How I Got My Spirituality Back

What happens when your faith collapses? In this episode, I share
my story of spiritual deconstruction and how I learned to believe
again—sort of. This isn’t a “how to get your faith back” story.
It’s the story of tearing my faith down to the studs, sifting
through the rubble, and deciding what was worth keeping. We’ll
talk god shaped holes, Kierkegaard, Camus, Pascal’s wager, and
the surprising peace of not needing all the answers. This episode
if for anyone who is currently filling their god-shaped hole with
TikTok marathons, self-help books and spiral-inducing questions.
If you started at church camp and have landed in full-blown
nihilism, press play. 





EPISODE OUTLINE





00:00 Intro: the story of how I lost my faith and got it back
(sort of)


08:01 1. Why spiritual crises often happen at the worst possible
time


10:35 How my own spiritual crisis began


18:07 Kierkegaard on despair and the self


19:47 2. Why spiritual health gets worse before it gets better


26:19 The delight of spiritual curiosity


27:43 3. Choosing how to fill the God shaped hole


29:42 Absurdism and optimistic nihilism (Camus)


30:57 Pascal’s Wager explained and what it gets wrong


32:51 Approaching belief pragmatically (belief as a choice)


33:53 What “god” means to me now 


35:33 Can you make yourself believe? Should you?


36:16 On stepping in the same river twice (Heraclitus)


36:49 Five reflection questions (Rainn Wilson)


38:14 Lightning round recap 





MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 





Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)


Rhett McLaughlin’s Spiritual Deconstruction Story


Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)


St. Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 CE)


Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)


Heraclitus, Fragment 49a (c. 500 BCE)


Rainn Wilson, Soul Boom (2023)


Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays (2016)





MY LINKS





• ⁠Listen to my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn
Wilson on Spotify 


• ⁠Watch my episode of Soul Boom with Rainn
Wilson on Youtube


• ⁠MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Get a signed copy of MAKE BELIEVE from
Blue Willow Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (write “REQUEST FOR
SIGNED COPY” in the order notes!)


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Join the waitlist for future
retreats! 


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find me @thedailyvictorian on
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RESOURCES 





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