In this episode, Randy, Kyle, and Elliot discuss American Christian fundamentalism and why they have, to borrow a phrase, kissed it goodbye.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Woodford Reserve Straight Bourbon.
AUDIO NOTE: There is some slight distortion and static at various places in this episode. We have since fixed these problems for all upcoming episodes. Socially distanced recording is hard.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
In this episode, Randy, Kyle, and Elliot discuss American Christian fundamentalism and why they have, to borrow a phrase, kissed it goodbye.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Woodford Reserve Straight Bourbon.
AUDIO NOTE: There is some slight distortion and static at various places in this episode. We have since fixed these problems for all upcoming episodes. Socially distanced recording is hard.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
00:00
[Music]
00:14
welcome to a pastor and a philosopher
00:16
walk into a bar
00:17
where we say the things you wish your
00:18
pastor or your philosophy professor
00:21
has said to you about god spirituality
00:23
and the church
00:24
[Music]
00:29
well hello friends uh on this episode of
00:32
a pastor and a philosopher walking to a
00:34
bar we're going to be considering
00:36
fundamentalism so we have titled this
00:38
episode lovingly
00:40
i kissed fundamentalism goodbye there's
00:43
a little
00:43
reference in there for those of you who
00:45
are paying attention yep and if you're
00:47
old enough
00:48
yeah randy and i are going to be uh
00:49
discussing sort of in a personal
00:51
narrative way
00:52
our own histories with fundamentalism we
00:55
both
00:56
would say that we used to be
00:57
fundamentalists and we're not anymore
00:59
uh so we're going to be sharing a little
01:01
bit of personal stuff about ourselves
01:03
and our journeys and how we came out of
01:04
that and what it means to us
01:06
it's going to be fun but what we do
01:08
around here
01:09
we are going to beverage sample and
01:11
taste and i don't know about you but
01:13
uh i find it difficult to talk about
01:16
fundamentalism without a whiskey in my
01:18
hands so this really works
01:20
amen yeah i got the first round this is
01:23
um
01:23
we're going classic standard can't miss
01:27
if you give it a bad review i don't want
01:30
to be your friend anymore this is
01:31
woodford
01:32
reserve now you bourbon enthusiasts
01:35
might be rolling your eyes right now but
01:37
i'm just saying
01:39
there is not a more reliable bourbon and
01:41
i haven't even tried it yet but i'm just
01:42
about to so i'm gonna yeah
01:44
get to the nose here if you're if you're
01:45
rolling your eyes then you've sailed
01:47
past enthusiasts and you're firmly in
01:49
the snob territory
01:51
absolutely and good for you roll your
01:53
eyes out here
01:55
it smells sweet so
01:58
for those of you who can't see randy is
02:00
currently performing what we lovingly
02:02
call the kentucky chew
02:04
maybe you can hear it yeah it sounds a
02:06
little slurpy that's what's going on
02:09
you pull it you suck it over your tongue
02:11
and you just it bounces over your palate
02:13
and you can really taste
02:15
the notes of what we're trying to get
02:16
here for me it helps to try to
02:18
take the air from your throat and move
02:20
it back into your mouth a little bit
02:23
can't say why but it seems to work this
02:26
this is getting weird
02:27
a little bit uh woodford is one of my
02:28
all-time favorite bourbons
02:30
it's probably it's my go-to there's so
02:32
much oak and woodford right here
02:35
i really feel like i can taste the
02:36
barrel that it was aged in right there
02:39
yeah so the double oaked is their higher
02:42
price
02:42
point expression and personally i prefer
02:45
this
02:45
same it's perfectly balanced beautifully
02:48
balanced
02:49
got that caramelly action going on it's
02:51
got the dark berries almost
02:54
and then it's got like the old antiquey
02:57
library book almost thing to it you know
02:58
what i mean
02:59
yep it's got the the right sweetness
03:01
that i identify with bourbon
03:03
i came to bourbon after scotch kind of
03:04
had a backwards journey there
03:06
and so for me um bourbon is is like a
03:09
dessert
03:10
that's associated in my mind with that
03:12
[Music]
03:15
as you said in the beginning of the
03:17
episode we are going to be turning
03:20
into the world of fundamentalism and
03:22
talking about our journey out of it
03:24
both of us have grown up in that and
03:26
been formed by it and also
03:28
kissed it goodbye as it were so can you
03:31
first kyle
03:32
being the philosopher and the academic
03:33
that you are
03:35
could you define fundamentalism for us
03:37
because certainly
03:38
when we talk about fundamentalism we're
03:40
followers of jesus we talk about
03:42
christian fundamentalism
03:44
we're very familiar with it but it's not
03:45
the only kinder brand of fundamentalism
03:48
there's fundamentalist muslims
03:50
and those are the ones that uh everybody
03:53
the caricature that everybody thinks of
03:55
when you think of muslims that
03:57
is just a little minority within the
03:58
muslim world there's fundamentalist
04:00
jewish people there's fundamentalist
04:02
atheists
04:03
you know there's there's fundamentalists
04:05
of all sorts so could you define
04:07
fundamental
04:08
fundamentalism for us kyle sure so in
04:11
the
04:12
the christian context or i should say
04:14
the christian american context maybe
04:16
fundamentalism has a kind of specific
04:18
historical meaning
04:20
which is not always what people intend
04:22
when they use
04:23
the word so if you were to look up just
04:25
in a dictionary
04:26
fundamentalist you'd see something like
04:28
the following
04:29
a strict adherence to biblical
04:32
literalism
04:34
and maybe some isolationist social
04:37
tendencies
04:38
and the reason for that is because
04:41
around the early 20th century
04:43
in the united states there was a
04:45
movement that came to be called
04:47
fundamentalism and the reason that it
04:49
came to be called fundamentalism is
04:51
because of
04:52
a specific book or a set of essays that
04:54
were published
04:56
in about 1910 called the fundamentals
05:00
and then it had this fun tagline a
05:01
testimony to the truth
05:03
uh so it gives you an idea of how
05:05
seriously they took themselves
05:06
yep this this set of essays was
05:10
by some pretty conservative evangelical
05:14
biblical scholars who took a very
05:17
literalist very kind of narrow
05:20
reading of the bible particularly
05:22
certain parts of the bible
05:25
strong inerrantists that kind of thing
05:27
probably a reaction against the
05:28
enlightenment
05:29
yeah yeah and ended up taking some
05:31
pretty strong stances against
05:34
liberal theology against
05:37
what we what scholars would call the
05:39
historical critical method
05:41
of biblical interpretation which means
05:44
you're treating the text of the bible
05:46
scientifically
05:47
and you're trying to study it like you
05:49
would study any other
05:50
ancient text they don't they don't
05:53
approach it from a perspective of faith
05:55
biblical scholars they approach it from
05:56
a perspective of
05:58
historians or sort of secular
06:00
scholarship
06:01
and that set of essays the fundamentals
06:05
was really influential and it ended up
06:07
creating or at least spearheading this
06:10
movement within american christianity
06:13
away from
06:14
certain expert consensus on several
06:17
issues so
06:18
things like the origin of the universe
06:21
how old is how old is the physical
06:23
universe or
06:25
human sexuality or um i mean
06:29
various political issues you name it
06:31
there's all sorts of these issues that
06:33
secular experts had sort of formed
06:35
consensuses about in the environment and
06:37
what's happening to it etc
06:39
and this group of evangelicals viewed
06:42
those expert consensuses as being
06:44
in tension with or in contradiction with
06:47
their reading of the bible
06:48
and so they sort of battened down the
06:50
hatches
06:51
and became kind of insular and then this
06:54
movement picked up a lot of political
06:56
steam
06:57
and we could do a whole episode on in
06:59
fact we will do a whole episode on on
07:01
evangelicalism and
07:02
how some of that worked out and so in
07:04
the sort of historical american context
07:07
that's what
07:07
it means to be a fundamentalist it's to
07:09
be a certain kind of evangelical in that
07:13
particular tradition but the word gets
07:16
used differently
07:17
and often the word means no more than
07:20
somebody that i disagree with
07:22
it's used as a pejorative or abusive
07:24
term
07:25
so a philosopher that i admire named
07:28
alvin plantinga
07:29
one time he's trying to define
07:31
fundamentalism
07:32
and he said often the word just means
07:34
something like
07:36
ignorant son of a bitch someone whose
07:38
opinions are somewhere to the right of
07:40
my own
07:41
is what fundamentalism often means and
07:43
we want to i think
07:44
both of us would agree we want to avoid
07:46
that kind we don't want to use it in an
07:48
abusive way
07:48
right because we identify with the
07:50
community we we say
07:52
we were fundamentalists and it wasn't
07:54
because i was an ignorant of the bitch
07:57
there were some good reasons why i was
07:58
and there's also some really good
07:59
reasons why i'm not
08:01
anymore so when we use the term
08:03
fundamentalist we mean something like
08:05
the following
08:07
a a christian who is uh pretty
08:10
conservative in their theology and who
08:14
leans very heavily on a very strict
08:17
literalist
08:18
reading of the bible and who
08:22
approaches that in a somewhat dogmatic
08:24
way which means
08:27
they need it to be true they need it to
08:30
be
08:31
um that interpretation of the scripture
08:34
is the
08:34
the correct one and all competing
08:37
interpretations
08:38
are somehow dangerous or untrustworthy
08:41
yeah
08:41
so that that's the kind of context we
08:43
came out of and i think that's what we
08:45
mean
08:45
when we talk about fundamentalism yep
08:48
yeah i mean uh as we talk about how we
08:51
use the term fundamentalist
08:52
um i do currently use fundamentalists as
08:55
a as a derogatory pejorative
08:57
word but i grew up in a fundamentalist
08:59
family and still have close family
09:00
members who are fundamentalists and who
09:02
would
09:02
consider themselves fundamentalist and
09:04
don't see it as a dirty word i remember
09:06
exactly where i was
09:07
sitting with a close family member who i
09:09
love and we're talking about faith and
09:11
we normally don't talk about faith
09:12
because it's a potentially volatile
09:14
thing and
09:14
talking about faith a little bit and i
09:17
asked
09:18
this family member if they would
09:19
consider themselves a fundamentalist
09:22
thinking it's a dirty word and they said
09:24
actually yeah
09:25
and i like the idea of being a
09:27
fundamentalist because a fundamentalist
09:30
stands on the fundamentals of the faith
09:32
and at that moment i was both
09:35
surprised because it's not a attractive
09:38
term for me but also
09:40
kind of impressed that like actually i i
09:43
do stand on the fundamentals and
09:45
unfortunately that inherently means that
09:47
i don't because i'm not a fundamentalist
09:49
you know um
09:50
but we can get into that later but sure
09:52
not all definitions of it are
09:54
are awful i'd love to hear
09:57
your story kyle of what your journey
10:01
in fundamentalism looked like yeah uh
10:04
when i was a kid i've been in church my
10:06
whole life
10:06
um i was raised in the rural
10:09
south kentucky which we consider at the
10:12
south people in mississippi probably
10:13
don't but
10:14
in kentucky listen to you i mean you're
10:17
in the south
10:18
you're from uh and uh so i was raised in
10:23
a church denomination which and i didn't
10:26
realize this until much later
10:28
was actually a fairly liberal
10:29
denomination but it was in the rural
10:32
south
10:32
and there aren't any liberals in the
10:34
rural south so
10:36
uh it was the disciples of christ
10:38
denomination if anyone is familiar with
10:39
that
10:40
and they they tend to be like if you go
10:43
to their
10:44
uh general conference or whatever you'd
10:46
be around some people who are pretty
10:48
theologically liberal and so our pastor
10:50
was trained in that denomination and so
10:52
his own personal views weren't
10:54
necessarily very conservative or
10:55
fundamentalist
10:57
but a lot of the people in the
10:58
congregation certainly were
11:00
just because of geography and my father
11:03
was definitely one of those people
11:05
and so i you know as a child was very
11:07
happy in this congregation i didn't know
11:09
anything about how it differed from any
11:10
other kind of
11:11
theological outlook all i knew was we
11:13
take communion every week
11:14
and everybody can take communion and
11:16
that's the whole that's their whole
11:18
shtick
11:18
and over time my father became less and
11:21
less
11:22
okay with that he became more and more
11:26
conservative largely as a result of
11:28
listening to
11:30
certain radio preachers and biblical
11:33
scholars
11:34
i should i just try to guess radio
11:36
preacher that was was it john mcarthur
11:39
not him specifically but i think he was
11:42
in the
11:43
the sort of group of people actually a
11:45
guy is one of those like
11:47
uh biblical prophecy guys named chuck
11:50
missler
11:50
he had a radio program that my dad
11:52
really liked and my dad had the scofield
11:54
study bible which is this
11:56
uh this very dispensationalist kind of
11:59
take on the scripture
12:00
so you know it gives you the answer to
12:02
any question you might have while you're
12:03
reading it and you just look in the
12:04
footnote and it tells you what it means
12:06
so you know he got really into this and
12:09
gradually
12:10
was less and less comfortable at the
12:11
church we were at and so we
12:14
shifted over to southern baptist he
12:16
remains to this day
12:18
a kind of fundamentalist i didn't think
12:20
much of it i didn't
12:21
really know any better to me that just
12:22
was christianity because i came of age
12:25
in that environment and when you're in
12:28
fundamentalism you don't realize that it
12:30
is fundamentalism it's just
12:32
the church i didn't even think to
12:33
question it much really until i got to
12:35
college
12:36
and as happens to many people in college
12:38
you take a few classes and
12:40
your professors say things inevitably
12:42
that our intention with
12:45
your religious upbringing what your
12:47
pastors
12:48
believe maybe they even say things that
12:49
your pastors warned you they might say
12:52
and i was always interested in being
12:54
able to
12:55
know the truth about things and be able
12:57
to explain why i believe things and so
13:00
it really didn't take long for my own
13:02
religious fundamentalism to
13:04
fall apart realize pretty quickly that
13:06
some of the doctrines they seem to care
13:08
a lot about that their
13:10
explanations of those things did not
13:12
stand up to scrutiny
13:15
and so that was the beginning of the end
13:17
of my fundamentalism
13:19
yep yep yeah for me
13:22
um i grew up in a house with a lutheran
13:25
dad and a baptist mom
13:27
and both were both sides of the family
13:30
were fundamentalists in their own way
13:32
the baptist side
13:33
particularly fundamentalist and so i
13:36
mean i grew up in the house where we
13:37
were literally
13:39
driving to school and we'd be singing
13:41
this is the day
13:42
this is the day that the lord has made i
13:46
mean we would do it in round it
13:47
makes me throw up in my mouth just
13:48
thinking about it but also
13:50
warms me strangely so i mean i grew up
13:53
in a world where i was i would
13:55
my cartoons were super book was the old
13:57
testament stories in the flying house
13:59
was
14:00
the new testament stories and i learned
14:02
the bible and
14:04
from third grade on i went to a
14:05
christian school and so i never was
14:07
educated into the way of
14:09
evolution and had to confront that
14:12
reality
14:13
creation was science to me
14:16
and uh i i had a very narrow
14:20
sheltered world view i remember sitting
14:22
in our living room growing up i was
14:24
probably 11 or 12 years old and
14:25
the local news had a story about some
14:28
gay men who were protesting something
14:30
and i still remember these men chanting
14:32
we're here
14:33
we're queer we're not going away and i
14:36
remember being
14:37
scared shitless to be honest with you i
14:40
didn't know what to do with this idea of
14:42
homosexuality and i remember my parents
14:45
reacting
14:46
in some violent ways and angry ways and
14:49
just had no space for it
14:51
and that was my upbringing i just had a
14:53
very black and white world
14:54
where god created the world and bible is
14:57
literal and
14:58
is what it says and uh is a very us in
15:01
them world
15:02
that we lived in the world was scary and
15:05
the
15:05
non-followers of jesus were seen as just
15:08
dirty
15:09
don't want to be around them that was my
15:12
world
15:12
very fearful and scary and small and
15:15
judgmental
15:16
and uh delicate extremely delicate
15:20
um and it all kind of broke further down
15:22
the road
15:23
yeah let's uh let's let's bring elliott
15:27
into this conversation producer slash
15:30
creative partner genius
15:34
genius yeah because you you as well have
15:38
uh your former fundamentalists so
15:42
you have a lot to contribute here what
15:44
was your experience there like
15:46
if i if i spin my chair from producer
15:49
mode and think about my
15:51
religious upbringing actually producer
15:52
isn't far off from that either
15:54
you know it was it was about being as
15:56
being a certain thing and having a
15:58
certain
15:59
output to my faith which really was was
16:01
just about how
16:02
um how how i looked how our family
16:05
looked my dad was the pastor of the
16:06
evangelical free church in a small
16:08
northwoods wisconsin town of 1200 people
16:11
so
16:11
something that's a part of
16:13
fundamentalism already this appearance
16:15
that needs to be maintained
16:16
if you put that in the small town
16:17
context is amplified that much more and
16:19
so
16:20
i was leading worship as soon as
16:23
i was old enough and part of our youth
16:25
group and trying to invite people and
16:26
leading see you at the poll at the high
16:28
school
16:28
and bible studies and these are just the
16:30
things that as a lund
16:32
our family did this and i don't say that
16:34
to dishonor that upbringing at all it
16:36
actually was a
16:37
the biblical truth and the grounding
16:39
that's part of the foundation that i
16:40
still have but i realized looking back
16:41
that this was
16:42
almost like this manicured lawn of faith
16:45
with no unknowns and nothing that hadn't
16:47
been
16:48
considered and put in its place and so
16:50
as i stepped outside of that
16:52
my fundamentalism began to show some
16:54
cracks and that was because
16:56
i had never been around people who love
16:58
jesus
16:59
and also would swear like sometimes for
17:03
fun
17:04
or or would drink or smoke or do these
17:06
things that
17:07
like around the the lunch dinner table
17:09
these were bad things like for people
17:10
who weren't following the lord
17:12
as opposed to us and so to see
17:16
people who who i wanted to be like that
17:19
really started to break me down and
17:20
people didn't
17:21
necessarily have to act the same way
17:23
that i had always been taught to act
17:25
in order to be jesus followers and
17:28
and so that was my experience with
17:31
fundamentalism and how it started to
17:33
break down for me
17:34
so this question is directed at both of
17:37
you
17:37
was there a particular form of
17:40
disruption
17:41
was there a particular experience or a
17:44
particular conversation or something
17:45
like that that started to
17:47
crumble the house of cards so to speak
17:49
for for myself it was more of a gradual
17:51
progression of a lot of really small
17:53
things i realized for example that
17:55
creationism was not scientific and you
17:58
know i realized all these things
18:00
um and gradually came to understand that
18:02
the kind of experts that my community
18:04
had appealed to weren't really experts
18:06
and
18:07
over a long period of time and several
18:09
other experiences that we can
18:10
talk more about i just gradually came to
18:13
realize
18:14
i wasn't a fundamentalist anymore but it
18:16
was never like a single intentional
18:18
decision
18:19
what was that process like for for you
18:21
guys yeah it was definitely a process
18:23
but there's a few milestone moments that
18:26
that define that
18:27
one was just getting out of the
18:29
baptistery lutheran church and getting
18:30
into a little bit more of a
18:32
um i don't know it was very evangelical
18:37
but still
18:37
more open reality in in world view in
18:40
the church that i was
18:42
a part of in college and wanted to be a
18:44
pastor discovered i wanted to be a
18:46
pastor but within that
18:47
would have a drink every once in a while
18:48
because friends would and didn't feel
18:50
bad about it
18:51
and felt like i had to hide that from my
18:53
family and
18:54
journey from smoking cigars to clothes
18:56
to cigarettes and then got addicted and
18:58
didn't feel terrible about it actually
19:01
you know but i had to
19:02
hide it even though my mom knew the
19:04
whole time
19:05
but the biggest thing that really sucked
19:09
me out of that fundamentalism was
19:10
working at a restaurant where i was the
19:12
only christian person there and my
19:14
bubble was burst i just didn't know what
19:16
to do with all these people
19:17
who were just the furthest thing from
19:19
what i grew up in but they would just
19:20
happen to be amazing people insulted the
19:24
earth people who partied hard
19:25
but they were amazing beautiful people i
19:27
remember having my
19:29
my my world shaken when a gal who was a
19:32
server we got off at the same time on a
19:34
friday night and she said hey randy you
19:35
want to go have a drink
19:37
and internally i was like what a girl
19:40
wants to have a drink with me she must
19:41
be hitting on me
19:43
turns out she just wanted to hang out
19:45
she's a cool
19:46
cool girl the other thing the other
19:49
person that shaped that for me was this
19:51
guy named brad who
19:52
was very obviously gay the first time
19:54
you talked to him you know that he's gay
19:56
and i had no experience with gay people
19:58
i thought that they all had hiv and that
20:00
maybe if i got
20:01
into too close of contact with brad i
20:03
might get hiv myself
20:05
i started there and then observed what a
20:08
beautiful amazing person brad was and
20:09
became
20:10
great friends with him and then i
20:13
remember this moment where we
20:14
after a shift went and had martinis and
20:17
talked about him and his sexuality and
20:20
his world and me and my world and my
20:21
understanding and
20:22
he was gracious enough to let me ask
20:24
asking questions like
20:26
has he always been gay and when did he
20:27
find out and if he could choose to not
20:29
be gay would he
20:30
not be gay and his frustrations with how
20:33
hard it is to settle down
20:35
and have a family and that's all he
20:36
wants to do that's what he dreams about
20:38
and
20:38
talking about uh his struggle with the
20:41
culture and all sorts of things and it
20:42
just
20:43
in that one night of a couple of
20:46
martinis in a conversation with
20:48
brad my world just melted and it went
20:51
from black and white
20:52
to colorful and confusing
20:56
but rich and complex it went from simple
20:59
cut and dry to anything but that really
21:03
was a catalyst for bringing me out of
21:04
fundamentals i'm seeing that
21:06
the world isn't as simple and nice and
21:09
neat and concise
21:10
as i was raised to think it is and i
21:12
thank god for that moment
21:15
elliot how about you there was a point
21:18
where i realized that fundamentalism
21:20
wasn't going to be
21:21
a big enough place for me to live
21:24
happily and healthfully
21:26
and it was actually a moment in our
21:27
marriage where we were already going
21:29
through a lot
21:30
but i think we were just sitting and
21:31
watching like some
21:33
sad movie like where the red fern grows
21:35
or something
21:36
and i just i grace turned to me my wife
21:39
turned to me and said do you not feel
21:40
this at all
21:42
there's something wrong with you if
21:43
you're if you're not able to feel that
21:44
and i wasn't and i
21:45
and it was through other scenarios as
21:48
well realizing i just wasn't able to
21:49
feel anything
21:50
and it was because of this um
21:55
this weight of shame that that actually
21:58
bridged back to this fundamentalism
22:01
it was being able to know truth and to
22:04
have this responsibility for defending
22:06
truth looking out at the world that i
22:07
had also applied to myself
22:09
in the form of of self-judgment
22:12
self-loathing at
22:14
any any sin or things that i perceived
22:16
as
22:17
being against god's will and and so in
22:19
that pain i had just
22:21
shut down and realized this is the world
22:23
i was living in even relationally not
22:25
being able to connect not being able to
22:27
feel
22:28
not only the shame but the joy of
22:31
connection
22:31
and um and the sadness that's
22:34
appropriate
22:35
in order to grieve with those who are
22:36
grieving and so i just turned that all
22:39
off and
22:40
that wound up being the kind of the
22:42
catalyst to
22:43
some work personally you know honestly
22:45
doing
22:46
going through counseling and starting to
22:48
peel back these layers it's not
22:49
something you would right away associate
22:51
with
22:52
fundamentalism but the judgmentalism
22:56
that comes with fundamentalism
22:58
had been so destructive inside of me
23:01
that it had caused some serious damage
23:03
and that was the world that i needed to
23:05
fix
23:07
it just happened to also involve
23:09
dismantling
23:10
uh that judgmental stance towards the
23:13
world and towards myself
23:15
yep you mentioned elliott which a good
23:18
fundamentalist or recovering
23:19
fundamentalist would
23:21
truth right and i've got
23:25
okay i've got a bone to pick with
23:27
fundamentalists in
23:28
in many ways but here's here's the bone
23:30
to pick i want to talk about now
23:32
is this this notion that fundamentalists
23:36
care more about truth than any other
23:39
branch of christianity
23:42
first of all i think fundamentalists
23:45
idolize truth over and above
23:48
god in many ways fundamentalism idolizes
23:51
the scriptures because they
23:53
call the scriptures truth and and it's a
23:56
member of the holy trinity which is in
23:58
completely unhealthy but secondly
24:00
fundamentals kind of feel like we have
24:03
the we are passionate about truth we
24:05
have the truth we own it we know what it
24:06
is we
24:07
we are protectors of truth
24:10
when really what we find in the
24:13
scriptures
24:14
is jesus is the fullest revelation of
24:16
who god is
24:17
and jesus himself said that i am the
24:20
truth the truth is a person the truth is
24:22
not a
24:23
a bunch of ideas the truth is not a
24:25
literal interpretation of the scriptures
24:27
the truth is not a guidebook
24:29
and a statement of faith on the church
24:30
on a church website i'm getting a little
24:32
preachy here
24:33
but actually the truth is a person and
24:36
his name is jesus
24:37
for for any uh philosophy types that
24:40
might be listening and your hackles are
24:42
going up at this usage of the word truth
24:44
uh fear not we are going to do an
24:46
episode on uh
24:48
truth specifically so stay tuned
24:51
piggybacking on your soapbox a little
24:53
bit it was specifically the desire to
24:56
know what is true that led me out of
24:59
fundamentals how about that you know i
25:00
mean it was
25:02
uh scrutinizing the assumptions
25:05
that had been given to me and
25:06
scrutinizing the arguments
25:08
for particular doctrines and points of
25:10
view
25:11
that ultimately led me to conclude that
25:14
this was not a sufficient foundation for
25:16
a religious faith
25:17
eventually anyway that and having a
25:19
really good
25:20
mentor figure who modeled for me
25:24
what a different kind of christianity
25:26
could look like i had a
25:28
good friend of mine still to this day
25:30
named hl hussman who is a pastor now
25:33
in louisville shout out to hl hey hey uh
25:36
daylight church google it check it out
25:38
and he even though
25:40
he was a little more conservative than
25:41
me and kind of still is to this day
25:43
definitely showed me that there was
25:46
there was an alternative to
25:48
either fundamentalism or atheism because
25:52
there was you know there was a point and
25:53
you guys probably experienced something
25:55
like this too
25:56
eventually you reach a point where
25:58
you're ready to chuck the whole thing
26:00
and if i didn't have a good model for
26:02
what an alternative could look like i
26:03
might have
26:05
chucked the whole thing but he and a few
26:07
other people
26:08
modeled for me like look you can be
26:11
passionately invested in this and also
26:13
simultaneously admit that you're unsure
26:16
about some stuff yeah and not pretend
26:18
that you're 100
26:19
certain about everything all the time
26:20
and that as a matter of fact a sincere
26:22
religious faith doesn't need to be a
26:24
hundred percent
26:25
certain about everything all the time
26:27
and we can have serious conversations
26:28
and serious disagreements and still
26:31
uh love each other through them and
26:32
share a religious experience together
26:35
if i hadn't had that i might not have
26:37
stayed stayed around at all
26:39
yeah thank you lord for hl i mean i i
26:41
can say pastorally
26:43
um you know i've been pastoring for
26:46
shoot i don't know 13 14 years and i've
26:49
walked through
26:51
countless faith journeys with people who
26:53
are faith
26:54
crises with people who grew up
26:57
fundamentalist
26:58
and were introduced to the wrong or
27:01
maybe even the right person who caused
27:03
them to question
27:04
their view on the scriptures or
27:06
contradictions in the scriptures
27:07
or whatever science confronted them in a
27:11
in a jarring way whatever it might be
27:13
and they had a little doubt doubt snuck
27:15
into their process
27:16
into their faith journey and they had no
27:19
idea what to do with it
27:22
because they they've been groomed in
27:23
this world of fundamentalism that says
27:26
if one thing isn't true the whole
27:30
house falls apart that is a really
27:33
really dangerous kind of faith to give a
27:36
person
27:37
because the world is just not that black
27:38
and white and in
27:40
in cut and dry and it's frustrated me
27:42
endlessly
27:43
journeying with people and by
27:45
frustrating me i mean
27:46
also like i just love him so much i just
27:49
want to be like
27:50
you don't have to freak out if the bible
27:54
isn't absolutely literal you don't have
27:56
to freak out if inerrancy
27:58
actually doesn't work out because jesus
28:01
is still
28:02
alive for crying out loud
28:05
so that's that's a a fatal flaw to
28:08
fundamentalism to me
28:10
is i don't want to pass down to my kids
28:12
a faith
28:13
that is so delicate that if one little
28:15
thing is out of whack about it and they
28:17
they kind of look under the covers and
28:19
it isn't there
28:20
that the whole thing falls apart yeah in
28:22
some ways i think this is
28:24
a justified fear that a lot of
28:27
fundamentalists have
28:29
it seems to me there's a there's an
28:30
insecurity at the the root of this
28:33
approach to religious faith and
28:36
that there's something right about it in
28:38
the sense that
28:40
once you start to question it in that
28:42
way
28:43
yes you might actually be led down a
28:45
trajectory or you begin to question
28:47
all of those other things i was down
28:50
that trajectory
28:51
and whatever form of faith you end up
28:54
with
28:55
will be a fundamentally different kind
28:56
of thing than what you started with
28:58
and to that extent the fundamentalists
29:00
are correct
29:02
to be afraid of that but you know at the
29:05
end of the day like
29:06
either you trust that god is able to
29:09
handle that kind of doubt
29:11
or not either you trust that
29:14
reality really does reflect uh your
29:17
belief system
29:19
or not and if you if you do really trust
29:22
that then
29:22
you know follow the argument where it
29:24
leads and wherever you end up is going
29:25
to be a place that
29:26
is still compatible with communion with
29:29
that god
29:30
yeah that's good so let me ask
29:33
where where would you say how would you
29:35
describe your faith journey now
29:37
at this point in time i started with a
29:40
really long list of things that i was
29:42
sure of
29:43
in my faith and
29:47
i thought that's the way it was supposed
29:48
to be but over time it's actually become
29:51
a much shorter and shorter list as i've
29:53
started to realize
29:55
what the actual i mean it's ironic is
29:57
what's
29:58
what's actually fundamental to faith in
30:01
this triune god
30:03
and it's it's not a certain
30:05
eschatological view
30:07
and it's not a certain way even of
30:10
of seeing the the creation narrative or
30:14
um or or of interpreting how
30:18
how we should be on mission in the world
30:20
it's
30:21
understanding that there is a creator
30:23
god
30:24
who sent his son to save us from sin
30:27
and and now we get to be with him in
30:30
life
30:31
and that's kind of the only thing that
30:34
i've been able to cling to through this
30:35
and there are other things that i
30:36
actually hope are going to come back
30:37
into phase
30:39
that i'm going to be able to to once
30:40
again feel sure of but that doesn't feel
30:42
like a journey that can be rushed right
30:44
now it's been
30:45
more appropriate to to sit back and and
30:48
hold loosely and let the ground shift
30:50
so yeah i really i hope to be able to
30:53
continue
30:53
in this faith in in in god and to have
30:57
that type of trust
30:59
but i guess i guess to have that type of
31:01
trust requires
31:03
a loose holding of it as something that
31:05
doesn't have to be coddled or protected
31:07
and that's much more the stance i've
31:09
taken now than
31:10
when i needed to protect that the house
31:13
of cards
31:14
from uh from getting bumped it's good
31:18
for me um if i had to describe the state
31:21
of my faith
31:22
currently it would be something like
31:27
a deep fascination with
31:30
agape and agape is the
31:34
one of the greek words for love and
31:36
specifically in the new testament it's
31:38
the word that is used for divine love
31:40
the kind of love that god has for the
31:43
people
31:43
that he made the kind of love that jesus
31:46
has for
31:47
his enemies even while they hate him and
31:50
torture him and crucify him nonetheless
31:52
he loves them
31:54
and this is really what has sustained me
31:57
as a religious person is the fascination
31:59
with understanding and experiencing this
32:02
kind of love
32:03
and if i'm just totally honest totally
32:05
transparent at this point
32:06
in my religious journey i'm pretty
32:09
ambivalent about the rest of it
32:12
ambivalent in the sense of being like
32:14
torn in in
32:15
multiple directions sometimes to the
32:18
extent that i
32:19
sincerely doubt many of the things that
32:21
are probably on
32:22
elliot's list of fundamentals did you
32:25
know did jesus
32:26
really rise from the dead is there
32:28
anything after
32:30
this life does god even exist that kind
32:32
of stuff
32:34
tuesdays i'm pretty sure friday's not so
32:36
much and the thing that really keeps me
32:38
going
32:39
is this this really
32:43
deep sincere fascination almost an
32:45
addiction to understanding
32:47
whether that kind of love is possible if
32:50
we can
32:51
practice it if we can learn it where
32:54
it's available
32:55
and i've had a few like a handful of
32:57
experiences in my life that you might
32:59
call
33:00
mystical or contemplative or something
33:02
like that
33:03
where i feel like i did experience that
33:05
kind of love and it seemed
33:07
transcendent and it seemed outside of me
33:10
and that's that's what keeps me going
33:13
and i've experienced that kind of loving
33:15
various human relationships as well um
33:18
and it
33:19
i at the end of the day my faith at this
33:21
point is a combination of
33:24
sincere doubt but also sincere
33:27
hopefulness
33:29
that the world really is as described in
33:32
the new testament
33:34
and and when i can't bring myself to
33:35
believe that it is
33:37
i rest on the hope that it might be how
33:40
about you randy
33:41
as my faith has evolved which it
33:44
certainly has
33:45
with each evolution jesus
33:48
hasn't diminished he's just gotten
33:50
better
33:52
my view of god of the divine has gotten
33:55
fuller and richer and bigger
33:57
the love of god has gotten
34:00
deeper and deeper and deeper and i feel
34:02
challenged by it so for me
34:04
is my faith has evolved and grown it's
34:07
rooted me more in jesus than
34:11
my first simple self
34:20
so let me ask this as we've talked about
34:23
where we are
34:24
and how do we deal with an ever
34:28
evolving faith journey kyle what do you
34:31
think is a healthy way to
34:34
engage with god or hold our faith
34:36
journey
34:37
in a really mature healthy way that's
34:39
going to bring life
34:43
yeah so let me start answering this
34:46
question by saying
34:48
a way that i i think you should not do
34:50
it
34:52
and this is the way that i did it for
34:54
for quite a few years
34:56
and that was to try to
35:01
explore every possible avenue
35:03
intellectually
35:05
that would allow me to hold on to my
35:08
narrow interpretation of christianity
35:11
uh to the extent of reading as many
35:14
books as i could get my hands
35:16
on and engaging in as many online
35:18
arguments as i
35:20
as i needed to to try to force myself
35:24
to be as confident about my belief
35:26
system as i thought that i should be
35:29
and for a while especially if you're
35:31
clever
35:32
you can be very successful at that there
35:35
there is something to be said for
35:37
positive psychology the power of
35:38
positive thinking right
35:40
and and convincing yourself of certain
35:42
things i got
35:43
boy i got super into that and for
35:45
several years i thought it was my life
35:46
calling to be an apologist a christian
35:49
someone who you know professionally
35:51
defends
35:52
the faith but from a very intellectual
35:54
perspective marshals all the arguments
35:56
that you can to
35:57
to justify why the bible is inerrant
35:59
doesn't have any contradictions and why
36:01
each of these doctrines and our
36:02
understanding of them is
36:03
you know precisely accurate and that is
36:06
the wrong way
36:08
to go about uh recovering from
36:11
fundamentalism or something because
36:12
well there's so many dangers there and i
36:14
don't want to go into them all right now
36:15
we should have a separate discussion
36:18
about that but it's maybe the most
36:20
pernicious thing
36:22
hold timeout what does pernicious mean
36:25
yeah it's maybe the most dangerous thing
36:28
i think the most tricky
36:29
thing about certain forms you're welcome
36:32
certain forms of
36:33
particularly evangelical christian
36:35
fundamentalism
36:37
is that because it has this tool
36:40
of apologetics it gives you
36:44
kind of a framework for anticipating
36:47
and explaining away any kind of
36:50
resistant inconsistent information you
36:52
might encounter in the world
36:54
so i go to college and i take a class
36:56
and the professor says xyz
36:58
and that disagrees with what my pastor
37:00
said but
37:01
my pastor warned me that they were going
37:03
to say that and then they already gave
37:05
me a reading list
37:07
you know just in case they say this here
37:10
is what you should say
37:11
or here's how you should interpret it so
37:13
that your mind is never actually focused
37:15
on
37:15
getting an education or learning what
37:17
the expert has to teach you
37:19
it's focused on refutation and holding
37:21
on to your prior point of view
37:23
and that that's the way i i went about
37:25
it personally
37:26
and that was deeply destructive
37:29
for me a healthier approach
37:33
has been to focus first on
37:37
relationships with people
37:41
and trying to form mature
37:45
healthy loving relationships
37:48
with appropriate boundaries and all of
37:50
that and letting
37:52
the religious agreement stuff
37:56
play second fiddle to that
37:59
and it's not that it's not in the
38:01
picture ever
38:02
it is because if you're a religious
38:05
person and you're going to have a deep
38:07
friendship or a deep romantic
38:09
relationship or a deep family
38:11
relationship with someone
38:14
being religious is part of who you are
38:16
and that's going to have to come into
38:17
play eventually so it's not that it's
38:19
you know it's not that we bracketed it
38:20
out altogether it's that it's no longer
38:24
the most important thing it's not given
38:27
primary place anymore and we don't
38:28
approach it as though
38:30
if we don't agree about this it's the
38:32
end of the goddamn world
38:34
we approach it as though uh agreement
38:37
about this is secondary to us
38:39
actually having a loving relationship
38:41
with one another because we both agree
38:44
that probably god cares a little more
38:45
about that than he cares about us
38:46
agreeing about how old the earth is or
38:48
whatever
38:49
um so that's that's the kind of general
38:51
approach that i've developed
38:53
to this sort of thing and what i've
38:55
found interestingly
38:56
is that when you approach the
38:58
relationship first
39:00
the other stuff becomes a lot more
39:02
manageable
39:04
the disagreements that might be
39:05
inevitable now take place in the context
39:09
of trust and we're willing to listen to
39:12
one another
39:13
in a way that we wouldn't have been if
39:15
the entry
39:16
into the relationship was let's
39:19
you know hash all this out immediately
39:21
that's good it's really good
39:23
how do we see god in our faith journey
39:26
in a healthy way i would say first of
39:27
all for me
39:29
it looks like my faith journey is not
39:31
something that needs to be protected
39:34
it's something that should be enjoyed
39:36
that's a very
39:37
fundamentally different perspective on
39:40
my faith journey
39:41
another one is that it's a dangerous
39:43
thing to think that i've arrived at
39:44
truth
39:45
the scriptures are authoritative to me
39:48
but to think that i've arrived at truth
39:50
and i have a
39:52
full understanding of who god is it's a
39:54
very arrogant
39:56
position to hold rather than to say
39:59
i'm on a journey towards truth that i'm
40:01
going to be on for the rest of my life
40:03
and i'll never arrive until i stand
40:05
before
40:06
truth and look him in the eyes when i
40:08
when i see jesus
40:11
so thinking back over um everything
40:14
we've said about our journeys out of
40:16
fundamentalism i know all of us still
40:18
have family members and good friends who
40:21
are fundamentalists who are still very
40:23
much in it some of them struggling with
40:25
it some of them
40:26
proud of it how how should we relate
40:29
to these people do we consign them to
40:33
the you know trash bin of history
40:35
they're just behind the times and
40:38
uh they're a minority and so we're just
40:40
going to move on without them
40:42
do we view them as the other the you
40:45
know the
40:46
the enemy to be fought and defeated
40:49
or is there a better alternative
40:52
so how have you guys approached this
40:54
personally with respect to
40:55
fundamentalists that you're still in
40:57
relationship with um
41:00
all sorts of ways basically i have
41:03
confined them to the trash heap of
41:04
history and i have
41:05
just tried to ignore the fundamentalists
41:08
and done all sorts of things but then
41:09
i go back to what you said kyle in the
41:11
beginning of um
41:12
your where your faith journey is and you
41:15
said it's this obsession with an
41:17
addiction to
41:18
agape love and then that begins to
41:20
challenge me again
41:22
because if god is love and if jesus the
41:25
fullest expression of who jesus is
41:27
is agape love then i have to choose to
41:31
love
41:31
my family members who are
41:32
fundamentalists i don't get a choice in
41:34
that
41:34
actually and um and that's helpful it's
41:38
it's easier for me to love my family
41:40
because your family is something that
41:41
you
41:41
you know you can say no to but man
41:44
that's hard to do
41:45
my family is my family and so i don't
41:48
have a ton of
41:48
fundamentalist friends because you can
41:50
choose
41:52
pick and choose your friends and i don't
41:53
choose a whole lot of fundamentalist
41:54
friends
41:55
but the fact that my family i can still
41:57
love them and i can still appreciate
41:59
them and i can still see beauty in them
42:00
even though i disagree
42:02
fundamentally with their fundamentalist
42:04
beliefs tells me that maybe i should
42:06
open my world up a little bit more to
42:08
people who
42:09
i see as having a smaller more confined
42:12
faith
42:12
journey than myself that i condescend
42:15
upon you know and i've been
42:16
condescending through this
42:18
uh podcast it checks me a little bit and
42:20
says i don't know if that's what agape
42:22
love looks like
42:23
agape love probably looks like making
42:25
room and space for people who i disagree
42:27
with in
42:28
in in just finding the beauty in them a
42:31
little bit more now i know this is a
42:32
really pastoral churchy
42:34
answer but um i think this is a more
42:36
christ-like answer
42:38
and sometimes that looks like not
42:39
talking about things like politics or
42:41
faith
42:41
and that's best that's choosing love
42:43
that's choosing
42:45
a person over my agenda and loving a
42:47
person for who they are rather than what
42:49
they
42:50
do or don't believe in choosing to see
42:52
the beauty in them so
42:53
that's my reality is i have
42:55
relationships that i just can't go there
42:57
with because it's not constructive
43:00
i won't love them as much as i as i
43:02
would as if we just don't go there
43:04
and hopefully i hope and pray that we
43:06
will get to a point where we can talk
43:08
about that in a generous loving fashion
43:10
but not right now we can't and that's
43:13
that's okay for me
43:14
and it's actually enhanced our
43:15
relationship and given me a way forward
43:18
so that's how i do it or how i try to i
43:21
should say
43:22
it's not that easy
43:26
yeah it seems like often words aren't
43:28
the right way to get this across
43:30
to to break down fundamentalism it's uh
43:33
it's
43:34
more so uh yeah living it out in
43:37
in a way that that shows a better way
43:39
and so it's it's looked different ways
43:41
with different people but
43:42
it just feels like something that needs
43:44
to be shown
43:45
rather than told yeah that that's
43:48
excellent um
43:49
so that really dovetails with with my
43:51
approach to this as well
43:53
or i should say my ideal approach to
43:54
this because there's the way that i
43:55
would like it to go and then there's the
43:57
way that it
43:58
sometimes often does go the way that it
44:00
sometimes does go is we have a weird
44:02
argument on
44:03
facebook and then we don't talk to you
44:04
oh facebook um
44:06
there's a lot of avoidance right i mean
44:07
in some of my relationships it's gotten
44:09
to the place where
44:10
uh kind of a conscious decision uh if
44:13
we're going to continue to enjoy each
44:15
other's company
44:16
issue x just doesn't come up and
44:18
sometimes i think that's where you have
44:20
to go
44:21
that can be the most responsible
44:23
decision to make
44:24
given the dynamics of a relationship but
44:27
for me it's not ideal
44:29
and so how i think about the ideal
44:31
there's some philosophy for you if
44:33
you're if you're ready for this
44:35
so a philosopher named soren kierkegaard
44:39
talks about a concept that he calls
44:41
indirect discourse
44:43
and this is a way of communicating
44:45
without saying directly
44:46
what it is that you want the other
44:47
person to believe or understand
44:50
and for him it's really bound up with
44:52
his whole approach to philosophy
44:54
he wrote under pseudonyms most of the
44:57
time
44:58
so most of the works that we have of
44:59
kierkegaard are under different names
45:02
and sometimes he will say things in one
45:04
work that will directly contradict
45:05
something he says in another work and
45:07
sometimes in the same book
45:08
even he'll write under different names
45:10
and argue back and forth
45:11
with these characters and so it's very
45:13
hard to pin down major issue in kicker
45:15
card scholarship is
45:16
what the hell did kierkegaard think
45:18
about anything um and
45:20
but he does this very intentionally
45:23
because he believes his view of faith
45:25
is that you cannot get to christian
45:28
faith
45:29
intellectually it's not possible he was
45:32
an anti-apologist before there was ever
45:34
such a thing as
45:35
evangelical apologetics uh the your
45:39
reason is gonna
45:40
only ever get in the way of you having
45:42
the encounter with god
45:44
that is necessary for sincere christian
45:47
faith
45:47
and so if you're going to lead somebody
45:49
to that kind of encounter and
45:51
let's be honest when we're dealing with
45:54
our
45:54
fundamentalist friends and family that's
45:57
what we're doing
45:58
i mean our hope anyway i think
46:01
is that we want them to experience what
46:04
we experienced
46:05
to use another philosophical metaphor
46:08
leaving the cave
46:09
and seeing the sunshine and figuring out
46:12
what
46:13
a freer more sophisticated faith can be
46:15
like we want that for them too
46:18
but approaching that intellectually
46:21
you know shooting arguments at them
46:23
trying to get them to see
46:25
that their position is irrational
46:27
probably not the way to do it
46:29
and so you have to figure out a form of
46:31
communication that is indirect
46:34
and that can take a lot of different
46:35
forms and for me the form that it tends
46:37
to take
46:38
is building a relationship of trust
46:42
around whatever i can find in common
46:45
with that person even if it's just
46:47
we both like woodford reserve that could
46:50
be the whole basis
46:52
of our relationship at the beginning but
46:54
building some trust
46:55
first and then also secondarily
46:58
not having an agenda for where i need
47:02
this to go
47:04
and that that requires a lot of
47:05
self-work getting to the place where
47:08
i'm genuinely okay if this does not lead
47:11
to their conversion
47:12
if this does not lead to their departure
47:15
from fundamentalism
47:17
my goal is this relationship and
47:21
loving them well and modeling for them
47:23
what i think
47:24
christian faith looks like to me or what
47:27
i think agape looks like
47:29
and i don't need it to necessarily turn
47:31
out a certain way
47:32
and that's just something i have to work
47:34
on for myself but in my experience when
47:36
you
47:36
approach a relationship that way it's
47:39
much more likely to end up in the place
47:41
that
47:42
you would hope that it would but
47:44
indirectly
47:48
a couple of years ago i was sitting on a
47:50
beach
47:52
on a northwoods wisconsin lake just
47:54
beautiful
47:56
place and what i consider just paradise
47:59
this beautiful place and i was
48:01
on a bonfire it was probably midnight or
48:04
later and just by myself and there was
48:06
no moon and the sky was just
48:08
full of stars and i could see the milky
48:11
way everything was just brilliant
48:13
and i remember just it just took my
48:14
breath away and i remember thinking
48:17
how could i ever think that i could
48:20
wrap my hands around you
48:21
[Music]
48:23
how could i ever think that i could know
48:25
you
48:26
fully it just seemed silly in that
48:30
moment
48:30
and that was the actual i felt closer to
48:33
god in that moment than i had
48:35
in a lot of different worship
48:37
experiences or
48:39
enlightened times and that's kind of
48:42
what my journey's been like
48:44
god has just gotten bigger and better
48:46
and more beautiful
48:47
i expect that in five years my my vision
48:50
of god and my
48:51
my understanding of god is going to be
48:53
bigger and better and more beautiful i
48:54
just expect it to happen i expect it to
48:56
change
48:57
and to morph and to grow and to get
48:59
better because
49:01
god has never been more beautiful and
49:03
attractive to me
49:04
than he is right now the person of the
49:06
christ
49:08
has blown up my world and the scriptures
49:11
really are responsible for it but many
49:13
of us
49:13
just don't want to pay attention to what
49:16
the scriptures actually say
49:17
about who god is in jesus christ so
49:20
that's where i am i'm
49:22
i'm enthralled i'm all in i'm more in
49:24
than i ever have been
49:25
um and that doesn't mean i don't have
49:27
doubts or don't think that
49:29
this might i might be you know getting
49:31
paid to mislead people sometimes i think
49:33
that
49:34
but more often than not i'm just i'm all
49:37
in on jesus
49:53
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49:58
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50:00
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50:02
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50:04
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50:05
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50:07
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