I get a team. You know, sometimes when you do something, and before you do the something, you think and I don't know if I should do this something, but you do it anyway. So this is such an occasion. This is me talking about some of my background, my history, my beliefs, a big part of my life in religion and outer religion, my thoughts about God, about faith, about belief.
It's a kind of an existential personal exploration that I'm sharing with you, so public exploration of my personal story, I guess, and I'm going to say it's probably not for everyone. In fact, it's definitely not for everyone. I'm also going to say up front, not starting a cult. I'm not trying to get anyone on board anything. I'm not trying to steer anyone in a particular direction or to brace particular ideology or philosophy or theology or school
of thoughts. I'm not trying to get anyone to think a certain way, or to be a certain way, or to subscribe to anything. But and I don't have absolute clarity about where this is going to go. So I apologize in advance for the stumbles and bumbles and the potentially the lack of flow. But I am. I'm trying to be real and authentic and not to just wheel
out some cheesy kind of cliche around this. And one of the reasons that I want to do this is because it's important for me that I be as transparent as I can be and as honest, and that I open the door on my background and my story and who I am, that I open the door as wide as I can without being overly self indulgent. And if this seems self indulgent to you, then I actually understand it. May be I'm trying not to be, but a lot a lot of people ask me about what I believe.
Do I believe in a God? Do I believe in heaven and Hell? Do I believe in? You know? What are my thoughts on religion and the different religions and the different philosophies and ideologies and the different schools of thought? And you know, I'm like you. I'm like you in
that I don't I don't know everything. I don't know most things, especially when it comes to, you know, the idea of there being a God or a higher power or a divine intelligence, something that lives outside of what we would call logic and reason and science, and you know, the day to day normal, you know. Having said that for many people having a life and a mindset and habits and behaviors intertwined with their God or their version of God or their beliefs, but that for them that
is normal. You know. I was trying to find out before I started this, how many people in the world believe in God, a God or God's you know, a higher intelligence, divine source, whatever you want to call it. I mean, the thing with you know, the what, and this is true for language and psychology, is that you know, one word means different things for different people, you know, and so to you know, what might be what God might represent to me, the same word to someone else
might represent a totally different thing. And so then when you say we both believe in God, or we both don't believe in God, whatever the case is, we're talking about different things quite often. And so, you know, I guess our thinking and our belief and our understanding of certain words in terms and concepts and ideas is really driven by our exposure to all of those things, those
ideas and religions. And be that in synagogue, or be that in church, or be that in school, or be that you know, in some other environment that doesn't spring
to mind right now. But our beliefs, in our thinking and our ideas, and even our philosophies and theologies get shaped and informed and fashioned very much by the environment that we grow up in, the mindset, the culture, and obviously the religion that we do or don't grow up in the conversations we have, the people around us, the experiences we have, and so you know, for me, it was pretty much not an option to grow up not thinking about or not being exposed to God in inverted commace,
the God of the Bible, the God of the Christian Bible. That was the God that I grew up with. And when you grow up in a religious house with religious parents who went like over the top by the way, you know, smashing me over the head with the Bible. But you know, it's like I went to a Catholic school, I went to Mass, you know every Sunday. We had primarily like friends, and we had priests and nuns and brothers,
brothers who are like, you know, religious. It almost like a boy version of a nun or a male version of a nun, right, and those people were always in and around my reality. My life, and so I grew up in that, and you don't choose what you grow up in. And I think this is something that we need to be mindful of when we're talking to anyone. You know, there's like so many things that I didn't choose that just are part of who I am or who I was, and how I think and how I
see the world. And I think when we talk about consciousness and awareness as two constructs of the mind, you know, away from religion or away from the concept of God, but consciousness and awareness is where we start to become aware of or in my case, I started to become aware of my programming, the religiousness that I've been raised in, and so, you know, starting to think about, apart from what I've been taught and told and trained, what do
I really think like? And it's hard to it's even hard to think truly independently when your mind is programmed, like this is the idea, and I speak about this a lot, the idea of subjective reality versus objective reality and open mindedness. Like all of us, you me, all of us have been programmed, all of us have been influenced, all of us have been in some ways probably manipulated and coerced and controlled to an extent, even by people who love us and want the best for us, and
even with the best of intentions. And sometimes that programming and conditioning serves us. Sometimes that saves us. Sometimes it's helps us navigate life and relationships and make decisions and become the person that we become. And conversely, sometimes that programming and conditioning and that influence is what holds us back. And I don't know your background, I don't know your story.
I just know mine. And so for me, I grew up believing in heaven and hell and a thing called purgatory, which is kind of almost like a halfway house between both you know where and this. I grew up in this concept of different kinds of sin, basically terrible sins and bad sins. You know. I don't know how it works in Catholicism these days. I'm sure it's very similar. But it's been a minute for me to be at mass or to go to confession. I grew up going
to confession. I grew up going into this sounds fucking weird when I say it now, This little room, this little tiny room where I would kneel on this thing, and I would talk through a curtain to a bloke that I couldn't see, and I would tell him about
the things that I had done wrong. I would according to my understanding of wrong, my understanding of sin, and then this bloke would listen to my sins, and then he would give me a prescription to wipe those sins so that I could then once again have a clean slate, so that should I die in the next hour, I'm going to heaven. Now. I know, when I say this this way, it sounds kind of fucking ridiculous, But when you don't know anything else that is not only is
it not ridiculous, it's hugely influential and powerful. And when you truly believe, when you truly believe that if you die with an unconfessed sin of a certain level, a mortal sin, we call them. They're called if you die with a mortal sin on your soul, you're going to go. You're going to burn in hell forever. There's this eternal, fiery consequence of your sin, Craig. And you know, I
get it. I get that because I get religion, and I think, I think this conversation about God and religion, it's you know, it's important to try to just understand, not to agree, not to join the team. Not out of this too, you know, because I heard Craig talk and now I think this or believe that, or no, not at all. But rather and this is not encouraged in religion, by the way, but rather to think for yourself. And you know, when you grow up in a religion,
another word for a religion is a thought cult. That's a term, well, it's a term that I use because when you grow up in a certain religion, you are told essentially what is true and what is not true, what is good and what is bad. You are not asked for your opinion. You are programmed to see the world and religion and God or God's or whatever the particular deity of choice is for that religion. You are programmed to see things a certain way. And that is
the opposite of critical thinking. That is unconscious well, that is conscious programming, that programs your subconscious mind. So people are programming you to think and be a certain way and see God an eternity and the whole kind of religious paradigm a certain way. Now, do I think everybody that's doing that is bad and evil? And has terrible intentions. Not at all, Not at all. Do I think everyone has our truet stick, pure loving intentions, Not at all.
There's a lot of bullshit in there. There's a lot of bullshit in there. And for me, I always had a god curiosity in that I was curious about God. Should there be a God? I liked. You know, I'm going to say some things today that may not this may not help me, but I'm again, I'm being honest. I like the idea that there might be a benevolent, loving God that cares about me and cares about you, and you know, has some design or some purpose, perhaps
greater than my understanding or you know. But then do I know that there's a God? No? I don't, you know. And this is this is where many of my like I have, you know, friends that are Buddhisty, friends that are Muslim, I have friends that are Christian. I have friends that are different versions of Christianity. Don't get me started on all the denominations will be here. It's all September. But you know, it's it's it's true to say that
I don't know. I don't know if there's God, even if I want there to be a God, because if I had unequivocal knowledge or proof or evidence or data as we call in science, then there would be no need for faith. And it doesn't matter. You know, Believing in something is not the same as knowing in knowing something, And the idea of believing in God is believing in something someone much much greater perhaps than me, you perhaps or maybe God lives within you know, and not fully understanding.
And for people who are very very religious, who have very strong faith, who truly believe in God, this is a hard concept. And the truth is that you know, my friends that I used to go to church with, and I'll talk a bit about my church, some of my church experiences if I'm going to so if you're not interested, to tune out now because it might kill you. You know, they would sit. They would not like this podcast that I'm doing, most of them. Some are a
little bit more open minded because I would be. Now, let's say that I believe in God. Let's say this hypothetical, and I'll let you know what I actually think towards the end. But let's say that I believe in God, but I have questions, lots of questions, right, and I have doubt, and a lot of Christianity don't really vibe with and by Christianity, I mean how it works on a practical level in churches and among Christians. And I apologize for talking so much about Christianity, but that's my
that's my journey. I can't really speak with any kind of level of competence or expertise about any other religion, which is why the title of this is God, Common Me and Religion. But I think we can extrapolate my journey and the insights from my journey into other people's journeys and experiences with religion also. But real deal Christians, and I use that term in inverted commas, would call me a backslider. They would potentially call me a heathen.
I in the old days, if I questioned, or I doubted, or I share some of these thoughts and ideas, I would potentially be exiled or kicked out of the tribe. And because I understand how people think, I understand that response. I'm not mad at them, I'm not upset. I understand why even some of my Christian friends would think I've lost the plot, that I've lost my shit, that I've been you know, I've slid out of the light of God into the darkness. And I get it, and I
get all that fluffy language as well. And it's if you've never been religious, and I mean like I mean, your life revolved around I'm not talking about the casual church goer, and like a person who's never read in my instance for example, or a person who's never read the Bible or never a person who's never really prayed, or a person who's never really been committed to any but rather you were just almost like an accidental cafe because that's what mum and dad did. Well, then it's
probably quite a different story for you. But where my real God kind of adventure started was after I kind of stopped doing mass. So for me, growing up in a Catholic church, I went to only Catholic schools, so I never went to a state school. I went to six or seven schools. They were all Catholic. So I was incredibly indoctrinated and programmed and influenced. Not a good
or bad thing, that's just what I was. And the outworking of that, the byproduct of that was, you know that I saw the world through a largely through a Catholic lens, and as I've said many times before on this show, and in reference to the way that we think and perception and the lens through which we view
and understand and experience the world. The time I was ten years old, because of my program, I truly believe that if I died in a certain spiritual state, one of sin, that I or my soul or I guess I didn't really think about it. I'm like, how can you burn in a lake of fire if you don't have a body, Because anyway, I basically was terrified of this place called hell, and I'd been taught and told and trained that hell was real and Hell was where a lot of people who didn't toe the line were
going to end up. And this wasn't a suggestion, and it wasn't for me anyway. It wasn't a metaphor, it wasn't an analogy. It was a literal teaching. And as a child, you know, that's fucking terrifying. As an adult, it's terrifying. But I kind of survived that. And while there was, you know, there was the terrifying, there was also a lot of good stuff that happened within that place. But or that I guess those eighteen years. You know,
once I left school. In fact, my parents moved away to another state when I was in year twelve for dad's work. I decided to stay. I lived with another family, But essentially from when I was seventeen and a bit years old, I haven't lived with my parents, and I would say my Catholic ways pretty much ended about then.
But what I did always love and until that point in time, And this is ironic and somewhat hilarious, despite the fact that I was a Catholic and Catholicism is based on you know, the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, albeit somewhat catholically modified. Catholically is that a word, catholically modified version with a few other books that a few by books, I mean what you might
think of as chapters in the Bible. But in fact the Bible, the Old Testament, New Testament is comprised of typically I think it's sixty six books starting with Genesis, Exodus, lavitkas Numbers, Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible that are also called I think they're called the Torah, and then the New Testament. You don't need to know all this. But the New Testament starts with the Gospels, which is basically four different accounts of Jesus's life, but
anyway in that, and it ends in Revelation. But anyway, in the middle of all of that, in the Catholic version of that, there's some other stuff kind of woven in there, which isn't in most Bibles, but it is in the Catholic one. You didn't need to know any of that, but you're welcome. But what I do love about the Bible. I love the idea of in the New Testament anyway. I love the idea of love and coming from a place of love and the power of
love and genuine life, of humility, kindness. And I know that sounds very cliche, but for me there was something always And again, this is not a call to action. It's not a call to action at all, because I still am not one hundred percent sure on anything, and I probably never will be, because I'm talking about something that can't be literally, seen, measured, quantified. Right, We're talking about God and eternity and all of these spiritual constructs
and these ideas. But I loved I love the overwhelming message of love that comes through the New Testament. And yes, I fully acknowledge there's some dark shit in the Old Testament. You don't need to send me an email. And I also acknowledge the contradiction and the contradictions that exist between
the Old and New Testament. I also acknowledge that there's no way that we can verify that it's the word of God, as Christians believe, and as lots of other religions believe, that their particular religious text, their theology is the essentially God's vision, God's word, and that their belief and all of those things are essentially the one true Church or the one true or they have the one true hotline to God. And I get it, I get it,
I understand it. And then the middle of all of that, in the middle of all of that, I can't prove or disprove anything. And this is where you know it can get messy, because while religion can be a vehicle to beautiful things, it can also be a platform for horrible things. We know what happens not only within some religions, some horrible things that I won't name, but we also know that wars have been started because of religion. Now,
let's say there's a God. Let's just say, well, God didn't start whoever God is, whatever God is, didn't start any religions and all of these. Let's say, let's just say, and I'm not saying it's true, but let's just go with this hypothetical that there is a God and there is and that let's just go with this hypothetical for
the moment. And if you don't believe in anything, then I'm fully on board and okay with you believing that, not that you need my permission, but let's just say, okay, there's a God, and let's just say that Jesus was the son of God, and the New Testament's the real deal. Let's just say that, Well, we still don't know like
we want to believe that. The New Testament and the Four Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke John, who were written or basically written accounts of Jesus' life, and then all the subsequent books were kind of where Jesus was woven in and out of, you know, by largely written by allegedly Saint Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans and Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians and all of these things that you don't need to know about. But you know, we don't know. But if there is a God, then
God didn't create a religion. Religion is a man made construct. It is basically, you believe that we believe this. You believe one thing, we believe another thing. Right, there's a division. Now we're going to be over here believing what you believe, and you're going to go off in that tangent. And whether or not it's different religions or denominations under the banner of Christianity or any of the other religions, completely different religions basing their theology in a different text and
different values and different ideologies. We still don't know, Like we don't have hard evidence, and this will bother people maybe that God had anything to do. We might believe that, we might truly believe that a lot of people do. But if we had evidence, we wouldn't need faith. If we had proof, we wouldn't need faith. Does that mean I don't believe in God? No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. But like growing up for me, like God was kind
of an inconvenience. God was kind of like a supernatural kill joy in some ways, because a lot of the shit that I wanted to do wasn't really kosher, no pun intended to my Jewish friends, Like a lot of the shit that I wanted to do didn't really get
the kind of the God tick of approval. You know, I won't list those things, but as a teenage boy, you might imagine what some of those things might be, even if it was just ruminating on certain things, not even doing things, but thinking about doing those things is
a sin in inverted commerce. And one of the things that I tried to do, quite quite consistently and quite energetically, is I tried to ignore God because God just didn't fit in for me, Like God was kind of like, while I was curious about God, what was required, according to my understanding and my version of God to live the life that did not fit in with the shit that I wanted to do at all? And I won't
open the door, but you can figure it out. But one of the funny things for me was as much as I and again this is I'm not trying to lead you anywhere with this, and as I'm telling my story, I don't want you to misinterpret that I'm trying to
lead you to a point of anything. I just want to share my story because I get asked about it so much, and I've opened the door a tiny bit on probably fifty occasions, but in over six years and fifteen hundred episodes, I've never said the stuff I'm saying today. So I'm not leading you anywhere. I'm just telling you my story. And if I'm over emphasizing this and being kind of somewhat sounding defensive or apologetic, I don't mean to. I just understand having a public platform, I realize how
people can interpret things, so do not misinterpret. I'm not pointing you in any direction. I'm just telling you about
my experiences. So for whatever reason, I had a lot of what I can really only describe as God coincidences, even when I was not going to church, not thinking about God, in fact, really trying to not think about God, pretty much running in the opposite direction of anything particularly godly or Christian or biblical, even when I was trying to release the religious shackles and be my own self, which by the way, I don't think is a bad thing,
depending on what that looks like. But even then, there would always be people that would pop up in my life that would say something like, you know, God has his hand on your life. I'm like, what what does that even mean? Or God has a purpose for you. Now, I'm not talking about twice. I'm talking about repeatedly, and I'm not talking about from people that I knew. I'm talking about strangers, people who would, for whatever reason, come into my path and then tell me a story that
somehow had something to do with God and me. I remember one of who, a guy who turned out to be one of my best friends. His name is Rob Dixon. Rip love him, miss him. He's not with us anymore, but DICKO. He he came to my school when I think we're in year nine, as a non Catholic at a Catholic school, and he came in. He was a born again Christian. And I remember this guy on day one just cornering me and just telling me about God, and I'm like, oh, this is not the first time
this had happened. And then and then, but interestingly, me sensing something in him that was now whether or not that was God, or whether or not that was his energy, or whether or not that was his personality, or whether or not that was the fact that he was a charismatic charming, lovable, likable alaric and I don't know what it was, but I do know that I paid attention, and he kept for one of a better term, belt me overhead with God and then and then wherever, not
wherever I would go, but often I would go places where I would get a, you know, a similar kind of vibe from people. I remember when I was eighteen nearly nineteen, I moved to Western Australia and I worked on a construction site which I've spoken about here, a place called Worsley Aluminium Refiner which was being built. I remember literally been on the site. I was working as a trades assistant, which is essentially a fancy name for a shitkicker and a helper out or a laborer, whatever
you want. And I'd literally been there ten minutes and it's this massive construction site as big as a town, with three thousand men and all of this heavy machinery and dirt and dust and shit and mayhem and chaos and generators and diesel fumes in the air, and like it was just like nothing I've ever been in the middle of. And I look up and there's a guy heading in all of this sea of humanity and twisted metal and generators and dirt and dust and construction and chaos.
There's a guy making a beeline for me. And before he even got close, I went, oh, this is going to be another God guy. It's going to be a god guy. And he got close to me and I could see he was wearing a blue hat. The company I worked for was called Steel Mains. He had a Steel Main's blue hat on and he had Warren written on his hat, and underneath Warren he had a fish,
which was the Jesus symbol. And he walks up and he goes, God sent me over to talk to you, and I'm like, of course he did, have course he did, and on and on. Then I moved back to Melbourne and I started running a gym. I was nineteen by the way. I was over there working on construction through the day and in gyms at night, so I was always working in gym's. But I started working in a small gym that was only open at that stage six hours a day in the afternoon three to nine. It
was like a buff ed's gym. It was primarily just for blokes, meadheads, bodybuilders, crooks, cops, just it was it was called the Stables, and it was in mentone, and I was just this, you know, kind of out of his depth, nineteen year old that I'd been given the responsibility of running this. Let's put it in inverted commas. Gym was really an old warehouse kind of thing that had been filled with gym equipment. And to say it was a one star gym as probably an exaggeration of
how good it was. But at the same time, it was fucking awesome. It was just this grungy gym where awesome people trained, and for me, it was just a pop p purrey of humanity and different like different, Like I said, mostly blokes. If you're a lady, you would not want to go there. But anyway, it was all these rough heads and and but kind of you know, lovable Alarrikans interspersed with some crooks. Anyway, these three guys came in and they started training, and they were cool,
and I got on well with them. I got on well with everybody. I tried to remember everybody's name. I tried to you know, I tried to do what I could. I tried to be you know, I was shitouse at business. Let's be honest, and my understanding of you know, training and training myself and training others and anatomy and physiology and exercise prescription and running a gym and being a business person and the leadership. I was fuck and terrible,
but I did my best. I did as well as I could for the age I was with the skills and understanding I had. Anyway, fast forward a couple of weeks. These three guys have been coming in and out, and then one day they go, oh, they started talking to me, and then they invited me to church. I'm like, oh, my goodness. Hit there. It is like they were these young dudes. They rode motorbikes, so I kind of connected
with them. Anyway. That the long story short is, after twenty seven invitations to church, I ended up going to a church with them. Their church, and my thinking was, what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to go tick this box. Because these guys are good, I'm going to go. I'm gonna then they're going to
stop asking me. I'm going to go to church. And so I went to this church and it was just very very different from anything i'd been I'd been to church hundreds of times, maybe thousands, but hundreds, you know, once a week for eighteen years, what's that it's probably nine hundred times, I guess you'll take. But I've been a lot. But I'd never been to anything like this where it wasn't Catholic. It was there was a band up the front, there was heaps of young people who
wanted to be there. And I walked in and people said hello, and people gave me a hug, and it was just this energy, and I'm like, well, this is weird. It was kind of nice and kind of terrifying, but anyway, so I I kind of sat my ass down and this old dude, who I won't say his name because I don't want to be dis he I loved him, so there's nothing bad to say. But this old dude, I'll say his name. His name was Pastor Milton. And he stood up the front and he preached, you know,
and I'd never heard anyone preach. I'd just heard, well, not like this. I'd heard priests stand up the front and deliver kind of a sermon, kind of which generally it's the same passage from the Bible for you know, well, it's the twenty sixth Sunday of the year. So we teach this bit and it's all very formulaic and the opposite of instinctive intuitive, And this old dude was up the front, Pastor Milton, just preaching his little heart out, and I'm sitting down there. I didn't really know what
to make of it. But when I kind of the fear and the anxiety subsided, I just realized that what it felt to me like he was talking to me, now, is this a coincidence? Is this just where I was at in my life and he was saying things that resonated. I don't know. I'm not going to tell you had this big god experience. I'm going to tell you the experience that I had. And I like, there was something for me at that point in my life. There was something hypnotic, not in a literal sense, but hypnotic and
magnetic about that. And while I'd been this very insecure, overthinking, ex fat kid who was now obsessed with his body and his muscles and being big and being lean and being attractive to women and you know, kind of respected by other dudes and all of this inner bullshit that I dragged around with me in this place at this time. Anyway, none of that really seemed to matter, Like nobody was into me because of my shoulders and my arms or my or not into me like it was just it
was a different energy. And I can't I still can't really explain it, but my my reality at that time, I had never experienced anything like this, and so I was curious. So without giving you the whole, you know, the whole kind of conversion, I went back. I went back, and I kept going back, and I kind of immersed myself. I became part of that church for about four years, so I would say, and by part of it, I
mean boots and all. So from when I was about nineteen to twenty three, and I mean, you know, it's like my life revolved around trying to live a godly life, trying to trying to be for me. I wanted to be a better version of me. I didn't love who I was. And while I didn't necessarily think like church or God is going to fix me so to speak, wrong word, wrong words, but I felt, I intuitively and innately felt that there was something, you know, some deeper understanding, insight, truth, intelligence,
love to be gained, to be tapped into. And it was more you know, I guess just like it was. It was. You know, I don't know if you ever met anyone and you feel drawn to them and you can't even explain why I was kind of drawn to this place and these people. And yes, you can objectively if you weren't there, which you weren't of course, and you could go, oh, that's a culture, that's this, or that's that. And when I look back, I think, now, were there things that were kind of culty with some
aspects of what I was in the middle of. Definitely, in my four years there was everything that and I'll explain why I left. Was everything good and amazing and no And for me, like when people say to me, and again these are just my thoughts, what's wrong with religion? I think the intention I think religion and religious groups can be I'm saying, can asterisk beautiful places for people
to be and grow and learn and evolve. I also think religious groups of any size, shape, denomination can be toxic and destructive and borderline evil depending on what they're about. So I would just say that my four years in that place for the most part, were positive, and I had many experiences that for me were in a logical sense in it, explicable like things that I think. I've told this story once before, but I'll tell it again, and this might sound like bullshit, and I completely understand.
But I think if you know me, you know that I am. Actually I'm quite skeptical of pretty much everything and everyone. Doesn't mean I don't love people. Doesn't but it takes me quite a while to trust people. Doesn't mean that I automatically think they're bad. I definitely don't
give everybody the opportunity. But so the first time that I went to church in this place, I heard this lady talk about how that sometimes she just opens the Bible, remember the Bible sixty six books or thereabouts, or sixty six little books within this one big book, and that she would close her eyes and open the book without knowing where the book was opening, and she'd put her hand in the book and her finger would be on a scripture or a Bible verse for one of the
better terms, and that God would give her some revelation or insight or message that she needed to get in that moment. Now I'm sitting there listening to this first time in church, and I'm thinking, well, that's that she's
fucking crazy, That's what I was thinking. I'm thinking this is, by the way, all my Christian friends would hate the way I talk these days, hate hate anyway, So I was thinking, she's fucking crazy, but nonetheless interesting, and everyone seemed to be like on board and go, oh, that's great that God did that for you. I'm like, really, you all believe that? Anyway. So a week later, I was looking at my Bible. I had no They gave me a Bible, I had no idea. I didn't know
it was. Also, it was written in King James, which is the older English, you know, so you know, like like Romans twelve to in King James's been not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. There's a lot of these and vows and all that stuff, and it can be really fucking confusing, to be honest. But anyway, so I was sitting there with the Bible. I didn't know the front from the back, I didn't know where anything was, and I had this
weird feeling right now. Whether this was Craye created or God created or something else, I can't tell you. I don't know. But what I do know is I have this feeling that all this, yeah, I'll say feeling. I was going to say awareness, but it was to me, it felt like a knowing. And the knowing was that.
I I worshiped my body too much, and I had training on a pedestal, and I got my sense of self and self worth and identity from my body, what my body looked like, what other people thought of my body, from that accolades I would get from my body, and.
I felt, I felt what I thought was God saying yeah, you need to put that on hold and focus on me. Now. Whether or not that was God, I don't know. I believed it was God at the time. But here I am, all these years later talking to you, sitting in my office. So I'm trying to be as objective and aware as possible and not sound like a fucking weirdo. But that's what happened. And so I'm sitting there thinking and then about this, and then i go, well, what would that
even look like? And I'm almost negotiating with God in inverted commas, and I'm going, well, but you know, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. I knew that much, right, and looking after my body being strong and like that's a good thing, right God. So I'm kind of in my space there just negotiating with God. And I had this this idea to do what the weird lady, the crazy lady at church did was just swing open the Bible on a page, shut my eyes, put my finger in, and so I kind of and
see what God would show me. And it's like, well, if God wanted me to do something or not do something, he could just give me some divine guidance. Not on any level believing that I would get any kind of direction, but I thought that, well, what I'll do is I'll tick the box. So I'll go God, I'm giving you an opportunity. I'll open the book and bibbity bobby boo and anyway, so I closed my eyes, I swing the
Bible open, I put my finger in. Now, remember I don't know where anything is, so I definitely can't try to locate any scriptures because I don't know any And I put my finger on a page and my finger is at the my index finger of my left hand I'm left handed, is is at the start of a word, and it's so it's up against the letter and the letter is P and the word is physical. And the scripture I don't have it in front of me, but
I know it. The scripture reference off my heart. It's one Timothy four eight and it's and it's so there's a couple of books of Timothy, chapter four and verse eight, and it says, physical training profiteth a little, remember King James, physical training profiteth a little, but train yourself unto Godliness. And in other translations, there's lots of translations of the Bible, it essentially says, look, training your body is good, but
train yourself in God. Physical training profiteth a little, but train yourself in the things of God. And I sat there and I I don't know that I went white because I didn't have a mirror in front of me, but pretty sure I went white. My heart rate went through the roof and so on, and and that might sound like garbage, and you might go, well, then, Craig, why are you not a minister? Why are you not?
Lots of reasons, but that that happened to me, and whether or not that was the biggest coincidence of all time, whether or not that was God, I'm not going to I'm not going to tell you one way or the other. I don't know, but I know that that happened, that really happened, and I know that what happened after that was I took that as you know, I took that as a sign I guess that, you know, that I needed to And for me, it wasn't so much that I needed to stop training or at least stop idolizing
my body in that way. Now, at the time when this happened, I was over one hundred kilos and mostly muscle, and I stopped lifting weights for nearly a year, or lifting far less weights and not the way that I was, and started to run and lose muscle, which my ego didn't want, my self esteem didn't want, And over the course of the next year, I lost about twenty kilos
and not in a way that I wanted to. And I went from big and strong and intimidating and muscular, which my ego and my self esteem and my shitty self worth loved, down to like this almost skinny, endurance version of me. But I in many ways I grew and I started to, you know, I started to deal with lots of my own bullshit, of which there was, of which there was much, and so you know, I won't give you the whole story, but I you know, I ended up getting engaged to a girl. I won't
do her the disrespect. She was awesome, and it was very much a church that everyone was in house, and if you were going to get engaged or married, it will probably be to someone within that church. I got engaged very young, and that probably was not in hindsight, probably not the best thing. I didn't get married, obviously, I won't say it anyway. That person that I was engaged to, awesome human, now happily married, and she definitely dodged a bullet by not marrying me, because I'm a
fucking nightmare. But I spent years going to that church, and then I went to another church afterwards for a while, and I kind of did the whole God Christian thing. And when I say church, i'm talking about full on Pentecostal, you know, born again Christian, fundamental, holy spirit filled like. The stuff that goes on in some of those churches is if you've never been to one, it is very interesting and you might think, well, Craig, how deep were you?
I'm like, well, I'm telling you from when I was nineteen till probably nearly twenty twenty five, maybe about six years. I didn't have sex. Now at a time when a male body is that it's all time fucking high of testosterone and hormonal drives. I was. This is how committed I was, and so I didn't have sex. I didn't even with my fiance that I was engaged to, and we never had sex because it was a sin. It's
considered a sin, you know, And so I was. I was in boots and all and for me, it it you know, it was a it was a complete commitment. Every day. I prayed every day. I read the Bible every day. I you know, there's a lot of other things that happened that I you know, I don't want this to be a ten hour podcast, but you know, I read and studied the Bible, and even now, I still think there's a lot of incredible wisdom in the
New Testament the Old Testament too, in certain books. In certain certain books of the Old testament's kind of terrifying and taken literally, some of that very terrifying, especially for certain groups. And so I'm not not saying that I think it's all divinely inspired through God, and neither am I saying that it's not I'm saying I don't know.
I don't know, but I do know that whether or not the particularly the New Testament, which is what Christians tend to focus on more, whether or not that is the literal word of God translated and written down by men and then survived a couple of thousand years or depending on when when the New Testament was written somewhere between the sixteen and eighteen or nine one hundred years ago. Didn't start being written the New Testament till quite a
while after Jesus died, apparently. But nonetheless, there's some incredible wisdom in that. And the stuff in the Bible that I love. What I love is as I said before, I love. I love the love stuff. I love the kindness not to be mistaken with weakness or apathy. And you know, so, so where am I at now? So now I have a I have a belief in God that doesn't really look like any particular religion. Do I think I could be wrong? Do I think I could
be wrong? Yes? I do? And this is the beauty of like faith is literally believing in what you can't prove. It is just belief. Do I live a life aligned with the Bible. No, I do not do. I try to be the best person I can. Yes, I do. Am I a fan of religion and church and synagogue and temple, And I'm going to say I'm not a fan, but neither am I anti any of that. I don't think that. I don't think that church is the problem
or religion is the problem. I think that people are the problem, and thinking is the problem, and thinking in its many forms, is the origin story for all the bad stuff, you know, the need to control, the need to have power, the need to manipulate, the need to look after one's self. I believe there's a lot of window dressing and pr that happens inside and outside of religion. I believe that if you really want to know someone, watch them when they don't know they're being watched. I
believe that, you know, for me, words are cheap. Even on this podcast. Take what you want from it, ignore it. You know, it's like. But I hope that over my lifetime that how I live and what I do, and how I treat people, and how I take the responsibility of this podcast. I hope that over my lifetime that my body of work suggests that that I'm a person that can be trusted and may be valued and maybe relied upon. I wouldn't ask you to believe me. I
wouldn't ask you to trust me. I wouldn't ask because I think it's wrong. I think asking somebody to trust you or believe you is redundant and unnecessary because trust and respect to things that need to be earned over time, and the only way that they come as through consistency of behavior and authenticity. Yeah, and then I often get asked about whether or not science and God, because I'm
a scientist too, of course. And you know, so I have a degree in exercise science, and I'm you know, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, if I can find my teeth and my walking stick, hopefully finishing my PhD in the next you know, kind of six eight months, which is another science degree this time, and you know, psychology and neuropsychology, and and of course there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in theology and in specifically the creations story versus the evolution
story that just doesn't from a logic point of view, from a scientific point of view, from a you know, it doesn't in inverted commas make sense. And there's so much of There are so many things that I believe are true or potentially true that we don't understand, and
we may never understand. Could I wake up one day and realize that all of the stuff that I've thought and believed, or a large portion of it, is a construct of my mind or someone else's mind, that I'm believing these things because they kind of give me comfort. That's possible. Could I ononderut they somehow know that I was right. That's possible, But right now I don't, and I think one of the challenges. But nonetheless, I can simultaneously believe in something while not having evidence. And as
I said, that's the point. That's the point. Do I think we all need to go to church? No, I don't do. I think you can have a relationship with God without that. I think it's good to have. Yes, I do. I think it's good to have some kind of guidance or framework in some way from somebody, whoever that somebody is that you're your internal sat NAV tells you you can trust I am. You know, I'm very hesitant to belong to a group, and I'm not trying to start a group either. By the way, there's no
call to action coming. I'm not starting a cult, so it's all good. But one of the problems is that you know, every religion essentially thinks that it is the one true religion. If not every religion, nearly all religions think that, which is also another way of saying all of the religions that aren't us, that don't think like us, or have our theology or our philosophy or our practices rules rituals, they are wrong. And while they don't overtly
say that, their behavior says that. And so to me again, this is another red flag to religion. And I'm aware that you know, this level of divulgence and vulnerability and openness may not be a good idea or from a commercial point of view, like could this could this damage? Might an inverted Commas brand? I guess do I care? Nah, It's just true. It's just true. And if people are off me because I'm sharing my experiences, I'm okay with that. And on no level am I like wow, fuck them, none,
Like I truly believe that. You know, if I had to, if I had to create my own theology slash philosophy religion just for me, not for anyone else, but just for me, I go, this is my religion. It would be that I try to live every day expressing, giving, sharing love in all its manifestations, with no agenda, with
no expectation, with no conditions. And I am well, well and truly aware that there's no way I could do that all day, every day, because I'm human, I'm flawed, and I've got issues and problems and an ego and bullshit. But that would be what I would aspire. I would
aspire to be loving. I would aspire to be consistently kind and aware, to diminish my ego, to have a purpose while still knowing myself by the way, but to have a purpose bigger than myself, and to have clearly defined values that are basically the blueprint for my life. That would be my religion. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you, and the risk of sounding super cheesy, I love you.