The following is an auto-generated transcript of the Brazn Azn podcast Episode 24. It also includes affiliate links that do not affect the price you pay, but allows me to recoup some of our costs. Please excuse any mistakes or misspellings as we do not have the time nor bandwidth to edit.
Show notes
On this episode of Brazn Azn, co-hosts Stella and Virginia have an intimate conversation about their personal journeys with religion and spirituality, exploring how they’ve moved away from traditional Christian faith while still grappling with big existential questions. It’s a raw, honest exploration of leaving organized religion while still wrestling with fundamental questions about meaning, community, and the possibility of something beyond our immediate perception.
- Personal faith journeys
- Spirituality vs. religion
- Purpose of prayer
- Collective human experience
Listen to Brazn Azn Ep 24
Transcript
Stella: [00:00:00] Hello, Brazen Nation. This is the Brazn Azn podcast. I’m your co host, Stella.
Virginia: And I’m your other co host, Virginia Duan. I’m the entertainment editor for Mochi Magazine, which is the longest running online Asian American women’s magazine. I’m a freelance writer and an author of two novels one’s called “Illusive” and the other is called “Weightless.” they’re alternate timelines of each other. If you love angst, I feel like it has a fair amount of angst, recovering from trauma, messy, messy, messy people, spiciness, and also in a K pop background, those are the books for you. Check them out, please.
Stella: Today, we’re going to talk about spirituality and our complicated feelings about it. So, in a previous episode, we talked quite a bit about religion, and I guess, not religious trauma, because you and I don’t have a lot of that, but just our feelings about it, and I thought it would be nice to continue that conversation. So, something I wanted to ask you was, what [00:01:00] role does religion or spirituality play in your life now?
Virginia: I don’t think it plays any particular role in my life in terms of what I choose to do with my time or how I spend my time, but I think it heavily influences how I think and view this world.
Stella: So, it’s not a part of your daily life, like spiritual practices, I guess, is would be the phrase for it. Right. Right. But it’s still colored your thinking.
Virginia: Yes. Very much so. So it shows up more in my writing, like how it influences things or how I think the world should behave, if that makes sense.
Stella: Yeah, I mean, it’s wild how formative some of that theology can be on our thinking.
Virginia: Yeah, and I don’t necessarily even think of it as bad. Right. You know? Yeah. I feel like the worldview is pretty neutral. It, well, is it neutral. If you think people [00:02:00] are born in sin, I guess that’s not neutral.
Stella: I think it depends, right?
Virginia: Yeah, yeah. It can be neutral. I see it as neutral as seeing as people are valuable and to value people over things and to operate from a world of people first.
Stella: Mm hmm
Virginia: what about yourself?
Stella: That’s such a tough question. I thought about this.
I don’t think it plays much of any role and I am honestly a little bit concerned about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that spirituality is an important component of what it means to be human, honestly.
Virginia: Interesting.
Stella: Yeah, and this is not to say that I think people who are atheist or anti religious are not people, or that they’re underdeveloped in some way. But if you’re an atheist, if you are anti religion, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about what religion and spirituality mean to you, and you may have already come up with something to [00:03:00] kind of replace it with. But I think just a void of spirituality completely means that you are not getting a chance to develop this part of yourself.
And I guess it’s because I think people have souls and I think your spirit and connecting with it and connecting with, I guess, your ancestors in some way, right, is just a really important facet of your identity.
Virginia: Would you consider art to be a way of tapping into spirituality? Because I feel like, for a lot of people, that is what art does.
Stella: Yeah, like creativity, right? Just the act of making things. Sometimes I think about the fact that You know, just like for people who believe in a creator that the act of creation is a part of what was imparted to us.
And so there is a desire within us to make [00:04:00] things, to create things. But I don’t know that that act in and of itself is necessarily connecting to your spirit, right? It’s a challenging though. Cause if you were to ask me to define exactly what I mean by that, I would be like, I, I don’t know. Vibes, I guess, well, I guess another way to ask this is like, do we see a difference between religion and spirituality?
Virginia: Oh, absolutely. You can be spiritual, not religious, I think.
Yeah, yeah. And you can be absolutely religious and not spiritual whatsoever.
Stella: It’s funny, I probably knew, during my evangelical years, right, I probably knew way more spiritual but not religious people. And now that I’ve deconstructed and left the church entirely, I know so many progressive Christians who are religious, but not spiritual.
And they’ll say it, they’ll be like, yeah, you know, religion provides something [00:05:00] for me that they consider really important. It’s a huge part of their faith community and they enjoy being religious, but not spiritual because they don’t have any of the woo woo. Like, it’s just not a part of their faith.
Whereas vibes, that was a big part of my faith.
Virginia: I mean, if I had to choose, I would rather have spiritual over religious.
Stella: I think it depends on the person, right?
Virginia: Hmm.
Yeah, I guess that’s true. It’s mostly because I just despise Christianity.
Stella: I think the thing that keeps me from hating it more is knowing so many progressive Christians, particularly progressive Christian clergy, people who work in the church. And it’s helped a lot. I guess this is a different question.
Do you think that Christianity can be redeemed?
Virginia: Feel like the [00:06:00] correct answer is yes, because if you apply to other things like, can white people culturally, nationalistically be redeemed? I would like to say that people can be redeemed, you know, and that systems can be redeemed because otherwise, what are we doing?
Stella: No, completely, it’s like, oh, do we just burn it all down?
Like, that doesn’t seem like a viable solution.
Virginia: Well, I feel like that probably vibes more with your worldview, but I don’t enjoy that idea at all. Maybe enjoys the wrong term, but you know what I mean. So yes, I feel like the correct answer is yes, and of course I know plenty of Christian folks who are great and I feel like on the side of righteousness, if that makes sense.
Stella: Yes, but they would likely be that kind of person outside of religion.
Virginia: [00:07:00] Yeah.
Stella: Right? Like they’re probably just people who are really lovely, like they just have lovely souls.
Virginia: Yeah.
So, yes. But not really.
Stella: And I guess there’s also the debate, right? If you are going to change Christianity for the better, do you do that from within or do you build something different and try and convert people to the new Christianity? You know what I’m saying?
Virginia: But, like, how can you build something outside of it? It would just be another, like, billionth sect of Christianity.
Right?
Stella: But what if it was a better one?
Virginia: But, like, why? According to whom? Right? Like, isn’t that what the Protestants did?
Stella: Yeah, and we see how well that experiment went.
Virginia: Orthodox versus Catholicism and, I feel like that’s the start of a cult. Like, [00:08:00] you know, I’m yeah. No. And also, I feel like you cannot start a new sect of Christianity wholesale.
It’s not actually new because you learned about Christianity from something, from some. cultural context.
Stella: Yeah.
Virginia: So you cannot divest any new branch of Christianity from that context.
Stella: But mainline denominations like Lutheran and like the United Methodist Church and PCUSA, Presbyterian Church of the USA, are all progressive denominations.
I mean, they’re, they’re not evangelical. essentially.
Virginia: Yeah, I would just lump them all in the same. I just find them so, in general, not individual people. See, see, this is the thing. If we have to spend so much time saying, in general, not these individual people, I [00:09:00] feel like you should just throw out the baby with the bathwater, maybe.
Like, if, if all of it is like, not all Christians, then there’s something wrong with.
Stella: I think, I think that there is a component in which, so people often talk about the no true Scotsman fallacy. Where have you heard about this?
Virginia: I can’t remember what no true Scotsman even means.
Stella: Yeah. Yeah.
So it’s kind of like this idea that someone will do something and you’ll say like, Oh, well, a real dad would never do that.
A real Christian would never do that. And so that’s like the no true Scotsman fallacy, no true Scotsman, whatever. And it gets to the point where you’re like, nobody is a true Scotsman if, if we’re putting all of these restrictions on it. And so, if someone says that they’re Christian and they do things, even if you don’t think they’re Christian, that person is saying that they’re Christian, right?
This administration, now that we [00:10:00] have, I know, I know, but they’re, that’s the party of family values. That’s the party of the religious right. Those are Christians.
Virginia: I mean,
show your true face. Show your true face. That’s all I have to say about that.
Stella: There are so many Christians who don’t want to allow those kind of people into their group.
You know what I mean? They’ll be like, no, they’re not real Christians. They’re obviously just using God for their own political agenda. But I mean, but they think, but, but that’s what they’re selling themselves as like they count. I’m sorry. Yeah. Those are Christians. Yeah.
Virginia: And if you’re a Christian, that’s your fucking problem.
Fix it.
Stella: But I think I, one of the challenges there though. No, no. Like one of the challenges there though, is that individuals can’t fix this problem.
Virginia: Correct. [00:11:00] It’s what,
Stella: like, individuals did not individually make the system. It was a collective effort. And there are definitely key people who fucked us over, but individuals did not individually make the system.
It was a collective effort by a group of people in order to maintain power, right? And so,
Virginia: Wait, are we still talking about Christianity?
Yeah, I’m sorry.
Stella: Yeah, but even just any kind of system of oppression. I don’t want people to feel like they are individually responsible for breaking down the system when it’s a collective, it’s everybody’s problem.
It’s a collective problem, right?
Virginia: Okay.
I have nothing polite to say.
Stella: So then, okay, Okay. What did religion or spirituality look like for you before you deconstructed?
Virginia: How about you go first?
Stella: It was such an important part of my [00:12:00] life. Like it was central to everything. It was in everything that I did. That was like my reason for existence in some ways. Or at least I would, I would tell people it was. My church was my community. That was my family.
Virginia: Mm
Stella: hmm. They were people who I essentially grew up with, like, even into adulthood. Like, my college fellowship. Those are people who entered adulthood with me. Mm hmm. And those are people who watched me get married, you know, watched me have my first kid. And my second. And so it’s kind, it’s like hard to explain how important it felt at the time.
Virginia: So I would say that I was not fucking with God until maybe seventh grade. Until then I was just like
Stella: a heathen child,
Virginia: you know, I’m a person. It’s hard to explain because a lot of things I did were around the church [00:13:00] because the Chinese school I first went to was in a church.
And then because my father was such a shithead, my mother started going to church and she found comfort in the church. And then so we started going, and then God was a source of comfort,
but I would say that I was a huge snob. Because hermeneutically it was poor. I just felt things were just theologically not robust.
So it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God. The church was important, but I felt contempt for a lot of it, like this is intellectually bankrupt. And then, my freshman year, I got roped into intervarsity because of that In N Out food truck. But I think at InterVarsity was the first time I found like theological rigor.
Stella: That’s so fascinating. Our experiences are really opposite because I was raised in the church. My mom likes to joke I was born to church because my parents were at church three, four times a week. I was there all the time.
So I, from a [00:14:00] pretty young age, I was introduced to a lot of theological concepts.
Like, the concept of Calvinism, TULIP, like, that was, that was pretty early on. I remember that probably from high school, maybe earlier. Yeah, so.
Virginia: I’m so sorry.
Stella: I know, right? How did I escape and, right? And then when I went to college.
Virginia: The most joyless sect of Christianity.
Stella: It is. It is. It’s sad.
It’s so sad. Apologies to Calvinists out there, but you guys are sad.
Virginia: It’s just, how could we rob ourselves more of joy?
Stella: And then brainwash ourselves into thinking this misery, this suffering is desiring God.
Virginia: Oh, so terrible.
Stella: But that’s, I mean, that’s what we did for years, right? So when I went to college, I was like, well, I have to have a church that has at least this amount of theological rigor, if not more.
Which is how I ended up at a very, very conservative [00:15:00] church. Like, like Southern Baptist. Like, I think more conservative than Southern Baptist. Yeah, yeah, it was bad.
Virginia: Fun times.
Stella: Yeah.
Virginia: I feel like I always had a sense of justice, or fairness. Maybe my understanding of it was not very deep. In terms of like, systemic injustice, but InterVarsity gave me the foundation in terms of what those terms are, or even to say, hey, this is a different type of Jesus than I encountered.
It was really transformative for me. Until they betrayed everything by being anti LGBT, but that’s a different story.
Stella: Well, yeah, that, that, that’s a whole other thing. But being a part of a community that is trying to live out the ideals that they, profess to live by can be really, that can be a really transformative experience, right?
Virginia: Yeah. So that’s what it kind of looked like, but it was that desire for wholeness in the sense [00:16:00] of what you say you believe –you better be applying and intellectual rigor, it is that very same drive that led me away from the church.
Because it’s just. too hypocritical for me. Like, I just, I, I’m like, I can’t, I can’t deal with that.
Stella: It’s tough because there are people that we know during that time in our lives who were very not hypocritical. They were absolutely living out what they were saying they believed, even to their own detriment, right?
And then there were people where you’re just like, oh, Oh, but the church as a whole, as an institution, that’s really what we walked away from.
One of the challenges I think of not having a sort of a spiritual or faith community and having a family is that I’m not really sure what to replace my theological education with versus theirs in some sense. Like I [00:17:00] figured out what I’m deconstructing, but there is a vacuum in my kids lives.
There is a void, I think. Not that they have to have a religion, but that there is this experience that they’re not going to get to be a part of. And when they are adults, when they go to college you and I know how attractive a faith community can be when there are a lot of people who are super united in what they’re doing. And there’s this built in community, there’s built in rituals, there is this intentional care towards one another and towards other people. Are they going to see that and be like, oh, that’s something I’ve always been missing?
Virginia: I mean, maybe, probably, I don’t know.
But I will also hope that the values that we instill in them, and if they see that these communities might have all these things, but they’re like,
Stella: [00:18:00] Homophobic.
Virginia: They’re, they’re soulless, you know, they’re homophobic. They’re hateful people. Okay. So one thing I remember from InterVarsity. I remember one of my friends, he said people can believe one thing and behave a different way. And I thought that was like really, like their theology might be shitty, but they might be good people. if push came to shove, they didn’t apply that theology in a shitty way.
Even though if you did, it would be shitty.
Does that make sense?
Stella: Yeah, no, I mean, we’ve talked about this in our interview with Ophelia. We talked about that idea that like the majority of Americans are decent people who would not, I mean, there are a lot of Americans who would call people slurs, but there are just as many who would be like the ones in our community are okay.
Their gay neighbor, they’re not going to throw rocks. They’re going to try to be a good neighbor. And as they get to know them as people, they’re like, Oh, well you’re okay, but I don’t know about the rest of this. [00:19:00] Right?
So, do you think that there are any advantages in being religious or spiritual again or having a faith community again?
Virginia: I think if you have a found family of sort, if you have a community, there really isn’t much of a benefit. Cause what are the benefits of church or a faith community? It’s people who you can count on, people who have similar beliefs. People who provide care for your children.
Right?
Stella: People to give you, like, love. People to live life with, right? People to go through life with.
Virginia: Yeah. So if you have a few families, it seems like your children, you, you, you already have that with a bunch of your friends.
Stella: Yeah.
Virginia: I don’t really see how that’s different from church. Mm hmm. Other than church as a corporate body, right?
Right, right. Or a faith community.
Stella: Getting spiritual practices, yeah, collectively.
Virginia: And I feel like you’re teaching them how to be a good human being. Like there’s a praxis, there’s like a set of shared beliefs [00:20:00] that you find very important. And I feel like my kids know certain things that they’re like, Oh mom, you would hate this.
You know? Fair, fair. Or so I don’t really see anything that we’re missing, it’s not like you’re friends with everybody in church. It’s, you probably have a few, like it’s most, or I don’t know how other faith communities work, but I presume it’s similar. You don’t vibe with everybody. You just vibe with maybe three to five families. Maybe you have as many as 10.
Stella: There is a comfort in knowing that even if you don’t know all the members of your church really well, there is this sense of care towards one another.
Like in Korean, I guess you would call it like “jeong” which is not like a spiritual concept, but this idea that That you feel like we’re connected, you feel a connection to people.
Virginia: And I would say that that’s probably like the greater network of aunties, right?
Stella: Aunties worldwide.
So ultimately, I think for you, there, you’re not missing anything by not being part of a faith community anymore because you found something that [00:21:00] replaces like those emotional needs.
Virginia: I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
Stella: For me, one thing. I think my found families or these communities may be lacking is rituals, which if you had asked me during my evangelical years if I thought rituals were important I’d be like, you know, they’re empty their hollow practices like that’s not But the more time I spend learning about the importance of rituals for us as humans collectively, the more I’m like, oh, that’s the thing we’re kind of missing.
And I think that’s the thing that’s missing in American culture, period. So I don’t think this is me personally, I’m missing these things out of a faith community. But American culture really lacks rituals. Whereas I think many other cultures, particularly ones that are more connected to their ancient spiritual ideas and have carried them forward, have more of a [00:22:00] concept around rituals.
Virginia: Were your parents really into rituals or like Korean traditions?
Stella: No, but they are, they’re very religious. But no, I think so like for American culture, right? How do grief rituals work for Americans?
Virginia: Isn’t it you get two business days, three business days, and then you’re done.
Stella: But there’s no concept of a community ritual, aside from let’s have a moment of silence, that’s a community ritual, right? But there aren’t social rules around how to approach grief, and I think having rules, having this container for how we collectively as a community approach grief make it easier for the people who are not grieving to show that they care about people who are grieving, and it makes it easier for the people who are grieving to accept that care.
Virginia: Isn’t that what the lasagna is for?
Stella: I mean, pretty much, but it’s also like this idea that rituals have a beginning, a middle and an [00:23:00] end, right? And there’s prescribed rules for what’s happening. Conceptually, there is a beginning and an end to the grief you’re experiencing at the time, and it doesn’t mean that your grief actually ends, but that psychologically, you know that there is an end to the grief coming. And so collectively, everyone’s like, yeah, we do this ritual for three days.
And that’s something we don’t have in American culture.
Virginia: But wouldn’t you say that it’s because we have so many cultures.
Stella: I think actually that some of it is that we were very much a Christian nation intentionally at the very beginning, and then we decided rituals were not important.
Because there are cultural rituals in Christianity, there are Christian rituals around grief. But again, when you look at the evangelical faith, just like I thought, rituals are empty, they’re hollow, they’re meaningless. We don’t have to do these things, right? Like, A really funny example is like communion and transubstantiation.
So for our listeners [00:24:00] who are not Catholic many Catholics believe that communion and the eating of the wafer and the drinking of the wine is literally Jesus entering your body. That’s transubstantiation. You’re transformed and the substance, the bread and the wine become the flesh and the blood of Jesus.
And so, that ritual is incredibly important, and if you’re not doing it regularly, it’s not good for you, it’s not good for the community. As an evangelical, I was like, that is psychotic. To me, that’s just a ritual. It’s good to participate, but if you can’t do communion, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Virginia: Mm
Stella: hmm. Whereas now I would be like, oh, I don’t think that the ritual itself is all that important, but having a collective thing that we do that has this set structure. It’s really good for humans. It’s really good for our brains.
Virginia: As long as it’s not pedantic. As long as it’s adaptable.
It’s not dogmatic. You know what I mean? Yes, yes. Again, the [00:25:00] Sabbath was made for people, not people made for the Sabbath. That kind of idea.
Stella: I think it was almost a container. More like you enter the space and then you leave it and we collectively experience something.
Virginia: Have you tried any alternate spiritual practices?
Stella: Yeah, so I collect tarot cards, I collect tarot decks. And I, sometimes I read them, but not super often. I did meet with a budang, a Korean shaman once.
That was a pretty cool experience. She told me my spirit was very very clean, sparkling. Just like a very, very clean soul. I think that means maybe I haven’t reincarnated a bunch of times. I don’t know. Maybe that my ancestors are pleased, I’m not sure.
It’s been interesting to try and get in touch with my intuition, cause I tell people this all the time. When it comes to spiritual matters, I consider myself a deadhead.
I don’t have it, [00:26:00] whatever it is. If you were telling me to connect with the spirits, I’d be like, but I do have a high level of intuition, which is, I think, a little different. It could, could be the ADHD. We’re really good at seeing patterns. And so I have a high level of intuition.
And trying to get in touch with that aspect of myself through things like alternate spiritual practices has been really interesting. I’m very interested now in Korean indigenous religions, like folk religions. Yeah, like what, what did those practices look like? Can I incorporate them into my life?
Stella: What do I want to be doing? But a lot of them involve things like cleaning and I don’t want to do that, so,
Virginia: dude, what’s with the ancestors, man?
Stella: What about you? Have you tried any, like, alternative spiritual practices?
Virginia: Okay, so here’s the thing. This is where the Christian influence is very, very strong.
Stella: Does it feel too demonic? [00:27:00]
Virginia: Yes.
Also feels kind of like bullshit.
Stella: I mean, yeah, yeah.
Virginia: So I feel like a lot of people are into astrology, which I think is, is just insanely stupid to me. Like the stars aren’t even in the same fucking place. And also, why are we basing our whole personality on dead gods from the fucking Greeks and Romans. I’m Chinese. Let’s do the Chinese zodiac, and the five elements. Like, why are we doing this bullshit Virgo bullshit, even though I feel like I’m a very standard.
Stella: I was gonna say, as soon as I found out you are Virgo, I was like, Oh, yeah, no, that that tracks that tracks immediately. People who know me are like, yes, you are very much a Capricorn . I’m like, yeah. I, in my mind, I’m just like, Ugh, ugh. All the time. [00:28:00]
Virginia: Yeah.
So it’s very difficult for me. I try to approach astrology and the zodiac, the Chinese Zodiac as like, I treat it like the MBTI, right? I treat it as like,
Stella: Yes, it’s a personality test.
Virginia: Yeah, or like, an easy way to sort people. But I don’t really particularly believe it. But then I have friends who read star charts. And I’m just like, these are fucking stars. You’re telling me
Stella: some of them might have already gone out and you know, the light hasn’t reached us yet. And so we still see. Yeah.
Virginia: Yeah. And, and I’m not saying we understand how energy works, right?
Maybe. Sure. I mean. No, I think it’s all bullshit.
Stella: This tracks though, this tracks perfectly with your experience with religion too though, right? Where [00:29:00] you were like, none of this makes any sense logically. There’s no explanation for this that fits.
Virginia: Yeah. I think a lot of it is bullshit, but I feel like it’s not entirely as bullshit as I make it. If that makes sense. I feel like we are very prone to interpreting things. And how we interpret things will change our fate, if that makes sense, like change our course of actions.
They’re like self fulfilling prophecies. So I personally think I’m a very lucky person. Yeah. But am I actually a lucky person or is it that when I look back on things, I see how it could have been worse or I see Oh, that was a near miss. And I’m a naturally optimistic person. But because I believe I’m lucky, then you start seeing all the lucky things, right? Versus if you believe you’re unlucky, it’s confirmation bias, right?
Stella: That’s exactly right.
One of the really interesting therapy modalities, which is like ways to do therapy, is narrative [00:30:00] therapy. And that’s actually one of the facets that it focuses on. If you primarily see yourself as an unlucky person or an unlovable person, then you will pick out the pieces in your narrative that support this thinking.
And so if you want to reframe how you see yourself, then you have to start finding the pieces in your life story that go against you being unlovable. You have to find the pieces where it’s clear that you were loved, it’s clear that you were cared for, that you meant something to somebody and to focus on those pieces and to keep focusing on those pieces as you move forward to rewrite your narrative in some sense.
Because stories are really important. Humans are, humans are very narrative centered. Yeah.
Virginia: Yeah.
So, my main question that I constantly ask is, what does prayer look like or even mean at this point in our lives?
Stella: It’s so funny to think at some point in [00:31:00] my life this concept of being a prayer warrior was applied to me a lot. I think it was interesting being.
I was considered a spiritual leader, despite being a woman, for a long time. And so I think it is, it’s actually probably really shocking to people that I left and that it’s kind of dramatic. I mean, not really, but I left the church, I deconstructed, I came out and people, people were messaging me like, Oh my God, what does this mean?
And I’m like, I’m gay. They’re like, well, you’re not getting divorced. I’m like, no, because gay people, like bisexual people, pansexual people, asexual people, like they all count as queer. You know, so it counts. So people were like, well, as long as you’re not getting divorced and marrying a woman, I guess pretty much people were like functionally to them, I’m a straight person. And [00:32:00] I am like, Do you really think that my recognizing that I’m queer is a threat to my salvation? And the correct answer according to their theology is that that’s not a threat to my salvation. And so they can’t say anything about it, right? You can’t say anything about it.
But anyway, going back to it, I prayed a lot during those years. I prayed a ton. And It’s very weird to not have that practice at all in my life. I know a lot of progressive Christians now who do not do intercessory or petitionary prayers. So intercessory prayers are when you pray on behalf of someone else, like God, please take care of my friend.
They’re going through this massive crisis or, like, Lord, this country is going through this huge thing. You’re interceding on behalf of someone else. And for some people, they pray at to saints to intercede and for some people they pray to God, just kind of depending on things.
A petitionary prayer is when you’re asking God for [00:33:00] shit. You’re petitioning the Lord, I want things, I need things, please help. And I know a lot of progressive Christians who do not do either of those. That’s just not a part of their faith practice. They might do Thanksgiving prayers, where they give thanks, or they might do ritual prayers that’s like call and response, or pre written prayers that are part of the liturgy.
But yeah, it is very weird to not pray. I mean, I’m used to it at this point, right? But sometimes when things go really wrong, I’m like, oh I really miss being able to pray about these things and I guess I could still do it. There’s nothing stopping me, but it feels stupid.
Virginia: I feel super stupid
Stella: Yeah, I’m just like I don’t believe that God intervenes.
So why would I pray to them?
Virginia: Interesting.
So one of my friends, she no longer prays in a way that asks God [00:34:00] for things because they’re like, well, maybe what we’re asking for is not correct. In a sense of when you ask for things or when you ask for a certain outcome or when you ask for intercessory or petitionary or whatever, you’re telling God what to do and it’s already biased and that might not actually be what God is doing.
Stella: Right. I mean, this is such a silly analogy, but I’ve seen people make it. Like dogs really want to eat chocolate, even though it is poison to them.
And so you keep chocolate away from your dogs, despite the fact that they might really like eating it. Cause you’re like, that could kill you. That’s not, I know that’s what you really want right now, but that is not good for you. And so to believe that God is like, oh, no, I know that’s what you really want, but that’s not good for you.
Virginia: Yeah. So she views prayer like that and she’s trying to figure out prayer practices. I found that very interesting ,but for me. [00:35:00] I don’t know necessarily I ever prayed, except in a corporate sense, like you’re praying for people.
And I always felt very babbly and stupid, but there’s a way you can tap into if you’re just a good public speaker or you’re just good at words, then you can tap into the spirit of things when really it’s just a flow state, right?
But for me, when I personally prayed, it was mostly through journaling.
And I think that’s why, when I stopped really doing anything religious, I stopped journaling.
Stella: Oh, sad.
Virginia: I don’t necessarily think it’s sad,
Stella: but I mean, you journal more now, right? Or it’s just like writing?
Virginia: It’s just brain dumps. I wouldn’t call it journaling. It’s just external processing because I’m an extrovert. I need an external thing to process things. I don’t even know how to explain it, but I felt like time is weird, right?
Stella: Like, what is time?
Virginia: Right. But the reason why I say that is like, I would think of things like, [00:36:00] Oh, I don’t remember to pray for somebody until after something happened, I was like, well, it doesn’t matter if I pray now.
Stella: If God is eternal.
Virginia: Right?
Stella: Omniscient. Omnipresent.
Virginia: Then he would know that I would pray for this in the future. Yeah. For he’s outside of time, so it doesn’t matter when I pray for something.
Stella: Right. Cause time, presumably doesn’t work for God the way that it works for us.
Virginia: Right. So then I was just like, well, it doesn’t matter when I pray for something.
It’s that energy and it would just, well, not, I would never call it energy. That would be too woowoo at the time. But yeah, God is outside of time. So God would see that. And then his will would be changed regardless. And I’m just like, that’s so insane to me.
Like, if God is omniscient and knows I’m going to pray and knows what I want to pray for, why is he a dick? Why are they a dick that requires me to ask for something before they give it to me. So that’s several of my [00:37:00] thoughts about it. Yeah. And then another is, for a long time I saw prayers, that it reveals the desires of your heart.
Like the purpose of prayer is not necessarily for God to give it to you, but for it to reveal who you are.
Stella: But yeah, people will often say, like, prayers not for God, prayers for you.
Virginia: Right. And then I’m like, well, then I don’t see the point in it, because that just requires being honest about yourself.
Right? Like, I don’t see why this has to be a prayer. This is just a stating of this is the situation, this is what I want. That’s not, is that a prayer? That’s just a list of, you know what I mean? I don’t see how that’s prayer. But so I would say in general, I think it’s dumb. But I see why people do it.
And all of this like logical thinking goes out the window when my children are in trouble, or, or my friend is in a bad situation, like whatever. [00:38:00] Anytime there’s a situation where I really would like there to be somebody listening.
Stella: Right. It’s a situation like you don’t have any control. You have no power or authority.
And so you want to appeal to somebody that does.
Virginia: Yes. So that’s the only time when I’m just like, Oh, it would be really nice to have somebody to pray to. And then I feel stupid because literally it’s just in my brain and I’m like, well, God that I don’t know if I believe in, but Paul talks about a temple to an unknown God.
So maybe that’s who I’m talking to. Or maybe it’s just the universe or I don’t know, ancestors. Like I’m literally listing in my brain as I’m trying to beg for something, but I’m qualifying it in my head. It’s just, it’s so stupid to me. Clearly it’s just so self interested.
And then the whole time I’m just like, but I don’t know if you exist, but if you do exist and if you’re a good God, then you, I think you should be okay with it. You know, it’s like, I’m having a whole theological debate and all I really want [00:39:00] is for like someone not to have cancer. So yeah, I don’t know what to do about that.
That’s the only thing that I miss about a religion. Is it just energy? Is it just your thoughts? Is it just, I don’t know necessarily if I believe in energy either, but I mean, I have been in situations where you’re like, oh, this energy is shitty.
Right? Yeah. And it affects people.
Stella: The vibes are off.
Virginia: Right? Like, and I don’t want to be so arrogant to think that I know everything. I know barely anything about anything. I just know that I love BTS. That you cannot take from me. So I think that’s the only time I really miss the certainty of a religion.
Which is when I want stuff, not even stuff, but like when shitty things happen, you know?
Stella: There’s a comfort in that,
To kind of come back full circle on my thinking about spirituality being a necessary part of the human experience, I think that that [00:40:00] factors into it. This desire to know, like metaphysically, right?
Like, above and beyond what we can perceive, that there is something happening, and that something is a thing that matters. Whether it’s astrology, whether it’s vibes, whether it’s God, Creator, your ancestors, having a concept that there are things that exist outside of you, that exist outside of your control, that you can ask things of, it’s a concept that I think a lot of humans, a lot of people really want.
Virginia: Yeah, and that’s why ultimately, part of me is like, I think it’s all bullshit and the universe is random and it’s just shitty. There’s no moral arc of the universe. There’s no will of the universe. It’s just random brain firings. Yes. And I’m just really good at spinning a narrative. Just like my [00:41:00] luck, right?
Like if I wanted to start spinning a narrative that I lost my luck, which I’m not I don’t think I have Like even like part of me is like no no no, don’t say it. I need to say right. I think it’s just all in my brain, because otherwise the alternative is too terrifying
Stella: That there could be a force outside your will, that is what things happen.
Virginia: The alternative of everything being random and just all in your brain is kind of terrifying. But you know what’s also terrifying? Something bigger than us. It all just sucks. Because what? Who’s to say that this thing that is bigger than us is actually good?
Right. Definition.
Stella: Yes. Yes. That’s like the Gnostic, Gnostic beliefs, right? Where they’re like an evil God,
Virginia: and I feel like there’s really. No way to know until we know.
Stella: What will there be? Yeah. Like, what will there be at the end? [00:42:00]
Virginia: I don’t know. Is there, is there a such thing as an end?
Stella: My concept of the afterlife is essentially that we return to the universe as vibes, as energy.
Like that’s where we’re cycled, right? Cause matter cannot be created or destroyed.
The question I’m always left with when I wrestle with the concept of the purpose of spirituality or religion is that neurologically, we’re pretty hardwired to believe in things like religion.
It’s just a part of our makeup. And so I’m like, why would we have that if there wasn’t a force, whatever you want to name it, that exists out there? Why would we have this drive?
Virginia: Well, apparently it’s from drugs.
No.
Stella: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Virginia: They’re saying, like, there’s certain, like, psychotropics or whatever that people took a long time ago.
And even people who take [00:43:00] it now, they’re like, we experienced the universe telling us that you are loved. And everyone’s saying like, oh no, this is before people knew what to eat and what not to eat. And that really fucked with people’s brains, man. And that, it’s it’s all chemical.
Stella: But a handful of people having that experience doesn’t explain why all of us feel this way.
Neurologically, we are hardwired for it. Like if you could take all the mushrooms you want, but filtering that experience through, making a narrative about it. The fact that the conclusion for a lot of people is that, you know, like the destruction of your ego, ego death and this idea that the universe is huge and vast and wild.
And You’re loved that there’s something greater out there, right? Like, why would people have that experience? Why would so many people have the same experience on shrooms?
Virginia: I don’t know.
Stella: [00:44:00] And so that’s a question I’m always left with. Is there something out there that compels us towards?
Believing because it exists or is it just that we really want it to
Virginia: I think it’s really really want it to. I think I I honestly think it’s an evolutionary advantage.
Stella: Religion is an opiate for the masses.
Virginia: Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I don’t see anything different from me going to a concert and singing with 68, 000 other people the same song. It feels exactly the same as when I was at a retreat and everybody singing worship songs. Yeah. It’s the exact same feeling. Right? I mean. It’s like your brain, it hits the same brainwave.
Stella: We’ve always joked that evangelicals just haven’t gone to enough concerts. But the fact that that’s an experience that’s collective, that we share that as human beings, that it [00:45:00] doesn’t matter if it’s a concert or a retreat, right? This idea of collectively experiencing the same thing in this ritual is meaningful to us.
Why is that?
Virginia: No, I seriously think it’s a survival mechanism.
Stella: Right, like, to build a sense of community and collectivism so that we as a species can make it out.
Virginia: Yeah. Otherwise, why would you stick around with people? They suck.
Stella: It’s funny. I think research shows that when major disasters happen, people tend to band together.
Rather, you know, because so many of these zombie films, like these grimdark fantasies are like, oh, everyone’s going to be up for themselves. It’s going to be so horrible. But even in America, it often in times of great disasters, people band together, people care for their neighbor.
Virginia: And also people grift.
Stella: Yeah, well.
Virginia: Right? It’s in any extreme. It [00:46:00] allows your true character to come out. Mm hmm. And if you’re if you tend more towards community, then you’ll be more community minded because it’s necessary And if you tend to not be that way, then you will also not be that way because that is how you survive.
Stella: So Brazen Asians, thanks for joining us on our long ramble about spirituality and religion. We would love to know what you all think about the role that religion plays in your lives or what this has been like for you.
So that was the episode. I was your co host, Stella.
Virginia: And I’m Virginia Duan.
