Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 2, 2026, and we're here in part two of the Rise and Fall of a Evangelical Christian megachurch Pastor. We're here with Dr. Todd Phillips. Hey, Todd. Welcome back.

Todd Phillips [00:00:17] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Loved part one. Part one, we talked about Todd Phillips. You know, life of sin. I'm just teasing. Life of sin and debauchery before he converts to evangelical Christianity in Austin, Denver back in the 90s. He converts to Christianity around the age 24, 25, eventually becomes a pastor and eventually becomes a megachurch pastor. And this culminates in him going to the Princeton Theological Seminary and getting a doctorate and starting and running a major nonprofit that was a multimillion dollar nonprofit delivering water to. To Africans. It was an amazing part one. So if you haven't watched that yet, pause this episode, go back and watch part one, the rise of a evangelical Christian megachurch pastor, Dr.

John Dehlin [00:01:10] Todd Phillips. That's what part one was. And part two is gonna be about the unraveling, the deconstruction of a evangelical Christian megachurch pastor and what that was like for him to deconstruct, why he deconstructed, how he deconstructed. And then probably the most exciting part for him and for many of you, how did he reconstruct a new life after giving so much for so long to the cause and influencing so many people in the cause?

John Dehlin [00:01:43] How has he reconstructed his life? What made him decide to be a social media influencer in the reconstruction space after evangelical Christianity? And what tips and tricks does he have for reconstruction after evangelical Christianity? A high demand religion. And what's the state of Christianity today, including evangelical Christianity and or white Christian nationalism. That's what's in store. So we're just getting started. But welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast.

Todd Phillips [00:02:18] Dr. Todd Phillips, thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed part one. Excited about part two. We got a lot to cover.

How the Deconstruction Process Began

John Dehlin [00:02:24] So let's start by going back to the story form. You're running this nonprofit. You had been a megachurch pastor. Let's talk about how the deconstruction starts to emerge. I like to think of it as like the Truman show metaphor, where the light falls out of the sky and crashes on the street and Truman's looking around going, wait a minute, what is this? What's going on here? The Matrix moment, You know, what was your Truman Show? How did your Truman Show Matrix moment begin?

Todd Phillips [00:03:00] You know, I think with that metaphor, I would, I would probably say that mine was back in 2005 at Princeton. And it wasn't a. It wasn't a big lamp, you know, light coming off the ceiling. It was a piece of plastic about this small that dropped in front of me. And I didn't know where it came from, but it was very tiny. Right. It was just the seeds, just the beginnings of it, that something was a little off. So that was in 2005. It wasn't until 2013 when I left megachurch work, being a pastor, going to nonprofit work, mission work, with the last, well, full time in 2013, that I started being able to ask questions that I didn't have time or I think, the emotional or spiritual bandwidth to address while I was a full time pastor.

Todd Phillips [00:03:42] And there were many topics that ended up kind of dismantling my faith over a nine year period from 2013 to 2022. But I can speak to several of them. Early on, one of was just the inerrancy of the Bible that I'd been told that God was perfect, all knowing, all loving, all powerful, perfect in every way. And he in his perfection gave us a perfect book that was also perfect in every way. And although I saw discrepancies in the Bible and contradictions, I was shown with great care how to harmonize, for lack of a better term, discrepancies in the Bible that there were none and there could be none.

Todd Phillips [00:04:28] And therefore anything I thought was a discrepancy or a contradiction must be my shortcoming. My lack of information, my lack of knowledge, my lack of critical thinking to be able to reconcile those issues. When I left pastoral work, I actually went back to some of the theologians that I was introduced to at Princeton and went back to this habit of mine that I had been taught for three years at Princeton. Went back to Douglas John Hall, a systematic theologian that I had been introduced to there, and began to ask questions and go to literature in more liberal theological kind of frameworks that allowed me to see those questions differently.

Todd Phillips [00:05:09] And one of the first things to follow was the inerrancy of Scripture. I said this to you before, but I joke a bit. It took about 12 minutes. Once I was just open to the idea that these contradictions existed, to actually see them.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] What were some of the early things that started to occur to you as problematic?

Todd Phillips [00:05:29] For me, I did it in a very systematic fashion. I was like, okay, what's the most important? I thought I could reconcile the issues because if there were some contradictions in unimportant areas, at least they weren't in the important areas. And then I said, well, you know what, what I'm going to do is take a look at the birth accounts of Jesus, the genealogy accounts of Jesus, etc. I'm going to look at the, the crucifixion of Jesus and the different accounts of that. I'm going to look at the accounts of the resurrection and the empty tomb

John Dehlin [00:06:01] between the four Gospels.

Todd Phillips [00:06:03] Between the four gospels and compare how Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I'm going to compare how each of those major narratives, ultimately I argued at that point the birth, death and resurrection of Christ being the core narrative. I mean, at least that story should be correct. If there's a perfect God expressing the most important story, it's going to line up and we're not going to find contradictions there. At least that was my logic.

John Dehlin [00:06:28] So how'd that go?

Todd Phillips [00:06:29] Not very well. Yeah, Those were the 12 minutes I talked about that. It didn't take me long to just do a Bart Ehrman style parallel account. Bart Ehrman does this in his classes where he just says, look, take the crucifixion account or the resurrection account or the birth narrative and just write it down in four columns. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And then just compare them. It's not hard.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] Can you give a couple examples?

Todd Phillips [00:06:53] Yeah. I mean, when was Jesus crucified? In one Gospel it says he's crucified at 9am and another one he's before Pontius Pilate at noon. One is before the Passover, one is after the Passover. I mean, these are very basic.

Todd Phillips [00:07:06] It's either before or after. After the Passover. It cannot be before and after the Passover. It cannot be at 9am and noon. Right. These are the kinds of things that are, I hesitate to say the word comical, but it was so emotionally disturbing to me that I had to laugh at that point.

Todd Phillips [00:07:24] It was like, okay, why did I not allow the critical faculties, the critical faculties that I would give to any other area of my life? Why did I put those on a shelf for 20 years and allow the indoctrinational kind of structure of my seminary at Southwestern really drive my perspective rather than just letting the text say what it said? So let me take you through this. So I'll give you the other four or some additional ones in light of this. So it started with the core story. Birth, death, resurrection. Once I saw that there were discrepancies there at when he died, how he died, etc.

Todd Phillips [00:08:05] That was very, very frustrating to me. Then another area, which is a larger New Testament issue is the Difference between Pauline theology, the theology of Paul, and the theology of Jesus. I harmonized that for 20 years. It's not harmonizable.

Contradictions Between Paul and Jesus's Theology

John Dehlin [00:08:18] What are some examples?

Todd Phillips [00:08:19] Jesus says, very specifically, do not let a jot or tittle of the law fade away. This law is in effect until. Until the end times, until all has come to pass. And Paul says, you no longer are under the law. You're under grace, and you're either under the law or you're no longer under the law. They cannot both be true. It is a fundamental discrepancy and issue theologically at a foundational level between the theology of Jesus himself, as it's shown in the Gospels, and the theology of Paul in the rest of the New Testament. Okay, the law. Are you under grace or are you under the law? Jesus says, you're under the law. And the greatest in heaven will be those that follow the law. And that is the prophets and the law and the prophets. That's all of the Torah. It's all of the prophets.

John Dehlin [00:09:05] Okay, so Jesus meant Judaism.

Todd Phillips [00:09:08] That's the only thing he could speak to. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Yeah. Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:09:10] By definition, he speaks. He says, the law and the prophets, you are under that.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Okay, so that's Torah and Talmud stuff.

Todd Phillips [00:09:17] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] So Jesus is still saying, follow the Torah and the Talmud.

Todd Phillips [00:09:20] Yeah. In fact, those that will be greatest in heaven will be those that follow it, and those that do not follow it will be found least in the kingdom of heaven.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Got it.

Todd Phillips [00:09:27] Like, he is emphatic. And Paul says, no, no, no, you're now under grace. The law was to show your sin, and now you are under grace through Christ. That's not what Jesus preached.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:09:37] So I went from Gospel narratives of the life and times of Jesus to the reality that Paul and Jesus were teaching two different theologies, and they were fundamentally different. And it angered me, okay, that. That I allowed myself to harmonize or reconcile irreconcilable passages, and I just didn't see it for what it was. And then I started realizing that I was an apologist and not a critical scholar.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] What do you mean by that?

Todd Phillips [00:10:03] An apologist is one who. Who. Who comes to the text with predetermined dogma. God is perfect. The Bible is perfect. And therefore, if anything is imperfect in the Bible, you're actually seeing it wrong. That's apologetics. It comes with a result in mind and works back into the text. Biblical scholarship just takes the text as it is.

Todd Phillips [00:10:22] 11 passage says that he was crucified at 9am The 11 says he's still alive. And in front of Pilate at noon. Those are irreconcilable. They're just different. No problem if you can have problems in the Bible. But if you can't have problems, you've got to do something about that. One says he died before the Passover, one says he dies after. You can't have both. So that's apologetics versus biblical scholarship. In fact, just in the last year OR so, Dan McClellan, who Mormon, who's a tremendous biblical scholar, he's had a lot to do, along with Bart Ehrman, to help give meat on the bones of my deconstructed theology.

Todd Phillips [00:11:06] So those are kind of the beginnings were the contradictions in the Bible that became obviously so. And then the theological implications of Paul and Jesus basically preaching a different gospel. And that accelerated for me. So from 2013, when I started asking these questions, first I was just asking questions about inerrancy. And let me just say that 12 minutes really was several years, right? I mean, it didn't take long for me to see the contradictions, but I addressed those going, I'm still hanging on to Christianity. What I'm trying to do is deal with these things that have been in the back of my mind for a long time, and I'm going to come out the other side.

Todd Phillips [00:11:42] It never was. I'm going to come out not a Christian. That didn't even cross my mind. I was just going through my own existential theological kind of crisis. I was going to come out on the other side with some sort of version of Christianity that addressed these issues, or I was going to ignore them, but I was always going to be a Christian.

Todd Phillips [00:12:00] And one of the things that. So that happened the entire time I was doing the last. Well, until we finished our project in Liberia, in West Africa in 2020, from 2013 to 2020, asking lots of questions, reading lots of liberal scholars trying to come to terms with what kind of a Christian I was or would be. But I was still a Christian. And I knew one thing for certain, that regardless of these problems, I was still an evangelist. I wanted people to get saved. And so my work in Liberia was really primarily to serve people with clean water, to earn the right to share the gospel, the good news of Jesus.

Todd Phillips [00:12:35] And that was the focus of our ministry all the way through 2020. And I was comfortable with that. So in the midst of all these questions, still very focused on evangelism, very focused on Jesus and what I will say that it went from contradictions to the Paul and Jesus theology issue.

Todd Phillips [00:12:55] And then because of Those problems. I said, you know what? I'm going to go back into the Old Testament. I've always had problems with God's character. I've always had problems with some issues back there.

John Dehlin [00:13:05] Like, what were some of the problems?

Todd Phillips [00:13:06] Oh, boy. It was the amount of problems I had with God's character even before I began to read critically and just let the text say what it said. It was always a problem for me. But I was just wrong. I just didn't see God. Like, for example, with the Amalekites, God commands the Israelite army to commit genocide against the Amalekites. He doesn't just say, kill the men, the combatants. He says, kill the women, the children, and the babies, the livestock as well.

Troubling Passages in the Old Testament

Todd Phillips [00:13:46] So God is commanding Moses to send the Israelites to kill babies by the sword. And when you just scrape away all the theology that you're trying to. The Amalekites were horrible, or they were sacrificing children, so the genocide was necessary. It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd on its face that killing babies is an appropriate thing in any condition. In fact, I can safely say, Christian or not, that it is never okay to kill a baby in any way, let alone by the sword. It's never okay to murder a baby. It's never okay. Like, that is a universal. We can all kind of agree to that. And yet God's commanding it and the reason given for committing genocide against the Amalekites is because the Amalekites stood up and.

Todd Phillips [00:14:37] And went to war against Israel 400 years prior. I mean, it just gets more. If it weren't so tragic, comical. Right. So you're killing babies four centuries later in a generation of people who had nothing to do with the issue that you had a problem with, and you're still doing it. These are the kind of absurdities that I started seeing from my perspective in the Bible, when it came to the character of God.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] It's like 20 generations later, it's 20 generations.

Todd Phillips [00:15:05] They have nothing to do with anything. And yet that's considered justice. And not only justice, but perfect justice. Right. Because it's God's justice, because it's God. Because might makes right, and God can do anything. And if he's doing it, he has a reason for it. And so even though it looks immoral and unconscionable and just. It's the murdering of babies, even though it looks that way from all angles for 20 years, I said, I must be wrong.

John Dehlin [00:15:31] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:15:32] And those are the kind of things that started to really, really Whittle away at my confidence in the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] The scripture I was taught was, God's ways are higher than man's ways.

Todd Phillips [00:15:42] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:15:42] Isaiah 55. Okay. Any other thing from the Old Testament you want to highlight?

Todd Phillips [00:15:50] Well, I did a whole video recently on the ten Bible passages that I could no longer defend. And the Amalekites are one of them. But they're. The sad part is that the Bible is replete with it.

John Dehlin [00:16:00] I mean, there's slavery, right?

Todd Phillips [00:16:02] Yeah, I mean, yeah. Exodus 25, Deuteronomy 21, I believe. You know, it, actually.

John Dehlin [00:16:07] What do those say?

Todd Phillips [00:16:07] Yeah, they. They. The God of the Old Testament condones the owning of other human beings as property. It says very specifically, you can purchase slaves from the. From the nations around you. You may own them as property and hand them to your children. Okay, so they are. They are just. They're just like cattle. They are. They are defined as such. They are property. So owning another human being is property. It also says, I believe in Deuteronomy 21, that you can beat your slaves as long as they don't die within the first few days. If they die within the first few days, you can be punished. If they do not die within the first few days, you're not held responsible for anything that you've done. And these are the kind of things that you see. So slavery, rape, genocide, it is great.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] God's okay with rape.

Todd Phillips [00:16:52] Yeah. When you look at David, David and Bathsheba, if listeners know that story, David and Bathsheba, they commit sin by committing. He commits adultery with Bathsheba, sends off Bathsheba's husband to go get killed at the front lines. And the answer for David's actions of committing adultery is first to kill their baby. So any idea of justice, again, requires that the person that does the wrong thing is the person that deals with the consequences of the actions that they took. The idea that from God's perspective, it's okay to kill a baby for David's sin, again, in my opinion, I think, in every human's opinion, ludicrous. And yet that's what he does. And it gets better, though.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] Meaning worse.

Todd Phillips [00:17:45] Meaning worse. He takes 10 of David's concubines and. And has David's son days later, after God says, I will raise up trouble from among you. I will take your wives and give them to another to have sex with them, basically, on top of a building in front of all of Israel to see.

Todd Phillips [00:18:05] Days later, David's son comes in, takes 10 wives, takes them up on a roof and rapes them for all the world to see in public. That is a command of God according to the Old Testament. There's no way around it. And what I find interesting is when I look at, when I do videos on these, the apologist will come out of the woodworks and will say, no, you just don't understand the text. They'll use the term. You don't understand the context. It's always, you don't know what's really going on. And yet these are just a few of literally dozens and dozens of passages that address the, the horrific actions of the God supposedly in the Old Testament treatment of women.

John Dehlin [00:18:50] I want to do a little

Todd Phillips [00:18:53] start with the raping of David's wives. It's unconsensual. They are just chattel. They are property in the argument between God and David. That's it. That's how they're seen. And.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Or the. What about the. For a Mormon themed question, what about the polygamy of the ancient Old Testament prophets?

Todd Phillips [00:19:12] Oh my gosh. Polygamy in the Old Testament is considered a norm. The idea that Christians today would say that one man, one woman for life is the only way that marriage is shown in the Bible is just. You haven't read the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:19:25] That's a good point.

Todd Phillips [00:19:26] It's just, it's just there's nothing. In fact, many men, many leaders have many wives at the same time. And it's considered normal. It's not called out by God. In fact, it's just within the normal processes of being a child of God in the Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:19:45] And then the New Testament, you know, also isn't great with women, right?

Todd Phillips [00:19:49] Oh, not at all. I mean, you know, women aren't allowed to preach, they aren't allowed to hold leadership roles. It's a very misogynistic theology both in the Old and the New Testament. And the idea that Jesus came to do away with all that, again, that's not what Jesus said. That's what Paul said.

Todd Phillips [00:20:09] If you follow the life of Jesus and he's the one we're supposed to be following, we're not following Paulianity, we're following Christianity. If you are a Jesus follower, you have to address the issue that Jesus didn't abolish the law, he came to fulfill the law.

Todd Phillips [00:20:23] And he speaks very, very clearly to obey the law of the Torah and the prophets. He's very specific. And so the treatment of women in the Old Testament is validated by the words that are given to Jesus. You can't discount the character of the Old Testament God and say, well, Jesus is different, then you're talking about two different gods at that point. And you may believe that in your own theology, but I believe that Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was Yahweh in the flesh.

John Dehlin [00:20:57] One thing that Joseph Smith really seized on is this idea of the pure blood of Israel and how the Israelites were God's chosen people, which I think is what the Old Testament says. And then when Mormons come of age, they get what's called a patriarchal blessing, where they're told what, what lineage of Israelite they're descendants of. So I'm from the tribe of Ephraim, you know, because of the patriarchal blessing that I got, because Joseph Smith took all that really seriously and believed the Old Testament, which is that God has a favorite lineage and he blesses that chosen favored lineage. And I, for a long time was caught up on kind of the Curse of Cain, dark skin, Book of Mormon, Lamanite racism.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] That is in Mormonism, to not see that just this idea of God has millions or billions of his children, but there's a certain race or a certain lineage that's his chosen one. That's a problem. Have you ever thought about that?

Todd Phillips [00:22:05] Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, riff on that. Look, the God of the Old Testament is a tribal war God, straight up. Like, again, from a scholarly perspective, this is not some strange statement or some outlandish thought by some random former pastor. He's a tribal war God. It's very clear. He chooses Israel. It's his tribe among all the other tribes.

Todd Phillips [00:22:31] And it's clear from this that I used to say this and I've had done videos on it recently. If the Bible was really from God being perfect and outside of time, you would think it wouldn't look like a tribal war God wrote it. And that's exactly what you see. You see a tribal regional God thousands of years ago, picking Israel over other nations and giving them war booty. From beating the other nations into submission and committing genocide. And it's completely fine, by the way, to do that and then to own the captive brides from those other nations as war booty. These are the things that God supposedly says directly to his people.

John Dehlin [00:23:16] And then there's a blame reversal. If they get beat by the other tribes, well, it's because they were wicked, right?

Todd Phillips [00:23:22] Absolutely. Well, there's always a reason around it, right? It just seems, and I don't. I'm careful to use these terms, but I'm going to use them. It is at least the God what I started to do when I was going through my deconstruction. Still being a Christian is. I was like, I'm going to have to let go of. I remember saying this 2018, 2019 around. I said, I know I can't let go of the Old Testament God, but I don't know how I can continue to serve and say that I worship and endorse and condone the actions of the Old Testament God as it's expressed in.

Todd Phillips [00:24:01] In the Old Testament. That's not a God I would want to serve. You know, I think it was Richard Dawkins, you know, said that he had this whole paragraph in the beginning of one of his books. Maybe the God delusion is that, you know, Yahweh is the most capricious, immoral, vindictive. And he goes on with all these words about describing the Old Testament God. I remember hearing that when I was a Christian going, that guy's going to hell.

Todd Phillips [00:24:27] How can you speak out against God that way? I actually went back and critiqued that paragraph when I was going through my deconstruction. I said, asking myself, forget what I think I know. Are any of these words not accurate?

Todd Phillips [00:24:41] And I went through that entire paragraph and said everything. Everything that Dawkins described the Old Testament God as being is accurate based on the text. I have to decide not to buy into the text to disagree with this passage. I mean, this paragraph from Dawkins and that was like a pierce to the heart for me. It was like, what do I do with this? How do I separate Jesus from this Old Testament God? When Jesus validates everything that that God said, how do I do that? And I just had to choose for three or four years to just be a Jesus only Christian. I don't know how to reconcile it.

Todd Phillips [00:25:18] I don't know how to reconcile the Pauline theology. I'm not going to be a Paulite, I'm going to be a Christian. And I can't bind to the Old Testament God any longer. He seems horrible. And so I'm just going to bind to Jesus. But Jesus validated this Old Testament God, so I'm just going to be a red letter Christian. And that lasted from about 2019, maybe 2020 to about 2022, where all I did was just say, I'm a red letter Christian, I just follow Jesus.

New Testament Contradictions and Growing Doubts

Todd Phillips [00:25:42] So all these things happen, right? So we've got the contradictions. We've got Paul and Jesus with a different theology. We've got the Old Testament God, which is a horrific God from my perspective, looks like a Tribal God, acts like a tribal God, speaks like a tribal God, and looks a lot like the other gods of the same time period from other religious ideologies.

Todd Phillips [00:26:02] Then I started looking at how the Gospels were written and realized over months, maybe a year or so, that I couldn't honestly say that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts, because they're not. We have no idea who the authors of the New Testament are. They were written somewhere between 60 and 110 years after the life of Christ.

Todd Phillips [00:26:29] And we have no way of knowing. Dan McClellan famously will say this often we have no way of knowing a single word that was said or a single action taken by this Jesus. We simply don't know. We just have to take it on face value that these are the things that happened.

John Dehlin [00:26:46] Yeah. And tell why. Because until I learned about Bart Ehrman, I didn't understand how the New Testament manuscripts were put together.

Todd Phillips [00:26:54] Yeah, it's quite astonishing, really. The New Testament manuscripts specifically were written by people. We don't have the author. Church tradition, Catholic Church tradition gives us the authors in the second and third century,

John Dehlin [00:27:10] which is happening generations, hundreds of

Todd Phillips [00:27:11] years after the life of Jesus. So if something were to happen today and someone would write something about us in 2226 and say that was the author of that thing that we just found.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] And it was passed down through oral tradition.

Todd Phillips [00:27:24] It was passed down through oral tradition and for decades before it was written and it wasn't written in full form. We have Mark. The synoptic Gospels are Mark, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Okay, Mark and Matthew. Mark was the first Gospel that was written. And Matthew and Luke take about 90, some would argue 95% of their message from Mark. So the fact, the idea that we have three separate accounts is an inaccurate statement to begin with. They are synoptic. They are pulled from each other, Matthew and Luke, from Mark.

John Dehlin [00:27:54] So we know they had Mark as

Todd Phillips [00:27:56] a source, as a source document.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] They're fan fictioning an original source document.

Todd Phillips [00:28:02] Exactly right. And then John is the most developed, theologically developmental gospel where Mark is first. You don't have any post resurrections account in Mark. Matthew and Luke have post resurrection accounts. And all of a sudden in John, he is the Word in the flesh, he is eternal. John is the one that has the most theologically developed view of Christology.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Which reminds me of like the fish story, right? You catch a fish and it starts out this big and then by the end it's this big.

Todd Phillips [00:28:37] Yeah. And you see that theological development throughout the four Gospels. And so the authors of the Gospels definitely Had an agenda, a theological agenda. In fact, it's John who says that Jesus did this in order to fulfill the scripture here and then he misuses the scripture from the Old Testament.

Todd Phillips [00:28:54] Like, the crazy thing is the New Testament writers, the Gospel writers clearly read from the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament. They didn't know original Hebrew because they're misusing and misquoting the Old Testament. And again, if God's perfect, a perfect God is going to make sure that these kinds of mistakes, these very basic mistakes are not happening.

Todd Phillips [00:29:20] At least that would be my logic, right? So I could keep going on with the Bible. But what happened was just this cumulative effect of all these challenges that I've been describing over time from the New to the Old Testament, the development of the Gospels, the fact that we know who wrote them, the fact that they have theological developments that are very plain inside them over time and time will tell. In other words, Mark is early, John is late. The theological developments in the later books, you can see the development, it's just there for all to see that are not seeing with predetermined lenses over their eyes.

Todd Phillips [00:29:59] And I went through a very angry phase around 2019, 2020 was when I was starting to ask some of these questions. And the beginnings of that kind of anger phase started to happen. But I was still in the final throes of the last well, bringing the gospel to the last 10, 15% of Liberia. We were doing it during the pandemic. There was a lot going on, right? So I was trying to finish. December 31st was our end date of 2020. It was built into our mission. Mission to bring the gospel and clean water to all of Liberia by December 31, 2020, it was in the mission.

Todd Phillips [00:30:35] So those last two years, even though I was dealing with some of this anger, I didn't allow it to surface until after the last well was done. It wasn't until 2021, after the last well was completed in November of 2020, that the emotional side of this started to really carry some weight. So I had this intellectual exercise for seven years. I was still a Christian, right? When the last well was finishing, I started asking many of the questions I' about now, I would have said probably around 2019, 2020. I was a red letter Christian, but that was a private decision on my part. I wouldn't have announced that to the world, but I would say that was probably accurate.

Todd Phillips [00:31:10] Again, the timing gets a little fluid. But after the last well was completed in 2020, then I really, you know, my Career, my passion for evangelism. Nothing was tied career wise to this issue. And now it's a free for all. Now I can go wherever I want with this and really spend as much time as I want. And that's when things started getting really dark.

John Dehlin [00:31:35] How so?

Todd Phillips [00:31:40] I was kicking and screaming the whole way of my deconstruction. I never did not want to leave Christianity, not for career reasons, for relationship reasons. This idea that I had a relationship with the God of the universe, that I had been forgiven of my sins, that I was going to heaven to see my family. I woke up every day with what I thought was a God given very specific directive for my life to evangelize the world. Last well was part of that. I woke up knowing that God had given me that and he was empowering me to do it.

Todd Phillips [00:32:15] When the last well was over and I wasn't living day to day under God's mission for the first time really in my entire Christian experience, now I was untethered. Now I was angry. I did not have a mission any longer to get up in the morning for the pandemic had just happened. It was still going on in 2021. I went through a divorce in 2020, separate from my religious beliefs. It was just the end of the marriage.

Todd Phillips [00:32:43] Had gone through two or three years of Christian counseling to try to save the marriage. It ended in 2020. And so I was divorced, had just finished the last well during the pandemic, had moved from Dallas to Austin into an apartment. For the first time, I was living by myself.

John Dehlin [00:33:03] Did you consider, oh, go back and be a megachurch pastor? Things were happy then, never why.

Todd Phillips [00:33:13] I had already wrestled with the fact that I couldn't preach any longer, even if I was going to be some sort of version of Christianity. I just had too many problems with the text. And a preacher is a. You're a preacher of the word. I'm not just a pastor. I'm a preacher. And I have to be 100% confident in preaching. So in 2020, when the last well was done, I was like, man, maybe I'll lead another nonprofit. But what happened was I went through my divorce. I got long Covid. I had a eight month problem with that. I lost my dad in 2020. So theological crisis, divorce, dad dies, eight months of COVID and no career trajectory.

The Dark Night of the Soul

John Dehlin [00:33:59] You're going full job on us, man.

Todd Phillips [00:34:01] I'm going full job. That's exactly right. Don't get me started on job. It was a horribly difficult time. And that was the time where I finally had the chance also to ask the questions and really set with them.

Todd Phillips [00:34:15] And so, yeah, my life unraveled in short order in 21 and 22. And it really was the dark night of the soul for me. And I would, and I would say that lasted until, it lasted until 25. So I started last year, yeah, I would say four, four, four and a half very solid years of depression. I got to a point in 2024. I remember this very well.

Todd Phillips [00:34:54] I called my mother. I had this career and security and my finances were in order and I had my family and I had nothing. I was a single man in Austin going through this theological crisis and career crisis and relational crisis. I remember saying to her on the phone and I was just weeping.

Todd Phillips [00:35:16] I probably was not easily understood through those tears. I remember saying, I don't want to wake up tomorrow. You don't have to worry about me taking my life, but I'm exhausted. I would be fine not waking up. And I remember for months on end getting up in the morning and before I. You know, when you're in that fog, when you first wake up and you don't, you're not capturing where you are in time, you're just waking up from asleep and there's seconds there, maybe 30, where you're stretching and it's just another morning and then the reality of your entire world hits you. And I remember going for months, maybe over a year, every morning going, man, I, I actually have to get up out of this bed and just exist for 14 more waking hours until I can go to bed again.

Todd Phillips [00:36:13] That's how much I was hurting. It was a tremendous amount of depression. And those were the years of my theological dismantling. And I remember thinking, man, I wouldn't it be nice to be back in my useful fiction is the phrase I would use that Christianity was a useful fiction.

Todd Phillips [00:36:40] I mean, it almost brings me to tears right now because it was so painful. It was, You know, I think I'm past this sometimes and it surprises me, you know, it got so challenging for me. In January of 25, Elise was up at my apartment and I put everything I had in storage.

Todd Phillips [00:37:09] And I told a girl that I was actually seeing, had just been seeing for a few months. I said, look, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to be in a relationship and I care about you a great deal.

Todd Phillips [00:37:24] But I'm going to make a decision right now to get physically away from everything because things are not going well in my life. And so I put everything in storage and I took a one way ticket to Vietnam.

Todd Phillips [00:37:38] And I went on a solo backpacking trip. And I was gone from January, early February of 25, this is recent, until July of 25. I was in Vietnam for many months. I was in Cambodia for a while. I went and visited a friend of mine who had a bungalow in Florida. Stayed there for a few months and just got.

Todd Phillips [00:38:02] I haven't shared this publicly. I needed physical and emotional distance from everything. It was either going to be the worst decision of my life to kind of pack everything in storage and go to Vietnam, or the best it really wasn't going to be.

Todd Phillips [00:38:19] There was no middle ground there. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made. It gave me enough physical distance from all my challenges to realize that letting go of my faith, going through this crisis, existing in a depressive time frame where I didn't want to wake up each morning, that I valued this life and had some incredible chapters in it. And many of those chapters were driven by a belief in God. And I just didn't realize how devastating the loss of God would be.

Todd Phillips [00:38:58] And I. And when I came back from that, basically six months backpacking, I came back to Austin. And this was in summer of last year, a year ago. My gosh, so recent. I came back. I was doing some AI consulting work at the time.

Todd Phillips [00:39:20] And in Christmas, I sat down with my daughter, my youngest, Rainey is her name, and I said, rainy. I got back from my trip. It was very helpful. I'm kind of buoyed by the process. I'm not kind of mired in that depression any longer. But I have lost my faith.

Todd Phillips [00:39:40] You know, it's in the rearview mirror by some time now. And I really think I'm agnostic. I may even be an atheist. And I'm spending so much time struggling with the fact that I was a megachurch pastor and tens of thousands of people knew me in a certain way. I think I'm just going to spend the rest of my life in this horrible solitude because I don't feel comfortable telling anybody now where I am.

Todd Phillips [00:40:05] And maybe I shouldn't. Maybe that's just the price I pay. I don't want to damage anybody else's faith, certainly the people that I shared Jesus with. And she said, I remember this really well. She said, dad, she goes, you should download the TikTok app. This was at Christmas of last year.

Todd Phillips [00:40:26] I said, why would I want to download the TikTok app? She goes, look, just download it. Trust me on this. She goes, you can't find anybody that will talk to you. For hours about theology and philosophy in Austin. You tell me your friends in Austin are great, but they're. They're much more kind of football and, you know, everything else. And you're just stuck in this zone. And she goes, the algorithm will find a half a dozen Johns that you can get on Zoom calls with and talk theology and philosophy and kind of work through this stuff. She goes, right now, you're stuck in your head.

Todd Phillips [00:40:55] So I remember this. January 12th of 2026, about three weeks later, I downloaded the TikTok app and I pushed the little button. It's the first video on my TikTok channel. And I just said, hey, I'm a former megachurch pastor. Some of you might know me.

Going Public on TikTok and Finding Community

Todd Phillips [00:41:11] I'm just looking for people to talk with and to kind of walk through this journey with. And if that's where you are, let me know. I'm going to be posting. My daughter suggested I post for, like, the next month just to let the algorithm work. So I'm hoping to find some people I can talk with. And that was my first video.

Todd Phillips [00:41:27] I wasn't trying to start a movement or get followers. I was trying to find half a dozen guys that would have a whiskey with me over Zoom. That was it. And now it's eight months later, and it's a very different world.

John Dehlin [00:41:42] So what happened? Who reached out? How did they reach out? What relationship? What videos did the algorithm feed back to you? And what types of relationships or friendships or following did you tap into?

Todd Phillips [00:41:56] Yeah, so it was really quite amazing, and I didn't realize how much I needed to get out of my head until I was able to put it on camera and just talk for two or three minutes at a pop.

Todd Phillips [00:42:10] What I didn't realize was how good the algorithm was. You know, I really. Two things was I had lost my sense of self confidence, my sense of self worth, my sense of self esteem. And although I was kind of coming out of a very depressive episode, I just didn't have a lot of direction in that area. And the videos allowed me to start putting to words the things that I'd been thinking. The videos allowed me to speak into the ether, some of my thoughts and share my journey and make it okay that if somebody who was a Christian, who used to be at my churches, and they found out about it, which invariably probably would happen, I thought, that's okay.

Todd Phillips [00:42:54] We're all on our own journey, and I'm just going to stop worrying about everybody else and I'm going to live my life. And right now, the Healthiest thing for me to do is to express myself. And so I did. And the algorithm very quickly connected me with Brett Hartley. Soon after that, Dan McClellan.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] Meaning it was feeding you their videos. Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:43:16] Feeding me their videos. Yeah. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] No, no, no, no, no, don't.

Todd Phillips [00:43:19] Yeah, the algorithm was feeding me videos from Brit and from Dan McClellan.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] So slow talk, that a bit. Like what? So you see, Brit, like what? What messages that Brit and then Dan were sharing were interesting to you? These are ex Mormons or liberal Mormons. How did they speak to an ex evangelical megachurch pastor?

Todd Phillips [00:43:39] Well, a couple things, right. I had not been on social media since 2020 when the nonprofit ended, so I've been off it for six years. And so in January, eight months ago, when I started this, Brit shows up, Dan shows up, and I'm just amazed at some level at the level of discourse that's happening on two and three minute videos.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] Right.

Todd Phillips [00:44:03] And how effective Dan was at. You know, I used to say a sermon was hard because you only had 30 minutes. I remember that because I could talk for an hour or two hours. The. The superpower was getting it in 30 minutes. The superpower is definitely getting it in two to three minutes. Right. And Dan and Britt were both very effective at that. And clearly they'd been doing it for a while, for several years by the time I saw them, and were certainly in their own zone. And each of them have, like, I don't know, 7, 800, 900,000 followers on TikTok alone. And then they've got other channels, Right.

Todd Phillips [00:44:32] So more than a million people watching these two. What they did was they gave a level of validity to my process. They allowed me to say, okay, there are other people that are out here speaking to this. What I had not seen up to that point was someone like myself who was a mega church pastor.

Todd Phillips [00:44:55] And I knew a lot of them, and none of them, I knew, had gone through deconstruction. Most of them were still in their pastoral roles. So there was a uniqueness to the story that I thought I was bringing to the table at some level. But I. I was very impressed with the depth and the critical study necessary to produce the videos that Britt and Dan were producing.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] Let me ask you, I can get why Dan's would have resonated with you because you went to Princeton and you were knee deep in biblical criticism. So I could see that as a natural fit, even though, ironically, he's still a believing attending Christian. But Brit Hartley, what was it about some of her videos or her messages. She's more of a secular person. She's ex Mormon. How did her stuff resonate with you as an ex evangelical?

Todd Phillips [00:45:49] You know, it's really hard to put my finger on it, honestly. I just like her. I think I'm probably a student of oration and I love people that can speak publicly. And again, the idea that you can stuff the amount of knowledge in a two or three minute video, I was taken by Britt's ability to do that.

Todd Phillips [00:46:13] She speaks on a variety of subjects and does so with seeming intellectual curiosity and some level of, I would say, a great level of intellectual prowess that she brings to the table. And she just expresses it in such a way that it impressed me.

Todd Phillips [00:46:31] And I found her subjects to be certainly parallel to mine. So from, from that perspective, I was very, I was, I was very engaged with her videos. And then also what started happening is, is other deconstruction voices were in contact with me. Like, what was weird about the whole thing was I, again, I didn't know If I'd have 10, you know, followers. I was trying to find five, right? And for the audience, this is not to, to, to say anything, but just to understand, like over eight months, like there's 150,000 or so followers on my social media channels, right?

John Dehlin [00:47:03] That

Todd Phillips [00:47:07] what it's allowed me to do is I buried years ago, the Pastor Todd, never to be resurrected, so to speak. And now I find myself using the skill sets that I have a passion to use again. And I thought they would never be used again. So now I get to teach again, I get to share my journey again. I get to have. I get to be on a podcast with you, John. This was not in the cards eight months ago.

Todd Phillips [00:47:38] I have a sense of purpose again. I had lost a sense of purpose in 2020 when Lastwell was done. I lost a sense of mission when I let go of Christianity in 2022, 2023, and for the first time in over half a decade, I get up in the morning and I am very excited about the 14 hours I get to live, very excited about the next day beyond that and the weeks beyond that and the months beyond that,

John Dehlin [00:48:11] you

Todd Phillips [00:48:11] know, and crazy notes because of TikTok. I did not start this to get following or to create a career. It is becoming that almost by necessity, but also by passion. I have a sense of responsibility for other people. I don't want people to go through the years of depression that I went through. I don't want them to wake up in the morning and feel like they don't Want to live that day.

Todd Phillips [00:48:45] I want to shorten. I say this quite often. My goal now through my videos and the community that I built and other projects that I'm working on now, is to shorten the pain curve for those going through deconstruction. I have no agenda.

Todd Phillips [00:49:00] If deconstructing and having a critical phase in their own Christian faith takes them back to Christianity, I'm very happy for them if it takes them to a more liberal form of that Christianity. If they're evangelicals right now, I'm also happy. If it takes them where I am today, I'm equally as happy because they will have gone through the process of questioning the things that have been handed to them. And I think that's a good thing.

John Dehlin [00:49:23] This is a thought that I haven't shared with ex evangelical. You may end up doing this or liking the idea. So I started doing workshops and retreats for Mormons in faith crisis in the 2000s, 2007s, 2008s. But I really went hard at that after finishing my Ph.D. 2014, 2015, and I developed a whole weekend retreat concept on Navig Mormon faith crisis, healing and growth and mental health and marriages and sexuality and all that meaning and purpose. But one of the metaphors that I pulled out of it was to take Jesus's idea of being born again and applying it to what Richard Rohr calls the first half of life and the second half of life. And I've never described to an evangelical the idea or articulated to them the idea that, that, hey, brother, you've just been born again. Yeah, well, this is what Jesus meant when he said born again.

Todd Phillips [00:50:30] Well, there's no question. I mean, to come a bit full circle, the hilltop experience I had that we talked about in part one, when I came to faith, when I became a Christian, when I had that radical transformative experience in 1994, you know, in some ways, and certainly in slower fashion, but posting that video on January 12th of 2026 was the birth of a new, certainly a new chapter of my life was a rebirth of a very exhausted and depressed and in many ways lonely person.

Todd Phillips [00:51:20] And I have community again and building new relationships with people like yourself. That, and I do mean this because we've just met, I hope continues. Much of what the church provided in community and connection and belonging was stripped away from my life.

Todd Phillips [00:51:44] And I didn't understand how costly it would be. I just didn't. No way of knowing. And some people go through it in a much more casual fashion. They just over time just decide they don't believe anymore. I think it was because I was so steeped in really was every, it was everything to me.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:52:07] Everything. Everything.

John Dehlin [00:52:09] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:52:11] So coming out of that's been difficult.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Mormons get that. That's one thing Mormons get is the religion being everything and then nothing, you know.

Todd Phillips [00:52:20] Yeah. And it's. And, and I, I think for me when I, when I, when I talk to people in this new community that I launched, you know, like, oh my gosh, you know, I've, I've had to brave the comment section on TikTok to say something and then I get attacked. Right. And now they've got this place where it's kind of, it's behind a, behind a wall and you've got to fill out the little questions and we moderate the place. I don't know what it'll become. It's brand new. It's like it's weeks old.

John Dehlin [00:52:41] Oh, cool.

Todd Phillips [00:52:42] Yeah. And, and what platform I'm using? Skool.com. oh s k O O L O. It's kind of like circle. Yeah, I guess. Same, same kind of deal. But I just found it first. But one of the things I'm finding is that I also didn't realize even on social media this community is something different for me selfishly, you know, it allows me to, I don't have to navigate the shark infested waters of social media comments to get to people. Right. These are people that have kind of self selected into this and that's been very encouraging for me as well. You know, the idea that I was looking for four or five johns to just have some discussions with at the beginning of this in January. Now there's this community of people that I'm engaged with daily.

John Dehlin [00:53:35] I love it.

Todd Phillips [00:53:36] It's wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:53:37] Let me ask you to go back to. You put out that first TikTok video in January. How did people start reaching out to you and how did you start connecting with viewers and commenters and followers and then how did that start coming into your real life if you're willing to share?

Todd Phillips [00:53:57] Sure, yeah. I mean the last eight months has been really interesting to say the least. What happened was I again, and I mentioned this before, I just looking for a few people. So very, very quickly, I think. And again TikTok I guess does this for lots of people. But you know, I had two or three thousand followers in a week or two. Right. And I started realizing that my videos were at least being partially watched by more people than I ever preached to in any of the largest churches I was in. It's wild. It is. It's a strange deal, right? I'm like, wow, this is unexpected. Yeah, I just didn't have anything to go by.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:54:29] And so then I started getting emails and DMs, I guess more. More direct messages from people like yourself who were saying, hey, come on my podcast, or, I haven't heard your story before. And. And I. And I said no to everything because that wasn't the goal. I was like, I.

Todd Phillips [00:54:46] This is a crazy enough decision to get on social media to find some people to talk to. This isn't my career, podcast or not. I mean, you know, I'm still dealing with the fact that I'm gonna eventually be found out by Christians who used to go to my church. It's a bit of a challenge.

Todd Phillips [00:55:03] But I did get in touch with some people in the deconstruction space. John Cohen was one of them. He's a great guy. You should have him on. Of course, he won't fit this. He's always been an atheist, so it doesn't work, but John's a great guy. He's always been an atheist.

John Dehlin [00:55:15] Wait, I've had atheists on the podcast

Todd Phillips [00:55:16] that I've always been atheist, sure. Yeah. Okay. I thought you were mostly going through the. John's a great guy.

John Dehlin [00:55:21] Anyone who's got. Got a good story to tell, I want to hear the story.

Todd Phillips [00:55:23] Yeah, he's in the uk, really good guy. He's got a debate channel, basically talks to Christians about their beliefs. It's a very. It can get very confrontational, but he does it very well.

John Dehlin [00:55:32] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:55:34] But anyway, John reached out to me and asked me to be on one of his TikTok lives. So it was just 10 minutes real quick, and it was my brave move into the live space. And this was like, in late February. And then John and I became fast friends. So he and I, in fact, we just did a video that I posted yesterday, as a matter of fact, and it's. It's. I haven't told you this. So John is the lifelong atheist.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] What's his name again? John Thomas Cohen.

Todd Phillips [00:55:57] C O H E M. Oh, John Cohen. John Cohen.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:56:02] And you can find him on YouTube, TikTok, all that stuff. But his YouTube channel is the main one. But anyway, John is the lifetime atheist. I have an evangelical Christian, Jason, a friend of mine that I. That I was on his podcast in Florida a few weeks ago, a month ago, and then myself. And what we're doing is we're critiquing my old sermons. So young Todd is on The. On the screen.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Because your sermons are still on YouTube.

Todd Phillips [00:56:24] Yeah, I have, I have, I have. I have a. I've. I've got a Todd Phillips archives channel now because I've had so many people ask for the old stuff.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] Yeah, that's.

Todd Phillips [00:56:33] So we took one of my favorite evangelistic messages and we Critiqued it for 2 hours and 40 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] Oh, my gosh. I want to see.

Todd Phillips [00:56:39] Yeah, I'll send you the link, but I just. I literally posted it yesterday before I got on the flight.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] We'll put it in the show notes.

Todd Phillips [00:56:45] Yeah, yeah. So all that to say is what's happened over the last eight months is I get to write again, I get to teach again. I'm addressing all my fears by critiquing my old sermons. So a lot of it's come full circle. And what I found when I was on the video, just as a side note, I was on the video with John and Jason.

Todd Phillips [00:57:08] I found. I also got. I don't know, maybe I'm just having an emotional few days, but I went through this whole process of looking at my sermon 10, 12, 15 years later, whatever it is, and really having compassion for the guy on the stage, really having a lot of compassion for young Todd or younger Todd. And it was a really healthy process for me to go through, to just start putting words to. I still like what I said there. That story was still profound. This was still very helpful. This is what I disagree with. This is what I'm embarrassed by now.

Todd Phillips [00:57:45] And really allowing. It's a bit of a catharsis to go through that process. So social media has. It's turned out to be the doorway into new relationships, new opportunities, new conversations, new places to share my story, new opportunities to write, new opportunities to build community. And all of that came from a video on January 12th.

John Dehlin [00:58:11] So how did it bleed over into personal relationships or has it yet, like friendships or like lunches or dinners or like, have you done meetups yet, any of that stuff?

Todd Phillips [00:58:22] Yeah, I haven't done meetups in Austin from social media.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] You have or have not?

Todd Phillips [00:58:25] I have not.

John Dehlin [00:58:26] Okay.

Todd Phillips [00:58:27] I have not done that yet. But what I'm finding is in this community that I'm building on, this decon recon community, there's a map. And so as more people are joining, you know, it turns out three or four of these people are within like 45 minutes of Austin.

John Dehlin [00:58:41] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:58:41] So eventually we're going to meet up. But what I have found is, like with John and yourself and others, I've got a lot of zoom, friends like people that I just get on the. You know, I've really have become fast friends, you know, that I'll text, they're available for me, they understand the challenges that I've been through. I've shared my story with them like I'm sharing with you. And they're just magnanimous and open and caring and. I just cannot tell you how isolated I was.

John Dehlin [00:59:13] Yeah, yeah, I get it.

Todd Phillips [00:59:15] And how it was a very bad place. Well, and it's not anymore.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] Yeah. I mean, yeah, I went through my faith crisis in 2001, before the social media and in Mormonism. You can imagine what that felt like. I did that for three or four years. Went through the years of depression, hopelessness.

Todd Phillips [00:59:35] Well, we have a very similar story then.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Yeah. And then I left Microsoft in 2004. Learned about blogs and podcasts before YouTube, before Facebook, before TikTok, Instagram. And so I started an audio only podcast in 2005. Just wondering, I don't know what's gonna happen here, but let me just record something and put it out and see what happen. And so I'm just 20 by, whatever, 20 years ahead of you that way. But I started in a very, very similar way.

Todd Phillips [01:00:08] Well, I gotta tell you, we'll say more of this offline, but I'm obviously intrigued by your story and for someone that's down the path further, certainly in this kind of public setting. Cause this wasn't the plan. But it is the plan now.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Yeah. And it's fascinating because you just have no idea what's gonna happen. And yeah, you make friends and you have relationships and you make mistakes and you hurt people, but you just keep doing your thing. I was curious.

John Dehlin [01:00:42] Years ago, I actually named my nonprofit. So I did this for five years, an audio only podcast. And then in 2009, 2010, I started the nonprofit. And I literally didn't call it the Mormon Stories foundation, even though I could have. I called it the Open Stories Foundation. And I did that because I really thought the model had viability.

John Dehlin [01:01:05] And I thought there should be a Catholic Mormon. There should be a Catholic Stories and an Evangelical Stories and a Jewish Stories and a Scientology Stories and Jehovah Witnesses stories. Not just in English, but there should be a John Dehlink in every religious ex religious tradition and in every major world language. Like, because this idea of just long form storytelling is clearly transformative. Like the Mormon Church is on its knees for a couple centuries worth of deceiving people, harming people, lying to people. In addition, all the good that it's done. Because I also think the church has done a lot of good. It's done a ton of lying, a ton of racism, a ton of misogyny, a ton of homophobia, a ton of anti science and anti intellectual rhetoric.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] Lots of bad things, lots of good things, but it's on its knees. That's why, in my opinion, that's why it's suing me, because I'm part of this broader community of Britt Hartley's and Dan McClelland's and Radio Free Mormons and Nemo, the Mormons and all these ex Mormon and liberal Mormon creators that have just blown open the lock that the Mormon Church had on people's brains, on their families, on their marriages, on their lives, on their souls, on their spirits.

John Dehlin [01:02:30] And so what I'm trying to say, I'm being long winded, but what I'm trying to say is like this model has worked and it's why you encountered ex Mormons or liberal Mormons influenced by ex Mormonism, frankly, it's why you encountered them. Because we Mormons got so early to the social media game. We were there first in podcasting, first in Facebook, first in YouTube, first in TikTok. We were very early and very heavy. So I'm proud of that as a community.

Todd Phillips [01:03:04] You should be, but.

John Dehlin [01:03:05] Well, I, and I mean it as a community, not personal.

Todd Phillips [01:03:09] I understand.

The Ex-Evangelical Online Landscape

John Dehlin [01:03:10] But what I was wondering is when you got into the ex evangelical scene, were there a ton of John Dehlins and Britt Hartley's and Dan McClelland's or not? And if not, why? Why aren't evangelicals, ex evangelicals, ex Jews, ex Scientologists, ex Jehovah's Witnesses more prevalent is kind of what creators? Why aren't they more prevalent? Or are they.

Todd Phillips [01:03:35] Yeah, I can't speak to the other religious perspective, other religions, but I can say exvangelicals is the term I see a lot on social media. It's quite prominent.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] Okay, it is pretty.

Todd Phillips [01:03:48] Yeah. And it's. It may not be as large as, and I don't know this for a fact, it may not be as large as the number of Mormon influencers out there, ex Mormon influencers on social media, but it's quite large. That's one of the things that was most impressive to me is, is just seeing the numbers. I just thought there were none. Right. Other than kind of the new atheist movement in the 2000s with Dawkins and Hitchens and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, those kind of guys. That's really where I got, where I started watching YouTube was with what they called the four horsemen, the four atheists of the new atheist movement back in the 2000s.

John Dehlin [01:04:30] Yeah. And yeah, you're really early. So you even haven't started really having the in person relationships that you're probably going to.

Todd Phillips [01:04:37] Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I'm starting to see the seeds of that and that's something I'm very encouraged by. I just had my birthday last week and I had a couple of. Thanks. A couple of friends of mine that I've met since January I actually invited to a birthday. One of them flew in from Florida and another guy all that I've met basically connected to because of this whole deconstruction.

John Dehlin [01:04:57] Wait, When's your birthday?

Todd Phillips [01:04:58] August 26th.

John Dehlin [01:04:59] You were born in 1969? Yeah, I was born August 20th, 1969.

Todd Phillips [01:05:04] And we're six days apart.

John Dehlin [01:05:05] We were born in the same week.

Todd Phillips [01:05:06] Look at that.

John Dehlin [01:05:07] That's awesome. That's fun.

Todd Phillips [01:05:09] That's why we relate.

John Dehlin [01:05:10] And we're both Texans.

Todd Phillips [01:05:11] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] Okay, so really quickly, and I'm a nerd. During that 2020-2026 time period, what did you do for work?

Todd Phillips [01:05:23] I did coaching a lot. I had a, I had done a lot of coaching when I was still in the church, meaning just kind of executive coaching, life coaching, things like that. And I, for a couple of years I did a kind of a mindset mastery. I was trying to just try to still do coaching because I was interested in it, but really, I just, really was trying to find myself. So that paid the bills.

Todd Phillips [01:05:48] And then in the last year and a half I've done, I kind of shifted my consulting work into AI. So I've been working because I've always been interested in the topic. So before January, when I started the social media channels, I was working mostly with solopreneurs and small entrepreneurs, small businesses under like 10 employees. Because AI can be leveraged to a far greater degree, in my opinion, with smaller companies. And so they could see a much better return on investment. So I've been helping small companies do that because it's an interest of mine, but it's not a passion of mine.

John Dehlin [01:06:21] Is that like a company?

Todd Phillips [01:06:22] Like, do you have a. Yeah, it's just a consulting.

John Dehlin [01:06:24] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:06:25] Just, just.

John Dehlin [01:06:25] Oh, cool.

Todd Phillips [01:06:26] It's just me.

John Dehlin [01:06:27] So you know AI pretty pretty well?

Todd Phillips [01:06:28] I, I, I like to think so, but it changes very quickly. It's very difficult to keep up for anybody. But I, I have a good outsourced team that I, I use to kind of build out the contracts that I do. However, since it's funny, because I. And you'll appreciate this, I didn't know that TikTok paid for videos. I didn't know that YouTube paid for videos. I had. I had no idea there was a financial side to any of this. Right.

Todd Phillips [01:06:53] So when I started getting pretty good viewership and a certain number of followers on TikTok, they started paying. They just pay you as a creator for the. The volume of videos that are viewed. And then YouTube I just launched a few months ago, and now it's starting to pay a little bit. So what I'm. What I'm doing right now is trying to build that because ultimately what I'd like to do for the next chapter of my life is I'd like to help people this way.

Todd Phillips [01:07:18] I help people with AI, but I don't want to say, but I help people with AI, period. And although I like doing that, I really, I don't like. I love this. This is where I want to spend my time. And so if I can pay bills and develop a career from this so that I can spend more time helping people, this is what I'd like to be doing.

John Dehlin [01:07:42] So your goal is to do this full time and to try and find sustainable ways to support ex evangelicals in their deconstruction and reconstruction, Is that right?

Todd Phillips [01:07:57] Yeah, I would say that's my newfound passion.

John Dehlin [01:07:59] Love it.

Todd Phillips [01:07:59] Yeah. I didn't. Again, didn't plan on it.

John Dehlin [01:08:01] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:08:01] But I think what happened was in the comments section on TikTok and then Instagram. When I launched Instagram a few about a month later, it wasn't dozens. And I'm sure you've seen this in your own situation. You know, thousands of comments.

John Dehlin [01:08:14] Yeah, yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:08:15] And. And a very good, you know, a good number of them. You know, I'm struggling. I feel lonely. I have nowhere to go. I can't talk to anybody. I'm in the Bible Belt, so I. You know, everyone goes to church here, and I can't be an insurance sales rep in Tennessee and not go to church. You know, so they just. These kind of crisis moments.

John Dehlin [01:08:37] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:08:38] And I relate.

John Dehlin [01:08:39] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:08:39] You know, and I. And I. I guess it's my pastor's hat.

John Dehlin [01:08:42] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:08:43] Right. For lack of a better term, I did that for so long, and I want to help people, and I did it through Jesus for a while, through that Christian lens, but now it's just through the lens of kind of humanity.

Todd Phillips [01:08:56] And I just went through so much pain that when I see the comments, when I see the DMs, I feel, I feel at a deep level what they're going through. And I'm just looking for ways again to shorten that pain curve and to give people a place where they don't feel alone and they don't struggle the way that I did. And at least if they are currently struggling the way that I was struggling, that we can lessen the duration of that sense of loss and isolation and emotional upheaval. Yeah, it was very damaging for me. And I don't, I, I, I, if, and I, I remember thinking this, I've said this recently. If, if I help one person,

John Dehlin [01:09:46] I,

Todd Phillips [01:09:47] I think I'm like, I'm happy right now. If nothing, like, I'd be disappointed, but I would be happy right now. Just knowing the last eight months has helped me and helped lots of other people not feel alone. And that's just such a game changer for me. It really, really is.

John Dehlin [01:10:09] Preach. Preach.

Todd Phillips [01:10:11] But I'm serious. Like, it gets me excited. It, like, puts a smile on my face. It enlivens me.

Wrestling With Core Christian Doctrines

John Dehlin [01:10:19] Welcome to my past 20.

Todd Phillips [01:10:21] Yeah, no, that's, I see it. And I told you that's why you're on my list of most influential people.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] No, no, no, I'm just saying I've been doing you it for, for 22 years. Isn't that wild? I love it. It's beautiful. And I'm saying preach because, like, I'm, I'm still a believer.

Todd Phillips [01:10:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 22 weeks in, I'm feeling the same way.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] So let me ask you, you, you put a bunch of. I, I want to get to reconstruction.

Todd Phillips [01:10:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] And, but I also want to talk about your personal deconstruction a tiny bit. But first I want to talk about, let's do kind of a lightning round where I'm going to list some of the elements of deconstruction that we've touched on. But I want you to give a, you know, a 30 second spiel on each one. Is that okay?

Todd Phillips [01:11:05] Yeah, let's go for it.

John Dehlin [01:11:06] So we don't need to go over, you know, contradictions, contradictions in the Bible. We've covered that plenty, I think, in your story. And also the Bible's not speaking with one voice. I think we've covered that plenty. But, and we, we talked about apologetics and critical scholarship enough. But I'm going to ask you about a couple others. So, Hell. Do your riff on hell.

Todd Phillips [01:11:30] Yeah. I think one of the most difficult concepts in Christianity is the concept of hell, regardless of how you view it, whether it's ultimate. Annihilation or it's just separation from God. I can't tell you the number of euphemisms in ways that hell has been explained away. But then you have to ignore more than a dozen passages speaking from supposedly the words of Jesus himself, speaking about eternal hellfire, damnation.

Todd Phillips [01:11:58] It goes on and on and on and never ends. And so the concept of hell, when I originally understood it as a new Christian, I just didn't think too much about it. That's really, to be honest with myself, I just didn't think too much about it. And I just hid behind the grandeur of God and the perfection of God and that in his ultimate plan this makes sense and the people that end up there deserve to be there.

Todd Phillips [01:12:24] And yet when I started to ask the questions about hell, it wasn't as though hell existed. And God found a way through Jesus to get us out of it. He created it in the first place. He created the conditions by which our default destination as humans is hell. We're born defaulting to hell. Let me say that again. We're born with a default destination to hell. Whatever horrible place that is, and however you might describe it and whatever passages you choose to use, it's still a bad place. And it seems to go on forever.

Todd Phillips [01:13:00] And ultimately it just made no sense to me that the idea that an all loving God would have to create that in the first place. And I find it also interesting when you couple that with Adam and Eve, that if you actually buy into the Adam and Eve story, that, you know, these two humans that could not know that being disobedient was evil because they didn't have the knowledge of good and evil. So just the story itself makes no sense in the beginning. But they eat this fruit that somehow is in, you know, embodies this fruit embodies the knowledge of good and evil. And they eat it and they fall.

Todd Phillips [01:13:39] And God literally could have done anything else. He could have said that the consequences for original sin is being tickled by a feather, literally. He's an all power. If he is an all powerful God, he could just choose, for example to forgive. And yet there's this convoluted story that comes out of the Adam and Eve in the original sin theology and the fall of man, that somehow those two people's decision to eat a fruit has affected all of us. And it's just, I think it's absurd on its own, on its face. But when I believed it, I didn't think too much about it. You know, this is the story.

Todd Phillips [01:14:15] God in his Perfection has chosen to give us. He could have given us any other story, so there must be something valuable in it because he's a perfect God. And so ultimately hell is an immoral act of a God if it in fact exists. Because you could just choose to. Not just the people that believe in God could go to heaven and then you could have another planet for people that don't believe in God. Or you could say, listen, if you go with me, it's going to be eternal bliss and you can worship me all the time or just go do your own thing.

Todd Phillips [01:14:45] He could do literally anything other than the worst possible eternal torture, Anything. Of all the things he chose, he chose the worst possible thing he could possibly do to people. And that doesn't seem like a loving God.

John Dehlin [01:14:58] And that's the whole theodicy thing. If God's all powerful, all loving, he could have.

Todd Phillips [01:15:05] He wouldn't do this.

John Dehlin [01:15:06] Yeah, he wouldn't do it. Yeah. And there are liberal Christians that don't really. What they do is they just redefine words so that they don't mean what they actually mean, so that then they don't have. They can be Christian and not have a hell. Why not that option?

Todd Phillips [01:15:24] Yeah, well, there's a lot of people that think there's just annihilation and they go to Paul's theology for that, which.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] Or just. It's metaphor.

Todd Phillips [01:15:31] Yeah, sure. And all those things, Listen, all those things are ways to explain away the horrific reality of hell. That's what it is. It's an explanation to hand wave away the reality of what scripture actually tends to teach in the New Testament about this horrible place and that God's the one that created it in the first place.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] All right, divine hiddenness, go.

Todd Phillips [01:15:53] Yeah, that was a huge one for me.

John Dehlin [01:15:55] What is it?

Todd Phillips [01:15:56] Divine hiddenness is the idea that God could reveal himself to everyone, every individual human in the perfect way. If he's an all perfect God, he knows exactly what John would need and what Todd would need to be able to understand that he actually exists. And then we could make a decision whether to follow him or not.

John Dehlin [01:16:13] But then it wouldn't be a test.

Todd Phillips [01:16:14] But then it wouldn't be a test or it would somehow damage your free will. That's another one. So it gets in the way of free will. I hear free will hundreds of times in the comments. And that's. And I don't believe that that argument holds up at any level. I just don't. Because. Because the idea that in the New Testament there are many places where God shows Up in the Old Testament reveals himself. Pillars of fire by day or smoke. Fire, the parting of the Red Sea, Turning staffs into serpents. The talking donkey, the burning bush. Jesus performs miracles all the time. Doubting Thomas.

John Dehlin [01:16:48] How about resurrecting?

Todd Phillips [01:16:49] Yeah, doubting Thomas. Thomas comes in and says, look, I'm not going to buy until Jesus shows up and I get to touch his hands in his side. Well, that had nothing to do. It did nothing to push against their free will. And Thomas is the perfect example. Jesus didn't seem to have any problem with the guy doubting and him going, look, it's me. Here's the holes, here's the side. Are you good? And Thomas was like, yeah, sure, I'm all over that. God could do that with anybody at any time. And now that we have video cameras and phones and the ability to record everything at all times, there are no miracles.

John Dehlin [01:17:27] Miracles.

Todd Phillips [01:17:28] Nothing's happening. They're a little less frequent, they're a little smaller. They tend to be like, I had a headache and he took it from me and things like that. Right. And I don't mean to make too much light of it, but divine hiddenness, the arguments for God staying hidden, in my opinion, are, again, I use the word very liberally here, absurd.

John Dehlin [01:17:48] In Mormonism, it's the plan of salvation is a test. We're being tested. You don't like that? You don't like that?

Todd Phillips [01:17:54] No, I don't. No, I don't like it at all. Again, if he actually is a tri omni God, if he's all loving, all powerful and all knowing, if he truly is a tri omni God, then it doesn't fit. If he's not all powerful, maybe if he's not all loving, if he's less of one of those things, then some of these things make sense. If he is this traditional view of this all powerful, all loving, all knowing God, then it doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] Yeah, yeah. And the basic explanation is that, I mean, in Mormonism you're here to develop faith. And even Jesus would say it's better to believe without seeing than to be compelled to believe through seeing. So what's wrong with the theology that somehow the development of faith is really valuable?

Todd Phillips [01:18:50] Yeah. I don't see faith, now that I've gone through deconstruction as a valuable thing. Faith is believing something on insufficient evidence. And I mean this. Right. I really thought a lot about this. Faith is believing things on insufficient evidence. And if even by the theology that faith is better, so it was better for those disciples that believed and didn't see Jesus. And for us that believe and don't see Jesus, but still Thomas was there, There are still Thomases. So it might be better. But if God desires that all should be saved and that none should perish, what about the billions of Thomases show up, bring the holes in your side, the holes in your side, and the holes in your hand and show it. Because even though it might be better, you might think more highly of the person that believed without seeing. There are many of us that need to see.

John Dehlin [01:19:40] Yeah. In Mormonism, it's almost one level more pernicious because it's not God or Jesus show up. It's, oh, well, God spoke to Joseph Smith or God spoke to Brigham Young, or God speaks to a Mormon prophet today, and that dude is telling us whether it's evil to be gay or how much money we should give to the church or what a real family is or isn't, or what we have to do to make it back to heaven or not.

John Dehlin [01:20:13] And so it's abstracted an extra layer. And I just concluded, man, if God wants to talk to me, come talk to me. But I'm not gonna have some intermediary who's got his own bank account that's secret and his own private behaviors that we can't see and his own motivations telling me what he says God wants for me. It's not that pride. It's not pride. It's just like, why Joseph Smith?

John Dehlin [01:20:42] He was freaking. I mean, you could argue he's a sexual predator. I think I'm at least that worthy. So why would you go talk to Joseph and not me? That's how it is for me.

Todd Phillips [01:20:52] Yeah. And I do think on the faith thing too. One more thing about this is that, and I'll ask it in a form of a question. Is there anything that you cannot believe on faith? In other words, because you can believe anything on faith, you can believe anything. You can believe there's dragons on faith, flying spaghetti moss. You can believe on anything on faith. So faith cannot be, by definition a reliable pathway to truth. Of course it cannot be.

John Dehlin [01:21:15] Neither can emotion. Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:21:16] It just cannot be. And so if faith and emotion tend to be the cornerstones of Christian belief systems, Right. And they are not a reliable source

John Dehlin [01:21:28] for truth, so what sense do you make? What meaning do you now make of your theophany? That spiritual experience you had in Denver that that changed your life for the better?

Reexamining a Personal Religious Experience

Todd Phillips [01:21:37] Yeah. So I've done a lot of study actually, with on Brit. This is where Britt Hartley Comes in. I've watched a lot and read a lot on the psychology of religious belief. Primarily, the starting point of that was videos from Britt. And so I understand more about the psychology of religious belief.

John Dehlin [01:21:52] Elevated emotion.

Todd Phillips [01:21:53] Yeah. I understand how the brain works in relation to those moments. I understand they've done tests and many, many studies on people who pray and experience the presence of God in the room. That is something that the brain does. I just understand. And it's almost. I don't want to call it boring, but I can't think of a better word. It's almost boring how obvious those kinds of experiences are and those ecstatic utterances and the ways that we experience and the way our brain works in those kinds of environments. And it's just been tested over and over. And I understand it now. So, although I don't discount the experience. So people have very powerful experiences, like I did in the car that night. But I just was told who to point it toward. I was told by my Christian friend that that was the Christian God who made me feel that way.

John Dehlin [01:22:42] There's always an interpreter telling me.

Todd Phillips [01:22:43] There's an interpreter telling me what that experience means.

John Dehlin [01:22:46] Right.

Todd Phillips [01:22:47] So if I would have been told that day to go and talk to the Buddha, I would have then been told by my Buddhist friend that that was the Buddha. Right. There's an interpreter for my experience. I just no longer interpret it the same way.

Reasons for Leaving Christianity Behind

John Dehlin [01:23:01] So what about the idea that there are many ways up Mount Fuji and that it doesn't matter if it's Buddha or Allah or Jesus or Jehovah or freaking Woo? But the spirituality is beautiful and legitimate and real and just all those paths are pointing to some sort of divine something. And humans are just imperfect at really describing or knowing what it ends up being. But it's still spirituality and divinity and it's all good. And it doesn't matter which way you follow it, even if it's nature. It's all the same thing, but it's not cheapened, reduced to chemicals, reduced into neurosynapses and reduced to secularism. All the paths of spirituality are spirituality. And they all point you to something good. We just don't totally know what it is.

Todd Phillips [01:24:03] Yeah, it could be. What's wrong with that?

John Dehlin [01:24:06] Why don't you go there?

Todd Phillips [01:24:08] I'm open to that conceptually.

John Dehlin [01:24:09] Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:24:13] I think I would call it a problem right now. So I'm still very active in codifying and putting words to and expressing my own deconstruction. The reasons I knew, the reasons I did believe and Now I'm coming to terms with the reasons that I don't believe certain things. Right. So that deconstruction is an active, ongoing part, the idea of something else replacing that. In other words, maybe. I think what I'm in the middle of doing right now, and I've done videos on this, is I'm not trying to replace Christianity with another spirituality. I've already done that once, and maybe I will do it again. Maybe there will be something that replaces it. But I'm actually okay and learning to celebrate my uncertainty. And so I am no longer emotionally attached to replacing Christianity with something else that must be true. I am fine no longer having Christianity

John Dehlin [01:25:11] or a belief system, or a belief

Todd Phillips [01:25:12] system, for that matter. And I never thought I would get there. But I'm pretty comfortable right now. I'm pretty comfortable in my uncertainty. I'm pretty comfortable without a belief system to follow. I'm okay with that.

John Dehlin [01:25:24] Devil's advocate. What if somebody says you're trading down? You went from having this theophany that inspired you, that organized your life, gave you meaning and purpose, and that was beautiful and felt eternal. And now Brit Hartley has made it so you view it all as chemicals and synapses and it's all secular. And now instead of having certainty and confidence and meaning and purpose, you're just like a. A rudderless boat being tossed about the ocean. What's your response to someone that says, brother, you've traded down in every aspect?

Todd Phillips [01:26:00] Yeah. And I've been told that. Right, so you're not the first one. Right. This is certainly a common theme.

John Dehlin [01:26:07] I'm not telling you that.

Todd Phillips [01:26:08] No, no, I understand.

John Dehlin [01:26:09] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:26:09] But I mean that positing that is an option. Right. And what I would say to that, and this is a guy's a work in progress. And I often say this phrase. As of today in this conversation, I will tell you that I value. I value truth more than community or comfort. Not saying that I found that truth, but I value the pursuit of that truth more than I value community and comfort and tribal certainty. And I've determined that.

John Dehlin [01:26:47] And warm fuzzies.

Todd Phillips [01:26:49] And I value it more than that. So my pursuit of whatever that truth might be and living in that uncertainty is more authentic for me as a human than for others who require the religious certainty and the community. There have been a lot of studies done on this that there's an argument to be had, and certainly I think a strong one, that some people require religion.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:27:13] I think they do not live well with uncertainty. I think it's most People and I would argue it was me, and maybe it still is me. Maybe I'll find myself incapable of just living rudderless, as one might say, without a belief system. But for right now, I found a tremendous amount of solace in where I am as of today.

John Dehlin [01:27:39] So you don't feel like you traded down?

Todd Phillips [01:27:42] No, I feel like I went through a tremendous crisis. I do miss the certainty, but I could never go back to that. Let me be careful when I say that I could be plausibly convinced Christianity is still real.

Todd Phillips [01:27:58] So maybe there's another denomination or another theological paradigm or maybe orthodox Christianity might reach me and ultimately Jesus reenters my life. But it would not be, it would not be the evangelical Christian version of that faith any longer. I am very confident of that.

Todd Phillips [01:28:19] I think Christianity certainly on the table. I haven't thrown that baby out. What I am no longer convinced of is the evangelical Christian version. And I do question the existence of a God. Now. I'm not convinced there is a God, but I am very open to that when I say I'm a non resistant, non believer. I'm very open to the concept of a God. I've just not been shown the evidence that would cause me to be convinced that there is one.

John Dehlin [01:28:46] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:28:47] And I actually but very happy for there to be one.

John Dehlin [01:28:51] I'm of the belief, and I use that term intentionally, that everyone's agnostic, even though they won't use the label. Nobody knows. I've never met anyone who really knows.

Todd Phillips [01:29:02] No one does.

John Dehlin [01:29:03] They say they know. They think they know, but I thought I knew. I said I knew. And I've never met anyone who like, if you scratch and ask and like, wait, how do you know? And they say, oh, I feel it. And I'm like, oh, well, you don't know. And then if they say, oh, I saw God, I'm like, but how do you know that was a real versus a dream versus a vision versus mushrooms versus what your brain does.

Todd Phillips [01:29:28] I am utterly unimpressed with testimony now. Yeah, I am. Whenever someone starts to tell me their story, I had one, I felt it right. And that's not to invalidate them. I could be wrong. I could be misinterpreting things now. So I don't. But I don't find them convincing really quickly.

John Dehlin [01:29:46] Geography of belief. What's that?

Todd Phillips [01:29:48] Yeah, I heard this actually from probably Alex o' Connor a couple years back. I had dealt with it, but he certainly put it to words very well that if you live in Iran, 90% chance you're a Muslim. If you live in the United States, 70% chance you're a Christian. If you live in Norway, 85% chance you're an atheist. Our religious beliefs. The single most determining factor of our religious beliefs are our geography. That's not suggesting that I'm arguing for something to be true or not true because of geography. What I'm saying is that one would expect, like for example, from a Christian perspective, if God truly does desire that all should be saved and that none should perish, it is shocking to the senses, at least from my perspective, that geography plays that significant of a role in our belief systems. And I just really couldn't unsee it once I saw it.

John Dehlin [01:30:51] Believe it or not, I did that math in high school.

Todd Phillips [01:30:54] Yeah, Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:55] I was like, it didn't make sense here.

Todd Phillips [01:30:56] So, geography of belief, divine hiddenness. We've talked about resurrection.

John Dehlin [01:31:01] What's wrong with the Resurrection?

Todd Phillips [01:31:02] With the Resurrection, yeah. It's remarkable to me when I look at just how readily I accepted such a claim and the recording we have of that resurrection and the post resurrection accounts are, in my opinion, dubious documents that cannot be relied upon to guide us into an accurate account of what actually happened. Not to mention all of our scientific understanding of how people die and that they don't come back has been billions of examples and not one example of a resurrection. And if in fact resurrection were more commonplace and we had some sort of scientific understanding, or if the account of Jesus resurrection was attested to by more reliable sources, that would be different for me, I think it was Dale.

Todd Phillips [01:31:54] It's Dale Allison, maybe is his name on the Resurrection probably the best book I've read on it. He just has a very balanced approach. He happens to be a believer, but his approach is you just can't determine one way or the other based on the information that's been provided, period. And I just don't see that rising to the occasion of believability. And then that's a pretty major claim to just kind of accept on the accounts that we have.

Finding Meaning and Purpose After Faith

John Dehlin [01:32:20] Can you have a sense of peace and meaning and purpose without certainty?

Todd Phillips [01:32:29] I would say an emphatic yes. I was worried that that was not the case because I had relied on my religious belief to provide me purpose and meaning. And now I'm finding, I would say almost ironically for me, the level of meaning that my life has now that there's no afterlife, and I'm sure you've heard this a million times, it's relatively new for me, but now that this is it, that this may very well be it, Maybe it just goes dark at the age of 65 or 80 or 102. Whatever it is, it's a very short time, in relative terms, that's made this life and being present in each moment of this life matter so much more.

Todd Phillips [01:33:22] And so my sense of purpose and the sense of import I give to each moment is far greater than the evangelical Christian perspective where really what matters is the afterlife. This 80 years is but a vapor, a puff of wind right against eternity. And so you're preparing yourself for what really matters after this life. Well, now I realize this may be all we get, and it makes it matter more to me.

John Dehlin [01:33:51] Yeah, I agree.

Todd Phillips [01:33:52] And being able to be fully present, like, even in this moment. I live so much of my life with an agenda. As a pastor, every person I sat down with had to get saved. If they weren't saved, the conversation needed to turn toward getting them saved. Every sermon, every conversation, every leadership role I had was all driven around this eternal destiny issue. And it created a tremendous burden. And I was always thinking about that instead of just being fully present in the moment solely for the purpose of the relational dynamic of that moment. So, yeah, there may be a lot of people that see this down the road when you post it, but what's important to me now is my engagement with you and being fully present within that engagement and really sucking the marrow out of every moment because it matters. And that's a different way of thinking than I used to have.

John Dehlin [01:34:45] Love it. And what about alcohol and sex and drugs and just integrity and a moral framework now?

Todd Phillips [01:35:04] I'm a moral subjectivist now. And for those listening, I don't think there's objective morals. I don't think there's a universe out there, either from God or just the universe in any. Any way that provides something out there that is good or bad. I think those are preferences or the ways that we build our society. When we say good or bad, evil or just or whatever, those are choices that we make.

Todd Phillips [01:35:24] And because of that, that was a hard thing for me to come to terms with. And I'm still open to there being objective morals without a God. I think there's a philosophical argument for that. I'm currently a moral subjectivist. And so meaning and purpose and a sense of right and wrong come from our own interactions with one another. And that's sufficient for me. In fact, I would argue that we default to moral subjectivism because we all make laws and we govern our societies in a subjective way, subject to the minds of the humans that are engaged. And until Someone can show me there's objective morals.

Todd Phillips [01:35:57] We're stuck with subjective morality. And it's really all we have. Whether we like we can say boo, subjective morals, but it's all we have. It's the practical ramifications of our society and the way we relate to one another.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Yeah. In Mormonism there are prior prophets that contradict subsequent prophets and we can't even get it right within a closed system.

Todd Phillips [01:36:19] Well, there are 40,000 Christian denominations. Christianity can't get it right either of any stripe.

John Dehlin [01:36:26] When somebody say, are you just angry, angry at God? What do you say about anger?

Todd Phillips [01:36:31] Oh, I'm no more. I'm sure you've heard this too. But I'm no more angry at God than I am of Santa or of a non existent Satan. I can't be angry at something I don't believe exists. There's nothing to be angry at.

John Dehlin [01:36:45] Are you angry that you, and these are just air quotes, wasted decades of your life or gave decades of your life to something that turned out to be untrue, made all these crucial life decisions and invested and influenced so many people only to then learn in your 50s that it was all wrong?

Todd Phillips [01:37:10] I was angry at that. Yeah. And I did feel for a time that I'd wasted decades of my life. I no longer feel that way.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] Really?

Todd Phillips [01:37:21] Yeah. And I'm still working through those emotions and the, the ramifications of thinking differently about it. But I can say as of today that if this life is the only thing we get and there is no divine guidance that we're receiving from above, we're just going with this the best we can, then I, as an individual, within that framework, have done the best I can with what I've been given. At the time I was on my Christian journey. I believe that was the right journey to be on. And I believe the things that I was sharing was the best thing to share with other people and the best way in which they should live their life.

Todd Phillips [01:37:59] So as a human being, I was doing the best I could with the information I had. And now I find myself being able to have conversations like this precisely because I lived that life for a while. And so I'm helping people on the other side of that coin.

John Dehlin [01:38:15] I was going to say relationships got way better after I lost my orthodox brother faith. And they did. Yeah. Deeper, more meaningful, more personal, more vulnerable. My marriage is way better because there's

Todd Phillips [01:38:27] no agenda attached to it and no expectation and no judgment. And I find that to be one of the most surprising things about this process is the Depth and the genuine nature of the relationships that I possess now.

John Dehlin [01:38:44] Yeah, Amen.

Todd Phillips [01:38:45] You're so right about that.

John Dehlin [01:38:46] How did you, having raised your kids Christian, what were those conversations like?

Todd Phillips [01:38:52] Yeah, that took a while. So in around, I would say around that 2019, 2020 time frame when I was still trying to be a Christian, I still felt responsible to tell my kids, hey, dad feels differently about some things. I'm no longer a pastor. I'm not going to go back to be a pastor. I'm doing mission work right now in Liberia, but that's going to be over in 2020. And I always felt, and my ex wife was the same way, that we should be very open with them about where we are on our journey.

Todd Phillips [01:39:20] And so I had very, very, very healthy, meaningful, deep, honest conversations about, with all three of my children, about my eventual deconstruction to the point where I think they would say this, although I don't want to speak for them, I believe they would say something akin to, you know, I'm glad my dad talked to me about these things when he was going through it rather than just telling me after it was all done with. I think the process and allowing them to be involved with it was a very healthy thing for me to do and I think they appreciated that. And I think because of it, they were able to process it over a longer period of time and ask me difficult questions in the midst of my own moments of crisis. And they were allowed to be present for me in that crisis and they

John Dehlin [01:40:13] were kind of turns the tables a

Todd Phillips [01:40:16] little bit to a great degree.

John Dehlin [01:40:18] Yeah, the patriarchal kind of authority that Christianity gives us kind of gets subverted and we're kind of on the same

Todd Phillips [01:40:26] level as our kids sometimes fellow humans. And you know, Rainey was the one that told me to get on TikTok Parker was one my oldest. He was the one that told me in Christmas last year to just find an outlet for the way that I needed to communicate and that I was harming myself for not allowing myself those relationships. My middle daughter was the one that was more liberally minded. So when I had discussions with her, she was very matter of fact and appreciative and had her own perspectives about things. I am very proud of the three of them and very thankful that they were not only open to having the conversations, but were engaged in those conversations.

John Dehlin [01:41:08] That's beautiful.

What to Say to Those Still Deconstructing

Todd Phillips [01:41:08] And yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:10] What have you said when people. And you've alluded to this in our interviews today, what have you said to people when they've come to you and Said my faith was based on you. You converted me. How far you've fallen. I used to look up to you. How dare you? You betrayed me. You've betrayed your faith. What do you say to people who are still believers, who you influenced?

Todd Phillips [01:41:35] Yeah. So the ones that have come to me, it depends on how they approach it. Right. There have been some times where I think it's been appropriate for me to say, look, you're responsible as an adult for your own journey. I'm responsible for mine. And I'm responsible for the things that have come out of my mouth and the actions that I've taken. But at the time, I thought, as you still do, that I was speaking the truth. And now my decision to leave that faith is a decision I'm making for myself as an adult.

Todd Phillips [01:42:01] And you can think that I'm betraying you or betraying God or betraying the church, and you have a right to think that. I don't believe that to be the case. I appreciate that you have your opinion, but I don't take responsibility or own that opinion. That's yours.

Todd Phillips [01:42:15] For those that are more distraught and saddened and will email me with tears or message me or try to communicate with me, I was trying to reach more of them, but now it's gotten to be impossible. I just.

Todd Phillips [01:42:31] There's just too many of them. And so I try to be more overt in some of my videos about just describing where I've come from, why I'm where I am right now, so that hopefully my videos will help them. But I do feel very. And maybe I'm wrong about this. I'm still in process, but I do feel very comfortable right now in the fact that every single human being is on their own journey and they literally are truly doing hopefully the best with what information they have have at the time. And right now, I no longer am convinced that Christianity is true, and therefore I can't pretend to believe something I don't believe.

Todd Phillips [01:43:05] And I therefore wake up unconvinced. And because I'm unconvinced of Christianity, I have to live another way until I become convinced of something else.

John Dehlin [01:43:15] And you've already addressed this, but if somebody says, yeah, believe or not believe, whatever you want to believe or not believe, but why do you have to go spoil everyone? Like Christianity pulled you out of the gutter, why are you now going to spoil other people's Christianity and risk them falling into the gutter? Because you contributed to stealing their faith from them by speaking vocally about historical criticism or problems with the Bible or whatever.

Todd Phillips [01:43:40] Yeah. I tell them that I'm not here to deconvert anybody. I'm not speaking out against anything people may view that I'm speaking out against it in this video. I don't believe that's the case. I believe what I am doing is being critical of a version of Christianity that I no longer believe and that I espoused. And I feel, as I was responsible for speaking those things from stage, I'm also equally responsible for saying what I believe now that I was wrong. And if I truly feel that I'm wrong, I think that's the responsible thing to do,

John Dehlin [01:44:08] not to stay quiet. Huh?

Todd Phillips [01:44:12] Yeah. And people certainly vehemently disagree with me on that.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] That there's the. You know, I've been using this metaphor of like Truman show, the Matrix, the Village Tangled, the Wizard of Oz. There's so many instances, it's Plato's cave, this metaphor, that there are these wise elders that realize that humans won't be good without myth and a fake God and morals tied to eternal punishment.

John Dehlin [01:44:42] And the idea of prophets that talk to God and you do what the prophets say and by the way, pay 10% and don't masturbate. That's how civilization has come to where it is. And there are some who may not even be believers, but they're like, shh, this is the best way. This is how society. People need this and don't mess it up. It's the way we have orders and laws and family and raise kids and don't mess with that. Because there's always going to be a Thomas Jefferson or a deist or a whoever who can't believe it anymore. But don't spoil it for the rest of us and.

John Dehlin [01:45:30] Or for the better of society, because overall the contribution of religion is more positive than negative. And if the world all of a sudden became secular, it might not be a better place than as flawed as the world is with religion.

John Dehlin [01:45:49] There could be more loneliness, more murder, more chaos, less civil order without that organizing structure. So, shh. Don't. Don't spoil it for humanity. What would you say to that?

Todd Phillips [01:46:03] Well, that could be correct. I don't think it is.

John Dehlin [01:46:06] Why not?

Todd Phillips [01:46:08] For a couple of reasons.

John Dehlin [01:46:09] Look at how good it was for you.

Todd Phillips [01:46:11] No question. Listen, I think any individual story could speak to that. But you're moving from Todd's individual story to cultural dynamics. I don't think those two necessarily meet. I think a useful fiction can be helpful for a person and not be good for society.

Todd Phillips [01:46:33] I think those are two different questions. Or different things to ponder. I would also say that I would argue and again this is where I'm going to, this is new for me but I'm going to throw it out there just for the comments or whatever, just for the dialogue.

Todd Phillips [01:46:52] I think when you look at the Nordic countries, I don't think we have to look very far, we don't have to look to another planet to wonder what it would be like without religion. I think we seem to have functioning, very healthy, functioning societies, entire nations of people that are a majority non religious.

Todd Phillips [01:47:16] And there have been quite a number of studies done on Nordic countries for example, how healthy they are and how happy they are and how how their societies function and how altruistic they are and giving and caring and selfless. So I don't think it's for those that think that it may be a foregone conclusion that without religion we would fall into chaos. I don't believe they have very strong standing for that only because we have examples of something different.

John Dehlin [01:47:49] Yeah, I'm still trying to weigh through that because I do think there's a non trivial percentage of brains that are just going to be healthier and happier on religion and I don't know whether that's 20% or 40% or 60% or 80%. But if there's one thing I can just share with you not as truth but just as something that keeps me up at night is I've spent enough time with the secular world and the post religious world to know that there's minefields everywhere just like in the religious world and a lot of people lose their way, enough people lose their way and enough people end up lonely or with challenges and that's not everyone, but enough do where I'm like man, some of you would have been better off staying in the church.

Todd Phillips [01:48:46] I, I think that's absolutely. Sorry I interrupted. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. So again, back to individuals. I think there's numerous examples of people that have left religion and for their personalities, their own proclivities would have been better inside that religious construct or what I now call a useful fiction. It was a useful, helpful, healthy fiction to live under.

Todd Phillips [01:49:11] I do wonder what society would be like without it. It I'm not willing to certainly fall on that sword. I tend to see other countries that are majority non religious functioning very well and I tend to see currently on the global stage those countries that are most religious are the most problematic.

Todd Phillips [01:49:32] When you look at southern states that are the most religious Bible belt, they're the ones the most divorced, the most premarital sex, the most violence, they're tied directly to high control religious environments. And the more secular states, northeast, west, they have less of those statistical issues. So it's a quagmire. It really is. And you can find documentation that supports either perspective.

John Dehlin [01:49:59] A lot of the countries are very white, they're not very diverse, no question. And they rely a lot on, weirdly the national defense of like the United States to protect them.

Todd Phillips [01:50:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:12] So they don't spend a lot on their military budgets, so they could afford social, socialized medicine and social programs. And they keep immigrants out or the weather keeps them out and they're small. Yeah, easier to manage. So I, I, I, I know about all that and I see it and I don't want to over interpret what they might mean.

Todd Phillips [01:50:36] Listen, I take that, I receive that, that's what I was saying at the beginning is this is a new discussion for me, but I do find it, it's an interesting intellectual exercise to walk through. Right. And I also do think the last thing I'll say on that, who could possibly know? Because we've never had it. Right. We've never had a non religious society. So it does seem that from an evolutionary perspective or a societal perspective, it's, it's just kind of baked into our system. And there could ultimately be a God that orchestrated this.

John Dehlin [01:51:08] Right.

Todd Phillips [01:51:09] It could be the version of a, could be the version of a God that's, that's not like the gods that we understand of our current religions. It could be, we could be sitting in a simulation, you know, And I do believe that's possible.

John Dehlin [01:51:20] God could be a jerk and that's just the way God is.

Todd Phillips [01:51:22] God could be evil. You know, one of the things I found a question, I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's not been new to me. But I've been pondering it. How could, when I was a Christian, how could I have ever known if God wasn't good? How can you know if God's evil? How can you.

John Dehlin [01:51:36] It's axiomatic. It's axiomatic.

Todd Phillips [01:51:38] He must be good.

John Dehlin [01:51:39] If God did it, it's good.

Todd Phillips [01:51:40] Yeah. And if he's not good, if he's

John Dehlin [01:51:42] genocide and God did it, God had his reasons.

Todd Phillips [01:51:43] But if he's not good, how could you know?

John Dehlin [01:51:45] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:51:45] You couldn't, you can't.

John Dehlin [01:51:46] No, it's definitional.

Todd Phillips [01:51:47] It's just quite problematic. Right. So I worshiped what I called a good God and I would, I would have and could have never Known if he was not good. And that was another one of the dominoes to fall for me.

Todd Phillips's Closing Thoughts and Farewell

John Dehlin [01:52:03] Well, Dr. Todd Phillips, you got to get to the airport and we've bumped up on our second two hours. I do want to give you a chance to close. For evangelicals or others out there going through their dark night of the soul, what are some final tips or suggestions do's and don'ts you have for them up?

Todd Phillips [01:52:21] Yeah, so I, I, I mentioned this all. It'll sound a little too simple probably for some people, but, you know, time does heal wounds, at least some of them. It does take time to walk through the process of deconstruction, regardless of where you end up. Second thing is, if you're going through it right now, don't go through it alone. Whether it's coming to the decon recon community or finding online connection through a Facebook page or something like that. Regardless of where that is, find a place to connect.

John Dehlin [01:52:43] You don't have a website right now.

Todd Phillips [01:52:45] It's just it, you just go to, to, you just go to the, the, the school. The, the link is.

John Dehlin [01:52:49] Say it. Skol.

Todd Phillips [01:52:51] I don't even know. I don't even know the address. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [01:52:53] It's school. Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:52:55] You can just go to school.com and look up decon recon.

John Dehlin [01:52:58] Okay. And we'll provide a link.

Todd Phillips [01:52:59] Yeah, I'll have the link for you. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. No, that's fine. It's all new to me. No, it's good, but, but the community is just a few weeks old and, and I would say find that community. We have a scholar, we have scholarships available for people if it's, what's the affordability? $29 a month.

John Dehlin [01:53:12] Okay. A month. Okay.

Todd Phillips [01:53:13] Yeah. And then you just stay as long as you want to and don't have to. 65, 70, something like that, man.

John Dehlin [01:53:20] Love it. I hope you can make six figures in a short amount of time.

Todd Phillips [01:53:23] Well, who knows? I mean, it's.

John Dehlin [01:53:24] Holy work. It is.

Todd Phillips [01:53:26] There you go. Yeah, I don't, you know, it may be less in a week or two. Like, I don't, like, I'm just. There's a paywall there to try to keep. Because I already have a free channel. You can go hang out with another 150,000 people on social media and leave the comments. This is something different, right?

John Dehlin [01:53:44] You're meaning your TikTok channel or.

Todd Phillips [01:53:46] Yeah, TikTok, Instagram. Yeah, stuff like that. So there's plenty of free places to go. This is, this does cost money, but it provides Something that's very different.

John Dehlin [01:53:53] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:53:53] And so that was number two. Number three, I would. I would strongly tell people counseling is a good thing. I wish I would have gone to counseling and gotten help earlier. It would have saved me probably months, if not multiple years of pain and suffering.

John Dehlin [01:54:10] I think a lot of creators have also been an important part of your journey. Right.

Todd Phillips [01:54:14] Big time.

John Dehlin [01:54:14] Like you mentioned, Dan McClellan.

Todd Phillips [01:54:16] Yeah. Dan McClellan, Britt Hartley. You, John Cohen, Jason At. I mean, I'm sorry. Justin at Deconstruction Zone.

John Dehlin [01:54:29] Alex o'. Connor.

Todd Phillips [01:54:30] Alex o'. Connor. Richard Dawkins. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett. Alex o' Connor's a major player, too.

John Dehlin [01:54:40] Yeah, he's great.

Todd Phillips [01:54:40] Yeah. I'd love to meet him someday, but, yeah. So, yeah, if anybody needs Community, we're one way to do that through the decon recon. You can give them the link in the description. I'd love to see them there. You can come in, hang out for a week, just see what you like about it. But that's really where my focus is right now, is that Community.

John Dehlin [01:54:56] Beautiful.

Todd Phillips [01:54:57] Yeah. Can I mention one more thing?

John Dehlin [01:55:00] Yeah, yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:55:01] So I wrote recently a deconstruction guide. It's basically just 20, 20 questions.

John Dehlin [01:55:07] Yeah.

Todd Phillips [01:55:08] And it's for sale. And then also. But. But what I'd like to do for your audience, so that. That's something I offer out in the marketplace. There's also a you don't need to Fear Hell Anymore is another PDF that I wrote.

John Dehlin [01:55:19] Oh, nice.

Todd Phillips [01:55:20] And what I'd like to do for your audience, if you'll let me, is I'll provide both those for free. And so I'll just give you a link for just Mormon stories, and you can put it in the description or whatever. And for anybody listening right now, if you want to get those for free, 30, $40, but for free, I'd love to do that for your audience. So I'll put that together and make sure that you guys have a link.

John Dehlin [01:55:39] I'll accept that if you'll also provide a paid version, because I think we should pay for things that we get value from. And I would like you to give people the option of buying your stuff so that they can support you.

Todd Phillips [01:55:53] Yeah, fair enough.

John Dehlin [01:55:54] And do you have a Venmo or a Zelle or a Patreon? Cause, brother, you need one.

Todd Phillips [01:56:01] Yeah, I don't have any of that right now.

John Dehlin [01:56:02] All right, so by the time this airs, Dr. Todd Phillips, I would challenge you to have a PayPal and a Venmo and a Zelle. And if you'll provide us with those links. I'm asking everybody that wants to support someone like me. Or pick your favorite ex religious or secular or transitional creator. I think Dr. Todd Phillips deserves your support. So if you value him, go to the show notes, find his Venmo, PayPal or Zelle link or whatever Patreon, whatever he ends up doing, throw in some money and let's get this guy financially self sustaining so he can make a bigger difference in his world.

Todd Phillips [01:56:43] That means the world to me. Thank you. Did not expect that.

John Dehlin [01:56:45] Of course. Yeah, yeah, that. You know, I do have a few things I feel passionately about. And one is that the laborer is worthy. What is it of his?

Todd Phillips [01:56:55] Is this laborer is worthy of his wages.

John Dehlin [01:56:58] Yeah, like if we can't be sustained, then the work dies.

Todd Phillips [01:57:04] That's true. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out a way to sustain this.

John Dehlin [01:57:06] So don't have any, I would say a little bit of wisdom. Don't quit. That's my superpower, is not quitting, but also make it sustainable. And don't be embarrassed to ask for money and to find a way to make it financially sustainable. Because a healthy you, a healthy, financially supported Dr. Todd Phillips is someone that can help a lot more people than a Dr. Todd Phillips. That's licking the bowl, as we used to say.

Todd Phillips [01:57:36] So true. Thank you so much, John. I appreciate that.

John Dehlin [01:57:39] Okay, so it's rtodphillips on TikTok and Instagram, it's the deconstructed pastor on Facebook and YouTube and there's also a Stan store, drtodphillips. What can people get there?

Todd Phillips [01:57:55] Yeah, you know what, that'll be what we'll do with that. That'll be the link where they can get the deconstruction guide, et cetera. It'll be that link and then I'll add a Patreon or something by the time this posts. All right, so that'll be the one we'll use.

John Dehlin [01:58:09] Well, Todd Phillips, what a pleasure. I loved your entire story. You're gonna do great things and please reach out and I. And we wanna support you in your ministry, in your new ministry.

Todd Phillips [01:58:22] Thanks, John. I mean, thank you very much for inviting me out. This was an incredible pleasure for me. And to be able to come out and join you in person instead of over zoom or something like that was really an encouragement to me. So thanks again.

John Dehlin [01:58:34] Our pleasure. All right, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Support Todd Phillips and thank you. If you're a donor to Mormon Stories and the Yehova Stories Foundation. We couldn't do it without your support. Support if you do value this content and you want to see it continue, you can like and subscribe, you can comment, you can share it with others, and you can donate@mormonstories.org donate if you want to support our legal fund because we're being sued by the Mormon Church, we believe because we're so effective at helping people figure out their lives and find truth and heal and grow, you can Support us@mormonstories.org legal as well.

John Dehlin [01:59:11] Most importantly, we just want you to find value in this content and we hope it's been helpful. So thanks for joining us today. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. You can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you have a good story, if you're a good storyteller or you have a good story, or both, all you gotta do is apply. Mormonstories.org apply and you can apply to be on the show where every week we're evaluating new storytellers. So please apply to be on the show and we'd love to have you. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care of.

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