7. Cody Deese: The Pastor This Moment Has Been Waiting For

I'm grateful to live here. I love America. The danger is not loving America. The danger is believing God loves America more than any other nation. That's idolatry. And Christian nationalism is not Christianity plus patriotism. It is a political ideology of white supremacy, fear, and greed with the logo of Jesus attached to it. And a part of what is happening in Revelation with John is that word Revelation is the English translation, but it's apocalypse, which is the word, which literally means unveiling. So it's like the writer's just pulling the curtain back going, I want you to see Jesus for who he actually was. And then I want you to see the empire for who it actually is. And I also want you to see how religion gets in bed with empire and how dangerous that relationship actually is. And so a part of why that book is so amazing, and I know that does sound kind of funny, like kids, let's read Revelation during this time, right? But a part of the reason that book is so dangerous is because it's giving us permission to also see through this Christian nationalism, see through this merging of the world's largest religion and American empire. And here's why the empire loves evangelicals and Christian. It's why Trump loves evangelicals. We see it. We saw it the day he held up the Bible in that square. I mean, if there was ever an image we've been given of Christian nationalism, if there was ever an image that half the world could not see through, John Patnos would be like, how can you not see this? Like this man is holding the Bible. Trump doesn't care about Christianity. Trump doesn't care about evangelicals. Trump doesn't care about the church. Trump cares about Trump. Most of us know that by now. Empire cares about empire. Empire cares about self-preservation. Empire cares about power, control, and supremacy. And empire will use whatever empire needs to use to maintain and bolster that control, and so it's really convenient to merge Christianity and the American empire because what it does is it disguises the injustice. It baptizes it, right? And the most dangerous evils are the ones convinced they are righteous. That's the most dangerous evil. And what it does is it maneuvers itself underneath this name of Jesus and it disguises itself. That's not anything new. I mean, hate will often disguise itself as love. War will often disguise itself as just. Cruelty will disguise itself as strength. Domination will disguise itself as what leadership. Idolatry will disguise itself as devotion, right? But what John is helping us see and what I think a part of our task is right now as people who care about human flourishing, I'm even eliminating Christians. It's expectations for those labeling themselves Christians, but human beings who care about universal human flourishing, I think part of our task is to keep pulling the curtain back right now and showing the world how this movement that's been labeled MAGA is using religion for its own benefit. And I want to say to everyone that even may be a little bit confused by that, just because it has the name of Christ doesn't mean it is the way of Christ. And I believe that is the call for us in this moment is to wake up and realize there are lots of things that are labeled Christian that do not, when held up, actually correlate at all to the path and teachings of Jesus at an elementary level on the Sermon on the Mount. Is that a sermon? I think I just gave a sermon, but like, that's, that's, that's how I'm feeling. Welcome to The Sacred Slope, where the slippery slope meets sacred ground. I'm Alexis Rice, and today we're going to talk with Cody Deas. This episode is for anyone, religious or not. Who feels the anxiety of this moment. We talk about fear, power, religious trauma, and why Christian nationalism isn't just a church issue. It affects all of us. Cody Deas is a pastor that has a really amazing church that is a collective outside of Atlanta. He's also the author of this amazing book that was really helpful and healing for me. It's called Discovering Your Internal Universe, The Unexpected Good News About Anxiety, Panic, and Fear. The forward's by Rob Bell. And I just wanted to read a little bit about what Rob said about this book. In this book about anxiety, which is about a thousand things, chief among them being human and discovering how good it is, and I wanted to give you a little bit of a sample of the book, page 213, and it says faith and belief are often used interchangeably in the biblical narrative. The next time you run across these words, try inserting the word trust instead of belief or faith and see how it reads. All these words imply uncertainty. You only use the word trust when uncertainty is present. If you were certain you wouldn't need trust. So it is with anxiety. Anxiety and faith are not oxymorons. On the surface, they may seem incompatible, but they both belong in their proper place. Anxiety has its role. Faith has its role. One is not the enemy of the other. You can live simultaneously with anxiety and trust. Both can be and need to be active at the same time. You can have an anxious faith. You need an anxious faith. Faith is not the absence of anxiety. It's trust in the presence of anxiety. When I talk about the practice of trust, I'm talking about something you unconsciously do every day. The moment you get out of bed in the morning and take your first step, you are practicing trust. Every time you get dressed and walk out the door, you are practicing trust. When you choose to engage with other humans, you are practicing trust. It's tempting to live your life isolated inside your own internal universe. But it takes an act of trust to step outside yourself and engage in the world around you. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation. It's a little bit long because there were so many amazing nuggets. So you might need to listen to it, break it up with a couple of commutes or a run. But oh, it's so worth it. We're going to talk about how one of his clips went viral after Cory Booker tweeted it about Christian nationalism and having family and close friends that are in MAGA and how so many of us are struggling with that right now. And we're going to talk about his book, Discovering Your Internal Universe. It's so helpful when you've ever struggled with anxiety, with panic, with fear, with any spiritual trauma. And we're going to talk about the hope that we both have, that we both feel, and that so many people I have talked to who are living in this moment, seeing the atrocities and seeing more and more people finally wake up to the fact that maybe this is not the world that we want to live in. And maybe there is a world that is more beautiful and kinder and more focused on loving our neighbors. Let's dive into our conversation with Cody Deese. Welcome back to the Sacred Slope, friends. Today, I'm joined by Cody Deese. Hi, Cody. Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for being here today. Oh my God. Thank you for having me. And shout out to your name. I just looked at it. Sacred Slope. That's fantastic. As opposed to the Slippery Slope. It's where the Slippery Slope meets Sacred Ground. Beautiful. Beautiful. I mean, I like you already. I like you already. That's why I wanted to interview you. Love it. I'd love to tell our audience all around the world about you. Cody is a pastor. The reason I wanted to talk to Cody today is because there is a specific kind of ache that a lot of us are carrying right now. It's this ache of when you love Jesus, like you actually really love Jesus, but you're watching Christianity get used as permission to dehumanize. And you're sitting there and you're thinking, am I the only one reading the gospels? Because, you know, if our faith is producing cruelty and it's producing contempt and it's producing certainty that your neighbors don't deserve dignity, that's not the fruit of the spirit. There's something else. And so Cody is one of those pastors. He's willing to say that out loud. He's the lead pastor of Bindings Lake outside of Atlanta, an ever-evolving spiritual collective and the author of Discovering Your Internal Universe, The Unexpected Good News About Anxiety, Panic, and Fear. I am especially excited about this because I have had a lifelong battle with anxiety. It's turned into a lifelong acceptance of anxiety as well. And this was deeply healing. So I want to thank you for putting this out into the world. Yeah, awesome. I'm glad you're able to get a copy and read it. First book, so I had all the first book jitters with it, and it's deeply personal, but I was like, yeah, no, that's the one. Like, let's start here. So we're going to get there and we can simultaneously do both our inner work and then calling out the injustice out there. But I was like, no, no, let's have this conversation about anxiety because if you are a human and you're breathing, chances are, you know, a little something about it. Absolutely. Cody grew up in the South inside a deeply Christian world, preaching his first sermon at 16 from his dad's pulpit. Yet his faith didn't collapse when he started asking harder questions. It deepened, it softened, it widened. And in this conversation, we're going to be talking about two things that feel inseparable at the moment. So the internal universe, anxiety, fear, panic, healing, and what the body carries and the external universe of Christian nationalism, fractured relationships, and how we keep loving our neighbors when it feels like everything is on fire. So Pastor Cody, Cody, I'm so grateful that you're here and welcome to the Sacred Slope. Oh my God, that sounds like a good time. And what an easy conversation. So I'm so glad everybody's joining us. This is going to be fantastic. Let's talk about some, you know, light TV, you know. That's right. That's right. I'd love to start with a little bit about your upbringing, just to orient people. What, what was the world that formed you? What did your faith look like growing up? Yep. I grew up evangelical. My father was a Southern Baptist pastor. I was born in a little town called Lake City, Florida. Um, he wasn't Methodist. He was Southern Baptist, but it felt like Methodist. Cause if you know anything about like the Methodist world, they move quite frequently and that's the way it was for us. So, uh, we lived in North Florida. We lived in a little town called Webb, Alabama. We lived in a little town called Blakely, Georgia, then moved to a place called Johnson city, Tennessee. And then I went off to school in North Carolina for a while and have been in Atlanta now for, I don't know, 25 years, 26 years, but my dad was a suit wearing King James preaching Baptist pastor, very much so involved in things like, uh, the Tennessee Baptist pastor's world, all that kind of stuff. So I grew up kind of just entrenched in that world of evangelical, what most would call fundamentalism. And, um, when I got old enough, I went off to a very conservative fundamentalist Bible college in Hendersonville, North Carolina. And then from there, I finished my undergrad at Liberty university. The Liberty where Jerry Falwell led the moral majority, um, which was, I mean, when you ask about my upbringing, like that's kind of, that's the message I kept hearing, right? It was just like this idea of truth is replaced by relativism and sexual immorality is being normalized and families are eroded and faith is being pushed to the margins. And it was kind of this big warning, right. That America was on, this is for you, a slippery slope. And, um, and, and they were sounding the alarm. I mean, they were just like, Hey, we're, uh, we are headed down a path that we can't return from. And then of course you add in all the apocalyptic stuff with that, the book of Revelation, all that. That's my world. So the fact that I'm like somewhat sane, I'm sitting here and still involved in some level with the church, honestly, uh, it shocks me every day. So, but here we are because, well, there are many reasons, but I'm still compelled by the teachings of Jesus. And in the midst of all of it, somehow many of us, including you, many of us have found our way because there was some beauty in there, right? And not everything they handed me was awful. So I want to be very clear about that. Um, one of the things I love is having conversations with people about what, um, integration looks like and what a, uh, integrated human looks like. And a part of the conversation of maturity and growth and how we're evolving is, you know, we don't have to throw everything out. We don't have to turn our nose to it and be like, God, it was all awful. Now hear me. They are layers of trauma and layers of grief and layers of theology that was so incredibly toxic. But there was also some beautiful, uh, truths that I was handed growing up. Um, discipline, responsibility, conviction, all these things. I don't just leave behind. I look back and I try to include all the healthy elements, right. And then let go of all the unhealthy elements. And I think that's where the wisdom is. But also in light of where we're at right now in this moment, it is quite disorienting when you look at how I grew up. So I grew up with the moral majority, with people being concerned that America was on a slippery slope. And looking out now, I realized the very one sounding the alarm for that became the architects of that very decay, right? The same people who taught me integrity now seem to cheer what they once condemned. And that's where I think a lot of us are right now. I think a lot of folks that grew up evangelical are experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance because we're watching people who said integrity mattered, truth matters, and then we're watching them somehow completely embrace and rally behind and defend the very things they warned us was coming. Lying, cheating, abusing, deceiving, mocking, exploiting, and they're not only embracing it, but many of them are proud of it and thrilled about it and see it as strength. And so, yeah, there's a massive, massive upheaval that's happening in the nation right now on many levels, but like spiritually, yeah, this is why we use words like deconstruction because there are a lot of us going, what is happening? And it leads to this question, was anything I was told true? And that's a question worth following. Ooh, chills already. We just started. Question one. Everybody, if you're near the Atlanta area, you'd be so lucky to get to go to Cody's church. If I'm in the Atlanta area, I'm definitely coming by. Please come on. Yes. We got a good group. They're really amazing humans that go there. And I mean, it's been its own journey too, but oh man, the people that are there right now, they displace so much maturity and wisdom and I miss them. I miss them when we're not able to gather. And especially in times like this, and I know there's a lot of people that are just, you know, rightfully so just walking away, like, yeah, I'm good. I'm done. I understand that. You got to protect yourself, honor yourself. Sometimes it's the healthiest thing you can do. Where I'm at, I've just been very fortunate to be able to have a collective, a community that I get to be with because it's important for me to gather with other humans in like a real physical, tactile way, especially in light of what's happening right now, because we, even if we don't do anything, we just gather on Sundays going, um, did you guys see that this week? Did you hear that? Cause I just want to make sure I'm not like actually losing my mind because I mean, it's upside down. And to have a base note, at least once a week, like just like a base of truth that you're not losing your mind, actually. This is reality, but what we're experiencing right now is chaos. It's chaos. So let's embrace each other in the midst of it. I love them. So yeah, I mean, if you're like around Atlanta, come join us. I mean, the more of us, the more we enjoy having lunch together and drinks together and somehow trying to maintain our joy in the midst of this too. They can take a lot, but we have to be careful not to give them everything. And a part of that is, yep, nope, we're still going to laugh. We're going to enjoy this life that we've been given. So yeah. Shout out to all of our friends at Vinings Lake. I love them so much. One of the things that was really cool recently is that you gave this amazing, as all of your sermons that I've ever seen, one of them caught the eye of Cory Booker and he amplified you. I can no longer as a pastor, as a human, and as someone who's given their life to the way of Jesus, I can no longer stand by as Christianity gets hijacked by a particular agenda that is not the way of Jesus. I cannot stand by as a Christian and watch Christ's name get hijacked to further justify hate, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and white supremacy. The colonizers who came to America said they were Christians. The KKK said they were Christians. There have been mass shooters whose profile said they were Christians. There were insurrectionists on January 6th who flew Christian paraphernalia. They claim to be Christians. There were check this out. Some of you know this slave owners who claim to be Christian. And what you see in this moment, this week in American history is you see the twisting of the truth. And what I want to say to you is if these quotes that Jesus defeated death, so you can live by Charlie Kirk and Dr. King was an awful human being in civil rights with a huge mistake. If these feel incompatible, it's because they are. These quotes are not compatible with each other. And I also would like to say they're not compatible with the teachings in way of Jesus. Now, if this makes you uncomfortable, I would invite you to pause for a minute and think about how uncomfortable this makes our people of color feel. You were speaking with moral clarity as a Christian pastor. What has been the impact that that message has made so far outside your immediate community? And even in our Christian communities, what kind of hope as we talk about what is being birthed after this moment in our history in this country? I mean, in direct relation to that video, the response has been amazing, actually. Cory Booker, it was a Roland Martin. I mean, there were several that initiated that video. Here's what I would say. A part of the reason that I think that it went viral, and there's been a couple of videos go viral is here's what it's telling me. There is a demand. There is a large group of people that want to hear this. There's a resonance with a whole group of people that are like, yes. Why aren't more people talking like this? Why are we quiet? Where are the pastors in this moment? And for me, that's a bit of a wake up call. I mean, we have had within the last year, so many new people come through our spiritual collective. The room is filled with people. Well, some of them are walking away from their churches, not because they didn't love it. I mean, these are people that gave their flesh and blood, their money, helped build a lot of the spaces they're in. Some of them are coming from mega churches around Atlanta. Here's what they're telling me. They're telling me, I loved that space, but our pastor refuses to speak on any of the current issues right now. It's not that they're pro-Trump. They're just not saying anything. To which my response is, well, then that's complicity. By not speaking, you are speaking. People are listening. And this moment right now, I think has a lot of people realizing that we all have voices. We all have energy. We all have resources. We all have platforms. Now's the time to use it. And so we're seeing an uptick in so many people, so many emails, so many DMs, conversations of people that are like, yes, how do we navigate this? What does this look like for us right now? And of course there's the hate and the critics. I don't give much energy to them. They're always out there. Half of them are Russian bots anyway. That's right. It appears that way, but I will tell you, I think what's happening right now is an unveiling, if you will. I really, really, really lean in. I have recently just to the book of Revelation and that whole idea, the revelation apocalypse. I mean, it was, you talk about hell, but I mean, the end of the world scenarios growing up evangelical were just atrocious. I mean, I had, I didn't, I say I walked around not only with a hell anxiety, afterlife anxiety, but also apocalyptic anxiety. We were left behind kids. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is no joke. Tim LaHaye's left behind was a textbook in the Bible college that I went to my first year of college. That is no joke. A textbook, a fictional story was a textbook. So that'll tell you a little bit about what was ingrained within me. But, you know, as you get older and you start studying the book, you realize, oh my God, actually this book is profound in many ways. And if there is a book for America right now, it is the book of Revelation. Interesting. What do you mean? Not because of like, oh my God, it's the end of the world and Trump's the Antichrist, I mean, I meet so many progressives, like he's the Antichrist. The Bible says the Antichrist, the beast, the first beast was struck in the ear and he was shot in the ear and all these connections and I'm just like, my God, have we not grown, have we not learned anything from the toxic apocalyptic visions we were handed growing up? Because if we're not careful, we're going to be at the very reflection of the thing that we walked away from. That book, we have slaughtered that apocalyptic literature. I mean, slaughtered it. And there's so much depth and so much wisdom and so much imagery and so much poetry and language that we're given to make sense of what it's like to live inside of an empire right now. Because that's what the writer is writing about. He's trying to give language to how challenging it is to live as a follower of Jesus, a follower of the way of love inside of an empire that keeps demanding allegiance and this is where Christian nationalism comes into play. Christian nationalism is not Christianity plus patriotism. It's not that. That's what a lot of people think. Well, what's wrong with Christian nationalism? It's Christianity plus patriotism. Don't you love America? Let me say this. The danger is not loving America. I love America. I do love America. I'm grateful I'm here. I wouldn't be able to have these conversations and I don't know how long these conversations are going to be able to happen. I just got like shadow banned on TikTok for the first time since the new owners came in. So, so censorship and suppression is starting to happen. That's a part of the authoritarian movement, but I'm grateful to live here. I love America. The danger is not loving America. The danger is believing God loves America more than any other nation. That's idolatry. And, and Christian nationalism is not Christianity plus patriotism. It is a political ideology of white supremacy, fear and greed with the logo of Jesus attached to it. And a part of what is happening in Revelation with John is that word Revelation is the English translation, but it's apocalypse, which is the word, which literally means unveiling. So it's like the writers just pulling the curtain back going, I want you to see Jesus for who he actually was. And then I want you to see the empire for who it actually is. And I also want you to see how religion gets in bed with empire and how dangerous that relationship actually is. And, and so part of why that book's so amazing, and I know that does sound kind of funny, like kids let's read Revelation during this time, right? But a part of the reason that book is so dangerous is because it's giving us permission to also see through this Christian nationalism, see through this merging of the world's largest religion and the American empire. And here's why the empire loves evangelicals and Christian. It's why Trump loves evangelicals. We see it. We saw it the day he held up the Bible in that square. I mean, if there was ever an image we've been given of Christian nationalism, if there was ever an image that half the world could not see through, John of Patnos would be like, how can you not see this? Like this man is holding the Bible. And what he is doing is he is, Trump doesn't care about Christianity. Trump doesn't care about evangelicals. Trump doesn't care about the church. Trump cares about Trump. Most of us know that by now. Empire cares about empire. Empire cares about self-preservation. Empire cares about power, control, and supremacy. And empire will use whatever empire needs to use to maintain and bolster that control. And so it's really convenient to merge Christianity and the American empire because what it does is it disguises the injustice. It baptizes it, right? And the most dangerous evils are the ones convinced they are righteous. That's the most dangerous evil. And what it does is it maneuvers itself underneath this name of Jesus and it disguises itself. And so that's not anything new. I mean, hate will often disguise itself as love. War will often disguise itself as just. Cruelty will disguise itself as strength. Domination will disguise itself as what leadership. Idolatry will disguise itself as devotion, right? But what John is helping us see and what I think a part of our task is right now as people who care about human flourishing. I'm even eliminating Christians. It's expectations for those labeling themselves Christians, but human beings who care about universal human flourishing. I think it's a part of our task is to keep pulling the curtain back right now and showing the world how this movement that's been labeled MAGA is using religion for its own benefit. And I want to say to everyone that even may be a little bit confused by that, just because it has the name of Christ doesn't mean it is the way of Christ. And I believe that is the call for us in this moment is to wake up and realize there are lots of things that are labeled Christian that do not, when held up, actually correlate at all to the path and teachings of Jesus at an elementary level on the sermon on the Mount. Is that a sermon? I think I just gave a sermon, but like that's, that's, that's how I'm feeling. We need this sermon right now. It's so important. You know, what I was thinking about is, you know, midterms are coming up this year. I think that a lot of. that a lot of progressives who are in government, senators, house members, governors, strategists on the progressive side, even moderates, libertarians, often are really freaked out to talk about anything Christian. Media also just really afraid to touch it with a 10-foot pole. And I find it funny because the government on the Democratic side, like most of them are Christians, but we like don't even know that. And I really think that it's important in this moment for them to be listening to pastors like you. I heard a story recently about a pastor. She was meeting with somebody that was doing campaign strategy. And she said, well, you know, could I help? And they were like, well, what are we going to do with the Christian pastor? Yeah. Yeah. If you were able to talk to people who are right now planning for midterms, what would you what kind of advice would you give to to people who are really upset about what's happening in our country? I think with leadership in general, I would say I'm very hopeful, actually. And I would say to those leaders, like I'm seeing people like James Tallarico in Texas. Yes. And I'm very hopeful by what I'm seeing because that's a guy, in my opinion, and I know there's a lot of great people running right now or soon to be running. But that's a guy who is able to see how impactful what we've been talking about actually is right. And I think you're seeing more and more of that. Right. So I think part of the reason Cory Booker actually and I can't put words in his mouth, but a part of the reason he leaned in and actually retweeted or whatever, is because I think more and more politicians are starting to realize, as we just talked about with Revelation, John, this merging and how powerful of a merger it actually is. Now, the trick is, is we have to be careful that the message of Jesus isn't co-opted by any political party. Right. So you hold that loose, but also you continue to expose and call out the way it is being used and abused by MAGA and this Trump movement. And I think more and more politicians are starting to wake up and realize that. And that's actually giving me a lot of hope. I love it. I love that they're speaking to that and they're calling it out for what it is, because part of the reason I say it's important to expose it is because it goes back to what Richard Rohr says. He says, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge. And the only way we're going to be able to actually heal this nation, our country, is start acknowledging what our history is and then what we are doing right now in the moment. We have to shed through the lies. The truth has to come to the surface so we can just acknowledge it and begin this process of actually healing. So I would say to every political leader, lean in, lean in to the voices on the spiritual landscape, because it's not just happening in all these other areas of influence. What we're experiencing right now on the spiritual landscape is also a group of people who are not only deconstructing their faith. That's just one part of it. But they are deconstructing American exceptionalism. They are deconstructing U.S. history. I mean, I always love it. People are like, oh, deconstruction. That's a that's a that's a dangerous thing. You know, you know, it's like a slippery slope. And I'm like, friend, that's only one. Spiritual deconstruction is one very small part of it, like rethinking theology. Not really a big, big deal. Hang with me. But also kind of like one small part. We're now at a place where we're going, wait a minute. You told us that God was angry and was going to send us to eternal conscious torment. But you are also the same people who handed us a U.S. history textbook in school and told us the Puritans came over here and they were really good Christian people. And this is a Christian nation. So we're rethinking the entire thing going. Hold on. What about manifest destiny? Is that a thing? And this is why you see like the MAGA movement right now, like they're taking down any kind of writing about slavery. It's like whatever you do, don't look like we because we can just ignore that it happened and it would just go away. And then, of course, they play the victim. They turn it around like, well, it's just reverse racism. Not really a thing. Not really a thing. Regidous might be a thing. But friend, when you talk about systemic power, it's just not a thing. And that's what abusers and authoritarians love to do is flip the victim mentality. Like, well, we're the persecuted ones. And I'm just saying to every politician out there, heads up, there is a birthing within the spiritual landscape right now. And it's a whole group of people. And I speak from experience. This is why it's given me hope. They are feeling the building at our church. I've got direct messages, more emails for the first time in my life that I could ever actually respond to of people that are saying, hey, I have been rethinking everything. And the U.S. history I was handed actually wasn't even the real history that actually transpired. And it works its way through every area of influence, media, politics, all of it. And so I would say to them to be hopeful, because there's a whole group of people that are waking up right now. Now, to the voters in general, I would just say, they want you to feel disempowered. Exhaustion is their way of actually getting you to feel this word, despair. They want you to feel like there's nothing you can do. Well, there's just nothing we can do. Here's the phrase. It is what it is. No, actually, you have more power than you realize. I have more power than I realize. We have more power than we realize. And I think we're going to have to start reclaiming a little bit of our own agency and power in this. Yes. And realizing that we get to choose what we buy. We get to choose who's in office. We get to decide that. That's the beauty of democracy. And so we fight hard for democracy for that reason. But I want to empower our people. This isn't a lost cause. This isn't a moment of hopelessness. This is a moment where we are being reminded that we get to shape it. We get to shape the future. And I also would add, I love the generation coming behind me. We have a student pastor at our church, and he's a fantastic human. His name is Garrett. And Garrett spends time with our middle schoolers and high schoolers. And I get to sit with him all the time. Like, how's it going? And he was like, man, these guys and girls are levels above where we were. Levels above. Already at their age. And it's just bringing me so much joy. So I do my best to spend as much time as I can with those who are now, I mean, at my age, 20 years younger than me, 30 years younger than me. And watching their stage of consciousness already versus how it's taken me 44 years to arrive at some of these ideas. Yeah, maybe you need to get your head out of the news and start hanging out with some 20-year-olds, some 15-year-olds, some 12-year-olds, and just hear them out. Like, hear them out. I'm not saying it's automatic. We get to bend the universe toward justice. It is our responsibility. But I am also saying that I am very hopeful about what is coming behind us as well. I'd like to ask you about something that a lot of us who were raised in especially evangelical spaces or conservative spaces, Christian spaces, are really struggling with, have been for the last decade, but like really right now is having family that are in MAGA Christianity still, despite everything, despite all the conversations, just no movement, right? And it's so painful. It is so painful. Like you said earlier, these were the people who raised us to love thy neighbor, God is love, servant leadership, you know, everybody's valued equally, all this stuff. And then we just were so disoriented. So I'd like to play a clip of you that you've been recently talking about having family and close friends in MAGA Christianity right now and speaking to that pain. For the adults navigating complex relationships with MAGA family and parents, a few more thoughts. First, watching the people who raised you abandon the values they once instilled often leads to a question because you start to wonder, was anything they told me true? Now this question is important because it can lead us away from simply inheriting our parents' worldview to discovering our own. But this question is also an invitation. In fact, maybe the relational conflict as a whole is an invitation, an invitation for us to become more integrated, grounded, and whole. Let me explain. Many of our parents were shaped by rigid systems that prized order, obedience, and certainty. Those systems gave them some meaning, but those systems didn't give them much emotional maturity. Many of them never learned how to sit with things like fear, grief, and uncertainty. Many of them never did any internal work. In fact, some saw therapy as weakness. Some even brag about having never been to therapy. So when the world began to change, when things like diversity and complexity began to rise, they panicked. Fear became their compass. And fear always looks for control. Enter Trump. He didn't calm their fear. He weaponized it. He inflated it. He amplified it. And he promised protection in exchange for loyalty. He gave them some patriotic story about the good old days that justified their fear instead of asking them to grow through it. And they were drawn to his illusion of strength, so they regressed. They chose a corrupt structure because it felt safer than uncertainty, even though that structure demanded their integrity. But there's an invitation in here for us. We don't have to repeat that pattern. We don't have to swing between chaos and control. We can learn how to integrate. What do I mean by that? We can carry forward the healthy things that were passed on to us, things like discipline, responsibility, and conviction. And we can leave behind the toxic things that were handed off to us like misogyny, racism, hypocrisy, and bigotry. Friends, you're not betraying your parents by growing beyond them. You're honoring the best of what they gave you and you're healing what they chose not to. I think people who don't have this in their family and close friend circles, like don't understand that you don't get to just demonize a whole group of humans over here. And this is your family. These are your people. And it's just a really different experience for those of us who have like either mixed families or mixed communities. How do you suggest as a pastor that we process the pain of loving people and continuing to love people who are deep still in MAGA Christianity? And can you help us with some practical wisdom? Yes. Get a therapist. Bye. I endorse that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's oh my God. Yeah. Well, you just named it, but it's there are layers to this. Right. So we could do a whole podcast just on this conversation. And honestly, to do it justice, you probably need a couple hours because there are layers on layers on layers on layers on layers. So let me just whittle it down. Here's three separate thoughts. First, there is no one set way to deal with this. All right. I start there because I know maybe some of your listeners and I have experienced this already of people within our own collective that have MAGA parents or MAGA spouse. And that gets complicated. Do we divorce? Do we leave? We don't see eye to eye on anything. And then some are navigating parents or grandparents. Heard a lot of this, too. They no longer trust the Saturday night sleepovers where they drop the kids off at the grandparents' house because the grandparents have Fox News playing 24 hours a day and is indoctrinating the kids. So it's a whole thing and it's messy. Right. So I just start here to say it is a case by case situation. It is. I can't paint with a broad brush and say, here's what everyone is supposed to do. Right. I have heard from some people and I know this to be true. Some are at a place where they need to put up boundaries and distance to protect themselves, period. So I have heard of some people who even hearing you talk or ask that question and talk about this would say, navigate complex relationships with MAGA. I'm not navigating anything. I don't sit at table with fascist, period. And I want to say I actually understand that it was James Baldwin or it's attributed to James Baldwin. He said, I love this. We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. Now, I just pause there to say I don't think anyone should be asked to share a table with someone who denies their right to exist. And I don't care if that someone is a mom. I don't care if it's a grandmother, if it's a father or a spouse. You don't need to feel obligated to sit at a table or in a family gathering beside someone who is denying your very right to exist. So I want to honor that and just say sometimes one thing you can do and a lot of people have is use the boundaries you've been given. To say in a loving but firm way, I want a relationship with you. If you do, I want a relationship with you. But we're not going to continue to have this conversation over and over and over again. And so I want to be with you. And if you want to be with me, then I need you to honor this boundary. And I've worked through that personally. I mean, you know, I went eight years. My dad and I didn't talk to each other for eight years. We've walked through it with my in-laws, my wife's side of the parents. There was a time where we had to put up boundaries. And they honored that. We did like a three month thing, a little less than eight years, three months. But they honored it. And we were like, we're not going to continue to have these conversations over and over again. We told you where we are. We know where you are. If our minds change, we'll let you know. But if we continue to come over and this is happening again and again, then at that point, it's like sending a partner back to their marriage that is abusing them going, look, the Bible says no divorce. Get out of here. Like if you're if your partner is abusing you, get out. That's step one. Right. So I just want to honor people that are in those scenarios. Right. Because everybody's situation is different. It's really hard to tell someone who's walking into an abusive scenario. Hey, just stick it out or try to reconcile or work it out. No. In some levels, that's spiritual malpractice from a pastor to say that. And so I would say maybe you need to start there. And now that gets tricky, too. So that's why I'm saying there's layers to it. Right. Because let's just use this as a hypothetical, because there is another side to this. Right. So this is why it's nuanced. So if you choose to not be around particular individuals because they are denying your right to exist, well, then it leads to other questions. Are you never going to leave your house? Because you could walk out into the real world and somebody is wearing a symbol that denies your right to exist. Right. So so there's another side to it. There's layers to all of this because you don't want to live in isolated life where you're unable in a level of maturity to walk outside your house and oppose anyone who sees anything different than you. Right. Like you don't want that. You want to be liberated. We all want to be liberated. Right. So so that's the hope here. So there are layers to it. But I say to you, it is situational. Protect your own energies. Take an energetic audit. I would ask it this way. When you leave their house, how long does it take for you to recover? Because for my wife and I, we would leave and we found for every hour we spent, it would take 24 hours to recover. And I mean recover on a physical level, be it we feel sick, be it exhaustion, be it anxiety. And I realize, oh, this this isn't creating distance isn't selfish. That's actually stewardship of the energies we've been given. So protect yourself. Yes. And creating distance is an act of protection. That's what it is. So you're only pushing them away because you don't want to be hurt. Right. So so you push them out or also and I know some people that do this, they create the distance almost as an act or response of the repercussions of their actions. Right. Which I actually agree with. I mean, most therapists would tell you, yeah, that's how you sometimes you can leverage boundaries in that way. So if you're going to support an administration that denies my right to exist or is harming other people with injustice, then there are repercussions to that vote. And here's the repercussion. The second thing I would say. And that's just one person. But remember, one, three. Second one I would say is, and this is where I'm at. Disrupt the narrative. That's my thing. Disrupt the narrative. And here's what I mean. Most of these people that you talk to, including my own family, would all agree on this idea that their parents, their spouse, their partner, their kids, whoever it is, that's blindly following this MAGA movement. And they will use things like it feels cultish. You've heard that, right? Like it feels like they're in a cult or like they're in a trance. What is it? Here's what we know. Usually, not always, but usually those individuals constantly have some type of right wing media going at all times. So be it Newsmax, be it whatever it is, Fox News is a big one in both sides of my family. And so anyone that watches Fox News, they know what the message is. You know what the narrative is, right? Those people are dangerous. Stay away from them. Immigrants are out to kill you. Leftists, liberals, Democrats are trying to destroy America and take us away from God. And they want to take Christ out of Christmas. And I mean, you know, all of it, whatever you want to name it. Well, here's what's amazing about disrupting the narrative. They are fed this narrative and it becomes a worldview, right? So they are embracing a right wing worldview. And then when I enter or you enter into that universe called MAGA, your very presence is disrupting the Fox narrative because Fox tells you you're dangerous. Be careful. They're unchristian. They're trying to destroy America. Anyone who challenges MAGA, that's who they are. But then you show up and you create cognitive dissonance in the minds of your parents because they're going, wait a minute. I know him. I raised him. I know her. I raised her. And what's really trippy is when they see that you are in that world, that everything Fox said is dangerous. But check it out. You're thriving. Like life is good. Life is great. Turns out I did slide off the slope out on another slope. And I need you to know something about the other slope. It's amazing. There are pink skies. The sunsets are far more gorgeous over here than that slope that I was on. Oh, my God. So much love and freedom and belonging, because part of the reason they can't break out. And there are many reasons people say it's cult like this comes back to belonging. This comes back to ideologies that could never allow them to admit they're wrong. When you walk in, your very presence is distorting the media caricature that they have been handed. And that's how change happens, by the way. You can't argue with them like I know some people are like, load me up. I want a boxing match with policies and theology, and I will run circles around my parents. Well, that's called arrogance, and that's not going to get you anywhere. You can't argue. You can't scream louder than Trump screaming right now. You can't. So how do you do it? You show up. You keep showing up over time. Over time, I have found that it can begin to soften even the hardest of hearts. So don't negate showing up every time you choose to go to the family gathering. Just remember, your very presence is saying, hey, I know what you were told about me, but you know me and I'm not that. So what does that mean? That means it might be time to rethink all of the toxic garbage that you are being handed. Now, I'll give you the last one right here. Here's a truth that I never wanted to see that I'm coming to see. I made excuses for years of why my evangelical family supported Trump. And when I say support him, I mean signs in the yards attending rallies supporting him. I made excuses for years. I was like, well, it's the economy. I mean, I kind of understand why they voted him. Quit making it a big deal, Cody. It's just like it's the economy. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, he's a shrewd businessman. Heard the comments why I didn't vote for a pastor. I voted for a president or those that are like, I just learned to compartmentalize. I don't agree with everything he does, but he's a lesser of two evils. Right. You've heard it all like all of these. And I got to be honest, I made excuses for them because I didn't want it to be true what I'm seeing. But it's one thing to vote for that one time. It's another thing to vote for that two times. But when you vote for it three times in a row, here's what that is telling me. Many, not all, many support him because he mirrors back the very behaviors they already excuse in themselves. It's a defense of the part of themselves they've long wanted permission to keep. And I know we don't want to see that, but misogyny, racism and insatiable hunger for power, sexual sin without accountability. I am coming to see they justify him. Because they're justifying themselves. And that is a realization that's really, really difficult to stomach. But I will go back to this truth. If we can't name that, we can't heal that. So we have to hold all of those. And in some way, maybe what all of this is. Is all of the stuff goes back to this book that I wrote, all of the stuff that I had buried within me as an individual is true for the nation. The nation as one body has buried history, has buried slavery, has buried so many atrocious things. And we want to just move on without any therapy at all. We want to pretend it never happened. And maybe what is coming out of this movement is maybe we are watching it surface for the first time. It's no coincidence that Trump is the president in a time when we have cameras in our pockets. It's no coincidence because this is the moment of what I call the great exposure. It's not that it hasn't been going on. It's been buried within this nation for since its origins. It's just for the first time we are in a culture where we are actually seeing it. And this is why my heart goes out. I get why people are frustrated that white people are just waking up because two white individuals were killed. I get it. I get it. Where were you when George Floyd? Where were you when Breonna Taylor? I get those conversations. My God, half of our spiritual collective are brown and black individuals, people of color. And and I hear them. And I want to say to them publicly, thank you for giving people like me grace. Thank you. That's not an easy task. Thank you for giving space for people like me to wake up. And what I want to say is there are many people waking up and it's sad. It takes white individuals to be killed for people to wake up. Nevertheless, we are here and many people are waking up. And maybe just maybe that's what is being birthed out of this moment. And it's difficult to see, isn't it? My God, I wish it wasn't happening. I want to turn my head, but that's called privilege. And so I lean in. I lean in and I look at it for what it is. And check it out. I get to work. I get to work both individually and collectively as a nation. So we got to start healing our racial wounds. We got to start healing everything that was within us that we've been denying that we didn't want to see. Carl Young calls it the shadow. We need to do some national shadow work. I mean, going into the depths of our unconscious and opening the doors of all the things we didn't want to see. And also, I need to keep doing my own personal work because it's easy for me to point out the misogyny and racism in Trump and MAGA people. But I have found that can be a convenient way to ignore my own racism and misogyny. So we simultaneously do our work internally, individually, and we hold people accountable for the injustice of their own actions as well. And this is the integrated path forward, I believe. And so it's really cool to go into a space like you just described. And, you know, even for practical reasons, one example is I have this tiny little church now and I broke my foot and I drove myself to urgent care. And I told my Reverend that and she looked at me like, Are you serious? Why didn't you call us? Why didn't you call church? And I grew up in a MAGA church, which means there wasn't anyone to, you know, really call in that area. I was like, I'm supposed to call up my reverend or, you know, some church people and they take me to the hospital just because they care about me. That's what I think a lot of people are missing right now when we've completely left church spaces. Yeah. So I'm starting to see some people take some baby steps back into maybe there are some church spaces out there. And I'm trying to highlight some of those pastors that are just doing incredible work like you. Oh, I love that. Yeah, I think that's wise. You know, church isn't for everybody. And some people, the healthiest thing they can do is just not go at all for a while or not at all ever. But for others, you know, I mean, I think for years for me, it was just like I complained and complained and complained about what was rightfully so. And then at some point I was like, well, what if we dared to become what we dreamed it could be? And that's what we're just an experiment. Like, I mean, we're, we've got all kinds of issues ourselves, but we're an experiment. And we're trying to actually put legs to a dream that, oh my God, what if church, a spiritual collective could actually, like, what if we had like real conversations about what's happening in our world right now? And what if it was structured in a way that was actually filled with people who had been wounded and hurt by the church so they had all the alarms and all the right places to know, okay, this is a healthier version of what I was handed. And so, yeah, we're asking questions and we're exploring and we're trying to figure it out. But why not do it together? And honestly, if we're going to live in America right now in this chaos, I don't want to do that alone. I need some people. I need some humans to hug me, to go have a drink with and just to make sure. to make sure that we're all okay, we're good, we're going to get through this, we're not just going to survive it, we're going to penetrate the injustice. And we're actually going to hopefully begin to make some change on a local level. And that's one of the things I love too. This is our little town. We're Mableton, Smyrna, Vinings, like right here. And I'm like, yeah, this is our space. This is where we start. This is where we'll do our work. And we'll change this area right here. Like we'll jump in and like be fully present and embody what universal human flourishing can look like. And that's where it starts. So the larger thing will change, but it's going to start right here at the local level, which is why you hear politicians all the time talking about like, you know, you got to go, you got to go out and vote like on a local level, because they know what they're talking about. And we all want to sit around and wait, like, well, presidential election will be here or the midterms. I'm like, yeah, but we just had one last November. That matters. City Council. Yeah, that matters. So let's get in that conversation. That's how we have to begin to structure and change things. Just a couple questions for our listeners about your church. So your church is open and affirming, correct? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As in everyone's welcome and not everyone's welcome until you get in the side and you find out you can't be baptized because you're sexuality or you can't serve because of sexuality, but we'll take your money. You know what I'm talking about? Like, no, no, no. We have had so many LGBTQIA plus individuals show up on our front doorstep battered and bruised and broken and cut and wounded from other churches, a lot of mega churches around our area that are just like everyone's welcome here only to find when they get in the inside they're not. It's important for us to be as clear as we can with our policies. And a part of that for us is we are as clear as possible on our website. Like, yeah, you're welcome here to serve at any capacity, board, leadership roles, music, speaking, whatever. Awesome. If there are people that are not in the Atlanta area that are curious in going to a church and they want to make sure it's open and affirming, how does that work? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there's ways to look on the website and just tell. And if it's ambiguous, I would say stay away. If you have questions after reviewing someone's website, it's probably because these people are trained in that. You know what I mean? Like these pastors, they know how to navigate it. And so a lot of these folks that are designing websites, they word it and craft it in such a way that it can be very deceptive. But it's also easy to just pick up the phone and call them and just ask whoever answers. Just like, can you send me your actively enforced policies when it comes to LGBTQIA? And usually their jaw would drop because they're like, what are you talking about policies? And they'll say, we don't really have policies around them. Like, OK, that's all you need to know because their default policy is their actively enforced policy. And so you start asking questions like, are divorced people allowed to serve here? Are women allowed in leadership roles? All those questions. But also, there's a great organization, ChurchClarity, churchclarity.org, I believe it is. I think they're still cooking, but they used to back in the day have a whole metric where you could go to. You could punch in a church name into the search engine and it would pop up and tell you if they're affirming, not affirming, all that kind of stuff. So yeah. Excellent. We're going to talk about your book, about the internal universe and your story of anxiety. I really want to go to the heart of this and I want to name something personally. I've struggled with lifelong anxiety. I didn't have language for it as a kid, similar to you. Like I was just labeled too sensitive or too intense, too hard on myself. You know, people just say like, don't be so sensitive. Don't be so intense. Don't be so hard on yourself. Oh, OK, sure. After 43 years, I'm sure I'm just going to flip a switch. And so then that produces quite some shame if you're trying to just work on that yourself. So I wasn't given tools and resources as a kid in the 80s and the 90s. A lot of our parents' generation didn't go to therapy. They still don't believe in going to therapy. And then if you're in Christian spaces, a lot of times there's these messages that you're not being Christian enough if you're struggling with this, right? Maybe you don't have enough faith in God. And so it produces like an unbelievable amount of shame. So that's why I'm exceptionally excited to talk to you about this as a pastor, as a human, as a man, as a white man in the South. To talk this deeply and this openly, I think, is really changing a lot of minds and hearts. If we had more people who are trying to, you know, set the world in the chaos, if we had more of those men sit down and do this deep inner work, I wonder what the world would look like right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, I've had it. I've had anxiety since my earliest memories. I did not always know that, like you. There wasn't really a lot of language, as you said, growing up in, you know, I was born in 81s. This wasn't even really the conversation back then. And so I didn't know what I was experiencing. I had no idea what it was until I turned 40. I was 40 years old when a therapist said to me for the first time, Cody, what you're describing is a panic disorder. And the moment he said it, I intuitively knew that he was right. And it started unraveling all kinds of conversations about, oh, this makes total sense. This makes total sense of what I was experiencing, what I was experiencing in those moments of utter terror and confusion. And I write in the book only about one form, but there were many, many more that I didn't get to. I mean, some of my earliest experiences was sitting in a classroom and experiencing a moment of, in the only language I had when someone asked me about it was dizziness, but just utter freak out, jump, run out of a classroom, teacher running down the hallway, like what's wrong with you? And it's funny because that question has haunted me for years, even growing up when you don't know what's wrong with you, but you know, what is this? Is this normal? Is this a part of what it means to be human? And you're running out of a classroom and you're trying to give language to something that you can't explain. And there are some things, you know, your hands are sweaty, your heart's beating, but it was a moment of disorientation and derealization. Like what is this? And then at 40, when someone sits in front of you and says, oh, that's a panic disorder, all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, of course it was. And I wish I could go back and help that kid. Because if that kid knew just a little, just a little glimmer of what anxiety was, it actually would have toned down the anxiety pretty significantly because a part of the problem with being anxious as a kid or having a panic disorder as a kid is when you don't know you have it, it creates more anxiety and panic because you don't know what it is, right? So it elevates it, and then you can get into a mode where it just continually, continually happens. And I want to acknowledge the form that I write about in this book. And I write about it intentionally because I think everybody has different forms. Because when you talk about anxiety or panic disorder, some people are like, oh, yeah, I have it. Well, tell me how it manifests, right? So for me, my first experience outside of that first grade classroom was in the middle of a football game, which I write out in the book. And I was being chased by these big Alabama boys. I was like a running back. I was very short, small, little guy. And somewhere in the midst of that play, I fell down on my knees and started having a retching episode or gagging, which if you've ever had any kind of a flu bug and your stomach is empty, you know what that is. It's a very terrifying experience. And I just brushed it off, thought, okay, nothing, but whatever. That was weird. Maybe I'm sick. It's all good. But then it showed up again in the next practice and again in the next practice. And then it started expanding. It went from practices to school plays. It went from school plays to dentist visits. And then it began to kind of show up at the very moments I couldn't afford for it to show up. Giving a speech in class, a report, I couldn't do it because I would just go into this moment where I was just continually having a retching episode. And I thought, we visited so many doctors, my parents, I tried to explain it to them. And they were like, okay, well, let's go get your blood work done. And so they would take me to the family practitioner, took blood work, and then the blood work's just like, yep, he's good. He's a healthy boy. And because that's the thing about anxiety. Anxiety doesn't show up. Right? Like you can't see, it's invisible. And so it was maddening. And over time, I visited a few doctors as I got older and, you know, one of them said, oh, I think it's a form of Tourette's. I think you have Tourette's. And it started just invading every area of my life. Normal day to day conversations. I gave my first sermon at 16. And as you can imagine, that starts to wear on you over time. And eventually you start wondering, hey, is this going to put me in my room, locked up, unable to move, not function, like a human being out in the world contributing to society? And at some point in that process, I visited an acupuncturist because I tried everything. By the way, we write about it in the book. I tried everything I could. Not even knowing what it was, I still tried everything. Visited an acupuncturist. She was putting all those like needles in me. I don't know if you've ever had it done. You ever had it done? I'm open to it. I've done everything else. I've done CBT. I've done therapy. I've done EMDR, all the things. But I'm open to acupuncture if you say that it was helpful to you. Well, in some ways it was. She put all these needles in me and then she just nonchalantly asked me this question because I was telling her about these retching episodes and what I was having. And she said, have you ever had a choking incident? Like as a kid. And I was like, no, I don't think so. And she just walked out the door. And then they put these needles in you and they're like, okay, we'll just rest and, you know, try to relax. And the moment she walked out to the door to ask him that question, like a movie playing in front of me, right from the depths of my unconscious was this image of me that actually happened that I had pushed so far into the depths of my unconscious that I'd forgotten about it. It was the first time in my life I was like, oh my God, I did have a choking incident. And it happened when I was nine years old and I was at a sitter's house and got into some butterscotch candy and it got stuck. And I don't remember all the details of that night. I was nine. I know it was in the evening. I was looking out a window. I was standing at her kitchen sink. But I do know that it got so bad that I remember the experience of getting lightheaded thinking, oh my God, this might be it. And I remember, I look back sitting in the acupuncturist's office, I even at that moment started laughing a little bit going, God, how anticlimactic would that have been to die at nine from butterscotch candy? You know what I mean? Not exactly the hero moment that you want, like, how do you go? He's like choking on Werther's freaking original, you know what I mean? So I started sitting there watching this film in front of me, like, oh my God, I did have that moment. And eventually what happened is I started dry heaving in that moment and the candy came out and it literally like saved me. And it was a very traumatic moment that had never entered my collective consciousness until that moment. And that's when I realized it's time to get to work, like, because there's something inside of this. You're not just experiencing this anxiety in this form for no reason. There's some stuff deep within you that needs to be looked at. And there's an old Cherokee proverb that I love. It says, if you listen to your body when it whispers, you won't have to hear it scream. And for me, that's how I see anxiety. It is now not something that I have to exterminate or eliminate. For me, I have come to see anxiety as almost like a flare gun going off in the night sky or a message on the dashboard that's blinking. It's the language of the soul. It is how the unconscious, unconscious speaks. And there are many ways to learn that, right? You can look at your dreams. That's a door into the unconscious. There are many ways in, many ways in. Your tears, your emotions, imagination, all of it. These are all access pathways into the unconscious. But anxiety is one of those languages that the body speaks, that the soul speaks. And the question is not, is it speaking? The question I think is like, are we listening? Are we listening? And when you start having retching episodes as a 35-year-old man and you can't function in life, you better believe it gets your attention. And so I'm like, okay, I'm here. I hear you. If something happened at nine, perhaps I need to go back there. And where do I start? And I always tell people, start with the therapist. If you can afford one, start there. So disclaimer, I'm not a therapist. I'm a pastor. And it's important for me to say that because there have been a lot of pastors that have posed as therapists and they've done a lot of damage doing so. So I just want to be very clear. I'm not a therapist. I'm a pastor. And I don't write this as some kind of prescription. I wrote this as a description of what I walk through. And maybe in some way it can be a help to those that are walking through it themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's very helpful because you're right. I mean, I've had and I have spiritual directors, reverends, and therapists for different things, right? So you're right. It is so important to start with the professional. I've had psychiatrists too for medications, for SSRIs, I mean, all these different things. And yeah, if you just go to a church and ask a pastor who is untrained in these things, just like you said, everybody serves different purposes for mental health. Definitely. Yeah. All right. So if it's okay, can I ask you to read a couple of pages in the book? Yeah, please. Let's go. Okay. So it's a, let's see. So I'd like to ask you about the hell house that you wrote about at nine. Right, right, right, right, right. This is so important because you talk about anxiety, like some of it is internal. Some of us is just going to be wired, but then there are experiences, childhood experiences that when you're in therapy, you go back to and you go, oh, this is part of the reason that I can trace back to why I'm having chronic anxiety about certain things. And I feel like I heard that from you when you talked about this hell house. And for people who don't know what a hell house is, can you just like, why don't we just, why don't, before we read this, like, can you just talk about like, how prevalent is this? Because I had not grown up with hell houses in California. That doesn't mean there aren't any here, but like, I think that was the step too far. Right. Yeah. Can you just tell us a little bit about is it prevalent or was it just your area? Well, I'd say a couple of things first. Hell, like the, they were called like judgment houses is what they're called. So they come around like around Halloween. So like in the church I grew up in, like we didn't, they didn't celebrate Halloween. I don't know what world you grew up in, but we didn't celebrate Halloween. We celebrated Halloween. Yeah. Oh, did you really? No, we didn't. We didn't do that. It was like the devil's day or whatever. So we did like, we did like trunk or treats, you know what I'm talking about? Like in the church parking lot. Okay. Well, yeah, that was like, it's like their version of, you know, we got to do something for Halloween. Otherwise these kids are going to go out in the neighborhood and get candy and start sinning. You know what I mean? And so it was like, okay, we've got to figure out, we've got to offer some alternative, like a Christian alternative. Right. And so they started, and I don't know when it started. I have no idea the history of this, but they started these judgment houses. And at least in the South where I lived, they were everywhere. So if your church had enough money, it was usually like middle, like mid-sized mega churches because you had to have some money to kind of pull them off. So if your church had the resources to do it, they would do it. And it's almost like a haunted house. Like you've been to a haunted house, you walk through these different rooms and the scenes. It's like that, but just tack on like a Christian version. And so you have a tour guide and he takes you around. And there's usually, like the one I grew up in, there was a car accident and there's beer bottles laying around and there are two teenagers and one goes to heaven, one goes to hell. So you go to the scene in heaven, you go to the scene in hell, and then you come out through the judgment room and they ask you, you know, if this were to happen to you, would you go to heaven when you die? And by the time I was nine, these things were just getting in their groove. Like, I mean, they were like really becoming popular at the moment. And I would imagine if you Googled it, there's probably plenty of places that still do them today. Yeah. Wild. Nine years old. Oh yeah. You probably weren't allowed to watch like PG-13 movies with a little bit of cussing. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But they throw you in a hell house at nine. Yes, that's right. That's right. So we were allowed to go through hell and then we were also allowed to read stories in the Bible about how God, you know, killed, uh, genocide, a whole bunch of people. And yeah, that's a part of it. That's a part of what you have to unlearn and work through and figure out why was that allowed? It was really interesting because when you slap on the logo of God or Jesus or say it's the Bible, then all of a sudden violence wasn't the problem. Right. And, and vice versa, though, on the other side, it could just be something to disagree with. But they're like, well, it was a Christian. So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. When I learned from, I think the Bible for Normal People, when they talked about Noah's Ark is not a children's story. Yeah. And I was like, it is not. That is correct. And I did not raise my kids, my little kids, with the Noah's Ark story because it's a terrifying story and it's not for kids just because there's animals. Right. Right. So, you know, they can learn about it later. That's right. All right. Would you mind reading page 99? My religious upbringing forbade Halloween. Ghost dramas were my only occasion for costumes. I once donned a white T-shirt over shoulder pads, attached a few cotton balls, and sang All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray. We didn't celebrate the Devil's Day. Instead, my people created fall festivals, trunk retreats, and judgment houses. For those unfamiliar, a judgment house is the Christian version of a haunted house. They are similar in that both have darkness, terror, and demons, but the judgment house traumatizes the afterlife. I'm not sure when they began, but by the time I reached nine, they were just finding their groove. On Friday evening, our family loaded up our black Ford Taurus for a night out in the neighboring city of Dothan. Our nearby church hosted the only judgment house in town. Like waiting for a ride at Disney World, we stood in line with the rest of the city for a guide to come and whisk us away. Judgment houses are typically made up of several scenes spread out across the church property. This specific tour focused on two teenagers and ended in two different destinations. Our group was ushered in Singapore around the back parking lot to the first scene. We stood behind caution tape as we approached what appeared to be a car accident. Two police cars, a flipped over pickup truck, scattered debris, and an ambulance made this scene convincing. The beer bottles strewn across the pavement informed me of the cause of the accident. Two bodies lay lifeless on the asphalt. Efforts of resuscitation failed. First responders announced the time of death and slowly raised a white sheet over the cold bodies. Having fun yet? Off to the next scene we go. We were guided into a room enameled with glistening satin sheets, singing angels, and a fog machine that gave the illusion we were walking on clouds. In the center of the room sat a gold chair shrouded in serapin and cherubin. The two teenagers lay prostrate before the throne. Beside them stood an elongated table which held what appeared to be a giant family Bible. This was the book of life, the book that held every name of those making it into heaven. It must have been slimmer than it first appeared because one of the teens' names were not found. Right there at God's feet, she pleaded for mercy but heard, I never knew you. Go away from me. Cursing through the doors appeared a demon in black tights who dragged the teen away. She shrieked, forgive me, but it was too late. God was preoccupied. He was busy calling out the names of everyone in our group. Yes, you read that right. God had all our names. I froze. How did he know our names? One by one, I listened as he called every name in our group. He then asked, are your names written in the book of life? I nearly dropped dead right there in the throne room. From there, we descended into the church basement. With each step, the stairway grew dimmer and the temps got warmer. There was no fire, red tights, devil, demons, horns, pitchforks, or cages, just sheer darkness. I waved the palm of my hand in front of my face but saw nothing. Suddenly a piercing shrill filled the room. I'm talking next level octaves that are only reached by small kids at the neighborhood pool. Standing in the middle of hell, my nine-year-old self went into a full-blown panic attack. I began to have a retching episode in hell. I lunged into the darkness and shouted, mom. She called back, I'm right here, baby. I followed the sound of her voice until I felt the comfort of her touch. I grabbed her waist so tight that Satan himself couldn't have pried us apart. She pulled me close to her heart. I knew she knew it was all too much for me to comprehend. I ascended from hell that day, soaked in sweat and tears. These are my earliest memories of the afterlife. Hell made an indelible mark on my psyche before I hit double digits. I'm so sorry to ask you to relive that trauma by reading that. But the reason I wanted to ask you to read that is because this is actually something that you're so incredibly good at, is for people who really resonate with this, as a pastor now, could you just help them deconstruct that a little bit, why you're okay, and just any thoughts for people that feel like, yeah, that's in me? Yeah. Well, here's what I would say. I had to go back to revisit my nine-year-old self. I'm going to go back to him. And now some call this inner child work, whatever language you want to use for it. My rational brain used to turn its nose up at it. Like I don't have time to do like magical, mythical inner child work type stuff. Like I need real healing. And what I realized from the choking incident and beginning to explore the layers, right? So the unconscious spoke to me. I began to recognize that story as a nine-year-old. And so I had to get to work. And what I found when I went inside of me were many, many moments in my upbringing that needed, and you can use whatever language you want, needed healing, needed reparenting, needed me, the older me to step into that moment. And that's what I would encourage every single person that has walked through some sense of religious trauma. Find out when that religious trauma happened. And as you are, if you are able, in all the ways that you've evolved and all the ways that you have grown, go back to that moment. And here's what I would say. I didn't say anything to my nine-year-old. He wouldn't have believed me anyways. If my nine-year-old version saw my 44-year-old version, he would have wrote me off as some probably like raging leftist, you know, the people that evangelicals warned them to stay away from. So he wouldn't believe me anyways. I could have walked through the theological reasons and why he didn't have to worry about a hell, because as we understand it today, it's actually not even in the scriptures at all. And we could have walked through all of the words of Gehenna. We could have walked through all that, right? Hades, we could have walked through the parables that Jesus shares, and we could have tried to like work through that, but it wouldn't have mattered because he wouldn't believe that. He didn't need a new story. He didn't need a better explanation. He didn't even need better theology in that moment. What he needed was me. And what I needed, I realized at 44, is I needed him. And what we both needed was love. And I think, if anything, I would go back to my nine-year-old and simply just hug him. That's it. Just hug him. And by the hug, I would be attempting to display the very thing that I don't think he understood in that moment, which is the truth that the Johannine community told us in the writings that I believe is the apex of every metaphor we give to God, and that is God is love. That's it. Like I believe the culmination of all the fingers pointing to the moon is culminated in that statement, God is love. And I would attempt to incarnate, display, embody that for anybody who's walked through some sense of religious trauma. And then, of course, after that, you can begin to work through like theologically what that looks like. But I think a lot of post-evangelicals have deconstructed intellectually. But I think one of the things that we're learning is you can't just deconstruct intellectually. You're going to have to go back and do some somatic work, like actual body-level work. Because as we know, our minds weren't just present at nine. Our bodies were there too. And we walk through this on a bodily level, and we need to start healing some of those toxic ideas that our bodies stored in its system as an act of protection, right? So when this story popped up on our radar, I was like, oh my God, just like the story with the retching. I remembered it, but I also had placed it and locked it in the basement of my unconscious because I was like, whatever we do, don't visit that again, because that was terrifying. And a part of the healing work is realizing, okay, now I'm safe because I have walked through this theologically. I know where I'm at when it comes to the afterlife. My understanding of God is far more expansive, far more loving, far more liberating, far more free. And now that I'm there, I am capable of going into the unconscious, finding that door called hell that I'm terrified about and popping the door open. And I did. And when I opened it, I realized, oh my God, there's a whole world in here that needs to be rethought and needs to be hugged and needs to be healed. And a part of that for me was just coming to the realization that much of the evangelical world that I grew up in, they were built on the foundation of fear. And any religion that uses the power of fear hasn't experienced the power of love. That is a fact. That is a fact. And part of the reason evangelical fundamentalists keep leveraging things like hell, it's not even that many of them actually believe in it. I think they actually don't believe in it for many reasons. One of which is that they actually believed in it. They wouldn't even be living the lives they're living because they would be so terrified about what is to come. They would be in a full blown panic attack themselves and or out on the street screaming and begging people. But the other part of it too is I think they intuitively know. Also by the way, they would never have babies because that would be the worst possible thing you could actually do. If you really wanted to save the world, you wouldn't go to China to try to save them. You would just stop creating other humans. Because every time you create a human, you are risking their soul to be placed in eternal conscious torment. You know what I'm saying? So none of the math adds up. Like it just doesn't add up. What I began to realize is, oh my gosh, I have opened a door and been able to see and the foundation of much of the religion I was handed was built on fear. And a part of that is because it works. It just works. And we know that politicians know that Donald Trump knows that MAGA knows that. This is a part of why he ran on make America great again. What is that? What is make America great again? Hear that word great and again. That is someone who recognized that there was a group of people who are terrified about how the world is becoming more complex. How the world is becoming more uncertain. And he steps into the scene and he says, what if I could take you back? What if I could take you back to the days where it was a bit more simple? What if I could take you back to the days where there was a bit more certainty and less complexity? What if I could take you back there? Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and he recognized that like, oh yeah, we can just step right back into that world. And what did he do? He did not ask them to grow through their fear. He amplified their fear. He actually affirmed their fear. He said, yeah, immigrants are dangerous. They're raping people, killing people, and we must do everything we can to keep them out of our country. Hear what he's doing. He's playing on that fear. And then he shows up with the illusion of strength and he says, come with me. Come with me. I got you. I'll protect you. And I'm convinced that many, many evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians, they actually knew exactly what they're doing, but the cost, which was their integrity, they were willing to give up. willing to give up because they bought into his illusion of strength that maybe he could protect us from a future that was far too uncertain and too complex for them to handle in the moment. And so I say that to say politicians know how to leverage fear. They know it's lucrative. The church knows how to leverage fear. That's part of the reason there are these massive mega churches because they continue to dangle this idea that guess what? Everybody's going to die. Everybody's going to die. And they know they have the upper hand. And so then they create the narrative. But here's the thing. There is a heaven and there is a hell and you will go to one or the other. And if you don't want to go to hell, guess what? We have the solution, right? This is a business model. We have the solution. We can keep you out of hell. And it worked. It worked for years. This is why there are many pastors in America who have more money than they know what to do with right now. And it just turns out you'll give more than 10% if you actually think it can keep you from eternal conscious torment. And so I grew up in a world where they told me the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I say in the book, actually, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of anxiety. And there is a significant difference between having a sacred reverence for the divine and being terrified of God. And I grew up in a world where I was terrified of God. God was not safe. And I'm now at a place where I not only don't believe in hell, I believe the very idea of hell is blasphemy to a just and loving God. And it's time that we not only deconstruct that idea, but it's also time that we keep providing spaces for people that are walking away from a religion that is leveraging fear and terrorizing people in the name of their God. Yeah. Oh, amen. You know, one of the things that I appreciate so much that you just mentioned is that not believing in hell is not a deal breaker to not be a Christian. So many of us were raised with gatekeepers in front of us that said, well, if you don't believe in eternal conscious torment of hell, guess you're out. Guess you don't get to have this relationship with Jesus. We won't deconstruct all that further now. What I'm hoping that listeners also hear from you and many pastors that I've had on is that the eternal conscious torment is only one school of thought. There's plenty of Bible scholars on the sacred slope. Dr. Aaron Higashi just put out a Serving Up Scripture and Jennifer Garcia Bushaw. Brian Recker did a book called Hell Bent. I have an episode on that. So if you're interested in deconstructing more or find a trusted pastor like Cody who can help you with the theology, but also you're talking about the body part of it. I think people who completely walked away from church spaces and said, like, I don't believe anymore, whether or not you end up back in a church space. I think that that healing would actually really make a difference for people. So I want to thank you for going into that. We're going to talk a little bit about your healing journey. In your story, you're honest that you've tried a lot, right? Like CBT therapy, prayer, SSRIs, gummies, psychedelics, different paths that people consider when they really want relief. And just to be clear to everybody listening and watching, we're not prescribing anything. Everyone should work with their doctors and professionals. But I want to honor your honesty and thank you for sharing everything that you went through. And so I'm curious about, were there any surprising breakthroughs that you didn't expect to help you? Yeah, there was. I mean, all of them played a role, right? So it's not that some of them worked, some of them didn't work. Actually all of them worked at some level to help me arrive at where I've arrived at. And they all play different roles. I mean, to this day, I still take SSRIs every night. And a part of that, I mentioned that in the book, just because there's so much pill shaming. Even from like well-intended progressives kind of turn their nose up, like you need to take a holistic path. And I'm like, you need to get out of my face. You know what I mean? Yep. Because a part of it is just like they would openly shame you for it, but that's kind of the line, right? It's like a passive-aggressive shaming. And here's what I say to people all the time. Of course, I'm aware that medication like SSRIs are not actually like, their idea is like it's just a cover-up. It's just like a Band-Aid. And I'm like, yeah, because here's what you need to know. If you ever find yourself in a place where anxiety is so high and so, and I'm going to use this word, disabling, yep, you need everything you can get to even muster the capability to actually get to the root cause of your anxiety. And so there's something to say about the fact that SSRIs are not a Band-Aid, like covering up the wound. It's actually the very medication we need to actually be able to deal with the wounds itself. And those are necessary things. Now all that said, I've tried it all. One of the things that I have learned about that whole process is the cure, and I'm going to use that phrase openly. You can read the book and figure out what I mean by that. But the cure, if there is such a thing to anxiety, I came to realization might very well be inside the anxiety, right? So for me, it was, I was conditioned to believe anxiety was this monster trying to kill us. Because people in America probably at some level have been raised to see anxiety that way. It's something you are to get rid of. It is a problem. That's why there's so many books written about it. And so I was conditioned to believe that like, okay, this is how I understand anxiety is. And what I realized is maybe anxiety isn't the monster that we think it is. As we've already said on this podcast, maybe it's here to actually tell us something. And so that's when I, after trying these things, I realized, oh my gosh, all of them play a different role. And even psychedelics, some people are talking about this, for some it's still kind of taboo, but I went out to Seattle and took a high dose of psilocybin with a trusted guide. And I will tell you, it opened up my unconscious in ways that I don't know that I ever could have visited on my own. And a part of that was walking through that door and using the imagination, but walking through that door. These drugs gave me the ability to see some things that I was unable to see. Now I preface all that to say that was the very moment that this book was written. It was during a psychedelic experience that I realized, oh my God, there's a whole universe within us. And people have different language for it, call it the soul, the psyche, the unconscious, subconscious, spirit, heart, gut, mind, whatever you want to call it. There is a world in here and I've never visited because I live in the Western world and I grew up evangelical. And as far as I knew, it stopped right here. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, it was like, like you, the only world was the one above your shoulders. And what psilocybin did is it introduced me to a whole new world. There's actually a body in here and I can visit it and it's got all these layers. So they all worked at some level. But here's what I concluded. There is no quick fix here. We live in a pill-popping society. We want everything fixed right now. Like we don't, we don't know how to live with pain. So we're just like, oh my God, this is uncomfortable. Fix it now. And what I will tell you is we have to be careful not to use these modalities, even psychedelics as a way to, and you can use this phrase, like embrace spiritual bypassing. Like it's going to fix everything. Like you just go down to Costa Rica, sit with a guide, get some ayahuasca, throw your guts up, and then you're going to come back and be radically changed. It's actually not how it works at all. I don't think that's a really healthy use of those modalities at all. The truth is healing is an inside job and it doesn't work from the outside in. It works from the inside out. And that's the realization I came through, through all these medications. They were all helpful in their own way. They also helped me realize there's no one savior here. This is, this is a slow work and it's going to take some time. And you didn't accumulate all those traumatic events just to walk away after a four-hour session with medication in the same way that you can't walk into a therapist's office, be like, we've got an hour, I paid you $150, I expect to walk out of here completely healed. Right? That's not how it works. It takes some time. Yeah. Okay. So this is page 172 and it says, anxiety has transformed me. Anxiety is transforming me. How? Anxiety did what a thousand retreats never could, break my heart into a million little pieces, which leads me to ask, can anything that works for our own human flourishing be all that bad? How can something so painful be so transforming? Do we only change when the pain of not changing pushes us into the anxiety of changing? Richard Rohr writes it this way, two universal paths of transformation have been available to every human being God has created, great love and great suffering. These are offered to all. They level the playing fields of all the world religions. Only love and suffering are strong enough to break down our usual ego defenses, crush our dualistic thinking and open us to mystery. In my experience, they like nothing else exert the mysterious chemistry that can transmute us from a fear-based life into a love-based life. I call this the push-pull factor. Throughout my life, I have at times felt pulled or drawn or compelled into a newer version of myself, be it a new idea, perspective, possibility, or awareness. Something or someone pulled me into a new understanding. I saw something I had never seen before and it challenged me. I experienced something I had never experienced before and it stretched me. My hope is that the very words and stories in this book have opened your eyes to a possibility more beautiful than you once imagined. You could call this great love. Few things have contributed to my personal transformation more than love. I have had the honor to serve a little spiritual collective outside of Atlanta called Bindings Lake. I am daily inspired by their pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness. It's no stretch to say encountering them weekly is key to my own continual transformation. These are people who have decided they want their contribution toward a new world to exceed their criticism of the current world. Who wrote that? That's amazing. I don't know. But it's so good. I think this guy named Rob Bell. Oh, wait. No, no. It's Cody. It's Cody. That's probably right. Yes. You're probably right. Rob will be very proud. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Thanks for reading that. Yeah. Great suffering and great love. I mean, hats off to Richard Rohr for those great ideas. I mean, he's been such a legend in a lot of us that have been rethinking our faith. But yeah, I mean, these painful moments, even the moment we're walking through right now as a nation, the chaos, the upheaval, the pain. And I don't see this as a silver line as much as a hope that maybe something new can emerge from all this. And in my experience with growing up has been sometimes it's some of the most painful moments that push us. But also my experience with a community that has opened the door to love. And I don't mean just like my notions and so many of our notions of love, like the romantic flower love. All of that's lovely. I've been married 20, I got to get this right, 23 years. My lovely wife, Katie, she's an amazing human. I joke around with her all the time because I am like, yeah, you're in on all this. Like you've been to the other side, you know it. You came back to guide poor little me because, you know, you knew I would just fumble around. But I say that to say she has opened the door to love for me in a way that I never knew growing up. And I had very loving parents, but I never experienced this kind of love. And I think we all have to be careful because what happens is we begin to attach to the person thinking it's them. And then they leave us and we can't recover because we equated that love with that specific person. And maybe the reality is they just opened a door for us to experience a love that is profound in many ways. So my experience is that it's been both those. It's been the pain and suffering of living with a panic disorder and also the joy of living in a community and with a human that keeps insisting and showing that love is here, love is present. And both those have transformed me on ways I've never experienced before. So yeah, I'm grateful for that. I look for both even in America right now. I look for both. I see the pain. I see the heartache. I see the suffering. But I also see the love. I see what's happening in Minneapolis. I see the compassion of a mom who lost her 37-year-old son, parents of Alex Pretty. I heard their cry. He was a good man, right? I see all that. And so I hold both those and both, I believe, are transforming us as a nation, as a culture. And I think the question is, what is it transforming us into? And to me, that's the exciting part. That's the thrill of it. It's like, what is being birthed out of this chaos right now? And who knows? Who actually knows? But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that it's something that is a bit more loving, inclusive, and liberating and free than anything we've experienced before. Yeah. Me too. A friend of mine who's Buddhist talks about the lotus flower, which is so incredibly beautiful. I spend time in Southeast Asia and lotus flowers are everywhere. Also if you go to a cemetery, we have crosses a lot, but they have lotus flowers. And he talked about how the beauty of the lotus flower comes only through the mud. And it's just such a beautiful feeling of like, yeah, we're in the mud right now, but we can make something beautiful out of this together. That's right. That's right. Pastor Cody, there are a lot of people who are listening or watching who haven't been prayed over in a long time. And I was wondering if you could offer up a prayer for them. Yeah. How about this? Instead of like a close your eyes prayer, we do this a lot around Binding's Lake. Maybe you call it a benediction, but this will be a sin gulf. For all of your listeners, may you refuse to be bent by fear, silenced by any gaslighting or intimidated by the supremacy around us. May you speak boldly, protect the vulnerable with your very presence and let compassion be your weapon of creative resistance. May you recognize the humanity in others as you call out injustice, holding accountability without dehumanizing, refusing to mimic the cruelty you confront. And may the fire of your activism burn bright, unwavering, unmasked and unapologetic as you and I keep disrupting the empire and usher in dignity, mercy, love in a new world. As Jesus said, may his kingdom come on earth in America as it is in heaven. Amen. Amen. Cody Deas, thanks for leaving it all on the field today. Yeah. No, thank you. Where do we go? Two and a half hours. We're close. I love it. What a joy to talk to you. Thank you. One final question. Yes. What do you like to do for fun? Oh, okay. Two things. I run every day. I run every day but Saturday and Sunday. I run 15 miles. And I'm not bragging here, although it is kind of a flex because I can still do it at 44. I run 15 miles one day a week and I run six miles every other day. I love it. So I absolutely love it. And it's really good for anxiety, by the way. Like get out and make a mess. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. And it's really good for anxiety, by the way. Like get out and move your body. So walking, running, whatever. So I do that. And then I am a golfer too. I love it. Sunshine, beer in hand, good company, just hitting a white ball. Like all of the frustration. Just like getting up there and just, oh my God, that's a fun, fun experience. So yeah, those are two things. Amazing. Cody, thanks for being on The Sacred Slope today. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us today on The Sacred Slope. If you'd like to nominate a pastor, priest, or clergy member anywhere in the world, send me an email at alexisathesacredslope.com. Music by Brett Rutledge, Eddie Irvin, and Sean Spence. May the fruit of the spirit guide you this week. I'm Alexis Rice. Music by Brett Rutledge, Eddie Irvin, and Sean Spence. May the fruit of the spirit guide you this week.