What happens when your faith collapses? In this episode, I share my story of spiritual deconstruction and how I learned to believe again—sort of. This isn’t a “how to get your faith back” story. It’s the story of tearing my faith down to the studs, sifting through the rubble, and deciding what was worth keeping. We’ll talk god shaped holes, Kierkegaard, Camus, Pascal’s wager, and the surprising peace of not needing all the answers. This episode if for anyone who is currently filling their god-shaped hole with TikTok marathons, self-help books and spiral-inducing questions. If you started at church camp and have landed in full-blown nihilism, press play. 

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00 Intro: the story of how I lost my faith and got it back (sort of)

08:01 1. Why spiritual crises often happen at the worst possible time

10:35 How my own spiritual crisis began

18:07 Kierkegaard on despair and the self

19:47 2. Why spiritual health gets worse before it gets better

26:19 The delight of spiritual curiosity

27:43 3. Choosing how to fill the God shaped hole

29:42 Absurdism and optimistic nihilism (Camus)

30:57 Pascal’s Wager explained and what it gets wrong

32:51 Approaching belief pragmatically (belief as a choice)

33:53 What “god” means to me now 

35:33 Can you make yourself believe? Should you?

36:16 On stepping in the same river twice (Heraclitus)

36:49 Five reflection questions (Rainn Wilson)

38:14 Lightning round recap 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

Rhett McLaughlin’s Spiritual Deconstruction Story

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

St. Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 CE)

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Heraclitus, Fragment 49a (c. 500 BCE)

Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom (2023)

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)

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