May 22, 2024 • 50 mins
I had such a rich conversation with the one and only Naked Pastor, David Hayward (@nakedpastor) about his incredible journey of deconstruction.
David is a former Presbyterian minister and a brilliant cartoonist. He has a B.A. in Bible and Theology, a Masters in Theological Studies in New Testament, and a Diploma of Ministry. He was ordained to the ministry and served local churches… preaching and teaching and providing pastoral care for about 30 years.
In 2009, David had a profound "mystical moment" where he saw the interconnectedness and oneness of all people. This clashed with the exclusivity and hierarchy baked into religious institutions, ultimately leading him to leave church leadership. His book is titled, “QUESTIONS ARE THE ANSWER.”
David's provides a unique, valuable space for spiritual independence and deconstruction. I'm grateful our paths crossed!
-
The TRAUMA & DARKNESS that can follow leaving your faith community
-
Deconstruction isn't a new "MOVEMENT but simply questioning beliefs OPENLY
-
How his cartoons use HUMOR to expose absurdities in religious DOGMA
WATCH this episode on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SoulRoseShow
...
Follow David on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nakedpastor/
Join our new MINDBODY Soul Membership:
https://www.cherieburton.com/mindbody-membership
Get my Free WHOLE BODY Healing Mini-Course:
https://www.cherieburton.com/freeminicourse
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cherie.burton/
Ask to join our private Facebook group, Soul Rose COMMUNITY, for exclusive content and free monthly, live sessions & classes! https://www.facebook.com/groups/353442392180748/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello. David Hayward, aka naked pastor.
Hey, how are you? I'm great.
So you and I were kind of talking off air before we started
recording, and I was telling you, I've had your book here. If those of you
are watching on YouTube, questions are the answer
with a little bit of your background and story and some of your brilliant cartoons
(00:24):
that. Do you call them cartoons? What do you call them? I do. I do.
I call them cartoons. Yeah. Okay. Well, I was telling you that, like,
the reason it's so compelling is because it's bringing in
levity with such deep,
eternally charged, if you will, concepts that are just
alive in the kind of collective psyche, and you bring
(00:45):
in this element of lightness
mixed with that, and it's beautiful.
Thank you. Uh, somebody gave me a huge compliment
lately. They said, uh, uh,
cartoons are for naked pastor. What? Parables were for
Jesus. I really love that because
(01:07):
I'm, you know, they're not comparing me to Jesus, but they're comparing
the fact that somebody can use something so day to
day and normal and. And
mundane to illustrate some,
you know, tremendous truths. So. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's. That's really cool. I appreciate that. Yeah,
(01:28):
just. This is just like. It just lifts the weight of whatever it is.
I was actually showing my sister who I was talking to earlier. I
was like, oh, I'm gonna have David Haywire on the naked pastor. And I was
showing her some of your cartoons. And there's this one
with these, you know those, like, bearded,
bald robed men. One of them is writing, and it
(01:50):
says, one of it looks like a prophet or something is like.
Or God is writing, like, over the prophet. I don't know. You'll have to tell
me. But over the prophet's shoulder is the prophet's writing, and he's saying,
write that they were created as a second thought to be our helpers. That should
shut them up.
I want to go there first if you're okay with that. Yeah, yeah. I love
(02:13):
that you're an advocate for women and you've seen this
patriarchal culture, and you're, you know, you've deconstructed that.
We're going to talk about deconstructing. Deconstruction today, but my.
I guess I had my own sacred feminine awakening. Have you heard, I'm sure you
have, of Sue Monk kid and the book dance of the dissident daughter?
Are you familiar with that? Not that book
(02:35):
particularly yet, though. No. Black book.
Yeah. Yeah. She wrote this incredible book
about her life as a pastor's wife, or
they were in the clergy somehow, and she had this whole awakening.
And even though her religion of origin is different than mine, I really related
with some of her insights and
(02:58):
some of the things that she had walked through in trying to claim her voice
and power as a woman. Can we start there with you? Because I've
seen a lot of your cartoons are very feminine friendly. Let's just
say. How has your understanding of
women's roles. Let's just say, let's start with the church and what you
noticed because you were a minister for a time and how
(03:19):
that's evolved for you. Yeah.
So
I think what happened to me was some point along
the road, I realized that we are
all one. We're all connected at a deep and fundamental level
and that there's no hierarchy of value
(03:42):
among any of us. And the human race,
whether it's your gender or your
sexual orientation or your color, your
race, your religion, your ideology,
your lack of religion or whatever, to me, it was a very
profound, um. Let's call it a
(04:05):
mystical moment where I. I just saw the oneness of us all and.
And that this necessarily translates
into, um, valuing
women or valuing LGBTQ folk
or valuing people of color, etc. Etcetera.
So, um, it's. It's just, to me, it's
(04:27):
not like I chose to take on feminism, and then I chose to
take on LGBT or I chose to take on race
or anything like that. It's like we're all one. Everybody gets to
play. I'm sorry about that. Yeah. And
it just. That's how,
for me, it seems the church is drawing a line in the
(04:49):
sand about who's in and who's out. And to me,
that's fundamentally wrong. It's a fundamental
understanding of what love is. Yeah. And sort of co opting a
Jesus, because I know he makes his appearance in a lot of your cartoons, which
I absolutely love. Co opting a Jesus that would put
people on the margins or not include them
(05:12):
in the greater discussions. Let's just say how things are run or what
policies are. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. How does the Jesus. Did you always see Jesus that way, or
did that have to distill on you later as you kind of
how your own awakening to the oneness that you're talking about?
Well, you know, my understanding of Jesus has
(05:33):
vastly changed over time, but,
like, I was sharing with you maybe before the show. Well, my. My
deconstruction began on my graduation
day from seminary. I was actually in my
robe, getting ready to go to the ceremony
when it suddenly dawned. On me. I don't think
(05:54):
I believe in the inspiration of scripture, that, you
know, that it fell out of heaven as a divine document,
and, you know, that was the
beginning. It was almost like a corrupt
code was inserted into my hard drive,
and it just started to do its work, slowly
(06:15):
corrupting my theological
software and eventually led to
me leaving the ministry in 2010.
So, you know, that. That was decades. That took decades. It took a while.
Yeah. Yours is more of a slow burn than mine. My own
deconstruction process and path. Mine was more like a line in
(06:36):
the sand, although I could see how women
were excluded, heavily
excluded, and disempowered. And I wouldn't have even said
that back then that I felt disempowered, you know, but
over the years, I could. It was just the slow drip of this. Something's not
right here. Mormonism has its own
(06:59):
flavor of hierarchy. Because you spoke to. You don't believe that there's
hierarchy. I certainly don't believe that now. But there was a
time that I did. I really believe there was a quote unquote,
patriarchal order both on heaven and in
earth, and that this church was restoring the
patriarchy to the earth, literally,
(07:20):
as the most, like, divine template. And so there was
no real feminine co representation
at the highest levels. And then, like, there's a prophet and twelve apostles and a
quorum of the 70, and they're all men, wonderful
men. Uh, nonetheless, women
were not given the same power and authority keys of administration
(07:42):
or visibility. And I. And I'm very
young, I'm talking, like, seven or eight years old, I could see the gender
disparity, but I didn't dare argue with that. That's just the way God did
it. Right, right. So. And that's what
deconstruction means, basically, is when you start questioning
things, it's. It's a dismantling
(08:04):
of what we thought to be true. And
to me, deconstruction in any form is a
healthy process. We hear the word
deconstruction being used all the time now. Deconstructing the
patriarchy, deconstructing
gender, deconstructing
(08:28):
capitalism, deconstructing democracy.
You know, everybody's deconstructing something, the words constantly being
used. And basically it means dismantling, to look at the
parts, to examine it in its detail
and figure out which is working, which isn't
working, which is good, which is bad, and what
(08:50):
is helpful, what is not, etcetera. And I compare it
to Marie Kondo. I don't know. Yeah.
What is it like the joy. Yeah, the japanese minimalist who
teaches us how to declutter. And I kind of like
that analogy when it comes to our beliefs, where we declutter
our beliefs and we keep what brings us joy, and we
(09:14):
give away or, you know, no longer take with
us or keep beliefs that are we
no longer need or. Or harmful. Don't you think there's something really
alive? Let's just say in the christian consciousness around suffering is more
righteous versus joy. Oh, man. That's what I grew up in,
the. Martyr thing, the persecution complex. Like, you're more spiritual
(09:37):
if you're, like, down in the ashes and the trenches and
suffering, and Jesus sacrificed for you. So you need to co regulate
that suffering that you added to that stuff. All of that.
Yeah. There's two routes you can take for
Jesus. One is the health wealth route, where
Jesus wants you to be healthy and wealthy and to
(09:59):
succeed, and then the other route,
you know, and that's the whole resurrection route. Like, he wants you to succeed and
be. Yeah, that's like transactional gospel, isn't it,
too? Like, if you do these things, Jesus will bless
you with wealth and prosperity. And healthy, but prosperity
gospel, where the other one is the
(10:21):
persecuted, suffering Jesus
who ends up being crucified, dead and buried,
and where you deny yourself and crucify
yourself and turn the other cheek
and that whole root and embracing
poverty. So that's what I preferred.
(10:43):
And, you know, I was raised in a home. That
sort of conditioned me to prefer that,
but that's definitely the route I chose
and had to learn to heal myself from. Do you think that created
depression for you? No, I don't think I was not depression. I
mean, I was really into it. I mean, that whole
(11:05):
theology and spirituality of.
Of suffering, the suffering Christ,
and self denial
and all that is very rich. Sure. Yeah.
Well, in sacrifice, in my theological
construct, was the highest thing in heaven. Obedience and
(11:27):
sacrifice, those two things were the highest order of heaven. The
more that you say, it's kind of
like that self abnegation meets, like, you're
so bad and dirty and unholy and weak,
but you're so loved and cherished and full of the light, and you're a child
of God. Like, we don't know quite how to marry those two ways
(11:49):
to see ourselves. Right. And it creates a
lot of splitting in the psyche.
Yeah, I really struggled with that. Yeah, I did, too.
To heal from that. In fact, when
I left the ministry in 2010, I knew that was going to be my
(12:09):
number one project. I had to go to the school of life and learn how
to take care of myself and think
more positively and build a business and make money
and promote myself and sell my art and make
do books and courses and sell those and blah, blah, blah, blah.
It was a huge undertaking.
(12:31):
It was the most difficult university I ever went to.
And I ended up writing a book about it called money is spiritual. I can't
believe I've written a book called that. But that's what came out of that
whole thing. You know what? I went through a similar process where I decided that
I wanted to create legacy wealth, let's just say
just because, and also because I love the idea of
(12:54):
contributing and having options and added resources and what have you. And
it was the same thing I had to look at. You know, money is the
root of all evil and, you know, and. And also
just deeper, deeper, deeper. There is a very strong
undercurrent of transactional spirituality and prosperity gospel that
you were speaking to earlier of. Like, there's this track you go down if you're
(13:15):
the Lord's special elite chosen holy, and he's going to
bless you with riches and things. And you can read that into scripture.
You can see that. Like, he gave Abraham lands and cattle and all this
inheritance. And so you start to equate your,
I guess, performance, spiritual performance.
And so for people who are doing all the things like me
(13:37):
running the race and the trek and going on that hamster wheel of
striving and perfection and worthiness, and you're not seeing the
promises that you were told you would get if you did those things
right, personalize it and say, oh, gosh, I really am not worthy.
I'm just not worthy. Yeah, but I
experienced the same thing in the whole poverty mentality as
(13:59):
well. The poverty spirituality,
where you get this sort of
understanding, and there's threads of this in
scripture as well, where the more you suffer, the closer God is
to you. Yeah. And that
you're more deserving of God if you suffer more
(14:22):
and it creates an upside down hierarchy.
It's a race to the bottom. In the
prosperity gospel, it's a race to the top.
In the poverty gospel, it's a race to the bottom. But
the problem is just two sides of the same coin
(14:43):
of who can claim to be closer to God.
Yeah, that's such a good point. I hadn't thought about
that, but thank you for that visual. So
true. I've seen, I've lived both sides of that as well. I
remember on my, when I was serving as a Mormon missionary and
(15:04):
putting the name tag on and knocking on the doors and stuff. I was in
the Bible belt in Texas, and literally everyone hated us
because Mormonism isn't a super popular word brand of
Christianity anyway. So I'm 22, I'm knocking on doors, and the
sweltering heat, door slam after door slam after door slam. And the way
that I learned to cope with that rejection
is to develop a thick skin, because the definite
(15:27):
message that we got from our leaders was that that just means you're
doing the right thing for God. It's that
persecution complex of, I can get thicker
skin by people rejecting me and whatever. I didn't even think to
myself, now, why would they think this about Mormons?
And how can I meet them in that place of, like, why do you feel
(15:49):
so divisive? And what do I represent to
you? Now that I have done
quite a bit of deconstructing, I can see why there are elements of
Mormonism where people would definitely say, this isn't a safe
space. This isn't, you know, there were elements of it, like the history
of polygamy and other things. When you
(16:11):
started to, okay, how did that flip
that upside down, where the poverty. You're going down, down, and then you're in the
suffering and kind of that martyr for Christ. And however that
looks, how did it start to fizzle or
dismantle? Like, when did you kind of awaken to, maybe this isn't the
best way that I can commune with God or show up in the world.
(16:34):
Well, I, like I said,
when I left the ministry in 2010, I was
unemployed and I really felt unemployable
because my training was solely in theology
and pastoral ministry. And what good is that outside
(16:55):
of the professional ministry? I've come to
discover there's a lot of good in it. But at that time, that's the way
I felt. And I knew I had to
somehow do something about it myself. And
because I had, up to that point, relied
on God to rescue me,
(17:17):
and he wasn't showing up.
So I really did feel like I was on my
own. And this is one of the big things that
happens with deconstruction, is
you need to learn to think and live differently.
And at first it's going to feel transgressive.
(17:39):
And I knew that in my knower, like,
intuitively, I knew I'm going to feel like I'm
transgressing. This is going to be really hard because not
only do I have to learn business, but I have to get over my feelings
of yuckiness for
engaging in business you know, not that
(17:59):
business is yucky, but it was for me. It
seemed like it for me, money
and spirituality sullied each other.
And you're like, selling your soul or something like that.
So that's what happens when people deconstruct, is
there's this season of where you're feeling like you're
(18:20):
transgressing, and
you have to deal with those feelings and
come to a place where you
realize those feelings of transgression are
unfounded. There's nothing wrong with money.
There's nothing wrong with making money. There's nothing wrong with
(18:43):
business. There's nothing wrong with making art and selling art or writing books and
selling books or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But
you have to get to that point where you not just know that, but you
actually don't feel the guilt
and shame when you engage in it.
So a lot of people who are deconstructing their beliefs and
(19:05):
trying to learn how to live in this world have to go through that season.
For some people, it doesn't end. When you
talked about how you were graduating
from the seminary and you had this moment of, I'm not sure
the scriptures are inspired. I can't remember how you phrase it. What do you mean
by that? What did you mean by that? How did that distill upon you as
(19:27):
kind of like a thing? Well, because up to that
point, when I was a teenager, I studied the Bible. I had a
youth leader who studied the Bible, taught me how to study the
Bible. I had an interlinear Bible. Um,
I don't know if you know what that is, but it's a Bible that has
several translations running together. Oh, I think it was like
(19:48):
the King James, the living, and
the NRSV and the amplified versions all
running together. The big, thick Bible, right? And I had pencil crayons
and colored pencils, I mean, and pens. And I was all,
I still have it, actually. It's quite a thing to look at because it's full
of color and full of writing in the margins. That's
(20:10):
how my missionary scriptures are. I'm totally right there with you. They look like. So
I was like a total Bible fanatic. And then I went to Bible
college. I got two years
of Greek there and a year of Hebrew there,
and then seminary, and I got more Greek. I took Greek every
year to the point where I was speed reading New Testament Greek.
(20:32):
I took more Hebrew. I took a year of Aramaic. I was studying
under doctor Gordon Fee, one of the world world's most famous
biblical scholars. And like I was on my
way to become a biblical scholar. That was my goal. I even started my
PhD in New Testament studies at the University of Toronto.
But long story short, when I was
(20:53):
graduating from my master's in New Testament studies,
I was reading a book. I had some time. I was done
all my papers. I've finished all my exams. I already
knew I was graduating cum laude, and I was just looking
for stuff to do. And I found a book in a bookstore that looked
interesting, and I picked it up and I bought it and I
(21:17):
read it and it devastated. It was called the
found you. Do you feel like it found you.
One of the most influential books in my life,
and you're going to get people asking, what's the name of the book? So I'm
going to tell you. It's. James breached the silence
of Jesus, and he
(21:40):
basically analyzes a few of the sayings of
Jesus that he feels were authentic and
that weren't put in his mouth by the writers of the Gospels and so
on. And he just sort of unfolds his argument. And it was, like, very
convincing. And it wasn't that I stopped believing in the inspiration
of scripture. It was just that the seed of doubt was planted
(22:03):
and it was too late. Like, it was too late. It couldn't be
reversed, and it was in there. And
so I, you know, a few years later, ended up getting ordained,
becoming a minister, and I served the church as a pastor for about 30
years, deconstructing the whole time I was
serving pastor. That's
(22:25):
fascinating. I'm always struck when I talk
to different people who were, you know, like they were on a certain trajectory.
Yeah. And their life was mapped out and they
truly felt they were doing the right thing. But, you
know, right is a little more nuanced to us now,
maybe as it was back then, but it was like black and white. You're either
(22:47):
dedicating your entire service, your entire life to devotion,
service, putting yourself second, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera. And when you said
inspiration of scripture, what came to my mind is it's so
like you said, jesus taught in parables. When
you really look at the writings, I mean, I grew up with the King James
(23:08):
version, and I've also. Part of my
deconstruction was finding the gnostic texts. That's a whole other story.
But even in the gnostic text and in the
apocrypha and in, you know, the, let's
just say the King James Version of the Bible, Jesus is
not disseminating what to do
(23:31):
other than love. And when someone comes to
him with a question, he reflects the question back to them,
and he teaches in layered parables. So
why the inspiration? To me, the inspiration of scripture has
become so muddied? Because people, let's just say, who are
on an academic, academic path, that we're supposed to look to them as the ones
(23:53):
who know and how to interpret scripture. And then you have
someone who's inspired who. Who maybe, like, they got their own
download, and. And then they disseminate it to their congregation, and they all accept it
as truth when it's. I don't believe that any sacred
texts are meant to be definitive. They're to meet that person where they
are, like you said, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation,
(24:15):
whatever their life station is. And I
think that we've just had, like you said, that kind of, that top down approach
of that hierarchical, like, I'm not. I don't know enough, so I've got to ask
somebody else how to interpret this for me. And we lose the
deeper meaning. We lose the
essence of the teaching because we're, you know, think
(24:37):
Pharisees and Sadducees. I was awake to this for a very long, I would say,
20 years ago. I woke up to the whole pharisee, sadducee thing. Like, why are
there so many rules? Why is everything so
down to the. Didn't Jesus kind of, like, buck up against all
of those rules? He didn't get baptized in the church. He got baptized in
the wilderness. And whenever I'd ask questions like that, they're
(24:59):
like, well, he put a church on the earth when he was here, and
he had apostles and teachers and evangelists and
prophets, and so that's the order that we do it here. And I'm
like, where does. What church was that?
Like? You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. So for me, when you. When you brought up the inspiration of scripture, it
(25:20):
was like, I think that that was my first portal
into ask, that it's okay to ask questions because I was always that
person raising her hand and asking questions, and
I was kind of shamed for that. And I was told to not look
beyond the mark. I was told to pray and fast
and whatever, but I was never allowed to have a
(25:42):
question that bumped up against the existing doctrine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So with me, the whole. And you're
alluding to it here and there, I think
there's two kinds of deconstruction. One is from theology
and the other is from the church. So one's theological,
(26:05):
the other's ecclesiological. And
I started deconstructing ecclesiologically
or theologically, where I started questioning,
oh, is the Bible inspired? Because if it's not,
everything I've hinged my beliefs on
is questionable. Yeah, so everything's questionable. It was
(26:28):
the thin end of the wedge for me, and I knew it intuitively that this
was going to be trouble. But then there's the other deconstruction,
ecclesiologically, with the church, where I tried my best for
many years to serve the church on the inside
and do what I could to make it a better place,
and realized at some point
(26:50):
that with the help of the congregation I was serving,
that my time inside the church was no longer
going to work. And so
I had to make a decision to stay or leave. And I chose to leave
not only for my best interests, but for the best interests of the church that
I was a pastor of at the time. And so, you know,
(27:13):
for me, and this all converged around the same time when
I had that mystical moment where I saw that we were all connected in
one, at a deep love. So you did like that. Was it like a
waking vision or was it a dream or an understanding? It was waking, yeah, it
was awake. And it was kind of like. I'm not going to say it was
a vision or a revelation or anything. It was just like, kind of popped into
(27:34):
my head. It was a beautiful experience. Yeah. Nothing, no
chemicals involved, nothing. It was just happened. Yeah. And,
you know, I started sharing that that would happen in 2009, march of
2009. And in March of
2010, I left. I left the ministry
and. Yeah, it all culminated.
(27:56):
Yeah. Why do you think it's a threat to the
ecclesiastical organizations,
the clergy, the church, the idea of oneness.
Why is that threatening? Why would they not want
oneness? Yeah, religion depends on
exclusivity. A religion can only succeed
(28:18):
if it believes it's the right one.
That's embedded in
the ideology and the mindset. The paradigm of a
religion is that it's the right one.
What about within, like, just say any one religion. So I think you mentioned you
(28:41):
were a presbyterian minister, so let's just say with Presbyterianism
believing it's the one true church, whatever.
What about the awakening within that
religion to what we were just talking about
around not wanting oneness inside just one
religion? Like, you're a pastor, you've had this mystical
(29:04):
awakening, and you're trying to teach oneness, I'm assuming, in some
way, shape or form to your congregation. And there was
that resistance that you were meeting, that resistance why do you think that? So
even within that congregation or within that construct of that
religion? Well,
the congregation was one of the arenas where
(29:26):
I was starting to experience
discomfort, but also online. I'd started my blog,
nakedpastor.com in 2005.
And so in 2009, when I'd had this
moment, I started sharing that.
Naively, I think people are going to want to know.
(29:48):
And I found it very liberating. And I thought other people would
love to feel that feeling of liberation as well. And I was sharing it, and
head office was getting letters of concern from people who would read my
blog and saying, you know, you have a fox
in the vineyard, and, you know, you have a heretic in one of your pulpits
and stuff. And I started getting calls from head office and. And
(30:10):
I knew my time was up. And sure enough,
it led to that. And it's because,
like I said, a religion's presumption
is that it's right. And then
each of the denominations and the micro
groups within it think they're the most right in a
(30:33):
general sea of their own religion. Yeah. So of
course, Presbyterian reformed
theology, you know, based on Calvin and
others, of course they are going to
believe that their theology is the best one.
That's okay. That's fine. Yeah, yeah. But it
(30:56):
doesn't. But, like, what about the rest of the world population? What does
that make them? These are the questions I always had,
even from the time I was little. I'm like, I did the math.
Okay, so first of all, the theology was everyone needs to be baptized with the
proper priesthood authority. Proper priesthood authority that's been restored
to the earth through the latter day
(31:19):
Prophet Joseph Smith. And anyway, just,
there's this whole priesthood line of authority. So I would always be like, well,
how many members of the Lds church are there? Okay, well, right now there's
about 16 or 17 million. And if you look at the entire
world population, it's like 8 billion or something.
And it was like less than one half of, one 10th
(31:41):
of 1% or something crazy like that. And by the way,
like, two thirds of the Lds church right now are considered
inactive, so that number is even less.
But if you look at the straight math
of all of God's children on the earth right now,
needing to get a certain kind of authority, authoritative baptism,
(32:03):
to be recognized by God, to accept a different. To accept a
certain set of standards or
lifestyle, you know, commandments or the theological constructs or
doctrines. The doctrine of Christ is what they call it. It's
like less than one 10th of 1% of the entire world. And
I'm like, well, how? And then they would say, well, in the next life,
(32:25):
everyone's going to accept the same gospel. I don't know if you were told this,
too, like, we're all going to become one, like Zion.
This is where oneness went in my theological thing. Okay.
So everyone's going to gather from all corners of
the world are going to come together. They're going to be as one in Zion,
and they're all going to believe the same thing because it's going to be so
(32:46):
self evident. But it was, well, what are they going to believe? Well, they're going
to believe that there's a hierarchy.
And I'm like, well, if they're all one,
and then they're going to still have a hierarchy, then how are we
all want, you know, it just. These were the questions I already always had that
I felt so bad for the people that didn't have the gospel. I felt so
(33:08):
bad for them. Well, I mean, I remember
being taught that the number 144,000 of those who
were going to be saved on the last day was literal.
Yeah, that's not very many people. I've heard that. I've
heard that, too. Well, that's not very many people. You're a super special
favorite if you make that. Yeah. The competition is very high for those
(33:31):
spots. Yeah. So let
me. Let me ask you something that I. That I.
That I think of often. That happened to you definitely
happened to me, but when I had. When I started the initial stages of my
deconstruction, I was 100% swirling in trauma.
And I mentioned to you on our call earlier, before we started recording, it was
(33:53):
a sense of betrayal, trauma, because there were certain things that I discovered
in my earnest search for truth,
that documents and narratives and different things were not what I was
told, that there were certain key things that were left out
of the narrative I was given and that I was teaching for
my whole life and all the things. Anyway, I went into this real space of,
(34:16):
like, kind of closing in on myself and just.
It was just really not pretty. I was in fetal position
for weeks and sobbing and
reading and crying and going to source documents and going to public
records and going, you know, I wasn't following the naysayers.
I was following my definite sense
(34:37):
of. I was following a trailer
that I know was inspired. I know that I was supposed to follow that trail
and go down that rabbit hole, but then you would hear from other people, like,
well, I told you you'd be this miserable when you stepped away.
I told you if you were listening to Satan and all, they think, like, you
seem so miserable now. See?
(34:59):
And then, of course, that fueled my self doubt. And then I would get to
a point where like, okay, all right, all right. Probably being really selfish,
I'm just going to like, quote unquote repent, and then maybe I'll
feel better if I come back in and just be with a group and just
not go down with all my questions or what I've
discovered. And
(35:21):
I actually had a mystical experience when I got to the point where
I was ready to do that. It's almost like I was taken to
the edge to sort of see. And then
how long can she go in the dark? How long can she go without
capitulating and going back to the tribe and back to the community in all the
old ways? It was my comfort zone. But yeah,
(35:43):
I found that it wasn't my comfort zone anymore. I was so
uncomfortable and so I didn't fit anywhere. And it was just,
anyway, I had this mystical experience, and Mary Magdalene's involved in that and what
she represents archetypally and historically. And then I found the whole gnostic
gospels completely deconstructed, Christianity,
the historical, all of it. And
(36:05):
I didn't share with a lot of people because I felt like, number one, it
was my sacred path. But then I started this podcast, and I started
bringing guests with all these diverse voices. And then the people
that were telling me that I was going to
be miserable if I stepped
away later, came back and said, there's
(36:27):
something different about you. I'm so sorry that I thought
that, but there is definitely something. You seem more peaceful. And
that's after I had to write out all the trauma. Did you go through any
kind of. I'm laughing because I already know the answer.
Were you having some pushback around? Like, did you get, things get worse for you
when you stepped away from the ministry? Did you go into a hole? Did you
(36:50):
go down a see dark cave? Did you sit in a dark cave?
Yeah. Like, how can I ask you a question first? How
long were you in that metaphorical
fetal position, would you say?
I would say a solid week. Oh. Oh,
no. I mean, oh, like metaphorically or. Yeah, like the
(37:12):
whole trauma period. Oh, my goodness. Three or four years
on and off of just finding something else out and deconstructing that and
going down. Like, oh, I would have made a different choice in my life if
I'd known this. Or, you know, like I was telling you earlier, you know,
placing my daughter for adoption and getting disfellowshipped and being pressured
to place her for, like, everything that every choice I made in my whole
(37:34):
entire life was in through the lens of the worldview
of these certain doctrines. Yeah. And my
unworthiness and my need to capitulate, obey and
sacrifice to those doctrines and to the hierarchy,
to the prophet, really. So to answer
your question, it was, I'd be doing really well, and then something else
(37:56):
would take me down, and then I would have to work through that, through my
body. But I realized it wasn't just me. It was my
ancestors. It was intergenerational trauma.
It was that persecution complex that we've talked about. It was
the suffering, the persecution, the
pioneering, the sackcloth and ashes, all of that.
(38:19):
Yeah. You know, it's very much like,
let's say, a woman leaving an abusive, narcissistic,
abuser husband. And they say, the husband
says, you're going to be so unhappy, you're going to be miserable. You're not going
to have any money, you're not going to succeed. You're going to have no friends.
You know, you're going to be depressed. And, and
(38:42):
they're kind of proven right for a while because,
because the woman's life is so radically changed. She really
has cut herself off from, she doesn't, she might not have a
house, she doesn't have any finances,
she doesn't have a career or a job. She, you
know, and, and she's traumatized and
(39:04):
know his family, and maybe her family reject her because she left
him and their friends and all this kind of
thing. But after a few years,
she starts getting healed and
walking out of the trauma, and suddenly she's
aglow. She's happy, she's successful, she's
(39:25):
got friends. Her health improves. She comes
online. Yeah, yeah. And
it's like that when people deconstruct. People are proven right.
At first, they're like, see, I told you, deconstruction is horrible. Look
what's happening to you. But give them time. You watch, they're
(39:46):
going to flourish. But, like, so my deconstruction
started, like I said, way back in the eighties. And then
my, when I left, when I left the ministry in 2010, and we had to
leave the church because it's a small town, small church, blah, blah, blah.
That's when Lisa and I, that's when things
(40:07):
was like the perfect storm, a convergence of
stuff that we nearly lost
our marriage. Our mental health
was out the window. It was very, very traumatic
for a few years. And, like, at one
point, Lisa was studying to be a nurse. She was
(40:30):
48 years old and decided to go to university. That's
awesome. Got her nursing degree. She graduated when she was
52 and she's still a palliative care nurse to this day.
But it was hard.
We almost lost our marriage. We almost, you know, it was just
horrible. Horrible. Same with us. We, we actually separated
(40:52):
that year. Yeah, well, Lisa left several times.
Well, and your mental health does take, you're not yourself.
That's who you were before. It's insane. It really is.
It's like you're trying to excavate who you are. And then this is, this is
my best metaphor. So I, it was like I was in outer space and
I was tethered to a mothership. I was an astronaut tethered to a
(41:15):
mothership. And the mothership was, this is where we're all going. The good ship Zion
or whatever. You know, these are the things and the best way to be. And
so I was tethered to that. I was born into
that. And then I have this,
these deconstruct. It's almost like of my own
volition, I unplugged the tether
(41:36):
and I went hurling into outer space. And I didn't know I was, I was
so disoriented. I didn't know what way was up or down or where it was.
And I was spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. It's like, how do I
get back to that mothership? And my soul was like, girl,
that's not your home anymore. You know? And anyway,
that, that is my best metaphor because that is exactly what it
(41:58):
felt like. And then I had other people saying, see what happened? Like you said,
see what happens? And so my mental health. Yeah. How could you not have
mental health issues? If your entire
paradigm world view and construct of
life now and the hereafter completely
upends, you're going to have mental health issues. Did you
(42:20):
have a place where you could land? Did you have a tribe or did you
have, did you find somebody that could anchor you?
Well, my wife looked at me one night and she said, you need
help. And she was right.
And I found a therapist. I also found an online coach
who happened to be, had also been in the
(42:43):
vineyard church in ministry. And
I also started an online community for people who were
deconstructing called the lasting supper. And it's still going
today. Yeah. So
I had to find and build resources for myself. And
now my, I feel my calling, if you want to call it
(43:07):
that. Is to provide that word, right? You just like that word
to provide. Resources and safe spaces for people to deconstruct.
And that's what I'm about. That's what I do. I'm all about spiritual independence and
helping people find their freedom and live their freedom. So that's. That's
what I do. And it's. It's worth it. It's really worth it. Yeah.
I would hear people say that. I would hear people say, yeah, you can get
(43:30):
on the other side of this, and it's worth it. But I couldn't. In my
brain, I didn't. I couldn't see how it could be in get better. I
don't know if you went through that, too, but, um.
So I know you're a proponent of, like, we're never done
deconstructing. Um, it's a never ending
process. Not just with, like, let's just say, religious constructs, but, like,
(43:52):
everything, you know, government, academia, what we've been told
about everything. Everything, yeah. And.
But. But religious deconstruction. Deconstruction is its own animal
because it has eternal ramifications
that you. They're literally taking the hugest risk by answering,
like you said, spiritual independence. I call it full
(44:15):
sovereignty. I don't remember how you phrase it. Like, giving people their own.
Like, it's okay to craft your own path. This is your journey.
Yeah. It's just not something that we were
ever encouraged to
do, or I. Now when I see somebody that's starting
deconstruction, I'm, like, celebrating that that's a.
(44:37):
That's a step towards spiritual maturation. Are you familiar with James
Fowler's stages of faith? Oh, yes. I talk about it all the time.
What's your. Yeah, I love it, too. So what do you. How would
you present that to somebody? Let's just say who was in that
precipice place of. I don't know. I'm having questions.
So. I used to, in the early
(45:00):
days, think of spiritual growth as linear, where you grow
kind of like age, and. But that no longer
sufficed because it's like you're leaving stuff behind
like a snail trail. Then I came across
Fowler, his stages of faith.
And where, you know, you move from infancy, where you're
(45:23):
completely dependent to, you become a child, where
you learn how to be independent, and then. And then you
become, as an adolescent, you're independent, you know,
stubbornly, and then as an adult, you become interdependent and so
on. But I no longer like the stages either,
because then you're looking down on yourself, your previous self,
(45:44):
and on others who are at those stages
now. I think of spiritual growth as spatial, where
you grow bigger to
include everything that went before. Nothing needs to be rejected.
Not your mennonite back. Mennonite Mormon
background, not too far removed. Yeah.
(46:06):
Not my Presbyterian, anglican vineyard. None of
that stuff. I don't reject it. It's all a part of who I
am. I always tell people, you wouldn't be who you are now unless you were
who you were then. And so all that is a part of your
story. Don't reject it. Don't be ashamed of it. You know,
just part of psychological
(46:27):
therapy is learning how to integrate all those parts of
yourself, including the parts you're afraid of and ashamed of
and scared of and all that. Learn how to
integrate that into your life. That's how you become wise. That's
how you become whole. Yeah. And so that,
to me, is what growth is and deconstruction. The big
(46:49):
challenge I see for deconstruction is people not
saying, well, I was duped and give it the finger
and move on and reject everything. It's like, no, figure out
how did that help you to become who you are. You can't tear that chapter
out of your story and you make sense anymore. That's going
to create more chasms of mental health issues. That's
(47:12):
right. Yeah. I love what you're saying. And I think the highest stage of James
Fellars is integration. That's true. It's just like.
And also on the hero's journey or the heroine's journey, the last
stage is integrating. Like, you go through the drought, you kill the
dragons and you go on the quest and you get the elixir and you come
back and you've integrated all of that depth and all of that descent,
(47:33):
and you just never stops. Right. We're always on this
continual hero's journey, which means we're going to go to the depths.
Yes. We were taught to fear the dark. Right. We
were taught that there's no God there. Yeah. Yeah, that's
right. Yeah. And that anything to do
with darkness was evil and demonic, you
(47:55):
know, so we have to face those parts of ourselves
and learn how to integrate that. Not to worry it,
dismiss it, you know, press it,
suppress it, all those things. We need to learn how to,
you know, even. Even the parts of our past that. Where we were
(48:15):
abused or whatever, we need to figure out
how to integrate that stuff, not forget it. A lot of
people go to therapy to try to remember their
trauma, what caused their trauma, so that they can
heal that. And that's the purpose of healing. Healing
means to be made whole. And so that doesn't mean cutting off
(48:38):
those painful parts or those shameful parts. It
means integrating those things. And so that's what I think is the big work of
deconstruction. Yes,
absolutely. Well, I
want to just read this little part in your book while we wrap up that
I really appreciated. I'm just going to hold this
(48:59):
up. I got people watching online. Oh,
it's one man handing another man a
box with a smiley face, and he says, welcome
to the faith. Now here's our complimentary
box, outside of which you should never, ever think again.
(49:19):
And underneath here you've written, not by the way,
they want a program, not a community. Here
they got neither answers nor programs. Over time, I started getting more
communications from concerned members, suggesting that perhaps I wasn't really called to be a
pastor anymore. Some were genuinely worried about me, that I was no longer happy, that
(49:42):
I needed to find something else to do. And then you went on with
sort of like them being alarmed at what you were
thinking and feeling and asking and, and doing. That's kind of where I was leading
to with Christ. You know, he always reflected a question, and I think he was
modeling that. But we don't always see that we want
the answers. It makes us feel better if we know everything all the.
(50:04):
And I can tell you unequivocally that questions are not
honored or held up as faithful
when it comes to biblical
perspectives or theology or, you know, the
doctrine. And so that was what I
(50:25):
like to ask, questions. I'm a very inquisitive person. And so for me, that was
just a shutdown. So
I want you to just touch on one more thing before we close. And
that is, you were recently challenged that there is no such thing as
deconstruction or that it's not valid or it's not faithful or it's not spiritual
or. I remember how you put it, but it was in your newsletter, and I
(50:47):
thought that your, your thoughts and feelings around that were really good because you were
actually, you've actually been called out. As you know, this is the guy to
watch for. He's going to take you down a dark road in some circles.
How would you respond to that now that you've had a
little space around it? How do you frame that now,
(51:08):
when you get called out as a heretic or somebody who's leading people
off the, quote, path, let's just
say, let's just, people are. You're leading people away from Christ, how
would you respond to the deconstruction piece of that.
Well, the opening line in the book, it's in the forward,
(51:28):
says, apostasy is nothing new.
And so as soon as I read that line, the opening line, I knew, okay,
I know where this book is going. You know, that's the
taster. But what I say is,
deconstructionism isn't a thing. Deconstruction
is a thing. I started using the word deconstruction. I borrowed it from a
(51:50):
french philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who invented
the word deconstruction to refer to questioning
everything about the text. And that there is no. There can't. We can't
know what the objective truth of a text is. There's too many
obstacles to that. Not only my own paradigm, my own way of
reading my language, but also its transmission,
(52:12):
the author's intent and the words and then the editing that
went on. And then their paradigms
are so far and distant from our paradigms, it's impossible for
us to understand what paradigm that was, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's what deconstruction started as. You
know, questioning the text. For me, I
(52:34):
borrowed it because it just sounded exactly what I was going through in my
spiritual journey. And
it's nothing new. Everybody all through time,
questions their beliefs. This is nothing new. It's not a new
thing. It's not a movement. Wait. There's no organization
to it. There's no head, although there are people trying to, you
(52:57):
know, take the lead. There's no, you know,
groups, you know? You know what I mean? It's not. It's not
professional. It's not organized. This is something that's always happened. People
have always questioned their beliefs. It used to be, though, in the old days,
you either shut up about it or got kicked out.
So now people don't care so much about belonging to
(53:20):
a church. And COVID really exacerbated
that, where people are like, you know what? I don't think I need the
church. That's a new thing, and
that's a movement. That's a migration away from the church. That's
huge. But deconstruction isn't
new. Doing it out loud is new. That's all.
(53:42):
That's true. Yes, yes, yes. They get burned at the stake. Now you
just go to a different church, or you stop going and
find new friends. Yeah. I mean, now you could get
disciplined by your church. You could get called in if you were a
dissenting voice or even raising a question that flight in the face of
existing, you know? Yeah. Happened to you?
(54:03):
Yeah. Well, this has just been so great, and
I really just want to honor your work and what you do and how brave
it is and how just the art itself
is brilliant. Thank you. But I think people can feel your
soul and your messaging. I will just tell you. You want to know my
favorite one is the one where of your cartoons is
(54:25):
when you are drawing all the lines with the pencils, Jesus is coming
behind, trying to erase all of them, and he gets, like, the side eye from
one guy, like, what are you doing, Jesus? Anyway?
But it's just. It's just like, it was soul food for
me. That's great to sit with those. And that's why I got your book
and I've shared your cartoons with different people and different. And we just had a
(54:47):
good laugh and also, like, a good, like, oof. This hits the.
Feels like this. This really gets to the heart of
it. Calls out some of the obvious
polarizing ideas of many religions. It's
just so self evident now that
(55:07):
if we're going to push people to the margins and exclude and not
bring every voice to the table, and like you said, that oneness, if we're not
doing that, we're missing it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree
100%. Well, where can people find your work, David?
Where's the best place for them? Makeitpastor.com. That's where I'm at. That's
home base, that's basecamp, and I'm a naked
(55:29):
pastor on all social media platforms. I'm everywhere.
And I think that's one of the things that has helped me do well.
And naked pastor gets out and around is because I'm on all the platforms and
I just don't stop. And that's also what frustrates a lot of people.
I just. You're like, I'm not going away. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here.
Yeah. Well, thank you. It's brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Hello. David Hayward, aka naked pastor.
Hey, how are you? I'm great.
So you and I were kind of talking off air before we started
recording, and I was telling you, I've had your book here. If those of you
are watching on YouTube, questions are the answer
with a little bit of your background and story and some of your brilliant cartoons
(00:24):
that. Do you call them cartoons? What do you call them? I do. I do.
I call them cartoons. Yeah. Okay. Well, I was telling you that, like,
the reason it's so compelling is because it's bringing in
levity with such deep,
eternally charged, if you will, concepts that are just
alive in the kind of collective psyche, and you bring
(00:45):
in this element of lightness
mixed with that, and it's beautiful.
Thank you. Uh, somebody gave me a huge compliment
lately. They said, uh, uh,
cartoons are for naked pastor. What? Parables were for
Jesus. I really love that because
(01:07):
I'm, you know, they're not comparing me to Jesus, but they're comparing
the fact that somebody can use something so day to
day and normal and. And
mundane to illustrate some,
you know, tremendous truths. So. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's. That's really cool. I appreciate that. Yeah,
(01:28):
just. This is just like. It just lifts the weight of whatever it is.
I was actually showing my sister who I was talking to earlier. I
was like, oh, I'm gonna have David Haywire on the naked pastor. And I was
showing her some of your cartoons. And there's this one
with these, you know those, like, bearded,
bald robed men. One of them is writing, and it
(01:50):
says, one of it looks like a prophet or something is like.
Or God is writing, like, over the prophet. I don't know. You'll have to tell
me. But over the prophet's shoulder is the prophet's writing, and he's saying,
write that they were created as a second thought to be our helpers. That should
shut them up.
I want to go there first if you're okay with that. Yeah, yeah. I love
(02:13):
that you're an advocate for women and you've seen this
patriarchal culture, and you're, you know, you've deconstructed that.
We're going to talk about deconstructing. Deconstruction today, but my.
I guess I had my own sacred feminine awakening. Have you heard, I'm sure you
have, of Sue Monk kid and the book dance of the dissident daughter?
Are you familiar with that? Not that book
(02:35):
particularly yet, though. No. Black book.
Yeah. Yeah. She wrote this incredible book
about her life as a pastor's wife, or
they were in the clergy somehow, and she had this whole awakening.
And even though her religion of origin is different than mine, I really related
with some of her insights and
(02:58):
some of the things that she had walked through in trying to claim her voice
and power as a woman. Can we start there with you? Because I've
seen a lot of your cartoons are very feminine friendly. Let's just
say. How has your understanding of
women's roles. Let's just say, let's start with the church and what you
noticed because you were a minister for a time and how
(03:19):
that's evolved for you. Yeah.
So
I think what happened to me was some point along
the road, I realized that we are
all one. We're all connected at a deep and fundamental level
and that there's no hierarchy of value
(03:42):
among any of us. And the human race,
whether it's your gender or your
sexual orientation or your color, your
race, your religion, your ideology,
your lack of religion or whatever, to me, it was a very
profound, um. Let's call it a
(04:05):
mystical moment where I. I just saw the oneness of us all and.
And that this necessarily translates
into, um, valuing
women or valuing LGBTQ folk
or valuing people of color, etc. Etcetera.
So, um, it's. It's just, to me, it's
(04:27):
not like I chose to take on feminism, and then I chose to
take on LGBT or I chose to take on race
or anything like that. It's like we're all one. Everybody gets to
play. I'm sorry about that. Yeah. And
it just. That's how,
for me, it seems the church is drawing a line in the
(04:49):
sand about who's in and who's out. And to me,
that's fundamentally wrong. It's a fundamental
understanding of what love is. Yeah. And sort of co opting a
Jesus, because I know he makes his appearance in a lot of your cartoons, which
I absolutely love. Co opting a Jesus that would put
people on the margins or not include them
(05:12):
in the greater discussions. Let's just say how things are run or what
policies are. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. How does the Jesus. Did you always see Jesus that way, or
did that have to distill on you later as you kind of
how your own awakening to the oneness that you're talking about?
Well, you know, my understanding of Jesus has
(05:33):
vastly changed over time, but,
like, I was sharing with you maybe before the show. Well, my. My
deconstruction began on my graduation
day from seminary. I was actually in my
robe, getting ready to go to the ceremony
when it suddenly dawned. On me. I don't think
(05:54):
I believe in the inspiration of scripture, that, you
know, that it fell out of heaven as a divine document,
and, you know, that was the
beginning. It was almost like a corrupt
code was inserted into my hard drive,
and it just started to do its work, slowly
(06:15):
corrupting my theological
software and eventually led to
me leaving the ministry in 2010.
So, you know, that. That was decades. That took decades. It took a while.
Yeah. Yours is more of a slow burn than mine. My own
deconstruction process and path. Mine was more like a line in
(06:36):
the sand, although I could see how women
were excluded, heavily
excluded, and disempowered. And I wouldn't have even said
that back then that I felt disempowered, you know, but
over the years, I could. It was just the slow drip of this. Something's not
right here. Mormonism has its own
(06:59):
flavor of hierarchy. Because you spoke to. You don't believe that there's
hierarchy. I certainly don't believe that now. But there was a
time that I did. I really believe there was a quote unquote,
patriarchal order both on heaven and in
earth, and that this church was restoring the
patriarchy to the earth, literally,
(07:20):
as the most, like, divine template. And so there was
no real feminine co representation
at the highest levels. And then, like, there's a prophet and twelve apostles and a
quorum of the 70, and they're all men, wonderful
men. Uh, nonetheless, women
were not given the same power and authority keys of administration
(07:42):
or visibility. And I. And I'm very
young, I'm talking, like, seven or eight years old, I could see the gender
disparity, but I didn't dare argue with that. That's just the way God did
it. Right, right. So. And that's what
deconstruction means, basically, is when you start questioning
things, it's. It's a dismantling
(08:04):
of what we thought to be true. And
to me, deconstruction in any form is a
healthy process. We hear the word
deconstruction being used all the time now. Deconstructing the
patriarchy, deconstructing
gender, deconstructing
(08:28):
capitalism, deconstructing democracy.
You know, everybody's deconstructing something, the words constantly being
used. And basically it means dismantling, to look at the
parts, to examine it in its detail
and figure out which is working, which isn't
working, which is good, which is bad, and what
(08:50):
is helpful, what is not, etcetera. And I compare it
to Marie Kondo. I don't know. Yeah.
What is it like the joy. Yeah, the japanese minimalist who
teaches us how to declutter. And I kind of like
that analogy when it comes to our beliefs, where we declutter
our beliefs and we keep what brings us joy, and we
(09:14):
give away or, you know, no longer take with
us or keep beliefs that are we
no longer need or. Or harmful. Don't you think there's something really
alive? Let's just say in the christian consciousness around suffering is more
righteous versus joy. Oh, man. That's what I grew up in,
the. Martyr thing, the persecution complex. Like, you're more spiritual
(09:37):
if you're, like, down in the ashes and the trenches and
suffering, and Jesus sacrificed for you. So you need to co regulate
that suffering that you added to that stuff. All of that.
Yeah. There's two routes you can take for
Jesus. One is the health wealth route, where
Jesus wants you to be healthy and wealthy and to
(09:59):
succeed, and then the other route,
you know, and that's the whole resurrection route. Like, he wants you to succeed and
be. Yeah, that's like transactional gospel, isn't it,
too? Like, if you do these things, Jesus will bless
you with wealth and prosperity. And healthy, but prosperity
gospel, where the other one is the
(10:21):
persecuted, suffering Jesus
who ends up being crucified, dead and buried,
and where you deny yourself and crucify
yourself and turn the other cheek
and that whole root and embracing
poverty. So that's what I preferred.
(10:43):
And, you know, I was raised in a home. That
sort of conditioned me to prefer that,
but that's definitely the route I chose
and had to learn to heal myself from. Do you think that created
depression for you? No, I don't think I was not depression. I
mean, I was really into it. I mean, that whole
(11:05):
theology and spirituality of.
Of suffering, the suffering Christ,
and self denial
and all that is very rich. Sure. Yeah.
Well, in sacrifice, in my theological
construct, was the highest thing in heaven. Obedience and
(11:27):
sacrifice, those two things were the highest order of heaven. The
more that you say, it's kind of
like that self abnegation meets, like, you're
so bad and dirty and unholy and weak,
but you're so loved and cherished and full of the light, and you're a child
of God. Like, we don't know quite how to marry those two ways
(11:49):
to see ourselves. Right. And it creates a
lot of splitting in the psyche.
Yeah, I really struggled with that. Yeah, I did, too.
To heal from that. In fact, when
I left the ministry in 2010, I knew that was going to be my
(12:09):
number one project. I had to go to the school of life and learn how
to take care of myself and think
more positively and build a business and make money
and promote myself and sell my art and make
do books and courses and sell those and blah, blah, blah, blah.
It was a huge undertaking.
(12:31):
It was the most difficult university I ever went to.
And I ended up writing a book about it called money is spiritual. I can't
believe I've written a book called that. But that's what came out of that
whole thing. You know what? I went through a similar process where I decided that
I wanted to create legacy wealth, let's just say
just because, and also because I love the idea of
(12:54):
contributing and having options and added resources and what have you. And
it was the same thing I had to look at. You know, money is the
root of all evil and, you know, and. And also
just deeper, deeper, deeper. There is a very strong
undercurrent of transactional spirituality and prosperity gospel that
you were speaking to earlier of. Like, there's this track you go down if you're
(13:15):
the Lord's special elite chosen holy, and he's going to
bless you with riches and things. And you can read that into scripture.
You can see that. Like, he gave Abraham lands and cattle and all this
inheritance. And so you start to equate your,
I guess, performance, spiritual performance.
And so for people who are doing all the things like me
(13:37):
running the race and the trek and going on that hamster wheel of
striving and perfection and worthiness, and you're not seeing the
promises that you were told you would get if you did those things
right, personalize it and say, oh, gosh, I really am not worthy.
I'm just not worthy. Yeah, but I
experienced the same thing in the whole poverty mentality as
(13:59):
well. The poverty spirituality,
where you get this sort of
understanding, and there's threads of this in
scripture as well, where the more you suffer, the closer God is
to you. Yeah. And that
you're more deserving of God if you suffer more
(14:22):
and it creates an upside down hierarchy.
It's a race to the bottom. In the
prosperity gospel, it's a race to the top.
In the poverty gospel, it's a race to the bottom. But
the problem is just two sides of the same coin
(14:43):
of who can claim to be closer to God.
Yeah, that's such a good point. I hadn't thought about
that, but thank you for that visual. So
true. I've seen, I've lived both sides of that as well. I
remember on my, when I was serving as a Mormon missionary and
(15:04):
putting the name tag on and knocking on the doors and stuff. I was in
the Bible belt in Texas, and literally everyone hated us
because Mormonism isn't a super popular word brand of
Christianity anyway. So I'm 22, I'm knocking on doors, and the
sweltering heat, door slam after door slam after door slam. And the way
that I learned to cope with that rejection
is to develop a thick skin, because the definite
(15:27):
message that we got from our leaders was that that just means you're
doing the right thing for God. It's that
persecution complex of, I can get thicker
skin by people rejecting me and whatever. I didn't even think to
myself, now, why would they think this about Mormons?
And how can I meet them in that place of, like, why do you feel
(15:49):
so divisive? And what do I represent to
you? Now that I have done
quite a bit of deconstructing, I can see why there are elements of
Mormonism where people would definitely say, this isn't a safe
space. This isn't, you know, there were elements of it, like the history
of polygamy and other things. When you
(16:11):
started to, okay, how did that flip
that upside down, where the poverty. You're going down, down, and then you're in the
suffering and kind of that martyr for Christ. And however that
looks, how did it start to fizzle or
dismantle? Like, when did you kind of awaken to, maybe this isn't the
best way that I can commune with God or show up in the world.
(16:34):
Well, I, like I said,
when I left the ministry in 2010, I was
unemployed and I really felt unemployable
because my training was solely in theology
and pastoral ministry. And what good is that outside
(16:55):
of the professional ministry? I've come to
discover there's a lot of good in it. But at that time, that's the way
I felt. And I knew I had to
somehow do something about it myself. And
because I had, up to that point, relied
on God to rescue me,
(17:17):
and he wasn't showing up.
So I really did feel like I was on my
own. And this is one of the big things that
happens with deconstruction, is
you need to learn to think and live differently.
And at first it's going to feel transgressive.
(17:39):
And I knew that in my knower, like,
intuitively, I knew I'm going to feel like I'm
transgressing. This is going to be really hard because not
only do I have to learn business, but I have to get over my feelings
of yuckiness for
engaging in business you know, not that
(17:59):
business is yucky, but it was for me. It
seemed like it for me, money
and spirituality sullied each other.
And you're like, selling your soul or something like that.
So that's what happens when people deconstruct, is
there's this season of where you're feeling like you're
(18:20):
transgressing, and
you have to deal with those feelings and
come to a place where you
realize those feelings of transgression are
unfounded. There's nothing wrong with money.
There's nothing wrong with making money. There's nothing wrong with
(18:43):
business. There's nothing wrong with making art and selling art or writing books and
selling books or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. But
you have to get to that point where you not just know that, but you
actually don't feel the guilt
and shame when you engage in it.
So a lot of people who are deconstructing their beliefs and
(19:05):
trying to learn how to live in this world have to go through that season.
For some people, it doesn't end. When you
talked about how you were graduating
from the seminary and you had this moment of, I'm not sure
the scriptures are inspired. I can't remember how you phrase it. What do you mean
by that? What did you mean by that? How did that distill upon you as
(19:27):
kind of like a thing? Well, because up to that
point, when I was a teenager, I studied the Bible. I had a
youth leader who studied the Bible, taught me how to study the
Bible. I had an interlinear Bible. Um,
I don't know if you know what that is, but it's a Bible that has
several translations running together. Oh, I think it was like
(19:48):
the King James, the living, and
the NRSV and the amplified versions all
running together. The big, thick Bible, right? And I had pencil crayons
and colored pencils, I mean, and pens. And I was all,
I still have it, actually. It's quite a thing to look at because it's full
of color and full of writing in the margins. That's
(20:10):
how my missionary scriptures are. I'm totally right there with you. They look like. So
I was like a total Bible fanatic. And then I went to Bible
college. I got two years
of Greek there and a year of Hebrew there,
and then seminary, and I got more Greek. I took Greek every
year to the point where I was speed reading New Testament Greek.
(20:32):
I took more Hebrew. I took a year of Aramaic. I was studying
under doctor Gordon Fee, one of the world world's most famous
biblical scholars. And like I was on my
way to become a biblical scholar. That was my goal. I even started my
PhD in New Testament studies at the University of Toronto.
But long story short, when I was
(20:53):
graduating from my master's in New Testament studies,
I was reading a book. I had some time. I was done
all my papers. I've finished all my exams. I already
knew I was graduating cum laude, and I was just looking
for stuff to do. And I found a book in a bookstore that looked
interesting, and I picked it up and I bought it and I
(21:17):
read it and it devastated. It was called the
found you. Do you feel like it found you.
One of the most influential books in my life,
and you're going to get people asking, what's the name of the book? So I'm
going to tell you. It's. James breached the silence
of Jesus, and he
(21:40):
basically analyzes a few of the sayings of
Jesus that he feels were authentic and
that weren't put in his mouth by the writers of the Gospels and so
on. And he just sort of unfolds his argument. And it was, like, very
convincing. And it wasn't that I stopped believing in the inspiration
of scripture. It was just that the seed of doubt was planted
(22:03):
and it was too late. Like, it was too late. It couldn't be
reversed, and it was in there. And
so I, you know, a few years later, ended up getting ordained,
becoming a minister, and I served the church as a pastor for about 30
years, deconstructing the whole time I was
serving pastor. That's
(22:25):
fascinating. I'm always struck when I talk
to different people who were, you know, like they were on a certain trajectory.
Yeah. And their life was mapped out and they
truly felt they were doing the right thing. But, you
know, right is a little more nuanced to us now,
maybe as it was back then, but it was like black and white. You're either
(22:47):
dedicating your entire service, your entire life to devotion,
service, putting yourself second, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera. And when you said
inspiration of scripture, what came to my mind is it's so
like you said, jesus taught in parables. When
you really look at the writings, I mean, I grew up with the King James
(23:08):
version, and I've also. Part of my
deconstruction was finding the gnostic texts. That's a whole other story.
But even in the gnostic text and in the
apocrypha and in, you know, the, let's
just say the King James Version of the Bible, Jesus is
not disseminating what to do
(23:31):
other than love. And when someone comes to
him with a question, he reflects the question back to them,
and he teaches in layered parables. So
why the inspiration? To me, the inspiration of scripture has
become so muddied? Because people, let's just say, who are
on an academic, academic path, that we're supposed to look to them as the ones
(23:53):
who know and how to interpret scripture. And then you have
someone who's inspired who. Who maybe, like, they got their own
download, and. And then they disseminate it to their congregation, and they all accept it
as truth when it's. I don't believe that any sacred
texts are meant to be definitive. They're to meet that person where they
are, like you said, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation,
(24:15):
whatever their life station is. And I
think that we've just had, like you said, that kind of, that top down approach
of that hierarchical, like, I'm not. I don't know enough, so I've got to ask
somebody else how to interpret this for me. And we lose the
deeper meaning. We lose the
essence of the teaching because we're, you know, think
(24:37):
Pharisees and Sadducees. I was awake to this for a very long, I would say,
20 years ago. I woke up to the whole pharisee, sadducee thing. Like, why are
there so many rules? Why is everything so
down to the. Didn't Jesus kind of, like, buck up against all
of those rules? He didn't get baptized in the church. He got baptized in
the wilderness. And whenever I'd ask questions like that, they're
(24:59):
like, well, he put a church on the earth when he was here, and
he had apostles and teachers and evangelists and
prophets, and so that's the order that we do it here. And I'm
like, where does. What church was that?
Like? You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. So for me, when you. When you brought up the inspiration of scripture, it
(25:20):
was like, I think that that was my first portal
into ask, that it's okay to ask questions because I was always that
person raising her hand and asking questions, and
I was kind of shamed for that. And I was told to not look
beyond the mark. I was told to pray and fast
and whatever, but I was never allowed to have a
(25:42):
question that bumped up against the existing doctrine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So with me, the whole. And you're
alluding to it here and there, I think
there's two kinds of deconstruction. One is from theology
and the other is from the church. So one's theological,
(26:05):
the other's ecclesiological. And
I started deconstructing ecclesiologically
or theologically, where I started questioning,
oh, is the Bible inspired? Because if it's not,
everything I've hinged my beliefs on
is questionable. Yeah, so everything's questionable. It was
(26:28):
the thin end of the wedge for me, and I knew it intuitively that this
was going to be trouble. But then there's the other deconstruction,
ecclesiologically, with the church, where I tried my best for
many years to serve the church on the inside
and do what I could to make it a better place,
and realized at some point
(26:50):
that with the help of the congregation I was serving,
that my time inside the church was no longer
going to work. And so
I had to make a decision to stay or leave. And I chose to leave
not only for my best interests, but for the best interests of the church that
I was a pastor of at the time. And so, you know,
(27:13):
for me, and this all converged around the same time when
I had that mystical moment where I saw that we were all connected in
one, at a deep love. So you did like that. Was it like a
waking vision or was it a dream or an understanding? It was waking, yeah, it
was awake. And it was kind of like. I'm not going to say it was
a vision or a revelation or anything. It was just like, kind of popped into
(27:34):
my head. It was a beautiful experience. Yeah. Nothing, no
chemicals involved, nothing. It was just happened. Yeah. And,
you know, I started sharing that that would happen in 2009, march of
2009. And in March of
2010, I left. I left the ministry
and. Yeah, it all culminated.
(27:56):
Yeah. Why do you think it's a threat to the
ecclesiastical organizations,
the clergy, the church, the idea of oneness.
Why is that threatening? Why would they not want
oneness? Yeah, religion depends on
exclusivity. A religion can only succeed
(28:18):
if it believes it's the right one.
That's embedded in
the ideology and the mindset. The paradigm of a
religion is that it's the right one.
What about within, like, just say any one religion. So I think you mentioned you
(28:41):
were a presbyterian minister, so let's just say with Presbyterianism
believing it's the one true church, whatever.
What about the awakening within that
religion to what we were just talking about
around not wanting oneness inside just one
religion? Like, you're a pastor, you've had this mystical
(29:04):
awakening, and you're trying to teach oneness, I'm assuming, in some
way, shape or form to your congregation. And there was
that resistance that you were meeting, that resistance why do you think that? So
even within that congregation or within that construct of that
religion? Well,
the congregation was one of the arenas where
(29:26):
I was starting to experience
discomfort, but also online. I'd started my blog,
nakedpastor.com in 2005.
And so in 2009, when I'd had this
moment, I started sharing that.
Naively, I think people are going to want to know.
(29:48):
And I found it very liberating. And I thought other people would
love to feel that feeling of liberation as well. And I was sharing it, and
head office was getting letters of concern from people who would read my
blog and saying, you know, you have a fox
in the vineyard, and, you know, you have a heretic in one of your pulpits
and stuff. And I started getting calls from head office and. And
(30:10):
I knew my time was up. And sure enough,
it led to that. And it's because,
like I said, a religion's presumption
is that it's right. And then
each of the denominations and the micro
groups within it think they're the most right in a
(30:33):
general sea of their own religion. Yeah. So of
course, Presbyterian reformed
theology, you know, based on Calvin and
others, of course they are going to
believe that their theology is the best one.
That's okay. That's fine. Yeah, yeah. But it
(30:56):
doesn't. But, like, what about the rest of the world population? What does
that make them? These are the questions I always had,
even from the time I was little. I'm like, I did the math.
Okay, so first of all, the theology was everyone needs to be baptized with the
proper priesthood authority. Proper priesthood authority that's been restored
to the earth through the latter day
(31:19):
Prophet Joseph Smith. And anyway, just,
there's this whole priesthood line of authority. So I would always be like, well,
how many members of the Lds church are there? Okay, well, right now there's
about 16 or 17 million. And if you look at the entire
world population, it's like 8 billion or something.
And it was like less than one half of, one 10th
(31:41):
of 1% or something crazy like that. And by the way,
like, two thirds of the Lds church right now are considered
inactive, so that number is even less.
But if you look at the straight math
of all of God's children on the earth right now,
needing to get a certain kind of authority, authoritative baptism,
(32:03):
to be recognized by God, to accept a different. To accept a
certain set of standards or
lifestyle, you know, commandments or the theological constructs or
doctrines. The doctrine of Christ is what they call it. It's
like less than one 10th of 1% of the entire world. And
I'm like, well, how? And then they would say, well, in the next life,
(32:25):
everyone's going to accept the same gospel. I don't know if you were told this,
too, like, we're all going to become one, like Zion.
This is where oneness went in my theological thing. Okay.
So everyone's going to gather from all corners of
the world are going to come together. They're going to be as one in Zion,
and they're all going to believe the same thing because it's going to be so
(32:46):
self evident. But it was, well, what are they going to believe? Well, they're going
to believe that there's a hierarchy.
And I'm like, well, if they're all one,
and then they're going to still have a hierarchy, then how are we
all want, you know, it just. These were the questions I already always had that
I felt so bad for the people that didn't have the gospel. I felt so
(33:08):
bad for them. Well, I mean, I remember
being taught that the number 144,000 of those who
were going to be saved on the last day was literal.
Yeah, that's not very many people. I've heard that. I've
heard that, too. Well, that's not very many people. You're a super special
favorite if you make that. Yeah. The competition is very high for those
(33:31):
spots. Yeah. So let
me. Let me ask you something that I. That I.
That I think of often. That happened to you definitely
happened to me, but when I had. When I started the initial stages of my
deconstruction, I was 100% swirling in trauma.
And I mentioned to you on our call earlier, before we started recording, it was
(33:53):
a sense of betrayal, trauma, because there were certain things that I discovered
in my earnest search for truth,
that documents and narratives and different things were not what I was
told, that there were certain key things that were left out
of the narrative I was given and that I was teaching for
my whole life and all the things. Anyway, I went into this real space of,
(34:16):
like, kind of closing in on myself and just.
It was just really not pretty. I was in fetal position
for weeks and sobbing and
reading and crying and going to source documents and going to public
records and going, you know, I wasn't following the naysayers.
I was following my definite sense
(34:37):
of. I was following a trailer
that I know was inspired. I know that I was supposed to follow that trail
and go down that rabbit hole, but then you would hear from other people, like,
well, I told you you'd be this miserable when you stepped away.
I told you if you were listening to Satan and all, they think, like, you
seem so miserable now. See?
(34:59):
And then, of course, that fueled my self doubt. And then I would get to
a point where like, okay, all right, all right. Probably being really selfish,
I'm just going to like, quote unquote repent, and then maybe I'll
feel better if I come back in and just be with a group and just
not go down with all my questions or what I've
discovered. And
(35:21):
I actually had a mystical experience when I got to the point where
I was ready to do that. It's almost like I was taken to
the edge to sort of see. And then
how long can she go in the dark? How long can she go without
capitulating and going back to the tribe and back to the community in all the
old ways? It was my comfort zone. But yeah,
(35:43):
I found that it wasn't my comfort zone anymore. I was so
uncomfortable and so I didn't fit anywhere. And it was just,
anyway, I had this mystical experience, and Mary Magdalene's involved in that and what
she represents archetypally and historically. And then I found the whole gnostic
gospels completely deconstructed, Christianity,
the historical, all of it. And
(36:05):
I didn't share with a lot of people because I felt like, number one, it
was my sacred path. But then I started this podcast, and I started
bringing guests with all these diverse voices. And then the people
that were telling me that I was going to
be miserable if I stepped
away later, came back and said, there's
(36:27):
something different about you. I'm so sorry that I thought
that, but there is definitely something. You seem more peaceful. And
that's after I had to write out all the trauma. Did you go through any
kind of. I'm laughing because I already know the answer.
Were you having some pushback around? Like, did you get, things get worse for you
when you stepped away from the ministry? Did you go into a hole? Did you
(36:50):
go down a see dark cave? Did you sit in a dark cave?
Yeah. Like, how can I ask you a question first? How
long were you in that metaphorical
fetal position, would you say?
I would say a solid week. Oh. Oh,
no. I mean, oh, like metaphorically or. Yeah, like the
(37:12):
whole trauma period. Oh, my goodness. Three or four years
on and off of just finding something else out and deconstructing that and
going down. Like, oh, I would have made a different choice in my life if
I'd known this. Or, you know, like I was telling you earlier, you know,
placing my daughter for adoption and getting disfellowshipped and being pressured
to place her for, like, everything that every choice I made in my whole
(37:34):
entire life was in through the lens of the worldview
of these certain doctrines. Yeah. And my
unworthiness and my need to capitulate, obey and
sacrifice to those doctrines and to the hierarchy,
to the prophet, really. So to answer
your question, it was, I'd be doing really well, and then something else
(37:56):
would take me down, and then I would have to work through that, through my
body. But I realized it wasn't just me. It was my
ancestors. It was intergenerational trauma.
It was that persecution complex that we've talked about. It was
the suffering, the persecution, the
pioneering, the sackcloth and ashes, all of that.
(38:19):
Yeah. You know, it's very much like,
let's say, a woman leaving an abusive, narcissistic,
abuser husband. And they say, the husband
says, you're going to be so unhappy, you're going to be miserable. You're not going
to have any money, you're not going to succeed. You're going to have no friends.
You know, you're going to be depressed. And, and
(38:42):
they're kind of proven right for a while because,
because the woman's life is so radically changed. She really
has cut herself off from, she doesn't, she might not have a
house, she doesn't have any finances,
she doesn't have a career or a job. She, you
know, and, and she's traumatized and
(39:04):
know his family, and maybe her family reject her because she left
him and their friends and all this kind of
thing. But after a few years,
she starts getting healed and
walking out of the trauma, and suddenly she's
aglow. She's happy, she's successful, she's
(39:25):
got friends. Her health improves. She comes
online. Yeah, yeah. And
it's like that when people deconstruct. People are proven right.
At first, they're like, see, I told you, deconstruction is horrible. Look
what's happening to you. But give them time. You watch, they're
(39:46):
going to flourish. But, like, so my deconstruction
started, like I said, way back in the eighties. And then
my, when I left, when I left the ministry in 2010, and we had to
leave the church because it's a small town, small church, blah, blah, blah.
That's when Lisa and I, that's when things
(40:07):
was like the perfect storm, a convergence of
stuff that we nearly lost
our marriage. Our mental health
was out the window. It was very, very traumatic
for a few years. And, like, at one
point, Lisa was studying to be a nurse. She was
(40:30):
48 years old and decided to go to university. That's
awesome. Got her nursing degree. She graduated when she was
52 and she's still a palliative care nurse to this day.
But it was hard.
We almost lost our marriage. We almost, you know, it was just
horrible. Horrible. Same with us. We, we actually separated
(40:52):
that year. Yeah, well, Lisa left several times.
Well, and your mental health does take, you're not yourself.
That's who you were before. It's insane. It really is.
It's like you're trying to excavate who you are. And then this is, this is
my best metaphor. So I, it was like I was in outer space and
I was tethered to a mothership. I was an astronaut tethered to a
(41:15):
mothership. And the mothership was, this is where we're all going. The good ship Zion
or whatever. You know, these are the things and the best way to be. And
so I was tethered to that. I was born into
that. And then I have this,
these deconstruct. It's almost like of my own
volition, I unplugged the tether
(41:36):
and I went hurling into outer space. And I didn't know I was, I was
so disoriented. I didn't know what way was up or down or where it was.
And I was spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. It's like, how do I
get back to that mothership? And my soul was like, girl,
that's not your home anymore. You know? And anyway,
that, that is my best metaphor because that is exactly what it
(41:58):
felt like. And then I had other people saying, see what happened? Like you said,
see what happens? And so my mental health. Yeah. How could you not have
mental health issues? If your entire
paradigm world view and construct of
life now and the hereafter completely
upends, you're going to have mental health issues. Did you
(42:20):
have a place where you could land? Did you have a tribe or did you
have, did you find somebody that could anchor you?
Well, my wife looked at me one night and she said, you need
help. And she was right.
And I found a therapist. I also found an online coach
who happened to be, had also been in the
(42:43):
vineyard church in ministry. And
I also started an online community for people who were
deconstructing called the lasting supper. And it's still going
today. Yeah. So
I had to find and build resources for myself. And
now my, I feel my calling, if you want to call it
(43:07):
that. Is to provide that word, right? You just like that word
to provide. Resources and safe spaces for people to deconstruct.
And that's what I'm about. That's what I do. I'm all about spiritual independence and
helping people find their freedom and live their freedom. So that's. That's
what I do. And it's. It's worth it. It's really worth it. Yeah.
I would hear people say that. I would hear people say, yeah, you can get
(43:30):
on the other side of this, and it's worth it. But I couldn't. In my
brain, I didn't. I couldn't see how it could be in get better. I
don't know if you went through that, too, but, um.
So I know you're a proponent of, like, we're never done
deconstructing. Um, it's a never ending
process. Not just with, like, let's just say, religious constructs, but, like,
(43:52):
everything, you know, government, academia, what we've been told
about everything. Everything, yeah. And.
But. But religious deconstruction. Deconstruction is its own animal
because it has eternal ramifications
that you. They're literally taking the hugest risk by answering,
like you said, spiritual independence. I call it full
(44:15):
sovereignty. I don't remember how you phrase it. Like, giving people their own.
Like, it's okay to craft your own path. This is your journey.
Yeah. It's just not something that we were
ever encouraged to
do, or I. Now when I see somebody that's starting
deconstruction, I'm, like, celebrating that that's a.
(44:37):
That's a step towards spiritual maturation. Are you familiar with James
Fowler's stages of faith? Oh, yes. I talk about it all the time.
What's your. Yeah, I love it, too. So what do you. How would
you present that to somebody? Let's just say who was in that
precipice place of. I don't know. I'm having questions.
So. I used to, in the early
(45:00):
days, think of spiritual growth as linear, where you grow
kind of like age, and. But that no longer
sufficed because it's like you're leaving stuff behind
like a snail trail. Then I came across
Fowler, his stages of faith.
And where, you know, you move from infancy, where you're
(45:23):
completely dependent to, you become a child, where
you learn how to be independent, and then. And then you
become, as an adolescent, you're independent, you know,
stubbornly, and then as an adult, you become interdependent and so
on. But I no longer like the stages either,
because then you're looking down on yourself, your previous self,
(45:44):
and on others who are at those stages
now. I think of spiritual growth as spatial, where
you grow bigger to
include everything that went before. Nothing needs to be rejected.
Not your mennonite back. Mennonite Mormon
background, not too far removed. Yeah.
(46:06):
Not my Presbyterian, anglican vineyard. None of
that stuff. I don't reject it. It's all a part of who I
am. I always tell people, you wouldn't be who you are now unless you were
who you were then. And so all that is a part of your
story. Don't reject it. Don't be ashamed of it. You know,
just part of psychological
(46:27):
therapy is learning how to integrate all those parts of
yourself, including the parts you're afraid of and ashamed of
and scared of and all that. Learn how to
integrate that into your life. That's how you become wise. That's
how you become whole. Yeah. And so that,
to me, is what growth is and deconstruction. The big
(46:49):
challenge I see for deconstruction is people not
saying, well, I was duped and give it the finger
and move on and reject everything. It's like, no, figure out
how did that help you to become who you are. You can't tear that chapter
out of your story and you make sense anymore. That's going
to create more chasms of mental health issues. That's
(47:12):
right. Yeah. I love what you're saying. And I think the highest stage of James
Fellars is integration. That's true. It's just like.
And also on the hero's journey or the heroine's journey, the last
stage is integrating. Like, you go through the drought, you kill the
dragons and you go on the quest and you get the elixir and you come
back and you've integrated all of that depth and all of that descent,
(47:33):
and you just never stops. Right. We're always on this
continual hero's journey, which means we're going to go to the depths.
Yes. We were taught to fear the dark. Right. We
were taught that there's no God there. Yeah. Yeah, that's
right. Yeah. And that anything to do
with darkness was evil and demonic, you
(47:55):
know, so we have to face those parts of ourselves
and learn how to integrate that. Not to worry it,
dismiss it, you know, press it,
suppress it, all those things. We need to learn how to,
you know, even. Even the parts of our past that. Where we were
(48:15):
abused or whatever, we need to figure out
how to integrate that stuff, not forget it. A lot of
people go to therapy to try to remember their
trauma, what caused their trauma, so that they can
heal that. And that's the purpose of healing. Healing
means to be made whole. And so that doesn't mean cutting off
(48:38):
those painful parts or those shameful parts. It
means integrating those things. And so that's what I think is the big work of
deconstruction. Yes,
absolutely. Well, I
want to just read this little part in your book while we wrap up that
I really appreciated. I'm just going to hold this
(48:59):
up. I got people watching online. Oh,
it's one man handing another man a
box with a smiley face, and he says, welcome
to the faith. Now here's our complimentary
box, outside of which you should never, ever think again.
(49:19):
And underneath here you've written, not by the way,
they want a program, not a community. Here
they got neither answers nor programs. Over time, I started getting more
communications from concerned members, suggesting that perhaps I wasn't really called to be a
pastor anymore. Some were genuinely worried about me, that I was no longer happy, that
(49:42):
I needed to find something else to do. And then you went on with
sort of like them being alarmed at what you were
thinking and feeling and asking and, and doing. That's kind of where I was leading
to with Christ. You know, he always reflected a question, and I think he was
modeling that. But we don't always see that we want
the answers. It makes us feel better if we know everything all the.
(50:04):
And I can tell you unequivocally that questions are not
honored or held up as faithful
when it comes to biblical
perspectives or theology or, you know, the
doctrine. And so that was what I
(50:25):
like to ask, questions. I'm a very inquisitive person. And so for me, that was
just a shutdown. So
I want you to just touch on one more thing before we close. And
that is, you were recently challenged that there is no such thing as
deconstruction or that it's not valid or it's not faithful or it's not spiritual
or. I remember how you put it, but it was in your newsletter, and I
(50:47):
thought that your, your thoughts and feelings around that were really good because you were
actually, you've actually been called out. As you know, this is the guy to
watch for. He's going to take you down a dark road in some circles.
How would you respond to that now that you've had a
little space around it? How do you frame that now,
(51:08):
when you get called out as a heretic or somebody who's leading people
off the, quote, path, let's just
say, let's just, people are. You're leading people away from Christ, how
would you respond to the deconstruction piece of that.
Well, the opening line in the book, it's in the forward,
(51:28):
says, apostasy is nothing new.
And so as soon as I read that line, the opening line, I knew, okay,
I know where this book is going. You know, that's the
taster. But what I say is,
deconstructionism isn't a thing. Deconstruction
is a thing. I started using the word deconstruction. I borrowed it from a
(51:50):
french philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who invented
the word deconstruction to refer to questioning
everything about the text. And that there is no. There can't. We can't
know what the objective truth of a text is. There's too many
obstacles to that. Not only my own paradigm, my own way of
reading my language, but also its transmission,
(52:12):
the author's intent and the words and then the editing that
went on. And then their paradigms
are so far and distant from our paradigms, it's impossible for
us to understand what paradigm that was, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's what deconstruction started as. You
know, questioning the text. For me, I
(52:34):
borrowed it because it just sounded exactly what I was going through in my
spiritual journey. And
it's nothing new. Everybody all through time,
questions their beliefs. This is nothing new. It's not a new
thing. It's not a movement. Wait. There's no organization
to it. There's no head, although there are people trying to, you
(52:57):
know, take the lead. There's no, you know,
groups, you know? You know what I mean? It's not. It's not
professional. It's not organized. This is something that's always happened. People
have always questioned their beliefs. It used to be, though, in the old days,
you either shut up about it or got kicked out.
So now people don't care so much about belonging to
(53:20):
a church. And COVID really exacerbated
that, where people are like, you know what? I don't think I need the
church. That's a new thing, and
that's a movement. That's a migration away from the church. That's
huge. But deconstruction isn't
new. Doing it out loud is new. That's all.
(53:42):
That's true. Yes, yes, yes. They get burned at the stake. Now you
just go to a different church, or you stop going and
find new friends. Yeah. I mean, now you could get
disciplined by your church. You could get called in if you were a
dissenting voice or even raising a question that flight in the face of
existing, you know? Yeah. Happened to you?
(54:03):
Yeah. Well, this has just been so great, and
I really just want to honor your work and what you do and how brave
it is and how just the art itself
is brilliant. Thank you. But I think people can feel your
soul and your messaging. I will just tell you. You want to know my
favorite one is the one where of your cartoons is
(54:25):
when you are drawing all the lines with the pencils, Jesus is coming
behind, trying to erase all of them, and he gets, like, the side eye from
one guy, like, what are you doing, Jesus? Anyway?
But it's just. It's just like, it was soul food for
me. That's great to sit with those. And that's why I got your book
and I've shared your cartoons with different people and different. And we just had a
(54:47):
good laugh and also, like, a good, like, oof. This hits the.
Feels like this. This really gets to the heart of
it. Calls out some of the obvious
polarizing ideas of many religions. It's
just so self evident now that
(55:07):
if we're going to push people to the margins and exclude and not
bring every voice to the table, and like you said, that oneness, if we're not
doing that, we're missing it. Yeah. Yeah. I agree
100%. Well, where can people find your work, David?
Where's the best place for them? Makeitpastor.com. That's where I'm at. That's
home base, that's basecamp, and I'm a naked
(55:29):
pastor on all social media platforms. I'm everywhere.
And I think that's one of the things that has helped me do well.
And naked pastor gets out and around is because I'm on all the platforms and
I just don't stop. And that's also what frustrates a lot of people.
I just. You're like, I'm not going away. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here.
Yeah. Well, thank you. It's brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.