whether you're a Christian or not, whether you feel spiritual or not, highly recommend this book. Brian, you write this is your first book, right?
- [83:43]
B
First book, yeah, yeah. And I've had some atheists reach out to me that have really loved it that say, hey, like I'm an atheist. But like this vision of Christianity was like really powerful for me and just knowing that it exists was really meaningful.
- [83:53]
A
Again, there's not enough, especially modern, there's not enough people writing about this like this. And so because we're all touching Christianity all the time, whether we like it or not, it's everywhere in the so called West. Like I think it's an important read for everybody. You write so well. I think friends, if you read it, you'll get to the end and say, I hope Brian is writing something else because that was so good in the last minute we have together. Where do you want people to follow you? What do you have coming up that you want people to get excited about with you? What's going on in Brian Wrecker's life?
- [84:30]
B
So I post on Instagram a lot. I write on Substack a lot as well. And so you can follow me on my substack Beloved with Brian Wrecker. My Instagram is Erecker. One interesting thing that's coming up that some of your folks might be interested in. You probably know Marianne Williamson and then my friend Brandon Robertson. I don't know if you know Brandon, he's in New York City as well. So they reached out and we're putting together a prayer rally for America on January 6, an interfaith. So we've got, in addition to, you know, obviously Marianne is not a Christian. She's kind of a new thought leader. And we've got a Sikh leader, me, Brandon. My friend Carrie Latticer leads the post evangelical collective, so maybe a few others will be a part of there as well. But on January 6, we'll be praying just for the state of our country. Honestly, we could really use a revival of the soul in America. I think so much of what is happening right now, I mean, you don't have to use spiritual language for it, but I don't think it hurts. And I do think that many of our great social movements, like certainly the civil rights movement, were fueled by elevating the consciousness and elevating the spirits of humanity towards a more inclusive and just way of being. And right now, unfortunately, spirituality is being weaponized to create division, toxicity, hierarchy, control, domination, exclusion. And so we are, yeah, we're going to be praying for healing and hope going into this next year because we've had a hell of a year, boys.
- [85:58]
A
A hell of a year. Could literally be the subtitle for this year. Again, I'm no fan of any political administration. I. I loathe the Democrats, but boy, these last 11 months, not even, like, have been just so insane in our own backyard in Gaza and everywhere in between. Who's the Sikh leader that is going to be joining this? It's a Sim.
- [86:23]
B
Simran.
- [86:24]
A
Simranjit Singh. Yeah, Simran's been on the podcast as well.
- [86:27]
B
Oh, very cool. Well, these are all friends.
- [86:30]
A
Oh, my God. He's incredible. He's incredible. He's incredible.
- [86:32]
B
I have not met him. That's a friend of Brandon's and he. Brandon brought him in. And so I'm excited, though. I love an interfaith thing. I mean, spirituality is not owned by Christians. And I love the idea of coming together with my neighbors of faith and praying for our country. And so that'll be like a zoom that anybody can join. It'll be like a live thing. And so I shared the details on my Instagram, but that'll be on January 6th, appropriately.
- [86:55]
A
So we'll link all of that in the show notes, the book, your substack this event. Yeah. Please follow Brian on Instagram. It's really, really great. Actually, let me ask one more question real quickly right before we close, because your substack is called Beloved. I know one of the chapters in the book is called the Beloved. Why should we refer. Why do you refer to sort of this community as the beloved? I love the beloved. A lot of our black and brown ancestors, they use that a lot, that phrase. But, like, I love beloved so much. It is a spiritual sort of. It has ties to Christianity and whatever. But, like, why should we be using that? Because I think it's a good way to, like, refer, to look at community.
- [87:42]
B
So Jesus's message, most scholars would summarize it as the kingdom of God was what Jesus came to announce. But that was very confused. A lot of Christians, when they hear the kingdom of God, they think about heaven when you die. And that's not what it was about at all. The kingdom of God was about God's dream for the world. Jesus was wanting us to reimagine the world. The kind of thing societies that we build, to build a society that reflect, reflected God's priorities for us, our interconnectedness and the love that God would have for us. And so as a. This worldly thing. And Martin Luther King Jr. Talked about that same dream, God's dream for the world. And he called it the beloved community, which I think is more resonant in some ways and more timely than talking about the kingdom of God, which kind of causes people to think about the afterlife and about religion and that sort of thing, as opposed to the very fleshly idea of a community in which everybody experiences their belovedness, which is, I think, what God wants for the world and what I want for the world. And so I, I talk about that a lot. I have unapologetically just used that. I. I see King as a spiritual figure in my life that, you know, I've been influenced by in many ways, similarly to how Jesus has influenced me. And so I. I use that language of the beloved community. But beyond that, you know, my dad is a preacher, and growing up, when my dad would preach, one of my favorite things he would do. And I still think about it, when he would refer to the congregation, he would call them beloved, you know, so, like, as he'd be preaching, like, he would say, and beloved, God just loves you so much, or whatever the case, you know, and that always stuck with me, that that's ultimately who we are. At the end of the day, I think, you know, if. What is the message of the gospel, I think if you were just going to narrow it down to just a few words, it would be that you are loved at the core of who you are, are, that you are loved. And there's nothing you can do about it.
- [89:28]
A
Nothing you can do about it.
- [89:30]
B
That word still speaks a lot to me. And honestly, I use it a lot for my own. For my own soul.
- [89:35]
A
Yeah, that's so good. Listeners of this podcast, viewers of this podcast, you are beloved. Thank you for being part of this beloved community through let's Give a Damn. Beloved Brian Wrecker, thank you so much for joining me and us on the podcast today. This was just, just wonderful. Thank you.
- [89:52]
B
Thanks, Nick. Appreciate you, buddy.
- [89:57]
A
Friends, thank you so much for showing up and for spending some time with Brian and me today for this very last podcast episode of 2025. To find links for everything mentioned in today's conversation and to keep up with all things let's Give a damn, visit letsgivadam.com Please share this episode with a friend. Please leave us a 55 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And please, please show up next week. We have many more incredible conversations coming your way. Last reminder, you can reach out to me anytime and for any reason at hello, let's Give a Damn Dot com. Keep giving a damn. I love you all. See you next year.