00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: What happens when your faith starts to fall apart? When all the answers you were taught no longer make sense? But the questions won't stop coming. What if the unraveling. What feels like the end is actually the beginning of healing? In this episode, I sit down with Michael Camp, a former missionary and Bible teacher, now a non-religious spiritual coach and author of the book Faith Funk How to Break Free from Toxic Religion and Reboot A Healthy Spirituality. We talk about deconstruction not as a loss of faith, but perhaps as a reawakening. We talk about unlearning fear, rethinking hell, and rebuilding a spirituality grounded not in control, but in love. So if you've ever been told that doubting God means leaving him, or that questions make you dangerous, This conversation might just remind you that love is bigger than belief, and that healing can start right where faith fell apart. I'm your host, Jeremy Johnson, and you're listening to slutty Grace. My guest today is Michael Camp. He is a former missionary and Bible teacher who now helps people heal from the wounds of toxic religion. He joins us from Seattle, Washington. Michael, welcome.

00:01:16 Michael Camp: Thank you. Jeremy. It's great to be here.

00:01:19 Jeromy Johnson: Okay, so I first heard this term, I think from you, a non religious spiritual director. And that really seems like an oxymoron to my mind. What exactly is a non religious spiritual director?

00:01:33 Michael Camp: Well it's a good question. Well think of it more as like a coach. Director is perhaps not the greatest term, but a lot of the programs where you get a certification, that's what they call it. But non-religious spiritual coach is basically someone who is helping people who are coming out of organized religion, usually conservative Christianity, evangelicalism, and need help transitioning into a new spirituality. They're still believers in God or the divine, but they're just rejecting organized religion and looking for something that's more simple and something that they can embrace themselves and not have to always worry about. Making sure they believe the right statement of faith, or believe the right things, and that a church might do in a high, in a high demand faith situation.

00:02:22 Jeromy Johnson: Okay, so like in a dating app, they may select the option of spiritual but not religious.

00:02:28 Michael Camp: Right. Yeah, that's very common.

00:02:30 Jeromy Johnson: And there's enough people out there that are looking for coaches to help them walk that path.

00:02:34 Michael Camp: Yeah. There are I mean, there's a lot of people who are what we call deconstructing their faith. It's usually fundamentalism or evangelicalism. It's a mixed bag for an experience. A lot of it is difficult to do and you end up losing your community. And maybe some people in your church might question you because you're asking too many questions and you're not accepting the answers that they give. And you're maybe doing some historical research and some biblical studies to get more into the meaning of the scriptures and maybe how the Bible was compiled. And you're discovering things that are counter to, you know, your church's statement of faith or the what typical evangelicals believe. So that part is a very disconcerting experience. Although on the other side, it can be very freeing because now you're realizing, oh, maybe this scripture is mistranslated, or maybe people have misunderstood what Jesus meant in this passage, or the history of the church shows that predominantly the early church didn't believe in the doctrine of hell. That's a that was a newer concept that was a minority in the early church. And then you go on and experience what you might call healing and recovery because you're realizing there's another way of looking at things that have been toxic to you, or people have spiritually abused you because they are so religiously certain about things, they're correcting you or they're trying to control you. And now you realize there's another way of looking at all these things.

00:04:03 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. That's fascinating. Are you seeing the numbers grow that are deconstructing, would you say, from five, ten years ago?

00:04:11 Michael Camp: I would say yes. Um, I don't have hard data on it, but I have read that five or six percent of of Americans are evangelicals, and I think that's a lot higher than if you went back fifteen or twenty years. You wouldn't see it that high. You'll see a lot of people in the deconstruction space that perhaps it was harder to find those people twenty, fifteen years ago, and now it's easy to find those people.

00:04:35 Jeromy Johnson: I mean, we found each other. Yep. And it wasn't that hard, right? In your book and it's coming out November eighteenth. Right.

00:04:43 Michael Camp: That's correct.

00:04:44 Jeromy Johnson: And this is your fourth book and it's called Faith funk. And in there you describe deconstruction as two things. And I think you were hinting at this. It was both an unraveling and a recovery. So for people who feel like they've lost their faith or maybe their God during this process of deconstruction, how can they begin to see that loss itself is a part of healing and not a failure?

00:05:07 Michael Camp: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, first of all, deconstruction does not mean deconversion.

00:05:13 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, yeah.

00:05:14 Michael Camp: You're necessarily walking away from your faith or Christianity altogether. There are some people that do that. Yeah, I found that most of those people are in a minority. Most people still hold some kind of faith. Usually they still hold faith and maybe even say that they still follow Jesus. But they're looking at the Bible differently. They're looking at how to follow Jesus differently. They're looking at what God's character is like differently. Their faith is taking a new form or shape, and they're not relying on the church, let's say, or a religious movement to tell them what they're supposed to believe.

00:05:49 Jeromy Johnson: So they can start to have and develop their own faith and their own belief. Become more confident in that.

00:05:55 Michael Camp: Yeah. So in that sense, it's it's a very healthy thing. It can be a form of spiritual growth. Because when you do historical study on the Bible and say a less biased views of Jesus, you you'll find that actually Jesus was deconstructing the Torah. The prophets were deconstructing the sacrificial system and their writings. And notice that the Bible is actually critiquing itself sometimes.

00:06:17 Jeromy Johnson: And sometimes I found you might have a period where you feel like you've lost your faith, or like you're still struggling about who God is, and there is a sense of loss in this deconstruction space. And it might be a few months. It might be a few years where people just are in this limbo, like, am I still a Christian? Have you seen, like, there's a amount of rebuilding that takes place?

00:06:39 Michael Camp: I think that you've described it well. There's stages of deconstruction and there's a period of time where where you're going. Okay, I'm questioning all this stuff. I'm finding answers. But what I'm finding is not the way my church was or my evangelical movement was. Yeah. Where do I go? You know, some people might say, okay, I'm going to try the progressive church down the street, or I'm going to go to the Unitarian Universalist Church or something like that. Yeah, a lot of people, they get burned out on church, and so they need something else. They they search for a another type of community, or they find another way of following Jesus outside the church.

00:07:20 Jeromy Johnson: Can you give an overview of maybe a high level of your spiritual journey?

00:07:25 Michael Camp: Yeah, sure. I was in the evangelical movement for twenty five plus years. I started when I was probably fourteen years old. Um, my mom, uh, switched from our more liberal Methodist church to a evangelical Baptist church down the street. Okay. And, uh, started going to youth group. Went to this big, huge Jesus festival in the early seventies. I'm going to date myself. I was only fifteen years old, and we went to see all these cool, long haired Jesus musicians. I don't know if, you know, Chuck Girard was probably their love song. Andre Crouch and the disciples, uh, Johnny Cash and then Billy Graham.

00:08:05 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, Johnny Cash was there because he would never, like, say that he was a Christian musician. But that's cool that he was he was there as well.

00:08:12 Michael Camp: Kris Kristofferson was there, too. So they were trying to get all these big names to attract people. Sure. Oh, if Johnny Cash is there or Kris Kristofferson is there, then that must be cool, right?

00:08:21 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Like, hey, Taylor Swift's going to be at this great revival.

00:08:25 Michael Camp: Yeah. Right.

00:08:25 Jeromy Johnson: Right.

00:08:26 Michael Camp: So I got I got involved with that. That was my first encounter with the Bible Belt. It was just amazing to me that their worldview was so totally different. It's a very strong us versus them mentality. We're saved and other people are lost. And Jesus is coming back soon, perhaps right after breakfast. You're never gonna find peace in your life, Michael, unless you accept Jesus. You know, the reason why you feel ungrounded and confused about life is because you're not in Christ.

00:08:55 Jeromy Johnson: It has nothing to do with the fact that you're fourteen years old. I know.

00:08:59 Michael Camp: I'm fifteen years old, and everyone goes through those feelings when they're a teenager. Yeah, finally he sucked me in and I. But. And so in college, I did conclude. Oh, it must be because I need Jesus. So I did ended up going to a college Christian fellowship called InterVarsity. And, uh, getting into the evangelical movement, there's two sides to it. I think they're one side of it is good. One side of it connects, you know, people saying you can connect with God, and there's nothing wrong with that concept. So I think I had some positive experiences connecting to God and the Spirit of Jesus, the love of God, let's say. But then on the other side, there was a lot of strange teachings and a lot of even controlling types of doctrines and practices where you realize, wait a minute, I have to believe a certain way. And there really isn't much freedom. I have to follow a religious code of conduct. And that can be very strict and legalistic. I got into, um, churches and, uh, college fellowships, and I ended up becoming a missionary. I bought into the teaching that you had to not just try to convert people that you encounter in your neighborhood or in your city. You need to go into all the world and convert people. So I became a missionary. I picked the farthest place away from my home when the hardest religion in the world to try to convert people Islam and became a missionary to Muslims in Africa. So I did that for seven years. And then. Then I finally had a faith crisis and started to deconstruct. That's kind of the short version.

00:10:36 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. Well, thank you for catching us up to speed with your spiritual journey. You would consider yourself a universalist?

00:10:42 Michael Camp: Yes. Correct. Yeah.

00:10:43 Jeromy Johnson: When did you first start considering that universalism? It can be a pretty far journey from evangelicalism to universalism. Right, right. When did you first start considering that universalism made sense to you and that it could be actual, a viable expression of Christianity?

00:10:59 Michael Camp: Believe it or not, the first time I started doubting the doctrine of hell was within a couple of years of becoming an evangelical.

00:11:06 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. So it didn't take very long.

00:11:08 Michael Camp: But I didn't become a universalist right away. Okay, yeah, that took a couple of decades. So but what happens is when, you know, I became a missionary in nineteen. Let's see, it was in the early eighties and I was only I had been a believer for three years, and then I was on the mission field. So there I am, working among Muslims, uh, in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia and Kenya, working with a community of people, working on some aid projects, community development projects, Getting to know people in another culture. Learning their language and really growing to love them.

00:11:46 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:11:46 Michael Camp: Yeah, right. And we became really good friends. I had so many good. And they had oh, I love them. They had they had a great sense of humor. They were very hospitable. They had families that they were dedicated to. And of course they had their religion. But, you know, just like any other religion, you have your middle of the road people, your normal people, and you have people who don't, who ignore the religion, people who are kind of in the middle and then and then the extremists. Right? Yeah. So most people were normal, right? But there were things that were ingrained into their culture and so forth that they just grew up with. It was at that time that I realized, wait a minute, if the love of God is true, which I've thought I had experienced and I think I did experience. Yeah, then how can these people be going on their way to hell? Or how can their ancestral line already be in hell because they didn't Then convert to Christianity, right? Yeah. I asked these types of questions and came to the conclusion that, no, that's not God's love, and there must be a different way of looking at it. And so I became what I would call an exclusivist, where I thought that God would save people outside of Christendom, in some cases where people were just living the best life they could with the knowledge that they had, that God was compassionate and forgiving in that way.

00:13:06 Jeromy Johnson: That's fascinating.

00:13:07 Michael Camp: But I knew that my church would not accept that. I knew that would be very controversial. So I didn't share it. And then years later, believe it or not, I found out that Billy Graham actually believed something very similar.

00:13:20 Jeromy Johnson: Interesting.

00:13:21 Michael Camp: He didn't usually say it publicly, but you can find some public interviews and statements where he did say it. He would never you would never find it in his books because his editors would have edited it out. But anyways, that was the first red flag on the doctrine of hell.

00:13:37 Jeromy Johnson: And so you were knee deep in missionary work. Yeah. Sharing the gospel to people who needed it. Not yourself. Believing fully in hell. And then through that experience, they didn't convert you, but just that experience of a broader humanity where you're looking at these people going, these are good, solid people, right? That really love God, right? Surely they're not gonna be sent to hell.

00:13:59 Michael Camp: Yeah, right. Exactly. So obviously, I wasn't preaching hellfire and brimstone because of that. Later on, I became a missionary to another country, the church that was sending me out said, Michael, you have to sign our statement of faith, and we have to interview you to make sure that you're kosher before we send you out and give you our money. And they had to ordain me. So they had I had to jump through the right hoops. I was honest with them. I said, you know, I've changed my view about the afterlife. I'm more inclusive. I still believed in hell, but I didn't believe that it was so easy to go to hell. Yeah, yeah. So they were like first shocked, but then they said, okay, uh, we'll still ordain you, but you have to promise that you won't teach this belief that you have.

00:14:45 Jeromy Johnson: So keep it to yourself.

00:14:46 Michael Camp: Keep it to yourself. Don't teach it. And so I acquiesced, and I later on regretted it. You know, you're invested. You know you don't. If you walk away. I got to start all over, find another church, you know.

00:14:59 Jeromy Johnson: Find another job.

00:15:01 Michael Camp: Yeah. You're right, another job. Right. Exactly. And then later on, I would say that when I started having my faith crisis and deconstructing in earnest, then I began to read about the history of where the doctrine of hell came from, what the early church taught about the afterlife, and how God restores people. That was fairly common. It was actually very common in the early church. And then you start to realize that there's some mistranslations of the word hell and eternal punishment in the New Testament, and you begin to see, wait a minute, there is another way to look at this. And I think we missed it.

00:15:37 Jeromy Johnson: And it's biblical. Like there's another biblical way. Yes, if that's important. Like, and I know that's important for especially a lot of people that are transitioning right from maybe an evangelical faith to a more universal faith. Is is there still biblical precedence for that?

00:15:52 Michael Camp: Oh, absolutely. And but but more importantly, maybe you find out that believing in the doctrine of hell is unbiblical. Or it's at the very least completely disputed by the Bible. It's it's a it's an amazing study.

00:16:07 Jeromy Johnson: But it takes courage. You know, deconstruction can be lonely. You can lose friends and family and community. And then, as you were pointing out earlier, sometimes it's hard to find a new community that shares that. So there could be a period of going solo in a sense.

00:16:20 Michael Camp: Yeah. There is. You feel like you're alone until you find other people who are deconstructing, going through something similar. You feel very alone. Yeah, especially if you're married and you're your spouse isn't going through the same thing or your friends aren't. Yeah.

00:16:34 Jeromy Johnson: And then you have kids and trying to align. How are they going to church? Are they not going to church? What does that look like?

00:16:39 Michael Camp: Mhm. Yep.

00:16:40 Jeromy Johnson: Your book Faith funk. Can we chat about that for a little bit.

00:16:44 Michael Camp: Oh yeah.

00:16:44 Jeromy Johnson: Sure. Give me an elevator pitch for this book. I don't know anything about it. I just pretend I don't know anything about it. Okay. Tell me about this book. What do I need to know? What's the elevator pitch?

00:16:54 Michael Camp: The subtitle is How to Break Free from Toxic Religion and Reboot A Healthy Spirituality. The book traces a couple things. One thing is my experience in deconstructing some of the things I just shared with you are in the book. Okay, so you're you're gonna see how I started to deconstruct, started to have questions and went into a clinical depression. And that's the faith funk part. And that's very common to have anxiety and depression because of this deconstruction and questioning of your faith. So the book has a personal story, and not only my story, but stories of some of my clients, too. Some of the, let's say, spiritual abuse, that people experience toxic religion. Some of the doctrines, including the doctrine of hell that can cause anxiety, and explaining what those things are and then why they're harmful. And then the book pivots in almost every chapter to a place of, if you're experiencing this kind of anxiety or depression or spiritual abuse, how do you resolve it? Being trained as a non-religious spiritual coach, I have a lot of tools that I use to help people to heal, to come to terms with their experience and how to rebuild a new spiritual life. Um, whether that's still calling themselves a Christian or a follower of Jesus or just saying, you know what, I don't. I'm not into labels right now. I still believe, but I'm not using labels anymore. Whatever the case may be, it tailors to a broad spectrum of people, but it's got a lot of tools to help people navigate a rebuilding of a faith or a new philosophy of life. My book really does focus on what I call Jesus's love ethic, how that is a good place to start when you're wondering what matters most in life, and start focusing more on loving yourself, loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, rather than all this religious doctrines that people tell you that you have to believe.

00:18:55 Jeromy Johnson: Sounds a lot like Jesus's teaching.

00:18:57 Michael Camp: Yeah, it.

00:18:57 Jeromy Johnson: Kind.

00:18:58 Michael Camp: Of does, right?

00:18:59 Jeromy Johnson: Go figure.

00:19:00 Michael Camp: It kind of does. That's the thing. Yeah. We're we're accused of, uh, the converting people, and they don't believe. They don't believe in the authority of the Bible anymore. They're going to deceive you. They're dangerous. You know all these terms that people use. For example, someone took my deconstruction workshop, and they. I asked them to write a review, and they said, oh, this is great. I went through all this and I feel closer to Jesus than ever.

00:19:29 Jeromy Johnson: Go figure. Go figure. Fear can be a very powerful thing. And you write about unlearning fear, right? And I think sometimes the bigger fear is just getting it wrong. Like a lot of people, if they know you're deconstructing, they don't want to talk to you because you might influence them and their belief might be wrong. And they have a fear of having the wrong belief. Because if they have the wrong belief, then maybe their salvation is at risk. And so there is this huge fear of getting it wrong. So for those raised on certainty and punishment, what are some of the first steps towards trusting love again without falling back into those old patterns of control?

00:20:06 Michael Camp: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, a couple of things have to happen. You have to identify what is the source of that. Where do people get that kind of view, where they have to be certain and they're afraid of questions and they're afraid of what did you say? Not, you know, getting it right. Yeah.

00:20:22 Jeromy Johnson: Fear of getting it wrong.

00:20:23 Michael Camp: Getting it wrong. And this person's going to influence me. I mean, I think it goes back to, let's say a couple of things. One is, um, how do you view the Bible if the Bible is a black and white kind of issue. It's either all true, you gotta believe everything, or it's not reliable at all. Yeah. And so I think that people have a fear. If I start questioning the Bible too much, then there's something wrong with me. Helping people to see. No, wait a minute. Actually, Jesus questioned the Bible. He did?

00:20:52 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:20:53 Michael Camp: You've heard it say eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But I tell you, you know, and he was deconstructing parts of the Torah. And so this deconstruction stuff or questioning is part of the biblical record. So that's one thing that you can help people with. And then another thing would be to realize that love matters most. Why are you hung up on this fear? I mean, even the Bible says love. Perfect love casts out fear, right? So yeah. Why are you so hung up on frightened of not getting it exactly right? Is that really the god you want to believe in, or are you. You do believe in. And does that sound like the God of Jesus? So it's getting them to help them to think for themselves about these things and come up with a new way of looking at it.

00:21:39 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, and maybe most importantly, or equally as important is it aligns with their soul. It aligns with what they've been feeling, hasn't felt right. Like when you were a missionary, you're like, gosh, I just this just doesn't feel right. And it gives you that permission to trust your gut a little bit more. Trust the spirit that you've been given and have the freedom to create your own faith towards love, towards Jesus.

00:22:04 Michael Camp: That's a good point. And another doctrine that's really necessary to address is the original sin depravity doctrine.

00:22:11 Jeromy Johnson: Oh boy. Yeah, that's a whole starting point.

00:22:14 Michael Camp: That's the one that makes you not trust yourself because it says, you know, yeah, you know, you're a depraved person. You'll never follow God's will unless you get converted and stay converted and stay in the word and believe the right things so you don't trust yourself. Yeah. Taught in the church not to trust yourself. It says lean not unto your own understanding and something like that. You know, you really have to unpack that. And one of the things I discovered was, if you look at the eastern streams of Christianity, Eastern Orthodox and other eastern streams, they actually don't believe in original depravity. They have a whole totally new way of looking at it. I mean, you know, they say, yeah, the sin, of course. Right? All of us have the capacity to sin, and we have to address that. But it's not original depravity. It's we still have the image of God. Yeah, we still have this beautiful part of us that's like God. And that's the way we were born. We were born like that. We didn't have this, like, interesting. You know, you're not born just completely a depraved, wicked human being as a baby.

00:23:16 Jeromy Johnson: Right?

00:23:17 Michael Camp: You were born a precious child of God. Yeah. And now you've gotta mature. Right? Yeah. You gotta mature. And you gotta make sure that you stay on a love path in your life. You know, so they have a totally different way of of looking at it. And so when you understand that, you realize, oh, okay. That's cool. Maybe I can trust myself.

00:23:35 Jeromy Johnson: When you say total depravity. For those who may not know exactly what that term is, we're really just talking about this idea that from the original sin of Adam and Eve, all of humanity from that moment on was cursed and had a one hundred percent sin nature. So if you are literally born an infant, you are already a sinful creature and you are separated from God. And what I always found fascinating with that is that Adam sin always seemed to be more powerful than Jesus's work on the cross. All were dead through Adam, yet all were made alive in Christ. Every human that sin applies. But when people ask the notion, Does Jesus's work on the cross apply to every human?

00:24:17 Michael Camp: No, no. Right. Exactly.

00:24:18 Jeromy Johnson: No.

00:24:18 Michael Camp: Yeah. I can't do.

00:24:19 Jeromy Johnson: That. No, I can't do that.

00:24:20 Michael Camp: Right. No. That's true. I mean, what kind of love is that? And so you're exposing these twisted, toxic theologies, and, uh, sometimes you're uncovering more original Christian ways of looking at these things. There are parts of the Bible, for example, that either the prophets critiqued or Jesus critiqued that probably aren't from God. The story of Joe. Excuse me, Joshua and the Canaanite conquest. Did God really order Joshua and the armies of Israel to leave? No survivors like the Bible says and kill, um, non-combatants, women, children, the unborn? Is that really the the the heart of God? If the Bible is completely univocal, how does that align with what Jesus taught of loving your enemies? So there's all these these things that you need to uncover, and uncovering them helps you to get a new paradigm and maybe take some blinders off and see things differently.

00:25:20 Jeromy Johnson: And as you do that, like you said, there is some possible depression that can happen. This entire foundation of evangelicalism has been our foundation. It's been our God lenses. It's been our worldview of how things work, and when that starts crumbling and falling apart, that's a huge part of a person's identity. It is as they're going through that. And so it can be nerve wracking. But I found that, oh, wow, that was just a very thin foundation. It wasn't the foundation, right. It was just a foundation that happened to be mine. But it wasn't God's.

00:25:50 Michael Camp: Yeah. People grow up in the evangelical movement as kids, right? And so they don't really choose it themselves. And then maybe later on they, you know, go to college and they might eventually reject it. A lot of times they just it's all they know. And then and then other people join the church in their formative years. It's very attractive to join what looks like a loving community in a church. It claims it has all the answers to life's mysteries. And you're a young teen or twenty something who's floundering in life and looking for answers. That can be very attractive to see that. Oh well, this is either the identity that I've known my whole life, or this is the identity that look like saved me, that got me out of that personal angst that I had.

00:26:32 Jeromy Johnson: As a fourteen year old, that.

00:26:33 Michael Camp: As a fourteen or fifteen year old or whatever age. I mean, you.

00:26:37 Jeromy Johnson: Know.

00:26:38 Michael Camp: Most people join in their formative years or they grew up in the church. Occasionally someone will join in midlife, but it doesn't happen very often.

00:26:46 Jeromy Johnson: I mean, that's what your mom did, right? She went from a methodist church to an evangelical.

00:26:50 Michael Camp: I would say that she was always kind of had a fundamentalist heart, because she was always complaining that all these churches up north are too liberal, you know.

00:26:59 Jeromy Johnson: So, yeah.

00:27:00 Michael Camp: See, so I think she always had it in her and then she finally got back to her roots, I guess, when she went to the Baptist church. Right.

00:27:07 Jeromy Johnson: There you go.

00:27:08 Michael Camp: Right.

00:27:08 Jeromy Johnson: And, you know, for for some people, it's a it's a good fit. But for those that that it's not that. Well, now they have a book to help navigate them through that.

00:27:16 Michael Camp: Yeah I hope so.

00:27:17 Jeromy Johnson: In your, in your experience and you've had you've had a lot of it. Like you've, you've seen a lot of things in the church. What. And I'm going to let you define church. What is the church gotten right with Grace specifically.

00:27:30 Michael Camp: Yeah, it depends on you to find church. If I define it the way evangelical defines it, it's it's not that evangelicalism doesn't have anything good in it, it's just that they're they're not open to other ways of looking at things. They're very narrow minded and narrow in their view of of certain ways of looking at God, the Bible, salvation, afterlife and so forth. Yeah. But as far as what they got, good. When I was in the church, I was very enamored with the concept of unconditional love, agape love. That was in the New Testament. You know, most churches would teach that, but you didn't. It was like a sleight of hand. They would teach you that God has unconditional love. And then at the same time, or at the end of the sermon, they would say, and if you don't accept Christ, you're consigned to eternal separation or eternal conscious torment. And because God is so holy, he can't be in the presence of sin or whatever, however it's couched. Yeah. And you're like, wait a minute. I thought this God loved unconditionally, and now you're telling me he can't be in the presence of my sin, so he has to consign me to hell?

00:28:38 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And a lot of times they wouldn't. Uh, I mean, some would verbally say that, but some wouldn't ever verbally say that necessarily, but in their doctrinal statement on their website. Right. It would be listed as this is the doctrine of hell. We believe so. Yeah.

00:28:52 Michael Camp: What I call cognitive dissonance, where you've got two things that just are incompatible. And sometimes, like you said, they're not said out loud. But when you look at them side by side, you go, that's that's not incompatible. What do I do with it? Yeah. And so they usually have have an answer for you. But those answers, if you're really serious about making sense out of your faith, those answers don't make sense. But I think unconditional love was something that the church got right. But they just they weren't consistent in how they and how they practiced it. Not all their doctrines lined up with it.

00:29:28 Jeromy Johnson: But they would say like, But God is unconditional when that he will always love you and he wants you to choose him. And that's up to you. And so then if you choose not to choose him, then you're rejecting that unconditional love. So that so that's on you.

00:29:42 Michael Camp: But then, then they, um, would say that once you die, it's too late.

00:29:46 Jeromy Johnson: Correct.

00:29:47 Michael Camp: So then you ask, well, if God is really loves me, why would he close the door to repentance and forgiveness and not leave the light on at home? Anytime you're ready to return to me, I'm here for you, I love you. That's not the way God is in the afterlife. That's what they teach.

00:30:05 Jeromy Johnson: Especially a God who is beyond time. And those are the kind of questions that get you to start deconstructing, because there's pre deconstruction. But I don't think anyone knows that they're ever like going to be entering a stage of deconstruction. It just kind of happens. It just starts happening. And then you're in that stage of deconstruction where you're actively well. And maybe we're never done fully deconstructing. Right. But I mean, maybe there's a very focused season of deconstruction, and then there's post deconstruction, which is where you really like to spend a lot of time on your book. Where do we go from here? How do we how do we navigate this? If the storms are really wild, how how are we going to get out of this into some smoother waters to where you can start trusting your face? Start trusting your your belief?

00:30:49 Michael Camp: Yeah. That's true. And then, you know, like I had said before, there's some things that you can deal with as far as theology goes to get started in that. But then once you get started, I'm burned out on church. Sure. Should I just, you know, I don't want to go to a church. Well, what are you going to do? You know, what can you do to replace that? There's other alternative communities. There's all kinds of things that people can do. You know, you don't have to go to a traditional church in order to have connection to God, right?

00:31:17 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Go hiking.

00:31:18 Michael Camp: You can go hiking. You can rediscover nature. Um, I started a pub theology group. We used to hang out in the pub and drink beer and talk theology.

00:31:26 Jeromy Johnson: Sinner.

00:31:27 Michael Camp: Yeah.

00:31:28 Jeromy Johnson: You sinner! I can't believe you would drag all those people into that heathen space of a pub. Right.

00:31:35 Michael Camp: And I joined a service organization called rotary, where you just focus on service in your community and in, in, in the world. You're not bogged down by religion, right? Uh, there are things that you can do. And of course, getting together with other people who are deconstructing. And then there's also practices that you can do. You know, a lot of times people going, you know, I can't even pray anymore. I can't even hear a worship song without getting frustrated. And that's.

00:32:01 Jeromy Johnson: Okay. Yeah. And that's okay.

00:32:03 Michael Camp: Right. And that's okay. We just find other things that you can do to connect with God's world. So like one of the things is gratefulness meditation that I help people get into, which is just a very simple practice of really being proactive and looking out in your life and what you're grateful for and focusing on that. And a lot of times that can help depression lift. And then there's also compassion meditation, actively imagining yourself, having empathy for people and putting yourself in their shoes, and also doing something called active listening, where you're you're listening to someone and you're really engaged with them and not always trying to figure out what I'm going to say after they finish talking. So you find out that these kinds of things can really generate love in your life for people, and that becomes very meaningful.

00:32:56 Jeromy Johnson: God, do we need that more now than ever, right? Michael, how has how has God been showing up for you lately in your life?

00:33:03 Michael Camp: I think one of the things that in evangelical circles or charismatic circles, especially, you know, when you say God shows up.

00:33:12 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:33:13 Michael Camp: You what they mean is, you know, okay, I had a specific prayer. God answered.

00:33:18 Jeromy Johnson: Yes.

00:33:18 Michael Camp: Um, I had, uh, I felt the Spirit of God. I started speaking in tongues. I, uh, I prophesied something or, you know, uh, had a dream, and God was speaking to me in this dream. Well, you know, I don't think I don't think of God showing up in my life in those ways. I think of God showing up in my life when you know. You know what I just practiced gratefulness and compassion and the art of listening. And I'm I'm more in love with my friends or people that I meet. Every person is a precious child of God, absolutely precious person. My relationships are deeper. They're not superficial or superficial, and I don't have an agenda. Yeah, anymore. You know, always trying to convert someone. You're just trying to love them and just be kind to people, right? And when you do that, you'll see a lot of things come into your life that I think are divine, that are from God, but they're not really the traditional way of looking at it. Yeah, yeah.

00:34:20 Jeromy Johnson: Is there anything else you want to leave us with? Kind of parting words.

00:34:24 Michael Camp: The main thing is really, um, what I really am passionate about is helping people rebuild something that's very, uh, meaningful to them. Helping people solve puzzles about why they feel the way they do. Like someone just read my book and they're an early, uh, reader of the book, and they said, oh, you know, I said, what did you get out of it? And they said, I've been depressed off and on for years. And your book helped me figure out why I was depressed. And now I can start working on it, you know?

00:34:54 Jeromy Johnson: That's awesome.

00:34:54 Michael Camp: Right. So, I mean, you know, I'm not a therapist, but spiritual coach can help people. There are some tools to help people to get through depression and anxiety and other things, and to sort of see people heal from these things and to see life in a different way. It's very rewarding for me. And so I think if this book can help a lot of people in this way, I'm really going to be happy about it.

00:35:17 Jeromy Johnson: Good, good. And where can they get it? I imagine Amazon, other places that sell books or is there a specific.

00:35:23 Michael Camp: Unfortunately, it's only going to be on Amazon and then I'll sell copies of it wherever I have an event or, uh, on my website. Okay. But but Amazon look for it on Amazon November eighteenth.

00:35:34 Jeromy Johnson: All right. So you heard him. If you guys are deconstructing in that process or maybe post deconstruction and just wanting to figure out more, Michael's book, Faith funk, is available November eighteenth on Amazon. Or you can just call up Michael and say, hey, I won a, uh, I won a non-religious spiritual coach. Can you help me out? But it sounds like a lot of this stuff is in the book. So if they can't afford your there you go, one million dollar an hour price, then they can, uh, they can just.

00:36:02 Michael Camp: No, no.

00:36:02 Jeromy Johnson: It's not that.

00:36:05 Michael Camp: So. Okay, let me get I have a shameless plug. Right. Can I have a shameless plug?

00:36:09 Jeromy Johnson: Plug away.

00:36:09 Michael Camp: Okay. Go to Faith transitions and you'll find out more about my practice and how to get help. Uh, you can buy the book on, on Amazon and then Faith transitions dot com, my website. It's got all the information you need about what kind of things are people struggling with that you might be struggling with, that maybe someone like myself can help you to process those things.

00:36:32 Jeromy Johnson: Awesome, Michael, thank you for sharing your heart, your wisdom, and your experience with us. We are deeply appreciative and thank you.

00:36:40 Michael Camp: All right. Thanks for having me on, Jeremy. It's great.

00:36:42 Jeromy Johnson: Absolutely. When fear dies, what's left isn't emptiness. It's space. Space for curiosity. For compassion. For something softer and truer than the god of rules we were handed. As Michael reminded us, it takes courage to grieve what we once called certain, and even more courage to build something beautiful in its place. You don't have to rush it. You don't have to fix it. Grace isn't waiting at the finish line. It's been walking with you the whole time. Thanks for showing up, for listening, and for being a part of this important conversation that keeps pulling us towards love. Until next time, remember to walk in grace. And if you can, share that grace.