Dan Koch: Music, Faith, Trauma & Why Reality Heals

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the and beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. You don't need to understand what the civil engineer down at City Hall needs to understand. You don't need to know what's going on at the dental conferences. But if you're gonna speak for God, you need to understand that there are other people who go to seminary and have different beliefs. Like, to me, that's like that's a pretty low bar, and we should call people to that.

Now you could still believe what you believe. Say, I'm still in this tradition. I believe this is correct. This is life giving for me and my congregation. Awesome.

Wonderful. Just acknowledge that people disagree because you don't wanna speak for God and be wrong. On today's episode of the Puck, I sit down with Dan Koch, musician turned therapist, podcaster, and researcher on spiritual abuse. Dan has lived multiple lives from touring in a rock band to pioneering new approaches in counseling psychology. He's the host of the thoughtful podcast, You Have Permission, where he explores faith, psychology, and the ways our spiritual traditions both wound and heal us.

We talk about his journey, the intersection of faith and therapy, and why he believes reality itself can be the medicine. This is a conversation about healing, curiosity, and finding hope in a polarized world. I'm thrilled to share it with you, so let's get to it. Dan Kope, welcome to the POC. And before we jump in, can you take a minute and, you know, just tell us a little bit about your background and and how you started doing what you're doing?

Yeah. Before I do that, I just I know that we're not talking about venture capital because you go beyond, and this is certainly gonna be one of those beyond episodes. I mean, I guarantee it, listeners. But I was like, oh, what what could I say? And I thought for me, you know, the real venture capital has been the friends that I've made along the way.

That's nice. That's where I would put that. That's a great way to look at it because in terms of launching your life and expanding your life and giving you the equity, the wind beneath your sails to take you forward, I I totally get it, and friends are a big part of life. Yeah. Okay.

So, a little bit about me. Yeah. These days, I am a a therapist, almost a psychologist, just wrapping up a doctorate here in counseling psychology and my kind of we call it an internship, but it's really more like a residency is kind of the closer word for it. Before that, I was a musician. So this is my third career.

I'm I'm 41. And I was, toured in a rock band for eight years and put out records, and then I moved into commercial composing for another decade and worked my way through grad school doing that. And, you know, you mentioned faith. So my podcasting began before my psychology grad school, and I I started by I did a little bit of politics in psychology. I did a show called Depolarize back around the first Trump election, really, in 2036 and, was focused on polarization.

I'm still very, very interested in that problem. I don't think it's gotten any better since then. Nine years on, it's it's worse. But I don't cover it regularly because it was not great for my nervous system to be super locked in on politics. And I started covering more faith topics.

I was raised kind of moderate evangelical is how I like to say California evangelical. My dad was also a therapist, so a California therapist who actually went to SC for undergrad. Let's see. So I got a kind of a a buffered version of what some some people who grew up more conservative got. Nonetheless, I I did experience, what I call spiritual abuse, which resulted in years long religious trauma around specifically around, like, end times teachings.

That's what they called it in that subculture. You know, the left behind books and and movies are sort of the most popular example of that. Nineteen early seventies Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsey. That was a multimillion seller and kind of a, you know, top 10 nonfiction book of the year. The year it came out, I think, '71.

Could be wrong. That world really kinda messed me up. And the the short version is at 11 years old, I was given a book by a a teacher at my Christian school that essentially said that the world is ending in six months, September of that year, and it's April of that year. So, yeah, five months. And I was not prepared for that.

You know, that that's a pretty good example of how we think of trauma. It is an experience that the nervous system, like, cannot process and assimilate. So at 11, I was not capable of processing the idea that I would be dead in five months and that, you know, Jesus would be showing up in the clouds with trumpets and antichrist and tribulation and and all this extremely distressing violent imagery. And eventually, you know, skipping forward twenty five years, I, did my dissertation on spiritual abuse. And actually, I have the currently the only peer reviewed scale for measuring, spiritual abuse experiences as well as some of the internal consequences of spiritual abuse, which which closely mirror, you know, other forms of trauma.

That is a lot to unpack. Yeah. We could start anywhere you want, man. I know. I I get it.

I really do wanna understand more about your journey because, you know, from music to psychology to, you know, a a faith based podcast Yeah. In in dealing with trauma, I mean, it it it sounds like it's it's safe to say you are a seeker. I I would say I'm very curious. I never stop. I I'm like basically, if I have energy, then I'm then I'm curious about something I'm thinking through something the the way I sort of self deprecatingly describe my brain is that I'm happy if for as many waking hours as possible I've got a little puzzle to figure out.

Like, I just always wanna be working on my little puzzles. And, you know, those those could be something small. Maybe I'm just interested in, like, arranging my Blu rays or something. But they can be as big as, like, hi. I wonder I'm really curious, like, how religion buffers against trauma.

Like, that might be the little puzzle that I'm working on. I just need to have a puzzle, and and every once in a while, I can I can turn that off and play with my boys and and stuff like that, but that is kind of my default state? So my interests go kinda wide. I I do believe I have ADHD and and part of ADHD is what we call interest based attention. So people with ADHD have a much easier time focusing on stuff that they are interested in, but, of course, that interest changes.

And so then you end up, you know, you end up with, for instance, three careers in twenty years. So yeah. I guess these things are, you know, blessing and and curses. I mean Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. If you're willing to share, is there any interesting or, particular puzzle that you're focusing on right now? Yeah. So one one project I'm working on right now is called I'm I'm kinda calling it reality is the medicine. And this might be something that I work on for the next five years and eventually write a book with that title or something like it.

But the idea is basically this, that so I'm a cognitive therapist. There's a lot of different types of therapy, different approaches or modalities as we call them. Sure. And that just means that I primarily work with my clients on the content of their cognitions, their thoughts and words, the sort of information that's connected to their emotions and stuff like that. I have a philosophy background in undergraduate and so that's just, I'm a cognitive therapist not because it's the best kind of therapy, but because I'm the best at it of the various types of therapy there are.

So it's a personal fit for me. But one of the things that's really central to to cognitive therapy as I practice it is is I I say that cognitive therapy in one sentence is bringing our thoughts, taking our thoughts, and holding them up against our best picture of reality. And when we are anxious or depressed, reality is almost always better. It is kinder. It is it's just, like, frankly, a better picture of the world than than the one that we are painting in our own minds with our moment by moment interpretations of our experiences.

And so this idea that reality itself is a part of the medicine, a part of the cure, I think that that's fascinating because first of all, unlike sort of sisboomba rah rah, you know, turn that frown upside down type of sort of shortcuts to happiness that we often engage in, it has the it has the added benefit of being more true. And so therefore, I think more convincing especially over time, you know, over years, the the stuff that you discover through cognitive therapy that really locks in for you, you you tend to believe it because it is truer. And the other thing that is interesting is sort of where this might line up with Christianity and and other religious traditions. So I'm still kinda early in the research part of thinking about it through the lens of religion. I've mostly been thinking about it through the lens of my sort of daily work with clients around, you know, language.

If people have heard anything, any of this language, language about cognitive distortions or thinking errors, which are closely related to logical fallacies, which is the philosophical concept. You know, these things that they feel true to us and and they're the kind of moves that we tend to make as human beings very naturally. We all do them, but they're irrational. They're they're they're illogical. And if we start asking ourself about evidence, we can see that they are illogical.

And so that illogicality is adding to our distress, and we get in there. We we we learn to sort of convince ourselves of a more accurate position, and then the distress goes down over time. So that that's kinda what I've been that's like one of four plates I have spinning in the air at the moment, if that gives you an idea. When you have plates spinning in the air and you're dealing with all these different things, what's the intersectionality between your spiritual practice and your kind of, you know, expertise in in terms of therapy and other things? Like, what are the tools you go to that help you try to stay in in balance and equanimity?

That's a great question. No one has ever asked that question before. I like that. So, yes, it's not immediately obvious the connection necessarily, right, between sort of the things that I do to connect with my faith and kinda stay, you know, stay regulated, stay grounded. I would say that the relationship there so so the stuff that I find most helpful is I attend an Episcopal church.

You know, those of us raised evangelical who move away from evangelicalism, I do tend to find that we don't tend to go every week to church any that's I go every two or three weeks. Let let's be honest, with my sons. But that is really grounding for me, and it's been interesting. So being in an Episcopal church, I was raised at a church that was technically not a nondenominational church. It's called an interdenominational church, and it sort of predates the nondenominational movement which exploded in, like, the eighties and nineties.

And it was actually a few mainline churches that kind of pulled their congregations and money together and hired an architect to build them a chapel, and then they became one church called a federated church. Sounds like a bank. And, in that church, we had some kind of old school mainline Episcopal Anglican type vibes growing up even in this Bay Area, California casual, environment. And so a lot of what I experience now, like using the book of common prayer and and all that stuff in the service, like, has really deep tunnels all the way back to my childhood and and adolescence. That's been really interesting with kind of a new psychological lens to to notice that.

And then privately, basically, it's a very simple contemplative practice is is the best for me. You know, you you the Eastern folks talk about monkey mind and that is there's just like there's never been a phrase that's been more apt to describe my experience of trying to meditate and and do kind of silent prayer, centering prayer, things like this. That that's really my main it's it's very simple. Just kinda grounding myself. And I will say I, the one kind of meditation practice that comes from another tradition that I have incorporated a little bit here and there is like a a compassion meditation and I think this comes out of Buddhism but it's it's, you know, it's very simple.

I don't know if you guys have talked about this on the show before, but it's like you're imagining, like, wishing well for different levels of, like, someone you someone you love, someone you just met, some you yourself, all creatures. And you're just sort of extending this, like, is it is it compassion? Is loving kindness, that's the word. Okay. Loving kindness meditation.

There we go. So sometimes I'll talk about that with clients who are struggling with self compassion because there's a obvious connection there. But yeah. So loving kindness meditation is kind of the one the one specific thing from another tradition that I've kind of incorporated that fits very well, I think, with my, Christian spirituality. And, there's nothing nothing in the teachings of Jesus that would discourage me from having, you know, loving kindness toward toward myself and others.

So that's that's the thumbnail. Let's touch back on polarization and also kind of Sure. This notion. You know, you mentioned Buddhism. You mentioned these different practices.

You mentioned, you know, nondenominational churches for how do you deal with, again, interfaith dialogue and also the black and white nature that some people approach, you know, religion, which is, you know, it's my way or the highway, the word of God is the word of God, This is the path of salvation. I mean, there are a lot of rules and things that people will espouse that that are very alienating for a lot of people. How do you make sense of all of that in terms of people's differing views of spiritual practice? Another really good question. I mean, to make sense of it really is kind of the first job for me, and that might just be the way my brain is wired.

But I make sense of it in the large scale by just thinking you know groups need boundaries there's no way to have a group without some sort of meaningful boundary now it used to be in our evolutionary past that the group was like whoever was in your tribe that was your group it was maybe there were internal groups or whatever but the main group was just all the people that you hunted and gathered with and that was true for basically a hundred thousand years Now it's not so simple as that. I'm a member of many different groups. And if I wanna be a part of a religious group, of a group that has, if not answers, if not definitive answers, it has language for, at minimum, the ultimate questions that human beings ask. Well, we have to have some boundaries about what we agree are answers within bounds and answers that are out of bounds for that. And so I start there just recognizing, like, reminding myself that if a group needs boundaries, then the question is how porous or how closed to make those boundaries, where to draw them, not whether to draw them.

So I I try not to get angry or frustrated people for having boundaries at all because it's kind of it's baked in. And then I think, alright. Well, maybe this group has, you know, they've got their foot too too hard on the brakes here. They they're really it's a very tight circle. It would feel suffocating to me.

But what's it providing for them? Well, it's probably providing a felt sense of security. It's probably providing a felt sense of certainty and something to sort of combat the anxiety that all human beings necessarily feel. And so that's kinda where I start. Now that sounds very serene and calm and, like, I'm not letting my emotions get the best of me, but, again, it's only where I start.

So then then you gotta actually deal with Well the people or the situation. Makes sense that I mean, I actually like the way you frame it, which is that for a group to survive Yeah. It needs boundaries. And I and I think that's that's true. And whether or not you're talking about a family, you need to have certain rules to be in the family, and and I think you can go from there.

And I think where we get into trouble is that what's the consequence of not fitting within that boundary. Yeah. You you can't stay in this church is one. You you you you know, you're gonna be put to death because if you don't choose our way, that's another consequence. I I guess, as as our consciousness as people evolve, you know, how do we balance these teachings in a way where we have mercy, we have grace, and we have loving kindness, but we also are able to maintain healthy boundaries?

I mean, how how do you wrestle with that? I mean, that's kind of the gold standard right there that you've described. That's, you know, so in a sense, that's the million dollar question. So there's you could think of it individually or you could think of it sort of at a group level. In what way were you more kinda thinking?

One of the things that when I started doing, you know, podcast Yeah. I didn't realize how hard this was. I think words going back to boundaries Yeah. I think people interpret words and questions in a certain way. Yeah.

And part of the art of dialogue is is to allow the conversation to really continue. Yeah. Because what I'm asking and what you're hearing are always two different things. Yeah. That's a good cognitive therapy right there.

Good cognitive theory. Yeah. Right. Just getting people to understand that that when I say something and you hear it, you have to because because it's gonna be triggering to to realize he doesn't really mean what he thinks what I think he means. Mhmm.

And I have to ask a question, which is what do you really mean? And and it's in that, I think, search, right, where we find our humanity. And I think what's what I find so challenging about today is, you know, you talk about ADHD. I think everybody's got ADHD that has a smartphone. Because the algorithms and the social media we are subjected to are designed to keep us agitated, and they make money that way.

They they they keep us focused on that. And so when we go into a conversation, we're often already triggered. Mhmm. And so by by or that very nature, being able to hold that sacred space and really get to know another person and under and enter into their reality, I think is really tricky. Yeah.

So so it sounds like you're thinking of it kinda more at the individual level. You're describing really kind of like a I wouldn't call it a modern virtue, but it's a it's a virtue that is especially needed in our current moment which is basically like a little bit of flexibility to be able to kinda come in to a like a conversation or a situation and you know to to phrase it negatively you you don't want to need everything to go your way in order for you to feel safe calm and engaged if if that is what you require then you might be able to get it but only at a cost so either the people around you have collectively agreed to make everything good enough for you and and that can happen if you're very wealthy and you have a bunch of people working for you. It can happen if you're someone with some unique challenges and you have additional special care. Those of us in the middle, we, I think, ought to want to pursue a bit more flexibility that go, okay. Sometimes, someone's gonna agree with me.

Sometimes, they're not gonna agree with me. And, you know, you talked about how certain religious traditions will really lean into black and white thinking and I do think that this is this is kind of where some of that rubber rubber hits the road is that, religious systems that that make all or nothing or black and white thinking a virtue that explicitly extol that as a virtue. People who spend a lot of time in those communities, I think it's fair to say, are gonna struggle with thinking in terms of shades of gray. They, to use kind of classic psychological language, they will have been conditioned. Right?

Pavlov's dog that the bell keeps ringing and they keep getting the food every time that they speak in a black and white or all or nothing way, the people in their community will be encouraging that, validating that. They will be conditioning that in them. And then you put them in a situation like an interfaith dialogue or just a neighbor who has a very different view of things or or something like that. And they're gonna say the same things that they normally say, but then they're not gonna get that reaction. They won't be praised for it.

They won't. The person across the table from them who's maybe a Muslim immigrant or an atheist college student or whatever is not gonna pray. They're not gonna look at them with respect for, quote, standing up for God's truth the way that they might get it from someone in their faith community or their family or whatever and that's gonna be a disorienting experience for them and my view is that if somebody wants to be a truly mature person in the modern age that requires cultivating some of that flexibility because pluralism these days is not just a philosophy. Pluralism isn't, you know, pluralism is just the facts on the ground. We have a multiracial, multireligious, you know, multi sociopolitical identity society that we live in.

We live in the modern world. We have international travel. We do allow immigration. You know, we have multiple languages. I have multiple friends who work in, like, English language learning in public schools.

This is just the truth. It just is. So, you know, you could try and move to Iceland or something if you want, but but basically, that's the world we're in. And I do think in more rural and small town communities, you can you can live a life with a lot less, interaction with the pluralism of the world. If you live in a farming community in Nebraska, you yeah.

There's not gonna be a whole lot of pluralism and diversity there. And I think that some people opt in in full or in part to living in those spaces, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's fine. That's temperamental. But ultimately, to to be sort of the the most mature kind of person, you know, somebody could tell you you're wrong straight up to your face and it it won't ruin your day.

You can go, that's interesting. Yeah. What do you why do you think I'm wrong? Can we talk about that? And so it does take work to cultivate that, and we we could talk about what that work looks like if you want.

But that's kinda where my mind went. Well, when you talk about the work to cultivate that, I guess, what here here's a question for you. Yeah. When you look at, for instance, what's going on with the Muslim world, the Christian world, and the Jewish world right now, there there is a lot of fighting and a lot of enmity. How do you, again, whether or not you, you know, you were and 11 when you were 11, people were done with the end of days.

You know, at some point, right, presumably, we all have to figure out a way to get along or, you know, some of us may be sneaking off to Mars. But for those of us who do believe in a fixing the world, whether or not it's Tikkun Olam or it's the Messiah returning or this Messiah coming for the first time, one way or the other, you know, many of us hope for a a better world where people are able to be in a pluralistic world and get along, or post tower of babble where the 70 languages come back together and speak a common language. How how do you see in your own work when you're talking to Christians or your your patients? How how do you see in the long run all of us figuring out a way to coexist? Yeah.

You know, I I hinted at it a little bit with people, you know, opting in to live in small rural communities. I I actually unlike probably most of my I'm I'm definitely on the left broadly in most ways although I am my friends will my friends will joke around calling me a known moderate as if that's supposed to be a slam and I said I should probably put that in my Twitter bio Known moderate Dan Koch, but I am broadly speaking on the left. You know, I vote democrat. I generally speaking, I want more redistribution of resources to the poor and and things like that, which tend to align. You know, we'll see.

We're in the middle of a realignment right now in The United States, and and I don't I I'm I'm not gonna be joining, the MAGA movement, but but I'm I'm not I'm not totally close off to what might come next, in terms of this kind of grand political realignment that that does seem to be taking place. But I do think, like so my friends on the left will tend to we will tend to have kind of totalizing utopian visions that where everybody gets more like us. You know, and and like, one way we measure like us ness is on the big five or ocean personality test and the the first item there which is openness to experience. I score very high on openness to experience. This is I love experience, man.

Give it to me. My like, my long term goal is to, like, host a television show or could be, you know, YouTube as long as somebody can pay to get it made, where I, like, go travel around to religious festivals and explain them and eat food and talk to people. Like like, that's who I am. I want all of that. Give it to me.

I wanna travel. I wanna try new things. And other people are not like that. They really like routine. They like to have the same stuff.

They don't want their life to constantly be changing and upending. So I I do think that, like, allowing for some self selection is a part of pluralism. So we should not demonize conservative people for wanting to be conservative Right. In lowercase c. I just mean they don't need to try a bunch of new stuff.

They don't need to travel. They're not interested in learning four languages. Like they like what they like and you know while they're liking what they like they're also growing our food and I say great thank you and I'm not gonna lay a trip on you that you gotta be like me and then those of us who do want to experience this big wide world I think for us we have to recognize that there are people who are different than us and who don't want that and then we need to not judge them and we didn't we did not pathologize everything that's different from us so that that is a part of it and that's a piece that I often see missing you know I think for instance like the way that Sam Harris and Bill Maher have talked about Islam and, you know, quote, radical Islam and and and they're kind of, like, you know, Harris' book, The End of Faith, this sort of new atheist approach, so so to speak. It's a lot of people kinda talking out of their ass who don't really understand religion. And and really what they're saying is, like, people should be more like us, cold rationalists.

And it's like, no. No. They they shouldn't. Like, people should be who they are, and a part of pluralism is to, like, meet people where they're at. So that's, you know, obviously, I don't have the solution to, like, The Middle East or anything like that.

You know? That's above my pay grade. Shoot. Shoot. But I think here here I here I thought you Here you thought you're gonna get it on this episode of your podcast.

We're gonna solve it. Yeah. Exactly. No. But but, you know, thinking personally, it's like, you know, taking your foot off the gas a little bit.

Apparently, I've got all automotive metaphors today. I we're trying to sell a car right now. That's probably next up, I'm gonna talk about using those Armor All leather wipes on upholstery as a metaphor for, I don't know, getting your own house in order or something. Yeah. So I I think a lot of it is understanding and and recognizing a diversity, in humanity.

And and I end up just applying that more often to my own side to to understand conservatives because I don't get a lot of, like, conservative media and conservative like, I'm not I'm not surrounded by that many conservative people. If I were, I would I would be kind of thinking in terms of how they could understand liberal people, you know. But I'm I'm trying to mostly help my circles understand the people who are unlike us. So I think you've just touched on an issue that I I struggle with. And it's interesting because you talk about Bill Maher and Sam Harrison and the strict rationalist and the atheistic movement.

And as you said, some people don't like change, and some people like a lot of change. I do think there's people that are more left brain, and I think there are people that are more right brain using terms, and and I'm I'm thinking of left brain as being more rationalistic and right brain being more ephemeral Yeah. And emotion driven. I do think that going back to your word, because you said you like experiences. If you don't experience right brain, ephemeral, nonlinear living, it's very easy to get caught up in a rationalist mindset, where you look at religion and you you you think it's crazy.

Yeah. Because there's you have to deal with paradox, in my opinion, to to deal with religion and this whole notion of how can something be rational, but yet we have the concept of infinity. And I and I recently asked them, I said, write a number down, the number that's closest to infinity, and that's the test question. And it it's not a trick question, but there is no number that's closer to infinity. Right.

And and so as somebody who's who's who's got a faith best practice and who's in school for counseling, where do you fit in that continuum of having a left brain and a right brain? And do do you relate to what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, briefly, I think that the specifically left versus rightness of it, these days, we are kinda backing down a little bit on that. It's not it's maybe not quite so localized.

But but but the point of what you're saying, which is that there are people who find it much more natural to speak in terms of, like, cold logic and rationality, you know, people who if they're into politics, they're like policy wonks. You know? They they like the the fine grain detail of, like, how's the policy gonna help. And then there are people who are, like, poetic, and they are more, like, artistic, and and they speak in metaphor. And and the the stuff that really matters to them is not cold and rational.

It's like it is more artistic and sort of open. And that that's obviously true. Like, that's a those are that's a real sort of continuum that people will fall somewhere on. Right? One side or the other.

I mean, may maybe you take it for granted because as you said, you're a musician. Mhmm. You're also, you know, studying therapy and therapeutic techniques. I mean, it seems to me like you you are somebody that has a feeling world and and a thought world. Yeah.

I I that's well said. Yeah. I I sort of have had one foot in each pool for most of my life, but I'm more of a cerebral songwriter than most of my songwriter friends, for instance. I I really do think I kind of land in the middle Mhmm. In some ways on that.

But I don't I I'd like to quibble with something. I I don't I think there's a way to for rational people to think about religion that isn't quote embracing paradox, like, to use your your language. So for instance, I I can localize this to to two thinkers, just to really briefly just to show my work. Kierkegaard, who is a hero of mine, grandfather of existentialism, my firstborn is named after him. He really did think it was paradoxical.

He really thought you look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, and God tells Abraham to to sacrifice Isaac, that that is pure paradox. God had already told Abraham that he was going to bless him with descendants as numerous as the stars, and this is his first kid. This is the one through which that's supposed to happen. Born to a very old wife, you know, who should have been barren. And Kierkegaard really leans into that.

Like, this is not rational. But on the other side, you have someone like William James of one of the founders of American psychology and probably the founder of the modern psychology of religion subfield. And and he was a pragmatist, and he said, look. You you can talk about there's some evidence, but there's not certainty. Like, it it like, in some senses, I think Kierkegaard's too black and white.

It's either paradox and you dive in the leap of faith, you know, or you don't, and you have really no way of knowing. I don't think that's true. I don't think that that's really how our lives go. If a Jehovah's Witness comes up to my front door and wants to talk to me and convince me to join the Jehovah's Witnesses, that is not a, well, I'm either gonna jump in with a leap of faith or I'm not. That's not what that is.

I know about Jehovah's Witnesses. I know that they that there are many loving and well meaning people, but that on the whole, it's pretty controlling, pretty shaming sect of, you know, sort of now I'm not gonna I won't make a final delineation on whether they fit in the club or not, but, like, I'm not like, that's not a leap of faith or not a leap of faith. I'm actually making a kind of a rational decision on the merits of what I know. And if somebody says, hey. Come, likewise, if they say, hey.

Come join my Unitarian Universalist congregation. I might think, interesting. That could be cool to kinda go to a church where the Buddha is quoted just as often as Jesus, and maybe we get some Confucius and Lao Tzu in there and, you know, we're we're bringing in whatever. But at the end of the day, like, I'm just going like, I think for me, it's better to be in a Christian church. Like, I that's that's that's my story.

And so William James would say, like, we can there is evidence. Like, we can draw on practical evidence about what works for us as people, what works for our communities. And, actually, what I think that Harrison and Maher and these guys get wrong about theism and religion is not that they're not willing to embrace paradox. I actually think they have really bad arguments rationally because they share a presupposition with literalist fundamentalists, which is either this this bible is all completely accurate in every way we might understand it Literally, historically, whatever. Fill it in.

Either this all happened or it's all a load of crap. And Bill Maher believes that, and fundamentalist Christians believe that. But you know who doesn't believe that? Most people. Most people recognize that there is another option.

It it could be that, like, the Bible roughly tells an accurate history of the people of Israel, or it doesn't. But it has very deep poetic truth, maybe even theologically accurate truth about God and the nature of reality, the nature of being a human being. You know, it's one of our oldest pieces of wisdom literature. That's another option. That's not an either or.

It's not a black or white, nor is it really paradox. Right? It's not, like, irrational. So the the one thing I'll say, it does like, faith or trust or commitment does require us to pay something. We have to, like, give our attention, give our effort, put our bodies in a group, and see what it does to us.

But I don't think it's necessarily, like, irrational or paradoxical. I would just say, I do think there's kind of a middle ground there. And and a lot of my work around faith in psychology is, I think, ultimately kinda arguing for something like that middle ground. Now that I as a verbal processor, if if your listeners couldn't tell by now, you know, that's kinda helping me put that together. So I I appreciate that question.

Yeah. When you talk about the Bible and and when you say that, you know, again, people say it's the word of God, and you can't change a single thing about it. And then they they point to certain things in there. Like, if you violate the Sabbath, we're gonna stone you to death or Right. Yeah.

Things like that. Maybe paradox is the wrong way to look at it. But when I think of the the atheist approach to being against religion, I even have this debate with Neil deGrasse Tyson, where I said, when you approach things from a rationalist perspective, you you're you're coming at it from the perspective that there is an answer. Right? Was Moses a real person?

Did the sea split? Was it what does it mean to be dictated by God, the word of God? But isn't there a placeholder for the fact that either everything existed forever, which we can't contemplate, because we don't understand infinite being, or creation ex nihilo, that something came out of nothing, and that God is that ultimate placeholder for that which cannot be explained. And and Neil and he, by the way, Neil looked at me and said, well, we don't understand it today, but it doesn't mean we won't understand it tomorrow. And and to me, that missed I wasn't able to get through, which was I don't think there is an answer to to infinity tomorrow.

Like, I mean, there is a there is a certain humility that I think is ironically baked into religion where God becomes the placeholder. And even using the word God, by the way, which is an English word Yeah. Right in the original Bible, the in in Hebrew, there there there are a lot of different names for God, but the ultimate name for God is is essentially that which cannot be stated. It's, you know, that which was, is, will be. Yeah.

It is a place beyond description. Mhmm. And that that is a that is to me that's what I mean by paradox. If there Yes. That you you have to be able to hold these two inconsistent thoughts at the same time without blowing your mind.

No. I think you're I think you're right. And to use theological language, it's apophatic and kataphatic. I think kataphatic is the right one. So kataphatic is like things we can say about God, and apophatic is things we cannot say about God.

Things that are sort of beyond language, beyond human concepts. In my personal view is that, like, any good theology is gonna have a healthy dose of apophatic in it because we're just like what are the chances that my brain in 2025 on earth in this corner of the Milky Way galaxy in this corner of the universe or maybe multiple I mean, who knows? That, like, I'm gonna lock it down and I'm gonna be really confident in my descriptions about ultimate reality. I think that, like, it takes about ten seconds of honest reflection to go. Yeah.

That's unlikely. I'm unlikely to I'm unlikely to have the kind of proof I would need to have to have that level of confidence. But that's not to say that I can't say anything, and that's kind of right. Like, it it it does need to be a mix because, for instance, like I like the Jehovah's Witness things. Like, I think I know enough about Jehovah's Witnesses.

Like, I think I can say something there. By the way, I, you know, if I were talking about this with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I would say I I don't I don't see either creation ex Nilo or an infinitely existing universe. I think God is compatible with both. Thomas j Ord, a good friend of mine, theologian, has done work on this. Like, we we can have God either way.

Like, God's the alpha and omega. So, you know, it isn't like, that wouldn't ruin it for me one way or the other. So as you're sitting here today and you're thinking about kind of different ways to view salvation and things like that. Do you do you believe in different paths to salvation? What what's your take on, you know, like for instance, people that are practicing Buddhist Yeah.

Or Jews or Muslims. I mean, what Yeah. How do you come to grips with even within Christianity, these these different ways of relating to God or to the divine? By salvation, do you do you mean, like, what happens after we die primarily? Yeah.

I mean, just like like, there are people that literally I I I remember when my my my father was dying, and he was Jewish. He he had a born again kind of Christian person in his life that he was very close to that really said, you know, if you don't take Jesus in as your savior, you're you're gonna go to to hell. And Mhmm. My dad had a sense of humor about it because he loved this person very much. And Yeah.

But that would have hurt a lot to hear that. Again, it's everybody deals with these things differently. Yeah. When you feel something very strongly, right, when you you've grown up with this incredible faith and Mhmm. I have a lot of friends that have had very, very intense born again experiences, for instance, and it it has literally saved their lives.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely happens. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

And so Mhmm. When when you believe things so strongly, it's hard not to wanna share those with other people. And so I'm I'm just, like, as a therapist, as as someone that talks a lot about religion, how do you make room for that, or how do you reconcile that with your close friends and and your Christian friends and so forth? Yeah. So, I mean, I'll answer your sort of the speculative question briefly first, which is that I I can't make any sense of eternal conscious torment in hell.

I don't think it's clear from the Bible even if I just took the Bible as a perfect document or whatever even within the bible I think there are three strains of thought kind of competing with each other annihilationism the idea that if people are not saved they just sort of cease to be There is eternal conscious torment. There's a little bit about that too. And then there's universal salvation that in the end, like, God will be all in all and that everything will be folded back into God. I think there are multiple traditions sort of speaking and intention with each other within the bible. So where I'm at is, like, look.

If God loves God's creation, then nobody's going to hell forever. That just doesn't make any sense. They weren't they didn't choose to be born. There's literally nothing. I think I think philosophically, I feel confident saying there's literally nothing a human being could choose or not choose during their finite life that would justify torturing them infinitely.

There's just nothing. That becomes not just. That's no longer justice. And so what we actually have at that point is just like a bad god. Now it's possible that we have a bad god.

I really hope not. But I don't think there's much evidence for that either. So that's sort of the theoretical stuff. I approach, you know, death in in my own way, which is that I have no idea. Meaning that the fact that we I love what Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, said that the fact that I'm, you know, here Yeah.

You know, in the first place from my perspective, reincarnation is no weirder than that. I do have to believe that because life is such a miracle and the fact that we are having this con Mhmm. Conversation to me is impossible. I think consciousness is impossible. Life is impossible.

Coming out of no nothing is impossible. So I I think it would be a cosmic joke for there not to be a meaningful, loving level of consciousness that exists beyond this realm. Yeah. But I can't get there completely from a rational perspective. Yeah.

And I and I can't get there from a completely emotional perspective. And to me, that's what leads to faith, which is I have to choose to try to live courageously, and when I leave, give my kids a sense of hope that they too can go where I go. So when the bible says gather to your kin. I I think the only thing that I I really can hold on to is, you know, if my dad was able to do it, make that transition, That I'm gonna try to make that transition in a courageous way, and I'm going to, you know, be the optimist that focuses on that. The fact that I have been given this unbelievable gift of life with all its challenges, that somehow that journey is gonna continue on some basis.

But I think it's a very personal thing, and I and I think it's a very scary thing for people. Oh, absolutely. Let's talk about what's scary about it. So psychologists will tend to say that fear and anxiety about the future is a uniquely human thing. I think now we can say it might not be entirely only humans.

Like, we're learning a little bit more about some other species sort of mental capabilities, linguistic capabilities. Like, there's some really interesting whale research going on right now that they they actually have very similar mouths to humans, and they they use vowels with each other. Maybe someday with the help of AI perhaps, like, we can actually sort of speak to whales, which would be wild and, like, communicate with them. I think that's some ways off. And, we also know that cephalopods, like octopus and others have, like, some really very advanced neurological systems and a sort of a different arrangement.

It's, like, all through their body as opposed to localized in their brain like it is for us. So there might be some other animals that have some version of this, but something that humans definitely have way more than dogs, way more than, you know, most other animals. It's like we can project mentally into the future. We can imagine our death, other people's death. We can imagine the eventual heat death of the universe.

You know, we we can think about like, we have deer that live in our our neighborhood up in in Bellingham, Washington. We're we're we're sort of lousy with deer. It's wonderful. They are not thinking about they are not thinking about next year and, like, what will happen with the Supreme Court. You know?

Like, they they don't do that. Humans do that. And when we imagine a bad outcome, that leads to anxiety. So this is just like a thoroughly baked in human experience. And death anxiety is sort of one of the ultimate anxieties, and and existential psychology sort of speaks about some of these kinda these existential givens, these tough walls that human beings eventually run into if they're paying attention.

You know, death, the extreme weight of free will, and that my choices might have real consequences. I mean, talking about leaving the place better than you found it. Right? Meaning that I have a role in the meaning of things. For some people, this is about meaninglessness of the world.

Inherently, I I'm a Christian existential, so I don't think that the world is meaningless inherently, but it's still relevant that I am I, take part in creating my own meaning. I I would use language of cocreation to to use biblical language for that. And then the fourth one is isolation we are in some ways born alone and die alone in in certain respects so these these are things that people run into and these produce a lot of anxiety and there are ways of sort of working through that there's different therapeutic approaches for instance when it becomes, like, really a problem for people's lives. They come see a therapist about it. But we all deal with some version of that to some degree even if it hasn't gotten to, like, a a place of, like, quote, clinical significance, which is kind of our cutoff for saying it's really impacting your life.

You know? So I would just I mean, to start, just normalize it. Just acknowledge that. Yeah. That is that's what it means to be human.

And what you're kinda getting at with, you know, your dad's example, trying to repeat that, bringing in your kids. Now we're talking about values, deep, deep values. This is, like, what we care most about. And this is really where religion and spirituality, this is their ground. Those are the ways, you know and I generally think of religion as sort of, like, codified spirituality.

So it's like everyone has the capacity for spirituality. Religions organize it. They turn it into specific beliefs, specific rituals. Sometimes there's a text. Right?

And that you're putting more content around it. It's utilizing that spiritual capacity that we all have and then, you know, organizing it essentially. So both of those are dealing with deep values. Religion, generally more explicitly because there's more content. There is more sort of, like, doctrine or beliefs or rituals or whatever, whereas spirituality is tends to be more individual and open because it doesn't have the the rules and and the stuff around it.

And some people, that's all they can handle, and they don't want the structure. I've found that even though I'm very open to new things, I find a deep comfort in, as I mentioned earlier, being in church and, like, feeling a connection all the way back thirty years to my younger self. Like, that is itself valuable, and that's orienting and grounding. I feel like I've just now I've just done a whole cul de sac, and I don't even remember where I started. So Well, no.

That's okay. I I spent a lot of time with young people, and I I feel like what keeps me relevant is is trying to understand young people. And I think that I love that. You know, their their brains work faster than mine and and I I do feel like they're standing on the generations that came before. And I'm just Mhmm.

I'm really in awe of people again, you know, your generation, the generation after you of of people that are really seeking and and and wrestling with these difficult questions. And so, in a time where women now vote Thank God. Where women want equal pay Yeah. Where we are dealing with a multicultural democracy, where we are allowing gay people to get married Mhmm. And we are embracing the other.

Mhmm. You also have a lot of people that don't feel comfortable going to a Jewish synagogue or or to a church or or to a a mosque where they are basically saying, you are telling me that your book, your story, right, the book you want us to focus on, whether that's the old testament or new testament, is basically saying that I am a either a second class citizen or I I should be living in damnation. How do you wrestle with that, or or make sense of that for for people that feel completely excluded by the the biblical stories? I mean, honestly, if you have enough relational safety and and security with with the other person, so if you're the if you are the nonreligious person in the religious context, you go to a wedding, you go to a whatever, and you're you're confronted with this reality that, like, hey. Your, you know, your church says that I'm yeah.

Like, I'm I'm screwed. I actually think tell that. Say it very straightforwardly. Assuming that that's, you know, safe and there's not power dynamics and stuff like, you know, all those caveats. But, like, if you feel like you can tell your friend that, say, hey.

Honestly, it's really difficult for me to take this seriously because as I understand it, everybody in your church thinks that I'm going straight to hell when I die. And, like, all the stuff that I care about with my kids and all that stuff, like, that's all worthless for this question. And really kind of confront the person of faith to to sit with that. If that's true, then you should tell them. One reason that I say that is that they have options.

So, you know, there's, we're not good at this, I think, naturally as human beings. So I this is not a I'm not blaming Christians. I'm sure this is true. My guess is that this is true in every religious tradition. What we tend to say once we have spent enough time and are habituated to our particular group our particular church whatever we say things like the bible says this we say things like god says this that is our shorthand for repeating the most central important beliefs claims, you know, attitudes.

Right? But there's a little slight of hand there. Right? And actually, it's we don't have time, but it's it's extremely relevant to the spiritual abuse question. And, one way I talk about spiritual abuse is people writing checks and signing God's name, you know, instead of their own name.

Right? Like, you can't cash that check. You're not God. So God says this. Well, prove it.

I say this. Here's what I think. Okay. So what I what I think what people often mean, but they don't say, and they might not know that this is really what they mean is not, well, God says this. What they mean is, well, my tradition believes this.

And if we just swapped that out so much of that enmity could could go down because you say well this is what my tradition believes okay so they could be right or they could be wrong that that's like implied and that there might be a a discussion between traditions. So another tradition might believe this this other thing. A a pet peeve of mine is when, like, a Baptist pastor who didn't even have to go to seminary in in many of these denominations in order to be ordained speaks with certainty about what the what the bible says and therefore god believes about homosexuality or queer sexuality. When that person probably knows I mean, there may be some truly ignorant souls, but they know that, like, Princeton Theological Seminary exists. They know that that, like, Yale exists that, you know, many there are many, many, many seminaries with full time faculty whose full time job is reading and understanding and teaching the Bible who believe that God does accept queer sexuality and and I I just find it it's kind of crazy to just be like oh yeah I didn't go to that seminary I'm not familiar with those arguments but I'll just say with confidence that god says that they're all wrong.

I mean, that to me is, like, that's a unique that's a unique fact of the modern world that, like Right. Buddy, we all got Wikipedia. Like, you you you can just ask chat g p t. Does anybody disagree with my view on this? Here's my view.

Enter. Like, that's all it takes now. Thirty seconds of curiosity. And that's where there I do think there are generational differences that are starting to show that younger people who grew up in the information age do not have the same level of being willing to put up with that kind of, like, I would say, like, rank ignorance. You know, if you went to one seminary, then you know that other seminaries exist.

Like, that you are not like, that's on you to know. Like, if if your job is to argue about things in the bible, then it is also your job to understand what other people argue about it. You don't need to understand, what the civil engineer down at city hall needs to understand. You don't need to know what's going on at the dental conferences. But if you're gonna speak for God, you need to understand that there are other people who go to seminary and have different beliefs.

Like, to me, that's, like, that's a pretty low bar, and we should call people to that. Now you could still believe what you believe. Say, I'm still in this tradition. I believe this is correct. This is life giving for me and my congregation.

Awesome. Wonderful. Just acknowledge that people disagree because you don't wanna speak for God and be wrong. And you know who really doesn't wanna speak for God and be wrong? Pastors.

So I'm hoping to, like, you know, argue for this kind of an openness. Like Well said. I mean, guys, we can do better here. In a lovely way to end because I think it brings us back to humility, loving kindness Yep. Plurality, and and the importance that, you know, kind of the one thing we do have control over is ourselves.

Mhmm. And and to the extent we improve and and, you know, you you clearly are somebody that is focused on improving and and and making your life better and and helping those of us that listen to you and otherwise, you know, do the work as well. So, Dan, I mean, it's been thoroughly enjoyable, and I think that the war you you know, you you talked about polarization. I think having these conversations one on one Yeah. Is Huge.

How we ultimately are gonna fix polarization. Because I don't think a massive group therapy is gonna bring everybody to this higher level of consciousness. But if we can create safe spaces and we can each individually mind our own garden, so to speak, I think over time, this consciousness will expand. I just I have to say the role of media in that. If you want to depolarize and understand between you and someone who sees the world differently, Each take two weeks off of the news, two weeks off of social media, and then talk.

Like, just just detox from the tribalism and the algorithmically fueled radicalization of your mind, as you said earlier, to the profits of the tech companies. That is why. That's what it's for. Take a break from that. Like, let your dopamine receptors reset or whatever.

I'm not a neuroscientist. And then talk and just ask questions and be curious about each other. But I actually think that what often gets in the way is just our our media diets. They they make it it's too costly to see the other person because too much of our own identity is riding on us being right and them being wrong, and that is reinforced through these social media algorithms and stuff like that to where we can get to a point like now where we have like two entirely different views of the facts on the ground in Los Angeles or Minnesota or January 6 or whatever it's like we just have two realities so we have to take a break from those two realities Let it reset. That's that's best practices in my opinion before then just listening and being curious.

Amen. Absolutely. Dan, thank you. It was it was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

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