15: Following the Sex and Waffles Out of Church with Scott Okamoto

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[00:00:02] people of Deconstructionist

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[00:00:27] Hello, deconstructionists.

[00:00:35] This is Maggie, the host of our podcast, where we'll collectively share our stories and experiences

[00:00:40] of leaving high-control religion, along with what it's been like for us to find new practices

[00:00:44] that help us feel good and confident in ourselves.

[00:00:48] I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid and

[00:00:51] most of all that you are not alone on this journey.

[00:00:54] You are good, you are loved and you are worthy just as you are.

[00:00:58] Hello, deconstructionists.

[00:01:04] My guest today is Scott.

[00:01:05] Scott is a former English professor turned writer and podcaster.

[00:01:09] His first book, Asian American Apostate, Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical

[00:01:13] University came out last year.

[00:01:15] Scott is also the host of the Chapel Probation podcast and a co-host of the Asians in

[00:01:20] Baseball podcast.

[00:01:21] So thanks for being here, Scott.

[00:01:23] Thanks for having me, Maggie.

[00:01:24] It's great.

[00:01:25] Yeah.

[00:01:26] Congrats on starting this podcast.

[00:01:27] I've enjoyed your episode so far.

[00:01:30] Thank you.

[00:01:31] I was saying that Scott feels like a professional podcaster to me and I'm just over here

[00:01:34] trying to figure it out as we go.

[00:01:35] No, we're all faking it till we make it.

[00:01:37] It's all good.

[00:01:38] So I like to have guests start with a little bit about their church experience,

[00:01:43] how you got in church, what that was like for you and yeah, just all things

[00:01:47] church related before we jump into your deconstruction.

[00:01:50] Yeah.

[00:01:51] My parents were not religious when I was born.

[00:01:54] My dad kind of grew up in a cultural Presbyterian church here in Pasadena and my

[00:02:00] mom was Buddhist, but they were both born in the incarceration camps of World War

[00:02:06] II.

[00:02:07] The government locked them up in deserts and put them in jail for like three

[00:02:11] years and so they were born in that setting.

[00:02:14] And so coming out of that, their generation was kind of shook as to their

[00:02:19] identity as Japanese Americans.

[00:02:21] And so kind of subconsciously or sometimes consciously, my parents really wanted

[00:02:26] to approximate whiteness and be the best darn Americans that they could

[00:02:30] possibly be.

[00:02:32] And they discovered in the middle 70s that one of those ways is to go to

[00:02:38] church with the white folks.

[00:02:40] And so I'm like five, having lived my best life and suddenly we're going

[00:02:44] to church because some neighbors like witnessed to them.

[00:02:47] And and brought them to like a Bible study fellowship.

[00:02:51] But it's cool.

[00:02:52] You know, when you're like five or six churches, fun, you know, you sing some

[00:02:55] songs, you eat some graham crackers, you know, you learn about this God

[00:03:00] that loves you and there's always like a picture of Jesus holding a lamb.

[00:03:05] And that's so cool.

[00:03:06] You know, like, yeah, heck, yeah, I'm in I'm into this.

[00:03:11] And, you know, so they grab you at that age.

[00:03:13] Meanwhile, my parents are going all in.

[00:03:15] You know, they're like, oh my gosh, you know, middle upper middle

[00:03:19] class white folks in Southern California, this big church.

[00:03:23] And I'm being indoctrinated slowly with me and my brother.

[00:03:27] We're about three years apart.

[00:03:28] And yeah, I was all in, you know, the each step of the way, the

[00:03:32] Christianity gets a little more intense, right?

[00:03:35] It's not just Jesus loves you.

[00:03:36] Now you got to do stuff.

[00:03:38] You got to you got to read this Bible that honestly didn't ever

[00:03:42] make sense to me my whole life.

[00:03:43] And I spent a lot of time on it.

[00:03:46] You got to tell people about Jesus because they're going to hell.

[00:03:49] And oh, yeah, by the way, there's hell.

[00:03:51] And you were you were going there.

[00:03:54] And now if you do all the right things and do say all these

[00:03:57] these things, you won't.

[00:03:59] Like every year you grow up, God's love becomes a little more conditional.

[00:04:03] Like you have to do like one more thing to not go to hell or to

[00:04:07] maybe make it to heaven.

[00:04:08] Yeah, it's like a mixed message too, because they say, you know,

[00:04:10] once your name is in the book of life, you're good.

[00:04:13] Right. But then they're always telling you all these

[00:04:14] ways you can lose it.

[00:04:15] And so you're like, I don't know how many damn altar calls I

[00:04:18] responded to just to be safe.

[00:04:20] Oh yeah.

[00:04:21] Yeah.

[00:04:22] I think I'm good.

[00:04:23] Me and God were good, but I better stand up again.

[00:04:26] I know how many times where you're like almost falling asleep

[00:04:28] and then like, oh, I better just like pray the prayer one more

[00:04:31] time in case I sin today and didn't realize it or forgot.

[00:04:34] We didn't even need an altar call.

[00:04:35] You could just be doing our quiet time.

[00:04:37] And like, hey, God, just checking in.

[00:04:40] Little DTR.

[00:04:41] Right.

[00:04:41] Yeah.

[00:04:42] My name's still in that book, right?

[00:04:45] But in all seriousness, you know, I was all in, you know,

[00:04:48] I witnessed to people.

[00:04:50] I led, I learned guitar.

[00:04:52] Well, first I learned guitar just so I could do worship songs.

[00:04:55] Part of my early deconstruction ended up being rock music.

[00:04:59] So they were right to tell us not to listen to that music

[00:05:01] because that ended up helping lead me away.

[00:05:04] So there was Eddie Van Halen on one hand and worship music

[00:05:08] on the other hand.

[00:05:09] And I was doing both.

[00:05:10] Yeah.

[00:05:11] But I always felt like as long as I was all in on the

[00:05:14] Christianity and the worship, you know, rock music was just there.

[00:05:18] And it was it was a great release for this.

[00:05:21] You know, I was such a stressed out confused child with

[00:05:24] I thought I was white.

[00:05:26] I thought I thought I could be white or in.

[00:05:28] And so I kind of adopted my parents' vibe of like wanting to

[00:05:33] knowing inherently I can't be white, but I can get right next to

[00:05:36] whiteness and which and then there's nothing wrong with whiteness.

[00:05:39] As I talk about all this today, there's I'm not saying there's

[00:05:42] anything wrong with white people or whiteness.

[00:05:44] It's just that that's the the central people, right?

[00:05:47] That's the people who are centered in this culture that we live in.

[00:05:51] Yeah.

[00:05:51] And that's what's portrayed as the standard, right?

[00:05:54] That's the that's the benchmark that you're supposed to

[00:05:57] supposed to reach was your church at the time, like all white

[00:06:00] were the only Japanese American family in the church.

[00:06:04] It was mostly white.

[00:06:05] It was a scattering of it's Southern California.

[00:06:08] So, you know, there were some black families and Hispanic

[00:06:10] families and Asian American families, but probably 85, 90 percent white.

[00:06:16] But they're nice.

[00:06:18] They let me do the thing and I rose in the ranks of like leading

[00:06:21] worship and it was I was all in, you know, thankfully, because

[00:06:26] my parents had a whole life into early adulthood as not Christian

[00:06:31] as devout as they were, they kind of were lax on, you know,

[00:06:35] they let me listen to whatever music we wanted to.

[00:06:37] And my brothers could watch whatever TV shows we wanted to.

[00:06:40] And I learned that that was not the case for a lot of my friends.

[00:06:42] Yeah.

[00:06:43] And so it was weird.

[00:06:44] We we were fully devout committed Christians, but we were

[00:06:48] still sort of in touch with the world and I had a lot of friends

[00:06:52] who weren't Christian.

[00:06:53] So I never fully got into that sort of that Christian bubble

[00:06:56] that people talk about where your whole life is the church

[00:06:59] and Christianity.

[00:07:01] And part of the part of that was because I didn't I wanted

[00:07:04] to have a witness and I wanted to have friends that I could be

[00:07:07] a light to, you know, what's the point of just only hanging out

[00:07:10] with Christians?

[00:07:11] Well, it's interesting too that your parents kind of let you

[00:07:15] branch out into other things or like, you know, listen to

[00:07:19] other music and that kind of thing, because it seems like

[00:07:22] and maybe this isn't true.

[00:07:23] So correct me if I'm wrong, but they weren't necessarily

[00:07:25] there for the religious beliefs.

[00:07:27] They were there to align themselves with white culture,

[00:07:30] which is very much connected to the church.

[00:07:33] Is that right?

[00:07:34] It was both.

[00:07:35] I think it's both because the whiteness, they still to this

[00:07:38] day don't understand that concept when they talk to them about

[00:07:41] it. They're like, no, it was Jesus.

[00:07:43] OK, it was the Holy Spirit that was leading us there.

[00:07:46] Like I'm like, yeah, but also and they're like, no,

[00:07:50] I don't think so.

[00:07:51] I'm like, yeah, kind of, you know, yeah.

[00:07:54] But yeah, I'm not going to.

[00:07:55] I don't want to say telling them there's no Santa Claus

[00:07:58] or something.

[00:08:00] I'll just let them live, you know, because I, you know,

[00:08:03] we're going to talk about my story of deconstruction, I guess.

[00:08:05] So, you know, it's never my goal to like proselytize someone

[00:08:09] to my point of view.

[00:08:10] Right, right.

[00:08:11] You know, if you're happy and you're a good person,

[00:08:13] then we're fine.

[00:08:14] It's like, you know, there's lines and there's boundaries,

[00:08:17] of course, but yeah.

[00:08:19] Yeah, that's how I feel too.

[00:08:20] I'm I've been in the business of convincing people

[00:08:24] to believe what I believe for so long when I was in church

[00:08:26] that like I am not in that business anymore.

[00:08:29] I'm not trying to convince anyone to like come to the dark

[00:08:32] side if that's what it feels like.

[00:08:34] I'm happy to share my story.

[00:08:35] I'm happy to amplify other people's stories.

[00:08:37] They're welcome to join.

[00:08:38] It's fun over here.

[00:08:39] It's really fun.

[00:08:40] Yeah, we have a great time.

[00:08:42] There's a lot less judgment.

[00:08:43] We're not picky.

[00:08:44] We're not gatekeeping.

[00:08:45] Yeah, yeah, joining if you want.

[00:08:47] If you're comfortable.

[00:08:48] Yeah, but yeah, I'm not trying to convince anybody.

[00:08:50] So if you're happy there, you can stay.

[00:08:52] I mean, unless they come at you, you know,

[00:08:53] like sometimes people demand to know, like, you know,

[00:08:57] they know that I was this Uber Christian and it gets worse

[00:09:00] as they get into college.

[00:09:02] But if they come at you and like demand to know why

[00:09:04] you don't believe this or you don't.

[00:09:06] You didn't did you read this verse?

[00:09:07] Or did you pray this prayer?

[00:09:08] And I'm like, yeah, I did all that.

[00:09:10] I did more than you could ever imagine.

[00:09:12] Yeah, I've had some people be like, have you tried

[00:09:15] listening to this particular podcast?

[00:09:17] I'm like, yeah, I got it.

[00:09:19] Thanks. Yeah, I've I've read.

[00:09:20] I've done some overestimating the power of podcasts.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:25] Why do you think I started this one?

[00:09:26] Say this as a podcaster that we're not changing

[00:09:29] the entire world.

[00:09:32] Having some fun.

[00:09:33] But we're having fun.

[00:09:34] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:35] And we're telling stories and that's powerful to not to minimize that.

[00:09:39] No, absolutely.

[00:09:40] Yeah. But I think like this podcast is not trying to convince anybody

[00:09:43] to believe something else.

[00:09:45] It's it's here to help other people know that they're not alone.

[00:09:48] And so like it's for people who have already

[00:09:51] questioned things or wondered if it's OK to question things

[00:09:55] or who are out of the church but don't know where to go.

[00:09:58] Like that's what it's for.

[00:09:59] I'm not trying to convince anybody to believe one way or another.

[00:10:04] Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:05] So I went to high school, got to college, went to a big state school.

[00:10:09] I never wanted to go to a Christian school because I was like,

[00:10:12] in my mind, that was a cop out.

[00:10:14] It was like, why are you going to go?

[00:10:16] Why are you going to waste this college experience

[00:10:18] on just being with other Christians when you can be salt and light

[00:10:22] and you can, you know, save the school or some

[00:10:26] some high flutin thing?

[00:10:28] I immediately got my butt handed to me.

[00:10:31] There were party animals in my dorm that knew more about the Bible

[00:10:34] than I did, that had professors who were smarter than I knew more

[00:10:38] than I is. It was just like, oh, I went to college thinking,

[00:10:41] all right, I've read C.S. Lewis.

[00:10:44] You know, I got this new book by not a new book, but I just

[00:10:48] found people like Chesterton and I found, you know, all these

[00:10:52] theologians and I went all puffed up because, you know,

[00:10:55] I had one people for Jesus and I had led worship

[00:10:57] at these big services and I had blah, blah, blah.

[00:11:01] That doesn't mean squat when you go to a real school

[00:11:05] and be with real people who know a lot of things that you don't know.

[00:11:09] And it was humbling.

[00:11:11] But it just it actually made me dig my heels in further, though.

[00:11:14] So I'm going to I'm going to show them I'm going to be a bigger, better Christian.

[00:11:18] Yeah. Had you been in one church, your whole church experience

[00:11:22] up until this point? Yeah.

[00:11:25] OK, I also was only in one church.

[00:11:27] And then when I went to college, I went to a Christian college

[00:11:30] and it was like I saw that there were a lot of other ways

[00:11:34] to to believe and to be a Christian.

[00:11:36] Yeah, even amongst Christians, right?

[00:11:39] You think you're going to be with people all the same.

[00:11:41] And who everyone's arguing about church rituals and exactly.

[00:11:45] And like, yeah, which theology is right?

[00:11:48] Does it matter? Does it not matter?

[00:11:50] And I often think that if I went, if I had gone to a secular school

[00:11:54] that I would have dug my heels in even more as opposed to seeing

[00:11:58] that Christianity could be expansive, and that was that was one of my first steps out.

[00:12:03] But yeah, I think I would have done that too, because it's that's all you know.

[00:12:06] And then you go there and you're like, OK, well, I have to convince people

[00:12:08] this is the right way. Yeah.

[00:12:09] And you feel like you're under attack.

[00:12:11] You know, that's the I joined the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

[00:12:14] So it was like it was like going to Christian college in that sense.

[00:12:19] But we didn't have time to argue amongst ourselves about

[00:12:22] whose doctrine was correct or whether creeds are OK or, you know,

[00:12:26] Calvinism versus Armenianism.

[00:12:27] We we talked about it, but we we always felt like we got a band together

[00:12:32] to fight this big bad secular, you know, satanic environment that we're in.

[00:12:37] But it was funny, though.

[00:12:38] Yeah, I went to a really nerdy school, UC San Diego, and we were all very serious

[00:12:42] about our studies, our areas of study, and we're proud to be there.

[00:12:47] But always felt this mission to like, you know, represent and to

[00:12:51] bear witness to, you know, we have it's so embarrassing.

[00:12:55] We held like evangelical outreach things out on the quad,

[00:12:59] you know, and I'll play my guitar, sing for Jesus.

[00:13:04] And like some some apologists, there was a guy named Cliff Kineckley.

[00:13:08] He was kind of a would be Josh McDowell would come and like debate

[00:13:12] students out on the quad about, you know, where we come from.

[00:13:15] And he used that dumb wristwatch analogy.

[00:13:17] You know, like if you found a wristwatch, you wouldn't just assume

[00:13:19] it created itself.

[00:13:21] You had assumed there's a creator and then he got mixed up with a bunch

[00:13:24] of philosophy majors who were smarter than him, and they just handed him his ass.

[00:13:29] And I'm sitting there with my guitar, like watching him just go down in flames

[00:13:32] and I'm like, oh, that didn't go the way I thought.

[00:13:35] I thought he was going to like do, you know, that he was he was struggling.

[00:13:40] Yeah, don't don't argue with philosophy majors.

[00:13:43] They're smart.

[00:13:43] No, I had a fairly boring philosophy class, like philosophy professor,

[00:13:49] but there was one really amazing philosophy professor at our at my Christian school.

[00:13:53] He was fired later for, well, I think he was fired.

[00:13:56] I don't know. Don't sue me, anybody.

[00:13:58] But I think he was fired for like being too outspoken about LGBTQ rights

[00:14:03] at this school.

[00:14:04] But anyway, he was like a sub professor for one day and his

[00:14:10] or maybe two days in the two days that I had class with him,

[00:14:14] I think still was like foundational to me taking apart my beliefs.

[00:14:18] It was like he started a class with like a worship song to Allah

[00:14:22] and was like, what's the difference?

[00:14:24] Like I'm just worshiping like what's the matter?

[00:14:26] What's the difference?

[00:14:27] And like he made us question everything.

[00:14:29] He just flipped everything that I knew on its head and it was so good.

[00:14:34] But anyway, yeah, philosophy.

[00:14:35] I'll get you.

[00:14:35] It's terrifying at the time though, right?

[00:14:37] Because you feel like the rug's being pulled out from under you.

[00:14:39] It's like, wait, wait, I thought I knew I was thought I was totally

[00:14:43] solid on all this and they realized it doesn't take much

[00:14:47] to knock us off of our little precipice, right?

[00:14:49] It's like so easy.

[00:14:50] Yeah, I often say it for me, it felt like a game of Jenga where

[00:14:54] like you pulled that like magic piece out and suddenly it's just all.

[00:14:59] Yeah, we didn't realize there was a lot of pieces already missing.

[00:15:03] Yeah, so I'll just get the end like college was big because I started asking questions.

[00:15:09] I met I met gay people for the first time in my life.

[00:15:12] Well, out people who are out.

[00:15:14] And they were completely normal.

[00:15:18] And that's embarrassing to say.

[00:15:20] It was just like I was taught that they were out to steal my soul,

[00:15:23] that they were destroying America.

[00:15:25] And luckily I grew up before the 90s.

[00:15:27] So we hadn't gotten to all the hateful LGBTQ rhetoric, but it was there,

[00:15:33] you know, in the 80s.

[00:15:34] And that was a huge thing for me because I'm like these people are becoming

[00:15:38] my friends and they're really great people and they're not supposed to be.

[00:15:43] That's not how I was taught to believe.

[00:15:46] And that was another Jenga piece.

[00:15:48] It was just like, oof, I was completely.

[00:15:51] Luckily I was at a place where I could say I had that wrong.

[00:15:55] You know, yeah, I have this blog post on my blog that have you seen that

[00:15:59] movie, the Beautiful Mind?

[00:16:00] It's kind of old.

[00:16:01] It's about Nash and at the end of the movie, he looks back

[00:16:05] and he sees all these like these people that his mind conjured

[00:16:08] kind of just walking on the other side of the street looking sheepishly at him.

[00:16:12] And I compare that to my relationship with all the different versions of God

[00:16:16] that I had, you know, there was the benevolent grandpa and

[00:16:20] lamb holder as I was a kid.

[00:16:22] And then we got a little more fierce as I got older.

[00:16:24] And then oh, no, he doesn't hate gay people.

[00:16:27] And oh, no, he's not a Republican.

[00:16:29] And oh, no, he's actually not white.

[00:16:31] And, you know, so like every once in a while, look across the street

[00:16:34] and see this like line of 12 different gods and Jesuses that that used to be.

[00:16:39] And then it's the funny thing is like, it's not God that changed.

[00:16:42] It was me and my understanding.

[00:16:46] So now it's like, of course, God doesn't hate gay people.

[00:16:48] Oh my gosh, why did I think that?

[00:16:50] You know, and it's the same God or God's God.

[00:16:54] But you know, maybe our understanding of God is more tied to to us

[00:17:01] than it is to anything external.

[00:17:02] Right.

[00:17:03] It's like God is actually made in our own image, not the other way around.

[00:17:08] Do you feel like you had any grief for all these versions of God?

[00:17:13] As as God changed for you, did you feel like it was a kind of grieving process

[00:17:18] to lose the God that you had?

[00:17:20] Or was it like gaining a new facet of God that you didn't realize before?

[00:17:25] Yeah. At the beginning of deconstruction, I think it's really exhilarating

[00:17:28] because you feel like you're clarifying and you're gaining understanding

[00:17:32] of a more loving God, a more inclusive God.

[00:17:35] If you're going to the left.

[00:17:36] Right. Some people go the other way and no, God hates even more people.

[00:17:41] He hates you because you're left-handed and because you shrimp.

[00:17:45] And you know, like if this podcast is not for those.

[00:17:48] Yeah, they're not listening.

[00:17:50] No. But if you go into that direction, it's it's great.

[00:17:53] It's like, oh my gosh, Christianity can actually work and bring people together.

[00:17:58] And the tent is much bigger than I ever imagined.

[00:18:02] It starts to hurt a little when, when as I got out of college

[00:18:06] and had all these questions and all these experiences,

[00:18:09] the doubt that it even matters or exists.

[00:18:13] So you spent your whole life believing in this faith

[00:18:17] and in this God and this Bible.

[00:18:19] And the more you interrogate it and the more you ask questions

[00:18:21] and the more you actually try to understand it, you realize,

[00:18:25] oh, that doesn't make sense.

[00:18:27] And oh, actually, the Bible is probably not literal.

[00:18:31] I learned and oh, if it's not, then what what parts are and what parts aren't.

[00:18:35] And it all starts to fall apart.

[00:18:38] And that part is the terrifying part.

[00:18:41] I feel like a lot of people get to that point and then stay in church.

[00:18:44] I know a lot of people who have the exact same worldview as I do,

[00:18:47] but they're terrified to leave the faith in the church because it's all they know.

[00:18:50] And what are they without it?

[00:18:52] So for you and I to have these conversations

[00:18:55] to get to this point, it took some courage and we should pat ourselves

[00:18:58] on the back because it's scary, you know, that this is the foundation

[00:19:03] of your whole understanding of life in the universe and this world

[00:19:07] that you're going to say, I'm going to see what's outside of this

[00:19:12] because I don't think I can believe this anymore.

[00:19:15] Unfortunately for me, this all happened while I was teaching

[00:19:17] at an evangelical university

[00:19:21] where my job was dependent upon signing a faith statement

[00:19:25] and using doing faith integration while I taught English.

[00:19:28] Yeah, can you talk about your time at this evangelical university?

[00:19:33] You talk about it in your book and it is it's fascinating and wonderful.

[00:19:36] I called it EVU in the book just so but it's Azusa Pacific.

[00:19:39] Just everyone knows it's in my podcast.

[00:19:42] But I feel an olive branch to the school

[00:19:44] because they were pretty upset with me from the podcast.

[00:19:47] It's very kind of you.

[00:19:47] The whole first season of the podcast was just about APU.

[00:19:52] I thought it was just going to be a little compliment

[00:19:54] to my book that I was trying to write.

[00:19:55] And then the emails came flooding in from all over the country.

[00:19:59] Like I went to this school and I went to this school

[00:20:01] and I want to tell the story and it was like, oh, hey,

[00:20:04] think we think we tapped into something here.

[00:20:07] So yeah, I got a masters of writing at San Francisco

[00:20:10] University of San Francisco.

[00:20:11] My wife and I both went to grad school in San Francisco,

[00:20:15] which was another great step of deconstruction.

[00:20:18] Grad school or writing specifically?

[00:20:20] Both, yeah.

[00:20:21] I went to grad school in this great program.

[00:20:24] It's a Jesuit school, too.

[00:20:25] But the grad stuff, as with most colleges,

[00:20:28] it's not very religious.

[00:20:29] Yeah, it wasn't religious at all.

[00:20:31] I was in class with openly trans people in the middle 90s.

[00:20:36] And that was great going out drinking

[00:20:38] with the professor and my classmates.

[00:20:40] And I was still a Christian.

[00:20:42] So I was trying to be like, hey, I'm the cool, relatable Christian.

[00:20:46] And they're like, what the hell?

[00:20:48] You're not, you don't seem Christian.

[00:20:50] I'm like, I know, but I am.

[00:20:54] This is like a feminism in the like,

[00:20:57] I don't know, maybe like 90s and 2000s.

[00:20:59] It's not real feminism, but this feminism that was like,

[00:21:02] I'm not a regular girl.

[00:21:04] I'm a cool girl.

[00:21:04] Like I'm more like a guy than I am like a girl.

[00:21:07] That's like that.

[00:21:08] That's like this version of Christianity that's like,

[00:21:11] I'm not like a regular Christian.

[00:21:12] I do cool things and like, I swear and I drink, you know?

[00:21:15] Yeah, that's basically it.

[00:21:16] And so we moved back to LA and we both got jobs.

[00:21:20] I was working in a newspaper

[00:21:21] and then a family friend said this school is this Pacific,

[00:21:25] which I hated as a kid.

[00:21:26] It was like the worst school in the area in the 80s.

[00:21:29] It was like it was weirdly a Christian party school.

[00:21:32] OK, you know, the 80s were wild.

[00:21:34] OK, the Reagan years were like

[00:21:37] we're conservative and family values.

[00:21:39] And we sometimes wake up in a pile of puke on someone's lawn.

[00:21:42] You know, like that's

[00:21:44] that's conservatism in the 80s.

[00:21:47] And APU was kind of about that.

[00:21:48] It was kind of known as this place where kids just went nuts

[00:21:51] and had friends that went and there was barely any academics.

[00:21:56] But in the 90s, they tried to refashion themselves

[00:21:58] into this sort of academic powerhouse.

[00:22:01] And the family friends who worked there said,

[00:22:03] oh, they're hiring in the English Department.

[00:22:05] You should go and teach some classes.

[00:22:07] And I said, well, that could be fun.

[00:22:09] And I had already started teaching some community college classes.

[00:22:12] So yeah, I'll try it out.

[00:22:15] And yeah, so the book will tell us all about how I got into that.

[00:22:19] And immediately wanted to leave because

[00:22:23] my idea of faith and Christianity and life had just moved so far beyond that.

[00:22:30] But but I saw in these 18 year old, 19 year old kids myself

[00:22:34] at this point, I'm only 10 years older than these kids.

[00:22:37] And so I can still really relate to what they are.

[00:22:41] But man, that was a big 10 year step for me.

[00:22:44] You know, I had moved so far beyond.

[00:22:46] So yeah, fast forward to the second Bush election 2004.

[00:22:51] I think I don't remember the exact moment, but there was a day

[00:22:56] that the kids came in and they're like, why don't we pray in class anymore?

[00:22:59] Professor Okamoto.

[00:23:00] And I was like, yeah, why don't we?

[00:23:02] They hadn't even occurred to me in several weeks in this feeling of terror

[00:23:07] just kind of crept in and I was like, I think it's because I don't

[00:23:10] see the point in prayer anymore.

[00:23:14] All these kids are like, oh, please pray for my roommate who is driving me crazy.

[00:23:19] And I need a new car and please pray for that.

[00:23:22] And just like, when the hell are we praying?

[00:23:25] Why are we wasting class time?

[00:23:27] Hey, this is an accredited university.

[00:23:30] We're taking 10 minutes out of their class to like talk about prayer requests

[00:23:33] and even pray and it's just like you guys don't know what adjectives are.

[00:23:37] We need to we got stuff to do.

[00:23:42] Where are we?

[00:23:43] You know, like is this church or is this college?

[00:23:47] Anyway, I had this existential crisis and you know, there were a few weeks

[00:23:52] because I had seen the church in Christianity completely sell out

[00:23:55] to the Republican Party, which I was not part of.

[00:23:58] And I was just like, well, if if this is Christianity

[00:24:03] and this is church, I don't want anything to do with it.

[00:24:05] You know, I knew there were progressive churches and there's more now.

[00:24:08] And yeah, God bless the progressive Christians.

[00:24:12] But I went harder into the Bible.

[00:24:13] I started hanging out with theology professors and having lunch with them.

[00:24:17] And their answers were terrible.

[00:24:21] They had nothing like theodicy, you know, like suffering.

[00:24:26] And, you know, does God cause suffering?

[00:24:29] Does he not know it's going to, you know, the open theists had it the best.

[00:24:32] I thought the ones that said,

[00:24:34] though God doesn't know the future because the future doesn't exist.

[00:24:38] Like, OK, that makes sense.

[00:24:39] But then I was like, well, then what good is he? Right.

[00:24:42] Right. Then he's just all of us put together.

[00:24:46] Like we've all experienced everything.

[00:24:48] We're just like, oh, dang, that just happened.

[00:24:51] Yeah. Why did you?

[00:24:54] Where did you do this?

[00:24:56] And then if he's not that, then, you know, he knows it's going to happen

[00:24:59] and he let it happen, you know?

[00:25:01] I remember the Sandy Hook thing was a really big thing later on.

[00:25:04] That was like the last straw.

[00:25:05] Any any vestige of faith in all loving, all powerful God was dashed when that happened.

[00:25:12] I'm like, how?

[00:25:13] I mean, you already had the Holocaust.

[00:25:14] You already had inquisitions.

[00:25:16] There was world history is not great.

[00:25:18] And it's usually the Christians doing the bad stuff.

[00:25:21] Right. Right.

[00:25:22] Not preventing.

[00:25:24] And we like, I say we as Christians,

[00:25:26] like Christians have like aligned themselves with these bad things.

[00:25:30] They're always on the wrong side.

[00:25:31] Yeah. I think about like the crusades and how

[00:25:35] and you had mentioned inner varsity, but another like college group

[00:25:38] is campus crusades.

[00:25:40] They had to change their name.

[00:25:41] Right. I mean, we Christians, I say, I keep saying we,

[00:25:45] but like Christians align themselves so much with these

[00:25:49] the idea of these crusades that we named our college group.

[00:25:53] Someone thought that was a good idea.

[00:25:55] We're proud of that.

[00:25:56] Yeah, that's so fucking bananas.

[00:25:59] Not OK guys.

[00:26:00] But they did change it to crew, which is only half of the word.

[00:26:03] Right. So now it's only half a crusade.

[00:26:06] They totally fixed it.

[00:26:07] Yeah, you talked about nine eleven being a big point for you to.

[00:26:12] And I think that had a lot to do too with kind of seeing sort of white

[00:26:16] nationalism and fear of this kind of like idea of other.

[00:26:21] You want to talk a little bit about that?

[00:26:22] Sure. Yeah. I was in 2001.

[00:26:26] I returned to my childhood church.

[00:26:28] And I was kind of a big deal because, you know, they knew

[00:26:31] my parents were still there and my my dad was on the ministry council.

[00:26:35] I think he still is.

[00:26:36] I know he's not anymore anyway.

[00:26:37] My mom was like a deaconess and, you know, the college boy came back

[00:26:43] and we had started this new like younger, young married Sunday school class

[00:26:48] and and the kid teaches at a zoo specific just down the freeway.

[00:26:54] So he's a college professor now.

[00:26:55] And so the head pastor back then was that he was an OK guy

[00:26:59] and he he had a real heart for diversity.

[00:27:02] So he assembled a team of three of us to

[00:27:05] to create a curriculum about diversity issues for all the Sunday school classes.

[00:27:09] And I don't remember how many they were, but there were like 25 Sunday school classes.

[00:27:13] It's a big church.

[00:27:15] So we created this like six week curriculum of just examining identity

[00:27:19] and it was nothing radical, nothing like the DEI of today, which is great.

[00:27:23] It was just very gently like, you know, there's some racism

[00:27:28] and there's some things that maybe we should talk about.

[00:27:31] Yeah, there's some differences between us that need to be navigated.

[00:27:35] And just to be clear in all of this work that you're doing, you are not getting paid.

[00:27:39] No, we're putting so many hours and having meetings and writing things out.

[00:27:43] And, you know, we're doing it for Jesus

[00:27:45] and like doing the emotional labor of teaching white people that racism exists.

[00:27:49] Yeah. And to their credit, the other two people were white

[00:27:51] and so they totally were down with it.

[00:27:53] And we knew what was ahead of us.

[00:27:56] Thanks to 9-11, we didn't get very far because

[00:28:00] we we finally finished it around, you know, August of 2001.

[00:28:07] And we go into our first Sunday school class with lesson number one,

[00:28:11] you know, one of 25 Sunday school classes and the people were great

[00:28:14] and they loved it. You know, they they loved the way we presented it.

[00:28:19] They were excited to continue.

[00:28:21] So this would have been, you know, probably the first week of September.

[00:28:25] And the pastor was thrilled and he immediately sends us an email that says

[00:28:30] he's hearing great things, wanting to be in all the Sunday school classes.

[00:28:34] You know, we're thinking six times 25.

[00:28:37] It's a lot of Sundays, you know, that we're doing this for free.

[00:28:41] And I'm thinking, man, what did I get myself into?

[00:28:44] And then 9-11 happens the next week and or the next two weeks.

[00:28:48] And interestingly, the whole idea of diversity disappeared.

[00:28:52] Now it's like, screw that.

[00:28:54] We can't be talking about respecting people's cultures and shit like that now.

[00:28:58] Like, oh, right now is not the time.

[00:29:01] That's that's so last week.

[00:29:05] And to your point earlier, I think that really you could trace a lot

[00:29:09] of the white Christian nationalism of today to 9-11, you know,

[00:29:13] it's not that racism and xenophobia didn't exist before that,

[00:29:16] but that really galvanized the Christians.

[00:29:19] It gave them an excuse to like have an outlet for their their hate,

[00:29:23] their bigotry, yeah.

[00:29:24] And to frame it in a way that was like patriotic and justified or like for good

[00:29:29] and for Jesus and for Jesus. Yeah.

[00:29:32] Yeah. I mean, they started painting like Bible verses

[00:29:35] and pictures of angels on like bombs and, you know, jet fighters.

[00:29:39] Like we're laughing, but that's just awful.

[00:29:42] You know, like I was reading a different Bible, apparently.

[00:29:46] Right.

[00:29:47] That doesn't seem to track with Jesus' teachings.

[00:29:51] Yeah. So within a few years, my faith was completely gone.

[00:29:56] And it was probably, and I don't put this in the book

[00:29:58] because I honestly can't remember exactly these moments,

[00:30:00] but I think I held on to like the possibility of Christianity

[00:30:06] for a couple of years after 2004, even though

[00:30:09] that was definitely the death knell that was the death blow

[00:30:12] because we still went to like an Episcopalian church

[00:30:14] that was very liberal here in Pasadena

[00:30:17] that ticked all the boxes, you know, they're inclusive

[00:30:19] and not complementary and, you know, egalitarian with women

[00:30:23] and, you know, racially inclusive.

[00:30:25] But then I started thinking, there's so many other things

[00:30:28] I'd rather do with my Sundays than just have all my views

[00:30:31] and values reflected at me by these people.

[00:30:33] It's like, you know, great, awesome.

[00:30:36] But I kind of want some coffee and waffles.

[00:30:39] Right.

[00:30:39] My biggest most popular blog post is called

[00:30:42] Follow the Waffles and Sex Out of Church.

[00:30:46] You can have sex on a Sunday morning.

[00:30:48] Now, we started having children, so that probably didn't happen

[00:30:52] a lot ever, but the potential was there.

[00:30:56] You weren't in church on a Sunday morning.

[00:30:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:30:59] We were probably in bed, but probably with a toddler or two

[00:31:03] and a dog

[00:31:05] and some some diapers that needed changing.

[00:31:08] But still better than church.

[00:31:10] Right. I thought so.

[00:31:11] And to this day, I'm still every I wake up most Sundays

[00:31:14] just like, yeah, I have to go to church.

[00:31:16] That's awesome.

[00:31:16] Yeah. I was going to ask you something and I lost it.

[00:31:20] So I threw you off with the sex and waffles.

[00:31:23] Could be worse things to get lost in.

[00:31:32] Let's think about your timeline.

[00:31:33] So you've you've been in church, you left, you know,

[00:31:36] you're in an Episcopal church and then and then you left

[00:31:38] because you just don't really believe it anymore.

[00:31:40] Like is that the yeah?

[00:31:41] Yeah. Meanwhile, I'm getting promoted left and right at Azusa.

[00:31:45] They don't have any non white professors.

[00:31:47] And so I have a full time job, you know, I'm like a full

[00:31:50] not a full professor.

[00:31:51] I'm an assistant professor and I wouldn't have stayed

[00:31:54] if I didn't think I was doing a good job because as long

[00:31:57] the students were telling me that I was helping them

[00:31:59] understand the English language and literature

[00:32:01] and helping them be better Christians, then I felt good

[00:32:05] that I was staying because I wasn't again,

[00:32:06] I was never proselytizing them out of Christianity.

[00:32:09] I was like, well, 99 percent of what I teach is just English.

[00:32:12] It's an accredited university.

[00:32:14] So then I have to do some faith integration.

[00:32:17] Easy, you know, like I know the Bible better than they do.

[00:32:20] And so helping them understand and be more sympathetic

[00:32:24] to the people around them, to be more loving,

[00:32:26] be more Christlike is not that hard.

[00:32:29] You know, we almost don't even need the Bible.

[00:32:31] I mean, I knew the Bible, right?

[00:32:33] But I got rave reviews from this dude.

[00:32:35] Well, there was always some that thought I was evil

[00:32:37] just because I would say, you know, maybe gay people

[00:32:39] aren't the devil, you know, like what?

[00:32:44] Evil. So zero stars.

[00:32:47] Yeah, there was always five percent, five to ten percent

[00:32:50] of my students that just thought I was pure evil,

[00:32:53] but most thought I was great and I was really helping them.

[00:32:56] Yeah. What did it feel like to be at a Christian university,

[00:33:00] like an evangelical university

[00:33:02] while you personally don't really hold these beliefs anymore?

[00:33:07] Well, it felt familiar because I knew it so well, you know.

[00:33:10] Yeah. I write in the book.

[00:33:11] Luckily for me, well, and I won't spoil the ending for you

[00:33:16] the very end.

[00:33:17] But I'm very close to the end, but I have not finished it yet.

[00:33:20] Yeah. Now there's there's aliens and.

[00:33:24] Surprise. Yeah, yeah, it's a shocker.

[00:33:27] Maybe you're back in church.

[00:33:28] We don't know. I won't know until I finish the book.

[00:33:30] So let me tell you about Scientology.

[00:33:35] I started going to this Asian American arts

[00:33:38] and activism community called the Tuesday Night Cafe

[00:33:41] in downtown Los Angeles because my cousin was involved

[00:33:45] and she and she figures large in the book to end up bring her to my classes.

[00:33:49] And so I started making new friends

[00:33:51] because I'd never really explored being Asian American.

[00:33:54] You know, I've been spent most of my life trying to

[00:33:58] well, trying to be a bridge for all people, but

[00:34:01] by really leaning into these spaces that were dominated by whiteness

[00:34:04] because I felt like that's where the action was.

[00:34:06] That's where the center of power is.

[00:34:08] And so I was always like just driven to those spaces.

[00:34:11] And I didn't hate being Asian, but I didn't, you know,

[00:34:14] I didn't have mostly Asian friends.

[00:34:17] I had pretty diverse group of friends.

[00:34:18] But learning about this community and the values that they had

[00:34:22] was really healing for me to say, not only do I not have to

[00:34:26] hate being Japanese American, I can actually love it and celebrate it

[00:34:31] without it being, you know, like this, for lack of a better word,

[00:34:34] like a crutch or what's the Christian word?

[00:34:37] A God, as you know, that's what they always said.

[00:34:40] Don't don't let things be bigger than God.

[00:34:42] And so I raced was that it was like, well, it's not bigger than God.

[00:34:45] So it's it's like third or fourth on the list.

[00:34:48] Well, I bumped it up a few notches and really found this community

[00:34:52] and people who to this day are my chosen family.

[00:34:55] And so leaving the faith and not going to church anymore

[00:34:59] was no problem for me.

[00:35:01] I hear all these horrible stories of people

[00:35:03] deconstructing and losing all their friends and family.

[00:35:05] And that's so heartbreaking.

[00:35:07] And I almost feel guilty because I kind of cheated.

[00:35:09] I kind of I kind of like seeded this whole other life, this escape hatch.

[00:35:15] So by the time it was over, I was like, hell, yeah, peace out, man.

[00:35:19] Like I have all these friends who love me and care about me

[00:35:23] and support me and, yeah, didn't miss it.

[00:35:26] And I never, never looked back.

[00:35:28] Yeah, it's like you left and you fell into the arms

[00:35:31] of a more beautiful loving community than the church was.

[00:35:35] Absolutely.

[00:35:36] And there are Christians in this community, too, who are great, you know,

[00:35:39] and they know I used to be.

[00:35:41] Yeah, but it doesn't divide us the fact that we're, you know,

[00:35:44] apostate and Christian in community.

[00:35:47] And there's people who are Muslim, they're Hindu,

[00:35:49] they're Buddhists or agnostic or atheist.

[00:35:52] You know, there's we're all about community and human thriving

[00:35:55] and wanting the best for everyone, including the Christians.

[00:35:59] You know, we will advocate for everyone to have agency in their lives

[00:36:02] and an art to make it better.

[00:36:04] So that's where I ended up.

[00:36:06] And that's to this day, kind of where I am now.

[00:36:08] Yeah.

[00:36:09] Do you have any sense of like spirituality now or anything

[00:36:13] that you kind of gravitate toward post religion?

[00:36:16] Or is it just kind of like, I'm here and that's good.

[00:36:20] It's partly that.

[00:36:21] So at near the end, one of the things that really got me out of APU was

[00:36:26] because most of my career there, I had flown under the radar.

[00:36:29] I was popular as an English professor,

[00:36:31] but the administration really didn't know much about me.

[00:36:34] I just kind of hid out and did my thing.

[00:36:36] Well, I got voted by the students to speak in chapel, which is a big deal.

[00:36:39] Like, you know, for them chapel people who speak in chapel

[00:36:42] are like rock stars in this community.

[00:36:45] And I was really torn because I was I was probably three or four years

[00:36:49] out from realizing I didn't believe anymore.

[00:36:52] So I created this chapel talk about the divine and poetry

[00:36:58] and just how poets who aren't even Christian understand the world.

[00:37:03] They see through Jesus's eyes because they're poets and they're looking for beauty.

[00:37:06] They're looking for all and mystery and redemption.

[00:37:09] And I think that was me sort of writing my own manifesto.

[00:37:14] And there's a link.

[00:37:15] I have the video posted on my website, rscotlocomotto.com.

[00:37:19] It gets like two views every day, two to ten views every day to this day.

[00:37:23] And people ask, did you feel weird giving that talk when you weren't Christian?

[00:37:27] Because kind of like you earlier as I refer to us as we Christians.

[00:37:30] Yeah, you know, because I had to do that.

[00:37:32] It was chapel at APU.

[00:37:34] And I said, yeah, I did.

[00:37:35] But I felt really strong about the message.

[00:37:37] And I think for me, the divine happens when people who shouldn't get along

[00:37:42] choose to get along or when someone forgives someone or when someone

[00:37:46] reaches out and helps someone.

[00:37:49] To me, if there is God, a God or some kind of all powerful

[00:37:53] or all knowing being it exists there and and I'm cool with that.

[00:37:57] I don't understand the universe.

[00:37:59] And while that may have made me panicky or awkward before,

[00:38:02] I think it's great.

[00:38:03] I don't have to understand everything.

[00:38:05] I can embrace mystery and just I have friends that we can kind of do it together.

[00:38:11] You know, figure things out, create meaning, create love, create community.

[00:38:16] So if there is the divine, then I definitely see it there.

[00:38:21] Yeah.

[00:38:22] And I think a theme that's come up in this podcast a lot

[00:38:24] is embracing the unknown, the uncertainty,

[00:38:28] the everything that's not black and white.

[00:38:31] And yeah, just like the the unknown and like, I don't know.

[00:38:34] And that's OK. And that's beautiful.

[00:38:36] Yeah. And you can search for knowledge and search for understanding.

[00:38:39] I think, yeah, I don't know.

[00:38:41] That sounds like a life well lived.

[00:38:42] You know, you don't cross the finish line here.

[00:38:45] You know, you don't ever get to a place where I figured it out.

[00:38:49] That's life. Now I can just relax.

[00:38:52] Yeah, I like the idea of spending an entire lifetime searching for meaning,

[00:38:56] searching for connection. And yeah, it's it's cool.

[00:39:00] Did you say your dad was Buddhist?

[00:39:03] My mom's side is Buddhist.

[00:39:04] Your mom's side is Buddhist.

[00:39:05] Have you ever explored any of that for yourself or even just to like,

[00:39:09] I don't know, kind of like explore that side of your family?

[00:39:14] I mean, I looked into it and what it was about.

[00:39:17] Buddhism is interesting because it's not really a religion.

[00:39:19] It's more of a philosophy, worldview kind of.

[00:39:23] I mean, there's ritual and there's practice, but in terms of like Christianity

[00:39:27] and the big Abrahamic religions, it's nothing like that, which is cool.

[00:39:32] In fact, if you studied Buddhism, Jesus kind of kind of cribbed

[00:39:36] from Buddhism and the Beatitudes.

[00:39:38] If you read the Beatitudes, that's like, that's Buddhism.

[00:39:40] That's literally what the texts say.

[00:39:44] And so no, I think it's such a traumatic thing.

[00:39:48] And I know other people who do that, you know, I just interviewed some guys

[00:39:52] who when they were leaving Christianity, they went to Islam and they went to Hindu.

[00:39:57] They went to Buddhism and they were they're like, well, one of these is to be right.

[00:40:01] And I think I was the opposite.

[00:40:02] I was like, maybe none of them need to be right.

[00:40:04] You know, like and so I think letting go of Christianity

[00:40:09] is such a big all encompassing thing for me.

[00:40:13] I was like, well, I'm not I just not interested in religion in general.

[00:40:16] It's fascinating and I keep up on it, but I never felt the need to.

[00:40:21] Well, Christianity didn't work for me.

[00:40:23] So, you know, Tom Cruise is cool.

[00:40:24] I'll try the Scientology stuff and yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense.

[00:40:31] Are there any other pieces of your story that feel really important

[00:40:35] to share before I start to bring us to a close?

[00:40:39] Yeah, no, I could talk for hours, but yeah.

[00:40:42] And I'm trying not to spoil the ending in my book, too.

[00:40:44] So. Oh, man, people are going to be so disappointed.

[00:40:48] It's not it's not that great.

[00:40:50] Yeah, so they like I'm married, have kids.

[00:40:54] And so raising my kids without the religious indoctrination that I had

[00:40:59] has been great.

[00:41:01] And right at the end of when we were going to church,

[00:41:05] we were taking the kids to church and they were real little and they hated it.

[00:41:09] You know, they said the other kids are terrible and kind of mean.

[00:41:13] And when we stopped going, they were so glad.

[00:41:16] And then, you know, they got through high school and two of them are in college now.

[00:41:20] And they've many times thanked me.

[00:41:22] They're like, thank you for not raising us Christian because they see other people

[00:41:27] and they're like, oh, that seems what you went through must have been awful, dad.

[00:41:33] And then like, yeah, son, it was better damn appreciated.

[00:41:39] You're welcome.

[00:41:41] Yeah, but I love that, you know, like my son comes home from

[00:41:43] he goes to San Francisco State and my daughter is just she's becoming an electrician.

[00:41:49] But we'll sit around in our kitchen and drink a beer together or

[00:41:53] we'll go out and smoke a joint together and just talk about life.

[00:41:55] You know, I love that I have this relationship where nothing's taboo

[00:41:59] to talk about whether it's politics or the relationships or life.

[00:42:04] And never have to ask them, are you doing your quiet times?

[00:42:06] You know, did you read your Bible this week?

[00:42:08] You know, did you sin?

[00:42:11] You OK with God?

[00:42:13] Yeah, having a relationship with my kids without the religion is great.

[00:42:18] It's it's it's been amazing.

[00:42:20] And and like the more they learn about it, like when they read my book

[00:42:24] or they hear my podcast, they're like, man, that sounded awful.

[00:42:31] And you know, because it's just you went through it.

[00:42:32] It's our life. It didn't seem that it wasn't like we were like crying every day.

[00:42:37] I think that's what my kids know.

[00:42:38] It wasn't bad in the moment, like going to church.

[00:42:41] I'm like, I had a wonderful childhood. Right?

[00:42:44] Yeah, I had a wonderful childhood loving home.

[00:42:47] My church experience was actually fine until I looked back at camp.

[00:42:52] Did you do you go to camp? Oh, yeah, I went to camp.

[00:42:55] I was camp counselor.

[00:42:57] Yeah, it was amazing.

[00:42:59] And like, I feel like I found a huge piece of myself at camp.

[00:43:02] I still love the outdoors.

[00:43:03] My husband and I hike all the time.

[00:43:06] And I feel like that's where I really learned how to like be outside

[00:43:09] and like feel confident outside.

[00:43:12] And yeah, I'm so thankful for my time at camp.

[00:43:14] Now, we didn't grow up in IFB and shit like that.

[00:43:17] So, you know, that was not fun.

[00:43:19] You know, I BLP, IFB, ATI, all that's that sounds awful.

[00:43:24] Yeah, props to those people who survived that stuff.

[00:43:27] So yeah, it was great, right? We were good.

[00:43:29] We were. Yeah, we were just like normal,

[00:43:31] you know, slightly harmful, Calvinistic ideas, but not I BLP.

[00:43:35] Right. And I wasn't even Calvinist, you know,

[00:43:38] I think I was raised to believe anyone could go to heaven and God didn't know.

[00:43:43] That's funny, right?

[00:43:45] God didn't know whether you were going to choose him or not

[00:43:48] because that would be Calvinism, but but he's all knowing like what?

[00:43:52] Don't don't think about it too much.

[00:43:54] Unless he is this the one who doesn't know the future.

[00:43:57] Right. It hasn't happened.

[00:43:58] But I didn't encounter that theology until, you know, as a professor,

[00:44:01] it's like, right? Yeah.

[00:44:03] As we unpacked stuff, we go, wow, that was shitty.

[00:44:05] That was harmful.

[00:44:07] That was stressful, you know, this constantly worrying about

[00:44:11] whether we're going to heaven or whether we're going to save our friends.

[00:44:14] Well, my, you know, those camp speakers as great as camp was,

[00:44:18] there was always that speaker that was a doom and gloom speaker

[00:44:20] that'd be like picture all your friends burning in hell.

[00:44:23] And I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah.

[00:44:26] The speech I remember the most is like

[00:44:29] when you walk out this door, if you get hit by a car,

[00:44:32] are you going to go to heaven or hell?

[00:44:33] Like, do you know where you're going to go if you walk out the door and die?

[00:44:36] And I'm like, oh my God, I've never thought about death so much.

[00:44:39] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:40] Suddenly you're looking at both ways across the street when you cross.

[00:44:44] I had one camp speaker tell us he was a pretty good speaker.

[00:44:48] He told us I used to be, you know, into rock and roll music.

[00:44:53] And then I noticed, you know, when I would listen to the Eagles,

[00:44:56] the Eagles was my favorite group.

[00:44:57] And every time I listened to the Eagles, I wanted to drink alcohol.

[00:45:01] And and I realized Satan was in my Eagles albums.

[00:45:06] So I so I took my Eagles records to my backyard and I set them on fire.

[00:45:12] And he described this horrible scene of like demons screaming

[00:45:15] and like colored smoke coming out of his pile of records.

[00:45:19] And I was like, oh, my God, I have Eagles records.

[00:45:22] And I went home and I was like, mom and dad have to burn my records.

[00:45:26] And I'm like, hell no, you're not burning your record.

[00:45:28] It's a fire hazard.

[00:45:30] Thank goodness my parents had some sense because I was ready to set set.

[00:45:33] I had like 50 records.

[00:45:35] I was going to burn the house down.

[00:45:38] That's amazing. Yeah.

[00:45:40] I think he's really overestimating the power of an Eagles album.

[00:45:44] Yeah. And then backward masking, do you know what that is?

[00:45:46] They told us that if you spin Led Zeppelin's

[00:45:49] steroid heaven backwards. Yes.

[00:45:51] So kids listening, there's these things called records.

[00:45:53] We probably know it's cool to have records now, right?

[00:45:56] That's right. They're back.

[00:45:58] So what you can do is you can you turn it off.

[00:46:01] You don't want to mess up your turntable,

[00:46:02] but you can roll the records backwards under the needle

[00:46:05] and it plays backwards and it sounds horrible.

[00:46:09] We spent hours listening to stairway to heaven backwards

[00:46:12] trying to hear him say my sweet Satan and we didn't hear shit.

[00:46:15] OK, it was a.

[00:46:19] Oh, wait, there was a say in there that was half of Satan.

[00:46:23] Yeah, we were we were attempting faith there, right?

[00:46:25] Yeah, you tried.

[00:46:26] Satan could have got us.

[00:46:29] Oh, man.

[00:46:30] Yeah, I think they're they're really putting a lot of power into records

[00:46:34] that I don't think it has.

[00:46:35] Yeah. No.

[00:46:36] That said, the music itself did end up being a very healing thing for me

[00:46:40] as I as I exited Christianity.

[00:46:43] I'm a musician.

[00:46:43] I stayed playing the guitar and half of my job right now is playing music

[00:46:47] for we started a company called Access Mundi Brad O'Nishi,

[00:46:51] Straight White American Jesus.

[00:46:53] And I started an academic podcast company.

[00:46:55] So I actually get to write music and record music, original stuff for people's podcasts.

[00:47:01] And it's all thanks to me picking up the guitar at age 10 to play worship songs.

[00:47:06] So there's there's a nice full circle.

[00:47:08] Yeah, there you go.

[00:47:10] Yeah, my dad was like the worship leader at church.

[00:47:13] But my parents also grew up like they grew up like in the 60s and 70s.

[00:47:19] And we're just like real like cool hippies, Beatles loving people listen to great music.

[00:47:25] Eagles. Yeah, also satanic.

[00:47:27] But like I feel like I grew up with an appreciation for really good music

[00:47:32] and like listening to that.

[00:47:33] And that still made it into our house.

[00:47:35] And nice. So thank you for that.

[00:47:37] We had similar upbringing.

[00:47:38] Yeah, because my dad, my parents are, you know, maybe 15, 20 years old

[00:47:43] and your parents, so my dad had a whole stack of records from Motown

[00:47:46] that I grew up listening to.

[00:47:47] And I hated it when I was a kid.

[00:47:49] Like that's lame.

[00:47:51] But as I got into high school, like that music is cool.

[00:47:54] I know, I remember calling my dad one day, I was like, dad,

[00:47:57] you didn't ever tell me about Janice Joplin.

[00:47:59] How come you didn't tell me about her?

[00:48:01] He's like, I, I definitely did.

[00:48:03] Like, I'm not taking the blame for this one.

[00:48:06] Yeah, that's on you.

[00:48:08] But anyway, yeah, thankful for for the music that got in.

[00:48:11] And it has been really healing to, I don't know, to like listen

[00:48:14] to that music and enjoy it outside of the church now

[00:48:17] and so much other music too.

[00:48:18] But yeah, people singing about life.

[00:48:21] Yeah, that's right.

[00:48:22] And love and heartache and triumph.

[00:48:25] Yeah, it's it's all it's all there.

[00:48:27] Yeah. All right.

[00:48:29] Well, to bring us to a close, I like to end with some kind

[00:48:32] of encouragement from our guests for listeners who are in the

[00:48:35] throes of their deconstruction and need a little pick me up

[00:48:39] from somebody who is maybe just a step or two ahead of them

[00:48:42] or many steps ahead.

[00:48:43] Yeah. What I see the most is I just saw a post today

[00:48:47] in one of the social media groups missing community, missing

[00:48:51] worship. And I get that, but it's out there.

[00:48:54] You know, and maybe not in a church.

[00:48:57] It's definitely not in a church.

[00:48:59] But you know, find your music, find your people for whatever

[00:49:02] you think you're losing in church and Christianity,

[00:49:06] it's bigger and better outside.

[00:49:09] You know, you don't have the strings of guilt and shame

[00:49:12] attached to whatever worship or whatever communal experience

[00:49:16] you're having.

[00:49:17] It's all the good parts and not the bad parts.

[00:49:20] And when you let go of this notion that you are

[00:49:25] losing these things when you leave church

[00:49:29] or if you just go to a different church,

[00:49:31] when you let go of that concept and just open yourself up

[00:49:34] to what people, you know, your people have to offer.

[00:49:39] It's so much better.

[00:49:40] It's so great.

[00:49:41] And it's hard to find and it takes some some digging

[00:49:45] and some self introspection to fit.

[00:49:47] Well, what who are you and what are your values

[00:49:50] and what are the things that you're passionate about?

[00:49:52] When you find those things, I think you find people

[00:49:56] that are associated with those things

[00:49:57] and they can become the most important people in your life.

[00:50:01] And yeah, if you read my book, Asian American Pasta,

[00:50:05] talking about how that happened for me.

[00:50:08] And yeah, I have gotten to a point where I don't miss anything.

[00:50:12] You know, every Christmas my parents will ask

[00:50:14] and they know what the answer is going to be,

[00:50:16] but every Christmas in Easter.

[00:50:17] So you want to come to church?

[00:50:19] Like, no, thank you.

[00:50:21] I think early on, you know, I was like,

[00:50:22] oh, I kind of miss singing Silent Night.

[00:50:24] You know, I still get like a little teary

[00:50:27] when I hear Silent Night just because I picture that me

[00:50:29] at like age nine, singing my guts out at Christmas,

[00:50:32] you know, thinking this is the best experience I'll ever have.

[00:50:37] You know, that's the whole world is Jesus being born

[00:50:40] in this manger with these wise men and somehow Virgin mom

[00:50:44] and the star and angels.

[00:50:48] Yeah, yeah, don't think about it.

[00:50:49] That's another one. Just put it on the show.

[00:50:51] Yeah, what's a version?

[00:50:53] I remember asking from a Christmas song, I was like,

[00:50:55] Mom, what's a virgin?

[00:50:57] I was very confused.

[00:50:58] She was like somebody who hasn't had a baby.

[00:50:59] And I was like, but I'm so confused.

[00:51:03] Wow. Hmm.

[00:51:04] That answer will last a couple of years

[00:51:06] until you know, your friends start talking.

[00:51:09] Yeah, except that it was from Christmas songs

[00:51:12] that I heard the birds on like.

[00:51:14] Yeah. The Virgin Mary had a baby boy.

[00:51:18] I'm so confused.

[00:51:19] Yeah, that's our first sex ed experience.

[00:51:22] So yeah, to this day, if I hear Silent Night,

[00:51:23] I'll get really pretty version.

[00:51:24] Yeah, there's a part of me that's like, oh,

[00:51:27] those innocent days, but I honestly don't miss it.

[00:51:30] And I would never go back

[00:51:32] and I would never even look for it

[00:51:34] because the life that I have found

[00:51:37] and cultivated since then is so much better and bigger.

[00:51:41] And everyone can find it.

[00:51:42] Everyone can find it.

[00:51:43] Yeah, I love that.

[00:51:44] Thank you.

[00:51:45] If listeners want to connect with you and read your book,

[00:51:48] which I highly recommend,

[00:51:49] where can they find you and reach out?

[00:51:51] I have a website, rscottokamodo.com,

[00:51:54] and I do a podcast,

[00:51:55] which I would love to have you on for my next season.

[00:51:57] Oh, amazing.

[00:51:58] Choppel probation.

[00:51:59] We started talking about experiences

[00:52:01] surviving Christian colleges and universities.

[00:52:04] And we're still mostly that,

[00:52:05] but I'm doing a bunch of limited series this next season

[00:52:08] about purity culture, intersectionality,

[00:52:11] and music in post-faith.

[00:52:14] All things I like to talk about.

[00:52:15] Yeah, yeah.

[00:52:16] I think we'll have a nice conversation.

[00:52:18] Yeah, the book,

[00:52:19] The Asian American Apostate,

[00:52:20] Losing Religion, Finding Myself,

[00:52:22] and Evangelical University,

[00:52:23] super long title because my publisher was like,

[00:52:25] you're an unknown.

[00:52:26] The title has to tell people exactly what's in it.

[00:52:30] And so I was like, oh shit, all right.

[00:52:32] This is the title.

[00:52:34] That's a long title.

[00:52:35] It works.

[00:52:36] And the book is really good.

[00:52:38] Guys, it's really good.

[00:52:39] Oh, and check out AXIS Mundi.

[00:52:41] It's a podcast company dedicated to exposing

[00:52:44] the evils of Christian nationalism, for the most part.

[00:52:47] We are a small company,

[00:52:48] but our podcasts were right up there with like MSNBC and Fox.

[00:52:52] And we have two in-house productions

[00:52:54] we're already done with,

[00:52:55] and we're starting our third and fourth this year.

[00:52:57] And so it's great.

[00:52:58] Awesome.

[00:52:59] Great.

[00:52:59] Well, I'll link all of this in the show notes

[00:53:01] so listeners can connect with you,

[00:53:03] read your book,

[00:53:04] listen to your podcasts,

[00:53:05] and do all the things.

[00:53:06] So thanks so much for being here.

[00:53:08] Yeah, thanks Maggie.

[00:53:09] It's been great.

[00:53:09] This was a great conversation.

[00:53:11] Keep going.

[00:53:12] Thanks.

[00:53:14] Thanks for listening to another episode

[00:53:16] of Hello Deconstructionists.

[00:53:18] If you enjoyed this episode or any others,

[00:53:20] please like, follow or subscribe to the podcast.

[00:53:23] And if you feel like it, leave us a review

[00:53:25] so other people know what this show is all about.

[00:53:27] If you have any questions, comments,

[00:53:29] or parts of your own experience

[00:53:30] you'd like to share on the podcast,

[00:53:32] you can email me at hello.dcoms at gmail.com.

[00:53:35] And as always, you can find me over on Instagram

[00:53:38] at hello underscore deconstructionists

[00:53:40] where together we are building community

[00:53:42] post-evangelicalism.

[00:53:44] Huge thank you to Amy Azera

[00:53:46] for writing the theme song for this podcast.

[00:53:48] And when the sweet little bop

[00:53:49] inevitably gets stuck in your head,

[00:53:51] I hope it reminds you of this wonderful community

[00:53:54] that's here with you.

[00:53:55] Thanks to all our guests

[00:53:56] for sharing these parts of their stories with us.

[00:53:58] And of course, to you for listening.

[00:54:01] See you next time.

[00:54:03] Got to deconstruct.

[00:54:05] Oh.

[00:54:08] Mm-mm.