ASM081 Hurricanes, Fear, and My First Book

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let's just have a conversation it's been a crazy few days i had a poll for a completely normal episode of ask lance mike for episode 80 from my patrons and then around the time the poll closed hurricane hermine came into tallahassee and kind of shut everything down it's been a rough few days i just got power back at my house i was wondering if we would have a show at all this week and it's been a really wild ride in fact as i record this i'm not entirely sure i'll be able to get it to greg at all so hopefully you'll even hear this very minimal version of the podcast and a couple of thoughts and observations just from where i'm at at this moment i don't know if you've ever been through any kind of a natural disaster this is not my first hurricane this is not tallahassee's first hurricane but the last storm that had this kind of effect on this city was in 1985 hurricane kate and if you've ever been to tallahassee you know our city is trees more trees than city it's more forest really than city and it doesn't take much wind to cause a lot of disruption so most of our city has been without power or internet um obviously uh since thursday night and i'm recording this on saturday and still most of the city doesn't have power we looked out our neighborhood has juice again we've been eating dehydrated survival food out of uh in boiling water on a camp stove and uh it's been about 90 degrees in our house so if you hear snoring this week it's because my dogs can finally rest and i don't have the heart to kick them out of the office because they've been pretty freaked out uh by all this and they're calm next to me so i'm just gonna let them sleep and if they snore for once i'm not gonna make them leave just to do the show but it's kind of amazed me when when things happen there's this tension because on the one hand everyone kind of goes into panic mode and survival mode and the traffic lights turn off and every intersection is really scary because even though it should be a four-way stop some people charge through it people get aggressive at the few places you can get food or ice or gas some people don't have water at all and in that kind of panic state you really start to see how fragile a thing civilization is and on the other hand there's this really encouraging thing where people band together and even without internet access and without all the things we usually use to coordinate figure out how to get people food and water and shelter how to take care of each other and both of those things happen at the same time in a crisis you know i noticed in our own home a combination of closeness and intimacy and frustration this has been both an exciting time for me and jenny and the girls and a time when we probably fought more than any other period of our lives because no air conditioning nothing to do no lights where's you out i haven't haven't i got a good night's sleep since wednesday night really looking forward to lying debt down in the bed tonight with air conditioning oh what a luxury but it's interesting to me how that illustrates in our own lives that tension between turning inward and focusing on survival or turning outward and focusing on cooperation it's a it's a it's a struggle i constantly deal with in my own life when i get afraid i have that temptation to turn inside and to fight to make it so here i am when you hear this podcast we will be one week seven days from the launch of my first book i can't believe honestly that we're here this is something i've been working on for years and years and years and so since i don't have internet to look at your questions or to research questions i thought maybe out of necessity we'd do something differently this week um we talked a little bit about the book i didn't have this plan i was going to do this next week well not even this i just feel led to do this if that if that makes any sense because this is me trying to turn outward it's just such a terrible time for me to have no connection to the outside world i don't know how the book is doing i can't check my amazon rankings every 20 minutes as is my custom i'm completely in the dark and uh until quite recently i was literally completely in the dark and that reminds me so much of the journey i was on that led to me writing the book that fear and that sense of isolation when as a southern baptist i started to lose my faith in god and that's a story many of you have heard i've told it many times on the internet i've told it many times on stage i've been on many podcasts and interviews and so many people have heard this story but so many people have not and i feel like statistically the growth of the folks who have no religious affiliation the folks who identify as nominal who still profess as christians but are very frustrated with the state of christianity i think many of them need this story they need to know that they are not alone and the reason i wrote this book finding god in the waves is so those people could have a deeper sense of solidarity than i can ever offer on a podcast or a stage because i can really go in and talk about specifically what about faith troubled me and why what about the bible discouraged me what about people's attempts to help me understand god again hurt instead of helped it's an opportunity to dig deeper into this story in a way that i hope brings people not only a sense of solidarity but hopefully a sense of meaning and a sense of hope regardless of where they end up this is not a book which is designed by the way to convince you to believe in god the my story is simply a scaffold to outline this tension this struggle that we all go through with the idea of god and that's just the first half of the book the story you've heard some of you several times the second half of the book is something i've never been able to do on podcasts or on stage it's a detailed examination topic by topic of how i learned to relate to the christian faith through science i start by talking about god and cosmology and astrophysics where did we come from what created us and can we call that god and then i talk about god in the way that we experience god god being close to us god understanding us god loving us how is that possible and to do so i turn and look to the human brain i talk about prayer and the kind of logical and philosophical objections to prayer as well as the science of what prayer does how it works how it affects us how it changes us i look at jesus and this belief that there was a man who was the incarnate son of god who was god which is if not a crazy head trip of an idea i don't know what is i look at the church does it have a role in society does it have any scientific benefit then i look at the bible this book which more than anything else caused me to doubt god in the first place it was the bible more than anything else that convinced me to become an atheist so is there a redemptive place for that library of books in our lives and that's this book finding god in the ways that i wrote for you we've got one week left one week until the book launches so if you'd like to get some of the pre-order bonuses we've offered a chance to talk to me on the phone one-on-one about the book if you win we're doing the sweepstakes there you can get some meditations from the liturgists for free where i've worked with michael to create guided meditations you can even if you pre-order the book this week instantly download the first chapter so you can start reading the book before it even arrives be the first people in the world to start reading the book and those are preorder bonuses bonuses those go away once the book comes out on september 13th so if you're if you've been thinking about buying this book honestly there's no better time than this week and launch week for me this is the best time you can do it if you've been if you've been waiting now is the time to go ahead and pre-order the book if you're going to pre-order it if you're going to order it i'd love for you to order it the first week it's available for sale and i thought you know since i don't really have a show to do this week i haven't cleared this with my publisher i might get uh getting a little bit of trouble with them for this but i'm going to read you the introduction to the book the first few pages because i think they explain well what this book is about you know they can help you see if it's for you or not so again finding god in the ways comes out september the 13th everywhere books are sold it'll be on amazon barnes and noble books a million powell's book settlers listed through indie bound hudson bookstores all those places will have it on the shelf september 13th and available for pre-order before that they can drop it right on your doorstep or you can buy it at like your local bookshop it is a national launch and there is an audiobook from tantor media and that will be on audible.com as well you can go to findinggodonthewaves.com to learn more you can also by the way i'm going on tour all over the country so you can go see if i'm coming near you by going to finding god in the waves.com tour we're going to add a few more dates here right before the book comes out so if you don't see your city on there check back by september 13th we should have all the tour dates on the website if i'm coming to your city grab a ticket and i'd love to see you and now i guess without further ado we'll end this podcast with the introduction to finding god in the waves available one week from today in bookstores everywhere on september the 13th introduction she looks at me with haunted eyes we're in a small church held in a hotel conference room in texas and i've been talking about god and the brain for almost an hour i just answered a question about how christians should talk to atheists and as soon as i finished talking she spoke up so what i'm hearing you say is that it's okay to be an atheist and come to church and pray because i've been sitting in church for maybe four months now and i've been an atheist my entire adult life she tells me about studying anthropology in college and how she came to find all this god stuff preposterous and yet she likes to pray she says it gives her comfort but then she asks a question that makes my heart ache can i sit here in church like an imposter she asks am i an imposter i take a moment to collect myself her honesty and vulnerability are all too familiar i too have sat in a room full of christians and admitted i don't believe in christ or in any god at all so i tell her a story about a man walking along the shore of a lake on his way he runs into two fishermen they're busy working but he holds their attention long enough to tell them he'll show them how to bring in people instead of fish if they only come with him the two fishermen drop their nets and follow the man i tell her one of those fishermen was simon who is also called peter and that he is one of the founders of the church with a big c when peter dropped his nets and followed the man jesus he didn't know anything about the messiah being a sacrificial lamb or about crucifixion or resurrection he just heard the man's story and believed it enough to follow him the gospels are a collection of stories about peter and the other 11 disciples constantly doubting believing the wrong thing or entirely missing the point of what jesus was saying so do i think it's okay not to know what you believe and still be a part of the church heck yeah in fact i think that's exactly what following jesus is about we live in interesting times don't we we've got atheists in churches and christians who would never dream of stepping into a house of worship four in ten americans believe that god created earth with his own hands fewer than ten thousand years ago three in ten believe that the universe is billions of years old and life developed via evolution without any intervention from any god the rest of us generally believe some combination of these two extremes we're living in a period of tremendous social upheaval the secular nations of europe have for the most part bid farewell to organized religion all the belief in things spiritual and in the afterlife remains common the united states is among the most deeply religious nations in the developed world and yet even here religion is in historic decline the fastest growing american religion is none more congregations are shrinking than growing and more churches are closing than starting up but that doesn't mean atheism has become more popular most americans say they would never cast their vote for an atheist president and commonly held scientific insights involving climate change and the big bang theory remain controversial with the american public meanwhile however atheism has become one of the largest and most organized religious movements on the internet for me this isn't simply a sociological trend or more matter of religious history it's personal throughout my childhood and young adulthood as a member of a conservative southern baptist church i loved and followed jesus until my faith unraveled when my parents marriage fell apart the collapse of their 30-year union sent me to the scriptures where i thought i'd find god's answers to the crisis but instead of answers i found contradictions and a god so brutal it frightened me in time i became an atheist in private while publicly continuing to serve as a church leader deacon and sunday school teacher afraid of being found out i let a double life showing up at church on sunday mornings then going home afterward to plan a post-religious future for the world with other atheists on the internet i was the world's least interesting double agent but my mission was killing me years later god moved miraculously in my life and i came back to the fold of the faithful but it wasn't by studying sacred scriptures or works of theology it was through science studying neuroscience and cosmology and discovering a god who was as mysterious as quantum physics and as intimately near as the neurons of my own brain that journey is the story of this book i know what it's like to be a christian i have been saved and baptized and i have followed jesus day by day for years on end i know what it's like to feel that god is standing next to you and i know what it's like to hear his voice i also know what it's like to doubt i know how it feels to have questions pile up until their cumulative weight crushes everything you thought you knew about the world and its maker i know what it's like to be an atheist i know what it's like to trust only in what you can support with empirical evidence i know what it's like to know right from wrong without the aid of divine laws instead relying on a careful examination of how human actions can violate others consent and produce suffering these streams of faith and doubt religion and science collide in our culture creating rapids and whirlpools that rob people of their sense of meaning and purpose our different beliefs about god tear families apart fuel culture wars and even drive some people to suicide this volatile mix of faith doubt secularism spirituality and atheism have driven our american melting pot past the boiling point but i've also learned that it's possible to reclaim two seemingly staunch adversaries science and faith as partners to open myself to the movement of god without rejecting scientific insights about our world you can know god intimately while acknowledging the mystery even the absurdity of such a notion you can experience the proven neurological benefits of prayer even as you contemplate how science shows prayer's limitations you can be a part of the global body of people who follow god without turning off your brain or believing things that go against your conscience you can read the bible without having to brush off its ancient portrayal of science or it's all too frequent brutality and you can meet a risen son of god named jesus while wondering how such a thing could ever be true i guess it's a little weird to cry reading your own book but here's what i want you to know my friends i have a marketing background i have no ordination i'm not clergy i'm not a scientist i don't even have a college degree but this book is not a money grab this book is not platform building this book is not an attempt at fame this book is an attempt to address the human suffering i feel most qualified to address for some of us sometimes doubt becomes more than a curious topic it becomes a point of real emotional crisis i've read too many emails from people who are contemplating suicide because they're so afraid of telling christian friends and family that they don't believe anymore so this book 288 pages is a letter to those people that everything will be okay and if you're not a person who struggles with that kind of existential doubt if you're not a person who struggled to reconcile your beliefs about god with what science has to say about our world that's great this book still may work for you because i also want this book to help create better conversations between people who are comfortable in their faith and people who are doubting the book is called finding god in the waves and it will be in bookstores everywhere one week from today september 13 2016.