Dan Koch Is Giving You Permission - Episode 371

This is Rick Lee James, and the music you are hearing is from my new album, Thunder. The title track, Thunder, is a never-before-released song by the late Rich Mullins. There are also 12 other tracks made up of original music, hymns, and readings to guide the listener on a journey. You can buy Thunder today on clear vinyl and CD, or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, and almost every other music streaming service. Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James.

I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you are here with us again this week. For what's going to be a wonderful conversation. My guest this week is Dan Koch. Dan is the host of the popular podcast You Have Permission, which deals with theology, science, prayer, psychology, and related topics. His listeners range from moderate evangelicals to progressive liberal Christians, with few— with a few non-religious folks sprinkled in. Well, recently Dan conducted 20 interviews around the topic of end times theology and its relationship to mental health issues as part of his doctoral dissertation in psychology. He has turned those 20 conversations into a 4-part, highly produced series currently airing now on the You Have Permission podcast feed. The stories include self-proclaimed prophetesses, doomsday prepping, praying the rapture would keep a young man from having to live out a gay lifestyle, and more. Dan also deals with topics on his show like universal salvation, Trump and evangelicals, his own story of anxiety and control versus awe and wonder, Old Testament violence, purity culture, and LGBT affirmation. Well, Dan is here today for a visit, and I've really been looking forward to our conversation. Dan Koch, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thank you so much. I am, uh, happy and a little bit wary of being yet another one of those voices in people's head.

No need to be wary whatsoever on this end. I have really been enjoying your podcast over the last few weeks and discovering many different guests that you've had that I haven't had a chance to hear before your show. So it's been fun to kind of be able to listen in on some of those conversations. But before we get too far into what you do on the podcast tonight, I know you're a new father and you have the unique perspective perspective of being a father, really starting right around the time of this pandemic that we find ourselves in. How is life as a new father in these times?

Yeah, I mean, I think he was 10 days old when we— when our family chose to go on lockdown, which was about a week before Washington State basically did that for us. Um, so he is very much a pandemic baby, if that's going to be a thing. Um, you know, honestly, it's, it's not been bad. I mean, thankfully he hasn't had any major health complications where we had to be at the hospital or anything like that. That would have been, I'm sure, very scary.

Yeah.

But since he's been pretty healthy, it has honestly been kind of the best possible time to go into lockdown. I mean, we've, we've basically gotten to spend just unlimited time with him and, you know, like you have kids yourself, right?

I— we have one. Yes.

Yes. And so you know that people who come visit you when you have a new baby, they really want to be helpful, but oftentimes they end up kind of draining you, uh, even more so with your lack of sleep and all that. So we've been able to sort of tactfully avoid all of that and just spend time with our little buddy. So it— honestly, I don't have anything to complain about. There are definitely loved ones that we wish he had been able to spend more time with thus far. And that looks like it's finally going to be opening up a bit where we live. So, but it's— I really have no complaints. It's been incredible.

Well, and I'm sure that it must be difficult, but in some ways, in the times that we live in, uh, things like using our phones to be able to, you know, be able to video each other kind of live, I'm sure that helps a little bit. But still, I'm sure that's hard on grandparents and other family members and things like that.

I think the grandparents are having it the worst. You know, both my wife and I's parents are all still with us. And, you know, they basically barely get to see him. Mine are in California, and neither of them have even met him yet. So that's, that's a bummer. And her parents get to mostly see him from a distance. But I think we're going to be incorporating them into the circle here in the next couple weeks as things open up a bit in Washington.

Well, good. And hopefully you'll be able to have a little bit of a break too. I remember those days back as a new parent, and it's, it's just a whole new, a whole new way of life. And in a sense, you guys are learning two kind of new ways of life all at the same time. So that's true. It's just really— yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the coming days are like. But, but congratulations above all. And I know that you've had a— just from listening to some of your past shows, I was just listening to the Carry the Fire podcast that you were a guest on, and you were saying that you had— you and your wife had been through 4 miscarriages. And I— my wife and I also had been through 4, and I know how difficult that is. But we're rejoicing with you at the birth of your new baby. It's, it's always a wonderful thing when we can celebrate life like that.

Yeah, it's— I don't know if you guys feel the same way about this, but in one sense you're tempted to let the, you know, the healthy born baby erase the miscarriages and all of that pain and suffering. But I try not to do that because I know that, you know, that not everybody gets one like you and I have. And also, it doesn't really negate the previous story. I think that that's a— there's a triumphalist tendency, especially in American culture and American Christianity, but I think just as a subset of American culture, we tend to be very triumphalist. And, and I try not to be that way, although in the moment, I mean, I gotta admit, I'm thrilled. I'm just it, you know, most of my Instagram posts are just him being adorable.

Yeah.

But, you know, interpersonally, I hope to not— I hope to retain that story of, of, you know, the, the most real suffering I've probably ever experienced.

Yeah. And it's important to, to kind of maintain that because we, we do, we grieve them. Just, you know, a lot of people don't want to talk about things like miscarriages because I don't know if they don't know how to talk about it, or maybe it's because they aren't as visible of a hurt, but I think that we suffer just as much with that as any other loss that we go through. And I don't know exactly— you know what, I'll be honest, I don't know at all what the afterlife looks like, but I hope that one day it means that I'll get to hold them, and, you know, in some sort of reunion, and whatever that means. I'm thankful they're in the everlasting arms until then, and, and we leave it at that and, and, and trust in that for sure. But anyway, well, let's, let's move on to some other things too. And thank you for sharing.

You don't want to do an hour on miscarriages?

We could for sure.

We could pull back through my old notes.

Well, let's go on to a happier topic than that for sure. Although I'm sure that would be a great help to many people if we did do that. We might have to think about that in the future. But, you know, as we get started today, give us the elevator pitch for your podcast. You have permission, because I know that you did another podcast before that that was also very popular, and it kind of, I think, led into this one. But it's, it's intriguing, the whole premise of this show, and I really love it. I wonder if you could just give us your elevator pitch for it, for those listening that might not have heard.

Yeah, so it's basically a show for people for whom they in some sense have felt like they have had these really good questions, questions about God, you know, faith in, faith in science, prayer, you know, whatever, all the kind of really the big questions that people tend to ask, um, or, you know, issues with the particular version of Christianity that they've been presented with. And if those good answers, good questions have been met with bad answers, or worse, uh, with something like, "Actually, we don't ask those questions here," then this is a show for you, basically. And so, I have my own kind of angle, but everything's on the table. It's, you know, I myself am what people would call a theologically progressive or liberal Christian, but very much an active person of faith. And I am pursuing a psychology doctorate, as you mentioned in the intro. So there's a good bit of psychology. Psychology is, I guess, more represented than other lenses, you know, that you might imagine. So for instance, you know, I talk about the Bible sometimes, but talk a lot more about psychology, just because that's my interest.

Well, and I love the— I love the welcome that you give to your guests as well, to knowing that they don't all have to be from the same perspective. Right. And, and that's, that's something I think is hard to find. If we're not careful, we create these these bubbles or just echo chambers of people that sound just like us. And the way that you, I think, fearlessly have these conversations is so wonderful because you know you're not going to have, for instance, a cable news type pundit that's going to yell at you, you know, with terrible things if you disagree. But you're actually giving a sounding board for people with different ideas to be able to come on and in a safe place have conversations that maybe they're not able to have anywhere else. And that's what I really appreciated about your show So I'm a huge fan of Fred Rogers and the work that he did with the neighborhood.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you have a show, right?

Yeah, definitely. And, and, and I feel like the kind of welcome that he gave, you know, in his life on that show, I feel a very similar vibe to the welcome that you give to people when they come on your show. There's a very neighborly feel about it. And I so appreciate that. I think it's hard to find that.

These days.

So I want to—

about the nicest thing anyone said to me in a long time. I appreciate that.

Well, it's, it's true.

I think I can draw a line there, I think, between the previous podcast that I did right before this, which was called Depolarize. And that one dealt with more politics, but also psychology, like the psychology of tribalism and, and really increased polarization in, you know, in America, and probably in the West more broadly. I don't, I don't really know for sure. But that work really turned me into a sort of socio-political moderate. Not in the sense of like, well, I'd like to avoid conflict, so let's just compromise. More in the sense of like, oh, actually, the world is very complicated. It is very difficult to know something for sure on a complicated issue. So most of the time, all things being equal, better to just get multiple voices in here and find what they're each seeing that the other person is not seeing and go from there, as opposed to, I know what's right, this is the ideology that I have committed myself to. And because I think that sometimes progressive and conservative religious spaces both can end up doing kind of the same thing where they just stick to their ideology, it becomes its own kind of fundamentalism. And then yeah, it becomes an echo chamber. Once you've made that step, well, then nobody is going to listen that isn't already in agreement with you. So it's just preaching to the choir. And as we've seen with social media, and so many other features of our modern life, once I'm in an echo chamber, all these algorithms of these companies, their incentive is to keep me there. And I actually just get more and more entrenched into my own tribe, my own sort of echo chamber. To where I can't even understand the other person. And I just think that's a bad recipe for learning true things in general. So that has influenced the way that I structure and frame this show about faith, where I pretty clearly do have a perspective and it comes out. It's, it's pretty obvious to listeners that I'm a liberal Christian, but if I let that be the only thing that's welcome at the table, then I have basically violated my own rule number one, which is because then it's no longer helpful. It's not helping liberals, because fellow liberals, because we're just getting entrenched further together. And it's not helping people who disagree with me, because they're not ever going to hear it and hear the other side. So that's the connection between the two shows.

Well, that's great. Well, I think, you know, to put a little religious language to it as well, you know, and I think about so many times I've had conversations with people about You know, thank God that God did not wait until we knew all the answers and we had everything right before there was any revelation whatsoever given to us. And I think sometimes we miss that because we're so concerned on being right that we're missing out on relationships that could be there, or we're so concerned that another person is not right that we refuse to have those relationships with them in some ways. And I feel like you're doing a good work in trying at least to have relationship with people, and, and as you are seeking the answers together, and whether or not we have it all figured out yet or not. So I really applaud that for sure. I, I wonder if you could just help our listeners a little bit by telling us some of your own faith story, because I know that part of your story is going through a deconstruction of faith and sort of a new reconstruction of faith as well. But I wonder if you could just kind of share your background and some of that journey and what it was like for you.

Yeah, there's, there's a few, um, there's a few lenses I could tell this story through. I'll choose the, uh, the end times lens because that also relates to that recent, uh, spate of episodes.

Sure.

Um, but there are the other lenses that if we have time we could talk about would be sort of like Old Testament violence lens and the hell and universal salvation lens. But setting those aside for now, Basically, I, I have panic disorder. That's the official DSM diagnosis for it. I've had it off and on since I was a kid, at least since third grade. That's my earliest, you know, concrete memory of panic attacks. And it's currently in remission, you know, don't, don't worry, I'm doing quite well with it right now. And in fact, surprisingly well, given that there's a pandemic going on. But in sixth grade, I was basically given this literature about Christ's imminent return. This was April of, uh, 1996, and I was given a little short book that had 96 arguments that Christ would be returning that September. So September of my 7th grade year, and I went into a tailspin. I had to study this again in 8th grade at my evangelical junior high and high school, uh, and into my 20s even. Um, I, I had kind of deconstructed some of that theology in college, but still did not know that I had panic disorder and was still drinking caffeine, which made it worse. And all these things I didn't understand at the time. And around age 23, I had like this massive meltdown. I was in Los Angeles, uh, co-producing a friend's album, and I had to leave in the middle of the album and fly to my parents' home and like take 2 weeks off, uh, and decompress and start therapy and, uh, start cognitive behavioral training, you know. I just, I had a massive kind of thing. And that's when I got diagnosed with panic disorder and, and things began to slowly improve. That was 13 years ago.

Hmm.

So that is, that is one angle of it. And what you could say I had to deconstruct there was this particular view of the end times, which was basically the zeitgeist, it was completely in the water. In the type of sort of moderate evangelicalism that I was raised in. I was not raised a fundamentalist. You know, a lot of people were and have had very different sort of stories since then. I wasn't. I was very— just a mainstream moderate evangelical home. My dad is a therapist. You know, we had— so we were kind of science adjacent and all that. But I had this underlying condition already. And The end times stuff was just perfect, you know, read worst possible, uh, thing for that panic disorder. And so, uh, I've had to recon— you know, that was one of the many things that, that made me sort of rethink what kind of a theology I have. What do I think the Bible is? Do I think that the books of Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation, and little parts of Isaiah and Ezekiel, whatever are actually pointing toward a map of the end times that one can decode sort of mathematically and linguistically? Do I think that's what's going on? If I don't think that's what's going on, then what does that say about the rest of the Bible? You know, it— and, uh, one of the things that, uh, an interesting— if I'll say one last thing, one interesting angle of this recent research I've been doing on all that stuff is that a certain view of the Bible is assumed in these prophecy circles. If you think about it, if anything in the Bible with prophecy related is mathematical— 7 years, however many weeks, whatever— if any of that's math, then it has to be inerrant and, and perfect. It has to basically be dictated. It's a dictation model of inspiration. I don't know how deep into these, uh, terms you go on your show, but the idea that like the Holy Spirit basically gives the writer exactly the words, because math doesn't work on a— on probab— you know, prophecy wouldn't work on probabilistic math. It's, it's math, right? It's right, it's 7 years exactly, right? And so, right, uh, only recently have I sort of put those together that, oh, there was this view of the Bible that was innately connected to that view of prophecy Of course, nobody had spelled that out for me when I was 13, right?

Yeah.

But it was, it was assumed, it was part of the deal. So anyway, that's, that's one angle of that story.

Sure.

All right.

And, and, you know, I'm fascinated by that, because I'm, I've always been in, in an evangelical church too, although I don't know that it's quite the same as a lot of the other ones out there. I'm in the Church of the Nazarene, which is is very conservative on some things, a little more progressive on some others, right? But I, I'm thankful that my father, who was my pastor growing up, um, he always taught that that particular view of end times eschatology was a distortion of scripture, and that there was no— there was not a rapture like that, that that's totally things that are taken out of context. So it's interesting to me, um, just from my perspective, I remember from being pretty young on Dad telling me if I went to camp or something and somebody showed a movie, or because I'm pretty sure A Thief in the Night came up at some point, you know, something like that. And I just, it just made no sense to me. And I had, thankfully, a pastor father who said, don't listen to any of that, it's nonsense, you know.

But, um, what a blessing, man.

Yeah, it really, it really has been, because what I'm discovering is it really scarred a lot of people, um, including yourself, is what I'm hearing. And so I've, as I've been listening through some of your episodes, then when you've been studying this and the good work you've done, I'm saddened at how deeply it really has hurt people in so many ways and scarred them to the point that they want to leave faith altogether. Because maybe when they do find out this is not what they had thought it was, no, now I can't believe anything, you know. Yeah, right.

Well, and a lot of that depends on in what ways people have been hurt by who, you know, and all that stuff. So A lot of that ends up being anecdotal and autobiographical.

True.

And so you got— we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush. But there are also like much worse versions of this than the story I just told, right? I mean, I happen to be susceptible to it with my own anxiety disorder. But there are, you know, there's, there's legitimate kinds of abuse and fraud and, you know, all kinds of stories, some, some of which made their way into those episodes. But of course, countless others that didn't.

Yeah, well, tell us, if you don't mind, a little bit about your story of deconstruction, of kind of where you had to go through all this and, and kind of make a new path for yourself in, in your faith.

Yeah, so I think for me, um, it mostly ended up being a question of inerrancy of scripture. So while all of that stuff was going on Uh, so let's say I, I had kind of deconstructed some of the end times views around 18, freshman in college, and then 23, 5 years later, is when I had the big sort of meltdown and, uh, stopped drinking caffeine and recognized I was a person who had anxiety. So in those 5 years though, in that period, I was also thinking about other things, um, and I've always been sort of theologically engaged. I was a philosophy major in college, so You know, you get that— what kind of person self-selects into philosophy? I'm that kind of a person. I mean, it was an easy way to get into the school that I went to. You know, it was a hard school to get into for other things, and philosophy was easy. But I also didn't change my major after considering it, so I did end up, you know, choosing it. And, um, so the big one for me, I think, uh, starting around 19, 20, was the portrayals of God in the Old Testament. Specifically around sort of the big one, which is the Canaanite conquest. Some people call it genocide. Yeah, it depends on, you know, whether or not it's a conquest or genocide kind of depends on if you think it hap— happened or not. And there are both textual and extratextual reasons for thinking it might not have happened, um, you know, that actually they didn't kill everybody, uh, the way that they were commanded to. But for me, the the problematic thing is, is that they were commanded to, right? So the implication is that God would ever want God's people to do something like that, that there would ever be any reason to basically ethnically cleanse a geographical area.

Yeah.

And I struggled with that one for a long time, and eventually, uh, I had to land on sort of, you know, like, like consider one of those four views type books. So I read one of those. And then the basically the far left view, which is God, uh, did not ever want this. This— if there's something human in scripture that is non-divine, uh, this is— we're looking at it. This is the kind of thing that would be human. Uh, this is the kind of thing that people thought back then. We have evidence of other nations, you know, talking like this about their war, uh, and conquest and all that stuff with the gods on their side and stuff. And this reads a lot like that stuff, and it— and that is really nothing like Jesus. So we should conclude that this is human, that this is— that, uh, the text is not inerrant. The text may still be infallible in the sense of it has everything we need for salvation, which I would hold today, but it's not inerrant because this is presenting a God that is just cannot be the same God as the God of Jesus Christ. And so that's— that was the big— the first big one for me on my deconstruction journey. Then that opened me up to, okay, so then what else changes if that's the case?

Hmm. All right. It's interesting when you talk about that too, because I've developed a friendship with, with our local rabbi, literally almost around the corner from my house here in Ohio where I live. And it's been fascinating to talk with him about some things too. I think a lot of this that we read from Old Testament passages, like you said, we could be spared a lot of pain if we would consult some Jewish sources too on some matters. Because it's been very interesting to talk to him about things like— well, here's another big issue, not just like end-time stuff or the things that you just mentioned about genocide, but even from the standpoint of like creationism. And a Jewish person, and he told me, he's like, you guys don't really believe that happened like literally in the way it happened, right? It's like my local Jewish rabbi's telling me, like, well, you know, a lot of churches, they, they do teach that. And he's like, oh no, no, no Jewish person would tell you that. We, you have to understand why it was written. It's a story to, you know, it's poetry. It's there to teach us about, uh, you know, who God is in our world. But none of us take it literally, you know, things like that. And it's, it's interesting because we also talked about before, the ways that Scripture was written in such a way that you have different authors who are kind of in an argument with each other about different things that they're talking about, and you kind of see them wrestling with what other parts of Scripture say. And it's very hard to reconcile that if you've not been taught that in the church, that Scripture— again, getting back to if this is what it might mean by calling it the living word— and something that is active, then there's this wrestling that's going on with different places in Scripture within itself, even. And it's really hard to reconcile that with, well, everything's there is exactly the way it needs to be. And I think we have a hard time kind of breaking out of that sometimes, for sure.

But 100%. One little note on the Jewish thing. An old— the Old Testament scholar who had the most effect on me over the last 10 years or so is Pete Enns. Long before he started his Bible for Normal People podcast, I was reading his books, and he was basically trained under Jon Levenson and other Jewish Old Testament scholars at Harvard. And Jewish sources and Jewish ways of understanding their own text figure really strongly in the way that he reads it as a Christian. And, uh, that just— that clicked so many things in place for me when I was able to approach it that way. Of course, imperfectly. Um, but, uh, to your— to your second point there about, um, the Bible disagreeing with itself, or whatever, authors of the Bible sort of having an internal conversation, uh, the most compelling argument, and what sort of clinched it for me, was Christian Smith, who's actually a sociologist. He's not a biblical scholar. But he, he studies— he's a sociologist of religion. And he resurrected an argument one of his advisors had made back in the '70s and said, to my knowledge, nobody has answered this argument. So I'm going to reframe it here in my own book. Book was called The Bible Made Impossible. And yeah, and it basically said this, look, he said, here's a view of the Bible that many Christians are raised with. And I would say I was raised with this view. Implicitly taught to me, the Bible is a puzzle. And if we arrange the pieces correctly, we will see the whole picture. That's, that's the view that everything does actually fit. It is that we are incapable of seeing whether or not it fits. But it does fit. And, and Smith basically said, that seems wrong, because you have All these Christians, people of goodwill, people who genuinely and obviously love the Lord, and they can never agree on where the pieces go. So maybe the much simpler explanation is that the Bible is not a puzzle where the pieces all fit. And that lines up much better with a Jewish understanding of the text, that no, there are, there are internal disagreements. So the The technical term for this is univocality or multivocality. Does the Bible speak with one voice? Or does— or do different authors of the Bible, sometimes within their own books, speak with differing voices? And the truth is found in the conversation between the voices. And I, once I read that, I was like, oh, that explains the data so much better. The Bible, I believe, is multivocal, not univocal. And that is both scary because it undermines a lot of what many of us have been taught and the kind of certain, sure foundation we have, but it's also really exciting because it opens up all kinds of opportunities for different Christian experience to speak to us and to give us a much wider and expansive view of God and God's love for everyone.

Hmm. So I wonder that— and this may be something you, you would have to think about a little bit longer before you answer, and that's okay. We can move on if it is. But I'm wondering what you would think if, if we dropped somebody like the Apostle Paul into our modern context right now and he's still alive, and some of the, the passages that he's written, um, what do you think the Apostle Paul would say? And this is this is an example that comes up a lot because I live near a big Baptist university. So, and they specifically say, you know, women can't teach men in the theology department, things like that. Do you ever sometimes wonder, like, what if we dropped Paul into a modern context, and then had to think through, like, okay, so what would Paul say to us in this situation? Like, you know, you guys are way off base, or, you know, would he take a different perspective than what we thought? I just wonder, have you ever done any sort of mental exercises like that? Because I feel like there are many things that the Bible doesn't even address. You know, I often will say things like, like, you know, I affirm everything Jesus said about homosexuality, because he doesn't say anything about it. You know, things like that. But it's true, you know, we're oftentimes left to wonder, like, okay, well, if everything's in the Bible, what do they speak to us on this issue? And that's kind of a long and rambling question. I just— it's more of, I wonder if you've ever kind of done any thought exercises like that?

I have. Yeah, I have thought about this. I mean, before answering Paul, let's, let's answer something that's a little bit easier to get our minds around. Take someone's great-grandparents and drop them in a city today where they see black and white couples walking around.

Hmm.

Almost everybody, if we trust The survey data from 80 years ago or whatever would have been very uncomfortable with that. They would have thought that we were doing something wrong, sinful, basically. They still had an image that races should not mix. Now, of course, you could go somewhere else 100 years ago and not find that view. The point just being that, uh, our moral views are contextual, at least in, in large part. So if I am a progressive today, that is only really possible to define that in relation to what the norms are today for me. So a progress— like Abraham Lincoln was a progressive and wanted the slaves to be freed, but did not think that black and white people were equal. But he was a progressive for his day. Like, he was still a few clicks over from the average person. So when it comes to Paul, I think that if Paul— I mean, now we're talking a 2,000-year gap. I think that Paul would think— I, I think that Paul would say it would be very— it'd be fascinating to find this out. I mean, after it took him, I don't know, 6 months to get his head around where he lived now, and he could sort of get his sea legs, I think in some senses he would say we have completely missed the mark. And I think the number one thing he would point to is money. He would be like, wait, you guys went from everyone sharing everything in common in our day to massive multi-million dollar ministries with, with shiny buildings? I think he would think that was very weird. But also, I think we would consider him to be insanely sexist and homophobic by our standards. Um, but but I don't think by his standards, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, I think that Paul was a progressive for his time, some of which today to us would seem incredibly regressive. But that's just how time works, uh, or context. So in— so politically, so economically, he would be more progressive than all of us. But maybe sexually, or in terms of gender— now there is an interesting asterisk there with the gender stuff, because a lot of New Testament scholars don't believe that he actually wrote the books that contain the most inflammatory stuff about gender. That is not an issue I know a ton about, but enough people I trust have said that, that I, I trust that to be somewhat of a consensus in New Testament studies.

Hmm, fascinating. Yeah, that's very interesting. I love— thank you for kind of bringing it up a little bit closer within that 100-year range too. That really—

thought experiments are my love language, man.

Yeah, well, I figured if anybody had done that, it's you for sure. Well, and it is, it is fascinating even to think about, you know, just the world that like our grandparents were born into is not the same world that they die in, you know. Like, there's been more technological change just in the last 100 years or maybe 120 years than there was in the last 1,000 years. I mean, it's just amazing to think. It's no wonder that that so often we find ourselves so unsteady in the world, you know, with things just constantly changing. And now with, with news cycles and the way that we pay attention to the news, and so many people are, you know, addicted to their favorite cable news channel of choice, whatever that might be, I think our, our memories are almost shrinking because, you know, if we stopped and thought about it, I think it's what was it, 3 months ago when we had impeachment hearings? Um, and it seems like it was 25 years ago.

Everything's moving so fast.

Yeah, yeah, we— and it's just so hard to take a breath. I think even in, in quarantine times, in this time of pandemic, um, even now when things are, are in some ways moving so slow, it still feels like it's just speeding by in so many ways. So it's, it's fascinating to think of another person's perspective. And I think it's, it's important to think in another person's perspective in those ways. It's so hard when the only answer we have is just, well, the Bible says, or, you know, to kind of have that conversation, because that, that doesn't even begin to dive deep at all into what the Bible may actually be saying.

Well, and it's also, if you, if you say that to dismiss context, then you're actually— you shouldn't do that. Because even conservative theologians, when they talk about, you know, uh, things like homosexuality, gender, slavery in the Bible, they are constantly putting it in its context. That, that's the whole argument, for instance, with, uh, the— well, the Bible doesn't really promote slavery because in this context, here's what kind of slavery there was, and it wasn't like this kind of slavery. And, you know, like, everybody does that. Like, so you can't just say, well, I don't need context, I'm just going to go to the text. It's impossible to understand language from 2,000 years ago without cultural context. Furthermore, the people who are, uh, who are translating your Bible for you into English can only do so given the context of the time, which they are up on in all the academic literature, right? So there, there is just no way around it. And unfortunately, uh, American evangelicalism, and, and really just American dominant cultural in general, we tend to be pretty anti-historical, pretty ahistorical. We don't think we have a context. Uh, the way I like to say it is it's the early church, pop forward 2,000 years, and boom, here we are with our Bibles. Nothing in between. None of that matters. And I think that that's false. It does matter. And we do have a context. And if we, if we ignore it, we ignore it to our own peril, or perhaps the peril of people with less cultural power than we have.

Yeah, you know, one of my favorite examples of that is, uh, is that very famous passage from Jeremiah that is, you know, every— we're almost into graduation time. You know, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, give you a future. But if you read the whole, even just read the whole chapter, you see I have these plans for you, but it's not going to happen for you because you're not going to live long enough to be in the land. You know, it's for future generations and people. And it's a really interesting thing. You know, next time you give that graduate that scripture passage, you can just leave a little footnote. But also, even though this plan is for you, it's not going to happen.

You know, this plan should be— read this one to your children because that's who it's really for.

Right, exactly.

So it's going to make it—

yeah, even things like that are so hard for us sometimes than if we even would just study the one chapter, you know, try to put it in context.

That's a good example of why I find the psychological lens so interesting. So for me, in that question, I spent my whole, you know, adult life up until the last few years, um, looking at an issue like that— the Jeremiah, you know, out of context quote— in the context of biblical studies or theology. So the question would be 'Why don't we just read the text?' or whatever. And now I'm at a point where I'm like, ah, I think maybe the better question is, why do people find this out-of-context Jeremiah quote— why is it so sticky to us? What is it accomplishing that we are, we are uninterested in the larger context? Like, what are we getting out of this that is blinding us to the context of that passage? Message? That's the question I'm more interested in asking now. And, you know, I don't know how to answer that, but in, in a situation like that, something like— it's, it's similar to the same— whatever the answer is to that is probably the same answer to the reason that people will say God needed another angel when someone dies. Like, like, there are these platitudes that we have that basically distract us from having to think about the precariousness of our own living situation, our own life as people who will die. Um, and, you know, maybe the 'has plans for me to prosper me,' whatever, that's maybe less about death, but it's, but it's still about, um, comfort and security, right? So, and faith should be that in a sense. Like, faith is, is hope. It is, it's hope in light of bad circumstances, right? In spite of bad circumstances. Uh, but there's a time when that can go too far, where we're actually just— we're just using scripture to put big blinders over ourselves to actually avoid the world as we find it. So anyway, that's a bit of a tangent.

It's fascinating. No, it's very good. And, and since we're talking about the psychology of it, I, I wanted to, to talk to you about something before we do run out of time here tonight. I understand your wife does have the baby, and we can't keep you all night, so— yeah. And, and thank you so much to her for, for enabling you to do this.

She's the real tell you today.

Definitely, definitely. Oh, the mothers are incredible for sure. My wife is amazing. We would be lost without her for sure.

Yeah.

Um, but you know, I wanted to ask you about—

talk about things I don't want to consider because it would throw me into a full-blown panic. What would my life be without my wife?

Right?

Geez, that's about as bad as thinking about not existing.

Okay, I know. Yeah, that's about the worst I could imagine for sure. Anyway, well, I would love to just kind of pick your brain, maybe from the psychology aspect of it, or maybe just as a person. I don't know, you tell me kind of where it goes. But I'm, I'm, I'm every day more baffled and fascinated by white evangelicalism's love for Donald Trump. And not to say every single person, but it's there, you know, and they're strong supporters in many ways. And I think of that, and I think, like, I can remember growing up and the church was so incredibly scandalized by Bill Clinton, you know, because he had had an affair, you know, with Monica Lewinsky. And I remember being— going to school and just really that being the conversation that kids were having. And I was in the South, so I was in Tennessee, so that was especially, you know, oh, just his immorality was— that's just a bridge too far. No matter what we think of him, we can't abide, you know. And, and so here we are years later, and the same people, you know, who were so scandalized by that, we have a person who, you know, we know for a fact he used campaign funds to silence multiple affairs, not just one. He's stolen from charities that were supposed to help children with cancer. He ran this sham university and robbed so many people. Um, you know, he used extortion for his own gain while being president. Um, you know, he insults the military, which also used to be, you know, if you ever insulted a POW, that would be the last straw. Um, you know, the misogynistic remarks used to be, uh, the kids in cages alone at one time would have been enough. Or him, you know, bragging about sexual assault. I could go on and on because every day it's a new thing. And I know I don't have to, but I'm wondering, like, what is it psychologically that's there that says, oh, okay, I can completely disconnect this from where I was, uh, years ago? You know, I forget how many presidents it was now, 4 presidents ago with Bill Clinton, all because this time, 3, my guys, 3, 3 ago. I'm just, I'm just curious about what, what is the psychology there that says, well, I can excuse this, but I can't excuse that, I guess. What's your take on that?

Well, the psychological term is motivated reasoning. Under, under that heading, you have things like confirmation bias, which most of us have heard by this point if we've been paying attention. Another way to talk about it is tribalism. So, one very simple way to think about it is, what comes first for most people? Is it their— like, for most of these evangelicals, these white evangelicals, what comes first for them? What is more fundamental to them? Is it their sociopolitical conservatism? Or is it their evangelical theological commitments? And I would say the evidence here points to the claim that the sociopolitical conservatism is actually more important. It's more central to how they see themselves and the world. Now, to be sure, a lot of that conservatism has been given biblical language, religious language around it, right? So that muddies the waters. So for instance, you might think, well, hey, isn't being pro-life very clearly a religious issue and not a political issue? Well, it is in a sense, but the pro-life— but the pro-life platform completely disregards, for instance, factors that reduce abortions. It ignores poverty. It ignores— you know, I would argue that refugee admittance is a, is a life issue. War is a life issue. The death penalty, though it doesn't affect all that many people per year, is a life issue, often around the exact same principles as abortion, and the same sort of ethical principles, right? Like, we don't have the right to take a life, etc. So, and yet, death penalty is a good example. Conservative people like the death penalty. That's been shown time and time again. So what comes first? Is it the conservatism? Or is it the faith principles? And you could apply the same thing to people on the left. Whatever is true about evangelicals is probably true about me as well, that in some sense my political, um, and my sociopolitical identity comes first before my faith claims. My— the challenge to myself as a Christian is to allow Jesus to critique my sociopolitical assumptions and, and tribalism, right? That would be the best case scenario as a Christian. So I think that's, that's kind of the most succinct way of looking at it. It's actually not a very fun answer. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't feel great that that's what it is, but I actually think that we should lower our expectations a little bit and just acknowledge that that's what it is, and then we won't be so surprised. Now, that does have certain consequences for that flavor of Christianity if you were raised in it, that actually it's not as powerful as, as we were taught to believe. Maybe a lot of what was going on was not the power of God through our church, but was actually the power of, uh, smart people to cloak other things in religious language and activate people's loyalty, you know, or whatever. Of course, that doesn't mean that Christ is not there in any of it, but perhaps the road is more narrow than, than we thought. Maybe when Jesus said the road's narrow, he was right, uh, and in, in this is an instance in which it's right in our time and in place.

Hmm.

Well, thank you.

You did that so concisely and so wonderfully.

And that's what I'm spending a few years on, trying to understand. So that's what basically Depolarize was started to answer that question. So I did 75 episodes of that show, trying to answer that question.

Wow. Wow, that's great. So you've done a lot of thought for sure.

I would recommend if people want to read about this, the far and away the best thing to read is Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind. He gets into fantastic but very readable psychological detail about this stuff. And it's the single most impactful book I think I've read as an adult, personally.

All right. Well, that's a great recommendation for sure. Now, now what about you? You have any, any books on the horizon that you're planning on releasing?

Nothing currently. For now, the podcast is just the only sort of source of public work. What I, what I'm doing these days, if I have something that's kind of like a book idea, is I'm just doing a podcast series around it. Maybe one of those will end up as a book. But it's the way I am. I'm currently better at organizing my thoughts and it's quicker.

Yeah.

And I can kind of test it out and see what is people responding to. I mean, just this week I'm working on a kind of resource for people who are just beginning deconstruction of their faith and don't really know what to expect. And I purchased the domain soyourdeconstructing.com. So maybe that'll be a book someday, and maybe it'll be a podcast series. Uh, right now I'm just kind of at the very beginning, just, um, reaching out to people to help me organize it and see what should be in it. It's the kind of thing I think I wish I had had, and a lot of people wish that they had had when they started this kind of journey. So, wow, yeah, there's projects, but none of them are books currently.

Well, that's still incredibly helpful though, and I know a lot of people who are going through deconstructing right now, um, are— I'm sure that they will find that to be a great resource because you do kind of feel like you're in the middle of the ocean with, with not just without a rudder, without a boat sometimes when you're going through that, for sure. And I can remember a place in my own life feeling very lost when I was going through a lot of this, and I'm grateful for people like you along the journey that cared enough to be able to share your story. And I thank you for the good work that you are doing with your show right now and with your life. It's great to get to hear these good conversations that you're having on your podcast. But before we end our time together tonight, listeners might not know this, and it's fairly new information to me because I knew you from your podcast, but I'm discovering what an incredible musician you are as well. You're a great guitarist, and you even have your own Wikipedia page, which I don't know too many people, you know, that can say that. That's a— I mean, a lot of people do, but not, not people that you get to talk to that actually have them. And you were on MySpace Records back in the day, which I assume MySpace Records is not probably as thriving as it was, but still, that's right. Yes, impressive. But you've also— if you go to dancoke.net— and by the way, it's spelled K-O-C-H in case people are wondering— dancoke.net, you'll be able to find some of the amazing tracks and the success you've had. You've had music on Capital One ads, some McDonald's spots, some Walmart, Disney World, DoorDash, you know. Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing just the way that people have used your, your music So I just wanted to congratulate you on that because as a musician myself, I know that's a, that in itself is a huge accomplishment.

So a lot of luck, you know, the right combination of skillset and then really good timing with a friend that I happened to run into from Portland who had started a company. And so I was able to kind of hitch my wagon to them when they were 4 employees and now they're 55 employees.

And wow.

So it's been my full-time gig for 8 and a half years now. And yeah, very, very fortunate. And it's paying my way through grad school to become a psychologist. So it's, it's going to hopefully transition us financially to this next phase of life. I feel very lucky. Some of these ads are very silly. Others are other— others are quite cool, and were very cool to be a part of and very rewarding. And I I mostly just write with my friends now, and so I very much enjoy that. We work for a while, we get lunch, we come back and work for a while, and we just hang out. Although not during the pandemic. Now I'm having to figure out ways to do it over Zoom, which has also actually been kind of fun. But yeah, that's my other— that's my other life. I don't know who created the Wikipedia page. I will say this: one year I did— I had friends do stand-up comedy for my birthday.. And, uh, one of my friends, half of his standup set was just reading off of my Wikipedia page to laughter from my friends. That was so that at least it served one purpose. Uh, I don't think there's anything about the podcast or anything. It's just all the, as far as I remember, it's just all the Sherwood stuff. My old band.

Yeah. There might just have been a brief blurb about it, but yeah, there was stuff on, on there, uh, a lot about your band. So fascinating. You're just a, you're kind of a Renaissance person. So many different things that you do, and that's wonderful.

I'm easily bored.

Yeah. Well, Dan, I want to thank you again for the good work that you are doing, and I hope that you'll continue to do it for many years to come. And, and I just love the podcast, and I love the heart that you have behind it. I really do feel like you are creating a place of welcome for people that often may not have a place of welcome to talk about some very difficult things at times. I want to applaud you for that. And I also want to say thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thanks, Rick. I try to make it that kind of a place, so it means a lot to hear you say that for you at least it's, it's working.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me and Get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at RickLeeJames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.