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Join us as we sit Across the Counter from Brian Hall the lead singer and frontman of the band TENTS.
In this ATC Episode:
• Our conversation traverses the landscape of Brian's spiritual upbringing, which danced between Baptist vigor and charismatic mystique. He unveils the raw truth of his detour from organized religion, while still holding fast to the divine in his role as a father, desiring to pass down a heritage of belief to his children in a world where finding a church that accepts his distinctive Christian perspective is like searching for a rare chord in a complex melody.
• Every strum of a guitar tells a story; every melody carries a belief. Brian's life is a symphony of such stories, where music and worship converge into a sanctuary for personal faith. Crafting a home church as an answer to societal division, he highlights the power of song to shape our understanding of community.
• Brian discusses the challenge of wearing a label and the profound connection listeners forge with music—whether it be through lyrics that resonate or melodies that comfort.
• Brian candidly addresses the tangles of vulnerability and authenticity as he steps into collective worship, and we wade into the deeper waters of universalism, the critique of progressive Christianity, and the quest for genuine relationship with the divine. It's a journey marked by the reconciliation of deep-seated tensions and the embrace of love as defined in the greatest of scriptures, a reminder that the path to spiritual connection is etched with humility and an acceptance of life's sacred paradoxes.
Connect with Brian:
Instagram: @tentsband
Listen to TENTS on Spotify or anywhere you listen to good music!
Beliefs espoused by the guests of ATC are not necessarily the beliefs and convictions of ATC.
That said the intent of our podcast is to listen, remain curious and never fear failure in the discovery life giving truth. Many people we ardently disagree with have been our greatest teachers.
00:03 - Exploring Personal Faith Journeys
08:17 - Family Lineage and Faith Journey
16:42 - Navigating Faith and Identity Through Music
23:17 - Navigating Faith and Friendship
39:39 - Navigating Theological Messiness and Faith
49:08 - Exploring Universalism and Theological Mutts
54:57 - Exploring Faith and Relationship With God
01:11:00 - Struggles With Vulnerability and Authenticity
01:14:09 - Navigating Faith and Community Relationships
Pull up a chair across the counter. You're one stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity. I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with my co-host, jared Taftin, and today we're interviewing Brian Hall. He is the lead singer of a little band called Tense. It's pretty cool. They have some awesome music. You should check them out. Jared, I'll pass it off to you to ask the first question over here.
Speaker 2:Hey, brian, we're happy to have you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Glad to be here, gentlemen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Tell me, brian, where are you originally from?
Speaker 3:The Northwest. So I guess early, like late elementary school, my family moved from the greater Seattle area to a small town an hour and a half south of Portland and then I've been. I've been in Portland for about 20 years.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, and if you had to give me a snapshot of your spiritual journey, what would that look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think my spiritual journey, oh gosh, what makes it unique is that I had some people in my life that were like, extremely interested in emotional health. I kind of grew up bouncing between Baptist and charismatic communities. There was a lot of really complicated stuff that happened in my life and a lot of weird stuff that ultimately resulted in me finding a need to create some distance between organized religion and my own experience. When I would say like I probably had a normal teenager, I was in a lot of ways as a normal church kid around 19. I had this really profound moment that led to a couple of years of really deep, intimate closeness with God. That was so real that I think, almost in spite of my best efforts to shake my Christianity in the wake, as kind of the disillusionment started to happen, because basically what happens is that two year mark kind of started to unravel. Around the time my church community really blew up. It was like the fifth community that I felt like I had had this part ways with, under really difficult circumstances, a long story, and so that was kind of the beginning of my wilderness journey. That's, I feel like, been always. There's been so much. I started a successful business in my 20s I've had a really good marriage. Most of my friends close friends are actually evangelicals and I've relied heavily on those people and I've had a perhaps disrupted spiritual practice, but nonetheless some version of one for my adult life. As I've gotten older, I've become more interested in being just more positive, more hopeful. That wasn't very brief, but that's kind of the nutshell, I guess.
Speaker 2:Hey, I said snapshot, so that could be. That was pretty solid in terms of Like a stretched snapshot. Yeah, yeah. Brevity is not my strong suit, so I jumped on a podcast.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man. So where would you consider yourself now? You said that you're looking to be kind of more positive and more hopeful. Where?
Speaker 3:would you kind of consider yourself now. Yeah, I think now I'm a father who realizes that his children needs him to believe deeply in them and provide I feel like I have a pocket knife with like 50 tools on it. I have this like crazy tool in my pocket. That's like kind of hidden and it serves me in so many deep ways in my daily life I have, for example, I know how to like be deeply depressed and go on a three hour walk and pray and find God in my depression. I know how to like struggle with really complicated ideas and feelings and like navigate those well and it's like those are just kind of things I learned when I was younger and things I've learned since too. But my kids aren't getting access to those because we don't. They don't have as much of a spiritual practice. So I think my interest is in trying to stop defining myself by what distances me and trying to understand what distances me from my religious roots and figure out more what I share in common with those religious roots and figure out how to find my own type of way back in. So I've been visiting Quaker churches. I've been trying to engage in the like. It's really difficult. It's so hard Like I, from a personal place. I'm a Christian that maybe 60 to 80% of Christians would say is not a Christian theologically. But Christianity is deeply personal to me and I don't know what percentage they don't get to decide. I have a personal faith. Experience is very important to me, that I cherish, and I'm trying to figure out how to to practice it at this point. Those are the important defining traits of me.
Speaker 1:I think Sounds like he's not a Christian.
Speaker 2:I feel like the like, the labels that we've given things and kind of the like. The separation that we've taken from personal relationships has made it more difficult to have an identity. You know, we've always like to label people and say, oh, you are a Calvinist, or you are a Republican or you are whatever, and then the moment you label somebody, that means that you believe everything I think that person believes, and so that's always been the case. But as, like social media and kind of like the globalization of the world have come up and we don't have to be as like personally close to one another, I feel like it's become more difficult to like know one another, if that makes sense, because you know it used to be and this is the stuff I think about Moftime like it used to be, you didn't interact with thousands of people every week, Like there were a certain amount of people that you interacted with on a personal level on a daily basis, and now it feels like we have to hold space for so many more people all the time that when I meet somebody, I just need to know where you stand and then I can put. It's almost like I don't know if y'all collected Pokemon cards, but it's just like I'm. That card goes here, and then this card goes there and this one goes here, and so I relate a lot to that. I resemble some of your remarks of like I don't know that I fit in any camp, but I have a personal faith that's powerful. So would you tell us more about that? Like there's, I have notes, like so many things I want to ask about, but you said a lot of crazy stuff that led you to want to distance yourself from organized religion. And then you said you know, 19 years old, extreme interaction with God while you were trying to get away. And then now it sounds like I'm hearing you say like you're in this middle ground where, like you have the personal relationship but you're uncertain about the organized relationship. So can you take us back to like that interaction with God initially and in what that progression has looked like?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I just really like in my mind, like whatever criticisms I might have of the contemporary like conservative evangelical church become more difficult to uphold and certain, certainly in certain pop pockets, like you could talk culturally in a large way, but it's very difficult. My on my mom's side my grandpa was like a Baptist minister and my grandpa's dad was a Baptist minister who everyone would tell stories about how he would just talk about Jesus and start weeping and he just converted like halfs of grants past Oregon, like during his tenure as a pastor there, and had to do a building project and wouldn't do it because he just want to focus on relationships. You know, like so I have really when I engage with that tradition on my mom's side, it's really compelling because like I have a book written by my great grandfather called it's fun being well, a Baptist minister that wrote a book about the gospel called this fun being well, and it's like so simple and so positive and it's like I mean there's probably like four chapters that captured me and then I started talking about you know, then I stopped, I lost in. But those four chapters at the beginning were well thought out, well structured, interesting chapters and really compelled me and I was like man, like, so I had a pretty compelling like. There's a lot of compelling characters in my lineage on my mom's side, same with my dad's side. On my dad's side, I would say, in terms of my formation, my dad himself was the most prominent. He's like very mystical, he's really interested, he's a fascinating person. He has spent his life right. Huh. This is your dad my father, yeah, okay, he spent his whole life kind of on he's most of his adult life on the fringes of kind of in the strange corners of the charismatic world. He, which he kind of fits into and I feel like kind of doesn't, and I've told him that many times, like you're trying to find resonance in these spaces that don't quite fit you, but in other ways they do, and he's his own man, you know so what?
Speaker 2:what are the strange corners of the charismatic world? Because to many the charismatic world yeah, it's strange, maybe him.
Speaker 3:So his interest is yeah, I don't know if I could expound on that. That's the thing you have to experience firsthand to really meaningful understand. But I could tell you a little bit about him. I don't know if I could talk about strange courses without sounding trite, you know, but I can talk about him and things I like about him and what finds him so he's he's like really very interested in mysticism. He's almost like a spiritual, like mechanic, where he's like thinks about his own emotional state and he spends a lot of time in meditation and he thinks a little about repentance in an almost mechanical way. It's like where your heart is directed towards something that's meeting your emotional needs over here and you have to like complete, you have to engage in the practice of learning how to redirect your heart toward God. That's like his interest is that like kind of what he can think of things, of his comprehensive repentance is looking at this and then going over to look at this and he's really interesting and has a lot of really fascinating things to say about it. But he would like put his hands on me when I was kid and I would feel wind like one time I was really I brought up. I had beef with him one time and I was terrified to bring it up and I like he was facing away from me in the living room no one else was in the living room and I like felt myself like lunge and anger toward him as I was like trying to just come up with emotional fortitude to just talk, you know, and he like almost fell in the ground when that happened. Like he's just so. He's like one of those people that is confounding and also like you have to reckon with at the same time, like there's something very real about his experience with God and his mysticism. So I would say like because of him I had a really strong and because of my charismatic like background, which was really his influence, but then also basically like mid high school on, you just really learn this like it's sort of torture, but it's also deeply exuberant like sort of experience with God where like people are, you dance and and you you laugh and you bear your dreams and it's this really earnest environment. You know, we used to literally like me and my friends, on Friday nights, we used to like turn on music, like Christian music and like Christian music, and dance from like 10pm to one in the morning, or like pray and like talk to each other and like lay hands on each other, and it's it wasn't. It sounds really like. It sounds like, oh, there must have been people barking, but there weren't. It was like it was sensationalized in a way, but it was earnest, you know, and it was just really impactful. So I guess, as I came through all that, the thing that became increasingly clear to me was that there was a religious experience in here that I had started to understand and find my place in, and it was deeply, deeply personal to me Even now, like a lot of the thing, like I have the physical sensations I had as a young man. I still experience, you know, like there's this feeling that you get from, like runners high. I feel like I'm in a body, like when I go and walks and pray, like within 10 minutes. I start to feel that way and it's just like very rejuvenating experience. It feels. It's weird because it feels experiential, I don't know and but meaning, you know, and like that experience is really the thing that I would say is like the, for me, the treasure in the field, or like the, the center of it. And I almost have to because of how I was raised. I almost have to reaccess like Jesus's interest in justice, you know like because I was so much raised on the experience and the inner world of a Christian. And so when I was 19. It was like summer highs, struggling with sin, whatever goes on in your life, the ups and downs and then it was 19 that all that stopped and I was just for like two straight years. I was active in church at that time and I was just it was like constant, deep Christian joy for a couple years and that was not when my deconstruction sort of struggle, like struggle with the practice, started. It was kind of a few years after that and and the end of the summer the extended summer camp high sort of coincided with my church imploding, so, yeah, so I can't remember the question now. I'm just kind of getting into more and more details.
Speaker 2:The only question is just your story.
Speaker 3:So my story time. Yeah, yeah, so that I mean I guess that's it. From there it was moving to Portland where people are religiously cynical about everything and sort of it really is like it's not a monoculture, but my circles of the musician that moved to the city and like a lot it was like interesting because we were on the more religiously earn. So they say there's like all these church kids right from my hometown, from this charismatic, charismatic church that had a really big impact, where me and my wife met. My wife has three sisters like I didn't I'll meet in that church, but I think three out of four, no, like it was a very important place for like so many of us and about half stayed back and most of them are still Christian, practicing Christians, and the other half like moved to Portland and most of us are like atheists, are agnostic or whatever. And I'm on like the more Christian end of the people that went to Portland. I started, you know, I started the music business in my mid 20s. That got pretty big and was a really big part of my life that I ultimately left. But I still, I still make a lot of my living like writing music for ads. That's why I support my family. And then somewhere in there I met John Collins from the Bible project, who I'm guessing maybe you guys know about tense to the Bible project. I'd love to hear more about how you even know about tense or maybe not but I think what has happened is I just it's like I got in a double bind. You know, it's like my face really important to me. I can't let go of this. I don't know how to practice this in a way that feels like safe and I just stayed in that double bind and I think the more now as I live in the last two or three years, the more I feel myself like softening up a bit and what I find myself in is just like being okay with the questions, you know, like I'm uncomfortable, like you know, and just being in this place and try and find God in this place and being willing to accept that the place that I'm in is meaningful and has has importance in use and it's part of my story and it's part of what God is doing in my life. So I have a lot of conclusions. I don't have a lot of answers. It's really hard to be like for someone like me who's really, really I am like really in conservative circles in an intimate way, and I'm really in woke circles in a very real way. It's very difficult to go to church, because you either go to church that's like on affirming or any number of those key points, or you just hear someone say something that just makes you really upset. You know, and you're like, oh, all of a sudden I'm a snowflake. I wasn't a snowflake 20 minutes ago and I'm like or you go, or you go to a liberal church and you're like they're just like trash talking your family you know what I mean like they're like these conservatives, like it's really difficult and so I so I really don't know. We started starting a home church or just figuring out maybe meaningful rhythms I can provide for my kids that don't include. You know, I'm kind of at a little bit of a loss right now because it's so hard, especially important. It's really like it's really one or the other. You know.
Speaker 2:Why don't you?
Speaker 1:I have like he always writes notes.
Speaker 2:I have tons of like thoughts and things, but sometimes it's like rabbit trails, so maybe I'll prayerfully ask the Lord what I'm supposed to ask. But he asked you a question.
Speaker 1:So I found tents. I was like this song is a banger, who are these guys? And so I kind of looked, because you were on like one of my Spotify, like like a band, like a band underneath the thing, and I was like these guys are awesome, you know, and I I'm really like I don't know, probably a little pretentious about my music, because I love, like you know, the ones with like less than a couple million.
Speaker 3:We'll try to keep it not too big for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta keep it, I can look cool.
Speaker 2:You're silly. No, it's just true, I'm telling you I was listening to Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
Speaker 1:and now they got too big and Where's that trying to make?
Speaker 2:I was gonna say, was that supposed to make you not as silly when you just said that band name no?
Speaker 1:Rainbow Kitten.
Speaker 2:Surprise.
Speaker 1:No, that was the silliest band name I could think of but it is also true, but but no. So I just, you know, I was listening to your music and I was like this is a jam. So I looked into kind of what you guys because I do this with all the you know bands that I really like is like I'll look at their page and then I'll go through and be like who are these guys, what are they, what are they think, all this stuff? And so I looked at you guys on Instagram and I was like, okay, this is cool. And then I figured out I don't even know remember, but I did figure out that you guys were the Bible project. But it was because of I listened to the first song. I didn't listen to the most popular, because I'm pretentious, so I went for like the third down. I'm not like, oh, what's the big? Okay, let's go song number three. He's like I have no clue what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:I'm not here in Portland, you don't? I mean, you know it's always, it's always fun to joke about, but it's not, it's you're. You can't, you can't freak me out with being. You know particular about your music. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1:And I think most pseudo Christian music is not not great. But hey, but you guys? So I listened to your number one. I kind of worked my way up and then I was like that is because we do listen to the Bible project. So I was like that is the song in the Bible project that's cool. And I that was something I was going to ask you about because I have no clue, like your affiliation if you even have one with the Bible project but would love to yeah, john Collins is one of my best friends.
Speaker 3:He plays well. So when I moved to Portland this is what I'm talking about having kind of church and mostly in bars for like a long time John was, so he went to Multnomah where Tim also went. That's how they met. They were like both involved in this nonprofit called Skate church, which is what you would guess. And then he, after college, like he pastored for a little bit and then he did other things and he was. He was becoming a digital creative. Early on he was like trying to edit, maybe be a filmmaker and and I was trying to start my career as a composer, like writing music for videos and stuff. So he and I were in those really very uncomfortable stages of our career. Career kind of moonlighting is as grown up. So we just formed this really strong, like trying to figure, you know just like you know,
Speaker 2:you remember, yeah, so we so we actually, you remember yeah, like first of all, how old?
Speaker 1:how old are you? Just 40, okay. How old are you guys? I'm 28 now.
Speaker 3:You guys are still. You guys are still kind of in the. You guys are just phasing out of the pretending to be adults phase now yeah, I'm actively moonlighting as a man.
Speaker 2:Yeah the grown man.
Speaker 1:I'm figuring it out.
Speaker 2:Once.
Speaker 1:I hit 30, I gotta, I gotta have something going.
Speaker 2:I'm just calling me dad now. I'm looking at everything. Things have changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, so, yeah. So john and I became really close friends. We played in a band together like a folk band in the double odds, like in, like what a formed and like oh eight, and around 2010, our work spot. Both got really busy and he stepped away from that band. I didn't bother, I just was like I needed to break. So then I formed a new band, like seven years ago, with Amy and probably 20, whatever 2014, 2013, 2014. So 10 years ago, what?
Speaker 1:Just saying that you know, oh no.
Speaker 3:Enjoy every minute, because it goes by quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so we. So that's my story with john. So when he started the Bible project actually it's funny is he kind of like? I feel I don't know if you would agree with this, but it felt like at one point he auditioned me he actually had me on a early podcast with Tim Not cool and I feel like I was so freaked out about I think his idea was that I would be like the emotional, like their instagram fives and I'm like a three, like I'm this, like I could bring the romance. You know, I could wax poetic and monologue like I did in the bar, but I was so I think I was so I was not in a place where I was able to fulfill that role, but obviously it's good the way the Bible project works and I think it could be the poet's heart, but unfortunately you have a poet's heart so it may have been in a hole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's like you're good right now.
Speaker 2:right now, you abandoned me for a little while and I deal with those emotions alone.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So John, so we were just another John put defender on the Bible project kind of, and that's really what and I think it's really real. I didn't understand at the time. It's been a real gift for me because I think as I've gotten older I've been like I'm like acting like a, like I hate trying to be cool, like I hate the band that I feel so uncomfortable inside, like the cool band. So um, he's too cool for everything I write is about fatherhood and existential questions about life and God and Christianity, like and it's your height, you know, and I live in Portland, so it's like not you know, I don't know it's been so good for me to be like oh, all of a sudden I kind of have this like audience that I can be myself around a little more, or, and so it's caused me to be a little bit more open about my faith journey. I'm trying, I tried the ex evangelical thing for a while because I would rather it tell people that are post religious that they can still find God in the wilderness. That sounds really exciting to me. Like that would be my favorite thing to do would just be take people who are struggling and maybe feel like God was putting a box when they were young and now they they're not in the box so they don't get God. Like I would love to take part in on doing that narrative, and what happens is I find myself alienating fans, people that are like that, have a faith experience that's not fractured. Why are you, why are you talking negative? You know all they need is that hashtag ex evangelical and they become very skeptical. So or just feel slighted, maybe. So I don't want that, so I'm ditching it. I'm I don't think my content and our stories of band changes at all. I have to be honest about who I am and I think that that can still be encouraging to a lot of different people, I hope, but certainly I'll probably. You probably won't see that hashtag as much as you have from the socials.
Speaker 1:Lyrically your, your stuff's incredible, by the way, just putting that out there. So also musically, but that's that's kind of what hooked me. Like I don't even listen. This sounds bad, but half the time I don't listen to lyrics unless they're like kind of kind of giving, and your lyrics are super, super good man, so that means a lot encouragement.
Speaker 2:My wife is that way where, like she almost doesn't even hear words a lot of times and like her taste in music is 100% related to the music, and I almost can't hear the music sometimes, I just hear words, it's anyway. That's just interesting the way.
Speaker 3:I'm the music version. Okay yeah, some words have to really capture me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes I'll. My wife will like like us on the like. Did you hear what that said? It'll be like one of her favorite songs for years. And she's like I have no idea what it's. You're not a musician man, you wouldn't get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just played drums, so I'm not really a musician either.
Speaker 2:That's not true.
Speaker 3:My band is a much better musician than I am.
Speaker 1:That's a win, because I just hit stuff with sticks.
Speaker 2:You're a musician and you are not pretentious, so I just recover.
Speaker 3:You're like. You're like you're being kind of self deprecating in some ways, but then you're very particular about your music.
Speaker 1:Obviously you have to make a box and then break it.
Speaker 2:Yeah keep everybody confused. So you mentioned, I mean, the relationship with John and everything like that's. That's cool and the fact that you guys have been able to. I love the fact that one of the biggest like I guess I would say like evangelical outlets right now and the Bible project, has not like led you to be out of relationship with John and even in the way that, like you said, I because I wrote um, you said I've so long been in this double bond where my faith has been so important and I cannot let go. Yet how do I practice this safely? And I don't know. Just touching on the points that you've made and how all of these things are tied together, like I'll just give you what's running through my brain. Like your dad and your experience has been a lot of like a mystical experience to some degree or someone classified that way, like from your experience being raised by your father, from your own experience, and then like the idea of practicing this safely. To me, it it feels like like how do I stay near God but not sacrifice? Like the traditions and the institutions that have value and have meaning and have meaning to those around me and and have not come to have zero meaning to me but maybe don't always lead to the thing I'm most, most about you personally. So this has been like super crucial to me in the past few years because I I feel like I've flipped back and forth on that pendulum of like I want to burn this down because it doesn't lead to the place that I want to be and it feels commercial and I feel like the Jesus that I know hates the commercialism of it. And then I'm in environments where it feels like other people are experiencing Jesus in reality in that place and so I would be burning the building down with people I love inside of it, because whatever they have isn't what I have or it isn't enough. And so a lot of my life has revolved around, or my thoughts have revolved around like the Hebrews 13 area, where it's actually Hebrews 13,. 13 says therefore, let us go to him outside of the camp and bear the reproach that he endured. And I've been thinking a lot about the idea of like the camp or institutions or traditions, and even the Messiah who we say we follow, like he showed up and the institution is the thing that crucified him, but then he built the institution in the first place and says I call back to McKills a day, like I call back to the place that you don't even know, that, mystically, your institution is founded on, or and you don't even have a complete understanding of. So I feel like I've been in that tension for years, and earlier you said something about like I couldn't get away, like even when I tried to get away and that happened to me early on, but it was more personal and then I feel like that's happened in a more communal sense now as well, like I can't just abandon everything. But then what does that look like? So I put all that out there and then I have a question for you, which is, I mean one so anywhere you want with institutions, like tell me more what you value, what the struggles are. But two like who does Brian Hall say Jesus is like? Who did he say Jesus was and who does he say Jesus is now?
Speaker 1:Easy question.
Speaker 3:Oh man, those are good questions. I'm going to answer the first. That's so funny. I got so caught up in it I lost the first one. I'm going to answer the second one and then you have to repeat this first question later. The second question oh gosh, Jesus, I don't know how. It's kind of weird because on a basic level I feel I'm going to talk in circles. If I'm not careful, I don't know, I'll just start meandering. I feel like very compelled by the great reversal that Jesus. This is like Bible project language, the idea that Jesus saw so much upside down and the idea that people I felt a lot of like salvageable, uninterruptible self-hatred. As a young man I felt so insecure about myself. I felt and for me the answer to that was belonging to God like deeply and comprehensively being. It's like you could hate yourself in one second and then when God meets you, it almost doesn't even matter what you think of yourself anymore because you feel so good, you feel so accepted and so at peace and that kind of. It's like such a bizarre thing to so deeply belong to God. So to me, Jesus is the personification, embodiment of those ideas, and I can't say it in probably more intelligible terms, but that's.
Speaker 2:These may be like unhelpful clarifications, but just for the sake of listeners in my understanding of your own walk, do you believe that Jesus was a real person that really died? We don't have to get into all the details, but do you personally believe that he was a real person?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say probably so. But I would also say like there's this thing that happens to someone like me who has a really astute and maybe a little bit dogmatic like religious heritage, where, as you feel your worldview sort of rupture with the worldview of your communities of origin, your family, you start to feel so much for me I'm so driven by like peace and like my music is all about, like my mom playing piano in the living room when I was a little kid and feeling unwell and feeling like there was chaos and tension and then when she played it was peace. You know, like that's why I that's really a core driver for me. So the tension, the schism, so to speak, between me and my family has been so difficult that when I try to be theologically astute or answer really practical questions like that, I feel like I have to. I feel like I have to give myself permission to be very messy theologically at this stage of my life, like because and this resonates with there was this Rob Bell podcast from years ago where he's talking to this guy about the myth of Christmas. It's actually that podcast was really formative for me because the guy talks about Christmas and paganism and how there's all this beautiful imagery If you start to study, like winter solstice and how it, how it marries to the gospel story and that's really what Christian Christianity does for us. It kind of weds like Judeo Christianity to the, to the West in a way. That is kind of lost in our post agricultural society. But I really loved that podcast. That was a rabbit trail but in it he says that a myth is is a story that represents an idea that's so profoundly true that you can't articulate it in any other way. And a really good myth should make you grown. So when I read the Bible I want to grown like and the more I try to even bother with the questions did Jesus really walk the earth? What type of reconciliation took place on the cross? That is original sin. I mean, these are things I have positions on that, but I don't know if I could articulate them particularly well. But in general, like I kind of don't care if. Like I do care if this is. See, this is where people put me into the camp they want to put me in. I kind of don't care. I kind of don't care if Jesus was real Like he. He is very real to me. I think he was real? I don't not think he was real.
Speaker 2:I think you're saying I don't care if I can articulate to you historically and referentially exactly what you were doing. It's like doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:I don't give a all those expletives Like I just like right now it's so healthy for me to be like to shed because it was so attached to like I don't get to experience God, which is sinful. I feel like for me to say I'm going to deprive myself of a religious experience because I'm being a martyr for because my family of origin or my communities of origin maybe believe differently than me and I feel like that distance makes me like I need to suffer. That's almost like a God complex. That's like kind of arrogant right. So like I'm repenting of that and part of my recovery is letting myself not answer some of these kinds of questions.
Speaker 2:I think that's I mean I'm going to get chewed out if certain people have opinions for the same reason, but I think that's beautiful and what you said, like giving myself permission to be theologically messy I, yeah, I've also often said like you can't you can't give good answers to bad questions. So sometimes, even like the word that I used, real, like we could, we could personify that in like one, one category of existence. But like what do we mean by? Like spiritually real and eternally real and more that. So I guess the reason I kind of asked those things along that line and maybe Grant can jump in too Like even some of the heart of this podcast, is like culturally, I believe, as a people or even a global society, like we've kind of been disenfranchised with every, every level of institution, everything that says it's real and then it's not, or it leads to life and then it does not. And so it's weird to me that, like we often feel this way and many others feel like these, these Jesus loving misfits out wandering in the wilderness. But how is it possible that there are so many misfits that feel the way that we feel, yet our institutions and the places that we commune together don't reflect some of the need for that reality. And so I don't even know that I have a question as much as like I have a similar pain and like longing for, like real communion with other families and other people that love, love the way that I've experienced it and the way I've experienced him, but, to your point, like if that's dependent on our ability to like grammatically and theologically express what that love has done. I don't, I don't know that we're ever going to find a community that can nail that down. So, yeah, I don't know. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. I think that, like you said, like theologically, you know, messy, and for me as a human I don't know, I don't even think it's possible to be like completely theologically clean, if that makes sense. Like I don't know. I feel like anything we talk about is not like if I shared you just all of my views on everything. I don't know how wrong I am, but I've got to be wrong at least 40%. So just that idea of you know I'll be theologically messy If I say this. I think it's a very one humble point of view, because like, yeah, I think we would be theologically messy if we said a lot of our opinions and thoughts and feelings about certain things, but also, like I do believe that there is like absolute truth, so I do believe that there is a thing that is theologically clean. I just don't think we'll ever be able to express that completely. So I just I love the point of view that you had. Thanks.
Speaker 2:I tell you what like doesn't feel theologically messy To me. It like my hope in someone outside of me doesn't feel theologically messy. My fear of my own inability to be consistent doesn't feel theologically messy. My desire for goodness and my belief that good wins doesn't feel theologically messy. The joy in the presence of, just like, the momentary practices of life and the fact that there is still joy to be had, even though many days feel like futility, like that doesn't feel theologically messy to me. But the ability to now try to express that experience. It's not that it feels messy as much as it feels like in order to do that I'm going to have to create a sanitized, surgical version on paper of what we're talking about and to me, that's who Jesus is in the reason that God becoming a physical person and walking the earth and having experiences carries so much weight for me because, instead of just explaining himself in words, like there would never be enough words or enough existence for me to understand. But I don't need somebody to explain the biology of why a hug from my you know, my father, at the lowest point in my life, like did something to my soul and I don't need to understand exactly what happened physiologically, spiritually and emotionally, emotionally to receive that healing. And I may never be able to, but I have no problem like participating in that love and then reflecting that love to others. And I don't. I don't know that. I don't know that the call of life for for Grant or for Brian or for Jared is is to be the like, the focal point of understanding, like our emotions, our, our comprehensive understanding of our own selves. And I love what Brian said earlier, like getting to be theologically messy. You said you could hate yourself so much and then you meet God and what you think of yourself just really doesn't matter. And I I've been picturing that lately in a different way. But the same words, like have you ever imagined like things are indebted in some way, or they're, they're hard or they're painful in some way and you're not sure when they're going to be better? And then, like goodness comes or relief comes, but the relief is so much greater than you ever expected that it could be, and then the cost now becomes inconsequential. You guys were letting it all in one thing, like it's like everything felt heavy or burdened or whatever it is, and then that goodness comes and you're like man, I don't even know what I was worried about. Like I've been fascinated by the fact that we can just so quickly like not be traumatized, depending on the degree of goodness to come, like it could be the greatest trauma of my life. And then you can overwhelm me with goodness in some way and you're like, yeah, it wasn't that bad. That sounds insane, but like maybe it's just me, but like in me it's like that's insanity that I can just like and genuinely let that go. Like if the goodness is that good, it's just like ah, never thought about it again, have y'all ever? Am I making sense at all? I'm not just being Jared.
Speaker 1:But you're always being Jared.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love, I loved all that. Honestly, the thing that stands out to me is like the rich young ruler paradox like 13 year old and Sunday's like or in youth group, and you tell them like look the gospel's tough, like you're not going to want it, like right now you probably don't want it, but you got to give everything like and don't be like the am I saying, is that the rich young ruler? Is that the eye?
Speaker 2:of the needle story Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the kind of that I've been doing this for about 20 years, since I did a cover to cover reading of the Bible. So I'm a little rusty, like that presents us with this notion that we don't like it, like we don't want it but we got to take the nasty medicine right. And like I literally think that's like just opposite of meaningful. I guess, like Paul talks about not caring how the gospels preach, like I don't know about all that, but like for me, like I think maybe it's partly because of my universalism, you know, but like like the, the, the gospel, like our the, the, the construct of Christianity is a means to an end for us to know God and to have deep, meaningful relationship with each other and with God. And like it's it, it has to be engaged with this. Such like I feel like the Bible is. Like the Bible is enchanted, like you don't want to read, like for me and I know I don't want to misconstrue my own views, my own sort of comp like messy views with other peoples but like I feel like the Bible is like if you really want to have like a really organized hermeneutical, whatever you call it, like your theology, all lined up and tidy. Like for me this is one of my biggest like critiques of conservative evangelical Christianity is you're like I won't, like the Bible is enchanted, like, if you're trying to line up all your ideas by reading the Bible, how are you possibly engaging with it as an enchanted text? How are you possibly groaning when you encounter these like profound, deep, resonant stories that have been told for generations? You know, like, like the only thing I want to do is be affected by these stories. The only thing I want to do is, like, like when I read the story of Jesus, like I'm blessed that I don't have to worry, I don't have to worry anymore about because I can be messy. I just get to be impacted by, like, the stuff that I read on the page. You know, like, and that is so freeing for me and it feels like such a healthy place from which to engage with the Bible and to build your entire framework for what it means to be a Christian. Like I know it's not the only picture, but like for me, that's really exciting to me because it's like you get to be messy, like, and you don't get to be self righteous, you know, because you're just a person that that wants to experience God, that identifies as a follower of Jesus. That's like let me get into this book and be really meaningfully impacted by it. Like, of course my ducks are in a row, like if I start to think my ducks are in a row, like something's wrong. My religion as a tool to help me experience God and be a meaningful community is somehow not working right.
Speaker 1:So what is, like you said, universalism, what? What does that mean specifically like to you?
Speaker 3:Like I in my 20 years out in the you know religious wilderness, like hanging out with evangelicals and hanging around with people from all like I just feel like there have been so many encounters I've had with people that have felt every bit as enchanted to use that word again as as the deep moments I've had with, like other people, that identifies Christians and I personally I really don't believe intellectual ascent needs to take place for a person to experience God. I don't believe in, I don't believe, I don't know that nuances. I think I'm a purgatory or universalist, I think is what I heard somebody say. So like the, the I'm sure you guys have, like I feel like a lot of people have engaged with the ideas about hell, like and Gehenna and Hades and she'll and all the different things that are kind of lumped together and turn into caricature of themselves. So the hell thing was a really big thing for me. I read a book called skeletons in God's closet where actually a guy from Portland, a friend of mine who used to be at a Mago day like Josh can't remember his last name wrote this book and it was like oh, like hell is, hell is like if the gospel is not good enough for right now. I'm really uncomfortable with with health feels very manipulated to me. It feels like populist religion finds out that it can really manipulate people to get them in the doors and ties by scaring them. That's just what health feels like to me. And when you start to decontextualize yourself from the 21st century and realize how broad Orthodoxy, evens understanding of hell, is, like it for me it's like, oh, like hell is like real, like I I'm very comfortable with my relationship with the power of sin, like you know, like I think that and that's a critique of like a progressive Christian right is like, oh, you know, or if that's what I am I don't know what I am, but like for me, I'm like, very like it's like all that stuff applies in the present moment. Like the power of hell is like death, the power of sin is death, like, and if that that stuff is apparent in our lives now and it's very real. So, yeah, so I'm that. You can hear me start to talk about the nuances of my theology and maybe like not be able to have a meaningful discourse about it and defend it. Well, you'll citing scriptures or whatever, but these are some of the probably the theological. These are some of like the specifics maybe of where I come from and how I've sort of Frankenstein together. Some of my own ideas.
Speaker 1:We call ourselves theological mutts, so we understand intellectuals which are genetically the most healthy animals.
Speaker 2:No, don't get me there For real where's this pride coming from? No, if you get, if you go get a mutt from the pound, they will often outlive the pure breed with less genetic issues.
Speaker 3:Because they haven't, because they haven't have an overbite that causes them to like, suffocate and they haven't just been like mated with their own brethren in a closed circle.
Speaker 2:I have this pure breed and I have to do it myself for him, but you don't get poor news, naturally.
Speaker 1:That's a. That's a fact Like long.
Speaker 2:for no reason I'm going to refrain from almost like, yeah, almost like, just picked any denomination. Be like, you don't get these, naturally, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:But it is natural thing, the tulip of Calvinism.
Speaker 2:Man. This may be an area to direct the conversation, because I feel like I resemble a lot of your remarks, brian, like in the idea of continuing to pursue personal experience. I love what you said in the last portion, where the construct of Christianity is a means to an end for us to know God and be in right relationship with one another.
Speaker 1:That was the best thing anybody said on this whole podcast, by the way, so check.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really was. Yeah. So, so I'll read again the construct of Christianity is a means to an end, for us to know God and be in right relationship with one another. I guess just what I would say from my experience and like even when you said, like Jesus is real to you, I would say, like historically you just gave a reference of what the like most historically Christian faith has said Christianity is. It is that we're out of right relationship with God and that we need to be in right relationship with him, and historically that has been through Messiah, and you know you even mentioned like sin, and I agree with you too Like a commercialized, manipulative version of fear tactics. You know what would you create? Like I create hell and a devil with horns and then just freaking, scare little kids into tithing. It's like a bully. It's like a bully taking lunch money. I got Dante's, so like I related to that. And then I'm also, like you know, damnably terrified, if you will, of the idea of what, like I can't fathom what it would be like to to eternally be out of relationship with God. Like any description is not close to description. Like even when Jesus says, just like outer darkness and gnashing of teeth, and so sometimes I do lean toward that, like it feels. Maybe it's fleshly of me to think like okay, well, let's just answer this practical question, and I think sometimes I'm, I'm even trying to like get a mental and emotional or physical next step, that is of me and maybe not of God, or even put my own thoughts or another's thoughts in a box. But a lot of times when I feel this way, I feel like I can go to an actual description in 1 Corinthians 13, which tells me what love is. And so to me, like the idea of God, like, or John, where John says, like God is love, and this idea of love winning and of goodness prevailing and then there being a definitive outline in a living text that I don't truly comprehend, is enchanted, and like I can read things for years and then come back and be like there's never been there before. It's like a magic book that the chapters just change. But in 1 Corinthians 13, it's. He says love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it is not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with truth with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away, for we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways, for now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have known, even as I have been fully known. So now, faith, hope and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love.
Speaker 1:It's like just keep going.
Speaker 2:When you spoke earlier and you just said, like man, I just I don't know that my understanding, my answers to questions are worthy of following or that are even what I believe. I just kind of want to hear, like I don't even know, that I can say words that even describe what I think about the words you just asked me and I would even give back like I'm not even sure you know what the words you just said. I feel that sometimes I'm like what are we doing, man? So what do you? What would you say? It's probably what's most on my heart. Like you said, I'm not sure what's a need to practice this nearness, this experience of being in and I'm paraphrasing but being in right relationship with God, which is an experience and has traditionally felt like something to me and I can't let go of that, but then it feels unsafe, was what I just read. If it comes with consequences of lack of safety, is it still worth it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know like oh, yeah, I mean that feels to me like it's one of the more uncomfortable truths of all this. You know that I can look for like being so rooted in like a liberal city and talking about the paradoxes of feeling like suddenly you're a snowflake or whatever when you're in church. Like I have trauma right Like. So when I go to church I literally get like a body, like I get I'll feel myself tense up, just involuntarily. That as a protection makes a mechanism. I don't know there's so much for me around. It's like if I want to be, if I want my kids and I want me to have like a really meaningful, like vibrant practice, like social practice of Christian infused, like meaningful Christian, whatever I'm saying, I'm just trade, I'm just adding adjectives now. Like I feel like I have to be, I feel like I have to be willing to just lay everything down and be like it's absurd. You can't like buy a can of of sort of LaCroix, probably without taking part in some sort of compromised institution. Like like our culture has so many layers of complexity at this point. So to be in a church where perhaps the the membership brochure says sex is like marriage is designed by God between a man and a woman, or to be in a church that says where there's a bunch of people that are doing a lot of demonstrations for transgender movements, or to being, you know, in a black church where people talk about why Jesus all the time and the Savior complex of white, even like there's so many places you can go, where there's so much heat being thrown around and there's so much. And I think the only, the only path for me is being willing to be okay. It's like where we started. It's like I have to be okay with that tension, like I have to be, like that's the whole point of the gospel, right? Like then, that's exactly what you're saying. Like if we're going to use this tool to experience God, we got to drink that Kool-Aid. We got to. You know, it's like you can't, you can't like.
Speaker 2:I mean you just said drink that Kool-Aid, because I was thinking about drink that blood, sugar blood. It's just like you're just getting right there and I'm like I was about to cry because I'm thinking about, like you're talking about all these things that we have to partake of in order to be in this world, and it's like drinking poison. And Jesus, like right before he's put on a cross and has like poison stuck in his mouth, or he takes the poison of sin for the whole world, he says now eat my flesh and drink my blood. And I just had this picture of what you were saying. Like either my communion with him is more powerful or it's not. Like my kid, because I relate to you and this is going a little long but like my kids need some freaking institution. Like they don't need the chaos of my freaking mind, like you know. Like it's just like give me a preschool. And just like or just give me some community. Or my wife needs that. Like I've drugged my wife in a lot of ways through. Like just this pursuit of it's got to be real, and she's like it just needs to be here. Like whatever it is, it just needs to be here. And and I see that and there's this like this. I think it's a masculine and we don't have to get into that, but like a masculine anger of like it needs to be right.
Speaker 3:I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2:How dare you?
Speaker 1:Like you can't say masculine.
Speaker 2:I think, I think this like there is a mantle of like rightness, that maybe yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm not even. No, you don't have to. You don't have to. Sorry, I shouldn't have made that.
Speaker 1:I'm joking. No, that's why he lives in Portland.
Speaker 2:I'm only making myself, I'm only making fun of myself when something about that passion of rightness versus, like the stability of just nurturing. But I, just when you said that like it just took me to the place of, like the power of Jesus is not asking John, brian, jared, grant, tim, you know, jordan, my wife, any Reagan, anyone that's searching. He's not asking us to partake of the body and blood of this institution, this Baptist religion, this denomination, this like in Norse, asking me to partake of the essence of this person's opinion, like I don't know. I just feel this freedom and everything that you've said of just renewed, of like it's come and come and partake of me and then go the way I have gone and I don't know that feels this is the last thing I'll say, like you can give some feedback. But it he said come unto me, all you who are weary and in laden or weary and burden, and for my and he's describing like his own heart. But this week what came up again was he didn't say come unto me and I'll take everything away. Like we still were given shoulders for the bearing of some type of weight, but it was a. It was a good weight and that's what I feel like with what you're sharing is it's just a good, like it needs to be the good shepherd that is leading the good weight. And and I don't know that, that means that, wherever you are, kind of like what you said, like, all of us have preferences, and I'm thinking about literally like taste likes. I have children. Some of them just don't like the way something tastes, or like I have an allergy to cilantro and so it tastes like soap to me and so like could it be as simple as just find what like, what is healthy and what is what is communal and the partake of me there, I don't know, I'm rambling now, but does that, does that make any sense at all?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean, I think the. I think for me what it is is like having to sort my way through all my, all the boxes I need checked. You know like it's absurd for me to talk about how the Bible is in a rulebook and shouldn't be engaged with such when I have so many boxes that I need checked. Like, and that really that's a, that's a, that's a defense mechanism, you know. But also like, if, if you're me, like at some point, going to certain certain churches isn't any more like exposure therapy, you know, like it's just destructive, because it's like and I think it for me, and maybe it's a spirit in which I would occasionally go to a church, hoping not to be pissed off by something that was said or whatever. It just sounds so childish when I talk about it now, I like I don't, I don't want to like disreact, like the things I've experienced and the things that I've come to believe are true, like are part of the story that's God's given me, and it's absurd for me to just say, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to sacrifice all this good stuff that I've learned and struggled through and just pretend like it's not there and go hang out somewhere where they don't espouse any of the things that I feel like are true. So it's like this. It's a difficult thing to navigate, but I think it's deeply, deeply true that God wants to bear these burdens. And when I come at my, my practice of Christianity and I bring it before God and I say I'm like like the first thing I have to do in order to move forward is be okay, like with the right. You know, like you said, like just be like and, and and. So being able to lay that down and say Okay, like there's a lot of tension here is, I feel like, the only means by which you can meaningly move forward. And it's okay that I feel scorned. It's the same thing. Like man, it's the same thing like the, the, the, the religious I'm so tired of religious like offendedness. You know, like it's time, like if you want the good stuff, you have to be able to be in a room with somebody that thinks that you're full of shit and have a strong enough identity that you're okay, that you're okay. You have to be able. Sorry, I don't know if your audience permits curse words.
Speaker 2:It's all good yeah.
Speaker 3:You're gonna lose like a thousand views or no.
Speaker 2:Um, anyway. Well, that's the heart of it.
Speaker 3:It's like I want to be. I'm sorry, I know we were probably gone over.
Speaker 2:This is your time clock, so keep going.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, okay. So I did this tony robin seminar recently, which was Dude. I just went through this like pretty tough thing at work and I was really down. I lost an employee, um that I really liked and it was because of my own probably shortcomings, not just, but, um, certainly a significant reason, and I was really sad and I was like I had watched the steele von tony robbins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, okay. This sounds like the weird and it was so crazy because I was in there and it's a digital conference, right, and there's everyone's sharing their zoom screens. Anyone who paid for the vip membership gets to have their zoom screen. They might get to appear and you might call one of them out and he's like everybody dance, like I want you to make the Gnarliest like growl, like warrior sound you can make, and then the cheesy music starts and he's like jump up and down. Let me hear you cheer and they play the like fake track. You know, cheer, track and like. And then it cuts all these cameras and there's like Beautiful people and funny looking people and people that seem really disingenuous, with like logos in the background so they could promote the brand and like and you're like, I was like that. That really reminded me of being in a charismatic church, honestly, and and the feeling I had is you know which, I would walk into these spaces and every bone in my body Was like, was like this is so suspicious.
Speaker 1:I don't know why that hit me in the gut, I'm not a charismatic, but like this reminded they were all jumping and they were all promoting their own logos.
Speaker 2:I felt like Super reminded me of my childhood church, not the logos, but everything else.
Speaker 3:You know, I think in some metaphorical way, the, the logo's, I think that's valid yeah. Yeah, the, the uh, the uh. It was like if I want to partake of this, I have to be able to just let go of it's like. It's really tough because I feel like there's maybe a third way where you don't have to be like as vulnerable as a child. But some part of me believes you either get to be a cynical old man who just doesn't get the gift or, if you want, like tony robbins, like he just it's not rocket science, he just helps you get you into a state of like hope. You know he gets your body like feeling positive and then he helps you like think about really deep parts of your life that are it's like you know and like, and then at the end of it You're like, oh my gosh, like I have so many like, I feel so inspired and it's like, if I want that good gift, I got to jump up and down and I got a growl.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I got to act like a kid and and I have to really let all these barriers down and if I'm not willing to do that, then I don't get the gift like and so that that practice is so central to corporate worship, like and it's the thing that I'm like, oh, that is like the, that is Like the, the, the hard stuff of like being in community, like being vulnerable to all these people you maybe just I don't like these people like. You got to like get through that. It's just so powerful, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think I think maybe the last like Thing, and then, yeah, we can, we can cut, like, you can give your feedback on this or you and grant. But my experience of what you just described like just the, the actual, like a backlash of the soul, of like I hate this, like even when you were just grabbing the Tony Robbins thing and stuff, and just like the lack of Realness and and like the ambiguity and the, the, the brand promotion, the self indulgence, like that, it's just, it's there with everything. But even you describing it, I was just like, like, and then like I know where you're going with it and I'm just like, yeah, stop it. But but I think I think something that God has done in my own life is like I have this imagery of my soul being like a traumatized animal that has just been harmed, and just like in the back of the cage, and you're trying to, like a trapped, traumatized animal, like trying to get out of the cage, and then God has tried to coax me out in so many different ways and then I Hurt myself, or religion hurts me, or or theology or doctrine hurts me, or whatever the next thing is and then I hide again and and I got to a place where it was like I'm never coming out, like I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna be part of anything, because I can't bear the weight of any of the crap that everybody is bringing to the table and I'm not okay within me and they're lying and all this is BS and like. And then somebody tells me to dance and I'm like you can go to hell and like. That's not a good emotion. Like why do I feel that way? That says more about me than that happy man Just said. Like why don't you dance a little bit? I think what is wrong with me. And then something just happened. One day we're like I feel like God Made me come to a place of accepting that coming out and and being a part of Like communion is the thing that is right, but it doesn't mean that I am wholly right yet. And something about just like agreeing with him and then saying help me, like he's been so gentle in leading to a place that like isn't Coming to communion and community, that that is like Safe enough if that makes sense. Like instead of being brought from the Terrible cold and then just slammed into warm water and your whole body convulsing and may be dying, like there's been this process, like just my agreement that communion with him and others is valuable and it is most valuable for my family and my wife and me. Like it was like just that yes to him was enough to Begin and it wasn't, because my expectation before was like it's the yes and all the boxes. And he was like I know you have the boxes and some of them will hit and some of them are Just stuff that needs to die, and like we'll figure that out along the way. So I don't know if that's an encouragement of like there's enough people in the city of Portland that a few of them probably feel the way you do.
Speaker 1:Something, something that was a beautiful thing for me, of going to church and feeling very similar, of just like Randomly angry. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I think it was masculine energy.
Speaker 1:It was masculine, it was the spirit of the patriarchy was the problem. No, but for real, the, because I would just find myself like they were teaching and I'd like Get angry at the way that things were and get angry at how it felt like everybody was fake, and then get angry at how, you know, nobody's talking to each other and it's freaking me out. And then get angry like, and you know, I've been to so many different churches and so it's not I'm not speaking out one particular church or anything like that but then realizing that I'm the problem if that makes sense like there's, there's a place to call out the church, and I'm not saying that there's not, but I'm saying that Once I kind of realized my own sinfulness and like brokenness and how much I cared about God, it just kind of went away in the sense of like, okay, I'm gonna try to like worship Jesus here. And then it was like and that sounds real dumb, like how simple that is, but it was like I'm gonna try to like actually worship Jesus and not look at like what's going on. And that was like that was really really like helpful for helpful for like my soul of just like being in active worship and being like I don't care what people are doing around me, like I'll raise my hands, I won't whatever. Just like me trying to worship Jesus while I'm around people that I don't feel comfortable with. Like I don't feel comfortable with people in you know nice clothes putting on their best faces for the Lord. Like that just bugs me for some reason. I just don't feel comfortable with that. But like just me Worshiping in that way Helped a bunch. So yeah that's beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's funny. Uh, probably not the perspective you imagine hearing from a person I don't find his ex-fangelical but hey, you said you wouldn't use that. Not in a hashtag anyway.
Speaker 2:I just on the podcast.
Speaker 3:No, no, I mean it's true, though Like it's weird because it's I like really believe everything we've talked about and identify with it. And it's like and I'm trying to figure out how to navigate that in light of like there's certain things I want to teach my kids, you know like, and there's certain things I don't really Want to teach my kids, and that's okay, you know. So it's like, it's like holding that In a place it's so much healthier, like you were talking about grant, like it's so much healthier both you were talking about to do that from a place of of, where you're not carrying the whole burden, you know, and you're not doing it from a place of like a, like a sad baby who's like grouchy or whatever, but like the place of openness and having given the whole thing to God, and then it's a lot easier to make those decisions in a healthy way. So, anyway, yeah, I have the feeling I don't want to take over hosting here, but I have a feeling if I don't, we might be able to do that. I mean I would. I just don't want you guys to your listeners, two hour conversation and be all bummed out about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we Genuinely. We care very much about our listeners, but we also do this for fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it doesn't really we just kind of can do whatever we want, which is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it's a great idea to have a conversation with your listeners and to have a conversation with your listeners, it doesn't really. We just kind of can do whatever we want, which is a lot of fun. We lose a thousand listeners from this episode. It's like okay, you know what I mean. I don't know. But go ahead last thing, and then I do want to give you some space if there's anything you want to share with the audience. Brian, whatever, whatever whatever you want to do, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:You just made me think of something you said earlier that I felt was profound. You said my, my father has a faith experience as a person that, at the same time, is Confounding and yet has to be reckoned with, and just feels like you gave us a bookend, like bookends, confounding and has to be reckoned with, for like the entire conversation we just had. So does that feel? Does that feel?
Speaker 3:relevant? Yeah, I think so. I think that's. I just feel like there's so much joy, you know, like waiting for us, it's like we're so many of us are sitting on the metaphorical sidelines, you know, on the edge of the water and I just like, for me, I'm like man, this just on the edge of reality, like we talk about the Bible being enchanted, like God is just so active. You know, like, everywhere you look and you can participate with that Activeness and it's so profound, you just have to jump in. You know, and and I, for me, that's like a. Really it sounds corny, you know, but it's so like.
Speaker 2:No, it was the scripture that I write down while ago when you're talking. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross and just like it feels exactly like you said, like I'm trying to protect myself and my kids from the cross and I'm not giving them any of the joy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, that's what. That's what my music's about, that's what it's what it feels like. In a lot of ways, you guys seem like you both share a lot of those same Sentiments as well, so it's a joy to really. I hope my mic didn't clip. You guys have me like laughing and let's see, I'm looking at my waveform. No, I didn't clip, I. You guys have me laughing a lot more than I thought I would, so that's a win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so tense we have. We're kind of like ramping up a bunch of stuff. Right now we're working on our third. None of it's like immediate, though, unfortunately. We are working on a third full length record which will come out sometime in 2020, probably early 2025. We are also re-releasing dear keeps pace, our first LP on vinyl, and it will have two bonus tracks and both of those bonus tracks or collaborations sort of with the Bible project. One of them is Defender and the other one is a song I can't tell you about that will be featured on the podcast in June. It will be a little beans man. So there will be limited release vinyl available on our store and we'll be loud about it on social media and in general. If you're a person who, like, wants to listen to music, that's Christian music but like isn't punching you in the face. That's just kind of like processing and it's kind of more like it's not. It's not prescriptive, but it definitely deals with a lot of the stuff we're talking about today and fatherhood and all kinds of stuff. So I just feel like that's my heart is to make music for people. That it's basically like just music about life. That's like kind of oriented in that way I might like it. I felt like my pitch was good at first and it took a turn. But check it out. We're called tense, not like, not like uptight, but like tense like.
Speaker 2:The pitch was like just enough to keep it at the low subscriber where Grant's pretension doesn't make you or his pretension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if it was a good pitch, I wouldn't listen to it.
Speaker 3:Maybe I should have asked you to tell me. Maybe I should have been like Grant tell him about tense.
Speaker 1:It's pretty good, grant, you like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, only the first 700 of you can listen to it, and then after that the numbers will get too high.
Speaker 2:He's actually like Grant's bitch.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Across the Counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us 5 stars, wherever you got this podcast Thanks you all.
