In this episode, Scott, a Japanese American, reflects on his journey of navigating faith, race, and identity within evangelical Christianity. His parents adopted the church as a path to assimilation after the trauma of their own internment during World War II, a legacy that shaped his childhood in predominantly white spaces where he often felt alienated. While evangelicalism offered belonging, it also demanded conformity, leading Scott to eventually question its contradictions and begin the hard work of deconstruction.

He shares the emotional labor of disentangling belief from dogma, and how cultural trauma, racial identity, and political realities like Christian nationalism complicate that process. Scott speaks candidly about the loneliness and struggle of leaving faith, but also about the healing found in community and the freedom of embracing uncertainty. His reflections point toward a spirituality grounded not in rigid certainties but in authenticity, compassion, and the courage to hold space for mystery.

Who Is Scott?

Scott is a 4th generation Japanese American author, musician, and podcaster. Creator/host of Chapel Probation and co-host of The Horny Chapel, Asians in Baseball, and Let's Talk About Text with Blake Chastain. Author of Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University. Composer and editor at Axis Mundi Media with Brad Onishi.

Connect With Us

• Scott's Website - http://rscottokamoto.com
• Connect via Facebook or Instagram

• You can find out more about Sam on her website – www.anchoredcounsellingservices.com.au
• To connect with Sam on Instagram – @anchoredcounsellingservices
• Want to contact with Sam about the podcast or therapy? Use this contact form.
• Also check out The Religious Trauma Collective

FOREIGN.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagara land and people.

I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

I also want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which you, our listeners, are joining us from today.

I recognize the deep connection that first nations people have to this land, their enduring culture, and their commitment to the preservation and care for their country.

This land was never ceded, and it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Hey there, and welcome to beyond the Surface, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who have survived religious trauma, left high control occult communities, and are deconstructing their faith.

FOREIGN I'm your host, Sam, and each week I'll talk with individuals who have taken the brave step to start shifting their beliefs that might have once controlled and defined their lives.

Join us as we dig into their experiences, the challenges they've faced, and the insights they've gained.

Whether you're on a similar journey or you're just curious about these powerful stories, you're in the right place.

This is beyond the surface.

Welcome, Scott.

Thanks for joining me.

Hey, it's great to be here.

It's amazing.

We're talking to each other from, like, opposite ends of the world in completely different time zones.

I know.

So great.

Thanks for having me, Sam.

It is the best part of doing a podcast.

I don't know about you, but it is just the funnest part of doing podcasting, which is just being able to chat to a bunch of, you know, people that you wouldn't usually be able to.

So I'm thankful for you joining me.

Yeah, I know.

I. I guess you're friends with Claire MacGyver.

Yes, Claire Heath McGyver and I. I've had her on my P podcast.

She's been on.

She's been on mine, and I've been on hers, and so very cool.

Yeah, Claire's amazing.

People will know her.

She's been on here as well.

We've had plenty of conversations.

She's cool chick.

She'll love that.

We're joining her.

So for a bit of context for listeners, where in the world are you?

At the moment, I'm in the Los Angeles area in a city called Pasadena.

Grew up here in Southern California and live here now.

Yeah, amazing.

And I feel like I've been doing what I call, like, the therapist version of a welfare check every time I record with a US Person.

How are you going over there?

Yeah, it's not good.

It's.

It's.

It's pretty damn awful.

Here in America, we elected a unintelligent, uncaring madman who's hell bent on destroying all that is good in this world.

And I hope people in Australia know that, you know, over half the people in America don't like Donald Trump or Maga and all the things, but, you know, gerrymandering being what it is, we elected him and we're paying the price.

And, you know, people like people on my end of the spectrum, political spectrum, tend to say things like, this is not our America.

No, this is our America.

We're.

We're owning it.

This is.

I mean, we don't want it to be.

And.

But it's been leading up to this for a long time.

And I've.

I'm no longer a Christian.

I grew up evangelical, and I saw the beginnings.

You know, it's a natural progression in my mind to where we are now because of evangelical Christianity.

Yeah.

Which is a nice segue into what is usually my first question, which is, where does your story start?

Because I think that that will give some perspective as to why you saw this coming and why many who understand Christian nationalism saw this coming a mile away.

Yeah, I. I'm Japanese American.

I'm a fourth generation.

My parents were born in the incarceration camps of World War II.

So my family has been through this, you know, being arrested with no due process and being sent to camps, to prison camps in all over the country, in deserts and mountains, far away from civilization.

So my family emerged from, you know, one of the, you know, greatest travesties of.

Of just unfair incarceration of people.

They were citizens.

You know, my grandparents were citizens.

And so for us, it sucks, but we're like, yeah, we've been through this.

And the Japanese American community is very supportive of immigrants because we know what it's like to bear the brunt of hatred of a nation.

So coming out of that, unfortunately, my parents who were born in those camps, you know, they were shook.

And I think they were raised to feel ashamed of their Japanese heritage, and so they didn't lean into it.

You know, I didn't grow up speaking Japanese.

It's a hard language.

I didn't grow up eating a lot of Japanese food or observing any Japanese traditions.

Yeah.

So my parents gravitated to Christianity because that was like a foothold into the greater American culture.

You know, what better way to prove you're American than to go to a Predominantly white Christian church.

And so when I was a young kid, they converted, some neighbors invited them to a Bible study, and suddenly we're going to church.

And it was fun.

You know, church when you're little is.

Is, you know, some songs and some nice stories about Jesus who loves you, and.

And it just kind of ramps up in intensity as we go.

Right.

And now you got to dedicate yourself to.

To Jesus who died for you.

You don't want to go to hell.

And so my bro, I have a younger brother, we were all in.

You know, we were good Christian kids, completely forsaking our identities as Japanese Americans and just trying to be good Americans.

And yeah, it made for.

It made for a confusing childhood.

I grew up in a mostly black neighborhood, and it.

That was cool, but I. I kind of thought I was black when I was like, you know, 2 to 5.

Moved to an all white neighborhood and they put me in special ed because I talked funny to the white people who had never ever spoken to a Japanese American before, so they assumed I was.

I don't know what it's called in Australia, but special ed, you know, for the special kids who with special educational needs.

Shocked the hell out of them when I tested into the gifted program.

Way to confuse them.

Yeah, no, it fucked up their heads.

They were just like, what, this little Japanese kid talking like a little black kid of the 70s now is smart.

Yeah.

But.

Yeah, so.

So going to church, going to a pretty predominantly white school from that point on really shaped my youth and early adulthood.

What flavor.

What flavor of Christianity were you in?

Oh, good question.

It was evangelical, technically.

The church I grew up in was called a congregational church.

It's a denomination.

Yeah.

Which all I know about it is it just.

You have to like, have 12 committees decide on any.

Anything the church is going to do.

Yeah, it was kind of a proto megachurch, you know, it was like the big church in the area.

My parents rose up in the ranks as, you know, the first Asian American people to be like deaconesses and deacons and things like that.

I was like, weirdly, I never felt like I completely belonged because there weren't very many Asian kids.

There were a couple, but I taught myself how to play guitar so I could be on the worship team because I knew that's the way in.

Yeah.

That's how girls.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I was.

I should have known better, but I was like, oh, shoot, I'm gonna go for that.

Because I started listening to music.

And luckily my parents didn't grow up Christian, so they didn't have restrictions on music, so I could listen to whatever I wanted.

And I listened to Van Halen, you know, I was like, oh, shit, I gotta play guitar.

Because that's, that's amazing.

Yeah.

And if I could, if I tell my parents I play playing the guitar to be on the worship team, they'll be cool.

And so not to mention that getting on the worship team is like signed, sealed, delivered of like, church life.

Like you're in if you're on the worship team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I joined like a garage, a Christian garage band.

And this is, at this point, we're in like the early mid-80s.

Yeah.

And Christian rock is, is sort of in its, its, I guess it was a heyday.

It was developing in the 70s.

But I, I did my best, you know, I, I, I knew instinctively I had to out white white people.

Yeah.

If I was going to be successful in it.

So I couldn't just be a good guitar player.

I had to be the best.

And, and I played baseball, which is a sport here in America, and that was, it was like America's pastime.

And I played basketball and, and I knew I just couldn't be good.

I had to be the best.

And I wasn't great at sports.

I was pretty good.

But I had kind of a musical ear, and so music came easily to me.

Yeah.

And that was my way in.

And it didn't exactly get me, you know, all the way to the top.

It gave me entrance, though, so I didn't have to feel bad about being there.

I didn't have to be ashamed of what I look like compared to everybody else.

Yeah.

Were you, were you aware of that overcompensating at the time, or is that something that you look back on and you can see that now?

Yeah, I think it was instinctive.

I don't think I sat there and thought, okay, here's the power dynamics and the hierarchy of things.

I just knew I'm not white.

Everyone knew I wasn't white.

And I think I was just trying to be white.

Yeah.

You know, to, to overcome my hair and face and eyes, you know?

Yeah.

And yeah, it makes me sad when I think about it now, but luckily I had friends who were white and black and Latino and Asian.

And we all saw each other and we knew we weren't going to be like the cool kids, but we had our own little, little subculture, you know, people, kids who were in orchestra, marching band.

We went on team or, you know, weren't the heroes of the school, but we had our own little subculture.

And I think that really helped.

Yeah, some of my best.

And I realized my, you know, my best friends were women, were girls at the time.

And, and that really helped as I sort of transitioned through college and did intervarsity Christian Fellowship and led worship there too, because I had to go and conquer.

And um, I told myself I was doing it all for the Lord.

You know, it's all this is all just for Jesus is it's not me, it's Jesus.

And in actuality it was me.

Yeah, Jesus didn't practice until his fingers bled and learned how to sing and play guitar and.

Yeah, I mean, I told people Jesus helped me, but I don't think Jesus helped me at all, honestly.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of like your own personal faith, who was God to you during that teenage years?

And at what point did it move from this is the faith of my family to this is my faith?

Yeah, well, from an early age, probably from like age 12 on, I was all in.

I was super Christian and it was mine.

You know, I felt like I understood it better than my parents who, who really only tackled Christianity on a very surface level.

And they're to this day, they're still alive in their 80s.

Yeah.

Have a very simple faith, you know, and I'm starting to read like CS Lewis when I'm younger and I'm reading like, you know, Bible concordances and dictionaries and studying and shit.

And, and I zipped past them like they, they, they had no idea, you know, about theology.

And you know, and I, I started being critical of our church growing up because the theology was very weak.

And, and in truth, all of evangelical theology is pretty weak.

You know, it doesn't, there's not a lot of basis to it.

You know, they make fun of Catholics, but Catholics can tell you exactly why they believe what they believe.

Yeah.

Chapter and verse in the Bible, you know, thousands of years of development of theology.

But evangelicals is just like, well, it's what the Holy Spirit tells me.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I'm like, what if the Holy Spirit's telling someone else something different?

What do you do?

Yeah.

So it weirdly, you know, this term deconstruction.

I think I started deconstructing early on as I was really seeking answers that, that I wasn't finding.

You know, I, I, the answers I always got was like, oh, you'll have to ask God when you get to heaven.

That old chestnut.

Yeah, that, that works on a 12 year old.

It doesn't work as well when you're like 17 or 18.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so it's either that or God works in mysterious ways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We can't understand the wisdom of the Lord, we mortal humans, you know?

Yeah.

And.

Yeah.

And so.

And then I think I always thought, well, the answers are there.

I mean, he wouldn't put us in this life on this planet and not have answers to these very basic questions.

So, yeah, I got through college and I.

And I became a writer, and eventually an English professor landed a job at an evangelical university.

I always put the quotes up.

There's no way in hell it should have been a university.

Yeah, it's like a Sunday school that gave out degrees.

Right.

I mean, they tried.

You know, they had.

I.

So I taught in the English department, but, you know, there's a science department that doesn't believe in science.

You know, it's.

The world is 6,000 years old.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

I don't know how you get accredited.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of other people talk about the same about some other pretty prominent Christian and Mormon universities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And my university called itself, you know, like, the most preeminent evangelical university.

It was called Azusa Pacific.

And, yeah, it wasn't because I went to a state school, one of the finest state schools in the country.

And going from that environment to a Christian educational environment is like, wait, how is this.

How is it possible that they give the same degrees?

Yeah, because there's no way kids going through four years of this university got anything close to what I got at just a state school, you know, and not just science, but, you know, everything.

English, history, whatever they're teaching is.

Is through the lens of Jesus and a very simple Bible view.

And so how did you land there?

Well, I was still kind of Christian, so I got married in the nineties.

Kind of Christian.

I love that.

I was hanging on, you know, in my mind, my.

My faith was evolving.

Right.

And it's amazing that, like, as a Christian, so I grew up very conservative.

Gay people are evil and they want to kill us.

And literally was.

And I meet gay people in college.

Oh, shit.

They're just people.

Yeah.

We're actually very boring people.

And I'm cool.

Yeah, well, you run the gamut.

Just like anyone, you know, these are dumb things that I had to, like, come to realize.

And now I have gay friends.

What do I do?

I love these people very much.

I'm still friends to some of them to this day.

And I had to change my theology because what I was taught was not matching with What I was seeing and experiencing.

Yeah.

In my mind, I'm like, well, I just understand God better.

God doesn't hate because, you know, two weeks prior, God hated gay people, and now God loves gay people.

And just like.

And you go through all these changes and you realize, is God me?

Yeah.

Because it's weird how he keeps changing as I keep changing, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, what did you think at the time about all of, like, I call them mental gymnastics with my clients.

Like, the mental gymnastics that we play to make.

Make sense.

That doesn't make sense.

Yeah, but if you had known that, like, that's all you had known up until that point, what did that feel like to go through all of those mental gymnastics?

It was.

It's tiring.

You know, I.

And I. I was trying to do the mental gymnastics.

I was trying to stick the landing after a triple axel, you know.

Theologically speaking.

Yeah.

I was like.

Because I'm still like, the answers are out there.

You know, I believe in this wholeheartedly, but the more I studied the Bible, the less it made sense to me, you know?

And so.

Yeah.

And then I think you asked earlier about, you know, my racial understanding.

God was white.

Yeah, God was.

God was never Asian or black or, you know, God was white.

I do this exercise when I.

When I do public speaking, you know.

So a quick story.

When I was leading worship in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, we had a pastor come speak to our chapter, and he was from this church called the Vineyard, which is very charismatic.

Now we have Vineyard churches in Australia.

Okay, so you got those.

Okay.

Yeah.

Lucky you.

I was raised believing that speaking in church was bullshit, but.

Okay, so we do the service and the guy speaks, and I don't even remember what he said, but afterward, we're cleaning up and milling around, he comes up to me and he's like, you have the gift of worship.

Because I saw an angel of worship on your head while you were singing.

Right.

And it kind of freaked me out because.

Yeah.

My first instinct is, that's not creepy at all.

Yeah.

Because it's a angel standing on my head.

Or is it, like, straddling my head or just sort of hovering?

Yeah, because they said, on your head.

And I was just like, how does that work?

But the thing now, years later, decades later, I was telling the story because it's a funny story, and I realized I was still picturing a white angel.

Oh, yeah.

I wasn't picturing an Asian.

You know, in my.

I think the assumption is there's no way an Asian angel would be the angel of worship.

You know, the Asian angel is the angel of accounting of physics.

The Asian angels are the worker bees of the angel world, I assume because the white angels are the cool ones, they get to be the angels of worship.

And, you know, and so I do this little exercise with people like, you all were picturing a white angel, weren't you?

You know, even though on my Asian ass head, yeah, it's still a white angel.

Yeah, it's.

And to this day, yeah, if I say angel white, you know, blonde, probably.

Yeah, I was about to say white, blonde, blue eyes.

Yes.

Yeah.

That bare skin stereotypical image that comes to mind in the same way that I think for a lot of people, the stereotypical image of God is like this old white man with a beard sometimes.

Like.

Yeah, you know.

Yeah, the beard's important.

Yes.

Yeah.

Makes it, makes him intelligent, obviously.

More gravitas.

Yeah.

So anyway, I, you know, so I'm at APU now and ISU Pacific.

Yeah.

Barely hanging on to my faith, you know, I just like.

But I figured if I'm going to a quote unquote preeminent Christian university, yeah.

I'll get the answers, you know, and, And I, I liked teaching there.

I related so hard to these kids who are 18 and trying so hard to figure out how to live their faith.

Because at this point I had lived in San Francisco and San Diego and those were very eye opening experiences.

And I was bringing this sort of real world perspective to my English classes.

And my students, by and large, we all got along great.

There was always like the 1 or 2% that thought I was just pure evil.

Because I would make them, I would make them think, you know, what's money?

Jesus says this about money.

You all rolled up in your Mercedes that your dad bought you.

You know, is, is this okay?

Can Christians, you know, and I never told them yes or no, but I say, you should be asking these questions, you know, what about gay kids?

We didn't have the trans conversation yet because at this point, this is like the late 90s.

That came later.

Yeah.

But I would ask, we would read a story out of the Norton anthology with gay characters and I would just ask, you know, because we're supposed to ask, we're supposed to, you know, apply Christianity.

I forget.

I think it's called faith integration.

If this is your neighbor, how are you treating him?

Yeah, they hated that question because, well, I guess we have to love them, but I don't want them around my kids.

Yeah.

Do you hear yourselves?

Do you know Any gay people.

Yeah.

Like they just.

In their minds, there's like.

I don't know what was in their minds.

Actually I do know what was in mind because it was in my mind when I.

The stock standard answer.

Right.

Yeah.

These fire breathing.

Yeah.

Sulfur smelling people that want to destroy humanity is how it was couched.

Fun.

Fun fact.

I grew up about seven houses down from James Dobson.

Oh, yeah.

Exactly.

My parents are.

Wants that to.

You don't want to rep that.

Like.

Oh gosh.

But I mean like in terms of like the kids not wanting you to ask the questions, my first instinct go, like, if you've been raised to always have the answer, why do you need to ask the questions?

Right?

Like that's why questions feel so uncomfortable because you've never had to ask them.

You've always just been given the answer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, they would say things like when.

And I got in trouble.

On average every semester at that school for 15 years.

The biggest, the most common complaint was I came to this school to not have professors like Professor Okamoto.

Oh my God.

And they would say things I'm sure, sure he'd be great at like U. UCLA or usc, but not here.

We don't want to talk about.

We don't want to think about these things.

We want our faith reflected back to us and affirmed.

We don't want.

In the same way that we give it out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm supposed to just nod and say yes, good Christian answer.

You know, when they say something racist or they say something homophobic, you know, And I'm like, well, hold on.

Because there's faith traditions that aren't necessarily homophobic or try not to be racist or patriarchal.

Yeah, but it was rough.

So by the.

There for 15 years?

Yeah.

Holy dooley.

That is a really long amount of time to stay in that environment.

And like, so I wrote a book about it to explain it.

But yeah.

So within five years, I. I'm pretty sure I don't remember the exact moment, but within five years I was like, I don't even know if I believe in God at this point.

My.

My students were like, why don't we ever pray in class?

You know, my.

My history teacher prays and my math teacher prays.

Well, why don't you?

And I realized I don't.

I don't see the point.

You know, like where an accredited college, you guys don't know what a noun is.

Like, we don't have time, you know, Pray before and after class, you know, but we got shit to do.

You know, you're, you're paying a lot of money to, to get this degree, and I'm your English professor and I don't want to spend 10 minutes going around sharing prayer requests and then spending time praying.

We have 55 minutes to teach you the English language and how to write it or how to read it and if it's a literature class.

And so, But I realized it was after the Bush, the second George Bush election.

I was like, I don't want to even be associated with Christianity.

It was like, yeah, it's unintelligent, it's uncaring, it's everything that I was, it's a, it's completely opposite of everything I was taught that Christianity was.

So if this is Christianity now, I want nothing to do with it.

And within several months of that, I was like, I, I, I don't like the Bible anymore and I don't think I believe in God.

And then they gave me a full time job.

Okay, well, we'll get to that.

But what was that moment like where you actually consciously realized, oh, I don't think I believe in God anymore?

It was kind of freeing, weirdly.

Yeah.

Because I had been, I had been doing the gymnast, the theological gymnastics.

Yeah.

At this point for 15 years, just trying to find the answers.

Trying this book will help me or that, you know, this, you know, preacher or this, you know, intellectual will, you know, will get, will satisfy the answers that I was looking for.

And none did.

I got, I got really good at like, hanging out with my friends in theology in the theology department and asking them questions and making them fight because none of them agreed on how to answer things like, you know, theodicy, you know, suffering and does God cause it?

You know, I started teaching right after the Columbine incident in Colorado.

The first big, you know, televised school shooting.

Yes.

And so I would ask my students, you know, if God is in complete control, as you keep saying, did he make that happen?

Is that part of his plan?

That is a much better question than the question I got asked, which was, if someone had a gun to your head, would you renounce Jesus?

Yeah.

And that story ended up being false.

That didn't even happen.

I know.

Apparently the girl's parents made it up.

It's like wild, because I already knew to answer that question is you say no, because God knows your heart and you got shit to do on this.

He put you here for a reason.

You want to stick around, who cares what they Think you believe in God?

No.

Yeah.

Okay, don't shoot me.

So I can go on and be a good.

I thought about this in high school.

I was like, when, when if someone's gonna threaten you, like, yeah, you lie because you gotta still witness your friends.

And if you're not there because you said yes to stupid question from someone you don't even care about.

But it's another one of those examples where you feel like you can't win because if you say yes, it's the wrong answer.

And if you say no, it's the wrong answer.

And so you are in that binded place.

Place where you can never win no matter what you say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's a, it's a terrible, you know, it's, you know, like those ethical, you know, quizzes people give.

They're so contrived and they're, they're not based in any reality.

You know, if some homicidal maniac is just killing people, there's not, it's not about the conversation.

Yeah.

It's not.

That's.

That, that determines whether someone lives or dies.

Yeah.

I don't think they actually want to know the answer.

It's like, oh, why do, do you want to.

Can I tell you about Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior and.

Yeah.

No, it's just great.

Bad, bad people.

So.

Yeah.

So how did you stay there for another decade now that especially now you've got this conscious thought.

I don't know that I believe in the Bible, I think, and I don't even know that I believe in God.

And yet another decade teaching at a Christian university.

Yeah, I, I made a promise to myself that if I stayed, I would never try to like, de.

Christianize anyone.

I knew how to help them be better Christians.

Yeah.

Be more caring, be more, more intellectual about, you know, logos, you know, I knew how to do this job and I felt like I could do it well.

Now the reason I stayed, because I turned down another job, which I regret to this day, it would have changed the course of my life significantly.

But I thought, I'm going to stay here because we just started an Asian club that had never happened before.

And these poor kids were just lost.

They were getting so much racism, so much demand for them to deny their identities, you know, and just, you know, be normal was what they're always told.

Don't, don't talk about being Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean.

And so I really had a heart for these kids.

And we were just starting to, like, the club was just starting to get Its footing.

Yeah.

And I felt like if I left, it would.

It was gonna just crumble.

We also, a bunch of kids had started a completely illegal underground LGBTQ club that.

And.

And asked me to be their advisor, even though it was not an official school organization.

Yeah.

And that was just starting to take off.

And I was like, I can stay here and help these kids foment many revolutions and have a real college experience.

And I'm still friends with those kids.

Kids, they're, like, pushing 40 now today.

You know, I just.

I still see them.

We're on social media, we're in activists and art spaces together, and.

And I don't regret staying for them.

It ended up costing me my job eventually working with.

With them, but I don't regret it.

I mean, ironically, at the point that you consciously are aware that you no longer believe in God or are a Christian, in that moment, you do actually a really, really Christian thing to do, which, like, even the language of, like, having a heart for them, like, you know, it's.

You know, that selfless nature that you get taught to put others before yourself is, you know, that's like an actual Christian example.

The irony.

The irony, yeah.

You know, and that part of Christianity I still admire.

I don't see it.

I don't see it a lot here in America.

You know, Christians these days are more likely to be, you know, foaming at the mouth for people to be put in cages and separated from their families and.

Yeah.

Or bombed in Gaza.

You know, like, they're cheering for this.

It's like Christianity.

There's still true believers who are out there, but, man, the.

The brand has really been taken over by very hateful, angry, and ignorant people.

And so, yeah, I don't miss that.

I don't.

One thing that really helped me in my disbelief, my apostasy, was when I moved back to Los Angeles, Los Angeles area, I started getting involved with an Asian American arts and activist space because I was really thirsty for that.

You know, I. I had dabbled in my identity in college and living in San Francisco, but I had never really been in a community that was predominantly Asian American.

And those people.

I swapped those people for my church friends gradually over time.

And so by the time I had realized I don't want to be a Christian anymore, I had a whole community of people of chosen family who.

Who were queer, who were immigrants and.

And who were white and black and, you know, Americans, very diverse people who figured it out, who.

Who knew how to be community value.

Things like art and music and political Activism to.

To support people who are being marginalized.

And so, you know, you talk to a lot of people who deconstruct, and it's a terrifying journey.

Right.

Because you realize one day, I don't want to do this, but all my friends and family are in this space.

And if I reject that, I'm casting myself out of my people, my comfort zone, my family.

For me, I had just slowly swapped those people out over, like, five or six years.

And so I just went straight into the arms of my people.

So I was seen as the guy on the inside who was teaching Christians to be better Christians, which I still think if Christians could just go back to following Jesus, the world would be a better place.

I don't believe in Jesus anymore.

But, you know, Christianity is not going to go away.

It's.

It just keeps changing.

Right.

It keeps.

Even the Christian I used to teach, Shakespeare, the Christianity of the Shakespeare.

Shakespearean era looked nothing like Christianity today.

Yeah.

The greatest sin of that era was usury, which is what we have built our faith on now that, you know, making money with money and charging interest is capitalism.

And that's.

That's like, the first tenet of Christianity these days, you know, which would have been a mortal sin back, you know, four or five hundred years ago.

It just keeps changing, and it's not going anywhere.

But Christianity does its best when it's really focusing on, I think, Jesus and the teachings, which are kind of Buddhist.

It's true, but.

Yeah, we don't want to tell them that.

No, no, good.

That's true.

I'll get pissed off by that.

Yeah, he's.

The Beatitudes totally cribs from, like, Buddhist teachings.

It's like.

Yeah, but.

Okay, no, fine.

You can have it.

Let's.

We're not gonna quibble over that.

Yeah.

I mean, what impact did.

No longer, you know, identifying with Christianity have on your relationships and your family?

And, like, you said that you were married at this point.

Like, was that difficult within your own home?

It wasn't.

My wife and I, when we were dating, we just made it a point to always figure things out together.

And so one of the first things we did as a couple, as a dating couple when we were, like, 19 years old, was to say, we love our gay friends.

What does the Bible actually say?

And we literally would get together and do, like, a word study.

Yeah.

On all the parts of the Bible that mention something about, you know, what, homosexuality.

And we realized most of them don't talk remotely about homosexuality.

No.

They were badly translated.

Right.

And the ones that do are very contextual.

You know, you can't.

If you're gonna.

If you're gonna, like, ditch all of Leviticus except for one.

That one thing is that.

Really.

Talk about cherry picking, right?

Yeah, we don't follow any of that shit, but we're gonna.

But that one we're gonna hang on to.

Yeah, that's.

That's the one that's.

That's still good.

Yeah.

And so I think because we started our relationship in a sort of subversive Christian manner to say we're not just gonna take what they tell us at face value.

We're going to, like, question was it was.

It was.

It was.

My wife, her name's Jerry.

She gave me the first Bart Ehrman book, which was like the last straw.

It was like, oh, shit, the Bible is even worse than I imagined, you know, as far as, like, historicity and accuracy, and it's how many contradictions there are.

And so.

But weirdly, we ended up in an Episcopalian church.

We call it the last stop of the journey of faith.

Yeah.

Because I liked the fact that I ended my church life sitting in pews next to, like, gay families and diverse people and, you know, people who were praying for President George Bush even though they didn't like him.

Yeah.

And it got to the point where, like, I don't know why I'm here.

Like, love.

These are nice people.

Yeah.

But there's.

There's a million other things I'd rather be doing with my Sunday.

And it was like, yeah, cool.

So I'm glad those.

It's the good Episcopalians, you know, the ones that.

That went with the, you know, ordaining gay people to be.

I think it's called priests.

See, we weren't there that long.

It was fun.

It was fun to do the.

What do you call it?

The.

The standing and sitting and kneeling and.

Oh, yes, I don't know the technical term anymore.

Yeah.

Because I grew up in, you know, the.

The Jesus is my brother, my bro who goes surfing and eats tacos and best friend.

Personal relationship, you know, and this was more like this awe and reverence and mystery of.

Of God.

And that was great.

It was.

It was a different experience.

And I was just like, yeah, and I don't need it anymore.

It is a really common bridge that a lot of people take, though, to move more into a progressive space.

And I think it is just, you know, it's from, like, from a therapy point of view.

My brain goes like, that's us trying to help our nervous System adjust from, you know, one space to another.

And, you know, not having that bridge is also, you know, deeply traumatizing to people to just be falling out of a space that was their absolute everything.

And so having that bridge is.

Is often a really beautiful soft landing out of the church for a lot of people.

Yeah.

And.

And a lot of my friends still are there.

You know, a lot of my friends from college and my.

In our life in our 20s still go to a church like that, you know, and great.

God bless them.

You know, it's like.

And we're, we're still friends, we see the world the same.

But it was important for them to hold on to the faith part, I think, because I never felt like I fully belonged in church because I didn't go to Asian churches.

I always went to like predominantly white churches.

And, and I think in doing so, I never felt like fully vested in it.

You know, I never felt like fully accepted.

And so for me to let that go is not as big a deal.

But for my white friends, I don't think they can imagine life without it, you know, without having to get up on Sunday and go and do the Bible study.

And even though a lot of them don't believe it.

Ritual.

Powerful.

Right.

And so for them it was so meaningful.

And it was to me too.

But I never, like, again, I never felt 100% accepted.

And so it wasn't as hard to let go.

Yeah.

What difference do you think it would have made had your parents landed you all in a predominantly Asian church when you were a child?

Yeah.

I co host a podcast called the Horny Chapel.

Yeah.

With my friend Prisca, who's Taiwanese American and her father is a pastor.

Still is.

And we ask ourselves this because I grew up in a predominantly white church.

She grew up in an all Asian church.

Yeah.

But we both exited around the same age.

She's like 13 or 14 years younger than I am.

But it was around the early 20s where we started to like.

In fact, she left.

She left the faith a lot earlier than I did, age wise.

And so for her, she said it was harder to leave, but it was also just really clear in her journey.

So.

Yeah.

I used to wonder if I had grown up in an all Asian church, if I'd still be there because I felt so connected to the culture.

But I think because I found an Asian American culture that was not religious, that gave me so much support and love.

Yeah.

And purpose.

That.

Yeah, I think, I think that helped because I stayed embarrassingly long.

You know, I.

We were Questioning everything in our 20s.

And I stayed in Christianity until I was like 34, you know, as some form of Christianity.

And you hinted at the fact that you had lost your job at the university.

And so how did that happen?

Yeah, all the gory details are in the book, but, yeah, I knew it was coming.

I.

The, The.

The.

The LGBT club started out as a secret underground thing because we all knew we could get kicked out if the school found out.

Yeah, they had already expelled students for not renouncing their gayness.

And the, the first couple generations, we would do these.

We would meet and we would.

And we would have support groups and we would watch movies like, for the Bible Tells Me.

So I don't know if you've ever seen that one.

Yeah, and it was great.

We were just helping kids not be depressed and helping kids who had been disowned have a sense of family.

All secret.

But once a year, we would put on a show on campus called Art Night, because we had.

It was like, I call it the ocean's 11 years.

It was like we had students who were in student council, who worked in facilities management, who worked in the cafeteria, and we could put.

We could.

So we all knew how to reserve a space on campus, reserve a pa, Reserve tables and chairs, and put on like a show where people are reading poetry and singing songs about queerness in the middle of campus.

But we just called it Art Night.

It was like an open secret.

Now a few years go by and the club is getting more popular underground.

My name is now, you know, you can't keep this a secret.

You know, my name is now associated with it in this school.

And my boss finds out.

My chair of my department, and, and he was supportive.

He's like, I know, you know, I, I know what you're doing, and I think it's great, but be careful because the board of trustees is horribly homophobic.

Yeah.

You know, the most.

The administration terribly homophobic.

So a few years go by and the new kids now, whole new generation.

Because, you know, college ministry is tough because every, every year you're losing your leaders and new people are coming through.

Oh, this, this next generation of kids were like, we need to have more faith that, that Jesus will protect us.

And we're going to come out to the school and be a real school sanctioned organization.

And I told them, absolutely not.

As your, as your advisor, I don't want you to get in trouble.

I like what we have here.

We get to choose who comes talking to us.

Who gets.

We get to choose what we Talk about we get to choose our programming.

If the school comes in, you're going to lose all that.

And they basically booted me out because I didn't have enough faith.

Oh, my goodness.

And they were right about that.

I was no longer a Christian, but technicality.

They saw me as old and out of touch.

So they start having meetings with the administration, and some people get kicked out and they get in trouble, and now we can't have events on campus anymore.

And it was all a big I told you so.

Yeah, we eventually made peace and I came back in.

But it was then that the school, the administration was like, yeah, we ought to talk, because you can't do this.

And I kept doing it.

You know, I was like, I knew when the kids asked me to be involved, I knew this was a turning point.

I didn't jump at the opportunity to work with these kids because I knew what was at stake.

And I liked my job.

I loved teaching English.

I loved helping kids learn how to write and form arguments and find themselves in literature.

And I thought, this is the best job ever.

And I love doing it at this point in the setting because I know how they think, and I can help them be better Christians.

And the.

The.

The comment I got the most on my student evaluations was like, this really helped my faith, taking this class.

And I. I was.

I felt great about that, you know, and.

But I knew that if I took this position with this.

This club, yeah, I knew what could happen.

And so I had to think about it for.

I think it was a couple days before I came back to them and said yes, because it's better to be underground and not, you know, I would give hints in my classes that I was, you know, quote, unquote, affirming.

I hate that word because it's just the.

It's the lowest bar.

Right?

But.

And so kids would come out to me, you know, and that's how I got asked.

You know, the word got out that, you know, Professor Okamoto doesn't hate gay kids, and most of the professors did.

And.

And so as I got more associated with the club, and at this point, the club is making, like, national headlines, you know, we're.

We're attracting, like, local Episcopalian priests are coming to talk to us.

Mel White of Soul Force came and talked to us.

But I teach argumentation, and the dean was not an intelligent man, and he was famous for, like, hauling in, like, he really hated single women.

He would bring them in and grill them to make sure they weren't lesbians.

And then they weren't, you know, trying to steal someone's husband.

You know, that kind of shit.

Like, he's that guy, right?

And he's.

He's reading me the riot act of.

He's got this stack of.

Of complaints.

Now, the funny.

Here's the funny thing.

Toward the end, I kind of knew the end was near.

And when the students would get their student evaluations to fill out about me, I would tell.

I would tell them, yeah, just write Okamoto's evil.

And.

And I wrote things on the board.

Even, like, okamoto thinks the school is totally wrong, and he's right and Okamoto is evil and Satan.

And these smart ass kids would write this on my student evaluations.

And most of them were writing really nice things, but a few of them are like, oh, hell yeah, that's hilarious.

And they would write this.

So I sit down at this meeting and the dean is holding the stack of papers like, I got you now.

And he starts reading off these things that I had told them to write.

And I started laughing and he.

He turned bright red.

There was like a vein, like, popping out of his forehead.

And he's like, do you think this is funny?

I was like, yeah.

Yeah, I do.

I didn't want to go into it, you know, because I was like, all right, if I'm going out it, I'm gonna tell him everything I've ever wanted to tell him to his face.

And I unleashed 15 years of you're on the wrong side of history.

You will not be remembered well for how you treat black students, how you treat Latino students, how you treat Asian students, how you treat women, and especially how you treat LGBTQ people.

You treat your professors badly.

This is a joke school.

You're.

You're not.

You know, I just.

I let him experience.

Yeah.

And he's just like, you know, no, I don't think anyone ever, like, stood up to him because he was.

He liked being that guy that scared people.

And he.

He sat there and he's like, well, in light of what you've said, I guess I'm not going to fire you.

But you'll be on probation.

You know, you can still teach here.

So I go home and my wife is like.

I was like, I. I still have a job.

And she's like, why in the hell would you want to go back there?

Yeah.

After everything you've been through?

And, you know, my wife's.

I'm lucky because my wife's A dentist.

And, and you know, I, I made an okay salary, but, you know, she made more.

And we had three kids who were very young.

And yeah, she's like you.

You'll be more useful to this family if you just quit and be a stay at home dad for a few years.

Because we've got three kids at that time.

We have three kids at three different schools.

You know, it's a lot of lunches to make and places to drive kids.

You know, I became the Uber driver and the cook.

I mean, how non complementarian of your family.

I mean, Mark Driscoll would have a field day.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, I would have, I would have to defend myself.

Oh my goodness.

Oh, I mean, like my.

And I feel like I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway because there are a lot of people out there who would not have risked their career to be that advisor for that group.

Yeah.

There are a lot of professors that would tell me like, I, if I could do what you're doing, I would.

Yeah.

I'm the sole breadwinner of this family and I can't afford to lose this job because once you start teaching, it's like porn was for actors.

As soon as you do porn, they're not going to get hired on the regular.

So as soon as you're teaching at Azusa Pacific for a number of years, no respectful university is going to hire you.

You got to go find another Christian school because you're marked as kind of a dumbass.

You know, you're teaching in a joke of an educational environment.

Yeah.

And so they knew they're not going to find another job.

A ten year.

Actually APU didn't have tenure.

They're not going to find a long term position at a real school.

Yeah.

And so they, they couldn't take, you know, I could, you know, I was like, it was a calculated risk, but I was like, I'm privileged, you know.

Yeah, I can do this.

There's also a lot of silent.

And I'm going to do this in quotation, like silent affirming, you know, pastors and church leaders and faith leaders out there who also have the same privilege and still choose not to take that risk.

Sure.

And so why did you, why was it important to you?

Yeah, a lot of reasons.

But one of them was back in college, I was in the leadership for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which is a college, you know, ministry.

And one of the other leaders came to me and, and basically came out to me and I was Already deconstructing that part of it.

But I gave her the standard Christian line of, well, you should pray that God will take it away.

You know, I hated.

And as soon as I started talking, I saw her face.

Yeah.

And I knew I was fucking up.

I knew as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was saying the wrong thing.

That was just so deeply programmed in, in me as a Christian leader.

Yeah.

I never saw her again.

I never.

She.

She quit Intervarsity.

I think she may have dropped out of school if she didn't.

It's a big school.

She.

She may not have.

But.

Yeah, I think just remembering her face for the rest, to this day has motivated me to not be that guy, you know, to, you know, if I can help people.

Because she was suffering.

You know, she was really upset because she realized she was gay.

You know, she was a lesbian and she didn't want to be.

And I think she knew that I was pretty open minded and I think she was hoping that I would like, encourage her.

And I should have, I should have gave her a hug and told her, awesome, you know, how great that you figured this out.

Yeah.

And I was a total asshole.

You know, well intentioned, but an asshole nonetheless.

Well conditioned.

Yeah.

But I think, and I, and I've said terrible things to other people, you know, as a Christian, you know, Christian brother or Christian leader.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it doesn't determine everything about me as an adult, but I think I, I've always wanted to make amends for that and when I can to, to help people who are struggling.

And if you go to a Christian school like that, and you're not white, you're not straight.

Yeah.

You're struggling.

You're.

You're, you're facing daily attacks on your, Your very identity.

And I hate that I'm like, that makes me so angry and, and it breaks my heart.

And so I think that's why I gravitated to this Asian American arts and activism space.

Because that's what they do is they're looking out for people who are marginalized or oppressed.

Yeah.

And, and forming a community that supports people and tries to make change and, and help and helps people.

And so it, it got so when the kids asked me if I would be involved with their club, I think I knew immediately that I was going to.

But it was just like, I love this job and I just got full time and it could, it could cost me, but there was just no way I could say no.

You know, I, after everything that I'd been through and the things that I had screwed up, like, here was my chance to do the right thing, you know?

And I think there was a part of me that thought, this is going to be fine.

It'll work out.

I'll have a long career here, and it'll be great.

And maybe, you know, but I also knew, but maybe not.

And so.

But as time went on, it became more and more clear that there's no way I'm staying here.

It's.

Yeah.

And so what did unpacking, I guess your faith of origin, that deconstruction that I feel like never really ends because life changes and we gain new information every day.

2016.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, like, what did that unpacking and that deconstructing look like as you started to see a lot of this play out in, like, grandiose ways?

There was no podcasts there.

Yeah.

You know, there's no new evangelicals or name your big name people that can guide you through deconstruction.

So it was a very private decision and a quiet one.

You know, there was no support.

And so I think, weirdly, I think that helped.

And I'm not saying anything bad about, you know, I do a podcast.

You do a podcast?

Yeah.

And I think that helps people.

But.

But for me and the people that sort of left the faith around that same time that I know, it was just, we have to just quit cold turkey, like, and just cut all ties and not look back.

Yeah.

So watching all, you know, first it was the Tea Party, and then there was Trump and.

And QAnon, and.

And here we are today.

It's just.

It's a little sad for me because it's that.

That's not even what I left.

I left a Christianity that was still trying to be caring, and still I left.

You know, like, if I hadn't left, then I would have surely left that, you know, when Trump hit the scene, you know, like.

But I left at a time when there wasn't support for that.

And so that actually made me ignore pretty much everything.

People I know who are friends, I'm friends with, who do podcasts and have deconstructed, they'll always say, oh, do you know?

Oh, this pastor so and so.

And I'm like, who's that?

And they're like, you don't know that past.

I'm like, guys, I don't know shit about Christian culture from, like, I quit Christian music in the 90s when I was still a Christian, because, like, this.

This blows, man.

Like, I'm a musician, and this sucks.

Yeah.

And so I don't.

I didn't know who the newsboys were.

I've learned since five.

Actually, I like five.

Iron Frenzy.

They're kind of a good band.

I can't even name other ones.

Like, Casting Crowns.

Yeah.

Skillet.

Yes, Skillet.

They're the heavy metal Christian band.

Yeah.

And then you went into, like, your Hillsong E, where it was very much.

Like, oh, God, just Worship music.

Yeah.

And Leland and things like that.

Yeah.

I'm really glad I missed all that.

Yeah, you're not.

You didn't miss a whole lot.

And they get stuck in your head and you can't get them out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the beauty of music.

You know, music's music.

But not all of it was terrible.

It's just.

I just decided, like, I'm out.

You know, I'm listening to, like, Miles Davis at this point and classical music and.

And jazz.

Jazz and.

And, you know, progressive rock and.

And.

Yeah, I still liked you, too.

And, you know, that was like a holdover.

Yeah.

But, you know, you two used to be cool for all the young people listening, you know, in the 80s, you know, they weren't the corporate shills and, you know, pseudo liberal old guys that they are now.

Like, they were young and they were cool.

They were like, you know, like, they.

They.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Watching all that happen is just.

Yeah.

Wow.

I. I don't have words for it.

Yeah.

And when I.

And I think it helps.

So when I came back to the exvangelical thing and I. I got.

I met Blake Chastain through, like, social media and joined, like, a Little Face or Twitter group, and I was like, do I really want to go back and talk about this?

Because I haven't talked about this for, like, 10, 15 years at this point, and I didn't want to.

Yeah.

I don't blame you.

But people had questions, and I had answers.

You know, I've been here.

I. I've.

And I've.

I pulled myself out of this with.

With no help.

Yeah.

I'm like, God damn it.

I still want to help people.

Yeah.

And so.

And I knew I Wanted to write this book.

And so, like, I needed to.

To find my people now who are also ex Christian, ex evangelical.

Some of them are still Christian.

Yeah.

So there I am.

And now I have a podcast.

And I've been doing my podcast called Chapel probation for like three years now and.

150 episodes.

I never thought that would happen.

Yeah, it's wild.

Hey.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm only pushing at about 18 months, but I think you will probably be by the time it comes out.

My like 80th episode or 85th or something.

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

But it's.

It's a cool experience.

And I love one of the questions that I love asking people because it's like I get the most diverse answers asking this, which is, what do you think about spirituality now and how do you relate to it?

Do you have you just, like, thrown it in the bin or have you found something brand new for yourself?

I haven't found anything specific, but I. I'm also.

I don't.

I don't identify as atheist.

Yeah.

Because I. I can't buy into anything that.

That expresses a certainty.

You know, atheists are certain that there's no God or there's nothing out there.

No.

The world is too weird and mysterious and beautiful to lay any claim of certainty.

You know, when I was a Christian, I knew I had to be certain about my faith.

What the Bible says is absolutely true and it's historical and it's scientific and, oh, my God, it sure wasn't.

And one of those things.

Yeah.

And I think letting go of certainty.

Yeah.

Prevents me from being an atheist because, I mean, I don't know that there's, you know, a sky God or.

I don't know if Jesus even existed.

Yeah.

But I see the value of looking beyond what we can see.

And I think I've made my peace with the idea that there is mystery, you know, that I.

We don't even.

Like, scientists can't even tell us what's in sand, you know, dirt.

Yeah.

We don't know.

We still don't know what's the bottom of the ocean or what's out in space.

You know, I love that.

And I think letting go of certainty is so freeing.

And, you know, life can just be a mystery and.

Yeah.

You don't know what's going to happen.

It's.

It's terrifying because, you know, bad things can happen at any moment, and they do.

Yeah.

But when good things happen, when someone stands up for someone else, when someone does the right thing, I cry because it's such a beautiful thing.

And it's.

It's like.

Yeah, it's.

It's something to live for.

You know, that.

That hope.

I don't have hope for Christianity.

I don't have hope for America at the moment.

Yeah.

I had to let these things go.

I have hope for my friends, my relationships, my.

My chosen family.

My family.

Yeah.

And the people that I interact with.

Like, talking to you gives me hope.

Yeah.

And.

And the.

And the work.

And I've listened to some episodes.

You've interviewed some people that I've interviewed.

Yeah.

And those conversations are so powerful because when we tell our stories to each other and we listen and we compare and contrast our experiences, you know, that gives us information and perspective and context that we face the world with.

And so we know we're not alone in.

In our struggles and our traumas.

And.

And we're not.

We also know we're not identified by them specifically either.

They're part of us, but we get to decide who we associate with and who we build lives with and who we build community with.

Yeah.

And that kind of mystery has been such a great replacement for me for fundamentalist Christianity.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I wake up every day so thankful that I have the people in my life that I have, and it's just worked out.

I get to play music and make money because I write music for the Axis Mundy's podcast with Brad Onishi of Straight White American Jesus.

Big shout out to Brad Onishi.

He's an amazing person.

And we've built this company that puts out podcasts that really push back against Christian nationalism.

So I get to work in this space and I get to be creative and I get to have my community, and I could get hit by a meteor tomorrow, but I feel like I've been so lucky.

And I have kids that I love and they love me, and I'm married.

It's just like, for everything that I feel like I was denied as a kid, as a boy, as a Japanese American, and trying to be a Christian, I just can't be anything but thankful for the.

The way things have.

Have turned out.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, that's a beautiful response, and I think it is a really nice lead in.

To.

Which is what?

I always finish these episodes asking, which is what would you say to someone who is fresh in all of this?

They're fresh in their deconstruction.

They've just left their church.

They've just realized they have don't believe in God anymore and has hit the fan emotionally, for them.

What would you say to that person?

Oh, so much.

It gets better and.

But it takes work.

Yeah.

We have to decolonize from the systems that are so deeply programmed in us, whether it's whiteness.

And I always say there's nothing wrong with people with white.

It's just in our Western world, that's the center, and that's seen as the standard or the normal.

We have to see everyone as equal.

That's the part of deconstruction that doesn't often happen.

And we're seeing all these clashes in our circles about race, sexuality.

People tend to accept.

Okay.

I mean, to varying degrees.

Yeah, it's moving.

But we have to decolonize, you know, heteronormitivity, too.

Yeah.

Patriarchy.

You know, it's.

There's a list of things.

It's not going to be easy deconstructing.

Yeah.

But it's worth the work because once you can extricate yourself from all the things that oppressed you and held you back, it minimized you as a human.

You know, you're taught to not trust your instincts.

You're not to trust your body.

You're not taught to trust your eyes for what you can see because they're going to lead you astray.

No.

Those are the things you have to trust.

And you have to.

And to do that, you have to decolonize from all the things that were preventing you from doing that.

Hard, hard to do.

But you got to find your people who will.

Who will help you and will encourage you and.

And call you in when you up, because you will up.

Yeah.

And.

But God damn it, if it's not the greatest decision you will ever make in your life, whether you stay a Christian or not.

You know, you can do all this either way.

Yeah.

But.

But finding this life like that is.

Is worth all of the effort and heartache and struggle and trauma.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I guess there isn't just one thing.

It's.

It's one list of things that I would.

That.

And I.

And I.

Do I talk to people all the time about this.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm sure you do, too.

Yeah.

I mean, I think in all of the episodes I've recorded, I think that's probably my favorite answ.

It calls into the fact that deconstructing is so much more than deconstructing your faith.

And I think it's one of the biggest things that so many people don't realize when they go into this space, whether choosing it or they were thrust into it.

But they don't realize that there is so many other systems that we need to deconstruct alongside of that.

And so I love, I love that response.

It was.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

And it's, and, and I think you mentioned earlier, it's a journey when you're, and you're never done, you know, I, you don't cross the finish line, I guess, until we die.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I like the idea of spending the rest of my life, however long that is, still searching for answers and still searching.

Yeah.

For things that give us hope and that everyone can have a life where they thrive.

You know, I, Yeah, right now it's not, it's not happening.

It's.

People are suffering, and that's at the hands of governments and capitalism.

Yeah.

And I don't know.

I don't have the answers, but I think it's going to get messy, you know, I think people are going to be forced to deconstruct a lot of things in the, in the coming years because just of how things are.

And so, yeah, talking to people like you helps a great deal.

Absolutely.

It's the best part of storytelling is the way that it connects people far and wide with similar themes.

You can have completely different backgrounds, different upbringings, different faiths, and yet the themes still connect us.

And so it's the power of storytelling, I guess.

Absolutely.

It's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for sharing your story so openly and vulnerably and from one queer person.

Thank you for being the person who took that risk on those queer kids in that university.

And so, yeah, I appreciate your voice in this space.

Yeah.

And I, and I appreciate you, Sam.

Thank you.

Thanks for doing this.

My book is still out.

It's called Asian American Apostate.

If anyone wants to read it.

There's more.

The gory details of my time at Azusa Pacific and how I got out.

And I do a podcast called Chapel Probation and do listen.

It's fab.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just, I think it's not wrapping up, but it's definitely changing because we, we're kind of kicking a dead horse.

It's like, yeah, we.

After five seasons.

Yeah.

Evangelical school, they kind of suck.

So I don't know what else there is to say.

So we're having, you know, I have people on of all walks of life now as we just talk about not just deconstruction, but, like, what are we constructing?

You know, what are we moving toward?

What, what in our pasts affects how, how we move forward.

Yeah, amazing.

And I will pop all of the links to the book to the podcast in the show notes so people can easily access them.

But yes do go listen to the PODC podcast is amazing so do go and do and thank you again for joining me.

It's been an absolute joy chatting to you.

Yeah no this is amazing.

Sam, thanks so much.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface.

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