ASM094b Bonus - FundaMENTALIST with Joey from BadChristian Podcast

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okay welcome to ask science mike on a thursday a little bit different uh i'm doing another conversation show kind of like we did with pete ends only this one is going to be completely unedited no announcements no intro music no outro music um because you know i'm on tour and so many people have come up to me uh during the meet and greet portion following an event and said how much they like listening to as science mike on liturgic's podcast but also many of you listen to the bad christian podcast or some of that network of programs like pastor with no answers and have asked that we'd do more stuff that kind of crosses the boundary between those two shows and oddly enough uh joey's working on or just finished a book which talk about his struggles with mental illness and uh which is also something that i get asked about all the time on the show and uh we'll probably do a deeper episode on the liturgist podcast so i asked joey to come talk about the book and also to talk about his experiences firsthand with being a person of faith dealing with mental illness and how the church relates to that so please enjoy this conversation between me and joey from the bad christian podcast his book is called fundamentalist okay so everybody this is a weird show this is not a normal episode of ask science mike this is kind of a bonus episode i guess i haven't really done one of these before but uh i'm here with my friend joey from the bad christian podcast and pastor with no answers and a lot of you have sent me questions about um mental illness and faith and our response to that what's wrong with it what could we do better and joey has a book out now called fundamentalist that explores that issue so i thought i'd just have him on today for a very informal conversation about that book and what he's trying to accomplish and what he's learned and so joey welcome to ask science mike thanks man it's an honor for sure and uh hey all your listeners are going to get all their questions answered perfectly man because i have [Laughter] could not be any further from the truth i mean i i honestly i think that i have you know i realized that i even had depression back in college and uh i mean it was a very simple thing my my dad suffered from and still does he suffers from depression so i inherited it from him and basically my parents told me for years joey you need to go see a doctor you need counseling and um i think the the uniqueness with my form of depression which i go into in the book is that it was just immensely connected to religious legalism and fear of hell i mean when i remember when i discovered masturbation it immediately sent me into this talespin of i'm going to go to hell like this this is the end of me because i can't stop doing this and i know it's i mean just so that's that's kind of my story is just how connected it was to faith and god and religion and so my response to my parents was basically mom and dad you're wrong i have to get my life my life straight with god and once i have enough faith in my salvation and i truly believe that jesus has saved me then all this stuff will go away but this depression is just a result of of my spirituality being off and i mean the only thing they could do is make me go to the doctor but here i am in college they can't really do that and so it it took a very simple act or or a very simple event in my life and and i'll just accredit it to god for using it to open my eyes but my brother was setting me up for a blind date uh she would have been like an hour and 45 minutes away and i was excited i was like man this is cool well i didn't have anything invested in it and he called me probably three hours before i was gonna leave and say hey it didn't work out so hung up the phone went back to my you know video games and then i just plummeted i mean i just fell into the deepest darkest depression i was like wait a second this is not right like this in my mind i know that i should not be upset about a girl i've never even met and so i mean my eyes were open and i called my parents i said i think you guys are right you know what are my next steps it's interesting to me that it was your parents that were encouraging you to seek yeah mental health counseling and you were the one who wanted to put it into a more spiritualized context what do you think that is well it it was definitely the churches that i was brought up in like you know i don't want to paint all pentecostals with the same brush but the churches that i was going to certainly taught a grace that was free but then if you want to know the full picture there's a lot of strings attached i mean if you if you swear and get in a car wreck and die you're going to hell because jesus couldn't cover that one you know so it's like any unrepentant sin it you know you're you're just you're screwed big time so it was kind of just that culture of okay you can get saved but then if you start backsliding you're not saved anymore and you need to repent and rededicate your life to christ and so it's just that culture of being extremely afraid of god afraid of hell and doing some research for this book i mean i discovered there's an actual disorder called scrupulosity which it was crazy i was reading the depictions that these other people put out there in interviews and i think this this one came from like cnn and how this one woman in particular was describing the sorts of thoughts she had i was like oh my gosh like this is the exact sort of stuff and i always i mean it's pretty naive on my part but i always just thought man this is this is so unique to me nobody struggles with these sorts of whacked out spirituals i mean you know we're talking i would say the sinner's prayer you know on average 20 times a day and i i would feel like oh i think i did it right that time but then i was like maybe i wasn't truly sorry for my sins or i think i addressed god and i should have been talking to jesus or uh i didn't ask him to actually save me i just asked for forgive i mean just bizarre stuff to the point where you know there i remember one time i was like okay i think i said everything right god's accepted me and then i was like wait a second i did that when i got up in the morning maybe i was halfway asleep and i know for a lot of people this sounds just insane but i my mind had me convinced that that that was the situation and hell is such a terrifying thing for me it was like if there's even a chance that i need to do something else to make sure i'm good to go then i need to go ahead and do that just doesn't matter you know so if i have to just keep saying the sinner's prayer over and over and over but my parents were just so sure because all these things that i had gone through they saw that my dad for you know the last couple decades so to them it was a no-brainer it's interesting you say that you had this um kind of ongoing fear of hell and and not saying the center fair correctly because i get a lot of emails uh into ask science mike people saying my whole life i've been afraid i'm not really saved so i say the center's prayer over and over and now that i've gone through some process of deconstruction on the one level i don't think hell exists anymore and on the other level i'm absolutely convinced i'm going there and that's a tension that i've never understood right because as i kind of went through my deconstruction once i decided there's no god i didn't worry about hell there's no there's no there's no god and some people get caught with kind of a a compulsive anxiety loop related to theology which is that's a fascinating way uh yeah on one level and on the other way really terrifying and oppressive way to experience faith yeah yeah for sure and i think i think what had me stumped is i was so convinced that the problems in my head were due to either lack of faith or faith in the wrong thing and so i always felt like i it's my responsibility to fix this and the only way i can do that is by having enough faith or clean up you know the stuff from my life that needs to go and little did i know just that sort of approach to me being better was highly attributed to my irrational thinking that was due to the depression so it was just like this never-ending cycle of i've got to do such and such to get better little did i know i couldn't do those things because my crazy thoughts were the things convincing me that i needed to do them in the first place i mean this this this went into my marriage i remember my first year of marriage i mean i like sat my wife down and she knew that i struggled with depression that was something that she kind of needed to wrap her mind around during our engagement process and all that but i mean i showed her a slip of paper that i had actually written down the words you asked for salvation and the date and the time and then little check marks where she was like what are the check marks for well those are all the times when in my head i was convinced that i had never asked for salvation so i had to go back to this piece of paper that i wrote down as proof that i did you know i mean just craziness and i think uh i mean it's so crazy when i when i got on medication like i could have possibly i i don't know i think i was smart enough to realize that it was the medication that was working but it's so crazy how the medication working felt like i was just untangling all this stupidity and i i feel i can use the word stupidity because it was me but for anyone listening that that struggles with this i don't mean that literally but it was just like all that stuff was just unwinding and i realized wow if if a loving god does exist i don't have to try to get saved like if how whatever salvation looks like however that applies he knows that i want it and he's given it to me like he knows my thoughts like if i asked for salvation and i thought i was sleeping he knew that i tried to ask for salvation it was just like everything just started untangling and like i said i could have been convinced that oh i just had i've injected rational thinking into all of this but what was really going on is the medications that i was taking was ironing out a lot of this stuff you know and um i know people are all over the place with with you know counseling and medication and all that i think it's all actually pretty helpful but i was at a place to where i feel outside of the medication i didn't even have a starting point to start working some things out and i think that i was pretty stubborn with not getting counseling like i was just like no this is a you know my i would always say this is a chemical thing medication is what i need and in the last two years and i would say you know this time two years ago i was at a way healthier place than i've been in my whole life but i started to get some counseling and it's just been huge so it's kind of a it's kind of a double punch medication and counseling yeah we we uh i talk about that a lot with people that i see at events or at the show the interplay between spiritual practice conventional therapy and then medication and almost everybody has a hang up with at least one of them yeah so even though they're in a state of suffering um they they aren't necessarily willing to engage all three some people feel like oh i don't need medication or i don't i don't think medication is is helpful or beneficial in this context um other people shy away from the therapeutic process and then some people even though their experience with anxiety or depression has a religious component shy away from any restorative faith practice which is you know i've struggled with depression in the past my depression was situational and not clinical but what's funny about when you get in when you become depressed is how self-reinforcing it is so it actually robs you of the agency and the energy to work against uh your own situation it can be very paralyzing very disempowering which is a real tragedy oh yeah totally yeah i remember i remember times early in our marriage when i you know i really did not have any sort of um relief from my depression i would be at a good place mentally and i would think to myself okay next time i get myself into this or next time i fall into a depression i am not going to um treat my wife callously i'm not going to be short with her i'm not going to be short-tempered and say things that i would ne and it was like i was psyched myself up and then exactly what you described i mean once you get in that place though it's like you're you have your mental hands tied behind your back like you you could you could say hey next time i'm in this position i'm gonna act a certain way but when your mind is the thing that's broken and your mind is what dictates a lot of of how you act i mean it's just it's way easier said than done and i just started getting to the point where i didn't make that promise anymore because i just over and over i learned the lesson of gosh i just i can't i can't do this you know let's see four years ago you know i was at a pretty good place and my wife and i we had a a good friend that died in a car accident and that um i think it was a combination you know a lot of psychiatrists say that after you've been on a certain type of antidepressant for years it can eventually lose its steam and just put her out and i think it was a combination of our friend getting killed and the medication you know was becoming a little less effective months prior and it just sent me i mean it was just horrible it was like some of the worst times of my life and uh you know i remember you know at that point it was like i was at the mercy of my wife whatever she wanted me to do i would do but it was like you know we we recall some of the situations that we were in i mean i i got to the point where i would come home from work and totally empty totally spent and i'm like if i sit on the couch with her right now i'm not gonna be able to offer her anything i'm not gonna you know i'll talk but she'll know that it's not coming from the heart i'll ask her how her day is and she'll know that i'm doing it you know just out of duty and it just got to i mean just super eerie it just got to the point where i just walked right by her went upstairs and i mean it was a devastating time you know for her and we met with uh a pastor at our church and this was super eye opening for me you know i i've never had a problem with taking the concept of depression and attributing it to you know some physical stuff going on your brain but i didn't take it the next step as far as okay well if there's something wrong physically you need rest like you need to do certain things to recover and he told me like as as my boss he said you know you are going to work 30 hours a week and we're gonna pay you 40 hours a week so those 10 hours i want you to um jog sleep watch a movie read a book whatever is restful to you and he said you know obviously this time in five months or so if you're still doing this we need to reevaluate but right now you know you taking care of yourself is the most important thing and that i was like gosh that's that makes sense but you know i never really thought about it that way what would you say to a person who is today where you were on your darkest day oh well it's it sounds very pastoral of me mike but the first thing that i really would say and i've said it to people before is man i'm so sorry like i really am sorry you're going through this because it's just it's just so painful and i mean a handful of things one would be you know you need to go ahead and accept the fact that you are limited in what you are able to do on your own so in other words if you had this mentality of i'm just going to figure this out on my own i would say you're not going to be able to you know outside of a miracle from god you need help so whether that's talking to a psychiatrist about medication whether that is um you know going to a counselor for a therapy a psychologist you've got to get help like you can't just have this willpower mentality of i'm i'm going to get through this and i'm going to toughen you know tough my way through this because you just you just can't i mean and i think that's important for people to understand i mean that was extremely freeing for me like i i actually had to so this goes along more with your question i actually had to get to the point where i made myself not care how my depression was affecting other people and i'll explain that because that sounds like an [ \_\_ ] thing but basically if i put a lot of emotion in to not only how i was feeling under depression but also how it was affecting other people negatively then it just compounded my depression because not only was i sad because i was depressed but the burden of knowing that i'm destroying my wife and my kids are starting to notice and my friends feel distant from me that just makes it worse that's i had a psychologist tell me that's dirty suffering you're suffering enough with your depression you don't need to add all this other stuff on there and so my wife and i talked about this i was like look if i put a lot of energy in while i'm depressed and caring how this is affecting you it's going to make it worse and it's going to be a longer journey to get out of it i have to force myself to just be like okay this is affecting other people it is what it is and now i just need to figure out with other people's help you know how to get out of it but um you know that's that's one thing is just know that you you just can't muster you know enough strength to get out of it and then i you know one one more thing i would say is um and i lost my train of thought this damn 40 year old brain let's see um man mike i had something good i know that feeling that's something [Laughter] um well it only happens to be on stage when that like kind of like it never happens in the studio it's only when there's like a crowd of people that my brain just goes you know what i'm not going to tell you the rest of that there you go there you go i actually remembered it so i would say you're probably not going to be able to do this effectively when you are struggling with depression but when you are not i mean you've got to make it like you're almost a pseudo mission to be very open about the struggles very open about your thoughts because you know people that struggle with mental illness we we feed the stigma by not talking about it you know we we can point the finger and say hey other people understand you know they're telling us to suck it up and you know power our way through this how dare they you know how inconsiderate and sensitive but part of the problem is with us because we're so ashamed of what we're going through and we're not talking openly about it i mean how how are people supposed to respond to that if we're not open enough about it then they're gonna be a little uneasy about it as well and i think that's what i set out you know to do in this book and there were definitely times when i had to stop and just think okay do i want this information public like you know the the angle i took was hey i'm giving people permission to laugh at some entertaining stories if that means that people will be more comfortable to talk about their own stuff and be less ashamed i mean we have a whole chapter i say we cause uh we had an editor that was highly involved in the process but i have a chapter and it's basically all about the mental anguish my penis caused me because of masturbating early in life i was convinced that i had stunted the growth of my penis that i had um you know jacked up my ability to procreate and just this is something that i dealt with year after year after year and the you know the humor in this is is it was a very simple thing of you know when you're a little kid you get in the shower with your dad and you're just like oh my gosh that's like the biggest thing i've ever seen in my life and i've got this tiny little thing and it's like over time you just have in your mind i mean your dad's penis is just the biggest water snake in the history of the world you have that image in your head and you keep thinking okay well i'll i'm eventually going to be huge like that and over time your your little guy down there is growing incrementally but once you get to uh you know adulthood where i was at mentally i was like wait a second i i had this vision of of my dad just being gigantic i think maybe i messed myself up and uh what's crazy is the the the irrational aspect of that is i mean there were times when you know me and some of my closest friends were super goofy and maybe i would walk out into the apartment you know common area with no clothes on and uh come on joey put that back on we don't want to see that and not one of them was like oh my gosh dude you need to go to the doctor or something like that so there were situations in which i could have totally i mean i got physicals from the doctor but there was just something in my head that would not let me off the hook of thinking i have you know messed something up i mean there was a time when uh you know i talk about this there was a time when i kissed my uh soon to be wife uh for the first time and she was in minneapolis and i i fly all the way back to south carolina and i couldn't even enjoy that first kiss because i started being convinced that it never happened and there was no way i could validate the fact that it happened and we laugh about this now but i would send priscilla emails along the lines like i didn't want to come across as this cheesy guy and and and turn her away but i would like be i you know i can't believe that happened last night and and i just wanted her to come right out and say oh i know that kiss was amazing and she just wouldn't go there with me and so i had this thing that i don't even know if that happened i mean it was late at night we were watching a movie at our aunt and uncle's house and we were both really groggy maybe i just dreamed up the whole thing so it's just you know they're rational so so you take that sort of irrational thinking and then you add that to like a lot of the legalism that i grew up in in the churches and i mean i had a i had a great childhood as far as my parents are concerned and a relatively healthy life in high school and college and all that but it was definitely tainted with a lot of mental anguish and a lot of stuff that really could have been lessened a either by not being in those sorts of church cultures that were just so works and fear and um oriented and held this and held that and if you do this and mess up you're going to hell and those sorts of things that would have been one way that would have eased up the pain a little bit or you know me just coming to grips with the fact okay i do struggle with some sort of mental illness and i need help but um you know unfortunately neither one of those were the cases so you know there's just story after story after story of just the crazy you know things that were in my head i'll tell you one more you'll get a kick out of this so we're sitting there in german class and i mean we're talking old school man i graduated and 95 i know that's not old school school to you mike but a lot of our listeners man they're like whoa i wasn't even born yet so we've got these gigantic headphones on and we're going through this workbook and we're listening to the the person on the instructions say all these german sentences and you know we're following along writing stuff down in our workbook well i realized i'm kind of you know glanced around like wait everybody is uh everybody's got their headphones on so i don't feel like i'm saved and i need to make sure so i'm going to go ahead and say the sinner's prayer and i need to say it out loud because that's one prerequisite that god has made clear somehow i don't know why i was convinced of that so i started to actually start saying the sinner's prayer while everybody had that stuff going on their ears because i knew they couldn't hear me and so here i was i mean just you could imagine if somebody was hearing me they'd be like this dude is loony like this is terrifying what is going on and sure enough the the classroom pothead who was just like to hell with this learning i don't i'm not even gonna put my headphones on he did not have his headphones on and so i just noticed that and his eyes were just huge and he didn't want to make eye contact with me but he he was scared out of his mind so i mean just crazy like that do you think uh i mean it would have been i would say at least three or four times so i'm sure he was he was just terrified or maybe maybe he was high and he was thinking i think i'm tripping this dude there's no way he's doing this uh joey where can people learn more about the book and and order a copy yeah yeah um well oddly enough the domain fundamentalist pastor was not taken and so that is where people can get it at fundamentalistpaster.com and uh yeah yeah you know and i think that you know books similar you know this is uh books like you wrote um books that are like uh a fragment of the quality like i wrote and just a lot of the stuff a lot of the stuff that we're cranking out at bad christian here's what i would say to people is there there is a needed just in culture in general i mean sure i'll i'll go specific and say you know the church and and people that identify with christ but just culture in general needs people to be more open and more transparent and then more specifically with the church we desperately need a different sort of way of communicating in a different way of viewing pastors and you know things just need to be dramatically changed so i would just tell people when when you buy books like this you're you're supporting that you know you're supporting a a new way of seeing the church and i you know that's that's why we do what we're doing at bad christian honestly and why we respect the hell out of what you guys are doing with the liturgists is because it's just forcing people to realize wait a second there's different ways of thinking and a lot of it is just black and white right and wrong like this this is not right how the church has been doing and it's okay to say that it's not you know unhealthy judgmentalism or anything like that it's healthy needed conversation so i think it's great that that people are definitely seeing that and supporting these sorts of things well i'm gonna go order my copy and uh i'd encourage anyone listening especially all of you who've told me you meet me at an event you love uh listening to ask science mike the liturgist and bad christian back to back uh so we thought we'd do a little blender today and uh save you some time by listening to two shows at the same time and talk a little bit about something that even as we're doing this work of trying to destigmatize faith we still don't know how to handle uh any form of mental illness in the church or in culture um yeah so how do we how do we get beyond sympathy and to empathy and uh i think i think this book could help so joey thanks for coming on today hey thanks so much man it's fun