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- [00:00]
Dan Koch
I'm Archmanning.
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Madison Skinner
I'm Madison Skinner.
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Dan Koch
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Dan Koch
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Dan Koch
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- [01:54]
Dan Koch
Welcome back, everybody, to Religion on the Mind. I'm your host today, Dan Koch, and we are back for round three of Christianity versus Existentialism. And of course, returning again, Darrell Van Tongren. Darrell, so happy to have you, Dan.
- [02:10]
Darrell Van Tongren
Thanks for having me.
- [02:12]
Dan Koch
As I was pulling into my office to record with you this morning, the song that came on shuffle right as I was hitting the parking lot was hands down by Dashboard Confession. Now, you and I don't have a song the way that maybe you and Sarah have a song. Jeffrey and I don't have really a song either. We have the song we did our first dance to and things like that, but we don't have a song. Yeah, you and I certainly don't have a song, but if we did, it would be fucking hands down by Dashboard Confessional. Absolutely it would, because listeners of this show might not know, but back in the fall, we did a very fun episode of my music podcast Pretty Good Vibrations. We did an Emo Diaries episode on Hands down, and we got into some pretty fun psychological territory. So I'll have Josh put a link to that episode in the show notes in case people want to hear us nerding out about Chris Carrabba and 2000's Emo and the specificity of his lyrics.
- [03:07]
Darrell Van Tongren
I still look back at that and I think, man, that was so much fun. I loved that episode. I loved that conversation. And I will say, you know, I often usually thought of Sarah when that song came on, and now I think of Sarah and you. So, I mean, take that for what it's wor. Maybe in very different ways, but you're both entering my cognitive awareness.
- [03:29]
Dan Koch
It's our non sexual Throuples song. It's a non sexual triangulation between the three of us. I thought I would do a little bit of summarizing of the first two parts because this is part three. Of course, Christianity versus Existentialism is a little bit click baity as a title on purpose. In only some instances are they really at odds, and in other instances they're quite in line with each other or have overlap. And this sort of push and pull of that is, I think, what makes this topic interesting for both of us. And I've had some listeners mention that specifically. Really quick, Darrell, give me your thumbnail definition of existential. Existentialism. It's both a philosophy and it is a psychology. Just to remind us what. What does it say exactly?
- [04:14]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, it's really just trying to understand the process of being and becoming. And so it's coming to terms with human fundamentals, the givens of human existence, tackling concepts such as our limitations, infinitude around mortality, meaning, isolation, identity. You know, those core questions of what it means to be human and how to engage those authentically.
- [04:38]
Dan Koch
You know, in movie circles there are a lot of jokes now the, like the beginning of the first Deadpool movie, something happens and then like freeze frame, like record scratch. You're probably wondering how I got here, right? That's like now become a meme in pop culture. I think of existentialism as like a human being kind of comes online around late teens, early 20s, and it's like record scratch. I'm kind of wondering how I got here. And existentialism is like, let me tell you, here is a set of ideas that are, that are sort of like perfectly suited for someone who's like, wait, what is this human experience that I have been thrown into? Well, have I got a strain of thought for you? Existentialism.
- [05:25]
Darrell Van Tongren
That's exactly right.
- [05:26]
Dan Koch
And there's a philosophical version that came first. It's been applied as a psychology. And so we're talking about both. I talk about both pretty regularly on the show. A few kind of main takeaways from parts one and two. Just to sort of orient us. I'll say these. I'll give you a chance to speak after Darrell. You can also just give me a thumbs up and I'll head out or I'll move onward. So first is there is this view of life that is sometimes called naive realism. That people just kind of, they look around and what they see is what they get and the way that they think about themselves in the world is roughly accurate. It doesn't take any great insight to describe things. Life is pretty straightforward. That's naive realism. And both Christianity and existentialism really kind of mount an assault on naive realism. It's a very deep convergence between the two. They both say that this default human mode is actually self deception. There's major self deception going on in one way or another, and that most people are in some significant way kind of asleep to reality or because reality is painful. And so that was something that we really liked. One way. I said it was the matrix red pill metaphor as well as just the sort of the, the concept of the matrix. All these people are living in the matrix and they don't realize it sort of equally applies to Christianity and existentialism. That was the first main point.
- [06:59]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yep, absolutely. I think you captured that.
- [07:01]
Dan Koch
Well, number two, genuine faith, we both thought and said, requires uncertainty. This is like a semi overlap. There are forms of Christianity that really focus on producing the experience of certainty about the biggest questions in the universe to their adherence. And those forms of Christianity are at odds with existentialism. But Christianities that include doubt and, and a leap of faith and genuine uncertainty, which both of us think is a more biblical form of Christianity as well as there are many examples of it throughout the years, that, that lines up pretty well with existentialism and its insistence on fundamental uncertainty.
- [07:50]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yep, yep, absolutely.
- [07:52]
Dan Koch
Okay, here's a big divergence. Existentialism. You mentioned this earlier. Our mortality, our fundamental isolation from other individuals, the fact that we, that either life is meaningless or at a minimum, we create our own meaning in a Very significant way these things are like, given they are just a part of human life, whereas most forms of Christianity would view that as well. Actually these have been solved like Christ solved these. And a life with Christ will solve them for you. That's a real sticking point.
- [08:27]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yep, absolutely.
- [08:28]
Dan Koch
Well, two more really quick. It's never too late to start. We both really appreciate that that's an overlap between the two deathbed confessions. Great. Do it better than not doing it. You know, like just accept reality even if you don't have very much time in which to do it. And then a big practical divergence. This is probably to me in my day to day life where thus far the stuff we've talked about shows up as a, as attention is this life versus the next life. That's a real divergence with real stakes. We talked about missionaries as sort of the ultimate example of next life being valuable. And we talked about my own personal version of this is like, well, what should I do with my time and energy? Should I sort of delve into imitating Christ? That's kind of what I did in my 20s and early 30s. And what I notice myself doing these days more is like diving into like understanding the world, understanding this life and this world. I don't know if we get any more. If we do, it'll be quite different. I feel quite confident. So let's suck the marrow out of this life. And that is a real, that's some real tension.
- [09:43]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. And I think, I totally agree. And I think from that tension that might be like the core tension from which other tensions branch out, other tentacles, you know, create trouble or problems or undermine ability to bridge some of those other convergences that just seem so obvious.
- [10:04]
Dan Koch
Yeah. And Christianity, unfortunately, perhaps Jesus has a nice little saying where your heart is there, your treasure is also.
- [10:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah.
- [10:14]
Dan Koch
And that, that, that's kind of tough because that's generally interpreted by Christians to mean focus on the things of heaven, focused on the, basically the things of the next life, the things of, of God. And like obviously that's more about financial treasures and like financial stability there. And I would agree with Jesus on that. I think after, at least after a certain point of some reasonable financial stability, it's diminishing returns. But if I take it more widely, I go, I don't know, I kind of like my treasure is kind of my kids, like while they're alive. And the things I, you know, it's like it's a little bit of an ill fit, to put it that way.
- [11:00]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, yeah. And to the degree that you think that either this is just a practice round or this is just kind of in the way of what's more important. It can kind of give you permission to justify unsavory behavior or not really care for the people or the places or the things here and now, which can be really troubling.
- [11:22]
Dan Koch
That's not an argument in itself that the Christian perspective is false just because it can lead to certain excesses or whatever. Right, sure. But it is often something that we see as a consequence.
- [11:34]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah.
- [11:34]
Dan Koch
Okay. So that's a little kind of summing up. So what happened is we finished recording those first two parts, and then I went to the 4th World Congress on Existential Therapy in Denver, and I told you. I was like, darrell, I'm probably gonna have enough items for another episode after that. And sure enough, I do. So I'm just bringing in a list here today. I've got an overall concept that I wanna start with. I've got Two overlap examples. 2. Both tension and overlap examples, and two tension examples. And I think we'll probably get to all of them. I want to start with this concept. So I was in a session, and there was this clinician from Mexico who put something really well that I thought was. I've just been thinking about it since, and I've been sort of mulling it over in different ways. The context for his comment was about psychedelics, which is helpful to understand a bit. But I think what's interesting about his comment is that it goes well beyond that context, but I'll explain it. So this was a psychedelics and existential therapy panel that I went to, and this guy practices in Mexico. In Mexico, there is apparently just, at a cultural level, significantly more widespread use of drugs that we call psychedelics. You know, ayahuasca, mescaline, MDMA, or ecstasy, specifically, where he mentioned in his. In his chat. And he will sometimes have clients come to him, therapy clients, and say, the. The ayahuasca told me to quit my job. Is that right? Should I do that? And then he said, here is what I will typically say. I will say, what happens if we purposefully leave that question unanswered for a bit and see what comes up? And that's only a slight variation on a lot of therapeutic approach. But I thought it was phrased really well of like, if we purposefully decide not to answer that right now, and then what happens? Like, what does our psyche do? What behaviors do we notice? What feelings do we notice? What questions do we feel compelled to answer in its place? You know, it's really broad. And I thought that this is interesting for at least two reasons. But before I get into that, I want to just open that up to you as a general. Like, what does that make you think of? Does that kind of stir anything in you? Darrel?
- [14:17]
Darrell Van Tongren
It's an interesting perspective. The two things that stir in me. The first was this clinician's making a bid to say, let's just hang out in uncertainty. So you've got this idea that you should do this certain thing because you had a particular experience and you kind of want me to help you navigate whether or not that's right or wrong. So the first bit is like, let's hang out at uncertainty. And so it's almost like what happens in our bodies and our psyches, in our emotions, in our thoughts, when we're just hanging out in that uncertainty. The second thing that came to mind was that when you were leading into this, I was wondering if you were going to say is similar to how religious people might say, well, I think God told me to do this. Right. It's just subbing out. The ayahuasca told me to do this. God told me. And, and I know some people might shudder at that and say these are two totally different things, but from a psychological perspective, both of these are mediated through our own cognitive conscious awareness. And so when people make claims that divine, they had divine interactions that compelled them to do certain things or they felt like they received divine instruction, I'm curious the degree to which that might be similar or different from people who have had other types of conscious altering experiences where they feel compelled by an exterior superior force or agent to act in a particular way. And so I love that. Yeah, it's really kind of bidding. I think the other thing the clinician might be doing is bidding them to step in to autonomy and saying, I'm going to take responsibility for this. Maybe the ayahuasca told me this, maybe God told me this, maybe it's just me. And I just needed an excuse for this stuff to come to the surface. And what the, the therapist is doing is making a bid saying, hey, why don't you take responsibility? Let's just put that on the back burner. What do you think? What do you want to do?
- [16:21]
Dan Koch
I think all of that's right and really interesting. I'll say briefly, in, for instance, culture that is more common in Mexico than it is in the United States, for, for instance, there are people who do think of ayahuasca, mescaline. You know, some people think of Psilocybin this way. Some people think of DMT this way, that, that these drugs, you know, they really do. Like, this is a bit more of an indigenous framing, that there is a kind of an actual wisdom, maybe entity like that. Like, you take this, you do it ritually, you do it in a certain way. And it is kind of oracle, like it is an authority, it's a voice with authority, much like a Christian who prays about something and has a sense of God telling them something. It is a voice of authority. And like a Christian, they might go, I think that's what God said, you know, and like there's all. So there's that human layer that you get at that. Like it does all go through us and we're not always sure about it. And so, yes, I think that's totally true. I had sort of two ideas, as I said, and your let's hang out at uncertainty bit ties in nicely to the first. One thing I love about this question is I think the question encourages us to live in reality from the existential perspective, because the reality is that we have all kinds of unearned certainty and confidence all the time. Because that unearned certainty provides short term psychological benefits. It allows us to avoid anxiety. This is the whole, this is the basic framework of an existential perspective. Is that the reality of our impending death and our big brains and all the work that they can do, it's fucking scary. And so we turn to various things to relieve ourselves of that fear. And one of those is unearned confidence or unearned certainty. And so I like that the question invites us to sort of live in the real world from that perspective. And let's hang out in uncertainty is another way of saying that. The second one is that I thought, shit, what if I take this advice around the big sort of supernatural theological questions that I have around Christianity that I continue to have for fucking decades, never ends. What would it look like? And I haven't. It's like, this is almost too good of a question that I haven't really approached it because I know I'd have to do something about it of like, what would that look like? That's something I feel like I could genuinely dig into for hours of journaling by myself and see what comes out of it or bring into therapy of like, what would it look like for me to purposefully pause, be like, look, I've looked into this stuff for 25 years. I don't know the answer. Why don't we call that good for a bit and, like, you know, see what happens if we just pause it. I don't mean I'll stop talking about religion on the podcast. I don't want to. I'm not trying to freak anybody out. But I mean, like, personally answering it, like, I continue to go to church and I just don't try and answer the questions that relate to the creed or the ascension of Jesus or the virgin birth or any of that shit. I just. I pause that and what would happen? So that was another angle.
- [20:00]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. That's so fascinating, because as you're describing this, it almost sounds like it's easy in certain domains for certain people to get kind of stuck in a loop, Right? Stuck in a ruminative loop where, in all good faith, they really are engaging with topics with intellectual vigor and intellectual curiosity. But you may not be making much more progress because you kind of keep coming at it again and again and again in the same way. And so by stepping away, you're almost giving yourself the space of, like, if I wasn't dedicating this much mental energy and time each day to trying to wrestle with this, what would come of my life? How would I do things differently? Or if I just had to accept that I didn't know and the only sense I could make out of it was that it's senseless and to just embrace the chaotic nature of our existence, then what would you go do with your time? Right. If you're just like, yeah, I don't really know about that, but can there be other things that inform my values? Can there be other things that shape my particular responses? I think that's a really fascinating and potentially destabilizing and unsettling invitation. What would it look like to step away from things that we just really have to get right, even though we'll probably never know if we're right?
- [21:17]
Dan Koch
I think to some degree, I am already doing the thing I'm talking about. And listeners who've been with me for, let's say, five years or so would know I don't talk about theology as much. I'm less interested in answering those questions, in part because I have come to see them as unanswerable, or at least not to the level of confidence that I would need. And maybe I would still hang out in that water if I was really interested in it. But I've gotten less interested in it as I've felt like I couldn't really answer it, I think is probably the way to say it. And so maybe it's really just a call into a deeper version of that. Yeah, it's intriguing.
- [22:01]
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- [22:36]
Dan Koch
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Dan Koch
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- [24:06]
Dan Koch
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- [24:22]
Dan Koch
Seems like we decided. Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Time to read the timeline.
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- [24:33]
Dan Koch
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- [24:35]
Dan Koch
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Dan Koch
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Dan Koch
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- [26:35]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, I do. Yeah. The first one is almost like, come on, man, just enjoy. Like, order the dessert, you know, get us. Get a second drink. Stay up a little bit later hanging out with your friend, you know, like, just. Just enjoy life. You don't know what tomorrow holds. You don't need to be irresponsible. You don't need to be foolhardy or not planned. But just relax and realize that when you turn this page, that's it. You're not getting the day back. This is it. You spent the time. You can't get any more of it. So, yeah, the first one seems like, enjoy it. Maximize it. The second one, oh, man, when you said that, that hits really close to home for me in terms of the way at least I was raised in my Christian tradition. And what I'll say is the other part that I bring to this is my mom immigrated to the U.S. so she's not from the U.S. she came when she was a elementary school kid. And so, you know, she has. I think she has a little bit of this mentality that she passed down to us kids of, like, don't stand out, kind of just fit in.
- [27:38]
Dan Koch
Well, this is well known sort of Dutch culture, right. Tall poppy syndrome is the. The term for it. It's a little bit in England, too, but it's really associated with the Netherlands, Denmark, that sort of area of Europe. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:54]
Darrell Van Tongren
You stand up too high, you're gonna get whacked down. Right. Like, the nail that stands out gets hammered back down the tall poppy. And so, you know, it's fascinating because that meshed really well with Christian messages, at least that I received about, you know, people who are really trying to, like, make this life, you know, count in terms of, like, being a big shot or, you know, accumulating power or status or any type of accomplishment or prestige really were painted as being sinful unless you happen to be doing it in the name of the Lord, which is why we're planting another church, you know, cross overseas and go with past, you know, Pastor Rob or whatever. So there was, like, a qualification that you could, like, do your very best. You could shoot your biggest shot for team Jesus, but that was it. And otherwise, if you shot your biggest shot, you were worldly, you were selfish, and you were kind of a little. It was kind of like a little bit of an immoral thing to do.
- [28:51]
Dan Koch
Yes. And I think growing up evangelical, it's associated with ego. It's about like, oh, you want your prestige. And obviously there's a version of taking a big shot at life that can be totally motivated by ego and a desire for power and prestige. And. And I would still. I think maybe the way I would square this is I would still apply a basic Jesus teaching ethic to the question. And, you know, in Jesus fashion, think about the intentions underneath it, what's really going on. Everybody's deceiving themselves a lot. Are you deceiving yourself? Are you doing this because you want to be a big shot? Or, you know, is it like. Like, I think about. I'm prioritizing, visiting southern France to see cave paintings. That's my. That will be my gift to myself for passing the EPPP and becoming a licensed psychologist, because it's the number one item on my bucket list. And that's not really about my ego. That's, like, genuine interest, fascination. Let's fucking go. Like, you know, my body still works. I can still travel to Europe and get around and everything. And I, you know, like, let's go. That feels like a safe and healthy version of it. But. But then there are ones where it gets a little. Yeah, it can get a little fuzzy and. Yeah, I think your point about. Well, if you're. If you're taking a big swing for Team Jesus, of course that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they're. Obviously, I've got a lot of residue around this question, and I think you do too, right?
- [30:28]
Darrell Van Tongren
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Taking. Yeah. Taking up space was not something that was valorized much in evangelical Christianity. At least if you came up through in the 80s and 90s.
- [30:41]
Dan Koch
I can take this out. Josh can take this out if you don't have an answer. But just before we move on, give me an example of something that you might do if you leaned into this, that you feel comfortable sharing.
- [30:54]
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- [30:54]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. No, this is a great question. You know, I think, man, this is great. Yeah. This is kind of bordering into like, what's the work I'm doing with my therapist? You know?
- [31:04]
Dan Koch
Yeah. Which is why I'm giving you an act. I'll think about it too. I'm thinking about it right now as well. Yeah.
- [31:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
I think part of it is even. I think for me, the biggest part is just allowing myself to see and to reconceptualize my self concept. So to see myself as someone who is deserving of certain things or has earned his expertise. So for me, it's kind of like shedding a little bit of that inherent sin nature. Like, you're just kind of this inherent worm, totally depraved into, like. No, you've earned an expertise. You've put in the time and effort. You've really developed a platform from which you can speak and speak honestly about really challenging topics. And seeing myself kind of as my full self rather than full of myself
- [32:02]
Dan Koch
should have started with that. You really worked your way around to the sweet morsel at the end there. Yeah. That's wonderful. I really like that. Okay, so I'm trying to answer it. I'm thinking about being at the conference. The type of people who go to a world conference on existential psychology, you might imagine are a fairly diverse bunch of. Yes, there's a lot of individualism. There's a lot of openness to new experience. There's a lot of people who are extremely well traveled, and there are people who are like, obviously have made very individualistic decisions, and it often shows up visually. I'm thinking of Yoel or Joel, this, like, skinhead, like British 80s style ska skinhead with boots and you know, overalls, just tattoos all over his bald head, including a skinhead tattoo on the back of his skin head. Like, that dude. That dude is living his life. You know, he's going for it. And there's 10 other examples like that of totally different individuals that I. That I met or interacted with or just saw walking around. So I do think it's like. I think my mind is going to like conformity questions maybe, or. Or yeah. Experience travel. Like. Yeah, it's a lot of like, I guess for me, I don't know that there's like a big shot, but sucking the marrow out is probably the closer metaphor. It's like, you know, Jeffrey and I have had this idea of doing a few weeks in the winter in Mexico in this place where there's like an international school and it's like relatively affordable. And I would do some telehealth and it's like, yeah, let's go. It's more things like that. Like, are we going to regret that? No, you know, like, we both want to try that. Let's try it. It's more, I guess, on the margin. So if I really come up with a big swing, like I'm going to finally start that cult, you know, then that's really
- [34:09]
Darrell Van Tongren
not now than when.
- [34:10]
Dan Koch
Really not now than when.
- [34:11]
Darrell Van Tongren
Right.
- [34:11]
Dan Koch
Okay.
- [34:12]
Madison Skinner
Yeah.
- [34:12]
Dan Koch
All right. An item of both tension and overlap. Valuing the arts. Okay, now this is why I say it's both tension here. It really matters which type of Christianity you're talking about.
- [34:27]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yes.
- [34:27]
Dan Koch
So in many forms of Protestantism in which we were raised, there is a real suspicion of the arts. You know, people who were raised evangelical will be aware of this. You know, this is sort of what leads to the Thomas Kincaid, the Kincaid Ification of Christian art. You know, it's like, well, this looks pious. So it's good. And it's really unrelated to how good the art is historically the clearest I've ever seen. This is when we were in Norway, we visited a bunch of Stavakirkas, Stave churches. That's the English term. And these are. They are a particular form of architecture that is sort of world famous. A bunch of. These are UNESCO heritage sites. It's, you know, some of them are 500, 600 years old or more. They are like basically like a post Viking form of architecture. Stave refers to actually the way that the. That the weight is distributed in the structure. It's an architectural term. But you go to these spots and they have. They either have photos or recreations. Here's what it looked like inside when Norway was Catholic. And then here's what it looked like when Norway became Lutheran. And you go from all this emphasis on visual beauty and these paintings of scenes from the Gospels and all this stuff to like bare walls, unadorned benches, maybe a little wooden cross, you know, it is like, it's insane actually. You look at them side by side, they're both Christianity. But it gets at that. There's a real difference there. And in existential thought art, there's sort of like every reason to engage deeply with the arts. And I think especially this was clear at the conference where there's all these people who are so open to experience and, and expression. And really a lot of the speakers, a lot of these sort of, you know, very well, well thought of thinkers in this world just continually kind of hammering that of like beauty and art and variety and human experience and expression and cultural difference and all this stuff as this thing to really just like slurp up and so Catholics and Orthodox, much better job of that. Protestants have a hard time.
- [36:53]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, that's fascinating. And there was some work that I'm reminded of that came from the line of terror management theory. So Mark Landau, who's a professor at University of Kansas, I think this was during his grad school days at University of Arizona, he did a little bit of work showing how reminders of mortality, so kind of activating our existential anxiety, really enhanced negative evaluations of moral modern art. Right. So this, so this modern art that kind of lacks meaning and lacks structure. And where you mean kind of corporate
- [37:27]
Dan Koch
modern art, like Jackson Pollock or, you know, like. Or like the print right behind you on camera, it's just like some kind of black ovals in space. Yeah, a pattern.
- [37:39]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, a pattern. Yeah. So we're fine if we can see patterns. Right. But if something's kind of like inherently like structureless or patternless or seems meaningless, just that feels a little bit. That feels a little bit unnerving.
- [37:52]
Dan Koch
And so extrapolating specifically mean, like modern art that is. That sort of lacks the sort of like, oh, I recognize what I'm looking at right now.
- [38:02]
Darrell Van Tongren
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. So the metaphor he used is that these are windows into nothingness. Like we gaze into them and we see through the other side of like, oh, this is kind of a peek into the meaninglessness. And, and I need that meaning, I need that structure. And so it's fascinating that what you're talking about, about how this shift in religion and how different instantiate
- [38:29]
Dan Koch
I think your microphone came unplugged or something.
- [38:32]
Darrell Van Tongren
Sorry. I accidentally take that sentence. So it's interesting how you mentioned that different instantiations of Christianity have really diverged in how much they embrace or resist the arts. So Catholicism, like you were mentioning, leaned into, let's use this to help paint a richer picture of one's spiritual life. And then Protestantism said, we don't need any of that. Let's clearly shift away. Let's keep this in our minds. Let's be as austere as possible, and
- [39:03]
Dan Koch
let's focus on the text. Because more and more of us are literate now. We've got the printing press. This is the literal word of God. So all that stuff is secondary. That. That's the impulse. That's the Protestant.
- [39:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
That's exactly right. Yeah. That's exactly right.
- [39:16]
Venmo Advertiser
Yeah.
- [39:17]
Dan Koch
I love that. Okay, overlap. This kind of. This kind of follows along arts a little bit in this. Or maybe it. Maybe it more follows along the. The attendees of the Fourth World Congress on Existential therapy. But both Christianity and existentialism, especially the more liturgical forms of Christianity that do better on arts, there are examples of outliers, of sort of wild ways of living one's life. And in Christianity, we've got a category for that. It's monks, it's nuns, N U N S. It is missionaries. It's people who really martyrs, you know, saints. So we do have a category for, like, people who lived really big in an outsized way in a way that is not ordinary. And those can serve as examples, inspirations, foils. There's something to kind of. We can, like, work with that a little bit. And existentialism, in prioritizing and valuing individualism so much. And. And in. I think there's one thing that comes up a lot. There's a specific thing that existential thought does, and this gets worked out clinically in the therapy room. It really recognizes, I think, correctly, that so much convention is merely convention. So many norms. And this is also true in cognitive therapy gets at this. You know, you have these intermediate beliefs. These are norms and rules that we follow. We often get them from our families, we get them from society. But existentialism is like. It really. It's like, dude, zoom out. There are so many contradicting social norms across time and place. You were thrown into one time and one place. That's your spot. And it's governed by all these norms, many of which you have no fucking obligation to follow whatsoever. And that allows people to sort of open their minds if maybe they are the kind of person who is more of an outlier, they don't want to live, you know, a really standard kind of a life. And true, in Christianity, there's a particular path to that, but you can get pretty out there on that path. You could be a monk on Mount Athos and never meet a woman your whole life, if that's your bag or, you know, whatever.
- [41:48]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. And what's fascinating is that in both versions, there's this. Like you said, the similarity is this anti conventionalism, but the bifurcation is within Christianity, the anti conventionalism, as you said, is very pious. Right. So it's, I'm bucking the cultural or the conventional trends, and I'm being incredibly pious. I'm dedicating my entire life to God. I'm shunning maybe desire or sexual relations or any relations, and I'm just dedicating myself to this pious pursuit. Whereas in existentialism, the anti conventionalism is still just as aspirational, but it is by some considered to be impious. And it is through the impiousness that this exemplar of anti conventionalism pokes at the frailty and the illusion of convention. So in Christianity, it says, like, no, no, this convention is kind of bad. Let's be anti conventionalist by being more pious. And the existentialist says, this convention is made up. And in doing so, by some, they're considered to be impious. But that is true at the fringes. These exemplars really kind of beg us to nudge closer in ways that maybe we feel comfortable, even if it doesn't fully reach their level of extremity.
- [43:19]
Dan Koch
I could probably. I could put it in equation forms. For existentialists, it's like authenticity plus natural variety, that's kind of like equals the good life. It's like, yeah, they see authenticity as basically the highest, one of the highest goods. It's like, you.
- [43:41]
Lululemon Advertiser
You.
- [43:41]
Dan Koch
You're thrown into this life, you didn't choose to be here, but you can choose how you're gonna be here.
- [43:47]
Darrell Van Tongren
That's right.
- [43:47]
Dan Koch
And that's really the call. And that plus what I said earlier, that, like, actually, there's just a massive variety. Humans have lived all kinds of lives, societies have organized in all kinds of ways. And of course, there are limits to that. And there's a kind of a naive utopianism that can come from that. That's a problem. But, you know, for instance, like, just think about all the things that govern your life around having guests over. You know, like, there's that there's whatever version of that you got in your family. And then there are 25 genuine alternatives to that, like, genuinely different.
- [44:24]
Darrell Van Tongren
That work just as well.
- [44:26]
Dan Koch
Yeah, that could go just as well. And you. You know what I mean? So it's that real, that emphasis. I think that actually the figure of Soren Kierkegaard, the grandfather of existentialism, is an interesting case in point here, where it's a bit of both of what you're saying. Very pious, but also. But also like pious in a way where he's actually arguing against the state church and this sort of calcified form of Christianity. So he's arguing against the capital P, pious folks with his own piety. And he's like, he's not doing what he's supposed to do, which is like, get married, have an academic career. He sort of, you know, and there's. You could. I'm not going to psychoanalyze him, but he has a disastrous sort of romantic situation, and then he's ill and struggling with all kinds of things, but he doesn't live that conventional social life either. And he is kind of like. He's exactly the starting point for these threads that then work out in the coming decades.
- [45:27]
Madison Skinner
Yeah.
- [45:27]
Darrell Van Tongren
And I think, you know, even when people, some people may feel uncomfortable encountering the unconventional, I think in most of us, if we're honest with ourselves, there's also admiration and maybe a little bit of jealousy when we see people who aren't fettered by convention, we think, oh, to only have that freedom. And then, of course, we assemble all the defenses for why we couldn't do that. It wouldn't work that way for us. That's not the life we would want to live. But good for them. Good for them. But I do think there is a little bit, at least, maybe I'm just projecting here a little bit of admiration of. Oh, man. To see someone completely unfettered from really the approval of others. Right. And just living freely just to how they feel convicted according to their values. That just feels. That just feels so liberating and exhilarating.
- [46:15]
Dan Koch
Maybe there is something for you to pay attention to there, Darrel, but I think that there are people like you, and there are people who see that and go, I would never want that. And then that is authentic to me. Them. And that's great, you know. Okay, three. More tension. This is a real tension. Faith of a mustard seed is enough to do wonders. That's the Christian explicit teaching. Indeed, you will do greater things than I. Jesus says, yeah, right. Verses. And here's one where I, I think I. I just. I just take the existential point. The world has very real and very hard limits, and you have comparatively little agency outside your own body and mind. Get used to it, kid. Do with it what you can. Like maybe that's true, that faith of a mustard seed could do that. In which case nobody has that much faith and no one's doing that. Not actually. That's one of those phrases that Jesus either didn't say or was wrong about or whatever from the perspective of existentialism. And I find myself increasingly on the existentialist side of this. I mean, there's real inspiration to be found in the world, but it's. I would say it's more like creative collaboration is enough to do wonders. Like, it's not. It isn't really about faith. That's not really the thing that makes people do wonders. It's like they actually get connected to the right other people and that multiplies and that's when really crazy things happen. Science, engineering, arts, you know, peacemaking processes, these kinds of things. That's where wonders happen. So that one's a real. That's a real tension area for me.
- [48:01]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, that scripture, I just think, trips up and is so problematic in so many ways when I'm thinking about people who are undergoing adversity. Adversity or suffering, or really actually encountering any situation in life where they wish it was otherwise. And so I think about someone, for example, who has a ill or maybe terminally ill loved one. And if they're religious and they keep thinking, I just need the faith of a mustard seed, if I only I just had more faith, you know, this person will get better and they might even engage that person in, you're fine, God's going to heal you. Instead of embracing the reality of you have a sick loved one and maybe you should just lean into the limited time you have together, disabuse yourself of this illusion and just embrace who they are. And then if it goes poorly, like these things tend to do, oftentimes, then people are left wondering, what could I have done? Could I have done more? Could I have had more faith? Could I have, Instead of, like you're saying, embracing the reality of everybody's going to die. Right. Some of us just get sick, some of us leave earth earlier than others, and that's just the way it falls out. And we're limited. And once we embrace our limitations, that's when you can truly live. That's when you can figure out how to, like you said, suck the marrow out of life or take your big shot. But you can't do any of that when you're believing impossible things. When you're. When you know, when you're trying to convince yourself that reality isn't. So even when you're confronted with evidence that it is.
- [49:49]
Dan Koch
Yeah, there's a real. You can get stuck in a cul de sac and from the existential perspective, end up wasting big chunks of your life.
- [49:59]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah.
- [50:01]
Dan Koch
And it's possible that those sort of magical beliefs are true. But the. What I love about existentialism is it would say, okay, maybe that's right. Maybe, you know, we're. We try to be very humble about reality in a certain way, and, like, maybe that will work, and maybe that's something I don't know yet about the world, but the risk you're taking is spending the time you have left on it and being wrong. And that's the kind of splash of cold water that I find so appealing about the perspective.
- [50:36]
Darrell Van Tongren
Absolutely. When I teach this stuff to my students and we go over big existential concerns and things that make people anxious, my students, they say, well, what do you do not to be anxious about this? How do you get over it? And I say, you know, I think I've kind of come to take existential realities. Kind of. Like, I do gravity. Like, I'm not, like, really angry about gravity. Like, it just, like, holds me on Earth. It's just like a fundamental law of being alive. But, like, if I totally ignored gravity, I would probably, you know, I might fall down the stairs or walk off a building or.
- [51:10]
Dan Koch
But how many years did that take you?
- [51:14]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, I'm probably. I'm probably shortcutting it a bit here. Yeah. Decades. Right. It probably took me.
- [51:18]
Dan Koch
I believe you. I'm on that path. But it's like, gosh, it's taken a long time.
- [51:25]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. Probably like two decades. Probably like 20 years before I can finally be like, yeah, this is just how it is. I'm just gonna embrace it and try my best within those human limitations.
- [51:36]
Dan Koch
This is a totally random thought that maybe is not true. Or maybe we could do some research and prove that it is true. I wonder if there's a natural resonance between aging in general and that insight of existential thought of, like, you know, it does take a long time to get there. Like, our brains, just the way they form is they form with a bunch of inherent expectations about ourselves in the world that come from our families and cultures and all of that stuff, and it just takes A very long time for something really different than that to feel very plausible and true. And not just true, but like, to be calm and accepting about the truth of it. And that's maybe just why the kind of wisdom that most of us long for, that every spiritual tradition is founded on, this just typically happens in older people. Like, there's just like, unless something really wild happens to you when you're young that sort of shows you this stuff, you just typically don't get there in your 30s or before. It just happens in your 60s and 70s. Usually. You just need time.
- [52:53]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right on. And with that wisdom that comes for many with age, it's lamentable that we are in a culture that's decreasingly appreciative of the elderly.
- [53:06]
Dan Koch
Exactly.
- [53:07]
Darrell Van Tongren
We're just more marginalizing people based on their age. When we could be drawing so much wisdom, which we could learn from them, we could be engaging with so much more humility. Some of the work I love that comes out of terror management theory with older adults is that so many of the effects that they see where in younger people, reminders of death make people more aggressive or defensive, they see the opposite effects with the elderly. They become more generative, generous.
- [53:36]
Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [53:36]
Darrell Van Tongren
And part of it is death is just more real. When you're old, you have so much more practice. People that you have loved have passed away, and it's less of a threat because you've become more habituated to that reality. And so to me, that gives me hope that if people can just come to terms with. Just as people come to terms with these existential realities, it's simply a matter
- [53:58]
Dan Koch
of coming to terms with the existential realities. Right.
- [54:02]
Darrell Van Tongren
And as they do and as they embrace them as truths, I think that some of that defensiveness will melt, and I think we'll be able to have more authentic and less reactionary and less defensive responses.
- [54:12]
Dan Koch
I love that. All right, two more items. This one's a little bit of a tack on to earlier. This is a both tension and overlap item. This is our last of those two. If you feel like an outsider in mainstream spaces. Okay, let me paint. I'll paint a picture. Here's how I imagine this. You live in the suburban parts of a major US City, and everywhere you go looks like everybody went to home goods to, you know, design their spaces. And everybody's got a Starbucks in their hand. And everybody is, you know, if it's in the south or Midwest on Sunday, they're all driving to the megachurches. If it's in the Northwest. I don't know, everybody's got a coexist sticker on their car or whatever. If you're just like, I don't fit in with the mainstream culture, this is grading against me. Well, basically, existentialism was invented for you. I mean, it is just a very soft place to land if that's who you are. And I think Christianity is and isn't. I think that you've got, in terms of resources for not conforming. The ultimate resource is the life and teachings of Jesus, which if you're willing to sort of center your faith around the Gospels, then you are in the best of company in Western history. And like, we talked about monks and nuns and saints and weirdos, that's the connection to the earlier item. And some forms of Protestantism have a real punk rock energy as well. I think about Anabaptists, especially this sort of, you know, peace focused, kind of anti military, anti too much government power. Sort of like, we are. We're not of this world, we're doing our own thing. That is. That's a. That's a big ask. But for the people that it really lines up with them, it's a tremendous source of meaning. Any nonviolent strain of Christianity gives you some real stuff to criticize mainstream culture with. But there's also a lot of conformity in huge swaths of Christianity. And that, you know, the megachurch example is one. I'm sure there are people who feel kind of choked by a combination of an ethnic and religious Catholicism in some contexts. You know, there's stuff like that. You know, the Eastern Orthodox Church has been quite shameful in Russia and some other places in conforming to the culture of Vladimir Putin, for instance, and really backing disgusting stuff there. So we all know about Christian conformity, but if we look to the source of the whole thing, as well as Old Testament prophets and most of the major characters of faith, I mean, these are outsiders and they are changing things with their own lives. So that one's a bit of a both.
- [57:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
And yeah, Dan, I love that because as you were describing this, it's almost like the Christian or the Protestant invitation is, yeah, don't conform, be different. Right? There's that scripture like, don't conform, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, pull away. But it's almost like once that happens, there's sufficient enough fear and anxiety that it's like, oh, crap, we pulled away. Now what? Well, let's all kind of Band together to pull away in the exact same way, and then we can conform. So you're getting the conformity and all the benefits of meaning and social validation and the fellowship, but you're not doing it in a conventionally conforming way, because
- [58:05]
Dan Koch
the conventional T shirt would just be the Sprite logo, white on green. But see, we made it say spirit, Darrell.
- [58:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
There it is.
- [58:14]
Dan Koch
So we have not conformed to American advertising and consumer norms. We have made it Christian advertising and consumer norms.
- [58:25]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. Set aside. We're not creative in our own right. We're mostly reactionary. But, yeah, so it's almost like the invitation is like, let's step aside. But there isn't the bandwidth to stand with that distress, to stand with that existential anxiety. Whereas I think the nonconformity and the folks that don't fit in and existentialism, my gosh, it's simultaneously lonely, but just empowering and authentic, but also a struggle. And. And it's almost like the bid from Christianity is you can kind of have your cake and eat it too. We're not conforming, but we're all not conforming in the exact same way. So you don't have to have any of the distress. Here's your sermon with three points that start with R. Hit the coffee bar on the way out and rinse and repeat.
- [59:15]
Dan Koch
I do think it's a little bit similar in its structure to Trump as an outsider.
- [59:24]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah.
- [59:24]
Dan Koch
Where it's like, he's literally the most powerful man in the world and this is his second time being the most powerful man in the world. He's not an outsider. Like, he's best friends with the head of FIFA during the World Cup. Like he. But that's a bit of a. It's a similar thing psychologically. And I, I don't want to. I'm not. I'm trying not to be too judgmental with that. I'm just saying there's a way in which, if you frame. If you get the framing right, we are both persecuted and we're in charge, you know, and it's like, it's that kind of a thing where. And, you know, we talked about the self deception. I think that Christianity proper has good tools for diagnosing that kind of self deception and that double standard. But it's hard when you have a version that has sort of taken all that Christian language. And we could do a long time on the ways that religion. You know, this is a. A major theme of your work is the ways that religion is sort of perfectly calibrated. To address these anxieties that come up from the realities that existentialism names. So we're aware that within that there can be some self and inter group level groupthink and deception and all that kind of stuff. So that's, that's where it can get sticky. Yeah.
- [60:47]
Darrell Van Tongren
And religious groups tend to thrive a little bit more strongly when they feel like they're the target of persecution. When they feel a little bit more minoritized, you're a little bit more cohesive, commitments are a little bit stronger. And so there is a benefit of we really are under the gun here. Even if they might possess the most social capital and power.
- [61:09]
Dan Koch
Yeah, it's interesting. It's like you're glad that that's the case when it's the black civil rights movement, then you're like, great, use that power, use that cohesion. Let's get this done. Let's make this world better. But the same principles are, the same psychological principles apply to $200,000 making white Republican men. Whatever. It's like, same thing. Okay, our final item is really a little bit of a tack on here. It draws on earlier conversation, but I do think this is a point of overlap. It's maybe a point within what we've been talking about. If you want a strong critique of most of the structures in society that keep one group elevated above the other group and that make that upper group feel inherently superior to the lower group, which is a perennial problem in all societies. I think both Christianity and existentialism have very sharp, very well founded battering rams to ride or Trojan horses to climb inside. You know, like, maybe I'll give you, I'll pass the mic to you for this final one. Like, how would you phrase what's shared there in terms of, like, the way that a Christian worldview and an existentialist worldview will give you really robust tools for fighting back against that kind of society level injustice.
- [62:43]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So I mean, Christianity kind of, you know, at its core says, you know, there's, there's kind of an inherent brokenness in human systems. And part of what we need to do is become aware of that, that brokenness. We need to repent for our participation in that human brokenness. And then we need to rely on an external divine force. We need to rely on God to kind of work against that human brokenness, to bring in something better and more just and more loving. Or at least ostensibly that's one version of Christianity. In the same way, existentialism kind of views the variety of human Conventions as gosh, this is just, this is just kind of like a human made creation and this is not reality. The similarity is kind of those earlier points you were talking about, kind of like a bidding of this is not capital R real. There's something more real over here. And so let's dismantle, let's break down, let's deconstruct. What I think is fascinating is deconstruction is a term that's all the rage in religious and post religious circles right now. That's an existentialist term. Right. It's a philosophical term. And they kind of both share this like breaking down in order to rebuild into something new. But how would you approach it?
- [64:09]
Dan Koch
Yeah, I like that. I was just thinking that existentialism was not in existence at the time of like when eugenics was really big and sort of social Darwinism. And I think about the way that in the pre Civil War and post Civil war South, the sort of these racialized views of the different ethnicities of humanity that comes out of the Darwinian period and becomes very much in vogue and contributes to World War II and the Anti Semitism of the Holocaust and all that stuff by the time Hitler's there. Well, first of all, Hitler is the one who really ultimately gets existentialism a seat at the table in a larger scale because it's after the Holocaust that sort of people want to turn to these ways of understanding the world because they do a better job. But if there had been a robust existential critique, the critique of eugenics and all this racialized stuff would be like, how do you know? Yeah, it looks to you like the brain size is different or the cranial shape shape is different. And you're going to make all these inferences, but you're doing that because you have a need to be, to like be superior. That you feel that staves off your fear of extinction and death and all that. You know, it's like that's what this is doing for you. It's a fiction. It's a big self deception that a bunch of people are engaging in to stave off their anxiety. That would be a pretty compelling argument against that worldview. For instance, Christianity did have its own. And eventually the Christian argument prevailed of human dignity and the imago dei and there is no difference between us. And it took a while but eventually that became the dominant view and that critique was accepted. So that's kind of where my mind went is like picking a case example kind of like that. Yeah.
- [66:11]
Darrell Van Tongren
And it dovetails again with the kind of there's something wrong, we think that we have a better way of doing it. And it's particularly, I think, why it can also be attractive to people, more so to people on the margins, is because if the system's working for you, you don't really want to upset this illusory convention because you're benefiting from the illusory convention. And so to the degree that you're not benefiting from it or you're on the kind of the outside of power or status or access to resources, it's going to be more attractive to kind of want to engage in the world in a different way, which might topple some of those structures and reorganize access and resources.
- [66:59]
Dan Koch
Well said. Well, I think we did it. I think we have solved for. We've solved for Christianity and existentialism. We've put it to bed.
- [67:13]
Darrell Van Tongren
Well, I'm glad we could definitively, with full certainty and not a drip of irony. No, just clarify.
- [67:21]
Dan Koch
In fact. Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Let me just do a little. Let me save you a little time. Our official code will be.
- [67:30]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah.
- [67:31]
Dan Koch
For these episodes when they are imprinted onto a disk and sent out into space for whoever might eventually find us. This was so great, though, man. I got some good feedback from listeners and I really, really enjoyed recording these and having a bit of fun, but also getting in the weeds a little bit with you. So thanks for your time, Darrel.
- [67:53]
Darrell Van Tongren
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Always enjoyed these conversations.
- [67:58]
Dan Koch
It's going to continue. We will keep talking. We will find other things to talk about. And yeah, thank you guys for listening.