Introduction to the Series and Shane Sams

Todd Phillips [00:00:00] Welcome to exvangelical stories. I'm Dr. Todd Phillips, and this is a new series that's in partnership with Mormon Stories. And it's built around long form, very honest, very open conversations with people whose lives have really been shaped, by and large by evangelical Christianity, the process of deconstructing from that belief, and then really what comes afterwards. So the goal here isn't to convince anyone to believe or not believe anything of any religious or philosophical persuasion. It's really just to give people, first of all, the space to share their story, what they believed, what changed, what it cost them, and what life looks like now. But also allow people who are watching these interviews to really understand that they're not alone, if they're going through deconstruction or have questions about their religious beliefs, that there are places they can go to ask those questions.

Todd Phillips [00:00:46] So my guest today is Shane Sams. Shane is a friend. He's an entrepreneur, he's a speaker, founder of great men. And for years, years, Christianity was, I would say, deeply woven into Shane's identity. His family culture, his business, his public life, his public Persona. And then he eventually found himself speaking about Jesus to thousands of people on some of the largest stages in evangelicalism, while privately starting to question whether he still believed the things that he was saying. So, again, he's become a really good friend of mine. He's also become an active part of the decon recon private online community that I've developed. The description will provide the link to that.

Todd Phillips [00:01:26] And today is really significant because although Shane has spoken publicly about parts of his journey, this is the first time he's telling his full story of his deconstruction publicly. Shane, I'm really glad you're here.

Shane Sams [00:01:41] Todd Phillips, my man. What's going on, bro? Let's hang out. I got my new studio ready for. I did this for you, actually, is what I did. I was like, I got.

Todd Phillips [00:01:49] Listen, and I will take it as just that, that you created that just for me and for this, for

Shane Sams [00:01:53] me. Like, I built this house, actually, last week, and I said, there needs to be a room to go on Todd's podcast. That's what I'm gonna do today,

Todd Phillips [00:02:00] man. I'm just. I'm just shocked. I'm. I'm amazed at what you've done there. That's a pretty cool setup. You'll notice the dark environment behind me. See, I've got a peloton. I did that just for you.

Shane Sams [00:02:09] Hey, as long as you're doing your cardio, bro, I'm just

Todd Phillips [00:02:11] Holding. Yeah, man. I'm taking it seriously. Hey, great to have you. Listen, I'm really excited about this story. I know that you've been through a lot of conversations with family and friends, and you and I have had several discussions about the decision you made today to kind of get, get out there and, and, and go public with not just part, but really all of your story as we share it today. So I really want to just say, just for me, sincere thanks. I appreciate you trusting me with this, because I know it's a, it was a, A big decision, and it, it means a lot to me, and I, I take that very seriously. So I want you to know that.

Shane Sams [00:02:47] Yeah, man. Thank you, too. I think when I saw you for the first time, I reached out to you, we got together, started talking a little bit, and you're the first person I've really seen that has a heart for everyone's true story in this. There's so much agenda out there for something that's a huge struggle. I mean, this has caused me depression. This has caused me to question everything in my life. It is an existential moment in most people's lives when basically the railroad track you were on kind of derails. And dang, bro, I just, I'm glad you showed up in my life when you did because it has helped me settle in to the. I don't know and to start seeking answers and figure it out. And it's amazing, man, what you're doing,

Todd Phillips [00:03:33] man. I just got to tell you, you know, when you reached out to me, I think it was on Instagram, if I'm right.

Shane Sams [00:03:36] Yep.

Todd Phillips [00:03:38] I. It's just funny how things work out. Right, Because I, I, I now, because the channels have grown. I just, I get a lot of comments and direct messages, and I can't keep up with everything. And so the ones I get, I get. And the ones I don't, I don't. It just, it's. It's become a bit overwhelming in a good way. But getting yours, connecting to you, and then, you know, we've built a friendship. This has been a, this has been an. This has been some of the. This is a positive result of, you know, all the negatives of social media. This is one of those positive things that

Shane Sams [00:04:07] 100.

Todd Phillips [00:04:09] We've been able to build this fast friendship. So, hey, man, I want to dive in. We got a lot to cover today. I want to really talk about your childhood. I want to walk through the whole story. I want people to really understand where you came from, where you're where you are now, where you're going, you know, in these next chapters in your life. So dive down. Childhood. What is. What does Christianity look like and feel like in Shane's home when you were a kid, not a teenager. Childhood,

Growing Up in the Deep South Church Culture

Shane Sams [00:04:34] I mean, it was the foundation. You know, I grew up in a Southern Friday Night Lights town, right. I mean, we were in the, you know, right in the deep South. I'm at the very bottom of Kentucky, right on the edge with the town Tennessee border. And you know, it's a very, what do you say, homogenous kind of place. I mean, it's. Church was the thing that you did. You would go to school and play sports for the local school and you would pray before the games, you would pray after the games, you would pray before practice, you would do the Lord's Prayer after practice, you would go to church. On Wednesday nights. We did Royal Ambassadors. I was a royal ambassador.

Todd Phillips [00:05:08] Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Shane Sams [00:05:09] A little ra. Get the ra. I think they had.

Todd Phillips [00:05:11] The

Shane Sams [00:05:11] girls are in the gas. They had to keep us

Todd Phillips [00:05:13] GA and ra. Yeah,

Shane Sams [00:05:15] right. So like, I mean, it was everything thing, dude. You know, my parents grew up in the church. My dad was a pastor for a while. Southern Baptist was the overlay of everyone around me. We had other denominations and too. I remember I would go up to the Pentecostal Church and I'd be dancing and running around and screaming and stuff. And I'd be like, what is going on, man? Because I was. Our Southern Baptist churches are just like, get your seat in your pew and we're going to do this. Let's just sit down and we'll do this. Then we'll go to Wendy's, we'll go to Chili, right?

Shane Sams [00:05:44] But that's how I grew up, man. I grew up that, like, there was no other way. There was no other thought. But I didn't really mind it, really. You know, like, I liked going to church. I liked going to youth group.

Shane Sams [00:05:58] I've always been very like, philosophical and historical. Like I have a degree in history and so different things like that. And so it was fascinating to me actually growing up. And I wanted to understand it more. More. But I really didn't start like digging into studying my Bible until probably my mid-20s. But yeah, I lived that classic 80s 90s. Just say no. Purity.

Todd Phillips [00:06:26] You and me both

Shane Sams [00:06:28] in the 90s, man. It's as cookie cutter and a storybook as you get. I didn't know there were other religions until I went to college, basically.

Early Baptism and Childhood Faith Experiences

Todd Phillips [00:06:35] Yeah, okay, that's, you know, you told Me a fascinating. What I consider a fascinating story about your first baptism. Oh, yeah, I think it was a friend or a family member got baptized and then.

Shane Sams [00:06:45] Yeah, man,

Todd Phillips [00:06:46] tell me about that.

Shane Sams [00:06:47] So, like, you know, there was almost like a sequence of events I felt like everybody had to go through. And like, there was just this expectation that as you got closer to high school, that you would get baptized in our churches. Right? And I remember feeling a lot of pressure for people to go out there and get baptized and, you know, to do this. People were telling me, it's time to. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. Like, what do you mean, it's time? I've seen this my whole life, but I don't even know what's going on. And then a buddy of mine who was in the same grade as me, he was the first of us to actually say, I'm getting baptized.

Shane Sams [00:07:24] And of course, he was the talk of the town. He was. Everybody was praising him. It was such a brave thing. They're kind of looking over at you like, do you want to be brave like him? You know, and all this stuff. And I was like, well, I just had so much pressure that I decided to go ahead and get baptized at the same time he did. I figured my buddy was doing it, it wouldn't be as scary. He's going to throw myself. And dude, I remember the pastor who was a great man, our pastor was an amazing dude, just. Just truly pastoral. Someone who would show up for you to death or wedding, whatever it is.

Shane Sams [00:07:55] And I remember sitting on the couch, dude, and him saying, like, you know, has there been ever been a time in your life that you made a public. Blah, blah, blah, all the things, right? And I just remember everyone standing there looking at me and being like, yep, yes, that's it. Whatever you just said out loud, I agree, right? And I. And I went through with the baptism. So I thought, man, I was baptized. That's just the way it was. And, you know, I had some more spiritual level events, like through high school. Like, I do remember one time in high school we had like a.

Shane Sams [00:08:27] What I think they call them conferences these days where you bring a bunch of teenagers in from the counties and stuff. And we had this big speaker come in and it was super emotional. And I do remember that being the first time I felt like a spiritual experience at church, but that I had no clue what I was doing when I got baptized the first time. Not at all. Zero. I just did it because my buddy did.

Todd Phillips [00:08:50] Yeah, it was kind of Fun. I'll do it too.

Shane Sams [00:08:52] Yeah. I didn't have to do it by myself. I did it next week. I'd have to go up there alone. I don't want to do that. Let's jump in again. We'll do the can. You want a cannonball or the can opener? I'm going in first. Let's do

Todd Phillips [00:09:01] it. Oh, man. Would you. Did you consider yourself at that point from a Southern Baptist perspective? Because that was my first religious experience as well, in my mid-20s when I got saved. Did you consider yourself saved? And what did that mean to you if you. If you did?

Shane Sams [00:09:17] You know, I. I knew I was a member of the church and I thought. I guess I thought in my. You know, I thought that was how you did it. It was like, okay, there's a Jesus. Okay, we all believe in Jesus now. You know, they used to make us to practice. They would make us do Bible verses when we were little. We would have to go up and say the Bible verse we memorized that week or whatever. Or. I remember one time they would bring us up and we had to memorize the whole books of the Bible and say them in order, and everybody would clap for you.

Shane Sams [00:09:44] And then, like, it just looked like the natural progression of being jumped into the gang. It was getting baptized, right? So I did for. Yeah, I was like, I'm a Christian. I'm saved. I've been baptized. I said all the magic words and like. But I don't think I ever fully felt like all these things like, called or, you know, super spiritual. It felt like duty, responsibility. It felt like it felt good because I was very accepted, you know, in my local community for this thing.

Shane Sams [00:10:19] But I don't think I would probably truly call myself saved until probably about the end of college. I remember having a really mystical experience at a. At a pretty big church that had incredible music. And we all know that music, the frequency of it can really dial in an emotion, which I'm

Todd Phillips [00:10:37] sure

Shane Sams [00:10:38] a lot of churches have discovered this. And I remember just being overwhelmed with guilt and shame and everything I had ever done bad and. And I had this weight that I wasn't being a good example for all the people around me. So that's where I really started living my faith was when I was probably about 23, 24 years old, coming out of college, can I get married? Jumping into a community and working. And that's where it really crossed the line. And I would eventually get re baptized later because it was out of order, basically.

Todd Phillips [00:11:13] So how old were you when you were baptized.

Shane Sams [00:11:16] So I think I got baptized somewhere around 8 or 9. It was probably around third grade, so I would assume it was like 8 or 9 years old. And yeah, man, I just thought that you were in the club at that point. I thought that's where we were. I thought, you know, hey, I'm a member of the church. But I didn't. Other people talked about these like, you know, big experiences they were having where God like talked to them audibly and these things were happening. I was like, ah, I don't really feel that. I didn't really have a spiritual or mystical experience like that until I was in high school.

Shane Sams [00:11:50] We had kind of a traveling evangelist come through and all the kids from the local counties came to the thing and at the end he calls everybody up to pray with their friends and some people are crying and some people are doing this. So that was probably the first time I was like, whoa, there is a Holy Spirit. And it moved through this place, but it still didn't really like catch me. Like I would definitely say I was a cultural Christian. I enjoyed the community, I enjoyed being a part of it. I enjoyed being accepted by the community, being a part of the team.

Shane Sams [00:12:21] Then around college, the end of college, I went to this big non denominational. This is when these were new and there was these huge churches and there was a pretty big moment where I just started crying and I just felt this overwhelming shame and guilt and just that filthy rag feeling that we're all supposed to feel and we're told our whole life. And it was about just being in college and not being a good example. And that's probably where I started like living my faith, like really like, okay, I'm going to be this person in the world and I'm not only going to be it, like, you know me, I'm going to the next level with it.

Shane Sams [00:12:59] If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it at a world class level. So I'd say 23, 24 is where I really made the turn. And then I got re baptized at 35.

Todd Phillips [00:13:07] Yeah. So as an 8 year old, did you ever think about heaven or hell? What were the, what did Christianity, if anything, how did it affect any area of your life other than just attending church? Did it, did it cause you to think differently about your actions at the age of eight?

Fear, Hell, and the Emotional Weight of Belief

Shane Sams [00:13:24] Totally,

Todd Phillips [00:13:24] it did. Okay, so tell me a little bit about that. Like what? Once you, you get baptized, you're like, I'm in the club now. What does that mean for you? Walk Me through that. Take me back to that. That space.

Shane Sams [00:13:36] Yeah. I mean, I think the way I was brought up, you know, I had all of the angles from it. I had the God is love. I had the God is this. I had the God is that. But hell was a huge thing for everything that we did. Like, I remember one of my earliest experiences with the church that I can remember was we went to another church. It was like a Pentecostal church up on top of this hill. And they were doing the. What's it called? It's that

Todd Phillips [00:14:05] Evans Gates. Hell's Flames. That's

Shane Sams [00:14:08] it. That's it,

Todd Phillips [00:14:09] yes.

Shane Sams [00:14:09] It's like where they take you to hell, right? You know?

Todd Phillips [00:14:11] Oh, yeah.

Shane Sams [00:14:13] And holy moly, man. I remember walking out of that place just terrified. I was scared to do anything bad. And I was like the kid at school that couldn't sit still and got in trouble all the time. So I was like, am I going to hell because I talked in class? Am I going to hell because I didn't clean up my room? Am I going to. Like. Hell was an overarching pressure. That first mystical experience that I had, the real spiritual one in high school, was the whole thing was about sexual shame. And you're terrible, and, you know, the flesh is terrible. And it really pushed all of this, like, guilt on us.

Shane Sams [00:14:51] Now, I. You know, me, I like to push the edges of life, so I. I think I was. I struggled for about 10 years with this enormous sense of guilt, but also this desire to go out and experience the world and see for myself and, you know, and, you know, run wild a little bit, you know, so it was a constant thing in the back of my head, man. Like, hell was the reason that I tried to go so deep into this, because I didn't want to go to hell. And, you know, I'll.

Shane Sams [00:15:22] I'll say this. I felt a huge pressure from the generations above me that my salvation and where I was going to spend eternity somehow was tied to their happiness in this life and the next. So there was a huge pressure of, hey, grandparents. Or something like, hey, make sure you better do this, because, one, you'll burn in hell, and two, I want to make sure you're with me, you know, and that. That. That enormous, eternal peer pressure on top of a guy walking out of a flaming pit or whatever he did in that play. When I was a kid, yeah, I think that pretty much drove me. Anytime I would even get close to questioning anything, the fear of going to hell would kick in.

Todd Phillips [00:16:10] Yeah, let's hang out There, I think

Shane Sams [00:16:12] still

Todd Phillips [00:16:12] does. I think a very, yeah, I think a very, very important place to swim around for a while. For those that are watching this, you know, we, we both relate to the Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames, but many people that are watching this have no clue what that is. Can you take me back? So you, let's go back to that night in this thing. What is Heaven's Gate Flames? Is it a church service? Take me into. You're walking into this environment. What is it? Build the picture for the audience.

Shane Sams [00:16:40] So I didn't, I didn't know what it was. I just, my mom, dad just said, we're going to play, right? And I'd been to this church before and the last time we went to the church, there was supposed to be a band played and they just started shouting and speaking in tongues and I don't think they ever played their music. And we left. So I was like, why are we going back up there? I don't know why we do that. And then we went in, we sit down. They have all these different things. And the part that I remember is basically from the past. They show a very visceral passion of the Christ.

Shane Sams [00:17:11] Like they're whipping a guy, he's got fake blood all over him, crowns of thorns, you know, like, you hear about these things, you're little, but to see an actual dude and you're in the front row getting, you know, flailed, it was terrifying. And then, then they go through like a journey of hell, like to show how bad hell is going to be basically. And honestly, Todd, I don't remember the rest of it. I only remember when they started the passion stuff and started beating him to death and how terrifying hell was, the way they portrayed it as an 8 year old on the front row of this, of this thing. Yeah,

Todd Phillips [00:17:48] listen, I went through it too. I was in my 20s when I first saw it, but it was just. I cannot imagine having watched the whole scene of the Jesus being beaten, the flames of hell and the death and eternal suffering, and the way that they express it in these plays is, is quite dramatic. I mean,

Shane Sams [00:18:10] and on top of that, like, I remember the conversations after it being like, that's what's going to happen to you. Like that's. I'm 100% sure we know this is exactly what's going to happen to you. And kind of like the only thing you can do is follow these three steps and hope for grace at the end of it. Like, I wasn't even sure what the steps were to not go there at that point. So it was very confusing and terrifying.

Todd Phillips [00:18:39] Yeah. I remember thinking, I can't imagine an 8 year old. Like I remember going to this event after I became a Christian at 24. At 24 and still be being very affected by this, going, look, at least I'm not going there. Like I felt like I was already saved. But my gosh, you know, this is a very. It's frightening. It's absolutely frightening. And I can't imagine it'd be like sending a six year old to a rated R movie.

Shane Sams [00:19:02] Totally.

Todd Phillips [00:19:03] You know,

Shane Sams [00:19:04] but on the other side of it it's like, you know, this was the 80s. Like, no, your parents didn't talk to you about important issues back then.

Todd Phillips [00:19:12] Like,

Shane Sams [00:19:12] it was just like, that's what's gonna happen to you if. And then we never talked about it again. So I'm just in my room, I'm just playing with my friends. I'm just going to school, going holy. Am I going to burn in hell? Every. It's like there was no context given and I just had to figure it out like, oh my gosh, well, I guess I better get baptized and go to church every Wednesday at this point. So.

Todd Phillips [00:19:33] Yeah. So would you say, I mean, is it fair to say that that. And it sounds like you're saying this, that that fear of hell and the dramatic interpretation of that in that play was a driving factor in committing yourself to Christianity in a very aggressive way?

Three Forces That Shaped His Christian Identity

Shane Sams [00:19:50] I would say that's part of it for sure. It was more. There was more. Three things. It was definitely that, like everything, the music you listen to, that was back when they said that when you played music backwards, it was the devil and stuff.

Todd Phillips [00:20:01] Yes, I remember that.

Shane Sams [00:20:02] So like feeling this. All, everything, everything at church was about hell and going to hell and not going to hell. But then the second layer of it was, you know, this deep tribal instinct that somehow my decisions were responsible for everyone else feeling good and being happy and being safe in their salvation.

Shane Sams [00:20:26] And then the third thing was a total shunning of looking at any other information about anything else in life that was outside of the Bible. Like it was the truth, it was inerrant. And even, you know, I remember bringing home a book one time of Greek mythology because I'm a big story guy. I love mythology. I just, I just, I love it.

Shane Sams [00:20:51] And my, I remember my family having a very difficult time with me bringing that book home, like to the point of like, don't bring that book home. You know what I'm saying? Because it was Just something that was outside of that. So there were these three things working on me was the fear stuff, hellfire, damnation, deep South. There was the deep social and family pressure that if you don't, you have to do it this way. And then I just had no other context. Like, even if I read my Bible and didn't agree with it, it was like, well, it's what it says, so it must be true.

Todd Phillips [00:21:28] Yeah, I mean, I think you. I think you paint a very good picture there about these kind of. These three. The three spokes of that wheel, so to speak. Right. That are pressing in on you culturally and otherwise to drive you into a certain way of thinking. And I really haven't heard it described quite the way that you did. I think that's very, very well said. So you came from a very similar background as I did. I was told very soon on when I became a Christian, God is perfect, the Bible's perfect. And so these are the two lenses through which you see all of life,

Shane Sams [00:21:59] everything.

Todd Phillips [00:22:00] And if you disagree with the Bible, it's not the Bible's fault. It's. It's your reading or your interpretation of it that God's ways are not your ways. His ways are higher than ours. And any. Any supposed discrepancy or questioned, you know, a questionable moral decision of God in our understanding of it is a deficiency in us. Did you feel that way?

Shane Sams [00:22:20] Yeah, and I, you know, there was. There was. I. I noticed early on when I did start reading it, though, like, well, one, I actually really, really enjoyed the Bible. Like, I still enjoy reading the Bible, but more like I would enjoy reading philosophy or history or something like that. But, like, I always really loved it. So I actually read quite a bit, but more on the story level. Like, I was obsessed with Absalom, that whole story where he gets caught in the tree and stuff, Right. With his

Todd Phillips [00:22:45] hair.

Shane Sams [00:22:46] And, like, I would read these things, but, like, going deep into those stories and then reading the New Testament, you know, at church or going back into the Old Testament to read about the Exodus or whatever. Like, I noticed, like, the Bible, like, didn't agree with itself. That was my great. Because I'm a big believer in, like, reason and figuring things out and finding agreement and collaboration. And, like, I would just notice that it looked very different in the Gospels than it did in Paul, than it did in the Old Testament.

Todd Phillips [00:23:17] And

Shane Sams [00:23:18] even the Old Testament looked different depending on where you started. Right. So, like, I. I never was totally settled. Like, I asked a lot of questions. Like, I remember I was at A youth thing down in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And we went to this thing, and we went to this session about music, and this guy started reading these Bible verses. I think he was from some denominations, like, don't use instruments and stuff, you know what I'm saying? So he. He had a bias, it felt, against music in general, I think. But then he was doing. He was totally in that. You know, if you play AC DC backwards, they're worshiping the devil or whatever it was.

Shane Sams [00:23:53] And I just remember confronting this dude, like, and kind of causing a scene. I'm like, dude, it's just a good song, and I ain't listening to it backwards, so who cares? I can't tell what it says backwards. And, like, we got. Me and this dude got into an argument, and I remember just walking out, like, who the hell is this guy to say you can't listen to this song? Right? I do remember this conflict with what I was being taught, but it was. It was also defaulted to, I'm a kid. I mean, what do I know? I mean, I can read, but I never was settled with. Everything in the Bible felt true, but it was. It was inerrant. So I had to keep seeking to figure it out. But

Todd Phillips [00:24:33] it sounds like you really, you. Your personality, I mean, what does that. What does that tell you now when you look back on that teenager? What does that tell you about Shane back then, about who you already were at that age, you know, regarding questioning those issues and fighting back and forth with that?

Shane Sams [00:24:49] Yeah, well, I've always been a little bit of a. You got. You can't find the boundary till you push past it. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like, But I do look back. I've always been slightly skeptical. There's a lot of reasons for that that I've done a lot of therapy on. But, like, you know, I do think that I.

Shane Sams [00:25:08] I am a seeker, not a finder. And I've always. I love novelty. I love. I love when things change. I know most people don't like change, but I actually do enjoy change when things happen, you know, bad. Like, I was talking to a friend of mine this morning, and they went to a court thing yesterday, and her son passed out in the middle of the court. And I'm like, that's going to be the greatest story ever someday. Right? I thrive on the chaos a little bit. But, like, yeah, like, I've always had this, you know, standoffish to someone telling me what to do. But also when that gets deep enough, when it's like, tell me what to believe.

Shane Sams [00:25:46] You're going to tell me, you're going to tell me what my inner world is actually thinking and supposed to look like and how I read and interpret this. But honestly, dude, I thought that everyone believed the same thing in the Bible. I thought I was the one who was completely wrong.

Shane Sams [00:26:04] And that was actually the first crack one in, in everything I believed. It was probably, I was probably in late 30s when this happened. I remember sitting in church with that same mentality from that kid. I'm always listening and writing notes of the pastor and trying to figure out if I agree with him or not, right?

Todd Phillips [00:26:19] And

Shane Sams [00:26:20] what the Bible actually says. And I remember he was hammering young earth creationism. And I do not buy into that at all. I think all of the evidence clearly indicates an old earth and we came from another species and blah, blah, blah, right?

Shane Sams [00:26:36] And I was looking around and the pastor that was speaking that Sunday was making a case that this was as important as the virgin birth, this was as important as the resurrection. And I looked around and I was like, do other people believe this? And I noticed that like one guy was asleep. I noticed that like one guy was playing on his phone. One guy was nodding viciously like, yes, this is exactly true. This guy was elbowing his wife. I look over my wife, I'm like, what are we talking about here? This seems crazy, but it was being presented as if you didn't believe this.

Shane Sams [00:27:09] All of a sudden it doesn't matter what you believed up until this point. And I thought in that moment, dude, I said, you know what? There's 8 billion religions in this world for every human being believes something different about this book.

Shane Sams [00:27:23] How could it possibly be inerrant if that's true? And that was one of the moments that I remember back where I really started reading the Bible differently because I realized that nobody actually was in agreement on what the thing said.

Todd Phillips [00:27:36] You know, as I've heard your story in different discussions we've had, I mean, you told me at one point, like even back in your, back to your teen years, in relation to what you're talking about now, in your 30s, there were some moments where you saw some hypocrisy in the church, right? So it wasn't just the, it wasn't just the Bible. It wasn't. It's inerrancy, young earth creationism, all these different subjects that you had questions about that you were pushing against, but thought maybe you're just the odd man out. Everybody else believes this, right? Even back in your teens, you're, you're noticing.

Todd Phillips [00:28:04] Tell me a little bit about that. Do you remember this? You. You were talking about this idea. There, there are people that you knew that were con. That were professing this Christian life, Christian lifestyle, being saved, being part of the family of God. And yet there was what you considered at that point, hypocrisy. What were those things that you were seeing?

Shane Sams [00:28:21] You know, like, I mean, I think it was on two layers. I can think of a sequence of events that happened in my high school years that really shook me. Like, I'd say my first three years in college, I didn't give a crap about church, the Bible, anything, because of these things happening. Like, one was just my friends. Like I would. You would go to church and the, what do you call it, the teacher's pets. The best examples of who they would get up to read the Bible verses, who they would get up to sing on Sunday morning.

Shane Sams [00:28:57] The. And these people up there wearing their purity rings and all these different things that we did in the 90s, right? And. But then on the weekends I saw them at the same parties. I knew they were going to the same thing. They were, they were doing this and that and the other. And like sometimes they would come and you know, cry and confess that they have been living sinfully and they want to get back on track. And then like three weeks later they're at the same place. You know, I knew from my own personal experience too, like I was doing the same thing. Like I would go to church on Sunday, go to Wednesday nights and hang out and be in community and do all those fun things, you know, games and stuff.

Shane Sams [00:29:33] But then like on the weekends, you know, I would go out and have fun and do things like that. Um, and then two things happened with adults and you know how you're in that stage of life where you find you figure out adults aren't actually perfect and have no idea what they're doing, right? Like

Todd Phillips [00:29:50] I

Shane Sams [00:29:50] warned my children for years, I don't know what I'm doing. This is the first time I've ever had a 17 year old son give me some grace, right? Like I've tried to because I had to figure this out on my own. And one of them was our main music minister who was single, had an affair with a married woman in our church.

Shane Sams [00:30:12] And he stayed. Like, I don't know what actually happened to that. Like, it just kind of was known, it happened, there was some to do about it and then they all just kind of moved on. And this was like a leader of the church.

Shane Sams [00:30:27] And then at one point, I found out that my dad couldn't serve in certain capacities in our church because way back in, like the 50s, he had had a divorce. And I knew the story of that, which I don't want to tell publicly here. It's not my story to tell, but it was. It was a terrible thing and he needed to get out of that. Right.

Shane Sams [00:30:48] And so I was like, why would a man's past prevent him from serving at the highest level in the future? That doesn't make any sense to me. And then the big one was a pastor came in and took over our church. New guy outside the bubble, hellfire indemnation. I mean, just the classic cheesy Southern Baptist, you know, pastor. Just picture in your mind a cheesy Southern Baptist pastor with slick hair. Yes, that's the guy I'm thinking of.

Shane Sams [00:31:21] And he split our church in half. The biggest church in our town. Like, it was a. I'm right, they're wrong, we're going over here. The other church goes and buys land on a hill. And I watched our town get ripped to shreds by a cult of personality.

Shane Sams [00:31:38] And there was actually one more interesting thing about him that really. I remember the first time I ever walked out of church. This just came up. This guy comes in and he starts hammering down, like, hardcore. The fundamentalist, Baptist, evangelical thing you can think of, right? And we had a Mormon tabernacle in town. And my best friend, who is still my best friend to this day, literally texted him last week during the UK football game.

Shane Sams [00:32:04] His family went to that Mormon church. I went to that Mormon church to play basketball sometimes on the weekends. And I had been in there and there was a picture of Jesus. And I knew they had another book, but they also had the Bible. So I was like, whatever. They had a different hymnal, they sang different songs. But, like, I remember sitting there in church and him just saying, like, if you have a friend that's a Mormon, they're going to burn in hell. They are a cult. That is not a church. That is a den of vipers and all this other craziness. And I remember, I was like, that's my best friend, he's saying, is going to burn in hell because he's decided that they aren't the same as us.

Shane Sams [00:32:39] And I remember being a kid, just like, I walked out and sat in the lobby during that, because I'm not going to listen to this. Gotta tell me, my friend, who I know is a great human who I love, and has a picture of Jesus hanging in his church just like I do. You're not going to tell me that that guy's going to burn in hell just because you think he is.

Shane Sams [00:32:56] So that those were the real formative moments where I knew that this was not the. There was a veneer on Christianity and evangelicalism, and it kept me skeptical. Probably. Probably going forward.

Todd Phillips [00:33:09] Yeah. So in your teens and your 20s, I mean, it sounds like in the midst of being very committed, you know, you're involved. You've told me Bible studies and vacation Bible school for years, and, you know, you leaned in. But during all of that time, during all of that time, there are some very serious moments, some watershed moments, I would call them, where you're really asking some very dramatic, very profound questions regarding some very deep issues, Biblical inerrancy and hypocrisy within the church and just misunderstandings about these things. And it sounds like you're not. Either you're not able to, or you chose not to ask questions about those areas or dive into them as deeply as you could have at that moment. Is that accurate to say?

Shane Sams [00:33:53] 100%. It was not the. There was nothing like your community that I could go to and ask these questions. And when I went to ask questions, they were completely stonewalled with apologetics. Right. And I didn't know a lot of apologetics and the tactics and things like that or what even apologetics was.

Shane Sams [00:34:16] And what would happen is I would just get looped into this place where I could never quite get past skeptical because it would all reset. I mean, you would go talk to somebody, you would wrestle with these things, and at the end they would just be like, well, Bible says it must be true. Let's pray. And you'd go to church Sunday and it would all reset with the next series. And then everything would, like, just keep moving forward. Right. So there was never a time or a place or people. No one in my life I can remember. I don't remember people leaving the church. Like, people stopped coming sometimes, but they would always be back, like Christmas and Easter or whatever.

Shane Sams [00:34:48] Right. So I didn't have the opportunity to go deeper. I would just notice something and then it would have to go. One of probably the key moments that really, I think what pushed me past skepticism into I've got to seek out answers from people who are not in this bubble was when President Obama was running for president, and I'm not a political guy. I don't care who you voted for. I don't really. That doesn't matter to me at all. Do Whatever you want to do. But like, I remember the sermons at the church I was going to at the time shifted, deeply political and like, you would not vote for this guy if you were a Christian.

Shane Sams [00:35:27] I didn't even care if I agreed with him or not. This was from the pulpit, this was happening. I'm an older guy now. I'm an adult. I'm probably 25, 26, 27, somewhere in there maybe. And I led a Sunday school group I was in with the leadership of the church.

Shane Sams [00:35:43] I went to my pastor and I was like, hey, I'm not arguing the beliefs of this guy. I don't really get into moral arguments. Todd, we can talk about that later. But what I'm worried about is that we are a tax exempt institution and we are telling people under penalty of hell and their salvation that they can't vote a certain way.

Shane Sams [00:36:09] And that is completely unacceptable. And we had this. We had this circular conversation that didn't go anywhere. And I felt like I had been completely dismissed. And it was funny though, because of the pastor. These are great people, by the way, too. It's not like I'm mad at any human being about any of this. But he was like, well, why don't you pray for us? And I prayed for a spirit of collaboration and fairness where everyone has the freedom what they want.

Shane Sams [00:36:40] I guess that was kind of a punk move, but that really made me think, okay, I can't just take anybody at face value. You're telling me how to think. You're telling me what's real and what's not real and I don't get an opinion on it. You're telling me I can't ask questions and now you're telling me who to vote for in my own country.

Shane Sams [00:36:56] So that kind. But even at that point, though, it was never to leave. It was to double down on seeking Jesus, God and the truth. But I had to do it my own way with my own Bible. So I started buying concordances and apologetics books and, you know, I started really studying more of what I actually believed.

Building a Public Life Around Evangelical Platforms

Todd Phillips [00:37:16] Okay, so when do you. Let's talk about how you got involved in not just being involved with the church and really sold out. But let's jump back. You mentioned, I think it was at 35, you got baptized the second time.

Shane Sams [00:37:28] I did,

Todd Phillips [00:37:30] yeah. And you are, by that time, I think you're already teaching and speaking and leading for years prior to that. So take me through that, how you started teaching and how you started kind of having a public ministry and then how that ties if it does to being baptized that second time at 35.

Shane Sams [00:37:48] Yeah, man. So, like, at that time, I was actually a school teacher. I was a history teacher, and I was a football coach. That was my kind of identity in the community. Like, I loved football. I loved being a leader of young men. I loved teaching. I loved the kids. Like, you know, that's kind of the path I took. I coached a little in college, but spent most of my time in high school.

Shane Sams [00:38:10] And at the time, I had. We had two small children, right? And I started a Sunday school class because I realized, like, we had no friends. Like, we. Even in the church, we would sit in the pews and we would do stuff. Or we started going to this big, small group that was just a lot of older people. And I was like, you know, we need people in our life that have children our age so that we can go through the same things together. We need people that are going through this right now. So I started that small group, selfishly for me, and so that other parents with kids under 5 years old would have somewhere to go, right?

Shane Sams [00:38:46] And great group of people. I mean, it was one of the most rewarding, probably couple years of my life when the kids were little, because we would play with friends, and we would all be doing the same volunteer work at the church. We would all go and study the Bible, and I prepared these lessons every week. And so that started happening, and then my life pretty dramatically changed. I won't tell the whole story here, but, you know, at the time, my children were in daycare, and I found out one day that my son was being mistreated in his daycare center. And he had been for a while.

Shane Sams [00:39:20] They were punishing him and punishing a lot of other kids. They actually shut this daycare down eventually where he. My son, particularly, was singled out, and they would lock him in, like, a bathroom for, like, hours at a time.

Shane Sams [00:39:34] So, like, this was, of course, horrific. And it led to a series of questioning a lot of things in my life, like, do I really want a job where I've got to put my kid in daycare and this could happen to him? And I started looking for other things, and I became an entrepreneur. My wife and I started a very successful business that allowed us to quit our jobs.

Shane Sams [00:39:55] And then I started being interviewed on podcasts, and some of those podcasts, like, went super viral, like, tens of millions of downloads. And I was being encouraged to step behind the mic myself, start, you know, a personal brand, start a public thing. And I became kind of known as an online Entrepreneur, expert, how to start online businesses, how to lead teams. You know, I was, I was doing interviews. I recorded over a thousand podcasts like this. This shift in our life happened right about this time.

Todd Phillips [00:40:24] And how old are you at that time?

Shane Sams [00:40:26] We started right around that, right after I got baptized. I'd say it was somewhere between 30, around 36 is when business really took off. And then we started a very popular brand and podcast called Flip Lifestyle. That's, that's when I became a public figure. Um, that podcast got, I don't know, 4 or 5 million downloads. And I was being interviewed every week on some other podcast. And so I was out in the public sphere making a name for myself. And it wasn't like a Christian brand, but we were obviously Christian. Like, I remember the day that it was a Christmas. It was Christmas. We were like three years in and I was like, man, we've never talked about this, but I'm going to post about Jesus.

Shane Sams [00:41:06] I'm going to post how grateful I am that he was born. And if you're not a believer, reach out to me. We started actually praying publicly for our students on our social media. Like one of our students and one of our programs was like something was wrong in their life. We would just, can I pray for you? Can I write a prayer? Put it online?

Shane Sams [00:41:27] Um, I don't think I was being performative. I was just trying to like weave that in. Like, this is a part of my life. I'm a very open, authentic guy and I want people to know what it is, I believe.

Shane Sams [00:41:38] So that went on probably for about seven or eight years. And I would say we. I was known as a entrepreneur who definitely 100% was a full blown Southern Baptist Christian guy, right? And that got me noticed on a bunch of different things. And I was eventually invited to come on some pretty massive stages, you know, to teach entrepreneurship, to teach business and do things like that. But it was definitely evangelical organizations. Like, I was, I was literally, you know, doing my thing. Hour and a half a week out of 10 hours, 30 weeks a year, 2030 weeks a year in stages as big as 10,000, all the way down to 200 in ballrooms and stuff all across the country.

Shane Sams [00:42:23] And that's where it really turned more to, I'm not just a guy who is a Christian. I'm a Christian trying to teach you something, but I'm also trying to win souls, you know what I'm saying? And we would have tens of thousands of people, these events, make decisions for Christ and come forward and do all Those things, and that probably started around 2020, right after the pandemic, is when I started saying, hey, let me step on a national stage. I mean, I'm up there with the biggest names in Christendom, you know what I'm saying? Like these major authors, major celebrities, major stars, and here's some dude from Kentucky. But it was all about Jesus all the time, with the practical stuff on. On the back of it being taught too

Todd Phillips [00:43:05] well. There's a lot there. So let's go back a little bit. So you, you started speaking with the business that you and your wife started. How did it, how did it actually transition into this primarily evangelical Christian environment where you're speaking on stages in that topic? So how did it shift from business to evangelical Christian stages at events?

When Business and Evangelical Worlds Collided

Shane Sams [00:43:30] So around 2020, of course, you know, our online business was roaring. Our podcast was doing really well. I mean, our podcast eventually got up to about 100,000 downloads a month. Right? So we were, we were known. I wouldn't say that we were famous, but we were definitely known by a lot of people. We had been featured in magazines like Forbes, Huffington Post, you know, Medium. All these different things that you do as you start, you know, talking in public.

Shane Sams [00:43:58] And this big organization, basically they were looking for someone who was a business expert, right? Because there was definitely a. There was definitely a bent toward kind of like, you know, it wasn't prosperity gospel, but it was like crazy. Christians should step out into the marketplace. Christians should invest. Christians should help people in their local communities and build the kingdom. Basically. It was kind of the first versions of the kingdom wealth kind of movement that's kind of taking on right now in a lot of different places on the Internet that was happening. And honestly, it was kind of luck kind of. I put myself in the right place to be in the right place at the right time.

Shane Sams [00:44:38] One of the event organizers had a buddy and he brought up my name, sent him my podcast. They listened to it, they kind of contacted me, got on there, and they were like, dude, you're perfect for this. Sold out believer, Evangelical Southern Baptist, also successful in business and living your faith publicly.

Shane Sams [00:44:59] But I never really spoke before and then. But I've said a lot of words, Todd, on podcasts, everything else and in general life, you hang out with me, you know, this. And like. So I got up there and did kind of a tryout and my talk was just better than everybody else in there.

Shane Sams [00:45:16] Everyone freaked out and they put me, they just put me right on this main stage in front of, you know, I think the first event was like 3,000 people, give or take, something like that, which I'd never spoken in front of more than like 50 people.

Todd Phillips [00:45:29] And

Shane Sams [00:45:29] it went really, really well. And I just had a knack for it and I had a sincerity to it. And I was, you could tell I believed every word that was coming out of my mouth and I wanted to spread that to other people. So I was teaching on those. I was telling stories, you know, teaching people, kind of a motivational speaker slash, equipping you with some good things you can take home. But the whole core of it was this is what the Bible says. This is what the Bible wants Christians to do in the marketplace. That was the core of my message is your highest calling as a business that you can start to serve others. And I preached that dude to about man for like three or four straight years. Hardcore.

Todd Phillips [00:46:11] And what are those years again?

Shane Sams [00:46:14] So we started in 2020. The first event was in 2021. Once everything started opening back up. And then, you know, I'd say I just stepped off those stages for the last time myself in 2024. Okay, 24. Yeah,

Todd Phillips [00:46:31] yeah. So you say you believed everything that you were, you were teaching from the stage. Maybe

Shane Sams [00:46:35] 25. A little bit of 25.

Todd Phillips [00:46:36] You were. Okay, yeah, you were all in. And you are experiencing this success. So you're inside now. It's not just business success, it's business success inside of the inside of evangelicalism, inside of a specific Christian framework.

Shane Sams [00:46:55] Literally, bro, in the green room. I'm not going to name names on this podcast because I don't want to, but, like, I'm in the green room with the leaders of the biggest churches in America with the highest selling authors, with the most prominent sports figures. It wasn't just being evangelical. It was being a key member of the circle and of the people that were in that room to accomplish that mission, to take Jesus to the marketplace and to the masses. Yeah,

Todd Phillips [00:47:24] yeah. Some call that marketplace ministry. Right. So you're encouraging business owners, successful entrepreneurs, to give their money, their time, their leadership skills, to the kingdom, to Jesus. Correct?

Shane Sams [00:47:33] Yes, 100%, yes.

Todd Phillips [00:47:34] I totally relate with that. So that's, that's one place. This is one place. The reason I'm spending time here, this, this is where we connected. Right. I, I was in a very public setting and so were you. And, and we're going to talk about this in a minute, but there's a cost to that, you know, when you make, when you make a change. And we're going to get there in a minute, but this, this. I want people to understand just what this looked like for you at the height of all of it, right? You're, you're, you're in the green room, you're in these. What's the backstage, basically, before you come out to these events, and you're with all these very popular people in evangelical circles. And I mean, you're, you're just. You're swimming right in the middle of it.

Shane Sams [00:48:09] 100%, dude. I remember I was at the LA Convention center, and this was probably. Probably late 22, early 23, I think is when this happened. And I'm at this huge event, mega stars all over the marquee, biggest band in the world at the time, Maverick City's playing. And I'm standing backstage behind the stage watching Maverick City and 10,000 people just rocking out for Jesus. And I look to my right, I have a picture of this, but I won't share it, but I have a picture of, like, just say the Mount Rushmore of modern Christianity, like, standing right beside me, and I'm just like, what am I doing here?

Shane Sams [00:48:50] Who am I? Like, what is happening right now that this is happening? That was kind of like that peak moment of insanity. It's like I am literally on the stages. My youth group put us on a bus to go watch when I was a kid, and we're doing great work together, so. It was a trip, man. It was a total trip.

Todd Phillips [00:49:12] Yeah. So you find yourself in this moment. You have this kind of, Aha, kind of existential moment where you're standing on stage, you look at the Mount Rushmore of. Of. Of, you know, evangelical Christendom. You see the 10,000 people, big band. You're part of this now. And. And this is around 2024. Is that around. Is that

Shane Sams [00:49:30] right? This would be around 2020, early 2023, before the. Came off. Yeah.

Todd Phillips [00:49:35] Okay, sounds good. So we're in 2023. This is not long ago.

Shane Sams [00:49:39] No.

Todd Phillips [00:49:40] Yeah, this is very, very recent. And. And again, this is where we relate a lot, and I've appreciated the conversations that we've had in light of this. So now let's take the audience from this height. I mean, you're at the summit from a, I would assume a financial and relational career success point. Right. It's as good as it gets. And you're experiencing that and you're basking in that. I'm sure it's a wonderful place to be. I want you to take us now to. You described with me a conversation that you had. I think you were in Utah and it was with some former Mormons. And. And you described this. And I want us to hang out here. You describe this as the major turning point, if I'm accurate, the major turning point, or at least one of them in this entire story. So tell me what. Take us back to that scene. What happened?

Mental Health Struggles and Growing Doubts

Shane Sams [00:50:37] Let me go back a little farther to get to that. Okay. So I, in my 40s, started having some mental health stuff happening, right? Like, I would suddenly find myself depressed at the beginning of 2022. I was in a horrible health. I ended up getting a massive blood infection. And, like, I was in the hospital for nine days and almost died. Like, I literally was laying there and I was talking to my wife on the phone. Like, if I don't wake up tomorrow, do call this number to get the life insurance and call this person to help you, right? Because it was during the pandemic.

Shane Sams [00:51:17] I'm laying there, they wouldn't let my family come in. They wouldn't let my kids come in. So I'm laying there all alone, right? And I had this really kind of weird experience. Like, everyone was praying for me, everyone was doing that, but I was just trapped in this hospital room alone. And.

Shane Sams [00:51:34] And like. And like, I just felt so hopeless. And I remember going to sleep one night and I was like, God, if I can just see the sun come up one more time, you know what I'm saying? And I remember looking out the window the next morning I woke up and the sun came up over a hill over on the left. And I thought to myself, man, God gave me another day.

Shane Sams [00:51:58] Like, this is unbelievable. Like, I don't know what this means. I don't know why it's here. I don't know what's going on. But that moment, in a weird way, Todd kind of disconnected me from all of the Bible and praying and what stuff like that. Because I just saw this weird miracle of the sun coming up, and no sunrise has looked the same since.

Shane Sams [00:52:22] And there was a disconnect there in what the dogma and the religion made me feel. And this feeling of something making me wake up that day. And I started really thinking about my life after that. I mean, when a doctor is looking at you saying, you might not walk out of here, you start changing the way you engage with the world.

Shane Sams [00:52:46] And in that moment, in that year, in 2022, I made some decisions. One, I decided that I was going to get my health back because I was way overweight, and I was never going to go through anything like that again, not being healthy. So my Physical body needed to be helped. But I also started really looking into the Bible and what people had told me. And that experience was so different than anything I'd ever read or felt.

Shane Sams [00:53:10] Why did that feel so different? And nothing in church had ever felt that way. At the same time, as a part of my mental health journey, I was introduced to psychedelics and I went through a company that did legal prescribed ketamine therapy because I was having a lot of mental health stuff trying to figure out because I'm a happy, go lucky, preposterously optimistic guy. And I was super depressed during some of that time.

Shane Sams [00:53:34] And in that experience, my brain was able to think in a way that I have never been able to think before. I was able to actually think differently about everything in my life. About my relationships, about my health, about what the words I had been given my whole life actually meant. And I went through this like deep experience of reading back through the Bible, reading back through the stories, and I started going on YouTube and I started watching what other people thought about these stories and things like that. So there was a moment before that trip to Utah where I was in bed one night and I was reading about Noah's Ark and I was reading about Noah and the story and I was really getting into the aftermath of it and I'm like, this dude went to cave and did what with his daughter?

Shane Sams [00:54:21] Like, that's not the part they tell you in the books with all the colors and it's pretty. And I started reading that story and I was like, this is crazy. Like I wonder what people say about this story.

Shane Sams [00:54:33] And I started really digging into it and I became very convinced. You're never 100% but very convinced that Noah's Ark was not from the Bible. It came from earlier sources and other religions and this was completely copied, co opted. And it was kind of like the Jews were basically like, we're like, hey, our guy also survived a flood, but it's really just, it was just the same story. And then there's all these flood myths all around the world. And that really left me at that was the first time I became uncertain. Like, not just there's contradictions, not just we can figure this out. It's like, wait a minute, what does it mean if this is literally plagiarism from a much older faith, that this didn't even exist when this happened and there's other characters that serve the same role.

Shane Sams [00:55:18] So I'm on the knife's edge right now. I'm still going out, I'm still like well, help me overcome my disbelief. God, I'll just show up and I'll just keep preaching, I'll keep teaching, I'll keep talking, I'll keep living it. And I'm just keep studying this.

Shane Sams [00:55:31] So then we get to go to Utah for a mental health retreat, and we get out there and I'd never been to Utah. And, you know, this is the Mormon Empire, right? I mean, it's like, I got. I love taking old person tour buses. Like, I love getting on one of those bus tours where you get on and like, everybody's 90 but you, and you're like their child for a day. And you just go look at all the sites. Like, that's one of my great guilty pleasures in life is just to hang out with those guys. And. And we went and we looked around the Mormon Empire, man.

Shane Sams [00:55:58] We went to the tabernacle. Heck old. I was like, whoa, this is crazy. And then we went like, they had these big statues of like, the pilgrims coming through this point, like, this is it point, or whatever. And I was like, this is insane. It was just a whole different culture of Christianity and world and I'd ever been to. And at this event, it was a lot of people who were wrestling with their faith. They were wrestling with what they've been told, childhood stuff, whatever it is. And out in the mountains and we were hanging out and I was talking to this couple, and there were six of us there.

Shane Sams [00:56:29] We were all talking about this, and we were like, they were telling us about their. Their experience with Mormonism. And at the. At the beginning, I was like, this is insane. You guys are totally in a cult, right? Like, they were telling me about, like, magic underwear and these garments that they wore under their thing that had spells or something on them. And they were telling me, like, one lady said that the. The elders of their ward took their teenage daughter in, and if I.

Shane Sams [00:56:57] Because they had heard rumors she was either sexually active or masturbation or something like that. And a bunch of old men took their daughter away from their family by themselves in a room to basically shame her for some. Something like this. And they wouldn't let the mother go in with them. And I was like, that is crazy. And so we get these big, big stories, right? But then all of a sudden they start talking about other little things.

Shane Sams [00:57:20] And I'm like, that's crazy. Whoa. That's not so crazy. Whoa. This 100% rhymes with the Southern Baptist Church. And as we got to talking, all of a sudden I realized it was the same BS but a Different hymnal. And there was a point where I sat straight up and I went, oh my God, I think I'm in a cult too.

Shane Sams [00:57:42] Because the stuff we've went through is just as crazy as that. But it was just so stark the way the ex Mormons were able to explain it to me and hold up that mirror to what I believe with all the things I'd ever, I was always taught to stay away from Mormons, always like never, never talk to them, never go to their church, never do anything.

Shane Sams [00:58:01] And now I see it's because it's a, it's a different angle on the same mirror. And I realized in that moment that I could not go back and I could not believe I could no longer be an evangelical biblical. I believe the Bible is inerrant Christian. Now Jesus was a separate issue that I've wrestled with.

Shane Sams [00:58:24] But the, the religion of Christianity, the denomination of being a Southern Baptist, the, even the concept of evangelicalism, all three of those in that direct moment were done for me. I, I couldn't go back if I wanted to right now to, to those three concepts.

Todd Phillips [00:58:42] Do you remember any of the specifics about that conversation that, where you say oh that's crazy, that's crazy. Oh that's familiar. Oh that's familiar. Oh that's right on. Where did they start connecting for you? Do you remember those?

Shane Sams [00:58:53] Yeah, I remember the way that the story about the daughter being separated from the parents hit me in a couple of triggered ways because one, that entire experience was all about shame. Like using shame as a tool to get a human being in line, especially around like sexual shame. Basically that was a very common theme that most of the ex Mormons at that event had was how just, just filthy they were made to be to feel about their own feelings and stuff like that.

Shane Sams [00:59:24] I remember that the separation thing really hit me at a different level because like I am, I am a, I know sales and I know how events work, I know show business and how things are set up to get people to behave and do certain things and people feel certain things.

Shane Sams [00:59:39] And when I heard about that separation of a child from a parent in front of a bunch of old men alone, you know, it made me think of church lock ins. And I remember when I was a kid that like, oh my God, like separate the kid from the parents.

Todd Phillips [00:59:56] Okay, tell me what's a church lock in?

Shane Sams [00:59:58] So in the South, I don't know if this is true everywhere, but a church lock in is like where basically you go to the church on Friday night and you stay up all night, basically. And then you go home in the morning. Okay, so you're all the kids are locked in with the leaders and youth people at the church and volunteers, right? And it's kind of like presented like a Pinocchio's island to me now, right now, like where he gets on the island and it looks really fun and everything's going crazy and then something happens later that's not good because. And again, I want to always preface.

Shane Sams [01:00:26] I don't think this is like some grand conspiracy. I think it's just evolved this way. And the people that I know that serve in these things definitely really believe what they believe and they care. Right? But in practice, it's 100% a high pressure seminar because you separate kids from their parents. You go wear them out with games and having fun and they're tired. Around midnight or 2 o', clock, all of a sudden you start singing and you get these real emotional songs. And then all of a sudden you get this real hellfire and damnation thing. Highly attuned to those kids lives like sexual sin or, or XYZ or whatever it is.

Shane Sams [01:01:02] You put all this pressure on these tired kids and then they'll do an altar call and some kids are taken away to the prayer room. And then all of a sudden on Sunday morning, you've got 30 kids that have said they're saved and they're going to get baptized. And it just struck me as such a rhyming similarity that like that tactic. Again, I'm not saying

Todd Phillips [01:01:22] it is a tactic.

Shane Sams [01:01:24] It is a tactic whether or not someone's like, I believe this is the right way to do this. It's a tactic to pull kids away from their parents. I was always taught to think for myself. I'm grateful for that from my parents. Like question it, think about it, read it yourself. That was always how I was taught to engage with the church.

Shane Sams [01:01:41] But that was the big thing that was like, oh my God, that was the rhyme. When they told me that story, I was like, that's no different than a lock in. I'd heard of kids being pulled up outside by the youth minister to have a talking to, you know what I'm saying, about their purity. And I just could not unsee that after that moment that, like this. These are high pressure tactics that get people to believe something and do something performative for the church, not necessarily for the individual. Just like I was pressured when I was a kid, hey, your family wants to see you baptized.

Shane Sams [01:02:15] You should do this at this time in your life. And that's kind of what pushed me over the edge is like, oh my God, I've always thought you were the culture, but we're all in a cult.

Todd Phillips [01:02:25] Yeah. And just to, just to clarify, for people who've never been in a lock in, this is. These are high school, junior high, high school kids. They go to the church or to the gymnasium and, and some event center and they're there all night. They bring sleeping bags.

Shane Sams [01:02:36] You're not allowed to leave even if you can

Todd Phillips [01:02:38] drive. They cannot leave. They show up at 7pm and then their parents come pick them up maybe at 7am the next morning. And the whole night is about just getting them excited and they play games and everything. And then they go through the worship and just in the midst of this and then they're exhausted and they're staying up all night and it's at 3:00 in the morning, they're being called forward and that's when the altar call comes

Shane Sams [01:02:57] and

Todd Phillips [01:02:57] that is their most exhausted.

Shane Sams [01:02:59] And this is like in any other industry, you know what I'm saying? Because I've spent a lot of time in the live event industry, the sales industry, the seminar industry, and there's a lot of amazing people, companies and people out there that are really doing really good work with their programs. But like when you talk to hardcore salespeople who just don't get, give a crap about anything but selling, right.

Shane Sams [01:03:23] One of the great strategies that was discovered was get people into a room for three or four days and get them tired and get them on at the end of this big emotional event, fatiguing event. Sales are much more likely when someone's tired or fatigued, you know what I'm saying? Until that. And it, it just hit me that that's the same tactic. This, this would be called predatory if it was for money. But when it's your eternal soul, for some reason with children, it's, it's not even kind of looked at, right. So that, that, that, that hit me so hard because not only had I participated in it, I had been a part of those things, you know what I'm saying?

Todd Phillips [01:04:09] Contributed to that. Yeah,

Shane Sams [01:04:10] yeah. But I mean, I was doing my best with what I had and surviving just like everybody else was at the time.

Confronting the Cracks in Evangelical Identity

Todd Phillips [01:04:15] Okay. So you go through this, these transitionary moments in your theological beliefs. You're seeing that, that much of what you understand about your own evangelical faith certainly mirrors or is, is, is, is walking very closely alongside some of the things you've heard from the Mormon people that you were talking to. And you realize, man, maybe I'm in a cult. And so you're going through this critical phase.

Shane Sams [01:04:37] It wasn't maybe it was crazy. And then it was literally, I said, I'm in a cult. I have agreed to creeds and dogmas that I did not actually realize I was signing up for. And I am so grateful for the ex Mormons, because I don't know if I could have seen it in the bubbles that I lived in, if it.

Todd Phillips [01:04:57] So how does that make you feel? What are you feeling when you realize that what. What. What emotions are coming over you?

Shane Sams [01:05:03] You know, I think that the. I think at we were deep in the mountains, the super inspiring place, there was definitely this feeling of loss of some kind, but there was also some kind of. Like, in that moment, there was a freedom in it. There was something like, oh, I'm not crazy. Like, I was reading these things correctly. I was thinking through these things correctly. I was having conversations and participating in a way where I was open and listening. And it felt like a little bit of loss, a little bit of freedom. But then I was terrified because my entire identity was wrapped up into this person that I was at that time.

Shane Sams [01:05:51] Right. And was like, truly was. Like, there was always a skepticism that was healthy, but never a disbelief. Like, this is what happened. God. God did this for the Israelites. Jesus. God did this with Jesus. Like, revelation is true. Like, there was never, like any kind of, like, super disbelief.

Shane Sams [01:06:10] It was just always helped me overcome my disbelief, basically, so that I did that identity. I mean, my money was tied up in it. My life was tied up in it. I raised my kids this way every single day of their life. You know, like, we did the Lord's Prayer before he went to bed for a decade. So it was kind of terrifying of what comes next. I had an event that week, that next weekend.

Todd Phillips [01:06:35] So is this the one you were telling me about where. Where you. You woke up that night and you had to change the message?

Shane Sams [01:06:42] Yes. Like, over the next week, I had a big event that I was about to go speak at. And again, I still am. I still hold it. I was still holding the Jesus part of it. And I do still hold that in some ways. But, like, so it wasn't that I was my first step to it. I'm kind of cautious when I change things. And, like, I didn't. I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater because I don't think I'm right. I don't know if I'm right or wrong. I just knew that this uncertainty had become the majority of what I believed. Right. And I had to basically go look through all the things I said on stage to make sure that it was still in alignment with how I felt in that moment.

Shane Sams [01:07:25] Because I didn't want to just say the same thing after believing something different. I do believe that there is great encoded wisdom in the Bible. I believe that we should not throw out 2000 years of 100 billion human beings thinking about that and passing something forward.

Shane Sams [01:07:44] That doesn't mean any of it's true. It doesn't mean any of it's right. It doesn't mean it's wrong. But I just had to go through and make sure any Bible verses I used were coming from my actual values and wisdom, not actually just so that we could push an agenda to make sure a bunch of people said yes to Jesus and evangelicalism at the end of this.

Shane Sams [01:08:06] And that was a process. I had to go say the words a few times to kind of realign what I was presenting to the world with my beliefs. And also, too, like, serving the institutions and the organizations that hired me to do a job. Right.

Shane Sams [01:08:24] I know some people, man, they just throw the baby out with bathwater. They just. Their whole life, they just quit everything, stop everything, start shouting. Their new thing. They figured out from the mountaintops, which is basically just evangelicalism with another point, another aim. Um, and that's not how I did it. I slowed down, I wrestled with it, and until it really started eating me alive, that there was no other changes I could make that would be in alignment with me anymore. I kept doing that and finally stepped away from it. Yeah.

Stepping Away From the Speaking Career

Todd Phillips [01:08:54] So let's talk about the transition out of, you know, the, The. The height of. Of your speaking career and motivational speaking career. You told me about a specific night, though, where you got up in the morning, you had an event coming up. And if I'm remembering this right, there was a specific night where you started. You got up at night, and you were rewriting your talk or the talks that you were having that day, because you were trying to make them, like you said, as honest as possible in light of where you were. And at some point, I think you told me that you're thinking to yourself something to the effect of, I, you know, I wasn't sold out anymore. Why am I selling other people on this?

Shane Sams [01:09:37] 100%? Yeah,

Todd Phillips [01:09:38] yeah, let's spend some time there. Because I think that this transition, this is the crisis point, that existential crisis point. I think that many people watching this might be going through in their own lives, right? They're asking questions. It's starting not just to affect their own private internal conversation, but it's. It's bumping up against all of external reality, if you know what I mean.

Shane Sams [01:10:01] Totally, man. Yeah. You know, it was around March of 23, and this, this kind of leads to the worst year of my life, actually. Like when we had this big epiphany with the exmos and when I had that, I kept working on it and working on it and working on it, but there was this big ministry moment and there was this big thing where we all kind of went out on stage and we all had to, like, get people to stand up and get people to do this and get people to do that. And then, of course, you know, I, I was on stage a lot, so I had like, everything leads to one thing, right?

Shane Sams [01:10:39] So the things I'm saying are actually part of the process that leads people to make that call in that day. And as I was. There was other things going on at the time too. There was like, you know, business relationships that were contentious. There was personal things happening in my personal life.

Shane Sams [01:10:56] And then on top of it, I'm holding this, you know, I'm deconstructing, but I didn't have a word for it. I was starting to let go of some dogmas and figure out what I actually wanted to be. And, dude, I went in and I. I looked at what I was going to say and I went out there and just. I could not reword anything anymore. I was trying to say a minute ago there was no way I could get around having to go out and saying, I believe X and you should too.

Shane Sams [01:11:27] Right? And I did it. I actually went out and to the best of my ability and authenticity, tried to move through that situation. But when I walked off the stage, into the car, back to the hotel, that's when I knew I would have to make a decision to leave this place.

Shane Sams [01:11:45] It wasn't the only reason, but it was a huge weight on me. And this, this was pretty devastating, dude, because this was a multimillion dollar revenue stream. This was, of course, it feels so good to get a standing ovation and people waiting for you to take their picture with you. And like, you know, my kids have a certain life. This provides for them.

Shane Sams [01:12:06] And I was like, I've got to do something different. So I actually pulled out of all those, those speaking engagements. I went to my team and said, we're making a huge pivot. I don't know how this is going to work out, but in my mind, I thought, I can replace this. I can do something different. I can go over here.

Shane Sams [01:12:26] And what that decision to pull out of all those events led to was I had to shut down a company. I had to lay off 12 people. We went through an experience with them over three to six months where I was like, we're not evangelical anymore. I'm not going to talk about this. I'm only going to talk about this.

Shane Sams [01:12:45] We're not going to do this internally. Like we prayed before meetings and stuff, right? Like, I'm not going to do that anymore. And so this was very. Not only this decision was so disruptive to me and my family, but also I eventually had to let go of a sales team that was about 15, 20 people. I let go of 12 full time employees who depended on my company for their income.

Shane Sams [01:13:10] And I remember actually letting go of the last person out on my back porch. And Todd, I just collapsed on my knees and wailed in grief and crying that the only way I could move toward a more authentic version of myself was to unravel this whole thing that had produced so many good things in so many people's lives.

Shane Sams [01:13:32] But I was just done. And after I let them go, after we shut down that business unit, which was a huge hit in revenue with a lot of trailing fulfillment, I mean, it probably cost me a million dollars out of my own pocket to do it.

Shane Sams [01:13:46] The next six months were dark, man. Late 2023 and early 2024 was deep, deep depression. I had no foundation. I was completely untethered. Nobody really knew this was happening. They thought I was just leaving for business reasons and doing other things. Some people got hints of it, but I was crushed, man. My whole world fell apart.

Shane Sams [01:14:08] I would lay in the bed for nine, ten hours a day in the fetal position, just looking out the window. The winter felt so winter that year because it was just depression and rumination. And I had this spike around Christmas time that year where I was like, I'm getting up every day and I'm reading my Bible. I'm going back to church and I'm going to sit in this and I'm going to talk to my Christian friends and we're going to talk every morning and. And I gave it this one last push, hoping that this would remove this pain that I was in, right? And it just did nothing, man.

Shane Sams [01:14:40] And like, I would just go out on my back porch and I would just look up at the sky and nobody would talk back. And it was dark, man. Like, it was very, very, very dark. My Family didn't know what was going on. You know, talking to your children about stuff like this is very hard. And my partner didn't understand what was going on. And, you know, and it was just. It was. It was a bad year, man. Like, it took me a lot of therapy, a lot of healing, multiple sessions with ketamine and other professionals like, to get to a place where I was okay not knowing and I was okay being uncertain.

Shane Sams [01:15:20] But I will. I doubt I will ever look back at any year. Like, I look back at 20, 23 and think to myself, that's. That was a worse year. Because it was. It was. It was. It was very hard.

Todd Phillips [01:15:30] You know, you. How did it take you? How did you. You know, you talked about ketamine therapy and different resources that. That helped you get through, but there was a. There was a tremendous amount of isolation for quite some time there.

Shane Sams [01:15:45] Oh, big time.

Todd Phillips [01:15:46] Where you were being very quiet. You've talked about that. I want to spend a little bit more time there. Did you. Who did you. Who could you trust? Did you have anyone that you could talk to about the depth of what you were feeling?

Shane Sams [01:15:57] I had a couple. I tell you what was a true blessing at that time. And I don't want this to come off as a knock against people who are in the church because I love all the people in the church. I still value the traditions and the concepts of some of the things that we do and like.

Shane Sams [01:16:17] But the people that came into my life at that time, like, you know, my ex Mormon, ex Mormons that I originally had that conversation with, I still talk to them every day. And they had been through this. So we got. I had. I had them to talk to, and I'm eternally grateful for them in my life.

Shane Sams [01:16:34] In my life, though I was terrified to tell anyone. I could not talk to my family about it. I couldn't really talk to church leaders about it because they were so sold out. I remember I was at the coffee shop one day and I was reading Seneca some, you know, Greek philosophy, Stoics, right?

Shane Sams [01:16:53] And this was during this time when I'm trying to reconstruct a little bit of some philosophy or some kind of, you know, railroad track for myself. And one of the leaders in my church saw me and goes, oh, you shouldn't be reading that. I throw that in the garbage. Why? He goes, that philosophy stuff will make you start asking questions.

Todd Phillips [01:17:10] How remarkable is that statement?

Shane Sams [01:17:11] Oh, dude. I'm like, I'm already asking him, big boy. You know what I'm saying? But, like, I Didn't have a lot of people. Like, I couldn't tell. All the business relationships were kingdom people, like. And I've still got great friends. And at this point, I've started opening up a little more to them about, you know, deconstructing from religion, deconstructing from dogma, not agreeing to creeds that a bunch of dudes wrote down, you know, 2,000 years ago. Basically, we had a lot of talks about Jesus, but at the time, I had no one, man. This is all in my head, in myself. And I'm actually grateful, dude, that it was like that.

Shane Sams [01:17:46] I'm actually very thankful. I see a lot of people, when they deconstruct, they immediately jump into another group or another belief system. That seems to be a common thing when you lose that. You just jump in with anybody that has a. That seems like it's, you know, something that makes sense with the mystery of it all.

Shane Sams [01:18:02] And I went internal and I met myself there. I met my. I met my parts. I met the parts of me that were afraid, were anxious, were depressed. I met the memories and the patterns and the programming that still exist. Like, in my head, I really got to know the shadow side of myself. Like, who am I if I'm not what this book tells me I am? Who am I if I'm not who my family and my community tell me I am? Who am I if I'm not who society tells I am, tells me I am? So.

Todd Phillips [01:18:34] So let me ask you, who are you?

Shane Sams [01:18:37] I've learned about myself that I am a seeker. I don't think there are answers. You know what I'm saying? I think that we're put here to learn lessons and move through this existence and seek something bigger than ourselves.

Shane Sams [01:18:53] I think I'm a guy that cannot live a lie. I cannot not be myself. Some people would say that's a lot. And it is. And that's fine. You don't have to stay in the same room with me if you don't want to be there. But, like, I can't be something I don't think I am right just because someone said I should be. The word should, that's a word I don't allow very much in my lexicon.

Shane Sams [01:19:20] If I should do something, or I could do something, you know, I don't think I'm a guy who should do anything. I think I'm a guy who can look at the world and make a next best decision for me.

Shane Sams [01:19:30] And I don't think. I don't think I'm a person who wants to shout from the mountaintops everything that I believe. Like, I was. I'm very good at it. I'm very good at shouting from the mountaintops or across a football field, but that's not who I am. I was pulled into that role by a lot of people. Maybe because I'm a leader and some courage that might manifest in front of people, but, like, it's just not in my MO to shout everything I believe anymore. I like sitting with myself and figuring it out for myself.

Shane Sams [01:20:06] So that's. That's why I'm learning who I'm becoming. Right. This is not something I've arrived at, dude. I. I just went through the door of the unknown and I don't know. And now I'm exploring and looking around and trying to figure out what's going on.

Todd Phillips [01:20:22] So part of that exploration is having met me and you and I building a friendship. This Mormon Stories mini series coming up, and you deciding to. To say yes to sharing your story for the first time. Can you take me through?

Todd Phillips [01:20:42] I. I haven't asked you specifically this. What ultimately led you from. I'm not so sure to. I'm going to put a microphone in front of me and I'm going to tell my entire story, regardless of who may hear this in the world. Because this literally is a world stage. Right. Anyone and everybody may certainly has access to it and may find it at some point, whether it's tomorrow or 12 years from now. So what caused you to make that decision? Because I know there's a lot of.

Todd Phillips [01:21:20] There's a big private component of your life. Like you just said, you got thrust into that environment. It's something you're very good at. And you are. You've done many podcasts. There's a public side of Shane, but there's a very private side.

Shane Sams [01:21:31] Sure.

Todd Phillips [01:21:31] That I've discovered. So what. What caused that decision? Why'd you say yes?

Shane Sams [01:21:37] I'll probably lean into some. I'll get into some lessons here that I've learned post deconstructing or in the process of. You know, I think. I think anyone who's been in any church or denomination or even if you're in church right now, you realize that there is a veneer.

Shane Sams [01:21:54] Right. Like we call people our 2am friends, but they're not really going to pick up at 2:00am we, we say that we're going to show up and we do show up in a lot of ways. But, you know, God's not calling me to go on that mission trip right now. You know, that Kind of deal where you, like, still step out of it. And there is a arm's length of authenticity even. Even in a really deep, small group, because people are scared to talk about their real thoughts in life, and they want to tow the line. And the people who have come into my life post deconstruction, my ex Mormon friends, other.

Shane Sams [01:22:27] Other people who are exploring and in these, you know, spiritual communities trying to figure out, you know, what's going on, they have just showed up for me, man, like, in a way that is, I will say, is deeper than anything I've ever experienced. Like, a church and like, our friendship, dude. Like. Like, I'm. We've just connected so well and so deep, and you've really showed up. I've learned so much from you. And we show up for each other, you know what I'm saying? Like, we'll text each other and I'll get on a call right now. There's no ifs, ands,

Todd Phillips [01:23:01] or.

Shane Sams [01:23:01] But let's do it. And these relationships that I've formed since moving in a different direction, they're just deeper. And when my friends encourage me to do something or want me to support them or want to do something together, like, I want to show up. So a lot of it, man, is just like, one. It's showing up for you, dude. And I love what you're doing. You're helping so many freaking people. We're in that community every week together. And the healing that's happening there is, like, what I want to see in the world. I want people to heal from whatever's taking them down, you know, religion or something else.

Shane Sams [01:23:36] And also, too, like, even though I'm not. I don't want to be the banner waiver for this necessarily, because I don't. I don't feel like I have. I've got some things I think I can contribute to the conversation, but it's not. Not my. Not my mission in life. I don't want to be evangelical for anything, really.

Shane Sams [01:23:54] But, like, at the same time, I know that I would not have any truth in my life if there were not courageous people out there brave enough to say what they're actually thinking. And we get to do this. Like, we can reach 10,000, 100,000, a million people by sitting around for two hours with good friends.

Shane Sams [01:24:14] And so, yeah, that's kind of what made me do it this way. The thing that held me back the most is. And this is happening in progress is, you know, I did not know what to say to my kids. They're the only People I actually care about is my family of what they might think or what questions they may have. And, you know, my daughter is still very active in the church. I still go to church sometimes. Like, I love the community. I love the people.

Shane Sams [01:24:40] You know, my son and my daughter and my family were all in different places with this. And I've not really had the opportunity to sit down with them and say, here's what's happened. They know, because I don't go on Sunday mornings most of the time with them. But I don't stop them either. Everyone's on their journey. It would be arrogant of me to say we don't believe this. No, you can explore, figure it out, think for yourself. But get in there and tell me and we'll have talks about it. Um, so I've not really.

Shane Sams [01:25:07] I'm using this, actually, as a little bit of extra courage from my friends that this is going to happen. There's some accountability, there's a date. This is going to come out. And I need to have this conversation with my kids one way or another right now. So all of those things combined kind of landed on this spot where it's like, all right, this is it. Let's put it out there. This is. If anybody sees it, that's fine. They got a question. If any of my friends are listening to this right now, you have my phone number. Call me and ask me. I'll talk to you about it.

Shane Sams [01:25:36] That's kind of what this was for, you know, both to support you and selfishly to give me a little bit of a fire to. It's been three years. I'll stop kicking this round. Let's go.

Todd Phillips [01:25:46] Yeah. Well, I appreciate you trusting me with that. I said that before.

Shane Sams [01:25:49] Totally.

Finding Community Through Deconstruction

Todd Phillips [01:25:49] You know, you mentioned the. The decon recon online community. I. I originally started that community because I wish I'd have had a community like that five years ago when I was struggling the most and had the deepest level of isolation and pain and suffering and uncertainty and depression. You and I have a very, very similar story. And I wish I would have had something like that and couldn't find it. And so when we started the decon recon community, that's an online private community, it was to get people a safe place to ask those questions, that they wouldn't have to go through all of this alone. Because isolation, I think, for at least for me, was the worst part of this.

Shane Sams [01:26:30] Dark man.

Todd Phillips [01:26:32] Yeah. I mean, because in you and I've talked about it, I just don't know people fully understand just how dark it can get. You know, I've shared with you. I. There were moments as recent as last year that I just did not want to wake up. And when I woke up, you know, I just. I would. I would realize, man, I have to. I have to be conscious for 16 more hours and be depressed and angry and isolated and tears flowing at different times throughout the day just so I could go back to bed at night.

Shane Sams [01:27:00] Bro,

Todd Phillips [01:27:00] I don't think I would have ever done anything drastic to myself, but I did not want to wake up the next morning.

Shane Sams [01:27:04] Dude,

Todd Phillips [01:27:05] you and I have shared those dark moments.

Shane Sams [01:27:07] Oh, yeah, man. I had a. I have never felt like I was going to harm myself or someone else. Right. But that not wanting to exist and not wanting to wake up and see the sun. And I do remember this was probably about December 23rd, maybe January 24th.

Shane Sams [01:27:28] I woke up, I stayed in bed for, like four or five hours. You know, my wife came in at one point. I was like, this is not healthy. We've got to get you up. And I'm like, I'm fine. Leave me alone. You know, just. I'm isolating myself even more. And there was a moment where I was like. I was like, I feel like this might end in a place where I might want to kill myself. I cannot go through that, and I'm not going to put anybody through that. And I actually took all the guns and bullets out of my house and took them to my brother's house, just in case. I didn't think about killing myself. I didn't think about getting it.

Todd Phillips [01:27:59] Yeah.

Shane Sams [01:27:59] But I was terrified that this was the path it was going. If I didn't have any other way out of that. And the darkness comes from the loneliness of the emptiness of the isolation.

Todd Phillips [01:28:12] Yeah.

Shane Sams [01:28:12] Like, because you. You. It's not you. You. The. The. It's not that you can't feel like you reach out to people or you're scared to talk to them. It's, you know, what you've been taught will happen. Excommunication, cut you off, won't let your kids play with their kids. Like, all these things happen in your head that terrify you. For anyone to know that you might be questioning your faith. And it is impossible to explain. I regret. Let me repent right now. I always thought depression was like, get up motivation. What are you talking about? I'm never depressed. And then when I got clinically depressed from this, I have so much empathy and compassion for anyone that tells me they're depressed that I just stop. What I'M doing and sit and talk to them right then and there.

Todd Phillips [01:28:57] You and I are in the same place there, man. That is exactly how I feel. And it's not till you go through that kind of struggle and that level of depression. Depression and isolation and darkness. Like the dark night of the soul. That phrase a lot. Let me ask you this. When we talk about the online community, Decon Recon, you. You. Not only did you join it, and this was something I found very interesting because we built a friendship, started the community. You jumped in there. It's. You've told me it's become something very, very profound for you at this particular part of your journey. What did finding that community mean to you at this particular point in this process?

Shane Sams [01:29:36] You know, my journey so far has still been quite a bit of me wrestling with most of the issues myself. Like, even though I do have really close friends who have either deconstructed from their own religion or I have people I can talk to who are in the similar boat, but those conversations felt few and far between. I still felt like this was a really, like, personal journey. Like, and, you know, when you're in your own head, you say things in your head and you're like, I don't think any other human would ever say that to themselves. You know, it's like you feel like, crazy a little bit.

Shane Sams [01:30:05] You know, the difference in a crazy person is they say the voices out loud and we keep them quiet. That's pretty much the difference of society versus a crazy person. And from the first day, man, like, going in there. And I'm a community builder, Todd. You know, I value community. I mean, even go back to the why. I started a Sunday. I started the Sunday school class that I wanted to be in.

Shane Sams [01:30:26] My current mission is helping midlife men at great men. Like, I went through a lot of other things during this time that midlife people go. Men go through. And I was like, I need more men at this age around me, so I'm gonna start a community for them. And then when I got into decon recon, even the first day, man, I saw other people typing out the same words that were in my head. That made

Todd Phillips [01:30:49] me

Shane Sams [01:30:50] crazy. It's not even really about, like, the. Like, I love getting deeply philosophical with people and reading how other people are wrestling with this. But, like, at no point did I ever feel like arguing with anyone or shouting what I believed or talking to anybody. Like, my favorite thing to do in the community is go in and just thumbs up. Great headlines like, thank

Todd Phillips [01:31:10] you

Shane Sams [01:31:10] for asking that thank you for asking that. And whenever I'm having, they still come. The deconstruction, I don't think ever ends. I mean, we're 47 years of programming is not going to change in the last two, you know what I'm saying? So, like, when I feel that though, I just log into the community. Sometimes I don't even post. But just seeing other people saying those words out loud gave me so much peace. Especially when I'll see a Southern Baptist in there or I'll see someone that came out of the same kind of background I did.

Shane Sams [01:31:37] Just knowing you're not alone, you know? And I've realized something recently. You and I have talked about this. You know, we were always. You're always getting kicked out of the tribe is biologically the worst thing that can happen. Like if the tribe abandons you, you're going to die. That's what it feels like when you leave a religion, basically. And.

Shane Sams [01:31:56] But I've realized after seeing just so many people in here, seeing so many people comment on your videos, seeing so many people, like even Mormon stories, like, wrestling this from a different angle. Dang, there's more of us than them. That's what I'm really like settling in. Like, this is not. Not something that like the fringe of Christian denominations are going through. Like. No, this is. This is a lot more people than that. And a crazy stat I read is that something like 27, 28. Don't quote me on this, but a high percentage of pastors are preaching on Sundays. And I know some of them, and they no longer believe it, but they're afraid to lose their livelihood. They're standing in their community and all of their peer group.

Todd Phillips [01:32:38] Absolutely.

Shane Sams [01:32:39] So that's what the. Having a community. I don't. I think there's two basic needs that every human has to deal with. One, you must take care of your body. It's the only one you got. That is your meat vehicle to ride this rock around the sun, spinning around the galaxy for 100 years. And then the second thing is you do need people in your life. You have to have community. You don't have to do any of this alone. It's all too hard to do by ourselves.

Shane Sams [01:33:05] And this was the first place I had logged into where I feel less anxious. The second I log in because I know there's a lot of people in here. I will not be judged. I posted a thing the other day, like, how do you talk to your kids about it and immediately does chiming in? Dude, you know what? I'm saying, like, so, so that's, that's what you. Starting this when you told me you were going to do it. And my background is in helping people launch online communities. That's what I do. And I was like, well, I will volunteer. I'll do whatever you want to do. Whatever. We make it happen. Because let's bring in the masses and let's, let's help people heal. And I need. It's

Todd Phillips [01:33:41] a real. It's a. Yeah. And it's a, it's a cool place for people. Like, if they've gotten a lot out of the discussions here, I mean, they can come in there and talk with you there. I mean, that's another place where they can connect with you and

Shane Sams [01:33:49] totally.

Todd Phillips [01:33:50] Can I ask you to do this? Like, if somebody's watching this right now? Because this is that. And they are where we were just a couple years ago, just recently, and for me, as recent as last year. They've got questions, they're going through that. They're isolated, they don't know where to go. They can't turn anywhere. And maybe they can talk to somebody, but they're afraid to do it. What would you tell them?

Shane Sams [01:34:09] You know, I. I think I would probably. This, again, this is my experience. This is what people could do. Look, looking back, what I think I did right and what I wish I had done more of was one, it's, it's going to. It might hurt, but it's not going to be as bad as you think it is. Like, some of my biggest fears were not even true. Like, I still make money. I still.

Todd Phillips [01:34:29] That's a great, great, great word.

Shane Sams [01:34:31] You know what I'm saying? Like, it's. Your brain is going to invent a story based on your programming that is horrific. Right? And it's probably not going to be that bad. Number two is go to therapy. You need to go. You need, you need somebody to talk to if you can afford it. Like, go talk to a therapist that is neutral, that is not biased toward your religion and can just let you say it out loud to, like, another human. Right.

Shane Sams [01:34:59] The third thing is get around other people that have different beliefs. That's the fastest thing you can do. Like, is to meet new people without the ex Mormons, without some other people who'd been through this and even some of my deeper Christian friends I did share it with that weren't as judgmental. Like, it was just good to be that. But, like, find a community that you can become a part of. Like, not a new religion. Don't Go, you know, immediately look up astrology or something or whatever. I don't know. But like go find a place where people are talking about this because getting the questions out of your head is probably more important than finding the answers.

Shane Sams [01:35:38] Great greatness flows through your lips and fingertips. So does truth, your truth and that. You have to quit letting it bounce around in your skull. And all of those tactics that I just said are low hanging fruit to go say these words out loud without judgment. Right.

Shane Sams [01:35:56] And then eventually, you know, when you do start letting people know. I have found less judgment from the people I've confided in recently than I thought I would. We'll see.

Todd Phillips [01:36:09] Sure, sure.

Shane Sams [01:36:10] When this comes out, we'll see. But get, just find people, man. Do not do this by yourself. Do not just read books. Do not just watch Sam Harris on freaking YouTube till 4am He's a great guy, but like go find real humans to talk to. Don't just sit and talk to chat GPT about it. Right?

Todd Phillips [01:36:25] Yeah.

Shane Sams [01:36:26] You need to press the flesh and you need to look somebody in the eye and you need to type it out and let other people see it. It's got it.

Todd Phillips [01:36:32] Yeah.

Shane Sams [01:36:32] Whether

Todd Phillips [01:36:33] it's. Yeah. Whether it's decon, recon or somewhere else, at least one person, one voice, one place to express yourself and get the thoughts out of your head. Stop ruminating, express them, hear them come out of your mouth and have those discussions with other people, regardless of where that is now. Something that might surprise people, Shane, is that, you know, you didn't walk away from evangelical Christianity over these last several years and then suddenly become anti religion or anti spiritual materialist. Right. How do you describe. So tell people where you are. How would you describe yourself today?

Where Shane Stands Now in His Beliefs

Shane Sams [01:37:10] I would call myself at this moment in time a completely ignorant Jesus following mystic. I think that's

Todd Phillips [01:37:21] nice. I haven't heard that one.

Shane Sams [01:37:24] My favorite line from Game of Thrones is, you know, nothing Jon Snow. That's cool.

Todd Phillips [01:37:28] Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Shane Sams [01:37:29] It's like I don't know anything about any of this and like I landed in this spot, you know, through a lot of study. This is not something you go lightly into when you, when you think about changing your entire worldview. Right.

Shane Sams [01:37:42] So the process for me to get to that point, I'll explain like what that means as I got there, like, you know, I went back through the Bible, I read, read back through it, you know, cover to cover and started looking at it deeply, critically. Where did this book come from? Why is this the book that I was Handed to believe in, you know, who wrote it, who are these. These people and what actually is in there that is wisdom. I believe that there, you know, there's 2,000 years of billions of people wrestling with this book, and that matters.

Shane Sams [01:38:20] And it would be arrogant of me to. To just throw out everything that was passed down in it, because we can, in all wisdom traditions and all religions, have human truths that come out in them. Right. This book I found, I got this book early in my journey. It's called One Heart. It's actually right over here. So I see it every time I walk in. And so I read this book that was finding the deepest truths that all the religions agreed on. And there were things in there like, don't be eye for an eye and do unto others as you have them do yourself. And all these deep teachings that we attribute to Jesus, you know, they're discovered in other places too.

Shane Sams [01:38:57] Right. So I'm looking for that human consensus toward truth to make my decisions a little bit. But when I started really being critical with the Bible, I realized not just in contradictions, I don't really get into the moral things about, like the godlike slavery or anything like that. What I saw was inconsistency in the actual authorship. Like the Gospels, we have a lot of, somebody wrote something down, but I'm pretty convinced that they're anonymous. So now I'm believing something that I don't even know who they are. When I started really getting into the New Testament, I realized that Paul is the Christian faith. Like, they're not Christians, they're Paulins.

Shane Sams [01:39:36] That's what we. All the things in the creeds and things basically come from Paul. And I started looking deeply into those letters, and I realized that some of those letters were not written by that guy. So there is a book in the Bible that is clearly not written by the guy, but someone lied and said it was from them. I don't even care about the context that they used to do that back then. We are believing a book of the Bible that contradicts another book of the Bible that contradicts Jesus himself in some of his teachings. And it's canon because someone told me it was canon.

Shane Sams [01:40:10] So I started stripping all that down of the actual. What. What am I looking at? And I was just like, this is not an inerrant book that was breathed by the creator of the universe. Okay? It doesn't mean it's not valuable. It doesn't mean we shouldn't look at it. And it doesn't necessarily negate the impact of the figure of Jesus and what it is. But we do know that it is not completely accurate and we don't know who wrote it, most of it. Okay, so that's where I landed with the Bible itself. That it's not inerrant and that I don't think that some of it is even valuable because it was written with an agenda.

Shane Sams [01:40:47] Now as I explored that and I was like, well, okay, this isn't true. What is true? And my answer, Todd, was I don't know. I do not know even what objective truth actually means. I do know that I've had enough mystical experiences in my life and I've had enough psychedelics that I believe something else bigger is going on.

Shane Sams [01:41:10] But I think it was like Aquinas maybe that said that all understandings of God have to happen through analogy. Because if there is an infinite creator, if there is something infinite, it cannot be known by the finite. That's just logic. So anything we say about some kind of higher power, something we don't understand, is going to be completely fall short of the mystery of what it actually is.

Shane Sams [01:41:34] That was freeing. That was actually super freeing. Is like, oh, no one knows, no one can know. All we can do do is seek, right? So I landed at this really seeker place and really Jesus, the figure of Jesus, as we hear the echoes of what he actually said, that got told, that got written down, that got changed, that got rejected, that got re. Accepted, whatever it is.

Shane Sams [01:41:57] There is something different about that guy that I find compelling. I find really, really compelling at his core message. I'm not talking about Paul said about him. I'm talking about really. I'm just talking about Mark, the oldest manuscript, that's the one. Everything. All the others used Mark in some way and added to it. So like that guy right there, not, not the mythology part of it, but like the interesting component that he was, he's. He divided history. He definitely changed the world more than any other human being probably ever has. And I think that that matters. And as I was reading other places where Jesus is talked about in the Gnostic gospels and other things we found, like in the Dead Sea Scrolls and things that got rejected from the canon by the Catholic Church, I started seeing a picture of someone saying some really interesting things that weren't I am God.

Shane Sams [01:42:52] It was more just talking about the wisdom that flows through humans into the real world. I'm going to meander just a little bit. But when I. When I landed on Jesus saying the kingdom of heaven is within, that changed pretty much everything about my Feelings about deconstruction there was. It lightened the load. It became less heavy. It became less. Trying to figure out what everybody else believed and trying to figure out, like, looking within myself as a being that was created. Who created me? I don't exactly know, but I was created by my parents, and I'm here. I don't know where I was before. I don't know where I'm going after, but I'm here as far as I can tell right now.

Shane Sams [01:43:36] And it sent me inward. It sent me on a journey where, like, whatever it is, I feel it inside of me. Whatever it is, I feel it when I go on a hike and I see a waterfall. Whenever I am in congregation with people singing songs, whether it's a secular concert or even, you know, worship music there or a rave, whoever knows there is this some kind of energy that I feel separate from myself, right? And that's kind of what the mystics believed. I mean, it's echoes in Christianity. We're responsible for our relationship with whatever's out there and bigger than us.

Shane Sams [01:44:11] It's not the congregation. It's not the church. No one's appointed the guy that can tell me the. What the guy is saying, you know what I mean? And it landed me in this place where I just accepted my ignorance. I'll never know it all, but, gosh, it's fun to read about. And I accepted this place where, you know, I can still look at Jesus as very special. Do I believe that he was born of a virgin and that he actually physically rose from the dead?

Shane Sams [01:44:39] I would lean. Maybe not. I don't know. Probably not. But I don't think that matters. I don't think that the way the church handles the resurrection was even what Jesus was talking about when he was talking about resurrecting.

Shane Sams [01:44:53] And it just pointed it back toward me. My responsibility, my choices, my freedom to actually think this and whatever I think, move forward with it. So that's kind of how I landed in that spot. I don't think it's valuable. I mean, if you're unconvinced of everything, that's fine.

Shane Sams [01:45:12] But there's no black and white. There's no good or bad. Everything is gray. And there's a lot we can learn from mystical teachers like Jesus that we don't have to throw out. And it's me, bro. I grew up in a small town in Appalachia. Southern Baptist, bone and bone. I still like cookouts. I still like potlucks. I still enjoy going and singing with other people.

Shane Sams [01:45:36] I Don't think you have to let go of all these things. It's not an all or nothing decision, especially when you take total responsibility for your own beliefs.

Todd Phillips [01:45:46] Yeah. So that's really helpful. So you and I could get. Discuss the theology and we have had hours of discussions on this and I find it. I

Shane Sams [01:45:56] would love to do that with you, dude. Just nothing but theology and philosophy. Me and you, bro, we got to do that sometimes.

Todd Phillips [01:46:01] No, we will, we will

Shane Sams [01:46:02] do it on my podcast if you want to see what

Todd Phillips [01:46:04] guaranteed. But I, I find it interesting. So you and I are in a different place when it comes to the, the, the words and actions that are described as have been being done by this Jesus figure in, in the New Testament, in the Gospels.

Shane Sams [01:46:19] Sure.

Todd Phillips [01:46:19] I do appreciate that you, you focus specifically on Mark. I find that logical. I mean, that, that makes sense that if you're going to try to look at a way to live your life, take pearls of wisdom from the text in relation to this person, Jesus. I think one of the biggest challenges for me. We haven't talked about this. One of the biggest challenges for me so far is that I believe so many things that I think are untrue now that I think I've swung my pendulum to skepticism. And I don't see skepticism as a negative. In fact, I just want to believe as many true things as possible. And I also want to disbelieve as many false things as possible.

Shane Sams [01:46:57] Sure.

Todd Phillips [01:46:58] So because I believed so many things, as I look back on it now and view it as uncritical belief, I critique everything pretty aggressively now. And so I don't say that I believe in something unless there's, you know, sufficient evidence to kind of warrant that belief. I, it, it's convinced me or not convinced me, but it takes quite a bit to convince me.

Shane Sams [01:47:18] Sure.

Todd Phillips [01:47:19] And so I think, But I do think that pendulum is swung in such a way that I'm finding it hard. And I, and I don't feel that I need to do this, but I find it interesting that you do. I'm finding it hard to, to give much, if any credibility to the, to the words that supposedly were spoken by Jesus or the actions supposedly taken by him. Because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all written between 30 and 110 years after this man's life.

Shane Sams [01:47:47] Sure.

Todd Phillips [01:47:47] So I do believe that there was likely an itinerant preacher about 2000 years ago. Maybe his name was Jesus, and that's fine. And he was probably walking around Galilee, you know, preaching an apocalyptic message. He got in trouble with the religious and the Roman authorities, and eventually I think he was crucified.

Shane Sams [01:48:07] Agree.

Todd Phillips [01:48:08] I don't know that. And I have a cursory level of confidence in that. It's fine. It's there. I don't know that I would say it's likely. I would say that that's the most likely scenario based on what I understand. And because of that, and because I can never know, and this is a genuine question. Like, just as a moment of my own discovery and discussion with a friend, Dan McClelland said this, even he's an online social media guy and quite a biblical scholar. He said, you know, you just cannot. No one, none of us can know any word or action taken by that man.

Shane Sams [01:48:44] Agreed.

Todd Phillips [01:48:46] And so I just, I find that to be a massive chasm that I just can't cross when it comes to. Well, I think what I'm going to do is read those words now and see what I can pull from that to live my life by. When many of those things as I've studied, as you have, many, if not all of the things that Jesus said or supposedly said can be found in other religion and religious and philosophical traditions. I guess my question to you is, and it's one that is ongoing in my mind, why do certain people. Why do you feel the. What's compelling about the figure of Jesus that causes you to. Even though you know, you can't know for sure what he said that causes you to want to pull. Draw from his, the, the reporting on his life from these authors, that we don't know what's compelling to that compelling in that

Shane Sams [01:49:41] I think that humans, like, even history or wisdom traditions or Stoic philosophy or Plato or what, whatever, like we are all wrestling with concepts together over time. And I, I do put a lot of stake in what has survived time. I don't, I don't need to know the exact words that Plato wrote down to get something out of it. I don't need to know if this is exactly verbatim like a tape recorder, like some Christians say they had, you know, oral tradition,

Todd Phillips [01:50:18] sure,

Shane Sams [01:50:19] whatever. Like what Jesus said. And I'm not necessarily even talking about the stories. I'm not. I do not engage with virgin birth stories. I do not engage with what resurrection means to somebody else. Like, I'm not talking about the mythology of it, right.

Shane Sams [01:50:35] I'm looking at influence and I'm looking at what bubbled through and like, what kind of survived and also then kind of corroborating that with other things that I read in other faiths. And there's a lot of stuff I pull from, you know, Buddhism, Hinduism, the Stoics, whatever.

Shane Sams [01:50:50] And I think the interesting thing about Jesus is when I read something that feels true, I don't need to know if Jesus actually used the words do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. I do not need to know, know if verbatim, that's what he said, to know that this is where that concept emerged from in the West. Like, the concept of being present and not inventing stories of the future. Like, everything that can go wrong. If people find out that I've changed my beliefs a little bit, you know, all that stuff, like, these are moments of wisdom that do bubble up.

Shane Sams [01:51:33] I think that the wisdom moments that I read from Jesus in some of these things, like Matthew, Mark, I try to stick to the Synoptics if I can, because John's crazy. But, like, you know, like, blessed are the meek, right? This. This concept of looking at people who are weaker than you and not necessarily being bad to them or whatever. I think there's value there. I can. I can. And I also know that I am the meaning maker. I am,

Todd Phillips [01:51:59] yes

Shane Sams [01:52:00] maker. And I. I can make meaning out of my journey. I do not regret. I have no bitterness. I do not hate old versions of shame that were sold out to evangelicalism or a certain way that you thought the church should behave or whatever. That's just a dude that was doing the best with everything he had up to that point.

Shane Sams [01:52:24] And so much of who I am, like, so much of who I believe, like, I tried to be humble, you know what I'm saying? Which is a challenge for me sometimes because I got an ego, let's place it. But like, like, I try to take these lessons and, like, even the mysticism of Jesus, some of the words of Jesus are in other gospels, like, the Gospels. What are the Gnostic Gospels? Like, the Gospel of Thomas has a bunch of sayings of Jesus. Some of them are in the Bible, some of them are not right. And I can look critically at these in a lot of ways and see where the branches start.

Shane Sams [01:52:55] Like, the branches start in the fake Paul letters, where they're like, jesus is like, you know, men and women, everybody's cool. And then, like, all of a sudden, Paul's like, tell your women to shut up at church. It's like, you see these things where humans start changing the wisdom, which is always what happens with wisdom. It always reverts back to being manipulated and doing something for a cause or whatever. But, like, love your enemies and pray These core fundamental things that I was taught growing up, just because I no longer believe in inerrancy or I no longer believe that these are the exact words that Jesus said on the mountain, doesn't mean I have to throw them out now.

Shane Sams [01:53:34] What I do need to do is look at them critically, look at the message skeptically, look at the what, what is, what is being said, what is encoded in the words that survived, regardless if it's verbatim, and take that and apply it to my life and see if it's useful. And I do find that coherently. A lot of the things Jesus in the early synoptic gospel said are good.

Shane Sams [01:53:56] I do find a lot of the wisdom tradition in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs and things like that. I do think those are useful. And we know they are because people regurgitate them on Instagram and make their own quote, right?

Shane Sams [01:54:10] So that's kind of what I think about Jesus. I've also, also, I can only go by my personal life experience and I had a pretty crazy experience with Jesus one time. I will say this was on a psychedelic. I don't know what you believe about psychedelics. I don't know if you believe it's something real. I don't know if you believe it's all in our brain, but it feels real. And I'll tell you that right now. And I was actually saying like one time, like during my deconstruction, I was, I was doing a session. I've never said this out loud, Todd. I can't believe I've told this right

Todd Phillips [01:54:44] now. Share it, share it. Shane.

Shane Sams [01:54:46] I've never said this out loud anywhere. So we were, we were, we were, we were doing psychedelics and, you know, you set intentions before you take any kind of medicine, like mushrooms or DMT or ketamine or whatever it is. And I was like, you know, I've never, I've never seen Jesus. Like, I've never had a Damascus Road event like Paul did. Maybe he was taking psychedelics when he saw Jesus. I don't know. But like, I was like, I was like, I was like, if he's out there, if you're out there, big boy, let's have a chat.

Shane Sams [01:55:17] I was literally saying this and I was being flippant and didn't think about it. So I take the medicine and I close my eyes and I feel like I open my eyes and Todd Phillips, there was the son of Man. A silhouette of Jesus Christ with his arms outstretched, a crown of thorns and the brightest light. I've ever seen or experienced in my entire life. And I went, oh boy, we have called down the thunder and it is here. And what is about to happen, right? So I'm in this really deeply mystical experience and this glowing Jesus is right in front of me and I'm just kind of in awe of it.

Shane Sams [01:55:56] And then in this vision, all of a sudden a hand comes up over his shoulder and grabs it. And the light behind him dims ever so slightly. It's this red, dark, weird looking hand. And then all of a sudden another arm and another arm and another arm. And, and, and in this experience I see Jesus being pulled down. And the farther he's pulled down, the darker the light behind him goes. What finally happens is what felt like an eternity. I see Jesus being pushed down into like a crate, right? And this is as real to me as me and you talking right now. When I think of it, about it right in my memories.

Shane Sams [01:56:35] And all of a sudden Jesus, this figure in this vision, reaches out and grabs a hold of the sides of the box and stops whatever's pushing him and his light kind of glows back up on them. And dude, in this moment, I could see the faces of the people that were pushing him down.

Shane Sams [01:56:53] And it was a Jewish rabbi, it was a Muslim imam, it was a Southern Baptist preacher, fat and greasy and in a suit. It was a Catholic priest, it was a. All these different religious figures were trying to push it down. And right before this ended, like, I heard this booming voice that come from that, it just said, shane, get me out of the box. And it shoved him down into it.

Shane Sams [01:57:21] And when the experience was over, like, I processed this for like a week or two just thinking deeply about it and I realized that, like, that is what religion is. I don't care if it's what you're doing to Buddha. I don't care what you're doing to Shiva. I don't care if it's what you're doing to Jesus. Like, humans can't comprehend a mystery as grand as something like this. And we put everything into a box and I was living in a box. And that's why we feel the pressure of that box as it fills up throughout our life of guilt and shame and all these things that people are saying to us about this to make us believe what they do so that they feel better about themselves.

Shane Sams [01:57:59] And probably so we will donate on Sundays. And from that moment, dude, it wasn't about releasing everything in Jesus. It wasn't about getting rid of my whole background and tradition. It wasn't about upending my entire life and destroying it and being bitter and angry. It was just, man, how can I get Jesus out of the box? And the only way to do that is to expand what I think about him, expand what I think about the history of it, expand what I think about other religions and see what they think about him and even the ones that don't have him in it. What do people before him think?

Shane Sams [01:58:33] What do people after him think? Like, this concept of the word which is pulled directly from Greek philosophy, the Logos. Why was that applied to this guy? Like, why did they make that connection at that time in the Mediterranean?

Shane Sams [01:58:48] That lineage goes back farther than Jesus, basically, and Christianity. So, yeah, man, that experience really affected me and changed me. Not that I think it's totally real and Jesus Christ came to see me, but at the same time, I don't know what that is. That was very mysterious to me, and it felt like a worthy mission for myself.

Shane Sams [01:59:10] What if I just unpacked the box that everybody handed me about this dude and maybe I figured out, maybe I don't, but. But see what he looks like fully outside of that box so that. Okay,

Todd Phillips [01:59:21] so do you

Shane Sams [01:59:22] value the tradition of it all?

Todd Phillips [01:59:24] Do you think that. So do you believe that was an objectively supernatural experience, or do you see it as something the mind produced? Like, I know you say you don't know, but, like, if. If I cornered you.

Shane Sams [01:59:34] Yeah. I would say that I've had enough entity encounters on psychedelics, and I've interacted with reality enough on psychedelics to think at least open to the fact that something beyond the brain is happening. I think that the entity encounters you have are so real, even if they are an imaginary thing in your head. So is a triangle. So are the stories. Your memories aren't even real. They are retold in every telling inside your own head. So there is a creative reality somewhere in there that produced this from a bucket of ingredients, or it could be channeled in. I don't know. But if I was saying, yes, something happened there that is maybe beyond my brain. Maybe.

Todd Phillips [02:00:24] Yeah. I find that very fascinating. Thanks for choosing to share that story. You know, you and I have discussed psychedelics.

Shane Sams [02:00:30] Totally.

Todd Phillips [02:00:31] We do share an experience. I got on ketamine therapy a couple years back.

Shane Sams [02:00:37] It broke my depression. It's the greatest. I am an unabashed supporter of ketamine therapy, which is legal in all 50 states.

Todd Phillips [02:00:46] It's a prescription medication, and it's quite.

Shane Sams [02:00:49] 4-11-24. My depression ended after academy session. So take that. What you

Psychedelics, Mysticism, and Spiritual Experience

Todd Phillips [02:00:56] Want, I want to get your theory on this. So I've read a lot on psychedelics. Certainly ketamine is consistent, considered a dissociative. Psychedelics are a bit different than that. But the psychedelics specifically, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, there are stage three clinical trials on ibogaine and psilocybin or magic mushrooms, et cetera. And there are a lot of theories in the neuroscientific community right now where there's serious discussions about whether or not it's the brain producing these experiences or that the brain is, what do you call it in a car, a governor that keeps the speed a certain level. So the brain acts as a governor and in our regular daily life, like we're talking right now, the brain is limiting what's coming in our five senses, limit what otherwise is expressed fully.

Todd Phillips [02:01:45] On psychedelics, I know this is completely off subject, but the reason I bring that up is that I'm open to these conceptual frameworks. I'm skeptical of them. I'm looking for evidence to support those ideas. And they're very matter of fact for me right now, but I'm very interested in them. And when somebody talks to me about an experience, like when I listen to that, my first reaction was, how did you know it was Jesus? How do you know that?

Shane Sams [02:02:09] Well, I mean, one, it definitely looked like the programmed traditional feel of Jesus. He had crown of thorns, arms spread, silhouette, light. And then there was this presence of like a thorough authority, peace. It felt trustworthy. You know, these are all, again, these are still concepts that we get. I understand. Those are in our brain. Right. I do, I do prescribe to the governor theory. I think that what's happening when visual, audio, everything changes is the filters coming off. That's what it feels like when, when those things drop in on you. Right?

Todd Phillips [02:02:49] Yeah. And that's not considered it. That's not considered like a pseudo scientific perspective any longer. Very, that's a very, a very well discussed and well researched conceptual framework about

Shane Sams [02:03:00] how

Todd Phillips [02:03:00] we

Shane Sams [02:03:00] experience the need to survive.

Todd Phillips [02:03:02] Right.

Shane Sams [02:03:03] And if we block out everything else, that doesn't mean we still can't experience it. And I think that's what it feels like most of the time. Even ketamine feels that way in a lot of ways. You dissociate to be able to observe your thoughts and neural pathways can open and you can think differently. Right. But like even that is like there's something about the way it pulls you back that opens up how the rest of the world can like be experienced. Whether it's through your eyes through your taste, through whatever it is. And I don't know. I don't want anyone to say that. I know that was the spirit of Jesus Christ that came to me and told me to get him out of a box. I don't know that. Um, and that does not make the experience any less profound.

Todd Phillips [02:03:51] No, that's very true. Yeah.

Shane Sams [02:03:52] Yeah, it was a. It is. It is a new lens that I can look through. I can remember it like a memory. I can see that. And honestly, it's what gives me strength in my skepticism when anyone's telling me what they know about Jesus, right?

Shane Sams [02:04:10] Or that Jesus talks to them all. But that couldn't have been Jesus talking to me. That had to be some demon or something, right? Like, no, this was my experience. It happened. I get the meaning from it. I don't know if it was an antenna, you know, radio calling him in. I don't know if it was just my imagination based on all my constructive memories. But I do know that there was meaning to it. And I do know that it gave me strength and peace. And I do know that it became a worthy thing for me to think about the words that we read correctly.

Shane Sams [02:04:41] Not correctly. That's the wrong word in my own way. And Jesus never said, join a church and agree to the Apostles Creed. He never said that. He said, follow me. Like, okay, let's give it a shot. Let's follow you in a different way here and see what's going on with it without the judgment, without the guilt, without the shame, without the hell, which Jesus never really talked about, like, all these different things.

Shane Sams [02:05:04] And yeah, to this point I've. It's interesting. There's still some things I'm like, eh, but it's like, it's given me a new way to look at what Jesus is and what I think he actually, if he existed like we think he did, would rather have us have done. If anyone thinks the American church is the way that we are supposed to worship the creator universe, you are out of your mind. You are in the bubble and you can't read your own label from inside the pill bottle. Like, this is not the way we were supposed to interact with the divine.

Shane Sams [02:05:36] And I don't know what the way is. I still seek that. And that's a part of my journey is to continue trying to. I got to get him out of the box before I can figure out if I actually want to keep following him or not.

Does Life Feel Smaller Without Religion

Todd Phillips [02:05:47] Well, I think that's a really great segue into a question I want to ask you in light of you sharing all of this today, and I think I know the answer. Does life feel smaller without the security of that Christian religion, or has it actually become larger for you?

Shane Sams [02:06:11] Oh, man, I. That is an interesting question. Probably on the day you asked me would be different. You know what I'm saying?

Todd Phillips [02:06:20] Yeah.

Shane Sams [02:06:21] I think in a lot of ways it feels so much bigger. Like, it feels. It's so good to be able to just read other things without feeling guilt and wrestle with the ideas that other people have had. You know, it. It's given me a way to look at other humans in a different way. Everybody believes something different. I really believe there's 8 billion different religions in the world, one for every. It's so fun to understand what people believe and how they got there and to think about it critically and ask myself, if I do it, the world is open up to me. I don't feel like I'm cut off from part of the population. Like, you should interact with these people, but don't interact with. With those people.

Todd Phillips [02:07:01] Boy, that's a good. That's a really good way of describing it.

Shane Sams [02:07:04] Another thing that Jesus would totally be against. I mean, you can read him eating with people and whatever. Like, if that person's there, that he didn't believe that. And, like, just all these different perspectives has been super expansive.

Shane Sams [02:07:18] I think the hardest part of it is you did feel like you had a magic genie when things were going wrong that you could pray to help fix things. I still pray, actually. I pray probably more now. I feel like my relationship with the divine is healed in a way that could never have been possible. Trapped in dogma.

Shane Sams [02:07:37] But my. My worship is alongside a river. My. I smoke a cigar when I pray and watch the smoke drift it up in the air and hope it goes somewhere. I don't know if anyone's listening, and I don't expect anyone to talk back. Right. But there's a surrender to saying something's bigger than you that I really appreciate now instead of just hoping God fixes it. Right.

Todd Phillips [02:07:58] Yeah.

Shane Sams [02:08:00] So, yeah, man. I think it's definitely more expansive. Like, all the experiences that open up, all the people that open up in your life, all the stories that you get to hear that were off limits of you from you before are endlessly fascinating, dude. So. And when it gets. There has been a couple times when things were hard. Like, whether it's, like, you know, in the business or in relationships or something else, you reach back for that rope and it's not there.

Shane Sams [02:08:30] Right. And there was a comfort in that. But I would much rather be uncomfortable and free and moving forward than feeling like I have to just pull that rope back to a bunch of people who just want to suffer and hopefully they'll be rewarded. That doesn't feel good to me anymore.

Shane Sams [02:08:49] So even the hard parts where I'm facing it alone, I get to see who I am. I get to lean into my friends. I get to surrender whatever's too big for me. But it. I'm not waiting for anybody to fix it. Right. It's given me more meaning, more motivation, and dang, man, just more peace knowing I. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not doing anything wrong. And the next part of my journey is just a part of something bigger than me, and I get to witness it. So

Todd Phillips [02:09:18] I really appreciate you not only sharing that with me, but, you know, in the friendship that we're building, but just, you know, when you post inside the online community, decon recon, it's just a lot of wisdom and insight and humility in the process. I really appreciate that. And let's get to that. That kind of ties into your online community.

Todd Phillips [02:09:36] Great men. I'm going to be in your next cohort group, whatever you call it. Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit, because I want people to understand now that you're out of this, you hit the peak in this other world. You went through this religious and belief crisis. You find yourself on the other side of that, going through this depression, finally coming out of that into a better place. Relatively recently, and just recently, you've launched a new project. I would call it a project, a passion project, a business, but it's really a passion project for you is what it seems to me called great men. Tell us about that.

Great Men Project and What Comes Next

Shane Sams [02:10:09] Yeah. So Great men comes from a place of need, just kind of like decon recon was like, along with deconstruction. I found that a lot of people in their 40s and 50s, especially men, are struggling with belief, but they're struggling with a lot of other things, too, at the same time. This is all happening, man. My body fell apart. My testosterone dipped to nothing.

Shane Sams [02:10:31] I was having all these mental health problems, right? Like, I was just depression, anxiety, fear. My brain was running wild. We didn't grow up in an era where therapy was accepted, right? Yeah. There's stress in your relationships when your beliefs change. My business was changing. I was worried about the future, if I was going to be able to keep investing and building. And then on top of that, you have this crisis of belief. Of the things that you knew aren't working anymore. And, you know, when I started looking at the stats, man, I realized that men are suffering at a very high level in the world right now.

Shane Sams [02:11:07] I was one of them. Depression rates are higher in men. Suicide rates are five times higher in midlife men than they are in women. We're in a mental health crisis. That's why psychedelics are being fast tracked to help people. Not just soldiers, but everyone.

Shane Sams [02:11:22] The economy's changing, artificial intelligence. Like, all this stuff is happening at the same time. Your kids are coming of age and you're trying to get them launched. At the same time, your parents are older and you're having to now take care of them. And in many, many ways, the way our society is structured, a lot of that focus falls on dudes. It falls on men.

Shane Sams [02:11:44] And my thing that I would not accept in my life after going through deconstruction for months by myself is none of these things should be done alone, right? Like, you need people in your life, like our friend Lane, who helps people to get their body back. Men in their 40s and 50s. And you need people like you that are helping people on the inspiration side, on the meaning and the purpose side of what's going on over here.

Shane Sams [02:12:08] And basically, I had an idea. Could I just get a bunch of great men in one place and we could go through midlife together? I think deconstruction or challenging your beliefs is one of those seven areas of a man's life, Whether it's physical health, mental health, brotherhood, inner circle, your people, like, the job, investments, all that stuff is a huge part of it. And it revealed to me that there were other things going wrong that I also needed to address.

Shane Sams [02:12:34] So, dude, I was sitting on a incline bench, man, at the gym one day, and I thought, I Wonder if Great Men.org is available? And it was. And I bought the domain name. And then I started doing a podcast, man, where I was just like great men with Shane's. I just want to talk to great men from all walks of life and figure out how they're handling their 40s and 50s together. And we've got an awesome community, dude. Like, we go out in the woods, we get around a fire, we smoke cigars on these retreats, we have big events. We're doing one in Denver next year.

Shane Sams [02:13:04] And my goal is to be kind of the doorway for guys to have a place to talk about all these things. Because just like deconstruction, dude, most guys won't share that. They're depressed. They don't even have for it. And when a guy is 40 pounds overweight and he doesn't recognize the man in the mirror, he's just going to keep self loathing himself into a heart attack unless he's got dudes around him to encourage him.

Shane Sams [02:13:25] So it's a men's community for driven guys in midlife who are kind of sick of doing all this crap alone. The old playbooks don't work anymore and we figure out ways to write new playbooks so guys can live a great life on their terms and get through these things together. Not answers, it's just community.

Shane Sams [02:13:42] And in that collective wisdom which I'm a big believer in, we can find the answers to whatever people need to do next. So yeah, man, it's so funny we met at this time, bro.

Todd Phillips [02:13:51] It is,

Shane Sams [02:13:52] it's so parallel. Like I feel your heart for people and I know my heart for people and it's just really fun to build communities alongside people that are doing it for the right reasons, not just because somebody told them to. So I, I appreciate it man.

Todd Phillips [02:14:08] Yeah, no Shane, thanks. How do they find you? How? It's just great. Men.org they can go straight there and learn more about it.

Shane Sams [02:14:13] Totally. Yeah. You can look me up anywhere. Just google me. Shane Sams. Or you can go to greatmen.com and you can see everything we're doing in the community. I have a weekly podcast that is also on YouTube. YouTube is where we post that first and it's just great man. With Shane Sams and I talk to all kinds of people from different walks of life. We talk to entrepreneurs at the Guy runs a $2 billion company on there today. Todd's been on there. So you can look up Todd Phillips and great men and we talk about the deep things in life that men don't usually get to talk to so we can find solutions they would never find on their own.

Todd Phillips [02:14:47] Yeah, it's. It's exciting. I'm glad to be a part of it. I mean that it's, you know, not just the relationship you and I have. And you know, we've, we've talked about another friend of ours that we get together with regularly weekly now and then. Going to be joining one of these group, these cohorts that you launch, I think every six to eight weeks. Is that about right?

Shane Sams [02:15:03] About every. Yeah, about every couple months. We have small groups that meet and we focus on the seven core areas of guys lives and we go through them one at a time to figure out where their biggest problems are. Then we Focus on that for a quarter.

Todd Phillips [02:15:15] Yeah, you know, I. I need it. I need it. I'm excited to be a part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I just talk to guys all day long, especially in the deconstruction community. You know, it's funny, in. In the community, we have women's groups, plural, that are connecting. Right. They're. They're just popping up. They. They'll come to me. Hey, we want to start another group. And the men's groups, it's just a different ball game, right? And it's

Shane Sams [02:15:38] wolves, bro. They're afraid. They're afraid.

Todd Phillips [02:15:41] They're all lone wolves. It's crazy. Crazy. Well, listen, Shane, thank you so much. I mean, this is exciting. I. I really have enjoyed this conversation. We've got on to really incredible topics, I think. I hope that will be. Have been helpful for those that are watching this. And. And if you're watching this again, this is Exvangelical Stories. It's a. It's in partnership with Mormon Stories. It's a mini series of podcasts talking to people that have gone through evangelical Christianity, gone through the process of deconstruction, or are going through that process and sharing their story about how that's gone, how it's affected them, the costs that.

Todd Phillips [02:16:15] That were involved in it and where they are now. And hopefully, again, it will allow not only the people that share their stories on these podcasts to get something from it in sharing their story, but for those that are watching to realize that you're not alone. If you have any questions about that, you want to join the decon recon community that we talked about today or greatman.org all of that information will be in the description. And if you'd like to support this project, this is going to continue only if you find this interesting and you want to see it continue through the Open Stories foundation, which is part of Mormon Stories. The link to donate to this project specifically will be in the description. Thanks for joining us.

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