What happens when your faith collapses? In this episode, I share my story of spiritual deconstruction and how I learned to believe again—sort of. This isn’t a “how to get your faith back” story. It’s the story of tearing my faith down to the studs, sifting through the rubble, and deciding what was worth keeping. We’ll talk god shaped holes, Kierkegaard, Camus, Pascal’s wager, and the surprising peace of not needing all the answers. This episode if for anyone who is currently filling their god-shaped hole with TikTok marathons, self-help books and spiral-inducing questions. If you started at church camp and have landed in full-blown nihilism, press play.
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro: the story of how I lost my faith and got it back (sort of)
08:01 1. Why spiritual crises often happen at the worst possible time
10:35 How my own spiritual crisis began
18:07 Kierkegaard on despair and the self
19:47 2. Why spiritual health gets worse before it gets better
26:19 The delight of spiritual curiosity
27:43 3. Choosing how to fill the God shaped hole
29:42 Absurdism and optimistic nihilism (Camus)
30:57 Pascal’s Wager explained and what it gets wrong
32:51 Approaching belief pragmatically (belief as a choice)
33:53 What “god” means to me now
35:33 Can you make yourself believe? Should you?
36:16 On stepping in the same river twice (Heraclitus)
36:49 Five reflection questions (Rainn Wilson)
38:14 Lightning round recap
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Rhett McLaughlin’s Spiritual Deconstruction Story
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)
St. Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 CE)
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Heraclitus, Fragment 49a (c. 500 BCE)
Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom (2023)
Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)
MY LINKS
• Listen to my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Spotify
• Watch my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn Wilson on Youtube
• MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now
• Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from Blue Willow Bookshop (write “REQUEST FOR SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)
• Join the waitlist for future retreats!
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on Instagram
• Find me @thedailyvictorian on TikTok
RESOURCES
