The Inconvenient Reinvention: A Conversation with Bobby Walker Part 2

And so the challenge is oftentimes wondering if you are honest with others about who you are, if they'll accept you for that. And as far as in business, I don't feel that there's a direct connection other than it's easy when you can, or maybe not when you can, but when you do believe that the big man has your back. And that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord, and all things come together for the glory of God, that can make the dark moments easier to navigate. And we all know that as an entrepreneur, there's a lot of those dark moments.

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kimpton, and I'm Melody Edwards. Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night. Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here. Welcome back to the Soul Proprietor Podcast, everybody. I am sort of sad to be here, but also extremely excited because I miss Mel. This is the first time I ever recorded without her, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a bunch of stuff wrong today.

I barely know her.

Exactly. Well, and as you can see, I am here with my good friend Bobby Walker. Bobby, I'm so, so grateful that you're joining me today because We had a really great session with you before. We got to the end of the session and we're like, we're not even scratching the surface of this.

Yeah.

So really thankful to have you back today. For those of you who haven't heard the first one, I'm excited to cover not just what we— well, we're going to go back to some of the things that we talked about last time, but I think that what's important in the Sole Proprietor Podcast is we talk a lot about being in a foggy place, potentially with your belief and, you know, knowing what you believe and then using your business to possibly you project that out amongst your employees, your customers, yourself, the world, your community. And there's a lot of nuance that goes into that. And Bobby, I think, brings a really interesting perspective to that because if you listen to the first meeting that we had in the first podcast with him, Bobby was able to talk to us a lot about where he has moved into a completely different perspective where I know Mel even is like, has one foot in the door. She would never use the word atheist by any stretch of the imagination, but she also is like, I'm not sure that I believe. And Bobby, I think, sits in the camp where he's a lot more confident in his unbelief. And we're going to get into sort of where he got to this point. And so Bobby, last time we talked, we had talked about— well, we talked a lot about your process of being a devout believer, and then we jumped really fast across the bridge I want to spend some time in today of your deconversion.

And then we got to the part where you were on a drive with Melissa, your wife, and sort of shared like this, holy cow, babe, you know, I think, yes, I gotta tell you. But I have been in that, I think they call the dark soul of the night, is—

yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a lonely place, man. Yeah, dark night of the soul. You just flipped the word a couple of times. Okay.

Yeah. Thanks. I knew that it feels really like you're in a dark hole. I remember when I first started questioning whether I believe or not, feeling like I was really going back on some things I'd promised before I got married that my wife was committed to. So I'm curious about your position as you, you talked about it sort of coming out in like this, almost the silliest of ways, like Bobby, we're not going to be doing the worship service on Wednesday nights, or you're like, deconversion. Like, like what? And I know I'm, I'm totally turning that into something lighthearted now, but can you talk to me a little bit about that journey from getting to like, I totally believe, to like what you're going through as you weren't so sure?

Yeah, so just to briefly recap in case someone— I don't remember exactly what we discussed and exactly what was said on the last podcast, but you know, Curt, your comment about, you know, Wednesday nights canceled, you know, oh, I'm an atheist. What? What? Yeah, I mean, if you hit the fast forward button, that's kind of what happened, you know, but it's like, screw you, man. If I can't worship all the time, I'm gonna worship none of the time. For anyone that doesn't know, I was on staff at a small church. I was the associate slash youth pastor, which means, you know, the youth pastor is self-explanatory. Associate means you babysit the pastor's kids, you take out the trash, clean the church, things like that, you know, but it was real glamorous.

It sounds nice.

Yeah, it was great.

Are they hiring? Yeah, you love the vacancy. Oh gosh.

So anyway, what happened, you know, kind of the domino that started to kick things off for me was just a belief that I held very strongly. I realized it didn't have any grounding in the scriptures. Well, in all of my life, I tend to be pretty black and white. That's probably an understatement. And it's something I'm— I've been working on a lot to change just because it's not very healthy in many areas of life. It's a great little safety zone to be in to deal with things. But nonetheless, I had been taught, you know, by the Christians that I had— maybe you could say I was discipled by— one of the things was like church attendance was an indicator of one's relationship with God. If the church doors were open and you're not there, you clearly have compromise in your heart.

You clearly don't love God, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, just fill in the blank. I probably heard it and I believed it and it worked for me, you know, kind of going back to that— or not bipolar, but that black and white thinking of, okay, here's a rule that I can easily follow that helps me out, you know. And I was very zealous, you know, about that, as well as many other issues. So the pastor at the church that I worked for, he brought me in one day and was like, hey, we're going to cancel Sunday night services. I was like, what? Why? Are we inviting Satan into our church? Like, what the heck's going on here? You know?

Yeah.

But I pushed back on it and he said, okay, well, why? Why is this a bad thing? And then I was just like, uh, Jesus said it somewhere. Yeah, let me get the Do not forsake the assembling together of yourselves was about the best I could come up with, you know. And I don't remember that, where that is now in the New Testament, but I think Paul said it, but I just don't remember. But he, the pastor, then, you know, walked me through scripture and walked me through history and was like, yeah, the reason we have these services is because blah, blah, blah, the scripture states this when it comes to, you know, our get-togethers and so on and so forth. And Being someone that I don't want to say I was always true to myself on this, you know, I think we all let our biases get the best of us at times. If I wanted to be honest and I really wanted God's truth, I had to accept, wow, this thing that I had really held deeply and strongly to didn't have any foundation in the book that I used to model my life around. And I'm proud of myself on this stuff. I know probably the vast majority of Protestant Christians that listen to this are probably going to, you know, I'm projecting a bit based on my own Protestant background, but, you know, probably like, oh my God, this guy, whatever.

And I get that. But for me, you know, I was proud of myself because not at the time necessarily, but in hindsight, I was genuinely on a search for truth. And even then I still had my own bias, which the bias was You know, the God of the Bible is real. Jesus is real. He's the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but through him. And I was like, man, I probably have some other beliefs that I hold strongly to that aren't supported in Scripture, or I may have some that are absolutely contradicted by Scripture even.

So, Bobby, real quick there, you brought, you brought something up that really hit home to me. This is a big part of the dark night of the soul that I went through as well is the premises, is revisiting these premises. So you've already listed a couple of them. The Bible is the word of God and that the God of that Bible is a real God. I don't know about you, but for me, this is a time I was taking inventory of everything. Like, what premises am I just accepting? Another one is that the Bible, even if that God was real, even if it was the word of God, Can I accept that the whole Bible is infallible?

Like, that's another premise that I think a lot of people hold that don't, which is that was like, that was the sect, S-E-C-T, the sect that I was brought up in, believed that it was the infallible inspired word of God as well. So that was a difficult thing to push through. Yeah.

Okay. So just to kind of pause for a second as you're kind of like hitting these things like that, you've probably never questioned before. I don't know about you, but there was a lot of other things that flooded, like, what's the point of this life? Like, I had assumed that the point of this life is to, you know, and this isn't about me, so I'm not going to go into it all. But like, were there other premises that came up at this point too that were pretty foundational that you had to question?

Well, no, not at the moment. It didn't like open my mind to, oh my God, there's all of these things. It was, okay, what might be in there? Yeah, it was a search for, am I doing stuff wrong? Am I aligning with the scriptures? You know, I was very devout. I did mention in the first episode that, you know, I was a part of the Assemblies of God. You know, it was a Pentecostal denomination, which when I say Pentecostal, for anyone that may not know what that is, the stereotype of like the crazy Christian— and I'm not calling Pentecostals crazy, just for the record. I'm just talking about stereotypes and what the world will look at many times or say many times. But that stereotype of holy rollers, like, right? Yeah, holy rollers, Jesus freaks kind of thing. Yeah, and I say Jesus Freak with affection.

Uh, my first Christian album my wife ever bought me when we were dating was Jesus Freak by DC Talk, and I still listen to that. That's a freaking banger, man. It's got some great stuff on there. Oh yeah, bass had a little bit of a controversy, uh, if you guys want to go down that rabbit hole.

I, I actually remember being in high school, I was dating a girl who told me she was Pentecostal, and I knew that as a good, you know, at the time we were allowed to call ourselves Mormons, so Mormon boy. I knew that wasn't necessarily what my parents and everybody wanted for me, but she was super cute. So I was like, yeah, and she was a good girl.

I mean, no party like a Holy Ghost party because a Holy Ghost party don't stop, man.

That's right, exactly. I remember her being at my house. We had, uh, I had several friends over. I saw her sitting on my couch and, and she had her hand and she on her head and she was just shaking. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, but I was like, she stopped and then she looked up and everything was normal. And I'm like, I don't want to make this weird. So I brought it up to my dad. After she left, and I said, uh, I don't know what just happened.

That was really— it troubled me. Uh, very concerning. He said, oh, don't, don't worry, son, she's, uh, she's a holy roller. I said, what does that mean?

She's just crazy, son. Yeah. And I don't think that, for the record. I'm just trying to be funny.

Yeah. I'd never heard of what a Pentecostal holy roller was. I just told him she was Pentecostal, and he, he just nodded his head and said, all right, well, you're dating a Pentecostal girl. And then later on when I told him about that, he's like, yeah, they— when they feel the Holy Ghost or the Spirit or you know, what have you, they do just stuff that's going to look weird to you.

I'm like, you remember that song? I mean, I know we're kind of digressing a bit here, but do you remember that song by the Crash Test Dummies in the '90s?

Yeah.

And he talks about there was a kid who—

once there was a kid who—

and there's the one that would go to church and his, you know, parents would shake and roll all over the floor and stuff. That was like the kind of church I went to. Yeah, that's right. That song was very offensive to me back in the day, you know.

Oh, was it?

But yeah, because it didn't give, uh, And made light of it. Well, yeah, or even viewed it as bad and negative, which I didn't. And but the whole point, you know, as a Pentecostal, people that speak in tongues and believe in healing or physical healing by the laying on of hands and, you know, those types of things. But back to the whole— that first domino of that Sunday night service being canceled, because I thought you had compromised if you weren't showing up to Tuesday night prayer meeting, which was almost nobody. So that tells you what I thought about, you know, Um, the crop, baby, right? Yeah. So anyway, I was very devout to my denomination because I was convinced it was true. Now, I didn't think that it was the only group that was going to heaven. I just thought we had everything right and other people just had some things wrong.

I didn't think they were not Christian or anything like that. So I said to myself, man, I don't even care if it means that I can't be a part of the Assemblies of God. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to follow God's truth. So when we joked earlier, when we said, all right, service is canceled, well, I'm an atheist. Well, if we hit fast forward right now for, you know, I kind of forget the timeline now, but let's roughly 2 years forward, that was the story. Now, in the— during that 2-year period, it was as simple as me just giving God and the Bible, you know, the respect I thought it deserved, which was holding it up to the same truth standard that I thought anything else should be held up to. If, you know, I used to say things like, well, if the Bible says 2 plus 2 is a million, it's a million.

And then I stopped, you know, and I was like, nope, I can't say that because 2 plus 2 is not a million. So if the Bible says that, it's wrong. Now maybe it was because of translations, maybe it was whatever. And so it was just like, it was kind of like a chipping away. It was kind of like a chipping away, you know, just a— I remember, I don't remember exactly how this analogy goes, but I used to use it years ago, something along the lines of a brick wall or something. And there would just be a few bricks, you know, oh, this was a wrong belief, boom. Oh, I had this one inaccurate, you know, take it down. Oh, this one totally offbeat, you know, take it down.

And you remove enough of them in the middle or towards the bottom, then the whole thing kind of falls, right? You're just like, okay, this can't stand on its own. That's the short version.

Did you get relatively quick in those 2 years to the foundational? Did you, how long did you live with a crumbled, like looking around and just trying to make sense of all the rubble around you? Figuratively the wall came down?

The older I get, the less I remember on some things, but I can confidently remember it was over a year where it was, I feel like it was like 18 months before I started thinking, oh my gosh, I don't, I don't believe this, you know, and during that period, what that experience was, was I felt truths slipping through my hands and even started like I was questioning God's existence. At that point. It didn't start out that way, but, you know, I was like, wow, okay, this is starting to not make sense, for lack of a better term. And the thing that was so difficult with that feeling and that thought was I talked to some of my other Christian friends, some mentors, and then just some friends, you know, some on my level, some that were over me, if you will. And the answers were almost always identical, something along the lines of, hey man, we all have those doubts. And the way you, you know, the way you get through it is you get in the Word and you pray and you renew your mind daily by the reading of scriptures and yada yada yada. And I'm thinking, that's what I'm doing. And that's what's getting me to this place.

You know, you can only be on your knees crying so many times just saying, God, I want to serve you. I want to know what you want me to do. You know, I just need you to let me know type of thing, and it wasn't there. So that, that was the part where I still believed, was just struggling with doubt. And then I think the tipping point that went from doubt to realizing I didn't believe was just being honest with myself. And when I say those types of things, it's important to me— I'm not telling people that they're lying to themselves and stuff. Maybe they are, maybe they're not, I don't know, but I'm not making an accusation. And I'm— that's That's me speaking to the listener right now.

You know, I'm not making an accusation. I'm just sharing my experience. And when I realized, okay, I'm going to be honest with myself, I remember having a thought. I was laying in bed, you know, Melissa was watching TV. I was on my phone just piddling around, just, you know, not paying attention to my phone, thinking what was in my mind. And I remember thinking, wow, I actually don't believe in God anymore. And I didn't like it. You know, it was a horrible experience.

So I just wrote down a bunch of questions. You just kind of hit me with like a lightning round really fast and I don't want to like miss any of these, so I wrote them all down. But what you just said kind of goes into one of the questions I wrote down. And this is a big distinction because I want to ask you this question a little bit later, but this is not the question I'm asking right now is like, what went wrong? Why did— no, like, that's not what I'm doing right now. But you did use the brick analogy of like, like pulling out blocks or whatever. And one at the top isn't such a big deal. The structure still stands.

Like church attendance. I was, that one was pretty easy to get over after the initial shock.

Yeah. But I know this from personal experience and, um, it's funny because I ended up going a completely different way than you in this, but I remember all the blocks hitting the ground when I started holding everything up to this test of truth. And I said, God doesn't get a free pass. He's the most true, supposedly, right? So if he's the most true, I can be the most stringent because I don't have to, like, coddle God to make him work. And so I kind of found myself down at the bottom of it. And everybody at church, if I just bring up doubts, you know what, you already said what the lines are like, oh, you just need to pray more. You need to stop looking at all the doubtful stuff and start, you know, before you doubt your doubts, you know, before you doubt your faith, doubt your doubts.

Be in the world, but not of it, because the world will corrupt you.

Yeah. And I'm like, well, but God could stand up to all that, like, you know, and also, by the way, that's literally what I'm doing. And you're making it sound like I'm just getting the wrong answer doing the right things. So my question that I actually am asking you is, do you remember any of those specific blocks that you pulled out that were just like the one where you're like, oh crap, the whole thing is falling, like kind of the point where you're laying in bed and you go, oh my gosh, I don't know if I believe in God.

I don't even think I can answer that question accurately anymore. Just, I don't think that there was a big blow. I think it was death by a thousand cuts. You know, I think that's probably the best way to describe it. I wish, Curt, I had like some specifics I could dig in, but I don't ever remember just this huge foundational thing. Like, here's something I'm going to say that I've been trying to avoid saying things like this because I don't want to be offensive to people that do believe, but at the end of the day, it was just like there's so many times where you can say, okay, this doesn't add up, where the scriptures lost credibility to me. And then there's a couple of steps after that, right? If the word of God, in order to be the word of God, is infallible and it's inspired and it doesn't add up, well, then by definition— and take your own God out of it and just say if God A, God A says B is perfect, and then you look at B and realize it's not perfect, but God A says this perfection proves my existence, so to speak, then that God doesn't exist, right?

Yeah, I think, I think it's easy when, when it's Allah and the Quran.

Yeah.

That you haven't actually even read or have any investment into. I heard someone once tell me that Sharia law is X, so therefore it's just bullcrap. I know it's not true for sure. Absolutely for sure, for sure.

Exactly.

It just makes my faith stronger.

We don't hold the same standard to what we believe.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, that's a great example, Curt, because that was kind of like what I'd come to is I'd realized I'd applied a different standard to my own belief to give it a little grace.

Yeah. So I remember for me, very young, I'm sitting in a Sunday school and we went through and read all four Gospels rendition of what was written on the cross above Jesus. And all four gospels say something different. King of the Jews. Jesus Christ, King of the Jews. Something else. Like, they were close, but like one of them was quite different. I remember thinking as a kid, well, that seems like something that could have gotten right.

You know, like, like, yeah, that's a neat teamwork, man.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I can imagine like getting something wrong, but like that was, you're telling me what it said above his head. Like, and it wasn't like a paragraph. It was like short. And I was probably like, gosh, I bet you I was 6 years old. I was very young when, when we were doing that. I remember being like, huh, that doesn't seem quite right.

Obviously the story of Noah's Ark. You heard, I heard Noah's Ark as a kid and I'm like, uh, I'm going to go ahead and take that one as not literal.

Like, yeah, I took it as literal.

I know. Well, I believe it was taught to me as literal, but I went ahead and said, I'm going to make an adjustment in my mind because bullcrap. Like, no, no way. No way.

Uh, Ben Ham would like to have a word with you, if you know who that is.

No, I don't know who that is.

He's the guy that created the Ark Encounter, Answers in Genesis, dude.

Well, maybe I was too dumb at 8 years old, but at 8 years old, I'm like, and I gotta tell you, every time I walk around the zoo, my first thought is, hmm, no, like, hmm, this is not all the animals in Noah. Like, anyway, so Noah's Ark, I made an adjustment for early. Then, uh, I went on my mission. I learned a different bunch of different stuff that I kind of had to make adjustments for. I remember getting home from my mission, actually, I didn't know this on my mission even. I was in a world religion class and I learned that the Bible, the Gospels, just to get back to that, were all written down about many decades later, but in most cases, 80 years after they took place. Jesus's life was recorded 80 years after. And I remember the teacher going, so what I'd like you guys to all do is write down a story from one year ago with good certainty, like great certainty.

And I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I believe the gospels anymore. Like, so, um, so then I was like—

You know how I got past that though? To me it was, if it was God-inspired, it could have been written 2,000 years later. God was the one—

The inconsistencies from when I was a kid made it possible for me to see it differently.

Yeah.

And now I'll just tell you the block that came out the bottom. I was studying something and I learned that Pontius Pilate was actually a real jerk, like the meanest jerk to the Jews. Like when the Romans came in and he was ruling over his sector, he was an absolute tormentor of the Jews. And so number one, apparently there was no rule or nice thing that any of the Roman rulers would do where they would let a prisoner go free. Certainly they didn't take a violent rebel, yeah, like against the rule of Rome, and let them go free. And the people said, we want Barabbas! And Pilate's like, yeah, and Pilate's like, you know, I have to let him go, I've got no choice. No, no, no, all the writings of— first of all, it's not written anywhere else, and secondly, it wasn't the way. There was no custom.

I'm learning about this. I think that was the first time that I was like, it's all bullcrap.

Because when you were a kid—

no, actually, I was married. This was— dude, I had a bunch of stuff. They call it setting it on the shelf, like when your shelf gets too heavy and it falls down. I had set so much stuff on the shelf. I don't know what that's about, I'm gonna set it on the shelf. I don't really know about that, I'll make an adjustment and set it on the shelf. And then at some point, your shelf gets too heavy and it falls down. That's kind of the analogy.

For me, it was the moment of like, we'd go to church and literally talk about how evil the people were to let Barabbas go. Like it was so important and special. And, um, this key thing, it never happened. It made it into the infallible word of God. It said things that just absolutely weren't true, you know, and that's just on the, on, I'm just talking about Bible stuff at this point. There's, there's other like more Latter-day Saint stuff as well and Mormon stuff. And, um, And I think for me, that was when I felt like, oh my God, I just looked down and the whole tower is just in pieces all on my feet. So that's why it should be.

It's not a— I think you kind of want to hold off on this for the what happened question, you know?

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

That's a dangerous place. That's a scary place to be because, um, well, because nothing happened. But yeah, well, what did happen was your foundation is gone. What you said your marriage is built on, what you say your friendships are built on, what your eternity is built on, what your integrity is built on, what your morality is built on. It's on the floor all under your feet. And it's a terrible place. It's a terrible place to be.

Well, you just led me right into that. So you do find yourself, I think, in the same place as me as far as looking around, just going like, my foundation that I'm standing on, like, I'm gonna have to tell my wife this. We're committed to each other. And that, like, I know you, Bobby. You're not a liar. You're as far from a liar, like, to the point where you're really annoyingly truthful. Like, you can't even say a statement without, like, I gotta put a few qualifiers on here. That everybody in the whole world already knows because you're like, I literally had to deal with that in therapy.

No kidding.

Well, I'm glad because it's super annoying. You're trying to say one statement and you've got to like give me a thousand other statements that are all, just so you know that the statement's only true if these thousand things that everybody— grass is green, you know that. I know sometimes grass is dead, but it's green. Anyway, my point is, is that you're an honest person and I've always known that about you.

I try to be very transparent.

Why in the world— and I already know the answer to this, but I want our listener to hear— why in the world would you hold something like this inside for 18 months, as you— maybe a year? I know it probably felt longer than it actually was, so there's a chance it wasn't a whole year. But my point is, is why would you lie to everybody by going through the motions and pretending when that wasn't really the truth of the case for you anymore?

I don't think that that's accurate. When you're struggling and doubting all I was in was in a more difficult struggle of doubt than, you know, than minor ones that I had experienced in the past that all of my Christian mentors had told me is normal. And when, you know, like when I was a youth minister and you go to these events with a bunch of other youth ministers and they, you know, you work through stuff, everyone in the room acknowledges. I mean, literally, you know, if I'm in a room with 25 other ministers, every one of them raises their hand when the door is closed and it's just you guys and the guy speaking to you says, who in here Who here has doubted God's existence? You know, like, since being a believer, you know, and everyone raises their hand and you all look around the room and you chuckle. Oh my God, I'm not the only one, you know.

No, I gotta tell you, I always thought that was a— I always thought that was an opportunity to look humbler than you actually are and make your faith look stronger. Like, I don't know.

Well, maybe so. Maybe I was the only honest one. I don't know. But I wasn't active in church at this point, for one. Okay, so I wasn't a minister.

And when—

during my—

I—

yeah, like the domino got kicked off while I was still on staff at a church. But then I, you know, I left that church, stopped doing, you know, the ministry stuff, you know, and I still went to church for probably a year. And then when we moved to another city, other than visiting one or two, we didn't attend church anymore, you know, not for any particular reason other than we just didn't. And that's when all that was kind of happening. So I wasn't going around doing the, the quote-unquote Jesus freak thing or holy roller thing anymore. And last disclaimer, but when I say Jesus freak, I don't mean that as an insult to anyone. I wore that with a badge of honor.

I was gonna say, I actually think that a lot of people who are would, you know, they love it.

Yeah, I, I did. Yeah, I did. I don't think I was dishonest at all as far as my faith. For a while it was, you know, this internal deconstruction process. I actually had I talked to one of my buddies, and you know, we talk about once a month. I was just talking to him in our last call. He's been my friend since I graduated high school, and he's a little older than me, and we used to be in a Christian accountability group together and all that stuff. We were talking about when I came out to him.

He was the first person I ever told, dude, things are falling apart. I don't believe in God anymore. And then that was probably about, you know, if I remember correctly, that was maybe like 3 months after I had that first thought in my head. Wow, I don't believe this. I probably told him about 3 months later, and then it was probably about 3 months after that when I told my wife. Was the question, what was that like, or was it, why were you such a lying sinner?

Uh, well, I was using a little hyperbole there, but like, I know for someone who looks for every opportunity to be transparent and truthful, and including sharing how you're feeling inside, I'm trying to get down to the reasoning of like, like, I think you kind of already touched on the fact that it was the foundation of your relationships and everything. You knew to be true.

I was terrified. I didn't want anyone to know. I thought it made me a bad human because even if you lose your belief, you're still indoctrinated. You know, I was raised in Oklahoma, even though I didn't like go to church all the time. You know, I had an uncle that was a minister. You're, you know, God, family, football, but not in that order. You know, it's kind of what we always said, right? So it was just, it was just, it was a terrible, you know, I'm not exaggerating when I say it was terrible. No, it was terrible.

It was your life's foundation that you chose to build on falling apart. So it it, you kind of had to get to a place of like some sort of stability internally before you could even talk to someone about it.

I know your, your marriage survived, so like I can kind of— spoiler alert here— my marriage also survived, but I don't know. Yeah, I remember, I remember when I, uh, I first went to a therapist. The first person I ever was able to vocalize it to was a therapist. I sat down And this therapist is actually hardcore Christian, but definitely hardcore not Mormon.

So he was happy for you. Yeah.

Yeah. That's actually exactly the case. I sat down. I said, look, my wife and I got married in the Mormon temple. I promised her we'd be married together forever. I promised her that my testimony of Jesus Christ and everything, it's all foundational to like the, even the premise of us joining in marriage. And I said, at this point, I don't know that I can say I believe not just that Joseph Smith is a prophet, but that the God we worship is the actual God. Like, I don't, I'm really confused right now.

And he's like, well, if you think I'm going to sit here and blow any smoke up your butt to tell you to believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet, you got the wrong therapist. Like, there's no way I'm going to tell you to believe in that abomination of lies. And I'm like, okay.

Wow. Yeah.

And he basically went on to like make me really feel like just like an inch tall, just for like—

Sounds like a terrible therapist, not to throw stones, but I'm sorry.

I only saw him one, the one time because of that. I also felt that way.

Yeah.

And I actually had a whole series of therapists, but it was after that one, he made me feel so small and so insignificant. And also, look, everyone loses their faith. As long as you come back to it, God will always be there to accept you. I was like, I wonder if my wife would, you know, my wife sounds better than the God he's talking about anyway. Yeah. But, um, it was actually in this room, this, this office, my home office. I, uh, Rachel got home and I was just in tears and she's like, what the heck is wrong with you? Something has been wrong with you for a long time, but you are messed up. Like, do you want to talk? And like, yeah, yeah, I want to talk.

And I fully expected when I started talking that she would end up being like, well, It's been nice being married to you. I'm sorry you're a loser. I really wish I hadn't wasted all this time with you. Yeah, I really was ready for that.

Yep. See ya, heretic.

Yeah. Yeah.

We both have good ones, don't we?

We do. We do. And I'm so thankful that I was able to say that without getting emotional because it's truly the time I found out what my wife was made out of. And it meant so much to me because it's funny. And I'm curious about your comments on this too. You marry your best friend, you marry the person that you believe you can tell anything to. And it's funny, I can think of— and actually right now I'm going through some stuff that's like really hard, and I still have to like force myself to be like, it's okay to tell her. Like, there's stuff I'm holding back from my wife right this very minute that I don't know, I just don't want to trouble her with it, you know? Like, yeah.

And I know I love her and I know that she loves me unconditionally. Like, after that experience, It deepens so much.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious about like kind of where you're coming from, like where it's really hard, but it's ironic that the person you love and can be air quotes, the most transparent in the world with, like sometimes like you have the most to lose. So you actually can't, like, what are your thoughts?

I don't know if I think my thoughts are, I relate to that. And you know, the reason you can't is you're, you're afraid to hurt them and you're afraid to lose them. And you know that you're the one that changed the rules. Yeah, I remember that being kind of a little theme in my head, which was I'm the one that changed the rules. I'm the one that said, hey, let's get married. This is what I'm going to do, you know, so come do this with me, you know, as far as, you know, ministry and things like that, not to mention just the faith in general. So I don't know if I have a lot to expound on that. But I can relate.

And, you know, there was a great deal of guilt, you know, a great deal of shame that came with that, because you're the one changing, not them.

The shame is so high. And I think actually, I remember like I was ugly crying when I told her, and I was so ashamed. Like, yeah, like, yep, this is tough.

So, but what we know to be the truth, Curt, is you actually just wanted to sin. So, um, stop me, you know, a bunch of stuff.

Well, that Do you have my questions in front of you for some reason? I've been like writing them down and it looks like— so what was, what was your wife's response? Was it like, if it was like mine, I'm sure she obviously saw the pain. I think it's when you're in that conversation, it's really easy to understand this person isn't doing it just to sin. But what was her response? And how did that contrast against the response of people who inevitably are going to find out later who weren't there for that part of the conversation, who might have taking it totally different.

You know, her response to the event was somewhat non-eventful because she handled it amazingly, you know, externally. And it was very difficult internally. So what I mean by that is she didn't like it. It wasn't what she wanted to hear. I knew her own theological doctrine inside and out because we shared the same ones. It means that that person's going to hell. According to what we believed, you know. Now, I didn't think I was going to hell, even though that— and I think I mentioned this in the first episode, so we won't talk about it— but even though you still have that irrational fear once you deconvert, just because it's just ingrained in you.

So, you know, I could tell by looking, I could tell by— we didn't talk much about it because, you know, that's kind of her style, you know, on some difficult things. It was a long time, long, long time before we talked much about it. But her words, um, I forget her exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, well, you're still the guy that I married and I love you no matter what. You know, that's— that, that was the essence of what she said. And then we had some awkward silence because we both had to process, you know. We were in the car, we had about a, I don't know, an hour or two drive, you know. And maybe half of that drive was kind of some awkward silence. And then it was, well, what are we doing this weekend, you know, type of thing.

And, and it was really just a lot of that for a long time, you know. It was— we Yeah, it was just a lot of that because I do enjoy challenging people's faith. You know, if it's a designated time and place, I enjoy a political debate or a faith debate if I'm in a political or religious chat room because I've always—

I've mentioned this to you before. I've always thought it's funny if you go to a funeral and you see someone who maybe you already knew is an atheist or something and they're crying. You walk up to him, it's socially acceptable to put your arm around that person and say like, hey, he's in a better place. It's okay. It's much, you know, everything's going to be okay. God loves him. He was a good man. But if an atheist was to go up to a believer who was crying, put their arm around and be like, hey, he's in a big black hole.

He's dead.

The lights are off. He doesn't even know.

Like totally socially unacceptable. And I find that just an interesting contrast. But like you say, there's someone who's going into a dungeon that we socially can handle a certain way. And I think that there's a certain amount of social awareness that you have to have where if someone wants to challenge politics or religion or any sort of spirituality of any kind, they need to sort of walk in, not to the dungeon of like, you got me captive, but like into like the forum, like, hey, this is a good marketplace of ideas that you can, it's okay to now challenge each other.

But when you're not in that forum, it's not something that you want to do. Yeah, you know, even you and I as an example, you know, I mean, you've, you, you've shared with me, you know, when you were dealing with, you know, going through your— I'll use the term faith crisis, you know, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, I mentioned it to you a little bit, but internally it was really important to me of it basically to have the same approach that stupid therapist should have had. You're not there to tell someone what they should believe. You're there to support someone when they're navigating that, the search of truth. So like with Melissa and I, I was a little salty about religion for a while. Well, I didn't want to point that at her. I wasn't salty at her, you know.

I gotta tell you, I almost have to just interject here. When I had my experience with Rachel, her first thought was, oh, okay, well, you just need to read and pray more. Like, girl, last 3 years, you know, like And that's the unfair part is that now she's got this, you know, you talk about awkward silences. Rachel's like, well, that's funny because he's actually given this counsel to people before. He knows what to do next. Like, why is he not just doing what he's supposed to do?

Which probably adds to the shame because you're like, wow, I'm being a hypocrite because I tell people, you know, that where I'm at is not the right place to be. Yeah.

Yeah. But we had our awkward silences for maybe a week or two. And then we were in the car and we— it was right as we were pulling up to the house, we basically opened up this mess conversation again. And I'm like, great, now we're gonna like walk in and we're still like in it. Anyway, we're standing in my bathroom, in the master bathroom of our house, and the conversation went— I'm so ashamed of this, but I wanted to say this to anybody who's like, if anyone can relate to this, I'd love to save anyone the pain of doing what I did, which is looking at your wife, the one who is being cool about it as much as they can, trying to offer you the support that they know, all the stuff that— yeah, the checklist you already went Yes, but how would they know you went through it? They just learned about this, right? And they don't— and it's all they know.

They're 3 years behind. Yeah, to the conversation. Yeah.

And I say, honey, I'm not like you. I can't just put the blinders on and look down at where I'm told to look and not look to the side. I can't do it the way you do it. And I said it in the most belittling way to make myself look so much More enlightened. Yeah, more enlightened. That's the way. And I pressed on that for a solid, like, 5-minute circular discussion where she just looks at me like, okay, I'm sure that was hard for her.

Yeah. Oh, I'm—

I actually, if I had been smart, I would have known that's the part where she divorces you. Like, because you're looking at her as— now you're looking at her as less than.

Yeah.

And how she is the weak one. But it really went back to the whole idea, like the premise of that discussion was, is that if truth fears no test, if God can handle being scrutinized a little bit, or a lot bit, then why can't we look up? And I was trying to basically tell her, like, look, you keep telling me to look down, put more blinders on, not going to do it. And I think anyone who does is just afraid. They don't have a testimony. They don't really have a testimony of anything. They're just afraid of being exposed to something that's more convincing or truthful, and that's belittling. I've since taken it back because actually I think that what she has is a special gift for her. Like, it brings her peace and comfort.

And frankly, as a person who— you talk about getting salty— I was so critical of not just spiritual and religious things, everything that came across my plate. I was so critical of for so long. I turned into like just the biggest curmudgeon pessimist ever. And guess who wasn't?

Yeah.

Yeah. The lady I accused of blinders.

That's why I didn't like you at all during that period.

Yeah, I know. You didn't talk to me for like 3 years straight. No. So yeah, anyway, I'm just curious if that, if that's something that maybe, I don't know if you ever had a conversation like that with Melissa, but that was really—

No. Yeah. No, we didn't. Like the, just the truth be told, you know, it's, I've let that conversation be navigated by her. You know, I've said things like, uh, hey, this is something that I do think is important that I think, you know, we should discuss and talk about. And then I let her determine when and where that was. And the honest-to-God truth is we haven't had a lot— we've had a couple, we haven't had a lot of deep conversations about it. I'm kind of sharing some of my wife's dirty laundry— probably the wrong word, but It's just not something that she felt real comfortable with discussing.

You know, being challenged isn't one of her favorite things. And when it's your faith, you know, and I'm speaking from experience, I'm also speaking from at least anecdotes that I've seen with, you know, relation, you know, my own experience as well as my experiences with others is, you know, when you're deep in your faith, when even listening to someone tell you they don't believe it, can feel very offensive and it can feel very much like an attack.

Yeah, I was gonna say that, and it truly does feel like an attack. Like, oh, you're on the enemy's side and you're this close to me?

Well, yeah. And I want to be clear, she never like acted— Melissa's been a champ through all of it. I don't know, it just hasn't been that important. You know, we know where each other stand on it and, um, we're pretty happy with the way things are going.

We kind of like what we got going here, so Well, I think that for anyone who is in this sort of dark moment and your spouse is on the other side of that dark moment, I hope that listening to this has given you a little bit of extra insight. I would say if I can go back and do it, I think I probably would've brought it up sooner and tried to let her a little know about, I'm going through the checklist right now, but you feel so guilty for it. But I think knowing now, I would probably change that. And you're not alone. Like, anyone who's going through any sort of these, these things and is married, I think Bobby said it best, you don't want to hurt that person and you have this guilt and shame. But probably the best thing about guilt and shame is that one way to escape it is by bringing it out into the light, and you can't be accused of something that you're admitting, kind of thing, you know, like put it out there. But one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about today, Bobby, is At the time of your deconversion process, you were working for a company. I don't know if it would be appropriate to call you like a straight up W-2 employee, but you were certainly not the entrepreneur.

Yeah, no, I was. Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I was either a technician, which was a subcontractor, and eventually turned into a manager with, with someone else's company I was working for.

But by the time you started your pressure washing company there in Florida, I think you were fully out in the open, deconverted, your wife, kids, everybody knew. Can you tell me any of your perceptions about how life would have been different or maybe was different based on your beliefs? Because Sole Proprietor, we talk to entrepreneurs about sort of the bigger meaning of life and their business, how it fits into that. And I'm curious what you might say to somebody entrepreneurially about the differences.

Gosh, I'll see if I can make up some advice. I'll try to fabricate something.

You know, I have a list sitting right there. I've got a notepad.

You know, truth be told, I'll back up a little bit and say it doesn't just apply to being an entrepreneur, but when you are one, everybody needs a tribe. Everyone really needs a tribe. Not everyone has one, but they sure are good for you. And when you're an atheist, specifically here in the U.S., or at least in the parts that I've lived in, you are not a part of the tribe. I don't think I have a single friend that's not someone I met online and have never met in person. I have some online friends, but I don't think I've got a single friend that I can think of that says, yep, I'm an atheist. There's such a stigma to it because when people hear atheist, they think baby-eating god-hater. They think mad at the world, want to destroy all that's good about, you know, America and justice and the American way and all those things.

And I'm just thinking of the fish logo that people put on their business cards. What's the logo? I guess you just put a devil on your business card.

Pentagram is my go-to.

Yeah, that would win you a lot of business if you would just lead with atheists.

Exactly right. So the main way that it's impacted me is Well, first off, I feel like I did have a pretty good tribe in the entrepreneurial community, but you can't always share everything about yourself. And I have been open about being a non-believer, but it took a while for me to get to that point. Well, I grew up in like what a lot of people call the megachurch capital of the world. You know, they're in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, and there's like 8 megachurches, you know, Oral Roberts University and all that good stuff. So it can be a little lonely, you know, it can be a little difficult because even with the friends that you make, no matter how sincere and how good those friends are to you, in the back of your mind you do think about the stuff that you heard or maybe even said yourself, you know, in my case, about those atheist people when you were still a believer. So So that's not anyone else's fault. That's not any other person's fault.

I guess it's their fault if they think less of you as a human because of that, then yeah, I guess it's kind of their fault in that sense. But at the end of the day, the challenge, you know, it's my fault how I feel, right? Other people aren't responsible for how you feel. And so the challenge is oftentimes wondering if you are honest with others about about who you are, if they'll, they'll accept you for that. And as far as in business, I don't feel that there's a direct connection other than it's easy when you can— or maybe not when you can, but when you do believe that the big man has your back and that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord and all things come together for the glory of God— that can make the dark moments easier to navigate. And we all know that as an entrepreneur, there's a lot of those dark moments. Even when you have mountaintop experiences, there's almost always a valley on the other side of it. Yeah. So I wish I believed in an all-loving, all-powerful God that was looking out for me because that's comforting, but I don't.

So I don't have that particular comfort when it could come in handy. So So I don't feel that there's anything deeper that I could say in the entrepreneur thing. And frankly, that's not limited to being an entrepreneur. Yeah, I think when you're an entrepreneur, it's just you've added a whole new level of complexity and a whole new level of stress and a whole new level of work and a whole new level of responsibility that does tend to lead to more times when you're like, gosh, I wish I had an external shoulder to lean on. Now, fortunately, I have an amazing wife and family. And speaking of the Crash Test Dummies, the song— yeah, if anyone wants to hear a great album, Curt, let me just, just for a moment, let me go here. Anyone wants to hear a great album? So that album was God Shuffled His Feet with the song. The one prior to it— see, I liked them before they were cool and popular— it was called The Ghost That Haunts Me.

That's the name of the album, and it's got a bunch of great songs on it, and, you know, real folk music kind of sound. But one of the songs is called The Ghost That Haunts Me, and some of the lyrics talks about how, you know, it's a guy singing to someone that he loves, and he's just talking about how, uh, that person just laying in bed, just touching you, just putting their hand on you, just being next to you, can chase away the ghosts that haunt me. Oh, I'm not going to tear up on this one. But I do have that, and I'm very grateful for that. I've got a woman that my demons are very scared of.

Oh gosh, if I didn't have 15 more questions, we would end it right there. I felt that. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And I know Melissa— I think that's the other thing is like, I know Melissa, and actually Melissa's gotten me personally out of some pretty serious binds.

Yeah.

Just because she's, you know, she hasn't put her hand on me, just so you know, but she has been there to help me in some pretty, pretty dark times too. There's something you said that I think is really valuable. It reminded me of a lesson I learned. You talked about how it's not their fault that basically everyone's in a society that's been raised to believe that people are going to go to hell and burn and informs a lot of our motivations and things like that., but it reminded me when I was in Washington, DC for my son's senior trip, he wanted to go to the, he wanted to go see how the country was sort of founded and stuff for, for Jaren's senior trip. And so Rachel and I went for his trip in Washington, DC. We went to Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's plantation house, like just everything, right? And on that site, we got a chance to tour the house. And see a lot of inspiration for his love of reading, his travels. This guy traveled the world.

He was really good friends with Lafayette, this guy from France that was an ambassador from France. Got a chance to see something.

Hamilton, dude. I know this.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I saw the slave quarters. I saw the fields and the, and the like workshops and different stuff. His store, he had state-of-the-art for the time storage facilities for food and wine and just gorgeous. Like everything about it was gorgeous. But the thing that in the back of my mind just kept rocking my world was we've got a guy who is well-read, well-traveled, and is one of our founding fathers. I'm so glad that someone this smart is one of our founding fathers.

Why the freak does he have slave quarters on his, on his property?

This is a can of worms we're opening, Curt.

I know, I know. But the part I want to get to is what is gravesite, because his gravesite is also on the property. And so there's a few things I learned that day. One was that he was the nicest master. He hardly ever beat his slaves close to death. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So that was one of the things. And he also went on a trip to France where one of his slaves accompanied him. But apparently slaves aren't legal in France, so she had to be freed during the time that she was there. She's very young, ended up supposedly being impregnated with one of his children. Must not have thought too little of slaves. But anyway, that hit hard. And I'm starting to get pretty pissed. I'm walking around this place looking at the access to books, the access to travel, a story of him talking to Lafayette on property within earshot of some of his slaves, his enslaved people, I think is the actual proper term.

He said, Lafayette said to him, Thomas, it's not appropriate for a human to ever own another human. And his response back was, I agree. And that time will come. It's just not now. Now, fast forward to all these things that I learned, and I'm standing there with my son and my wife, and we're looking at this this little tiny Washington Monument that's basically his gravestone sitting there. And on it, it says, the author of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah. And the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.

They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I've just been really uncomfortable and I just broke down in tears because I thought if I had lived at the time the Thomas Jefferson did, I would have known even less than he knew. I would have been in the same society. I would have looked at enslaving people as just as fine as he did. They had no problem building. When I'm there and I'm seeing, oh, wow, look at this Washington Monument. That's kind of cool. Yeah, it was built by slaves.

What? I just want to interject because this is an important subject. Yeah. You're saying if you were raised back then and didn't know what you knew now, you were probably just as susceptible to your upbringing and indoctrination. You're not saying if the Curt that knows what he knows now— Yeah, I just want to be— Yeah, you know, you're acknowledging that you're susceptible to, you know, let's call it bad doctrine.

Yes. Yes.

It doesn't— it doesn't make it okay. It's just an acknowledgment that you're a flawed human as well.

Yeah. It really hurt to think that I'm as susceptible as anybody. And to allow society to paint a picture of just how it is, we can even say things that are completely— because we know that the words ring true, but society and the way it feels in it makes us view the world through this crazy wrong lens. And then we write— what we do is we write all these little, like, fine prints that go along with it. All men are created equal. All men deserve the right to pursuit of happiness.

I don't think they viewed Black people as men, you know. I don't think they viewed them as equal.

No, Black people are not free, you know, man, you know, people. Like, okay, so I guess I'm just saying all this to say, Bobby, as I listened to you, it reminded me of me being broken, sitting there looking at this headstone. The author of the Declaration of Independence was that wrong, that confused? I mean, what am I wrong about? What kinds of things am I not— do I have blind spots?

What's history going to say about us in 200 years?

And what fine print am I allowing that I know that this is a statement of truth, or I know that this is the facts, but I'm willing to turn my head in order to allow the societal garbage that I have been fed to make sure I don't upset it? And what things am I actively not pursuing in order to not upset the convenient truth that I hold to be comforting or just to hold the place of truth so that I can be done with this? Like, I don't want to keep wrestling with this. So instead, I'm going to just go ahead and stay away from the wrestle. Let this thing remain true in my head. And I think that's what leads me to the, you know, when you talked about people, you know, looking at you and, you know, I wonder what they think because I used to think those things and I, you know, like you can't get away from it. Like if you live in a society that believes a certain thing and everyone's willing to turn their head in order to conveniently continue on the path they are remembering and doing what's always been done. My question to you now is, in light of that, what do you think it is that our Christian society or friends maybe gets wrong about you? And not just you, but anyone who doesn't believe? Because I'll tell you, I'll just start it off with the fact that I think a lot of people, you know, you've said this as a joke, but like truthfully, I believe that a lot of people think that, oh, they're taking the easy way out. He wants to sin. That's the first one I'd start you off with is that I think that is an area having been in the dark night of the soul.

I think that that's one of the parts about if I raise my head and I tell everybody that I'm not so sure anymore and I've already done the checklist and I'm still not so sure, they're going to think that I'm just like ready to become a baby eater, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. First off, atheism isn't really a thing. Atheist is a label, you know, that you apply. We covered that in the first episode where it's, it's a response to a proposition. The proposition is there is a God. So if you accept it, you're a theist.

And if you do not accept it, you're an atheist. So to me, you know, now someone else may want to use the word differently. That's fine. You know, there's nothing I can do about that. So it doesn't say anything to what I want to do. I didn't want to be an atheist. I just wanted to be honest. Therefore, I have admitted that I'm an atheist.

I wanted to believe in God. I want to do good in the world. I want to treat people right. I wish I would have always got all of my wants. I have not always treated people right. I have not always done a lot of things that I wish I would have. But being an atheist is not a statement on, you know, my worldview. It's not a statement on my moral code or anything, you know.

And I'm sure there's a lot of people who want to say, well, where do you— you can't even have morals, or where do your morals come from? They're only subjective. We can have that conversation, but it would probably be a 2-hour podcast on its own. But the first one is just like, respectfully, I just want to say, screw you, man. This wasn't a path I chose. This was just a path I wound up on, you know, or it's a destination that I wound up at.

It's worth pointing out this isn't the path I chose. Just like, if I could just add to your sentence, just like I didn't choose the color of my skin, just like I didn't choose my final growth height. And people might fight me on this, but having a brother who's homosexual, you didn't get to choose what you're attracted to. Yeah. And, you know, luckily you are attracted to Melissa and that's been a great strength to you. But if you'd been attracted to men, you would have had another thing to deal with. And would that have affected your moral code? Would that have affected your view on the world's outlook. Yes, it's a thread in the fabric of who you are, and some threads, I'll grant, are bigger and thicker and more, but stand out more.

Yeah. Yeah. But at the end of the day, my moral code, if it's dictated only by the fact that I'm afraid that God's going to burn me in hell, what is that? Well, okay, if that's the motivation for how I've decided to put my moral code in place, What does that say about me versus someone who's like, I don't believe there's a God, but this is the moral code. We live by the exact same moral code. I'm not doing it for the motivation of not wanting to get punished, but just believing it's the right thing to do. Like, I just think that by people jumping to the conclusion that if you can't believe in the same God that I do, or a God of any kind, I automatically have to assume that you have no moral code. Yeah, that might actually say something about the fact that that your worldview is too narrow? Like, that's a pretty crazy statement.

Well, here's the bottom line. If you do something because of coercion or a threat, that's not free will. If I was single and I'm walking down the street, or better yet, if I said to you, hey, Curt, your single sister, I'm gonna go ask her out on a date and ask her to just stay with me forever. Now, she can say no, but if she says no, I'm gonna lock her in the basement and torture her for life. Yeah, but she has free will, she can do whatever she wants. Yeah, yeah, that's not free will, that's preservation, you know. Yeah, but that's, that's, that's just self-preservation, right? Yeah, that's self-preservation. It's not sincere belief.

Here's the deal, I'll be the first to acknowledge my moral standard is subjective. Now, I don't think anyone can provide an objective standard of morality. If I were to say my moral code is based on human well-being or the well-being of living creatures and especially humans, or, you know, however, then based off that subjective point, then you can have objective morals that start subjectively. If your moral code is based around your religion, If it's what my God does is good and what my God says is good because he's my God, then, you know, that's not a moral code. That's like more like divine command theory. You're not even making sure. How do you even determine who the good guy was in your book?

Yeah, that also reminds me of— it was a silly Office reference, but, you know, you and I are both fans of The Office. When Ryan Says like, hey man, we're never going to get what we would need from that guy. Like he did terrible things, didn't want to take responsibility for it. Like, hey, I'd love to help you out with replacing the thing that I broke of yours. But that was the old me and I can't be held responsible for the old me. He's like, well, that was you though, right? You need to replace the rearview mirror off my car that you broke. And he's like, man, that guy did a lot of things to me I'm not proud of too. We're never going to get what we want from the old me.

Imagine if we took kind of the same vein of what you were just talking about and said, well, it was all predetermined. We're never going to get what I wanted from the, you know, like, I have to be the way that I am because divinely I was created without free will. Like, this is just what it is. It moves all responsibility from us to say, I can't even think of you a certain way. Because that's all my God already told me. So I'm not even allowed to consider you as a human because very religious people that believe God created all things were treating people who had black skin a certain way. But God, you know, what am I supposed to do? God, God made you with black skin. You know, what can I, what could I possibly do to help you? Well, there's a few things you could do to help.

There's a lot of things you can do. You can create as You could treat them the way you wanted to be treated.

Oh, the golden rule that Jesus said? Yeah.

Oh, I don't think he was the first one, but I don't think it's the— which I think a better way, I think a better golden rule would be treat others the way they want to be treated.

That's actually, that's funny. Taught my kids that too. Yeah.

I sinned as much as I want. You know, I sinned probably more than I wanted when I was a Christian. So, which, you know, I say all that in jest. Like, I don't believe in sin. Sin as a concept, because I would define sin as doing something contrary to the laws, commands, or whatever you want to call it, of your deity, you know. And if you don't believe in a deity, you don't by definition believe in sin.

But, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't feel bad about breaking your own moral code.

Well, we just call it a different word, you know. I mean, like, sin's just— it's kind of like all murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. You know, it's kind of one of those things, you know, we may agree that the same thing is bad. I just wouldn't say it's a sin because that requires a deity to be involved.

That's all. That's another really important point is to think that a lot of our moral code is based off of the law of the land, where if this is a Venn diagram where an atheist's moral code and your religious moral code almost certainly overlap is as it relates to whatever the law dictates. And if you lived in a different country, your moral code might shift in either of those camps just based off what the government said was legal. For example, giving somebody an inside tip on a good stock to trade. You know, it's like, hey, he's my friend. You know, in this country, maybe we do, but in this country we don't. And anyway, my point is is that this conversation has been, in my opinion, incredibly enlightening. I will say, for anyone who's listened to my story, Bobby and I got into some really common ground about how dark things get when everything is being questioned.

In my story, I talk about how I came out of it differently. And, and honestly, I still, every day, just last night, I spent a couple hours out in the garage working on my bike. And, uh, I had a podcast on that was was just specifically there to get me thinking about free will, just thinking about free will and, and the relationship that that has with, uh, God. And, and I'm happy with where I'm at. I think that that's kind of the beauty of this conversation, Bobby, is to say we honor each other and give each other the credibility that they're able to have a different life experience than ours and come to different conclusions than us. And for us to be comfortable enough in our conclusions to listen to others and not just throw out everybody else's conclusions that's different than ours. Because in that is where I believe the real power of this, this experience of the journey on in this life is that we have the ability to pull each other aside and learn from their experiences combined with our own. I was talking to Bobby actually yesterday about how there's data-driven decisions.

And I've come to the conclusion that there, that data-driven decisions are important, but why in the world are we so incredibly ingrained to have emotional assistance to charge those data-driven decisions? We think we're making the most logical decisions in the whole world, but at the end of the day, a lot of us will check our gut, see where we're at, and You know, fight or flight is driven completely by emotion. And we know that, like, in today's day and age, it actually isn't always the best thing for us, but it served our ancestors really well.

Well, and sometimes we just do what feels best. You know, you used a good pun unintentionally, you know, you check that data says sugar is bad for me. My belly says I eat a lot of it, you know? Yeah. So that's for me, that probably is just a purely emotional decision. You know, I get comfort from eating the things that I eat, even though I know they're not good for me. And we're odd creatures, you know, we're all— we're all confused. And, you know, one thing that you said, that it's like you can fully accept a person even if you think they're wrong on something. And as a matter of fact, if you're going to fully accept someone— and maybe you shouldn't fully accept everyone, you know, there's probably the case that we shouldn't.

But if you're going to fully accept someone, you can only do it by accepting their differences, even, you know, and they're different. You clearly think their differences are wrong or you'd be that way. And for anyone that's struggling with it, the first step is to be able to do that with yourself. You know, you've got to accept yourself for being very flawed. I hate saying imperfect. I think whenever I say, if someone says, we've all said it, so I'm not throwing stones at anyone. I've said it. It.

But when we say, I'm not perfect, that just feels defensive. If I say I'm flawed, that gives me an opportunity to love myself in my flawed state. And it's the same with others. And, um, you know, Curt, you and I, you know, you and I had just appointed— might be the wrong way to put it, but you and I were going at each other's beliefs on some things, you know, a week or so ago, just, just back and forth on Voxer and chatting. And it's a beautiful thing because it doesn't impact how we view each other, but it doesn't impact how we accept each other. You know, we love each other and we know we're not the same. And I've always actually got a kick out of it. You know, when I tell people about, you know, my best buddy Curt, I'm like, yeah, man, a devout Mormon dude.

I'm a crazy atheist guy and everyone thinks we're nuts. And the number of times we've heard people say, We don't understand how you two are friends, you know? And I'm like, I don't understand it either. I can't stand the guy, but here we are.

Listen, you just reminded me of something. This is a very close personal thing that we've had together, but I just told you about how I was in therapy and I got the wrong therapist out the gates. There was a scary time in our relationship. I remember I had a really hard time sleeping. I was really worried about you and, um, We ended up getting together and we were talking, and I remember telling you, like, I'd never been to professional therapy. I'm like, Bobby, you need a professional. Do you remember that?

You remember that?

Yeah, I do. And what's funny, I am not qualified to answer the questions you're asking. I'm not qualified to give you the tools to deal with the emotions you're feeling. I don't even know. I don't know where to begin. All I can do right now is hug you. That's like, that's the best tool I got. I think it's just a really special and ironic thing that years later, and I don't know how many years later it was, but I knew, yeah, a few, I found myself getting a therapist and thinking, I'm not qualified to help myself.

I don't know what to do here. And it was actually your experience that you'd started making some progress that really was like, I can't do this on my own. And I am so thankful that I got to go down in that hole with you.

I am too, man. And in hindsight, I can see I've dealt with some depression on and off my entire life. Didn't recognize it as that. And when I say it wasn't extreme, that's only relative. If you're listening, any level of depression, it's not acceptable. You may have to accept that's the state you're in, but it's not acceptable in the sense of, oh, it's not that bad. Other people have it worse. Any depression is bad depression.

And, you know, therapy is not so much anymore, but it still does have a stigma. But if you're, you know, if you're our age, every comedy made, you know, movie back in the day made fun of people that had therapists and stuff, you know. And a good therapist, at the very least, they don't tell you how life works. They just help you start to understand yourself. They help you navigate some things. They just lead you to the water. They might give you a cup to scoop some out so you can drink it, but, but they don't, you know, do all the work for you. And I would highly encourage anyone, you know, that has struggled with that stuff, you know, myself, you know, and we're not going to dive into all this because I don't want to, you know, on the show here.

But I had a lot of like trauma, like extreme trauma from my childhood that as a mid-40-year-old dude I've had to work through. Just that fact was embarrassing.

And, you know, because if you can't rub dirt on it and just move on, there's something super wrong with you.

You're just weak.

Exactly. That's how I was. My parents never said that to me, but that is definitely what I took from—

well, and that's, that's what, you know, generally speaking, at least if you're our age, that's what you were taught. If you were a guy, you know, if you were a dude, that's what you were taught, you know, walk it off, bitch, you know, type of thing. And I've been guilty of giving that same advice to people. So I just want to just encourage people, you know, if you, if you struggle with depression even a little bit, you're worth a few hundred dollars over the course of a few months to talk that through with some people and get some help. And it might turn into something more than a few months. The light bulb might click for you and you might be good after just a few sessions. But I'll just say this. If you're too scared of therapy, you're not macho, you're weak.

And your, your macho-ness is just a mask. To hide your weakness. And I'll say that to you if I see you in person too. So that's my macho-ness coming out. Back to what Curt was saying, though, it's a beautiful moment. You know, the photos will pop up on my phone occasionally because what happened was I was struggling my ass off and it was my first big— you know, I've had kind of two big dips into depression and with a short little manic break in between them. And the first time around, I found, you know, I was struggling and it was weird. Like, I didn't even know what was happening.

Like, I didn't know why I was feeling the way I was feeling. It just— I just fell apart. Curt manipulated me into going to Chicago with him. And that's the honest truth, actually. Like, it's not even a joke, you know. He guilted and manipulated me into it. But there was this cool little— you know, we're both fans of the TV show The Office. And there was this thing called The Office Experience that they had temporarily opened up where you'd go and see a bunch of the, you know, just set pieces and things from the show, and I had kind of sent you a link to it, said, hey, look how cool this is.

Well, next thing you know, Curt's like, hey Bobby, we're gonna go do this on such and such weekend or whatever. I don't know if you did or not. I don't know if you talked to Melissa about it before you talked to me or not. I did not. Oh, you didn't? But I did not. And then I was like, um, you know, I was depressed, so I was just finding every reason not to do anything. And then it was like one day I wake up and I have a message just like, all right, I bought our airplane tickets, let's do it, you know. And You've done that to me twice.

The first time wasn't because I was depressed. The first time is you needed help at a convention and you guilted me. You did that. And we did. We went and we, you know, we had a good time. You had to push me around in a wheelchair some and stuff like that because I was having a little issue with my ankle. Yeah, it's tough to push.

Only when you were— only when you're willing to sit in a wheelchair, otherwise you had crutches.

Yeah. And I remember, Curt, we, uh, we were basically— we had, you know, why it was a day and a half trip or something like that. You know, we flew in, had a full day, and then the next day we, you know, we flew out or something. And we're sitting in the hotel that last day before it was about time to get out, and he just kind of cornered me. It was kind of like shut the door and stood in front of it type of thing, and just basically had kind of a— I mean, we're essentially the same age, but just kind of gave you the dad talk. And it was like, listen, bro, you ain't getting out of here unless you commit to getting some help. You need help. And I'm really grateful for it.

I'm really grateful for that. And I love you, man. And some people have friends like that. And unfortunately, some of us have to be that for ourselves. And I'll just say this, you know, if you're listening, it doesn't matter if you're religious, it doesn't matter if you believe in Jesus or whatever, you know, you can be totally different than me. You still— you deserve to get the help and the kind of help you need. Don't just get it from a pastor, because pastors may be awesome, but they're not trained to help you, you know, kind of understand yourself. You can still find someone that's a pastor, just find one that's been actually trained in helping with mental health therapy, you know.

They can do both. So find a pastor that has been disciplined and, and cared enough to learn that. And if you're not religious, you know, whatever, do your thing. But, but you deserve it. You need You're worthy of it. So that's that.

I love you too, Bobby. Well, everybody, thanks for joining us today. I know that last little bit, that was definitely not a planned part of this podcast, but I hope that whoever needed to hear that heard that because Bobby's words could not ring more true that you are worth it. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're a thinker. You may be an overthinker. There's a good possibility that, but God may have put an atheist on this podcast to give you that message. God sent his message to you through the atheist. We hope that, uh, we hope that you have found this, if not just entertaining, hopefully incredibly enlightening.

And what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with this information? Leave that with you guys this time. We will see you next week. Thanks again, Bobby, and, uh, have a good one. Thanks everybody for joining us at the Sole Proprietor Podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, it would mean so much to us. We really do read each of these reviews and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this and so many others. If you want to engage with us at our website and maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear on the podcast, feel feel free to go to soulproprietorpodcast.com and share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.