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- [00:01]
A
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C
Welcome back everybody to Religion on the Mind. I AM your host, Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist in the state of Washington. Occasional I am such an occasional researcher in the psychology of religion compared to my illustrious guest today, Darrell Van Tongren, research psychologist, both of us existential psychology aficionados. I'm not quite a psychologist yet, but I will. I would say both of us are existential psychologists. If I were a psychologist. I'm not yet. You are, Darrell.
- [02:26]
B
No. Yeah. I think we both would qualify. Absolutely.
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C
In our, you know, me in a clinical sense. You in a research sense. You know, friend of the podcast. Been on many times. Those who have been listening for two, three years may have even been following along to the blossoming of our IRL friendship.
- [02:44]
B
That's right.
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C
And the many jokes I have made at my own expense over the years about that. But this is a project today that I have been noodling on for months. I'm so excited to embark on it. It's going to be at least two episodes. I'm thinking maybe three or four. We'll kind of see how it feels like, how much of the terrain we feel like we've gotten to in the first two parts. It actually started as I had this idea of, hey, Darrell, why do you think each of us were drawn to existential psychology? I think it has something to do with Christianity and being raised Christian. And we talked a little bit about that. But as we discussed, a kind of a more, I don't know, like a little stickier idea came to me, which is like, what about Christianity versus existentialism? And that is a little bit clickbaity because as we will talk about, they are not always in opposition to each other and they can coexist. I'm going to say more about that in a minute here, but there are some ways in which I guess for me it's been feeling more I've been more aware of where there is tension between generic kind of ecumenical Christianity or the specific kind of Christianity. I was raised with white Protestant evangelicalism in America, so I'm kind of wanting to do the tension as well as the compatibility stuff. So the very basic format is we're going to talk a little bit about existentialist philosophy and, and existential psychology, as well as how that can really work with Christianity. We'll also talk a little bit about our introduction to this thought. Then we're going to kind of go back and forth and switching off between areas of what we see as like concordance or a nice kind of fitting together or some common areas between existentialist thought and Christian thought, and then alternating that with where we see there to be some tension between someone who might accept some existentialist principles like we do and try and make that fit with Christianity. So that's the rough idea, and we're going to be loose and we will follow whatever seems interesting along the path. Darrell, anything to add there?
- [05:02]
B
Sounds great. I'm excited to jump in and go on this conversation with you.
- [05:08]
C
So. And we should say too, you know, Darrell, you've been on talking a lot about people who have left religion. You know, your book done is a very practical guide to people who have left religion and how they can flourish and find meaning and identity and purpose and after that. But I'll just say from my perspective, the, you know, there are some books about that. There's not like a lot of books about that, but What I love most, or what I think is the unique contribution of yours is you've done a ton of research about people who have done that. So you're not just not to knock anybody. You're not merely a clinician, sort of speaking from your clinical experience. You actually are bringing in big research projects and the findings and then synthesizing that with the clinical experience of others, including your wife Sarah, who's an existential psychotherapist and also past guest of the pod. And so, yeah, people should know that that's there as a resource if they want it. And some of that's probably going to come up in this conversation. I imagine there's going to be some shared pathways there.
- [06:14]
B
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Thanks for highlighting that. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of good books, a lot of autobiographical books, but. Right. I thought that my contribution was integrating cutting edge psychological science in a practical way to help people who are going through a particularly challenging identity transition.
- [06:31]
C
Yep, challenging indeed. So, all right, I'm going to briefly define existentialism as a philosophy and as a psychology, because you don't have to be familiar with all these terms to enjoy this conversation. We are going to make sure that it is understandable to a layperson to the best of our ability. Existentialist philosophy is a 19th and 20th century movement. Think Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, if you're familiar with any of those names. These are major figures. Simone de Beauvoir, it is concerned with the concrete experience of being human like that. It's really about the sort of irreducible experience of a human life and specifically the subjective experience, like our internal world, one of a kind experience such that the kind that we do not have access to in other people, only in ourselves. And there's a specific emphasis on the anxiety that humans face because of our big old brains that allow us to kind of see a lot more of the world. I think existentialist philosophers would probably say that has some connection also to our ability to make free choices which carry a massive weight, a moral weight. It focuses on the absence of any predetermined meaning in life that's sort of ready made. That's going to be a point of tension with certain forms of Christianity, of course, and the inevitability of death and our ability to sort of forecast out and know that death is coming. So existentialist philosophy, and we should say it really picks up after World War II in terms of the popularizing of this view, because I think another Thing you could say about it that's a bit less technical is existentialist philosophy is very comfortable with the darkest shit in human experience. It's not just about human experience. It's really designed to deal with kind of evil, like just suffering, evil, death, despair. That's really kind of. That's the dough that it is most comfortable working with. Would you add anything there, Darrell, about existentialist philosophy from your perspective? No.
- [08:50]
B
That's great. Yeah. It focuses on anxiety, on angst. I also think absurdity and the absurd.
- [08:56]
C
Yeah.
- [08:57]
B
And so trying to highlight the ways in which we humans come to terms with our being and becoming and the subjective nature of that process, which again will probably be another point of contention for certain forms and expressions of Christianity.
- [09:15]
C
Yeah, that's good. That's a good addition. So then what is it when we're talking about existentialist or existential psychology? Well, that is a handful of psychologists who basically took a bunch of concepts from existentialist philosophy and put them into clinical practice. So it gets. It gets more practical, you know. Now we're talking about anxiety in a way closer to the way the therapists talk about anxiety. We will work with it, we will treat it. But rather than seeing anxiety primarily as like a symptom of something else, an existential psych approach will treat it as a signal that is worth looking at seriously and interpreting. Because sometimes anxiety should just be reduced, at least in the short term, to give us a little bit of breathing room. But in longer timescales, often anxiety is a pointer to an unlived or under lived life. There is a sort of a false self idea within existential psychology. We might be seeing evidence of an avoidance of choice and an avoidance of engagement with life. So we look at anxiety and some other mental health symptoms differently and work with them differently in the psychological version, as opposed to the straight philosophy. So that's kind of how I would go from philosophy to psychology. Anything that you would add there, Darrell, in kind of making that jump over,
- [10:50]
B
you know, a number of existential psychotherapists have argued, such as Irvin Yalom, who is a luminary in the field, that, you know, one could reasonably contend that the majority of psychological concerns, mental health concerns, distress disorders, symptoms are actually reducible down to a very small handful of existential fears. And so understanding the different expressions or different instantiations of a variety, I mean, essentially, I mean, the boldest claim, and I'm not sure that he would make this claim, but a bold claim could be along the lines of distilling down the DSM to just a handful of core fears of what it means to be human. And the process by which we come to terms with those givens of our existence kind of explain just a panoply of different mental health concerns. And so it's a frame for getting down to really the core or root cause of. Of human behavior and flourishing or maladaption, stress and struggle.
- [12:04]
C
Yeah, and that is a strong version of the claim. I mean, I think even. I think a modern, pretty hardcore existential psychologist would at least carve out that a lot of the DSM actually points to things that have like a, you know, a quote unquote biological source, like without much psychological or sort of cognitive content to it or whatever. But that, yeah, a lot of this comes down to our fear of death, our fear of being isolated, you know, struggling with meaning, struggling with our freedom, our moral freedom, struggling to accept responsibility for things, struggling with the limits of reality. So that's a lot of the stuff that I work with my therapy clients and some coaching clients. So one more note on Christianity before we get in. So really there are Christianities in the world. There is not just one Christianity, of course. We've got Orthodoxy and Catholicism and the other kind of break off Orthodox churches, the Coptic and Ethiopian, and then we've got Protestantism and all of the different varieties there. I'm trying to keep this ecumenical so that most forms of Christianity are represented in what we talk about. To the extent that we get too detailed, probably we're getting too detailed in the direction of American white Protestant Evangelicalism, because that's both of our backgrounds. But we'll try and mention that as we go. And as I said, I want to start off by highlighting that Christianity and existentialism, despite the verse's titling and kind of setting for this, they are not totally in conflict. And I've got kind of a couple ideas here. The first is that the grandfather of existence, existentialist philosophy, Soren Kierkegaard, was adamantly and intensely Christian and his whole project was framed as a Christian project. He was basically trying to reform the church with his sort of proto existentialist ideas. I wonder if you had anything to elaborate on there, Daryl, about Kierkegaard.
- [14:14]
B
No, no, I love that. Yeah. When I was thinking about getting ready for this conversation with you, you know that that was something that really did kind of leap out. Right. So so many existentialist philosophers and so much existentialist thought can be brought back to Kierkegaard and really he was trying to get folks. My understanding is to go past just like a cultural Christianity, to try to get to the, the root of what it really meant to engage with God or with one's creator. You know, I think most of us kind of remember the Kierkegaardian leap of faith is kind of the, you know, most memorable features of his contribution. But it's. Yeah, it's, it's interesting, you know, in thinking back on this, that, you know, a lot of, on both sides of existentialists looking at, you know, religious folks and religious folks looking at existentialism, that sometimes there can feel like this unbridgeable gap, even when the, the common roots or kind of intellectual grandfather is someone who saw them as so. As one and the same, as really just being cut from the same fabric.
- [15:21]
C
Yeah. Kierkegaard lived in a situation that we can't possibly imagine in modern day America, for instance, where we both live. Heavy sarcasm implied. The difference is that there was an official state church. I think it was Lutheranism right in Denmark at the time that Kierkegaard was living. By being born, you became a Lutheran and a citizen of Denmark at the same time. We don't have that kind of thing in the States, of course, but the official state church had become kind of bloated, high on its own supply. From his perspective. It was not able to sort of critique any kind of social ills. It was not able to critique. It just became very bourgeois and sort of country club Christianity, you might call it in the States and certain areas of American culture and especially geographically and culturally have really a lot of that sort of residue to them. And just the sort of wedding of Christianity and governmental power, state power, that's not something at all that any of us have spent time thinking about.
- [16:36]
B
No, not at all, not at all.
- [16:38]
C
Even when we get to the mid century, post World War II, like, you know, the real boom of French beret wearing black turtleneck existentialism, which is very atheist coded, you know, in popular culture. There were still major figures that integrated it with Christianity, like Gabriel Marcel. I think it, you know, might even be worth doing an episode or returning to him in a later episode. I've been wanting to kind of dig into his way of reconciling the two, but I haven't done that yet. I don't know if you have Darrell, and maybe some of that will come up in our conversation, but he's like a major name that gets listed like a top five name in French existentialism. And he was adamantly Christian. And then finally on this note of them not being always at odds. Most claims of existential psychology, as we'll get to, are fully compatible with theism, even Christian theism. What they're not compatible with is a Christianity that is particularly confident or certain in its truth claims. That's really where you're gonna get into a major disagreement between an existential approach and certain forms of a more traditional Christian approach. Is that how you would kind of frame that primary difference there, Darrell, or would you change that?
- [17:59]
B
No, I do think that is a. I think that's a significant difference or challenge. The truth claims that are high in epistemic certainty certainly are less compatible with a more subjective existentialism. I think when I was thinking about this, what I was thinking was the primary tension goes to really, the core of what existentialist thought is, and it's really predicated on the idea of existence before essence, right? So this idea that we're thrown into this world and we have to make meaning, we have to find morality, we have to carve our way out of an existing world versus a worldview or conceptualization of reality in which there, a priori exists an objective meaning, an objective goodness or badness for humanity, and a certain way that the world is apart from or preceding our existence. And so I think that oftentimes is so that on one hand, and then the certainty versus faith or subjectivity on the other hand. I think those are really the one two punches that really make some people struggle to bring these two ideologies together.
- [19:18]
C
Okay, very well said. I'm going to use that as a launchpad to jump straight into things. I told you I was going to ask you about, kind of where, you know, your autobiographical introduction to some of these ideas. Why don't we just. We'll weave that in as it sounds relevant as we discuss these concepts. So we're going to try and do like in every other, like I said, talk about dissonance, talk about concordance between the two, or where we see them lining up. Because you just named one of the divergences that I had listed. So let's just jump into it. I put it as the purpose of your life. So I see this as a natural tension between an existential perspective and a standard Christian perspective. I think the standard Christian view, and, you know, tell me if you see this differently, is that you are, as a human being, you are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. I think image of God can still work, but you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And God has a plan for your life that is already more or less set up for you. And there's variations on this. You know, you can have a maybe kind of a more populist version that's like, literally everything is planned out. All you gotta do is follow God in faith, and God will direct each of your steps, and it's all there. And then, like, a bit more kind of seminary student kind of a version which is like, no, like, there might be some genuine uncertainty, but, like, Christ lays out for us, like, you could completely just follow this way of living and in, you know, be in regular prayerful communion with God, and that is really the only thing you got to do. Like, that will then determine for you what to do with your life. You simply walk through your life in faith. Any. Any shading there, or does that sound right to you, Darrell?
- [21:10]
B
No, that sounds right. Yeah. So there exists outside of us a predetermined script for what makes our life and really capital L life, capital P, purposeful or meaningful.
- [21:20]
C
Yes. And, you know, different Christians could disagree on, like, how much of the details are kind of there ahead of time, but really, existentialism differentiates itself by focusing on what you mentioned, which is this throne ness that we are thrown into the world. It came up the other day, I was talking with a client about somebody taking responsibility or believing that they were responsible for all the things that they had done and the way that they were. And I was being sarcastic, and I was asking them a hypothetical question. Oh, so tell me, what went into your decision to be born into the family time and place into which you were born, with the genetic code that you were given? How did you make that choice? Right. We don't choose that. We don't choose our genetics, our parents. We don't choose the country, time of our birth, our lives and the contingencies, the various possibilities that are all dependent upon each other. We are swirling in randomness, chance and contingency. And the existentialist says you're thrown into that, but you also have this gift of this big old beautiful human brain, and you can figure out how to move forward, how to make that meaningful, but really, it is your job to do that. And this, to me, is. This is attention. This is attention for me personally in, like, if I come upon something tough in my life, a situation that I'm trying to navigate, do I lean. Do I kind of lean left into my Christian faith and go, all right, God, I'm going to sort of lay this at the foot of the cross. I'm going to give this to you, I'm going to sort of submit, you know, open my hands or do I lean right into the part of me that says, okay, this is difficult, this is painful, but this is an opportunity for me to learn about myself in the world, for me to practice those muscles of agency and choice and taking responsibility and like charting a path as best as I can anyway, as I make mistakes, I'll learn from those and rinse and repeat. That does, to me feel like a bit of a divergence in the woods, in the Robert Frost sense.
- [23:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, when I think about the Christian version of this, really does two things quite well. The one is that it very tacitly implies that life is meaningful. And so just by de facto there is an inherent meaning to life, even if it's difficult for us to figure it out, even if you and I might not agree on what it is, there exists this meaning in life or a purpose for my life. And so it reduces my requirement to acknowledge the absurdity of my existence and the chaotic nature of life and everything around me. The second thing that this version of Christianity does is at very most, I am penultimately responsible for my decisions. I am not the final person or final entity or agent who is responsible. Now, some may say, well, aren't I responsible for discovering God's plan? Or aren't I responsible for, you know, uncovering or being faithful? And whilst those things might be true, there's still an agent, right? There's still this supernatural being, God, to whom, even if I am the most faithful, I can only reach that amount of meaning, purpose or plan. And so at the end of the day, even if I am the quote unquote, most faithful I can be, I realize that it's still not entirely up to me. And so I do think that the existentialist perspective really leans so heavily on human autonomy and human freedom. And it contends that we must make a commitment to believing that something that we do is purposeful or meaningful amid kind of an uncertain, chaotic environment in which we're not getting any sure objective reification that our choices are indeed meaningful, significant, purposeful, or will last beyond, you know, our life.
- [25:57]
A
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C
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A
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- [27:57]
C
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- [29:00]
C
Okay, I want to keep talking about this. I feel like we could talk about it two different ways. We can talk about it what existentialist philosophers would say, phenomenologically, which is to say we can talk about it through the perspective of human experience, Our. Our experience of coming up against questions of purpose and meaning. Right. And how this looks. And then I do also want to talk about it more abstractly because I think there's a distinction that helps me actually square these a bit. I wonder if you think I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too, by doing that. But let's start with the experiential difference here. So I kind of led that way where I was like, I can lean left or I can lean right. That is, if I am approaching a situation as I'm narrating it and living through the story of my life, I sort of can come across two options. And I actually think that I mentioned the decision point there, but I think you could also differentiate between the effects, the expected effects of those choices. So if I lean left into a more Christian perspective, what's that going to do? In certain areas of American culture, I mean, especially geographically and culturally, have really a lot of that sort of residue to them, and just the sort of wedding of. Of Christianity and governmental power, state power. It's going to entail some sort of conscious submission on my part. It's going to entail a loosening of my grip on the reins. I'm sort of relinquishing control, and I will have the experience of relinquishing control. If I am, then if things go well, and let's say I feel like my prayer has been answered or I've been met by my community and it's been really supportive, and it's kind of helped me get through this, then that's gonna also tell me, that was good. You should be relinquishing more control, because when you do that, things go well and things happen that you couldn't have imagined otherwise. And probably as a Christian, I'm going to interpret that in some way as like, God's action, whether, you know, unilaterally or through other people or whatever. So I could be confirmed in that choice. Go the other way. I. Okay, what's my experience there? My experience there is of grabbing the reins, grabbing the reins of my own life. Therapists are thinking right now, ooh, this is kind of important to us for a lot of our clients, right. Like, we want to get past passivity and take, you know, feel like, ah, motivated. Right. Motivation is kind of the opposite of depression because a lack of motivation is a major symptom of depression. And then if things go well, I also will get a good response back, like, hey, look what happens when you take charge. You are more efficacious than you think you are. And we could maybe paint a picture of if things go poorly on either way. I just, I wanted to kind of put a little more meat on the bone there to show like these could both go well. But there's a, there's a real difference and different aspects are going to be kind of reflected back to me as a result of. Of which way I go there experientially. I wanted to get your thoughts on that or if you have anything else to add in the kind of phenomenological, experiential, subjective version of, of leaning one way or the other.
- [32:30]
B
Yeah, I think, I think you painted it well. The, the experience of what both of those things are like. The experience though, of being an autonomous individual who is volitionally acting out of their own motivation to make a choice is still inherently, though a little bit less tethered to the choice of leaning, as you would say, leaning left into your Christian beliefs around relinquishing control to God. Because we're never quite sure if the decision we're making is the correct decision. And while we, you know, while one could argue like, well, how would we really know if we've really relinquished or submitted, you know, other than the behavioral or, you know, consequential feedback we get after making that decision, there's still always kind of another level above us where the buck would stop. It wouldn't always stop with us. So there is something still a little untethering about saying, well, I'm just going to make this decision. I'm going to, you know, quit this job and pursue this one or leave this potential partner and pursue that one, it feels more untethering. Even though, you know, I might wonder, how does one know for sure if one has actually submitted to God? How does one actually know if they've laid their concerns at the foot of the cross or knelt the knee of the heart in obedient submission? How does one know other than through our own mediated cognitive and emotional processes? And so without getting too far into the phenomenological weeds of psychological processes and experiences, that too is a subjective experience of us saying, well, I, you know, I, I'm submitting by doing this and, and that's. That's also a curious aspect to explore about how do we know which, how do we know that one is doing that versus still, you know, making a decision that feels like submission or obedience.
- [34:28]
C
And of course in some cases leaning left into Christianity, so to speak, might actually involve a big difficult, you know, move to make which feels very agential, agentic and that, that kind of a thing. Right, so, okay, so yeah, I mean that's, that's good to kind of complicate the, the too simple picture that my illustration is perhaps implying. Let's talk a little bit about, let's talk abstract here. So I do attempt to square what you initially said, which is, is life actually objectively meaningful? If so, then that, you know, the way I talk about it is then that would sort of reside in the mind of God or it resides in the nature, the fabric of reality or something like that. It is sort of built into the fact and the existence of the universe, the ultimate meaning. And that is, yeah, that's ultimately sort of God's meaning or something like that. Versus the atheist existentialist contention that life is actually totally meaningless. It is entirely meaningless and human beings experience things as meaningful because of the way human beings are. That we are at our very core meaning making creatures. And every psychologist in the world will agree that human beings are meaning making creatures, I hope, but that doesn't mean that they have to agree with the idea that, that therefore, you know, the universe is actually meaningless. And so one way that I try to square these is I think of it in terms of. And I think that this is quite an existential way to think of it, I think in terms of what appear to be the hard limits of human capacities. So if I phrase it like this, Darryl, what would it take to create a universe? That's the kind of question that shows us. I have no fucking idea. Like, I can't even begin. Like I could maybe muster some half assed astrophysics and say, well there's, I guess there has to be mass and potentiality or you know, some bullshit. But like, no, no. Okay. So okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could say the physics, but like if you're gonna create a universe, what do you got to do? Like, no, no, I don't know, hard limit on, you know, language is beautiful, fis. Physics and math are elegant, powerful, I mean, unbelievable stuff. But there do seem to be questions that are, that like we're just not very well suited to answer. Like we just don't even appear to have the, you know, the stuff we don't have the Cognitive or otherwise stuff to even really approach that. And so one, the simplest way to say this is yes, in the mind of God or whatever created sustains the universe, let's just say that that's God, there is a meaning. But humans with our limitations don't have access to that sort of unmediated God's eye view meaning. And so our limitations make it such that we have to create our own meaning or at a very minimum, co create our own meaning. And we do that, like you could say from a Christian perspective, simply by being born and creating meaning in a body and a world that God created, that, that is co creation. So God creates the world, we create the meaning. That's co creation of the meaning. Now that implies a lot less certainty, right? As we said earlier. But it's one way to sort of square that circle of there could still be life could still be meaningful in a proper like capital M sense. But that doesn't mean that we can describe that meaning. And certainly we from an existentialist perspective should be very skeptical of anybody who's too confident about their ability to pronounce on such matters. How does that feel?
- [39:02]
B
Yeah, no, I think I come at it in a slightly different way that I think that might have a lot of overlap with the way you're saying, but it's just the way I've tended to think about it is I'm wondering if one of the reasons why existentialism suggests kind of rampant meaninglessness, a certain version, rampant meaninglessness or absurdity, is because of the inherent subjectivity of all experience. So because we're all experiencing in different ways, how can anyone ever be sure? We're all just kind of, you know, we're not really quite sure what the meaning is. Your meaning is different than my meaning, which means there's no meaning. But I'm a little bit less convinced that everything, everything is subjective because definitionally speaking, if everything is something, then that definition loses its referential power.
- [39:50]
C
So if, if everyone's a special snowflake, then fucking no one's.
- [39:55]
B
That's exactly right. So, so if, if we just take that one assertion that that must mean there's at least one thing that's not subjective. If all of our experiences are subjective, that would mean at least one thing isn't subjective, which qualifies our experiences as qualitatively different than what exists outside of our experiences. So I would then take that whatever objectivity to be some type of meaning, some type of value, some type of referent toward which I am just approximating. My very best estimation of what that thing should be or how I experience that thing. So my subjective experience of meaning. Your subjective experience of meaning is. Is kind of this dimly cast shadow right on the cave wall, so to speak. Right where we are trying to get a sense of this objective referent through our own subjective experiences. Which suggests to me my own inherent subjectivity of meaning is almost kind of evidence for there being some objective meaning that I will never quite get my head around or apprehend, but it exists nonetheless.
- [41:11]
C
I think practically we see this in, you know, sort of smaller questions than the meaning of life. But, you know, I'm a cognitive therapist, so I. One of the things I do is I help clients learn how to recognize when they commit cognitive distortions, also known as thinking errors. These are standard ways that the human brain evolved. The human mind evolved to, like, reason about things quickly with a. You know, there's a. There's a emphasis on the negative. There's an emphasis on avoiding danger. Right. That's the kind of anxious lean that we have, the kind of implicit negative bias that humans have, which makes very straightforward sense. If you think through a survival lens, better to have a lot of false negatives than. Or better to have a lot of false positives than false negatives. You don't want to think, that's probably not a lion and have it be a lion. Right? Yeah.
- [42:07]
B
Last thing you'll think.
- [42:08]
C
Yeah, last thing you'll think. Famous last words. Better to go, that little bunny is a lion in the bushes and be wrong. Right?
- [42:16]
B
Yeah.
- [42:17]
C
So. But when we do that, what clients end up doing is with time and practice, they actually get better at getting things right. Like, they more often believe things that have good evidence, and they less often believe things that have bad or poor evidence. And that's. Now, I don't. A philosopher might jump in and say, you can't. You know, maybe that doesn't mean that the same thing is true at these other orders or levels of meaning or whatever, but I do kind of think it is. I. For me, the simplest explanation is that there's one objective reality that can be described in different ways. And just like. Because different way, like different tools have a different language to them, sort of is a way of thinking of that. So you could describe it. You know, you can describe an object through the lens of color or shape or mass, weight. You can describe two objects through gravitational pull, but you could also describe them as the things that they remind you of. You know, there's a lot of different ways to describe Something, but there's some reality. And I think that even just basic psychology has come to understand that there is a very significant relationship to the physical matter of our brain and our conscious mental experience of the world. You know, the classic example is if you have a stroke or a traumatic brain injury in the wrong spot, your personality changes. The, the meanings that you make about things change. So there, there's some, like, it isn't all subjectivity there. Like, you know, if you might not be able to know exactly. Like it's, it's one thing to say I don't have access to your subjectivity. That is 100% true. It's a jump, I think, to say, therefore, like, I can't know anything, you know, like, like that's, that's, that's too strong. And so that's kind of maybe. Yeah, so we, we are, yeah, we're coming at it kind of differently there. It is about limitations in both of our descriptions, but a different kind of limitation.
- [44:28]
B
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, it's, it's.
- [44:30]
C
Yeah.
- [44:31]
B
Really. I mean, I, I think, I think one of the, the. I mean this, maybe this is my, you know, I'm going to show my hands for kind of what I think the telos of humanity is. I think part of our, our task or goal of being human is coming to terms with the limitations of what it means to be human. And I think so much of our effort is oriented around fighting those limitations, denying those limitations, being beholden by the anxiety resulting from not wanting those limitations to be true. That embracing those limitations, I actually think can be incredibly freeing. Once we get to the point of understanding, there's a descriptive way of understanding these givens of existence or these ultimate concerns that's different than a pre. Moral or value judgment that we would assign to them.
- [45:22]
C
I think I agree with you. Let's keep it moving though. So we're in this ABBA style. It is now your turn to bring one of the areas of concordance, you know, where, hey, here's an area where kind of basic Christianity and an existential approach really play nicely together. Back to that initial idea for the, for the episode months and months ago. So what's your first area of alignment?
- [45:49]
B
Yeah, so I mean, and maybe this is a little bit related to the conversation we were just kind of shifting out of is really kind of a basic view of Christianity and I think kind of a standard view of existentialism requires some degree of faith. And by faith we mean a lack of certainty. So we cannot know for certain and so we must rely on some degree of hope, of faith or of trust that what we are believing is true. Right. This is the Kirkegaardian leap of faith. This would be an acknowledgment or an embracing of uncertainty or becoming more comfortable with that discomfort. So both of them would converge by saying, you know, we can't know for certain. And so therefore, we are going to put our trust in something. We are going to put faith into something, because we just can't know.
- [46:47]
C
Okay. This gets into really interesting territory, I think, because what it forces me to do is sort of audit what do I think is going on in the mind. My best guess, in the minds of Christians and other people in other religious traditions who do believe or talk as if, and tell themselves that they believe that they have certain, you know, like totally provable knowledge about the ultimate questions of the universe. Because there's a version of this where they believe. They do, and they're right. Right. Okay. That is a possible reality. And that is what a lot of faithful people across religious traditions would tell you. If you ask them, what do you think the deal is? Like, oh, no, I'm a Christian, so I know who God is pretty much exactly. And what life's about. And if you are a Buddhist or if you're a non Christian of any kind, then you don't know. You are wrong. And I know and you don't know. And we do have to kind of take that seriously as a possibility. Obviously, there are some big problems there. How do you know that you know and that the Muslim doesn't and that the Buddhist doesn't and the Taoist doesn't? By what criteria are we going to judge this? And then you know, of course, that you follow that up with the empirical observation that very few people ever get around to doing that comparison, despite the fact that it would probably be the most important question that they could possibly settle Right. On the merits of the way they talk about their faith. So that discrepancy that Delta provides an opportunity for a psychologist or somebody who's psychologically minded to sort of go, okay, what do we think is going on there? And part of my job as a therapist is to ask that question all the time about my clients and reflect that back to them and collaborate with them on it. So here's cards on the table. Here's what I think roughly is going on there. I think that true religion, including Christianity and any other religion. I agree with you, I agree with Kierkegaard. It actually the most beautiful forms of It. The real power of it always includes a significant element of uncertainty. I mean, this is maybe more. This is more theopoetics than theology, but Jesus on the cross, quoting Isaiah, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus in the garden, sweating blood, you know, Lord, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me. Like, those moments aren't in a more kind of whitewashed, like, hero story. Like, those are moments, like, I mean, you got to call that doubt, right? I mean, I don't. I'm not sure you can. I'm not sure I can understand, certainly Gethsemane without the idea that in some sense the character of Jesus there is expressing doubt. They're like, okay, I think this is where we're going. I've been telling everybody, but, like, is there a possibility that I'm wrong? Like, is there another way here? Right? And Abraham and Isaac is the story that Kierkegaard picks up on for fear and trembling, to talk about absurdity and to talk about the leap of faith. And I do think so. That's my view and my view of what's going on with religious folks who do not think uncertainty is a part of faith. My view of them is that they are following a path that is simplistic, that is kind of childish, that provides the type of defenses against pain and uncertainty that childhood provides, and that. That is not as strong of a faith. And put it this way, if I
- [50:49]
B
was
- [50:52]
C
sort of like a military general, but instead of, like, soldiers, I've got, like, missionaries or, like, faithful people who have to, like, I need the best special forces guys for the job, you know, for something related to, you know, the gospel or a fan. This is a very silly analogy. I'm not going to assemble my team of a bunch of, like, priests who have never doubted. That team is fucking chock full of people who have been through the dark night of the soul, come out the other side and go, I have really looked at the abyss and I'm still here. But I don't know, you know, I don't know for sure. Like, those are the people that, from my perspective, are more faithful. Where I feel some tension is like, I think a good chunk, if not maybe the majority of religious people the world over don't. Don't see it that way, or they don't. That's not the typical way that they live out their faith. It is more certain, whatever. So I don't know. I mean, that's. That maybe that's an empirical question that could be answered, but yeah. What do you think about any of that?
- [52:00]
B
The certainty of sure faith is so psychologically soothing.
- [52:04]
C
Yes.
- [52:04]
B
That its elegance is in its simplicity. It's, I have faith, so I'm certain. Which is so bizarre because now we've equated faith and certainty. Like, don't have fear, have faith. Right. Like I can be certain because I have faith. I was in an interdisciplinary work group and someone said, I'd really love to ban the use of the word faith for at least a hundred years and just replace it with the word trust.
- [52:31]
C
Trust. Yeah.
- [52:32]
B
Which just shifts it to a relational proposition that you're, you're counting on someone else to hold up their end of the bargain. But you never really know even the person you trust the most. You have no idea what they're doing. You just have to trust that they're doing something trustworthy or carrying their, their end of the commitment. And so, yeah, I think it's so psychologically soothing to just say, well, I just know, and not even to entertain that you could be wrong because really the stakes are just too high. Right. And so I, you know, to weave in. And I think we've talked about this other times, you know, the William James kind of two different ways of believing. You have the healthy minded person who's like, I just know I have certainty. And then you have the sick soul who are, you know, people like you and I who have, you know, stared into the abyss. We live at the abyss. We have a lake house at the abyss.
- [53:26]
C
It's more like. No, it's more like a, a rough hewn cabin without running water and electricity. More the Norwegian style. Yeah.
- [53:35]
B
There's gaps in the planks over an edge of the abyss.
- [53:37]
C
Exactly. We smell the sulfur coming up from below us.
- [53:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. And that's just more distressing, but it's, it's just more honest. Right. And so, you know, reality is just a bitter pill to swallow. And so sometimes it is just easier to say, I just have faith. And so, yeah, the elegance and simplicity really does serve some pretty strong psychological features. But I agree with you. It really doesn't bear the weight of trials and tribulations for people who are high in cognitive complexity. And that's where I'm going to put in my qualifier. There are some people for whom they're like, you know what? My simple, childlike, you know. Yeah, I don't want to use any other adjectives. Yeah, sure. My simple, childlike adjective.
- [54:29]
C
I know you mean.
- [54:30]
B
Yeah, faith is sufficient for me. And I don't really want to do any more cognitive elaboration on it. But for folks who are high in cognitive complexity or like to elaborate on, on you know, the nature of seemingly disparate or areas of tension, that's just not going to be enough. And so oftentimes I think we're, you know, the religious institutions should realize that they're doing a disservice if they overly emphasize simplistic views of faith because they oftentimes just don't bear up to the weight of reality. And so, you know, as someone who studies folks leaving religion, oftentimes people who leave, they don't want to leave. Like they'd like to stay. Yeah, it's just whatever they were taught isn't holding up and they're having a hard time assembling a ship or a plane as they're flying through the air trying to make sense of life's experiences.
- [55:21]
C
I love that. So just to recap, you're saying this is an area of concordance with. And by the way, I think, yeah, I think like if we could get a numerical chart of like theologians and major religious writers across Christian traditions, I do think there'd be like an 8020 90, 10 in favor of faith includes some uncertainty and genuine trust. I think and I think almost like almost anybody in that remaining 10 or 20 are either kind of charlatans or they could be self deceived. They, that they don't understand. Like they, like they don't have the capacity to see the complexity of the world and they're not, they don't know what they don't know or they're snake oil salesmen that have figured out whether, whether they're conscious of it or not, they've sort of figured out that marketing is more effective if you have a miracle cure than if you tell the truth. But like the kind of serious thinkers do seem to all agree, even, even thinkers are much more conservative than me. Like you know, that I disagree with on major issues. Like I don't think this is actually that contentious of a, of a claim within kind of more serious Christianity. Yeah, so that's a great one. That's a great one. Okay, so I think we have time for one more. Maybe pick something that we could do a bit quicker, like maybe more of a nitpick than a deep, deep divergence. We'll try and do it in about 10 minutes.
- [56:48]
B
Well, okay, I need to save the deep divergence.
- [56:51]
C
Yeah, that one for part two.
- [56:55]
B
You know, I'm just wondering, and maybe this is too big rather than a nitpick and maybe it's, it's close to what we talked about before, but I think part of our, part of the thrown ness of existentialism is being unmoored or untethered from an objective morality. Whereas I think Christianity would say there exists an objective morality that we. To who? To which all people are beholden and need to follow. And so in the autonomous creation of, you know, making sense of one's own life, I think existentialism would be less inclined to promote an objective standard morality. Whereas Christianity would say no, no, there is one. And it might even be pan cultural, you know, with some various, you know, contextual expressions. But we kind of know what is right and what is wrong.
- [57:44]
C
Yeah, and I think the, that's a really great one. If you're wanting, you can't like basically, if you're going to do a Christian moral vision, you can't stray too far from Jesus, Jesus's teachings, but maybe especially Jesus's example of obedience unto death on a cross. Even if, like whether you're taking a traditional orthodox, you know, historical resurrection view or even a more liberal, liberal Protestant like, well, maybe the resurrection is metaphorical or psychological or some sort of down payment of some future world that doesn't look like this world, you still have Jesus going, okay, kill me, you know, and you've got, and you have in Jesus's mouth, put by one of the gospel writers, greater love has done than this than that a man should lay down his life for his friends. So there's a real kind of like self sacrifice, especially in that act. But, but probably other aspects of like, you know, you've heard it said, but I say to you the kind of like, don't kill each other. But I say if you have hate in your heart, you've murdered your brother. That there's a, there's a sense in which there's a kind of, yeah, there's something, there's a moral code here that has got to lean closer to objective and specifically for Christianity, even a liberal form of Christianity. If you're saying that Jesus is the best picture we have as humans for whatever is ultimate, which I think is a, I mean I think 100% of Christians would basically have to say some version of that Jesus is the best thing we've got to figure out these ultimacy questions, then you're kind of, you're kind of stuck with Jesus now. Not a bad guy to be stuck with. But if you want a bit more flexibility around, well, what really does count as like the Deepest and truest morality. There's less room for conversation around that. And I want to make that practical for a second because here's one where it comes up in therapy, I think, pretty regularly, self sacrifice. And this is probably especially available to me because I work with religious change clients and so come. And a lot of them are women or queer. So in one way or the other, they were sort of told that they were lesser than that. They, they were not able to use their gifts. They were not able to sort of pursue paths other people were able to pursue in one way or another. And there is a sense in which, you know, people can become doormats. You know, like, if there's power imbalance, if there are these rigid rules and roles, then self sacrifice can start to look less like, you know, like Jesus sacrificing himself for humanity and more like, yeah, like letting people shit all over you. And so in therapy, you know, if somebody, if a client says, well, I think what I need to do is like, I. I think I just got to kind of back down here and, and, you know, yada, yada, yada, fill up. However, I will not go, well, that sounds like Jesus. So that's the right move. I will go, okay, well, hold on. Let's, you know, let's, let's, let's find some context here. Let's use a little discernment. Is this, is that the right thing to do in this situation or is it not? And I could, I can tie that back to like a more, I don't know, robust and multifaceted Christian morality or something. But I notice myself thinking along these lines in situations like that clinically, and that's kind of where my mind goes in the practical.
- [61:28]
B
Yeah, I mean, I remember growing up, my mom had this little, like, crocheted thing that said true joy is putting Jesus first, others second, yourself last. Right, the joy.
- [61:40]
C
Oh, nice. Yeah, nice across.
- [61:42]
B
Yeah, exactly. And so I think a lot of Christians have interiorized a belief that boundaries are sinful and that we too should just be martyrs to a cross, to an abusive partner or exploitive co workers or unkind or unhealthy friends, rather than realizing that that's probably a mis. Of what the purpose of that passage from a scripture might be trying to demonstrate to us. Right. And so, yeah, by kind of really narrowly focusing also on saying, like, literally everything Jesus did, you know, like, do we need to open up, like, you know, a fish and loaves store? Like, is that the, you know, the only.
- [62:30]
C
How much should we be imitating Christ Yeah, yeah, right.
- [62:34]
B
And then, you know, I also think about the ways in which it might foreclose gaining wisdom from other religious figures or religious traditions that might. Might really complement or be valuable to people in particular situations, even if they hold strong Christian faith commitments. And so that's why oftentimes you see, you know, kind of Christian colonized versions of different non Christian, you know, like we're going to do Christian mindfulness and Christian meditation, you know, and so rather than just kind of like opening oneself up more, more broadly to the variety of different wisdom paths or ways of trying to understand relational flourishing in the world.
- [63:15]
C
Yeah, that's really good. I kind of want to either try and apply this to martyrdom or tease that that's the beginning of part two, maybe, because there is a kind of a. Well, let's just do a couple minutes on it. There is an application there to questions of martyrdom. And I think I would maybe if I put it in a quick formula, be something like this. The more that you are confident that Christianity is uniquely true and that Jesus and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus is really running the show and like that this is, you know, there is one path, like I am the way, the truth and life, and that means that Christianity is true and other things are not true, then to that extent, martyrdom is seen as. I mean, obviously it takes great courage, no matter what. To be willing to be martyred is an act of tremendous courage akin to the courage of Christ on the cross. I think that's just true psychologically. But the meaningfulness of the act and the efficacy of the act is kind of tied to. To some of these questions. If you think more like what you're saying, Darrell, that, like, well, we are thrown into this world. Now, there's a really interesting question. Does that mean that Jesus of Nazareth is thrown into the world in the same way that we were thrown into the world? And there's all kinds of implications of that.
- [64:50]
B
Yeah. I mean, to the degree that you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was human and the same human limitations. Yes.
- [64:57]
C
Yeah. Then you have to. Yeah, to some. Yes, that.
- [65:00]
B
That's.
- [65:00]
C
That's tricky. But if it's a more like, hey, humans find themselves waking up in the world, each of us already in a context, and then sort of doing what we can with that, then, yeah, that opens you up to other forms of wisdom, other, you know, from other walks of life and other people's experiences, and it kind of makes martyrdom look a. A bit more like bullhead ishness and like, like maybe sometimes a mistake. And it's, you know, we, we have examples in the regular world of mistakes that are courageous. Right. You could think of like certain battles even within like wars that are justified. There can be battles that were pointless and people just, soldiers just get massacred for no reason. Doesn't help anything. But they were nonetheless courageous or unjust wars in which the soldiers are nonetheless courageous and there is some sort of moral value to that. But you really wish they hadn't gone at all because in the end it hurt more than it helped. So we can do that. It's like ickier to do that with martyrdom. Martyrdom is like, it's the ultimate kind of, I don't know, it's maybe kind of the ultimate spiritual taboo because it's maybe the most Christlike action. I don't know why, but for me it feels like martyrdom has got this, some, some orange cones around it. Anyway, any martyrdom thoughts before we wrap up for part two?
- [66:32]
B
Yeah. So what you were describing about, you know, like who might be the people most inclined towards those types of behaviors are really describing people high in religious fundamentalism. So like my way this way is the only way. Every other way is a falsehood. And then I also think that, you know, maybe a generous or more kind of liberal interpretation of martyrdom could be that it, it exists in degrees. And so yes, ultimate martyrdom might be, you know, one losing one's life for their faith. Whereas you know, smaller acts of martyrdom might be like, well, I'm not going to confront my husband because he is the head appointed leader and even though he's doing something that's really unhealthy, you know, I'm just gonna, you know, be, be a doormat, be a martyr. And they may, you know, they may not even realize that they're, that they're being a martyr. But just kind of acts of powerlessness or kind of self abasing sacrifice in the name of religious commitment, I think happen even on smaller levels. And then those are things that can erode well being and show up in the therapy room. And if therapists aren't attuning to wondering like, why is it that you're acting this way? Right. That's kind of a cultural question around like what's the role of like what's your worldview and how are you bringing that into the decisions you're making around your relationship?
- [67:49]
C
That's a, okay, that's a nice way to end it. And also not, I don't know, like just piss people off right at the very end by, you know, shaming the memory of their beloved martyred ancestors. Okay, we are gonna come back next week. We're doing this again, part two. So we're gonna be picking up where we left off. And thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Daryl, for joining me. This is. This is just like a dream.
- [68:20]
B
Thanks so much for having me. This has been great,
- [68:30]
C
Ra.