Creating Traditions in Community, with Justin Jackson

[Music] hey and welcome to things worth learning i'm your host matt stauffer this is a show where a curious computer programmer that's me interviews fascinating people about their passions my guest today is justin jackson jackson co-founder of the podcast hosting service transistor and the creator of about a jillion products and podcasts targeting entrepreneurs and founders justin hey would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself and whether it's your personal or your professional life yeah i mean i i work at transistor full-time now i've been interested in entrepreneurship for a long time i'm a dad of four kids my wife and i just celebrated our 20th anniversary congratulations man that's huge yeah it's big it wasn't i i whenever i i talk about that part i'm like it wasn't easy right it's like not all those years but that's why it's huge because you made it and um something that a lot of people don't know about me is that i came into tech late in life um 28 years old the first kind of decade of my life i was uh evangelical youth minister and uh left that world behind in 2008 when i worked for software company and that's kind of defined me since then but i had this prior life that nobody knows about the one of the first what is it you get you get three decades i think it's yeah it's something like i wish i could remember how they split it up but yes that was your first chunk right that was my first chunk yeah uh which is funny because that's my first chunk too was i was an evangelical campus minister for the first chunk yeah went back to software i remember chatting with you about that at a conference like we were at a speaker's dinner and it's a part of my life i don't get to talk about very much and so when i sat down with you and you revealed that about yourself there was definitely this like um safety and also just yearning to be able to talk to somebody about those things um and maybe we can get into that a bit later i i don't even really exactly know where how how post evangelical you are so yeah then maybe i'll be revealing all this podcast we'll see yeah i mean it is it it is important to talk about because north america is uh has this strong uh christian evangelical catholic uh episcopal um background context for uh you know for decades and so it's it's it's built into the fabric of especially the united states yeah and so i think there's a lot of people who might have similar experiences or struggles or questions so yeah i think it might be interesting to chat take us somewhere and we we are both people who have been trying to talk publicly about public health our mental health and stuff like that so it turns out this is connected yeah and it might be helpful to talk about publicly too so totally yeah oh yeah just about half my time in therapy it's just uh exploring exploring uh stuff related to religion and uh yeah that whole experience yeah so well clearly we're gonna get there so thank you for that intro i'm gonna ask you one question and then we'll get right into it so the one question is do you have any sort of life mantra or phrase or idea you try to live your life by yeah so the the most poignant for me is this quote from james clear every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become no single instance will trans uh no single instance will transform your beliefs but as votes build up so does the evidence of your identity this is why habits are crucial they cast repeated votes for being a type of person and so yeah for me especially going through different seasons of life and that includes kind of spirituality and religion but also career also relationships also depression also you know whatever it is i i've found that quote to be incredibly helpful because in the moments where i when in the moments where i felt like i don't know a shitty dad yeah um i could look at that quote and go okay well what's just one vote i can take that will be evidence yeah that i can be a better dad and it's like okay well i can i'm tired but i can take the kids to the trampoline and jump on the trampoline with them and it was just a small thing but it became a vote for the kind of person i wanted to be that's so cool man so yeah i've i've referred back to that often i uh josh pigford has a uh a service that will print your tweets out on wood yeah and uh i've printed james clear's tweet engraved in wood and have it in our house because it's been so kind of uh central for me that is really cool um i love that idea about the vote for the person you want to be especially when you're doubting the person you think you are um i mean obviously you and i have a ongoing dialogue about you know depression and anxiety and handling them and stuff like that but i do think that like especially in the context of wrestling with our identity after being in a place that kind of provided us a lot of identity as we're about to talk about being in a place where you have to figure out your own identity again i don't want to go too deep in the actual topic yet but like i can really see the value in learning how to like determine your own identity i guess like have an agency over it yeah i think this is also why one of tech like the tech industry that i'm in now one of the problems is it's i mean even our pop culture is it's really focused on young people folks in their 20s you know startup founders you know the hot startup founders are in their 20s yeah a lot of the crypto community right now is in their 20s or teens yeah or teens and there's nothing wrong with being in your teens or 20s it's an awesome time for me uh you know life got difficult in my 30s and now 40s there's there's challenge there that you don't get or most a lot of people don't get when you're kind of in the again it's a great stage that idealistic uh stage of being in your 20s but having older people who can talk openly that life is not just uh idealistic clouds and rainbows is very important for the culture and i wish i knew more people older people who had revealed this to me who had been transparent about it because i i felt like i just kind of lived in this state of uh you know like public politeness where everybody just seems to have their together and everything's fine and and and to emphasize this even more like when when hard stuff started happening to happening to me again relationships family kids whatever it is it felt like it was so outside of what was quote unquote normal that i really thought i was a deviant i thought i i had deviated from what was normal and healthy yeah because it just seemed like everybody was walking around with this kind of public persona that's just that denies you know and and kind of um looks down on things like that uh i often go back to like the britney spears thing like when when when she she was going through some stuff and it was in the media i remember everybody kind of around me being like whoa like britney's crazy you know yeah and then in my 30s and 40s i've identified with that person that brittany a lot more going uh that's like people go through that yeah and it it it was odd for me to have people around me treat it as so deviant when it's like the disruption in my own life has almost matched that yeah and to not have that echoed or mirrored amongst anybody is just like ugh like why doesn't that exist yeah which is why and again then we'll go right into the topic it was one of the benefits of just being able to be open and honest about these things that seem to be taboo to talk about right because yeah you know like i know we have both benefited from other people who've been public about their stories and their histories and then allows us to be public about ours so yeah yes absolutely all right so let's let's get to the primary topic because obviously we're already on the verge of it from like six different angles already you know this topic is about our podcast was out one topic you're really passionate about can you tell me what are we going to talk about today i think post evangelicalism is the topic and what my my thoughts experiences lessons and thoughts about leaving the church leaving faith [Music] of taking something that was central to my identity for the first three decades of my life yeah and uh and actually central to my family's identity and then moving on how that happens and then what happens after is something that doesn't get talked a lot about and um that term post-evangelical can mean different things for different people for some people it means they've left faith entirely and that would be where i sit for some people it means uh they've left um evangelicalism in particular and maybe they've gone back to a a more traditional or liturgical uh uh church or something like that um and and for the purposes of this conversation evangelicalism uh i would define it as a brand of christianity fairly modern with the it has uh it it's it's like the it's in its extreme form it's the church you see on tv right it's the joel olsteen it's the mega churches it's uh political um lobby groups and organizations like focus on the family it's uh mission trips it's uh uh outreach you know christian outreach to teenagers and college students primarily it's that whole thing and uh would you would you define it any other way would you add or subtract from that you think yeah there's a tiny little bit of um like more theological space just in case anybody like has a theological event evangelicalism came out of um fundamentalism in the early like 20s and 30s and fundamentalism at that point didn't mean what it means now it just meant we want to go back to the fundamentals and evangelicalism kind of defined itself i think the way they talked about it was like billy graham and then john i don't think it was jon stop maybe john stott but a guy basically in the uk and billy graham were kind of like the two global spearheads and they defined it in a book called evangelical truth that was basically about evangelist evangelicalism you've got mainline protestantism and then you've got catholicism and that's kind of how they saw it obviously there's way more than that but in their mind the main line which is like the if you look at all like the presbyterians and methodists and all kind of stuff usually there's one one half of those denominations that are like you know lgbtq plus affirming and women priests and then there's usually one half of each of those that's like not so the ones that are not are the evangelicals the ones that are are the main line and then you've got catholic and of course there's a lot of other denominations in there but historically it's been the majority of like north american white christian religion that isn't either progressive or catholic or super fringe right so all the non-denominationals tend to be evangelical baptist evangelical you know all the big people you see so that's the only thing i would add to it so yes and and and maybe um not most importantly but but crucially for people like you and i and a lot of people listening is that it's the most um it was very strong it has a strong culture that intersected with capitalism yes and politics and media yeah and we grew up i was born in 1980 i grew up when this was happening so christian bookstores and music stores in every city in north america media properties like veggie tales and christian music and christian concerts christian movies so it was the the first time really where christians had their own culture and that meant their own media that meant their own magazines that meant you could grow up um and you had an alternative to whatever was yeah not christian and not church and uh it was a way of you know parents kind of protecting their kids you know um and i definitely grew up that way too of you know i wasn't allowed to my kids are my kids think this is hilarious but i was not allowed to watch the smurfs wasn't allowed to watch uh uh what was it ghostbusters we just watched ghostbusters the other day and but i was allowed to you know get anything i wanted from the christian bookstore and you know we would visit frequently you know maybe once or twice a month oh yeah and buy new cds uh you know i'm really into stand-up comedy the first stand-up comedy i heard was mike warnky like is that recently mike was like former satanist oh yeah okay uh and uh stole most of his jokes from like bill cosby and like it's it's but you know i remember the odd thing is is growing up in that there's a strange nostalgia that comes with all of that so the same way people feel about their favorite tv shows and their favorite music and their favorite events or whatever i still feel even though i've left the faith i still feel that tourist yeah like i have good memories of listening to mike warnke tapes on family trips and laughing i have good memories even though he's been proven to be a fraud and a huckster since then yeah um you know i have good memory i i uh my first real business hero was phil fisher the guy that created veggie tales he just seemed to be doing everything i wanted to do yeah he created this company he created he was making animation he was it was he was having this uh big impact on the culture um and so there's there's for me one thing i think about a lot is there's there's really not a lot of public discourse about growing up in that culture uh because it was at its strongest in the 80s and 90s and uh is now not as much of a thing partly because like uh i mean even streaming has i think affected the cultural like when you had the christian bookstore it was like the center yeah of the christian culture um and you had uh focus on the family had some magazines for teenagers uh breakaway for guys and brio for girls breakaway and you know that back then you could uh the internet was not very big and you could if you were going to get your kid a magazine subscription that kind kind of would dictate the kind of culture they would be exposed to yeah and so it was a lot easier back then to say well you know we're christian family we're just going to read these magazines yeah we're going to watch these movies we're going to buy this music yeah you want to go to a concert who's it with where are you going oh it's with the church youth group okay you can go yeah yeah it was like safe it was it was easy and um and and interesting on all sorts of all sorts of ways like the there's there's bands i've i've since i've become an adult i've become friendly with mike herrera who's the lead singer of mxpx really which is like yeah basically which is like this it was like kind of in the in the punk rock section of the christian bookstore they were like the big and they sell out huge venues and and um i've talked to him about this a few times he actually doesn't he's not a big fan of talking about this connection but the that distribution channel for them was massive like it's it's one of the only times in history where people have um where bands for example have had that kind of distribution and it allowed a lot of like artistic people to um and creative people to get you know some traction and get an audience and build up you know a following and uh again i think that's the only time in history that that's really happened as long as they behaved right as long as they behaved this could be an entirely separate podcast if we wanted but yeah so the the since i've left that culture so i was i i worked for a christian evangelical organization doing uh events for high school students camps for high school students and um i le you you uh for me i moved away from christianity slowly it was like nudge by nudge bit by bit until one day you wake up and you go man i just don't feel like going to church anymore and then um hanging out with different people so once i was no longer working with christians meeting with christian donors and christian leaders and christian small groups my new social group became like the people i was hanging out with in tech and one thing i've learned since then is that really we are just a reflection of the people we hang out with come on that's so much the truth that's so true and that was striking for me at first because previously i thought well no there's this there's this inspired truth in this book that was written thousands of years ago and that is what's creating this identity that's what's what's informing this belief but i mean i could be wrong about everything but my experience since then is that you just end up reflecting the people you hang out with and i've had this experience also even like moving to a new neighborhood or a new town you just i moved from alberta which is like the texas of canada to bc which is like the california yeah portland fish exactly yeah west coast seattle yep and just that move yeah nudges me over yeah and one of the things that's been a struggle that i i think i'd like to explore if we have time what time are we at we're good yeah in theory we got another at least 20 minutes so is when i left and i decided that i was done i ripped out all of this old stuff feeling like these were old useless parts that i no longer needed so uh prayer gone traditions gone uh small groups gone uh you know just take all these things out yeah and and let's say that transformation happened between the ages of 28 and 32 and from 32 to 40 as i've reflected yeah one thing i'm realizing is that some of those things were good things that maybe i shouldn't have thrown away so fast interesting yeah i'll give you an example um why pray before a meal if you don't believe in god well it turns out that that practice of like a family gathering together sitting down together and there being an official start to the meal where everyone gets grounded maybe you hold hands yeah you take a breath you close your eyes there's some silence that act that tradition that practice actually has tons of ancillary benefits yeah outside of maybe connecting with a deity that's there yeah and we just threw all that stuff out and in retrospect i think it it caused us to have be a little bit rudderless where the the benefit of religion is you have thousands of years of practice and some of it is not good maybe a lot of it is not good yeah but but there are things in it some of these practice practices some of these traditions are incredibly helpful for human beings for families for societies and by ejecting those um why did i say ejecting like that because you're canadian by ejecting i thought that's how canadians say it look an adult eject by by by is is it a skewing or a shoeing a shoeing i think i don't actually know i think it's a shooting that's how i always said it by removing those from our lives it was like taking these pillars that had always been there and just like nope don't need these and not thinking about whether they were load-bearing walls or not just we're we're taking everything out and it's been interesting for me to think about that that it it also leads to this profound problem that i've heard reflected from other people i was listening to noah kagan he's the founder of appsumo and he said one time he's like man i wish there was a church for atheists and he's like i'd like to go somewhere every sunday meet up with people i like have somebody communicate a message that you know is somewhat uh challenging for my life and then be able to talk about it afterwards with people over coffee and cookies yeah like that sounds kind of good and i again there's this like period of like when you leave a religion i'm sure this is true with any like you know uh amish people any anybody that's left this very this kind of embedded identity that was in religion yeah and then like at first i think it's common to say well that was all garbage and i'm never doing that again yeah and invariably it's like people come back and go man like i wish there was something for non-religious people or people that are not spiritual in that way where we could have some of these traditions that really human societies developed over thousands of thousands of years and maybe are just good good for us yeah yeah for us and then it seems like in the pendulum this is where people end up going back to like uh what you might call a main line like a church with liturgy yeah so in canada that might be like the anglican church like okay well i'm just gonna go back to church where at least i don't have to be invested spiritually they're not gonna they're not gonna ask me to come on stage and uh sing with a microphone and a smoke machine and uh you know but but i'm gonna be able to sing some hymns yeah i'm gonna be able to be thoughtful i'm gonna be able to have this practice that grounds me and yeah it's strange in my in my 40s to as someone who's been fairly like like even my brother who's this kind of tough biker dude we were talking about it some at some point i was the la i'm oldest of four kids last of the kids to kind of leave the faith okay and uh my brother goes so you're not spiritual at all i said no he said that's weird yeah he's like that's messed up and um but to reflect on it and be like wow like uh the i am missing something and it would be great to sit in a pew it would be great to sing those songs that's the other thing like if you talk to my wife i sing hymns all the time i sing old dc talk songs all the time i can't help i can't help myself yeah it's super cringy too like my kids well here what are you singing i don't want your sex for now now you're getting this to not until we take about some old school stuff right there i i i played a song for my 16 year old and it's like it's like toby mac is like yeah boy oh god and and my 16 year old was like dad this explains so much he's like this guy he's like this guy is you really he's like this guy is you it explains your personality so there's like some things that i would actually probably like to rid myself of but on the other hand maybe i don't like the the my wife asked me why i keep singing hymns there's like certain hymns that come back to me i i don't believe in the spiritual significance of them at all but i do but i'm coming around to the idea that they're good for my spirit that that and it takes me back to this idea that atheism as a thing is still it lacks a lot [Music] it lacks these practices these traditions these grounding forces that uh are really helpful for human beings and there's no real good atheist hymns actually that would be an interesting that would be if anyone's listening and they have some good atheist talents please send them to me because i actually heard have heard of somebody who did like a church service for atheists and i was choosing not to google it until we finished talking but now i'm i'm actually very curious to see what what else is out it is out there yeah like what are the practices of and it goes beyond music like of course there's there's uh incredibly moving uh secular music but the but what we're missing is this is the the uh participatory element yeah congregational right it's like everybody together congregational it's not just me it's not just me listening it's not just me listening and singing lyrics to a song because i like the tune or even i like the message it's this communal togetherness [Music] of of uh humans expressing things together yeah and there's so many dynamics of that that it's hard to explain if you've never experienced it of some of it i think is just theater that that yeah you know that people of faith put on but some of it is like you're singing a hymn and the guy behind you his voice cracks because he's emotional it's that's just like this one little element of that act of singing a hymn but it all of these things are cumulative and add up to an experience that is incredibly profound and so i've been exploring some of the stuff of of like what can i do now for myself and then also what can i do for my family yeah and one of the things i've come and maybe it's why i wanted to talk about it is one of the conclusions i've come to is that it's very difficult to do anything like this to build practice in isolation you almost you need the congregation you need like-minded people coming together for the same reason and you need it on the rails in the same way that uh a programming framework puts a lay a programming language on the rails and it just like it's all here like i installed and it just it's all there and the the idea of church has all the scaffolding right there that's a good word and and actual very well thought out and some of this was done for manipulation like in youth ministry we would sing energetic songs at first we also understood that like the singing together has other uh psychological and sociological effects that can be used for manipulation yep this is the both and because on the other hand it can be used for manipulation but it can also just be good yeah this idea of coming together and you know most churches follow this kind of this this feeling is you sing the energetic hymns first and then you have a little interlude and then you sing a bit slower hymns and then you have another like scripture reading and then you sing the really slow kind of thoughtful mindful it's all just preparing you to be in this place where you can receive a message or whatever and again part of this is manipulation but looking at it from another perspective i also am recognizing that now that i've kind of gone through my cynical stage of saying well that was really manipulative yeah i'm now in the stage beyond that where i'm like but there's also something really helpful about that about going into a place and you know you're you you're burdened by the events of the week and by the the pains of your present or whatever and you sing something that's really hopeful and triumphant yeah and makes you raise your voice even like in psychology we're learning that the expression of things outwardly like rage therapy and all these these things that people are exploring now it's all in church man it's like we're gonna sing this thing out you can sing as loud as you want you can ah you can just let it out and then okay now we're going to bring it down a notch we're going to get a bit more contemplative and now we're going to bring it down a notch and i mean in churches with littered liturgy liturgy this is what people like is that it's like pause think yeah pray be quiet with your thoughts in the midst of other people being quiet with their thoughts okay now let's pray together and now let's let's have a message about something in your life that maybe you need to think about let me give you some hope let me give you some correction let me give you know like there's something about that that is incredibly powerful and so the in isolation i've tried to reinvent some of these things i think it's actually why people like conferences you know very interesting and i mean it also explain why if anyone's heard me speak publicly uh if you think of me like a preacher it it makes more sense yeah that that is what i'm used to that is what that is the way i've been trained but it's also kind of what i long for is the the talk i gave at the last lericon in new york was i think the title was why growing old in tech is hard but really it's a sermon about being in your 30s and 40s and how to work through real life struggles and maybe how to have some hope at the end of it and it's just i mean it it's exactly not exactly but it's very similar yeah um to to uh and i have a i do have a concern about this about the performative nature of preaching um and the uh so let's just set that aside but you know like i i gave that talk and there's a lineup of people that want to talk about it yeah the cynical part of me goes this is just you're just playing the evangelical playbook and now people are responding the the less cynical part of me goes but people just need this yeah people just need to have a connection with other human beings who are willing to get past the skin level outward level uh surface level stuff and really dig into the guts of pain and joy and triumph and failure and this is where i'm at today and we need it like we actually probably do need it weekly and then when we get it from a conference talk or we get it from one of the new uh what do you call a bad preacher uh you know like the the the tony robbins of the world you know like the uh prosperity theology televangelism yeah shysters like but tony robbins tony robbins is not a preacher though right in the motivational speech no okay yeah motivational speaker but i think the longing what people go to tony robbins for is oh yeah this thing and i think what i'm saying is i think and i could be wrong because this is just where i'm at my state of life again having left faith having then been cynical about faith and completely cast it off and now getting back to this point where i'm like maybe there's something here yeah and then going through the process of being cynical again and i'm like well i don't want to be like tony robbins but then moving even past that you're going but there's a good version of this and what is it what's the best form for it and if if human culture really is not that old it's like maybe thousands of years old really i think the oldest traditions we have or i don't know three or four thousand years old something like that maybe older i don't know um i don't know what let me say i know well i know that there's a lot of things where like this thing was invented in often china or the middle east hundreds of thousands of years ago so i imagine there's some but i do know that the majority of western culture starts within the last three four thousand years so yeah so thinking like if if in the context of the universe if humans have the human society has the possibility of existing for hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years we're still very early yeah yeah and if we're going to if there's going to be a big group of people and again maybe faith like is just so useful like there's definitely days i wish i could go back yeah and i'm guessing it there will always be a place for people who are religious and spiritual and it will continue to serve them in the ways i'm describing but my guess is that as human society progresses there's going to be a big group of people who are atheists and what are the practices the cultural things we need to set in motion now so that in hundreds of years or thousands of years we have this scaffolding for people who might choose to be this way yeah and um i think part of me gets hopeful about that because it feels like it's possible and in north america especially but most of western culture this is fairly recent this movement like like church attendance like traditional church attendance is uh in europe in canada in the united states is decreasing so but it's fairly recent that this has happened right so what are we going to do for all those folks that that have left and it it's i i think it's going to require some experimentation some experimentation in my own household but there's also going to be this um there's going to need to be connection in where instead of atheism being or non-belief or post-evangelicalism or whatever camp you're in being this very private thing that we don't talk about where you know even talking about some of the stuff like singing dc talk songs is so embarrassing but at the same time again like where's the spaces to do this yeah i think i think the the state the stage we're at now we require more connection there needs to be people reaching out saying hey you know this is what we're doing hey um you know even every saturday morning when i can i walk down to this coffee shop and i text messaged a few people and we get together and we just talk about intellectual stuff about life stuff about whatever it's like a small group yeah but that act is so helpful yeah and uh when i do it even though it feels like a small vote for you know something bigger yeah it it it makes me feel like it's building up to something better a new scaffolding new rails that maybe i ca i won't fully benefit from but maybe my kids will benefit from and the kid their kids after that looking again at all these things that we grew up with and separating the good from the bad and saying you know what this practice was actually very good yeah how can we incorporate that into our context um in a way that matters that was incredible i have i have so few questions to ask i have so few contributions to make i'm like well wrapping up and since we are late on time i do want to i want to i what at one little note that you don't need to respond to but i want to note that like my particular place of post evangelicalism is i still have faith but i don't believe that the evangelical like the white evangelical church is a good and healthy thing for for faith or for non-faith um so i'm you know some people would say i'm ex-evangelical but a lot i've lots of feelings about all those things that i will not talk about now but a lot of the needs that i feel are very similar to the ones that you feel because i can't find a church that i feel super comfortable attending i can't find a church i feel comfortable taking my black children to there i don't think there's going to be weird white supremacy issues they're going to be embedded in weird political things you know what i mean like there's so many aspects here where i i miss a lot of those same things that you do right um and so while some of them are a little bit easier for me like i could still pray before dinner with the kids and it's not weird and i talk about faith with my kids and they say well does this exist or does that exist and i'm like well daddy thinks this but he's not sure mommy i think she thinks that but you can go ask her and other people think other things and we're all gonna have to figure out on our own you know and sometimes we'll say here are some things that i think everybody in your life believes uh for example we talk to them about the ancestors and that's something that's you know common across a lot of religions and also common across a lot of black cultures talking about the fact that like your ancestors we believe um still aren't a place where after death they can see you they can be a part of life your life they care for you they root for you whatever we believe that we're going to see them after death that's not something that we're saying is absolutely true but your mom believes it your dad believes it your aunts and uncles believe it you know blah blah blah and a lot of people in the world believe it so if that makes sense to you then you can choose to believe that too so we have space for some of these conversations that are a little bit easier because while i'm not in evangelicals and i still get some of these faithy benefits but there's still a lot of ways where i resonated so much with what you said of like i still miss and you know like i have i've got a mastermind group with a that's kind of like a small group and i've got a group with a couple neighbors that i meet with together once a month to talk about our finances and we have meals afterwards and they're you know one of their daughters make me little little we love you mr matt cards and and it feels like a small group so i'm like getting a lot of those moments in my life where it's like ah yeah yeah i missed this so i feel like yeah and and to not again i think this the state i'm at now is to not be ashamed of some of those impulses right or not even to be ashamed to borrow yeah some of that stuff yeah and also not to be ashamed like i there were some there were some high school students that i um i was a big part of their life i was a big mentor for them and now they're grown up and they have families and i couldn't talk to them for years and finally giving myself the permission to be like this is it's okay to be who and it's it's okay to be acknowledging that some of these desires you have are just good desires for community for connection for tradition yeah for daily weekly monthly seasonal practice and and to see the evidence of that like christmas and halloween and easter like these are just uh religious holidays that have been turned into secular traditions yeah and there's a reason why we did that it's like it's because there's something helpful about them that the practice is actually perhaps the most important part of it that the feelings that we get aren't just like throw away feelings but the feelings of warmth and family and food and you know nostalgia from when you were a kid these are all actually things that we need yeah and it's okay to want them and seek them right like it's okay to want them and seat them even if you are leaving behind some things from the past and especially if you're leaving behind some some of the truly toxic things in the culture that needed to be yeah called out um it's like there there's some of that stuff that just needed to be called up but again there's some of that practice that was good yeah and so yeah i think it's okay to recognize that i love that um i'm gonna add one last thing one last it's okay and then move on to our last question um first of all thank you everything you just said was amazing and insightful and i really appreciate your openness oh well cathartic for me thank you good for listening of course and as always i could talk to you about this for like another three more hours but time limits and everything but it's gonna say it's also okay and it's not shameful to go get those things from religious spaces if you're not in a religious space like i am not an anglican and i would have no problems whatsoever with going and sitting in an anglican church and receiving what benefit i can from there and to be honest i don't know any anglicans that would be like uh oh there's an atheist in the pews there's a guy who doesn't know what his faith is and so doesn't go to church in the pews they'd be like cool you want to listen to god we're here for it you know what i mean like i don't think anybody has any issue that if anybody's in any space and they want to go participate in those things for whatever reason i was going to hold it against you you know yeah and this is the again there's the the the catholic church and the anglican church and a lot of lutheran church you know they have a lot of bad history there's some there's some bad stuff in there yeah but that doesn't mean that um necessarily that it's it's a bad idea to go to one of these incredible cathedrals and sit down and benefit somewhat from that environment of course if you were truly traumatized then that wouldn't be a good experience but i think some of that exploration is good i like that auditioning and maybe i will maybe i will uh my parents would be delighted that's the thing i'm like you could say i am an atheist i'm gonna go sit in this church for atheist reasons and all the christians in your life will still be like oh they'd be excited and i mean i'm speaking to myself as much like i'm i'm i've not left the faith but i have not found places other than friend relationships where i feel like i have like space for spirituality and so there's been a lot of me that just keeps going can i go to a place that either just for me or even me for me and my kids that i don't think is toxic uh and maybe we have to have conversations about it afterwards but at least bring something into their lives and give them some opportunity to make their own decisions versus me making them all for them right so like it's just it's there's no hard and fast i mean and you you mentioned like you felt like you had a hard and fast rule for for close to a decade of i just can't touch that stuff and it sounds like a lot of what you're saying right now is you know what like i can figure out what's good for me you know i can figure out what i need and sometimes it looks like those things that i ran away from sure this new reality is definitely a lot messier a lot easier for my parents and my parents parents when it was just it was that it easy it's just the the script is there yeah uh but that doesn't mean that we can't like engage with the mess and figure some stuff out and maybe what comes out is something really good yeah i love that all right to keep us from talking any further last question what insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people will give to others today um i mean this is where the i think the model especially in evangelicalism the way this is not universal i'll just tell talk about my experience i got taken care of from leaders and mentors um it wasn't all good advice they gave me but that i there's no doubt that i would not be the person i am today if it wasn't for a lot of that care and for me the the the messy example of this is you know in 2016 or 17 i went through this truly traumatic experience and an old christian mentor called me just to see if i could fix his website and i have had a real hard time with this guy since leaving the faith like his facebook posts and political beliefs are um heinous to me yeah like i cannot stand what he says but he instantly recognized that something was wrong and cared for me and really loved me um in a genuine way in a sacrificial way gave hours and hours of his time took it upon himself to call back every week to see how i was doing and it's possible that i would have done something very destructive to myself if he hadn't stepped in and so i i bring that up partly because online this guy's a cartoon of the most like some of the most despicable stuff yeah and but but personally i'm saying and i there was nothing um i know some people might could be cynical about this there was nothing unhealthy about the care he showed for me or um it's not like he had any sort of power over me or anything like that i'm telling you this was as genuine as any anything you've experienced and i that to me um is important and i think the way the the the way that um mentorship and leadership worked for me there's also a lot of abuse for others in this scenario but the way it worked for me was really profound and genuine and pure um even though you know some of the stuff they said i think was not right even though you know it it uh maybe they pumped me up a bit too much maybe they gave me too much of an ego there's there are there were some downsides but there's a lot of that that was just very healthy yeah and when i look at my own kids i'm like man there's just times i wish there was other adults in their lives besides their parents me that cared for them in that way mentors leaders you know trusted adults that can help kind of guide them along the way so that's something that i'll never forget it's and it's probably it's also the thing that i'm trying to i think about yeah in terms of like as parents we are so limited you can do you can do you can do the best job you can yeah but you really do need other people other community other adults that care about your kids and um i think it's important and yeah for sure i would not be here unless i had that i love that it takes a village to raise a child right yeah yeah no it's true well i've said this already but this was freaking brilliant i look forward to having you on again next time we'll talk crypto um but [Laughter] that will that will be the full arc going from evangelicalism to the modern atheistic religions which is crypto i cannot wait to talk about that i'm looking forward to it man yeah yeah have you back and also if people have uh some atheist hymns they want to send me please yeah dm me well perfect because i was going to say how can people follow you how can they support you so where do they send it where are you if people want to pay you money you know just tell us about your stuff sure i mean if you're into podcasting go to transistor.fm my blog is justinjackson.ca where i write about business 80 of the time and this personal life stuff about 20 of the time maybe i'll change that and twitter i'm the letter m the letter i justin m i justin i learned the story of why you're in my justin is delightful um i i i'm stout for matt because i was an idiot and got some stupid acronym when twitter started and by the time i realized i wanted matt stauffer some guy had taken it and squatting on it and so i'm still fighting him trying to get it so if we could go back oh my gosh we only knew i mean if we go back i'd buy bitcoin 10 years ago so i mean i'd probably make some other changes but you know this is the base this is the crypto debate that's where we're going to go we've got to have next year or would i not buy crypt bitcoin yeah that's we're going to go next time all right justin you're the man i really appreciate your time dude thank you so much this was really wonderful for me thanks matt good and for the rest of you i'll see you next time and until then be good to each other [Music] you

Channel: Matt Stauffer

Views: 315

Keywords: Post evangelicalism, exvangelical, religion, spirituality, faith, community, traditions, spiritual traditions., Matt Sauffer, Justin Jackson

Id: IkKwsgp_w2U

Length: 57min 29sec (3449 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021