Rainn Wilson Tells Me Where I’m Wrong on Spirituality

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Russell Moore Show one of the things that we do from time to time is tell me where I'm wrong where I talk to someone who would disagree with me on something and the rules of the game are that I'm not allowed to argue I'm just allowed to ask questions to get better insight and so the the next guest that we're going to be talking to in a few minutes Rayne Wilson Dwight Schrute from the office who's written this new book on spirituality we would see things very differently he he sees spirituality in a much more General sense where I as an Evangelical Christian have a very specific and objective view of Jesus Christ but I think we have a good and and respectful uh conversation we did both on the air and off the air one of the things that I had to really really keep myself from doing was making constant office quotations and uh and uh puns so I have someone who says uh that I'm only five or six seconds away from a Bible quotation or an office uh citation in any conversation so I'm trying not to do that so let's listen to the conversation with rain Wilson rain Wilson three-time Emmy nominated actor the founder of Soul pancake uh has a show Rain Wilson and the geography of bliss on peacock and the author of the new book Soul boom why we need a spiritual Revolution Rayne Wilson thanks for being on the Russell Moore Show hey thanks for having me I'll say in reading this there there wasn't a lot of Battle Star Galactica but there was a lot of Star Trek here uh references and so I I'm wondering how Dwight Schrute and Auntie Dwight schruty are you in real life uh there's a lot of similarities um I'm a little bit socially awkward um I um have a sense of kind of right and wrong and um I can be kind of a jerk sometimes uh so those are some ways that we intersect we certainly are both big Battle Star Galactica fans um although like you said I I reference Star Trek a lot more because I think there is some spiritual benefit to the investigation of of Star Trek but I think that the main thing about Dwight is his world is and His World Vision is pretty small right so he's all about hierarchies um who's got power who's in charge he's very clannish it's very about um who's a shrewt and who's not and in Dunder Mifflin you know who has um kind of a social capital over others so he can be a bully he can be a nerd um he can uh be a Toady uh and I would say that I hope that Rayne Wilson has a little bit more uh wide-ranging spiritual maturity and is uh able to uh loving lovingly Embrace uh people that are different than him uh in a more holistic way you you mentioned a quite a few times several times in the book Soul boom uh sort of explaining why you're talking about religion for people who will be turned away by that and I'm wondering when you think about in popular culture uh right right now uh usually when religion is depicted it's either in a Cheesy sort of almost propaganda-ish way done by religious people or in in more mainstream pop culture the religious person is usually the villain uh and religion is almost always presented in a in a dark manner do you think that that's more because of a a distance from culture makers and religious life or or is this just the moment we're in right now uh that's a great question and you might be referring to maybe you're not but I had a tweet that got a lot of Heat about a month or two ago where I was watching this wonderful show on HBO called The Last of Us about this post-apocalyptic survivors trying to make it on planet Earth and it's pretty exciting and well done well acted and one of the episodes started and it started with a pastor reading to his congregation from The Book of Revelation and um and immediately I mean half second in I'm like oh he's evil and it turns out Not only was he evil he was a pedophile cannibal like as evil as you could make a human being they made this guy and my first thought was like that's just lazy writing it's just it's lazy I've seen it a thousand times where it's like because Everyone likes a good hypocrite as a villain and it's the easiest kind of you know storytelling to have like someone pretending to be spiritual a spiritual leader and they actually have this you know dark underbelly and uh and and I think that um Hollywood unfairly um uh victimizes Christians and Believers you so rarely if ever sees just a reasonable kind loving person of faith who by the way I have tons of Christian friends I love them so dearly I learn from them so dearly and they're kind people that want to make the world a better place they love Jesus and they want to be of service and emulate Jesus's way toward the poor and the downtrodden and they want to build community in their in they want to create diverse loving communities and that's so rarely pictured um and uh yes I'll I'll leave it at that yeah probably the the most probably the kindest depiction that I can think of in recent years would be Ned Flanders on Simpsons that's true although he was you know Ned Flanders was the butt of jokes for the first time right 20 years of the show and then they kind of were like hey wait a minute maybe Ned Flanders could have some better qualities and then they started to have episodes it was only after decades that they kind of like revealed other sides of Ned and like oh maybe Ned knows something that Homer doesn't and and The Simpsons might be able to learn something from those Flanders yes you mentioned in the book about uh religion right now being almost focused on Sports and celebrity in terms of the way that we find a kind of uh spirituality and you also talked about your grappling with addictions Maybe not maybe not addictions but a pull toward certain kinds of addictions I wonder if was celebrity has that been an addiction you've had to avoid I went through a lot of dark times in my 20s and early 30s when I had left the religion of my childhood which is the Baha'i faith and uh being raised Baha'i I was raised to appreciate all faiths to love the Bible to study the Bible the Quran the bhagavad-gita the writings of the Buddha this is inherent this is in the DNA of being a Baha'i so conversations about deep spiritual topics about the meaning of life and the nature of God and of the soul and the spiritual Journeys that we all make on in this human Physical Realm um when I jettisoned all that in my 20s and I did deal with addiction issues and I dealt with anxiety and depression and a lot of mental health stuff um I I I had a deep hunger to dig into spiritual topics and ideas um I want to quote the great writer Julia Cameron who wrote that wonderful text called the artist's way and she said I come to spirituality not out of virtue but out of necessity and for me I'm so grateful for those dark times that I underwent in my 20s because it set me on a spiritual path to kind of figure out who God was and what it was what it was to believe in God and what it was to have a spiritual life um and what the meaning of life might be and again this doesn't make me wise it doesn't make me a guru or arrived or some kind of like Exemplar not at all I just did a lot of digging and a lot of reading and I read the Bible and I read the bhagavad-gita and I read the Torah and the the you know I read the you know dhamapadas of the Buddha and sick works and Sufi texts and um eventually came back around to the faith of my childhood but uh I I truly believe that this religious Quest is has enriched my life and made it better has given me balance has brought me a a return to reason and and Sanity and and wisdom and going to your question about Fame yeah so you know I need to use spiritual tools on a daily basis to balance myself because I'm such a anxious person and uh prone to you know addiction depression and other issues so my daily prayer and meditation practice is to is to balance me so that I'm just functional Russell it doesn't make me Super Wise or anything like that I can just helps me get through my day better but your Fame is is a tricky Beast it really is so for me as this insecure anxious guy my mom took off when I was a year and a half I lived with my Dad we were very poor I had a stepmom and they were in a very unhappy marriage and you know we had a lot of good things about my childhood but we all I had a lot of trauma as well um I uh all of a sudden and after working as an actor for like 14 or 15 years all of a sudden they had a certain measure of fame um so I had gotten out of theater school I'd done a budget theater and then plugged away in little TV shows and movies and then all of a sudden I was getting recognized from the office and some other movies and TV shows that I did around that time and all of a sudden people are stopping me and going I love you can you imagine that walking down the street people grabbing you like literally grabbing you looking in your eyes and going I love you and you're just like and here's this love a star little kid inside of me with all of a sudden getting this adulation and it it was fascinating because I spent many years early on in the office craving more like it wasn't enough and I talked recently to the other actor on the show BJ Novak about this and we we talked about the fact that our biggest regret from the office is that we just didn't enjoy it more like after being a starving actor for decades and then all of a sudden having a show that was winning Awards I was making a lot of money they were wonderful beautiful people that I was um acting with and uh people really adored the show like let that be enough but instead I was like but I want movies I want to be how come I'm not a movie star like well Farrell and Jack Black and in in Seth Rogen like and I need more I've gotta line this up and I've got to get this deal at this studio and why didn't they buy my script and and why didn't they take my pitch and I want a first look deal at Warner Brothers and you know so it's It's never enough you know and that is one of the great spiritual conundrums isn't it that we have enough and yet it's never enough it's like the Buddha describes life is suffering you know which is the term he used was dukkha and the Pali means kind of chronic dis anxious dissatisfaction in a feeling a lack of and that hunger the Hungry Ghost that wants more kind of spent several years running the show I'm one of the few actors in Hollywood talking about God the soul religion spirituality and and frankly I'm getting it from both sides you know I'm getting it from the Christian right that is like wait a minute he's a Baha'i that's the devil's religion and he's going to hell and that's a false prophet and uh Etc and I'm getting it from the political left which is like he's talking about morality there's no such thing as morality and oh God and the whole problem with the world is religion and God and morality and you know so I'm I'm happily getting it from both sides and I I actually enjoy being in that position because Russell I've done a whole bunch of therapy and I don't really care what people think about me anymore and it's such a beautiful release to be in my shall I generously say mid-50s and not caring what people think by and large you know one of the things that you talk about in the book that few people do or at least in detail is death uh I was especially interested in the section about uh the death of your dad maybe because I've lost my dad three years ago and that's a that's a shock to anyone's system I think and it doesn't matter how old one's father is when that happens I'm wondering what do you think happens to someone when he or she dies I mean what is that Transcendent what that Transcendence what is that next step in your opinion um I love it you just going right to the point like here we go okay I love it the biggest deepest possible question that Humanity has wrestled with for hundreds of thousands of years by the way speaking of humanity having wrestled with this for hundreds of thousands of years that is the earliest evidence that Humanity has always had some kind of spiritual belief system is because humans and the oldest Graves that we have found have been buried with things that they will need on a journey so the oldest grave sites the oldest human habitations have Kings or Elders buried with swords with weapons with sleds with their trusty dogs by their sides by with you know backpacks or little you know cases with books arrowheads Etc so Humanity has always had this idea that we're on a journey that uh doesn't end at the end of our physical life on this physical plane so the best way that I can explain this is through a metaphor that's used in the Baha'i writings which I love and I bring it up in the book and that has to do with the baby in the womb so the baby in the womb is growing everything it needs for this world it's growing eyelashes and eyelids and ears and elbows and fingers and everything you can possibly think of to um to function on this physical plane if you went to a baby and you interviewed it and you said hey why are you growing eyes and ears a baby would be like I have no idea I'm perfectly happy here in this sack hanging out I'm being fed it's nice and warm I'm happy I'm comfortable I don't know what I need why is all this stuff growing out of my body um but thank God that we have grown those organs for functionality in the physical world we're doing the same thing on this physical plane we are growing eyes and ears and elbows they're not physical they're spiritual this is what we take with us we don't take with us our bodies we don't take with us our our Toyotas you know we don't take with us our stuff we take with us the qualities of the Divine that we grow and develop and nurture in our hearts and in our actions over the course of our lives so kindness compassion love uh patience creativity uh light all of the stuff that we grow and develop over the course of our lives are what we take with us so part of our reason for existing not all part is to develop the spiritual qualities of God best exemplified by God's son Jesus Christ by God's messenger Muhammad by the friend of God Moses by the awakened one the Buddha by the glory of God baha'u'llah the founder of the Baha'i faith so in the Baha'i concept there's no Heaven and Hell uh it's a little bit different than some other Faith Traditions well what why would that be though because if if sort of the longings for love and Transcendence if that if that points us to something does the longing for justice uh also point to a kind of accounting a kind of Judgment Day how how does that work itself out in the way you see certainly future um says bring thyself to account each day air Thou Art summoned to a reckoning because death unannounced shall soon visit you and you will be called to account for your actions so is there a judgment day in that sense in the in the Baha'i tradition which I ascribe to absolutely you Russell me Reign we will be called in front of the mighty Throne humbled and on our knees and the entirety of Our Lives will be called in front of us and we'll be will be responsible for the choices that we make I I truly believe that do those who have fallen short are they punished for eternity in a fiery pit um I don't get with that nor do America's young people nor does most of the world and that's where it's a little bit different like I think that however I will say that separation from the Divine distance from the Divine is its own fiery pet so if one hasn't developed those spiritual qualities you were you were and you are distant from God or or goddishness spiritual spiritualishness then that is a kind of hell and I've lived in a kind of hell and I've been in a hell of separation from the Divine and I have been miserable and I have been suicidal and I have been you know the uh the son The Prodigal Son I've been the prodigal son you know and I have come back uh for mercy and for grace and forgiveness so Hell in a way to me Works metaphorically but Heaven is the infinite other Realms uh that await the Glorious journey of the Soul as we move forward from this physical world what you talk about in uh Soul boom about uh sort of the crisis of Institutions including organized religious uh institutions and you say why don't we make up our own uh religion and you you have quite a a section on laying out what that new religion would look like um and I'm just wondering as I read that because I think you are you are so right on so many of the diagnoses of what's uh happening but when it comes to making up one's own religion how is that not kind of um recyclops you know you you you you're kind of putting together a a metaphor uh in a way that it would seem to me in order to in order for spirituality to actually bring about the goods that you talk about there would have to be something objectively true does it does it seem that it might be sort of trivializing of uh of religious claims I mean the the difference between uh I believe that Jesus Christ is the the way the truth and the life as I do and and the Muslim friend who would completely reject uh Incarnation and so forth those would be really big differences for both of us not just kind of a generic uh spirituality so how do you how do you think about about that about about whether or not this is just one more form of kind of an expressive visualism yes that's a great question you're 100 right making up a religion does trivialize the truth of the world's great faith traditions and that's why I hope I had enough tongue-in-cheek throughout that section to call it Soul boom trademark the religion um and my purpose in writing that chapter was not in fact to create any new religion and that's made pretty clear on the chapter but to get young people who have dismissed religion entirely and whole cloth to reconsider the amazing Brilliance of organized religion I talk in great length in the book about uh one of my favorite chapters in human history and one of the most Progressive which is the early centuries of the Christian Church never before in the history of humanity and a lot of Christians don't know this I'm astonished that they don't but never before in the history of humanity had a more diverse group of people gathered and then welcomed loved and accepted then those early centuries of the church where a church service would include a Phoenician sailor a Roman gladiator a a Jewish Theologian a former slave a former prostitute and they would all be gathered acknowledging Jesus as the as the Son and the Lord as the father seeking Grace you know reading the the letters of Paul and praying singing worshiping together and and all being accepted that had never happened before in human history everything was tribal and not only that not only that these early Christians sacrificed their time their energy their comfort and their material wealth in service of others who weren't in their tribe all those people would gather and they would go find a sick family of Samaritans and they would give them food and they would give them comfort and clothing and the Romans wrote about it they were like what is up with these people they are serving others that aren't even the members of their tribe or family or race what the hell is going on out here and that's one of the reasons I believe that early Christianity was seen as such a threat to Empire I hold in great esteem uh the world's Faith traditions and certainly my own faith tradition which incorporates and includes the word not necessarily Christian practice or theology or what have you but the red letter words of Jesus but young people have rejected whole cloth religion in this Modern Age and just now just I mean literally last five or ten years social scientists and and positive psychologists are going hey wait a second religion actually holds a great deal of keys to mental health and well-being during this you know mental health epidemic and uh folks with faith young folks with faith are actually doing better than Young Folks without it and they're starting to look at the Hard data around us it seems often when people talk about the benefits that come with religion it seems to me that sometimes kind of like saying placebos work so let's all take placebos which means if you know this if you know it's a placebo it it doesn't work and so the benefits of religion come with people who actually believe there's something objectively true there and that means uh that there are things that are not so I mean those early Christian communities are coming around the letters of Paul often that are saying if if Christ is not raised none of this matters you would be better off uh you would be better off just uh living your life and dying yeah they're not it's not a Rotary meeting they're not getting together just to kind of like hang out and have a potluck and share stories and good times and high-five each other there is a central belief like I said that they hang their hat on uh at the center but I kind of feel like well does it really matter how anyone comes to the father like start come for the potlucks stay for the Salvation how about that you could put that on a Christian bumper sticker you know whatever draws young people into if they're looking for Community give them community and draw them in and if they're looking for love give them a loving community and you know eventually they may be drawn to some higher uh and more complex and real precepts you have a section in the book where you talk about loneliness I thought was really perceptive that the loneliness leads to a kind of scanning for threats and that leads to anxiety and the anxiety leads to more loneliness and the cycle starts all over again uh I mean how how when you're dealing with uh teenagers right now often who are in a state of heightened anxiety everybody coming out of of covid I mean is there is there a way as a society that we can get out of that loop I mean it's kind of I was just talking to someone uh earlier today about a group of people who it seemed to me the first question they asked themselves about anything is how am I being slighted by this which means you're always going to find slights uh there and so these people were making a miserable workplace for themselves by having that that mentality how do we get out of that you're asking me how to heal the mental health epidemic is the number one killer of young people in Western society as suicide has become the number one uh cause of death for young folks I believe Russell that there are tools in this great faith Traditions all of them that can help us and not can help us that will help us and that we need Humanity desperately needs these tools and these ideas um to find uh peace meaning tranquility and uh and purpose and again I'll use the phrase We we've just as I did when I was younger I threw the spiritual baby out with the religious bathwater when I rejected my the faith of my childhood um I also jettisoned all the spiritual tools that are available so my book I hope works on lots of different levels and I hope that atheists enjoy it and I hope that Born Again Christians enjoy it because it's just having spiritual conversations like you said about death about the soul about the nature of life and suffering um in fact let's go to suffering part of the problem with Contemporary American society is that parents have tried to take suffering away from their children one of the Abdul Baha the son of the founder of baha'u'llah was a great spiritual teacher in the Baha'i tradition he said very little about education of children one of the things he said about education of children is like is he said allow your children to become accustomed to hardship and when you think about that in the context of contemporary civilization where we try and take away all of the bruised elbows and skinned knees from our kids and we try and give them every Comfort right they call this affluenza and we try and take away any and like oh you have a conflict or oh we'll put that out oh this is difficult for you oh let us the helicopter parents kind of like taking away these problems and these difficulties then and also we're not having conversations about suffering I I qu I don't have it on the tip of my tongue but it's in my book somewhere I think there's a great quote by the Apostle Paul about suffering saying you know I'm I am glad for your suffering because it creates spiritual growth do you happen to know it off the top of your elements five endurance and endurance uh produces hope and hope does not put us to shame um that's great and uh so for for me because we're not talking about the nature of suffering suffering grows our souls we are in these soul-growing machines called human bodies and we become grateful eventually for the suffering that we've undergone because it can be transformative um and why is there suffering but suffering's part of the game the Buddha says I come for one reason and one reason only suffering and the elimination of suffering and that idea that um suffering is a constant and an important part of life and that it's real and it's ultimately as hard as it appeals is to swallow ultimately for our benefit and it's a mystery of God so the reason I'm lecturing right now and suffering is because if we're not raising our children to kind of understand suffering through a spiritual lens then they're not going to gain resilience and resilience is one of the things that psychologists write about that the younger Generations are lacking is a is a kind of emotional resilience to to obstacles and to difficulties and so again we have thrown the spiritual baby out with the religious bath water as we've rejected culturally religion we're then also throwing out a conversation about the nature of suffering and our children are truly suffering because we're not talking to them about suffering you you talk in the book it was moving to me about uh your dad and your stepmom divorced right after you got out of high school and left I I want it seems to me there are a lot of kids who are in that state of just insecurity they don't know what's going to happen next what would you say to that 15 year old uh who's out there who says I think I think my parents are about to divorce I think my entire life is about to be uprooted and we're going to have to move what should I do yeah divorce is uh that's a tough one you know what do you do when 50 60 of marriages end in divorce um I I wish I had uh I wish I had some wisdom around that um I think that uh um you know I would say you know that Old Hippie bumper sticker let there be peace in the world and let it begin with me like you grow we want to develop World Peace you know which is something that when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s people actually talked about world peace they kind of were like they wish they longed for World Peace beauty contestants scientists philosophers Scholars politicians talked about world peace we thought it was possible um I guess I'm digressing a little bit because I don't have a good answer so I'm just flapping a bunch of hot air but I'm going to say that I'm going to say that the family piece starts with the family and grows from there so it's super important work that um I think for for folks that are a product of divorce to undertake a deep curiosity about maybe why their parents divorced and what the mistakes they might have made and to Envision what a a loving uh monogamous relationship would look like um and uh uh and and seek to have that in their lives you know learn learn your parents lesson uh so you can apply it to your own life that's the only thing I got on that but I wish I had a a better answer but it's a super important topic right before we started recording my two of my sons were here wanted to be here to see you they've never asked to be here for any others because you have such boring guests yes that's right that's right that's right but they uh there there's an entire generation I mean the office isn't like Three's Company or uh even All in the Family or or one of these sitcoms it lives especially with Gen Z Millennials the those who are below gen Z coming up who often are watching it on a loop all the time and there was someone had written about how odd it is that there's an Escapist fantasy about working at a paper company in Scranton Pennsylvania but it does seem to be comforting in in some way to in entirely new generations of people why do you suppose that is yeah well people have been asking me on my book tour about spirituality as it relates to the office and I will say this that at its heart um the very last line that said by Pam the very last line of the episode is is I I'm gonna butcher it a little bit but it's it's about like there's Beauty in the ordinary is and isn't that what it's all about and that's how the show ends and the beauty and ordinary things and I think that ninety percent of the office 93 of the office is just silliness but seven percent of it is about real human connection it's about family it's about people coming together and finding the Beauty and the ordinary things so I think that's what that magic recipe that Greg Daniels our showrunner you know sprinkled in his magic Hollywood fairy dust over the show that keeps people coming back time and time again to uh enjoy those characters and but it is it's pretty Preposterous that I've run into a lot of young people and they're like I want to get a job just like a Dunder Mifflin like they think like working in an office which can be soul-sucking drudgery believe me I did it for years um is kind of has that kind of the the warmth and heart and zaniness of of working at Dunder Mifflin but I'm yet listen this this leads to another topic which is uh in the Baha'i faith we're taught that work in the spirit of service is worship in the eyes of God so working working in service to others is a form of worship just like prayer and although I didn't go into the office none of us went to make the office to uh be of service it's been a wonderful byproduct that the show has brought so much Solace and hope and joy to people during really hard times and I hear that every day from folks like the show means so much to me thank you for making it um it you know my brought my siblings together when my parents were getting a divorce we would sit around and watch it when my aunt had cancer and you know I'm honored and blessed to be a part of a show that was able to bring some warmth and Solace into people's lives hmm well it strikes me one of the reasons uh that you talk about in the book one of the reasons you wrote the book is because there there is a danger of I don't think you use the the word cynicism but there is a danger of cynicism and numbness and and hardening and I thought I thought about institutions when I actually I came across a quote that Aaron Shure gave about the debate over whether or not Dwight or Andy should be manager after Steve Carell left okay and what he said was it it was he was afraid that if Dwight was empowered as the boss that it would be scary he said it's funny if he sets the office on fire and blowtorches all the doorknobs but if he did that all day long without any sort of check on his behavior it would be terrifying and as I read that I thought you know it's almost a metaphor for why we have so much cynicism right now it seems as though the whole world actually is being run by Dwight Schrute that that there are people who don't seem to know how to uh how to actually lead through this and it's it can be scary well this is one of the Theses is that a word Theses Theses of the book which I talk about the spiritual Revolution aspect which is transforming uh systems along spiritual lines so many of our systems are broken and breaking down and are unsustainable because the systems themselves are based on the very worst qualities of humanity they're based on competition and contest and every man for himself in one upsmanship and uh survival of the fittest and um and not on community consultation love common service and cooperation the other elements of humanity that have you know created the world's great religions and and um and systems that actually work with this toxic system of partisanship that we have in the country where you have these two uh competing like rabid football teams it's like when you know but Cleveland Browns and fans and and Pittsburgh Steeler fans get together and they're like ah our Philadelphia Eagle fans or whatever um and they loathe and they contemptuously hate the other party and seek to destroy it and seek as much power for themselves as as possible there couldn't be anything more unbiblical than the American partisan political system which I talk about in great length in the book and uh as someone who has really voted independently along both party lines for my entire life I feel like um in a sense that you talking about Dwight being the manager and you know setting fire to the house our American political system itself uh is is very much in in line with that and rewarding kind of some of the worst aspects of humanity people talk a lot about like well we should elect the person from this party and then everything would be better but people are never having a conversation about like wait a minute what if this system is not right what if the system is is rigged wrong and can we reimagine it to be something much more in line with uh spiritual principles and with love hmm we we started out talking about uh for a little bit my own Evangelical Christian uh Community uh has has something of a reputation problem for all kinds of reasons earned in and unearned um there I wonder when you look from the outside uh what would it take to convince you that historic Christianity is true and I guess when I'm asking that what I'm really asking is uh what would it take for you to change uh and to be persuaded or would you say I really I've investigated everything and I'm I'm pretty certain about where I am now yeah um great what would it take for you to become a Baha'i what would it take for you to believe that Jesus's return is not going to be on a cloud with trumpets that is actually going to be the return of the spirit of Jesus Christ um uh that returns in some other way you know it's it's an interesting question what you know it's one of the reasons why Christians have throughout history been very unsuccessful in converting Muslims is because Muslims include the Divinity of the Christ they may not view Christ as like the sun as like God Zapped a person with a body and kind of gave him that special station but for me um I view myself as a Baha'i and a Christian so I do love Jesus Christ with all of my heart and I love his example I love his words I don't necessarily get with the nician Creed or you know how things shook down and the you know the creation of the Catholic church and then the Protestant Revolution and Martin Luther like I you know all of that stuff I don't pay that much attention to as a Baha'i so I've already converted consider me converted in the sense that I love and adore Jesus Christ and I do believe that the only way through the father when he was alive was the way the truth and the light was through Jesus Christ I I 100 believe that and then I also believe that the way to the father when Muhammad was alive was through the the teachings of the of the Holy Quran and now I believe that baha'u'llah is the newest incarnation of the light I and I feel like um there's a beautiful quote in the Baha'i faith like don't fall in love with the lamp fall in love with the light and um and I think that that's what Baha'is seek to do but listen here's the important thing um I know there's a lot of Christians like tearing their hair out going that's not right now and that's fine but people are often angry at me and that's all right I can handle it I've had a lot of therapy that I will say this the important thing Russell is people of Faith need to work together and stick together and the world is in a terrible place and the more that we selflessly serve for the benefit of all of humanity and work side by side elbow to Elbow agnostics spiritual but not religious born-again evangelicals Muslims Baha'is Buddhists that's what the world needs right now so um much more than any kind of conversion and this Soul boom is not up a high book I'm not trying to convert anyone to any way of thinking I'm trying to convert people to a spiritual way of thinking um that's what we need to do is all work together and find commonalities uh and love the example of Jesus serving the poor and and work together and for transformation well if you said what would it take for me to become Baha'i it would be becoming convinced that Jesus is the lamp or a lamp rather than the light but I I believe he he is the the light uh but one of the things I'm I really appreciate about this book is you're really honest and you're also respectful of uh of people who wouldn't see things uh this way and I think having those kinds of conversations are what we're going to to need as a country together the book is soul boom while we why we need a spiritual Revolution by rain Wilson rain thanks so much for being with us today thanks for having me what a wonderful conversation I I didn't know what to expect and this has just been joyous and uh it's been it's been an honor to speak with you thanks so much I thought that was a fascinating conversation I thought the book was um fascinating in terms of as I as I mentioned to rain I think he diagnoses a lot of the problems right in terms of breakdown of community loneliness where I'm not convinced is in this understanding of spirituality as something useful um and I think he he would not say it quite that boiled down but I think what he's saying is that basically underneath everything spiritual is the same thing and we're all kind of getting at that from different directions that's not what I think is the case I think that Jesus is either dead or alive and if he's alive that means that um that he was telling the truth about himself and so I'm not uh I'm not on a track to the high-ism anytime anytime soon I told him off air that I really um I liked uh the metaphor that he used of the the baby in the womb not knowing uh why it is that that there are ears and eyes and hands and I told him I hate to say that the first thing I thought of was Dwight Schrute uh talking about his twin brother in the womb that he resorbed so that he had the strength of a full-grown man and a little baby but once I put that out of my mind I think even though we would see that metaphor a little bit differently I think that's true and I think that's right thanks for being with us this is the Russell Moore Show brought to you by Christianity Today I have a new book coming out on August the 1st of this year it's called losing our religion and altar call for Evangelical America and really what this book is about is how to navigate the craziness that we're all facing right now how do we get to the point of uh exhaustion that so many people are facing what why are so many people leaving the church not because they can't believe what the church teaches but because they don't believe the church believes what the church teaches how can Evangelical Christianity ever turn around what would that look like and how do we get there that's what this book is about and you can pre-order it in the show notes and I look forward to sharing it with you August 1st [Music] the Russell Moore show is a production of Christianity Today executive producers are Eric petric Russell Moore and Mike Casper hosted by Russell Moore produced by Ashley Hales associate producers Abby Perry and azrae Phelps CT Administration provided by Christine Kolb social media by Kate lucky director of operations for CT media is Matt Stevens production assistants provided by core media audio engineer is Kevin duthu coordinator is Beth grabincourt video producer is John Roland the theme song for The Russell Moore show is Dusty Delta Day by Lennon Hutton foreign [Music]

Channel: Christianity Today

Views: 8,229

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Id: OD5Gb-23MZM

Length: 50min 43sec (3043 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2023