[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's a difference in focus.
The other ones require you to be the center of your own universe, your own source of power and your own support system.
And Christianity works exactly the opposite way. It doesn't require you to be any of those things. You become the vessel by which God is the source of power, by which God is the source of strength, by which God is the source of guidance, by which God is the source of knowledge. And that reverse of polarity is everything.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Before we jump back into the conversation, I wanted to pause and thank our friends at America's Christian Credit Union for making this episode possible.
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This special rate won't last long, so don't miss it. Visit americaschristiancu.com jana to get started today, America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA hi, I'm Jana Harmon from the Exskeptic podcast. Have you walked away from Christianity or you're questioning whether or not it was even true to begin with?
Maybe you're asking if truth even exists, or if it's arrogant to say that one faith is right?
These questions are more common than you might think. We've talked with over 120 former skeptics and atheists who've shared similar doubts and questions. That's why we've created nine themed playlists on YouTube drawn from personal stories of former skeptics who've wrestled with these same issues, among others.
Go to exskeptic on YouTube and find our playlist Is it Possible to Believe again?
Or what about other religions? Among others?
Once you've found them, you might want to share these themed playlists with others who might have their own unique questions about faith.
If you're listening and still carrying big questions, or even quiet doubts that you've never voiced, you're not alone.
Many of our guests have been exactly where you are. If you'd like to connect with someone who's walked the path of skepticism, just reach out to
[email protected] and we'll get you Connected.
Have you ever felt that your beliefs are fragile? Like one hard question might unravel it all?
What happens when those questions come and the answers don't?
Welcome to Ex Skeptic, where we explore unlikely stories of belief from atheists and agnostics and skeptics who didn't think faith was possible until it was.
I'm your host, Jana Harmon. On this podcast, we invite you into honest conversations with those who've journeyed through doubt and disbelief only to find something deeper, someone real on the other side.
Today's guest, Jason Holloway, once had a youthful faith that couldn't stand up to his growing questions. After 25 years of searching for meaning in philosophy, psychology, mythology, and other religions, he never expected to end up where he began, with Christianity.
But this time, he didn't return to a brittle belief. He returned to a robust, thoughtful, and vibrant faith, built not in spite of his questions, but because of them.
If you've ever wandered far or you wonder if faith is strong enough to face your doubts, this episode is for you. I hope you'll come along.
Welcome to the Exkeptic podcast. Jason, it's so great to have you with me today.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Fantastic. As we're getting started, I'd love for the listeners to know a little bit about who you are, your passions in life, what you do, and even your podcast.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Absolutely. So my name is Jason Holloway. I am a strategy director and a creative director in the marketing and advertising field. But we got to know each other by way of podcasting. So I am somebody who left the church for a very, very long time and came back. And when I came back, I met these two other gentlemen in the church who both semi similar stories and we ended up having these really incredible conversations together during men's groups and decided that we should make a podcast out of it.
So we've been doing for the. For the close to close to a year now, we've been doing a podcast about the Bible, the depth of stories. It's called the Boundless Bible because every time we dig into it, we find more and more and more.
And so when you ask what I'm passionate about, that's actually what I'm really passionate about right now. I'm kind of a jack of all trades person who gets really excited about a lot of things. But right now, I couldn't be more excited about the Bible if I tried because the deeper I get, the more there is and it just seems to be this endless fount of information, knowledge, beauty, poetry, and, and just, it's just, it's just incredible as I think most people know who read it.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Well, we will definitely put a link to your podcast, the Boundless Bible Podcast in the show notes so that anybody who is intrigued by your, your message there can go take a look and a listen. Yeah, so you mentioned also in your, your intro there that you were part of the church or. And then you left it for a while and then you came back. I'd like to really get into your backstory. I'd like to know how your early beliefs were formed. I presume that you, you were born into some kind of a Christian or culture or family. And so let's, let's start there.
Tell me about your family and, and how you grew up before you actually rejected whatever that was.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Sure, sure. I GRE Christian household. My family really, really got deep into church. When I was around eight years old, I went with my mother every week. My father wasn't a deep believer, but he wasn't a non believer. But it was mostly my mother and I and we would go, you know, Sundays, we would go Wednesdays. I don't know if, you know, the Baptist people out there know the RAs, the royal ambassadors, and I was part of that. And you know, church became a very big part of my life. From about eight years old on, I continue to be a part of that church. And it was a rather small church, maybe two, 300 people. So there's, you know, these really small groups of a. It's a smaller, you know, setting and, and everybody becomes very, you know, close knit. So church was a very, very core part of my growing up.
And that was also in the 80s and the 90s. I'm dating myself here. You know, it was the 80s and the 90s and very fundamental church, very conservative church, very traditional church.
I continued to go all the way up into my high school years. You know, like most people, I had some teenage strife going on in my life and I had some, you know, family things like that. But church didn't, church didn't waver at all at that point. It was kind of me learning to grow up and how to rectify how life actually happens versus what the church is telling me life is supposed to be. And there were always questions there. I think that's where I'll start. You know, when I was a young teenager, there were questions and things I didn't understand.
As I got a little older, I continued to ask more questions. And I'm, I'm a curious person. I think we'll probably talk about that a lot at the rest of the podcast. I'm just a. I'm a natural skeptic. You know, a word. A word that's, you know, very near and dear to your podcast. I'm a natural skeptic. I'm not a cynic. I'm not a cynic. I don't believe in negativity or looking for the wrong in things, but I'm always looking for.
If there's a question to be asked, I'm going to ask it is basically how I would say that, right?
I continued to go through my faith walk. I continued to live in a very secular world, in a very Christian, you know, environment. So there's these very two. It's this dichotomy of life that I was living in. And those two experience didn't always add up. So it made for a lot of tension and questioning and asking. Now, the anchor to a lot of this was during the summertimes, I would always go to these Christian conference camps and have these mountaintop experiences where I saw Jesus and I saw the glory of the Lord and said, this is what the world is really about. And then I go back to the secular world and just the experiences didn't. Didn't connect. And running into maybe 16, 17, 18, I started asking more serious questions.
And the people in church couldn't either couldn't or wouldn't answer. To this day, I don't know what the answer that was. They couldn't or they wouldn't answer.
And I still wanted to be faithful.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: I imagine that was a bit of a struggle.
Can you recall some of those questions that were burdening you? I mean, obviously there was a disconnect between what those mountaintop experiences and what you were experiencing probably at high school.
But. But what were some of those questions that were rising up in you that, that it felt like weren't being answered where they wouldn't be answered or they would, you know, they couldn't answer them.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: You know, it's funny because at the time they felt super big, and now they feel very basic. Now that I'm older, they feel very basic. You know, it's like, why. Why does God let bad things happen? You know, now? I mean, why. Why do. Why do we see children starving in countries? And why does that allow, you know, why are people captured as prisoners of war and tortured and die in captivity after, you know, 20 years without any chance to come back? Like, things like that? And I just wasn't getting answers to those. To those types of questions. And I was, I think when I. When I step back and look at my questions, I go to church and it's not about suffering. It's about joy and release and calm and peace. And yet you walk out of the church doors and all of a sudden you know, you're in this.
You're in the secular environment where people are not being kind and good and caring and thoughtful to each other. And if it's, if it's so right, why aren't other people seeing this? If it's so. If. If it is true, why aren't other people connecting with it? Why aren't they aligning with it? And just the questions I would, I would ask, I wouldn't get any types of answers for those. And again, I never blamed anybody for that. It was never, it was never a blame game, but it was this, this natural skepticism of needing some sort of answer was enough to make me. I don't know, it created a tension inside me which ultimately became. It kind of came to a head at. Again, 18 years old. After I graduated high school, I had another one of these mountaintop experiences. Decided I really wanted to be a pastor.
If I'm having this secular universe world where everything's not the way I want it to be, but it's. Everything's great in church. I need to dedic. Dedicate my life to being in church. If I can't rectify why this and this can't be together, I'm going to separate myself from this and go to. This was. Was kind of my thought process. It's a very. It's a very simple thought process now as I'm older and a bit more mature. But it was, it was a thought process nonetheless.
And so at 18, I went to a Christian college and I started learning about becoming a pastor and learning about the Old Testament, the New Testament. I started getting into it.
And I don't want to call out any names, but I'll tell you that at some point while we were in. While I was in that school there, we started to come up with some challeng challenges of the Bible. As we were learning the Bible, you know, how there are things that seemingly contradict which again, as I look back, I realize had I just been patient enough to get through the challenges, I probably gotten there, but I asked the professor directly to his face and hoping to get a real answer, I said I won't again, I'm not going to say his name, but Professor, I. You are a PhD. You are a super intelligent man. You're one of the most intelligent people I know and you're, and you're teaching me about these contradictions, these challenges, these, these complications.
How do you rectify it? You know, I wanted, I was looking for a mentor to rectify this for me. And his words were, I have faith. And I understand, again, in retrospect, I understand that that was a positive thing to say, I have faith. Because what he meant by faith is not what I heard him mean by faith. What I heard him mean by I have faith is faith is a noun. I hold it in my heart, I have it. And because I have it, I don't need to ask questions or I don't worry about the answers or.
And so that made me think again as an 18 year old kid with no real direction, that if I don't, if I am asking the questions, I obviously don't have the faith. I wasn't blessed with this faith you speak of, this noun that you speak of. And I ultimately left the church because of that. Because I said if I continue to ask questions and people keep telling me that the answer is have faith, have faith, have faith, have faith. And I can't have faith, then this isn't meant for me. Again, it's a misunderstanding. And in retrospect I understand that it's a misunderstanding, but it set me off on a really strange and unusual journey. One, one that I think, I kind of think God meant for me to be on.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: It's very disconcerting, isn't it, when you, you build your life and your hope on something you feel like is fairly solid and then you start testing the ground and the, and the ground becomes a little bit more fragile, a little bit more fragile and there seems to be nothing holding it up.
At least that was your perception at the time.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: It was.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: And I can see at that age and stage, and you may not have been aware of perhaps a lot more resources other than your, your professor, the smart one, who should have known but, but didn't, or led you in a direction or opened the door to, to deconstruction, I guess you could say, to deconstructing your faith. So you said you left the faith. Tell me what that looked like. Did you?
Was it a process over time? Was it a sudden decision you made, like I just can't believe that anymore. What did that look like?
[00:14:04] Speaker A: I think it was a sudden decision.
I, I realized that I had been, or at least I felt in my heart that I had been trying and trying and trying with all the resources I had available to me. And I had done what I knew how to do. And I had, I had, I had given it the old college try, literally and pun intended, but it hadn't worked out or it hadn't been that path for me. So I, interestingly enough, again, in retrospect, I realized what I did is I went searching for meaning still. I just went searching in other places for meaning. So I, which if you kind of reverse that whole thing, you realize that I always knew there was something there. I always knew that there was a, that there was a meaning and a source of all of it, but I didn't know where to find it. So I went seeking it. And I was a person who went.
I read a lot of philosophy, a lot of psychology.
Later on, when it became more popularized, I started reading neurology and physics and quantum physics and science of all types, mythology, other, other religions even, just because I felt like you can't eschew anything without trying. It was a don't knock it till you tried it type thing.
And so I just, I just went out there and learned as much as I could about as many things as I could.
When something struck as feeling true, I said, let's try it out. You're not going to know if it's true until you, until you do it. Spoiler alert. When you do try out other, you know, religions, or I should say other traditions or other, you know, meaning based associations, you find out they're dead ends. You end up finding out their dead ends, you know, even, even for the 10 minutes that they're keeping you happy, 15 minutes later they're not. I'm using it as an example, but you know, eventually you're going to find that there's, there's, it's a dead end road, which is what ultimately brought me back to the faith. But that did take me 25 or so years.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: 25 years.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Okay. Wow. Okay. So when you, it sounds like when you left Christianity you weren't exactly leaving spirituality altogether. The possibility that there's something more than this material world. Did you ever land in a place where you called or where you embraced an ism, you know, a worldview?
You would call yourself I'm a Buddhist or I'm, I'm this or that, or I'm, I'm an agnostic or I'm an atheist? Did you ever settle on a label of sorts?
[00:16:32] Speaker A: The crazy thing about 25 years is you have several lifetimes to live in. 25 years. And so I called myself all in every one of those. At some point at first I was an atheist. Again, I was very young. I was very, probably a bit church hurt as well. As I've learned in the, in the past as well, you know, I ended up being a little bit hurt, church hurt. And so especially as an 18 year old boy who doesn't have direction, you, you sometimes it's not that you're fighting towards something, you're fighting against something. And so in the beginning I think I was just fighting against anything that was other than my own personal joy, happiness and satisfaction on a, on a very, you know, personal level. So in the beginning I was definitely an atheist.
On the other hand, later as I, as I kind of, you know, realized that there's no, there's no win in that. I, I think Buddhism was one that got to me for a while. I, I felt it, I felt it was something that gave a bit of peace there. But again, as I mentioned, when you go to the ends of something and you find there's a dead end, you realize that Buddhism, I'm not gonna say Buddhism, but Buddhism for me in that time was, it ended up being about me and the world is not about me. The biggest change, I would say, and I went through a lot of those. I mean there was almost all the isms I was at some point.
But the biggest and most important one would be probably somewhere in maybe about eight, nine years ago I started reading a lot of Joseph Campbell. And Joseph Campbell is the.
I don't know how much if anybody knows about him, but just for a quick thing, he's, he's like the, the mythology king. He's the, he's the guy who has written about every mythology and religion that ever lives. And I'm not exagger, ever wrote. I listened to almost every lecture that's available.
And, and I just got into this metaphor, metaphor, metaphor thing. And what became interesting was that at around the same time I was really playing with this idea of just agnosticism and just not knowing. I just, I didn't know. I didn't know what was out there. I had searched all these roads, none of those roads had led anywhere. So clearly, you know, I didn't know. And that word I don't know became a really clutch verbiage for me.
Because when you say I don't know, it doesn't mean I know this is right and I know this is wrong. It means I don't know. It means I have to be open to things that I have previously closed my mind to, if that makes sense. It means that I have to be open to things and I can't be close to things. So the reason these two things come together is because when I got to this place where I was fully open again and I had fully opened my eyes to things that I had previously closed to in this agnosticism world, I reading Joseph Campbell, the very last thing I read by him is a book called Thou Art that. And Joseph Campbell was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He grew up Catholic. He had eschewed Catholicism until he, until his death. But he starts writing his mythology, but he's writing about the Bible.
And this isn't to say that I think Joseph Campbell's mythology of anything is correct or that the mythology of all religions is correct. It's not to say that. It's just to say that that whole, that whole journey opened me to something I hadn't ever done before, which is opening the Bible and reading it for its transcendent truth, not for its direct, literal, explicit truths of which I had been born and raised in a church tradition that told me I had to do that.
So it just, I can't even explain what happened the first time I opened the Bible after having that kind of revelation. I opened the Bible and every word was 50 more words behind every story were 50 more stories behind every, you know, Jonah, who had, I had read a thousand times and thought, I know the details has just layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer that I just, that I just never saw before. And it meant so much more, it felt so much stronger, it felt so much truer. And all of a sudden I could see the face of God through all of it where I just, I had learned the Bible and literality when I was a kid. And as I grew up now I could, now I could see what it meant. And that was the, that was the big shift back over.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: And so you, you opened yourself to the possibility of God in the, I guess the monotheistic sense. Yes, perhaps the person of Jesus and the Trinity. I mean, when you started engaging in scripture again in these stories, it seems so rich with depth and meaning and seemed boundless, right?
Yes, boundless in terms of. And that's true there, there. You can never get to the bottom of the depth and meaning and richness of Scripture, but there, there was something about it that obviously rang true. And now obviously the, the claims of scripture is that there is a person, you know, the person of Christ who is a God made man who came to walk on the earth and, and gave his life for, for those, you know, for our sins. And all of those kinds of things, that those are historical facts about reality. Now, I'm seeking clarity here because you're saying that you're entering back into the biblical narrative to the grand story of God and, and its richness.
Right now I'm trying to tease out, are you, you know, are you in the Jordan Peterson camp where you're, you're seeing the meaning in the, in the text and the, the moral truths and the, and the meaning that's brought through them, but they may not be literally or historical truth or have you, are you, what are, what are you claiming here in terms of your view of the Bible and what convinced you to move back in?
[00:22:14] Speaker A: So I'll tell you this one, one of the biggest, another one of these kind of like mantras that is like stuck in my head since I came back was when I grew up, everything was this or that. It's either literal or it's meaning based or it's metaphor or it's, you know, allegorical. And when, when I came back, I realized it's all of the above and it doesn't, you know, we, we sometimes put these false dichotomies on things or, or I don't even know if trichotomy is a word, right? But we, we put these like, we, we compartmentalize things and we say it must.
Real key word since I came back is that it's, it can be this and that and oftentimes it is, everything is this and that. Now it took me look my, my back door into the faith was metaphor and meaning and truth. And you know, I'm a 40 year old person and so I've had a long enough life to know when I see truth, right? And I've, and I've seen what truth doesn't look like when you look at other traditions. And so when I came back, my back door into Christianity was the truth and the meaning and the metaphor and the scriptural depth and quality.
But then once you see that truth and then you ask somebody, okay, you see that truth. Now I'm going to ask you, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God who came to this world, who died on the cross, who sacrificed himself for your sins? Absolutely also yes. So yes, yes, yes and yes. And there's that, that's where, that's why I say, when we talk about it on our, on our podcast and I say this all the time, it's this and that and that is what makes it so intensely. Rob.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's not either or Is both and.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Right. So what you're reminding me of, of course we are, Is CS Lewis and. And the imagination. And how when you come and open the back door of the house, you know that you can. You can enter into the house through another door, then the front door of maybe literal. Literality or, you know, those preconceived notions of what you think the Bible is. But you're coming in the back door and you're seeing the richness and the meaning and the Met and. And he, you know, he talks about keeping the watchful dragons at bay that you're actually entering in without, you know, considering that you may be engaging. But like you say, it's. It's in a much different way. And so you're embracing the fullness of it rather than maybe the rigid version that you had been handed as a child that seems so shallow and so easily breakable, you know, fragile, because, you know, these things seem not to fit together or whatever it was, but you were able to find a much more rich and robust place to land. So what ended up happening with those questions? I mean, you're still saying it's both ands, so what about those questions that cause you pause?
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Like, we all know, I actually have tell my son this all the time. Like when in learning, there's this phase one, phase two, phase three, learning. I don't know if you've heard of this before, but you know, when. When a kid learns something, they learn it as. As if it's absolute. And yet we know that there's exceptions to it. I before E except after C is what you learn in school, and yet how many times are there exceptions to that? But you learn it because it helps you. And so box one is kind of that. I before E except after C. It teaches you a basic, but it doesn't necessarily mean that your end all, be all ends right there.
Now, as you get older and you get into that second box, you realize that I before E except after C has exceptions. And then you realize that you need to learn those exceptions. And don't get mad at the person who taught you that I before E was it because they weren't teaching you wrong. They were just giving you a foundation. And then by the time you get to phase three, you realize that there's all kinds of language iniquities and challenges and oddities, and so you can move on from there. And I think that that's kind of my journey with this religion too.
I think I grew up in the box one, and I think I was given a very rigid set of standards, and maybe earlier than some, I questioned those standards and got into box two. I just stayed in box two far too long.
I stayed in box two far too long. And when I got back to box three, which is where I hope to say that I am now, it's much more mature.
It's much more understanding that there are nuances and subtleties and there are blocks of information that are connected by, you know, a concatenation. Concatenation of events that mean other things and create other systemic changes. And so, so when, when I talk about now, when I talk about why does God let bad things happen, I can answer that. But it's not because God put his hand down and said, good thing happened to you, bad thing happened to you. That's the simplistic version, right? The, the. There's. It's more than that. It's. It's more. It's a free will argument. It's a understanding of sinful nature and that, you know, God gives us free will and we are able to make those decisions, and those decisions do have consequences and effects on others. And, and God doesn't like that. But God has made an ordered universe and is allowing the rules to play out by themselves. I'm not trying to make a determination for it. I'm just kind of going through the thought processes. I have a larger schema to look at when I'm answering questions like this than I did maybe in box one. So now when I look at it, because I have these different layers to pull from, sometimes I can pull them from meaning, sometimes I can pull them from literality, sometimes I can pull them from apologetics. And understanding that the reason Paul said this is because of this situation of the previous, you know, administration of power and the previous administration power of that, or even because of the philosophers at the time who he was quoting, and that's why he said this. And so things that would have been a huge challenge when your box is small become far less challenging when you open your box up a lot further.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: It sounds as if, though in terms of meaning and objective truth and those, those sorts of things that you've landed on what you feel to be fairly solid.
I would imagine that especially since you've gone on that journeying through the other isms and you have found that they came up short. But there's something solid about Christianity. What would you, if someone asked you, what, why do you believe that it's true? Or something solid, a solid foundation to stand on, actually to give your Life to it sounds like you're very passionate about it, you're podcasting about it. What would, how would you answer that?
[00:28:43] Speaker A: I would answer with, I think the simplest answer is because the personhood of Jesus is the most perfect example of what we should all aspire to. And I think when you read Jesus and you read the Gospels and you read Acts and you learn about Jesus and his teachings, you, Anybody who has lived any life at all knows that they admire that they admire who he is. And the reason they admire who he is is because it is objectively true. It is objectively what we should all be aspiring to because it's how God made us in the first place. If we are made in God's image and then we are sinners, there's a part of us that is made in God's image and knows what is right when we see it. And when you read about Jesus and you see that what Jesus does is right, that feeling alone of knowing that that is the way that we should be, that feeling of aspiration that almost everybody should feel, if not everybody will feel, should be the enough proof alone that this is a life I want to follow. I want to follow a life that is more like Jesus. I want to be more like Jesus. I want to live my life like Jesus. And then when you say that, if you can say that I would like to be more like this Jesus person, you have to ask your next self the next question. Who was Jesus being like Jesus was being like God because Jesus was God. So it leads itself. It's this, it's this self confined journey. If I see myself as a child of God or if I see myself as made in the image of God, and that image of God can see the image of God in Jesus and want to be that, it becomes a cycle of I, I'm part of that. And, and that's why this is true. It's believable because it's true to my own experience.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I know that there, there are some views within Christianity that look at Christ as aspirational, as he's the example, he's the one that we're called to be like.
But in terms of being the savior, of being the one who sacrificed for us, the who who made the, you know, sacrificed himself as an atonement for our sins, that, you know, that we, we, we surrender to him and, and we give our, ourselves to him.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: And we fall at his feet for forgiveness and all of those things.
Is that something, a truth or reality in which you embrace?
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. 100%.
I believe that we all are sinners, we are fallen from grace, and we have tendencies to be everything but what we want to be.
I think that Jesus died on the cross as the ultimate example and sacrifice for our sins, for our forgiveness, for our salvation.
And I think that without that, we wouldn't be able to believe in that perfection of personhood in Jesus. And because of that sacrifice, we have not only a reason to believe, but a final knowledge that that gift has been given, that the present has been delivered, and that now it's just up to us to do our best to try and live up to his example. And. And then in the meaning side, it is also up to us in our lives to try and sacrifice as well. For, you know, to sacrifice our flesh for our. For the spirit of God. It is up to us for to.
It is up to us to die to our flesh daily so that we can be reborn daily to the. To the goodness of God in the same way that Jesus did that for us. So this is my yes and yes answer. It's yes, metaphorically. I think 100% that sacrifice was necessary. It was for the same reasons. And literally, do I think it happened? Yes, I do as well.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: No. Thank you for that clarity.
I appreciate that. And I love that you brought up meaning here in that, too, because when you left Christianity the first time and you said you were seeking after meaning, that was the first thing that you said now. And you also compared these other worldviews where you were seeking meaning.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: But somehow you landed back in this place where you started in a. In a different, much more robust way.
But what is it about Christianity that brings meaning that these other worldviews didn't and what did? And you kind of started describing what that might look like.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah, like I said, it's. It's a really interesting progression. And it's the kind of irony that fits my life perfectly.
The fact that I would leave something, go, you know, essentially travel the world of thought and end up back where I started from is a very me thing, it seems. But I'm happy for the journey. I'm happy for.
I think it was necessary. I think I'm just such a natural skeptic. I needed to kind of check off all the boxes of what does and doesn't work until I could find out what did. And so that's why I have so much, so much confidence in this now, is because I've had that. But when you ask what it was that didn't, you know, when, when you're looking at things like. And I'm hesitant to, like, call out any individual religions, but as I, as I sought them out, there were just as many questions, complications, contradictions. There was just as much, I don't know, what's the word? There's, it's not so much absolutes. There's just. There's relativism. Relativism in them as well, which, which, which is a challenging conversation to have, but mostly that the majority of those religions make you the center of your own universe, or those isms, they make you the center of your own universe. And if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that every time I've turned to myself, I've let myself down.
Every time I have ever trusted in my own wisdom alone, I have found myself coming up short, no matter what, every time. And so whether I'm seeking out stoicism, whether, you know, stoicism says just go for it, be on it, do it. You know, suck it up, keep going. You know, Marcus Aurelius could do it. You can do it too, you know, is a lot of that. But then, guess what? When you're laying in bed at night and everything hurts really bad and you're really sad and you have nowhere to go, Marcus Aurelius is not there to give me a hug and tell me it's going to be okay. Jesus is. You know, when, when I'm, you know, going through any number of, you know, hustle culture, you know, let me go through the hustle culture. Let me gain my own satisfaction by way of success.
Let me, you know, create a business and make it, it grow and, you know, get attraction and get focus and get fame and get adoration.
Anybody who's ever had adoration knows how quickly that adoration fades. Hey, go be in a band. You know, let's. Let's forget all the isms. Let's just become great art, you know, at art and become in a great band and get, you know, the, the adulation of fans who tell you how great you are. You still go lay down and it's quiet, the music isn't playing anymore, and you're alone. And so all of these things that I sought out end up with you being the center of your own world. They end up with you resting on your own world. And, and what you do need and what you do require is the outside world to reflect what your inside world does, and it doesn't. And so with Christianity, it's. It's exactly the opposite way out. You spend Your world.
You spend your life focused on the world in front of you instead of inside of you. And what ends up happening is the world outside you, you, when, when, when you need it, you have the tools to deal with any of those things as opposed to, as opposed to being your own God, essentially. And so I have something to lean on. When I'm having a hard day, when I'm having a hard time, when I'm going through something, when I realize the limits of my own space. I don't rely on me anymore. I pray. I don't rely on myself. I rely on my community at church. I don't rely when I'm, when my, when my family is going through something. I no longer, you know, go to a self help book or a psychology book and try these things out. We pray with my family and we say if there is a book that we need to read that's going to help us, you know, help guide us to that book so we can find it. But I would say that the biggest difference for me is that it's, it's a difference in focus.
The other ones require you to be the center of your own universe, your own source of power and your own support system.
And Christianity works exactly the opposite way. It doesn't require you to be any of those things.
You become the vessel by which God is the source of power, by which God is the source of strength, by which God is the source of guidance, by which God is the source of knowledge. And that reverse of polarity is everything.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: That is beautifully stated. And just to take that a step further again, and all of those other faiths, it's all you say, it's all about yourself and, and that you're your own God, but it's also your own salvation.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: To do these things in, in whatever path or steps or, or whatever, to create even that, that oneness or to reach that place where you're accepted in, in, in front of God or whoever that whatever the ultimate is. But in Christianity, obviously it's not that, is it?
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Not at all. I can't get into the whole thing here, but it, because it would be way too long. But one of the things that we talked about last year was that shame and guilt are two different things. Shame. Shame is what. Guilt is when you do something wrong. Shame is when you feel that that thing that you did wrong is who you are.
And in Christianity you don't have to rid yourself of either to come to God. You can, you can be in the lowest of your low and walk right up to God and go, I don't deserve you.
I don't. I haven't done anything to deserve your grace, your love, your care, your mercy, your kindness. But you will get it. You will get it. And in no other tradition that I looked at or followed was that even remotely a possibility. In all of the other things that I followed, it was more about when you get yourself cleaned up, when you get yourself stood up, when you get yourself buttoned up, up, then you can be worth something, then you are value, then you have value. And again, that's just such a, such a different variation. And again, somebody who's been around, you know, that's the truth. People can't clean themselves up enough. They, you.
No person is without sin, no person is without fault. And if you're relying on yourself to rid yourself of that fault before you have value, you're never going to reach it. It's not a reachable goal.
And so again, just another reason why Christianity is.
It speaks to the heart of what we all know that we need. And we know that we need it because we were born and raised and created in the image of God. And so we, we know true when we see it because it is a part of us.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's beautiful. That's why they call it the good News.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: That's why it's the good news.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the good news because we don't deserve it it.
But, but we need it. And God knew that we needed and he made it, made a way for us to have grace and mercy.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: In our. And, and that's through Jesus. So that is, that's a beautiful presentation of the Gospel there, Jason. Thank you for that. I'm also curious about being a skeptic and continuing in your, in a healthy view of skepticism, even as a Christian, that that's okay.
Absolutely to ask questions because I know you came from a Christian world at the beginning that it wasn't okay to ask questions. But, but you are obviously again, you're a learner, you're a seeker, you're a questioner, as you said.
What does that look like in the Christian life as a, as a, an earnest question asker?
[00:40:40] Speaker A: When I first came back, I was quite scared, if I'm being honest, to ask questions again because I knew, I felt that this faith was right and I knew that I was, had found the right path. But I also knew that when I was young and asked questions, it was not well received.
So I was very scared to ask questions when I came back. But when I did sit down with one of the pastors of the church and I asked, I kind of laid it all out. I told him my history and my backstory and that I'm a person who just naturally questions, a natural skeptic, if you will. And he said, God makes no mistakes.
If God puts you on that journey to ask questions, it's because you need to be asking questions.
And I have let that lead and that, that part of the Holy Spirit lead me since the beginning. So I continue to ask questions. What I think is important as people ask questions though is I mentioned earlier that agnosticism, in my opinion this may be not the technical definition, I haven't actually looked it up, but is to say I don't know and I don't know said. Another way is I'm open to all things and I will vet all things with this through the same unfiltered, unbiased lens so that I can give everything an equal choice. Now, that doesn't mean that everything that's going to come through equally is going to be true. It's not right. Truth bubbles to the top, however. And so I feel like as long as you are intellectually honest with yourself and emotionally aware of, of why you're reacting to things in the way that you're reacting when you're questioning them, then skepticism can be a quite a gift. Actually.
It can be a gift because you, you're looking at a question you haven't found the answer for yet. But instead of judging its lack of clarity, it's, it's lack of quick clarity and saying, well, that must be false. You're just holding it on a shelf. You're holding it in a place of this is a piece of knowledge that doesn't have an answer to it one way or the other. So I'm holding on to it until that answer becomes clear.
In fact, there's another great quote from one of the other pastors from my church was we were talking about scriptural complication. And he said, he goes, I've been teaching the Bible, for reading the Bible and teaching the Bible for over 50 years. And the one thing I've learned about the Bible is that when I don't understand the Bible, when I come across, let me say that correctly, I realize that when I come across something in the Bible I don't understand, it's not because the Bible is wrong, it's because I don't understand why it's right yet.
And that has been one of my, my major like stakes in the ground. When it comes, especially when it comes to reading the Bible, is because there's going to be things that challenge you. But instead of going, oh, there's a challenge, there's a complication, there's a contradiction, must be wrong, which is what a lot of people do. They. They see one thing and they go, oh, there it goes. The. The whole Jenga Tower comes down because of that. I don't let the Jenga Tower come down. I, I take that piece, I put it on the side. I put it on the I don't understand this entirely yet shelf, and I let it sit there. And the really fascinating and wonderful thing is when you let it sit on that shelf and you continue to learn other things, eventually that little question gets very clearly answered. But we as humans don't have the ability to have all of the information in our heads 100% of the time, 24,7. So we need to wait until we can encounter it.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Well, Jason, I love that you're in a place where you're honest with yourself, you're honest with your questions. You don't fear questions. Truth doesn't fear questions, or shouldn't. Right.
It sounds like that you're in a fairly solid place. I'm sure that there's someone thinking to themselves, well, he went on a bit of a tour of different worldviews. Who's to say that he won't change again?
How would you respond to someone like that?
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Oh, man. First of all, I would say I don't suggest my journey for anybody else. It's not. It's not something that I would. That I would recommend anyone to do.
That I did it and came back is only through God's immaculate storytelling capabilities.
And I, and I appreciate that for that reason.
What is to say that I won't leave it again? I mentioned earlier, skeptic versus cynic, right? I think that there's. A cynic is somebody who's seeking out the negatives and trying to find a way out of it. A skeptic is somebody who's just asking questions and they're doing it from an honest and authentic, authentic place.
I am definitely not a cynic. I am definitely a skeptic. And so, yeah, I'm going to continue to ask questions, but I am very, very confident, mostly because I have asked myself all the questions that I asked myself when I was 16, 17, 18 and 25 that I couldn't answer. And I have answered them so eloquently and so completely that I can't even imagine a question coming up any Ever again, that would lead me to walk away. I mean, it was almost like I had to test myself. So if somebody would say, why would you walk away again? I'd say I've already tested myself. I tested those questions again. I have, I've stress tested it and I came to the truth because when you seek out truth, you find it. And so I'm pretty confident that I'm not going anywhere. But I will always be open.
I will always be open to asking the questions and confident that I'm going to end up back at God again.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: As a question asker.
I just appreciate that about you. And, and I know that there are question askers in our audience and they are hopefully skeptical in all the right ways, not cynical that they're, they're not resistant to wherever they can find truth. And they're listening to your story as someone who's very painfully honest really about your own journeying and they would be willing to take a step forward. Now, you're, you're, you're someone here who also adores the Bible and has found such a depth of richness and beauty and truth in the scripture and especially in the person of Christ. Is that as, is that a place where they should start looking like you, you know, with fresh eyes, maybe with new eyes and taking away some of those perhaps preconceptions of what they think the Bible is?
Where would you start? How would you encourage someone to kind of open this box and take a look?
[00:47:02] Speaker A: I recommend going straight to the gospels. I, I would say, you know, reading the Old Testament is, is tough, especially for somebody who already has some, maybe, maybe some preconceptions or some, you know, cultural misconceptions. I think that's what I was trying to say earlier. Like there's cultural misconceptions to the, to the Christian church. And so if you can strip yourself of those and just go read Jesus and you can go read about the Gospel, it opens itself up to you. When you read it with no preconceptions, does that mean it's going to be easy? No.
But does it mean that you're going to get something in it you're not expecting? I can almost guarantee you it is if you read it with the right intention. If you read it with the belief that there is a higher power who's going to guide you through that, even if you're not a Jesus follower or a God follower yet, if you're, even if you're, I, I think it's interesting that agnostics and atheists still say Things like, you know, the universe is working against me today.
Oh, well, karma is.
Karma's out to get me. You know, they say things like that and it's like you're. That's an admission that you know that there's something out there. There. It's an admission. Now, you may not be calling it God today, you. But you're aware of this bigger power and you're aware of that. And so even I think even a non believer who walks into the Bible with a open heart and lack of preconceptions and reads through the New Testament is going to understand that there's something there that they didn't see previously.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard it said that you can approach things with trust or is suspicion. So there, There's a real posturing there. Yeah, trust versus suspicion and just being.
Just take it in for what it is and see what it is before you write it off. That's. That's really, really great advice. Now, when you told your story, Jason, it.
There were. There were no other players in your story except for perhaps the, the PhD who wasn't able to answer your questions in terms of a Christian.
Were there any Christians in your journeying at all that were helping you along as a guide or answering questions, or were you on this journey by yourself and that will lead to then how. How you think we as Christians could engage with those who are on that journeying?
[00:49:26] Speaker A: That is such an interesting question.
Obviously, my mother was praying for me for the last 25 years, and whether that was explicit, implicit, or, you know, in my face or not, it was definitely happening.
And she. She prayed daily for me to come back, and I came back.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: You maintained a good relationship with your family despite the fact that you. Okay, yes.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. My. My family. There was. There was no judgment when I left. I mean, it wasn't. And it wasn't like I was aggressively anti the religion. It just wasn't. It wasn't for me and I walked my other direction. But, yeah, my family life was great.
But as far as my. My wife is a Catholic.
She was.
She. She has followed her faith for as long as we've been together, but it was just never something that we did together.
It was never something that we really talked about. She. She did her thing, I did my thing. I think there's a. There's a part of it in there that probably kept me. It kept me on a little bit of a leash towards the church at times. I had to go on major holidays and I'm sure there was. I'M sure that, again, that was one of God's little breadcrumbs that kept me close.
But she, she didn't minister to me, and I don't mean this in a bad way or a negative way. She didn't, she didn't try to minister to me. She didn't try to, to pull me in. She never was aggressive about it, but she was there. And I think that had a payment. What I would say more. And, and I, I actually glad you brought this up because I think there are two very important points I would say, truly, God brought me back.
God took me on this journey and God brought me back. And it was, and it was his. It was, it was his journey the whole time.
And I'm incredibly appreciative of that. But there is a really important part which is that the people at the church when I did start going are the reason I continued to go.
They are the, they were the, they were the sticky parts of church when I got back. And it's not just the pastors, and it's not just the pastors. It's the men who were there who embraced me. It was the men who, when I had the really tough questions, and I was still a little bit aggressive in the beginning with the questions and the back and forth between, but, but, but type thing. And they were, they were peaceful and they were calm and they were loving and they were caring and they were, they were all the things that Christian men are supposed to be. And them being good Christian men showed me what a good Christian man could be. And again, when they followed Jesus, I got to see Jesus through them and I got to see who I wanted to be through them as well. And I think that sense of community that a church can offer is unparalleled. And I think the opportunity for anybody who is a Christian to show their Jesusness to others is an opportunity to disciple, to pastor, to minister, to be their priest, whether or not they're standing in the walls of a church or not. And it was absolutely invaluable. And I say this about my two co hosts. I mean, David and Javi are, they are my pastors.
Those guys are the two most Jesus following God, like, caring, helpful, wonderful, beautiful humans. I know. And, and they have been my, they have been my guides, absolutely 100%. And I'll take that a step further to say, had I had that when I was 18 and that PhD said what he said, had I had something more like a Javi and a David in my life, look how different my life would have been. And so I think that my.
I don't want to say final, but I think my final statement about that is that I think that the importance of each individual to show that Christ, like nature in their lives to everyone around them is far more important than the logical, the cerebral, the theological, the philosophical.
All of those things are great. They're fun. The apologetics. I could geek out on apologetics for. For two weeks at a time, but what really matters is showing the heart of God, living out the heart of God and, and you showing the fruits so clearly that those around you are drawn to it and those who are, for whatever reason they're like, are being repelled.
The attraction is more than the repellent, the repellation. It's, you know, it's. That's the important part of this thing, and that's probably my biggest learning in the last couple of years, that it's far less brain and so much more heart.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: It's beautiful. Jason.
Wow. What, what a rich conversation this has been. And I'm so glad that you've taken us on your journey, because I think that it can bring hope for those who are wandering, who are looking, that there is a place to land.
But it's also reassuring, I think, that you bring so much confidence because you have done due diligence. You went on the long and winding road and you came back to where you began, but in just so much more profound way. And I love the way that you, you, you really. And it is the work of God. It is the work of God. He's with us no matter where we are, even in our wanderings. And he leads us to Himself when. To Himself, when. When we're open and he surrounds us with his people. And that's what He's. He's done for you. And what a beautiful testimony.
[00:54:56] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: This is. Thanks so much, Jason, for joining me today.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: No, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. This has been wonderful. Thank you.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Jason's story reminds us that faith isn't the absence of questions, it's often found through them. His journey shows us that even after years of walking away, truth has a way of drawing us back deeper, stronger, and more certain than before.
If you're a skeptic, a seeker, or someone carrying old wounds from a fragile faith, maybe today is the invitation to open the Bible with new eyes, to read not with suspicion, but with curiosity.
If you've enjoyed this conversation, we invite you to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with someone who might be searching. Visit xceptic.org to explore our curated playlists tailored to your questions, or reach out to to
[email protected] if you want to connect or even share your own story.
X Skeptic is part of the C.S. lewis Institute podcast Network. We're grateful for the excellent work of our producer Ashley Kalfer. Until next time, remember, Truth welcomes your questions. We hope to see you next time, where we'll explore another unlikely story of belief.
