The One Who Went From Conservative Baptist To Affirming Pastor

Sam: 00:00:18

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 recognise 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.

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. Hey friends, just a quick heads up before we dive in.

This episode with Colby is such a wonderful conversation and I really loved hearing his story and it's something that's quite personal to me in terms of the book that he wrote.

Sam: 00:01:52

But I do want to let you.

Sam: 00:01:53

Know that Colby uses quite a bit of religious language and biblical jargon as he shares from his own experience.

And as we talk about the good old fashioned clobber passages, if that kind of language feels activating or triggering for you, please go gently, skip if you need to, or take it slow, your well being matters most. Alright, let's get into it.

Sam: 00:02:17

Welcome Colby, thanks for joining me.

Colby: 00:02:20

Well, you're welcome, Sam. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for making the time zone work.

Sam: 00:02:26

Yeah, we are in opposite times at the moment and typically most people, it's very obvious as an Aussie host, people notice the accent difference. So where in the world are you? At the moment?

Colby: 00:02:39

I am. You know what I almost said San Diego, because that's where I've been for 12 years.

But I recently moved to Portland, Oregon, which, you know, depending on on who your primary demographic is, that literally could mean nothing. But I'm. Let's just say this, I'm on the west coast of the United States of America.

Sam: 00:02:58

Right. Okay. I do have a. A good chunk of U S followers and listeners so they will probably have far more context. Hello.

Colby: 00:03:07

Good junk. It's nice to. It's nice to meet you.

Sam: 00:03:10

Yes.

So, I mean, most people are going to know you as the author of Unclobber and as, like, the famous straight white male pastor who is queer affirming, who never really needed to be particularly. And so I absolutely want to talk about the book at some point, and I'm sure that that will come up.

But I like to start these episodes with a super duper vague question so that you can start.

Colby: 00:03:40

Yeah, this is super duper V. Just vague. It's not even super. Yeah, super D. I'm so excited for what qualifies for that level of vagueness. Let's go. I'm ready.

Sam: 00:03:52

And also because I like to start it wherever you feel necessary to start, for context, because as we know, context matters. So where does your story start?

Colby: 00:04:05

Wait, that's the super duper vague question?

Sam: 00:04:08

Yeah.

Colby: 00:04:10

it was a cold November night,: 1981

Like, what's June minus nine months? Okay.

Sam: 00:04:26

Anyway, I was like, that was very quick math. Unless you just had that ready to go.

Colby: 00:04:31

Yeah, no, I've thought about that night a lot. No, I'm just kidding. God, that got weird. You said, anything goes.

And I don't know if we were going to talk about parental conception of where we came from.

Sam: 00:04:41

I mean, to be fair, I've talked about weirder. So let's go with it.

Colby: 00:04:47

This is why people tune in. This is what they're here for. Okay, where does my story start? Here. Here's how I'll frame it. I'll say this. I was.

I often start off my events or my lectures and my sermons by saying, hi, my name is Colby, and I'm a recovering Baptist. And that usually gets a few chuckles from the crowd or a few people will walk out. At that point, I'm like, all right, cool. I have thinned the herd.

I know who I'm dealing with here. And so I start there because I was born and raised into a family that came from a long line of very conservative Baptist heritage.

And so growing up in our family, it wasn't uncommon for us to be in church 47 times a week.

You know, when you start adding up Bible studies and choir practices and youth groups and Sunday schools and all the different services and the elders meetings. Um, so that was my normal rhythm growing up. And that shifted a little bit when my parents Got a divorce when I was around 8, 9 or 10 years old.

And, and so my mom then took my brothers and me into a more kind of generic evangelical world.

Because this might come as a shock to your audience, but the, the Baptists back in the mid to late 80s weren't super well attuned to how to deal with divorced people. It was still, it was still a world of like, oh, no shame.

And so my mom, I think, just kind of felt really awkward being at the church that her and my dad had been at for so long. So we, we found our way into an evangelical world. And you know, in, in the book on Clobber, I kind of unpack this story a bit more.

But the, the highlights are, is that I, I ended up having an experience that, that led me to want to become a pastor. And because I had come from a Baptist evangelical world, that was just where I proceeded to go for my education and my training and became a pastor.

And so really while, while now I look back and I say I've been a pastor for 22ish years. I will say that the first decade of that was in conservative evangelical spaces.

And then the last dozen or so years have now been what you could call post evangelical or progressive Christian spaces.

And so there, there's a bit of situating me for the con, for the, for the sake of those who have no idea who I am, which is going to be 97% of the people listening to this podcast.

Sam: 00:07:18

I'm not sure it will be quite that high, but.

Colby: 00:07:21

93. 93. All right, 93.

Sam: 00:07:24

I mean, I think, actually, come to think of it, I, I think you might actually be the first actual living, breathing, active pasta that I've had on the show. I've had ex pastors and I've had people who.

Colby: 00:07:42

You'Ve evidently had dead, not.

Sam: 00:07:44

Dead pastors, but living breathing.

Colby: 00:07:46

I'm the first living, breathing. I've had a couple corpses, jar of ashes that one time just sat there and listened to me.

Sam: 00:07:52

I mean, I've had a couple of people where they probably would say that their role as a pastor was dead. So, like, it probably would work for those people. But, but I think that you might be the first active, like, current pastor for the, for the show.

So that is, that is a first.

And to be fair, as like a queer person who has been actively harmed by pastors and religious leaders in the past, I got to admit I was actually like shitting myself for this episode. So it is going to be a really interesting episode because I think I Think it's one that many people need to hear.

I think it's really easy to think that like when your reference point is really shitty, abusive, harmful pastors and religious leaders, that's who you think everybody is. And I, it took me a number of years to open the pages of Unclobber for that reason.

And then I did it and I was like, actually he seems pretty all right. Hence, hence the episode.

Colby: 00:08:58

We'll see that if that opinion maintains 40 minutes from now. I don't know.

Sam: 00:09:02

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so growing up in that space, and I mean in an Australian context, Baptist is a very like enormous spectrum for us.

So, okay, like we have like super duper fundamental. I just realized I like super duper a lot. Fundamental conservative Baptist all the way to like very progressive, open, open Baptist.

So what was, what was life like as a kid growing up in a religious space for you? And quite a heavy faith based space.

Colby: 00:09:37

Yeah, thanks for that. That contextualizing, Sam. Definitely. In America, Baptist is generally synonymous with conservative and fundamental.

The if there are communities that still have Baptist in their name and they are more liberal, open, progressive, they are certainly the exception that proves the rule. So yeah, growing up we weren't of the.

To quote Sam, we weren't super duper fundamental insofar as we weren't the kind of family where it's like no dancing, no cards, no rock and roll music. Right. You can certainly get to that end of the spectrum in many parts of our country for sure.

But for us it was a little more tamped down conservatism insofar as, you know, it was just purity. Culture was super big.

Although that really came up more post Baptist because that was when we kind of found the generic evangelical world around my teenage years. That was when that influence became real heavy.

But yeah, there was the expectation in our family that, that all of us kids would come to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and savior.

And that as a Baptist, the way that you do that is to say the sinner's prayer, which is, you know, no one would ever call it this, but let's just call it what it is.

It's viewed as a magical prayer that once you say it, it somehow secures your name on the Lamb's book of life, which therefore ensures that when you die, you go to heaven. Like that is essentially like what is taught and practiced for sure.

Even though people would have their rejoinders and their, and their, their explanations for a while. Well, it's not just that. It kind of is just that. It really Was the point. Everybody, people still is the point.

Like you need to, you need to say some prayer where you acknowledge that you are a sinner separated from God, but that you believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross as penal as payment for your sins and that you believe that he rose from the dead and then when you invite him into heart, you're saved.

Sam: 00:11:48

Yeah.

Colby: 00:11:49

And so that was kind of the, that was, that's the plan, that's the expectation.

And I, I fulfilled that as a five year old boy in the top bunk of the bunk beds, which I see now for those who, yeah, most people are listening to this, but behind me, those are not the actual bunk beds that I was saved in. Okay, I want to be clear. I don't think those bunk beds exist anymore, but there are currently bunk beds behind me where my kids sleep.

Sam: 00:12:14

I'm curious how you feel about like the, the pressure as a five year old to do that and now with context as a pastor and as a dad and like, I guess I'm obviously coming at that angle from an angle of like childhood development as well. And like a 5 year old, a 10 year old ability to comprehend what we are asking them to comprehend. How do you feel about that retrospectively?

Colby: 00:12:44

Yeah, I, it's a great question. And there are a couple different layers to that. There.

One of the things that you'll find with me, Sam, is that I, I, I, I try to be quick to understand those who are different from me. And we can unpack that later if you want, like why that is. But it's a quick move for me to try and begin there.

And so when I do that, especially in this context, I'm like, yeah, my parents were doing the best they could with what they had. Right.

And their, their, what was given to them was a way of seeing the world themselves, reality, God, existence as this as a setup where you are born into sin. Right. That is, that was what their, their, their preconceived assumptions were about what it meant to be a human.

And so for them, and this is true for many people, to, to know that your kid is born into a state of sin and if they don't make some confession of faith before whatever the age of accountability is, which, you know, varies depending on which denomination you're in, then yeah, of course there's like that internal, I can understand the, the, the, the motivation behind wanting your child, quote, unquote.

Of course you would, of course you would, you wouldn't want to be eternally separate, separated from your child and Then as you pointed out, from a childhood development point of view, though, it's a lot of pressure to put. Yes, it is. On a child. Those are some big stakes to give to a young human who doesn't have the capacity to digest said stakes. Right. If I'm.

If I can switch from metaphor to literal like I just did there stakes S T A K E S to S T E A K S, which I don't know why I had to explain all that. Some people knew immediately what I meant. Others were like, what did he mean? Oh, that's what he meant. And now he's still talking about it. Yes.

Now he's still talking about how he used stakes in two different way. So those are some big stakes to hand to small children that, quite frankly, they have no business holding that much emotional, psychological weight.

They just. They just don't. They just don't. I don't.

So I understand why the church I went to growing up taught the way they taught, why the Sunday school teachers presented things the way they did. Why my parents. I don't remember my parents putting pressure on me. Right. It wasn't one of those things.

But obviously I picked up from a very young age that this is something that I should probably do at some point.

Sam: 00:15:23

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you remember it?

Colby: 00:15:28

I. So, I mean, memory's weird, right? Memory. How much do we remember things versus how much do we remember telling the story of the thing?

Sam: 00:15:37

Yeah. I mean, some people have a very vivid recollection of the time that they, you know, quote unquote got saved.

Colby: 00:15:45

Yeah.

Sam: 00:15:45

And other people just have memories, like snippets of memories. I typically refer to, like, remembering and recalling as two different things, but.

Colby: 00:15:54

Yeah, I love that.

Sam: 00:15:56

Yeah.

Colby: 00:15:56

I. I feel like I do remember.

Sam: 00:16:03

Yeah.

Colby: 00:16:04

The. It being. Being late and I'd already been tucked in bed. What I don't remember is if it was my mom or my dad. That's interesting. Right. I.

I feel like it was only one of one of them because the other one, because another piece that I remember. So I remember being at night, I remember already being tucked in.

I remember calling down the hallway for one of the parental units to return, saying that I was ready to. To accept Jesus into my heart.

And so whichever parent that was walked me through that prayer, and then the reason why I can remember it was just a single prayer is because then either the next day or a few days later, that sing, that parent with the three kids drove to pick up my other parent from a church camp. So I don't know if it was my mom at a women's camp or my dad at a men's camp.

So I don't really remember that part of it, but I remember then picking them up and like, having a good news to share with the other parent that, that Colby got saved this weekend.

So I do remember that, which is, I would, I would wager is probably only one of a handful of memories that I have from my childhood because it was, it was pretty traumatic pointing back to the whole parents divorce and all that. So my memory's pretty locked away under some layers of, of trauma from those early years. But I do have some, some memory of that. Yeah.

Sam: 00:17:29

I'm curious, as you got a bit older and through your teenage years, who was God to you and like, how did you relate to them as a divine being as a young person?

Colby: 00:17:42

Well, I noticed your divine pronoun of them and I would say I did not relate to them. Right. I related to him.

Right, yeah, clearly now I would, I would speak differently, but, but that was certainly part of the tradition I grew up in, is God was male.

Sam: 00:17:57

Yeah.

Colby: 00:17:59

Yeah. So I had that. I made that. I made that choice. Did I make that choice as a five year old? Sure, yes and no. Like, yeah.

I don't know how much of that is cultural conditioning, how much of that is actually autonomy. Some strange cocktail of both. And, but, but then going to church, you know, after that was really just a thing that we did.

I wouldn't say I necessarily had any kind of connection to or relationship with.

Like, being a Christian was just something that I knew that I was, but it wasn't something I did per se, outside of the obligatory attending with the familial expectations.

And the reason why put it that way is because the moment that everything changed for me was when I was entering my senior year of high school, so I was about 17 years old at this point, and I opted to go on a, a youth group event for a week down in the beaches of Southern California, where the goal of the, the week long event was to train high school students in the art of apologetics, which if people don't know what that is, that's like a fancy religious word that means how to prove that I'm right. Wrong. Yeah. So, so, like, they would train you in the morning. We go in these classrooms and they would train you in the morning.

And again, the whole impetus was getting people to say this magical prayer. Right. And so they would train us and how to like, spin every conversation into get it. Like basically getting people to say this Prayer.

And then they would send us out in the afternoons, two by two, to go throughout the beaches of Southern California and just interrupt random people, people who've been, by the way, saving up money all year long to fly across the country to go to the world famous Huntington Beach. And then here comes two punk ass teenage kids that walk up and say, excuse me, sir, can I ask you a question? And that person should have said no.

They should have just ran the other way like, no, I'm on vacation. My family, screw off.

Sam: 00:20:03

Yeah.

Colby: 00:20:03

You know, these people are nice and like, okay. And then I was trained to ask, if you were to die right now, like, which is just a great way to start any conversation.

You were to die right now, do you know where you would go? And the hope as what you know is that they would say no. And then I could like, lead them in a prayer of salvation. Right.

And so I get back to the room that I'm staying at that first afternoon, going out trying to save souls on the beach, which I saved zero souls that day, I'm proud to report. Get back to my. The room that I'm staying at, and I lay down on the bed in the room and I just start weeping, start like sobbing.

Which was a super new experience for me. I mean, now in my life as a 42 year old person who's been in therapy for a dozen years and all sorts of life, like, I'm an easy cry at this point.

But back then I don't know that I'd. Yeah, I don't know that I'd really ever cried. Maybe I, maybe I did. But like, this was a new experience for me.

And in that moment, Sam, I can remember God saying to me, not like in an audible sense, but in the kind where you're like, oh, there's, there's someone speaking to me right now. And God's like, colby, this is a chance for you to, to choose one of two paths for your life.

You can keep going on the path that you're on, where life's just all about you and, you know, you just kind of do your own thing, whatever, or you can make your life about something bigger and more meaningful and make it about me. And that was the framework of that. I understood it at the time.

And what I realized looking back on is the reason why I think I was so utterly broken that afternoon is because I had been exposed to be a kind of fraud out there on the beaches of Southern California. Like I was out there telling people, have a relationship with God through Jesus. When I really had no idea what that meant for myself. Yeah.

And that that sort of dis. Integration in my spirit broke me.

And so that was the moment where I, like, really did choose to, you know, to use the language that I used, would have used back then to give my life to God. That's when I, A couple days later at that conference, I felt the calling on my life to go into ministry and become a pastor.

And so that's a bit of the contrast of, like, I don't know that God meant much to me prior to that other than just I knew that I was a Christian because I said the prayer. Yeah.

Sam: 00:22:32

I'm curious at that moment where you're sort of being presented with two paths. Why.

I mean, aside from the obvious reasons as to why a lot of people become people of faith of any kind, but why was your path where it was just about who you were as a human and as a person? Why were you not enough in that moment?

Colby: 00:22:58

Oh, well, I mean, if. If I look at, if I look at it now with, with my understanding of capital R reality now, I certainly was enough. Right. So, I mean, the, The.

The framework that I was working with was flawed.

Sam: 00:23:14

Yeah.

Colby: 00:23:15

In many. In, in many regards, the framework I was working with was flawed. So the framework I was working with was, no, I am a fallen, broken sinner.

And sure, that might have gotten fixed by saying the prayer of salvation when I was five years old, but I was basically playing pretend ever since then. And I, I can. So it's real interesting for me to reflect on this now. What are we talking, 35 years? No, sorry, now my math sucked.

All of a sudden, 25 years later, I'm not that old. Good gravy. 25 years later.

It's interesting to ref on if, If I continue to believe that that was truly God speaking to me that afternoon, which I'm open to the suggestion that it wasn't, that it was all just convoluted in my head. Right, sure, that's possible.

But if I continue to operate under the belief that it was God, whatever that might mean communicating with me that day, I have no problem with a perception of the divine, where God is kind of restricted to only be able to meet people where they were at, where. Where we're at, using a kind of language and framework that we currently understand. I mean, this. We see this in scripture constantly.

I mean, the whole trajectory of the Bible. One of the trajectories of the Bible is this unfolding revelation and. Well, I shouldn't use that word that's probably goes in a different direction.

This unfolding awareness and expansion of comprehension into, into the divine.

Like the earliest conceptions of who God was in the Old Testament are remarkably similar to how all the other gods of that time were, which was pretty violent and angry and trib. I mean the earliest Israelite people were just like everyone else on the planet, which is to say they were all polytheists.

There was the assumption that of course everybody has their own God.

This is why, this is why so much of the Old Testament is phrased as I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God is the most high God, you shall have no other gods before me. Right. The assumption is, yeah, there's lots of gods, but as Yahweh, I'd like to be the number one, you know, so the original.

So anyway, what I'm saying is, is if we are to, we can glean all sorts of things from scripture.

But one of the things I think that is really clear is that there is this unfolding, this progressive awareness to where it paints a picture of a kind of God who meets people where they're at. And I know that was a really long way just to get back to where I started.

But I do think, Sam, that to answer your question, the materials I was given were kind of flawed to begin with. Where I was told I wasn't enough. Clearly I know now and if I were to speak to 17 year old kids, I'd be like, you are enough.

But in that moment, I think what God was working with was someone who saw and this is, this is true about me, that my life, I was just focused on me. It was just all about me, me, me. Very egocentric, which is pretty typical for teenagers anyway, right?

Yeah, there's not even that big of a deal there. But, but, but there was the contrast for me was where did I want to point my life's aim? And I think it's okay.

And this is where I look back and be like, this is why I can still, with some earnestness say I think it was God.

I think it's okay to say, yeah, there's a way to live life where you set your own interests as the aim and that will lead to a kind of selfishness and ego driven isolation, loneliness, etc, or there's a way to set something else, something bigger, more, more true, more real, more noble, more beautiful. These are all different synonyms for God to set that as your aim and that'll take you on a different kind of life path.

Sam: 00:27:32

What was it like for you to, I guess, go on the path of becoming the fully fledged actual pastor. Because I, I have met quite a few along this journey of.

That's where things can fall apart for a lot of people when they get to the point of actually pulling apart doctrine and scripture and interacting with other people who might be just as fundamental and as conservative as they are, but they might be a different kind of fundamental and a different kind of conservative that they were not raised with. So what was that like for you to sort of start broadening the knowledge and the horizons of that space?

Colby: 00:28:16

Yeah, two things. One, the broadening didn't come till after my. After I got my college experience of getting my degree in pastoral ministry. Right.

So first I had to decide I wanted to be a pastor, change plans from going into graphic design in college to then going into ministry and study to become a pastor. And so those four years wasn't a broadening yet. It was more, it was a narrowing. It was like a refining of the, the, The Baptist view of things.

And in many ways, Sam, I thrived in that environment. I always did well in school, not because I'm smart necessarily, but because the modality of Western education works well for my temperament.

I don't mind sitting in a classroom for hours on end listening to lectures and taking notes and, And I'm good at tests and I can write essays. Right. So I just, I thrive in that sort of learning environment. I also happen to fit a number of different.

Check off different boxes for these are the kinds of things that we like in our leaders. You are male. Check. You are straight. Check. You are.

You have the relative body type and physique and facial structures that in our time and place and culture map onto. Oh, we like the way that looks. Check. So therefore you are now trustworthy just because you have like, just because of how you were born. Right. You.

And then you add on to that, like, personality. You can, you can be charming and people tend to. To like you. You have leadership qualities. You have communication skills. Right.

So I had all these things that just kind of worked in my favor.

Sam: 00:30:10

Yeah, you're the textbook pastor.

Colby: 00:30:13

Yes. In many ways, just sort of fit kind of the textbook pastor.

Now there's, there's a cynical way to look at that, and then there's a, a charitable way to look at that. And it's probably some combination of the.

Sam: 00:30:25

Of two.

Colby: 00:30:25

Right. There's probably people that fit that mold that maybe in hindsight shouldn't have taken that career path or been given those roles.

And there might be some people out there that think that about me as well. I. I have no illusion that I have nailed my job as you know, which is to say done really well being a pastor in every, every context.

But I do think that it was a combination of oh yeah, this is. This career path works really well for me and I'm good at it and I like it. Right. So those.

My time in college and then working at the first church after college was. It was a good fit. It was a good fit for that system. It was a good fit for that world.

But then when I started the broadening of the mind about a year or so after graduating college, that's when I started to become the new wine that did not fit in the old wine skins.

Sam: 00:31:23

Yeah. Yeah. Did you? I. Before we get to that broadening, I want to ask because I obviously don't know what. Because you've mentioned you have siblings.

I don't know what they do. But did you become the golden child by becoming the pastor?

Colby: 00:31:38

Oh, no, I just further cemented my status as golden child.

Sam: 00:31:42

Oh, Frost.

Colby: 00:31:43

Yeah, I, I kind of had always been right. I was the middle child, but I often functioned as the, as the, as the oldest child in terms of like birth order kind of patterns and archetypes.

And yeah, I just, it. It was what it was. I was successful in most every endeavor and I just was a kind of golden child in most efforts. So that.

So then sure, becoming a pastor in sort of the larger network of Martin family extension was certainly like, yeah, that makes sense. And now you're elevated even more, which has caused that then to unfortunately go the other direction as a result of.

Sam: 00:32:29

Yeah, I mean the reason I wanted to ask because I were like, oh, we can ask the comparison question a little bit later I suspect in the conversation.

But I, I do want to ask as well because you mentioned purity culture and typically the people who I have of on my show, Purity culture really, really sucks for those people. You know, women, queer people. And so what was purity culture like for straight white male where it's not. Not harmful, but is the least harmful in.

In terms of communities.

Colby: 00:33:09

Sure, sure, sure. I like that you like that you pointed that out. I.

It certainly there's a reasonable argument to be made that someone like me would us would the least harmed out of that sort of system for sure. And I think even reflecting on my own story can it can attest to that because. Because I can talk about the.

The years of sort of just internalized shame and discomfort with my body that I carried and still carry in Some ways to this day, and that's true, but I'm absolutely hyper aware of how. Then just scale that up, you know, for, For. For anyone who sort of, you know, as you begin to add on the layers of those who don't have the kinds of.

Of privileged identity markers that I. That I do. What was it like? For me, I took it serious. Right? It was something that I'm like, okay, if that is what. If that's how a Christian.

If that's what it means to honor God with my life and my body, then that's. Then that's what I'll do. And so I did the, you know, the, The. The.

The classic save myself for marriage sort of thing, but in, you know, good evangelical fashion, you kind of. You found a way to do everything but. Right. And I just. You figure out where's the line? Where's the line? That's where it is. All right.

I'm gonna come right up next to that line because I still want to. I still want to get an A in very. In many ways, it matched my approach to school, which is how much work do I have to do to get a 90 in this class?

I don't need an A plus. I just need an A. So where, like, what's the minimum required to still be successful at this? Right.

So I took that even into that sort of purity culture. But, yeah, but then I think where it really showed up was in the first decade or so with my. With my first wife. First wife. I don't have a second wife.

My previous wife, my former wife. I don't know. I'm still new and like, how do I talk?

Sam: 00:35:28

OG Wife?

Colby: 00:35:29

Oh, gee. I've been divorced for like two and a half, almost three years now, and I still don't always know how to talk about, like.

Like, what's the word to use? The mother of my children. You know, our first 10 years together there was. It was clunky.

It was clunky because we were just operating out roles that were handed to us about assumptions of what sex should look like and feel like. And. And neither one of us really had a clear grasp on how to.

On that we should think beyond that, let alone how to start to think beyond some of that. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm still. I almost said I'm still working through some of the. The body shame stuff.

But you know what's interesting, Sam, or at least it's interesting to me, is I'm not absolving evangelical slash purity culture of anything that. That's all the charges that they're guilty of are well deserved. And if I were to use, like, my own sort of. My.

My ex wife and I did not raise our kids with any purity culture at all. Like, we swung the. If anything, we swung the pendulum too far the other way. Right. Which. Which is normal, I think, to do.

But that didn't immediately, as I observed my children and have observed them grow up, that didn't solve issues with, like, body shame issue stuff. It just didn't. So, like, removing. That doesn't immediately have people be comfortable in and with their bodies. Yeah.

You know, like, one example I might give is I, growing up, I always felt super uncomfortable taking my shirt off. Like, I hated playing shirts and skins basketball. Never felt comfortable in the locker room in high school.

Just all of that just felt really foreign and uncomfortable to me. And I didn't like it and tried to avoid it as much as possible.

And I remember in my early years of, you know, parenting and starting to have kids, thinking, well, I want.

I bet that's because my dad wasn't around growing up, and so I didn't have, like, a male figure that modeled taking your shirt off in the summer because it's hot. I'm gonna go mow the yard now, and I'm gonna be shirtless. And it's fine. It's fine. Right? There's no. There's no. So I. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna make sure when my kids are little, I'm gonna just be comfortable being shirtless and just body positivity and all that. And it didn't. It didn't. It didn't work the way that I thought it would work.

Sam: 00:38:09

Yeah.

Colby: 00:38:10

You know what I mean? Like, it didn't. That. That alone wasn't a solve for then. Oh, now all of my children have super comfortability in their. In their body. So.

And there's obviously many other factors to that, but I do sometimes, at least in my own narrative, and I sometimes wonder about other people's narratives. If we in our efforts to.

To rightly critique and pull apart purity culture, if we maybe have other things that we sort of have been smuggled or lumped in there that maybe don't really have anything to do with purity culture, but we kind of attack them because that's a convenient container that makes sense to put it in.

Sam: 00:38:52

Yeah.

I mean, I think when I talk about purity culture with people, and particularly when I'm unpacking purity culture in therapy, I go, we've Got to look at the ideology behind purity culture, not just all of the facets of it. And the ideology behind purity culture is patriarchy and control. And we see that in like literally every part of society. It's not religion specific.

There is, you know, condition like secular conditioning around, you know, body image and sex and shame and relationships and all of that sort of thing. They're all stemming from one place typically. So it's unpacking, I guess, the ideology that fueled that purity culture timeline.

Colby: 00:39:39

That's good.

Yeah, it's almost like the, some of the things you mentioned are like the, the, the stanky ingredients that purity culture like built a cake using some of these. Thank you ingredients.

And if we just attack the cake as like the problem, then we're, we're missing out on the fact that while those ingredients are often used in other things too and, and are, are negatively affecting other, other baked goods.

Sam: 00:40:07

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so kickstart the conversation wherever you feel like it is necessary to start.

In terms of the biggest thing that I did not know about your story when I read Unclobber was that usually when I talk to pastors or ex pastors or parents who have gone from non affirming to affirming or anywhere in that space, it's usually because of someone. Right.

There's usually a relationship or a child or a friend or someone in their life who has come out and they've gone, oh shit, I need to rethink my theology and my beliefs around this. That was not the case for you. Right. So I would consider that fairly rare, I imagine.

And so why was this important for you to, to look at and to unpack and to go, this is not okay.

Colby: 00:41:05

Yeah, Real quick though. Can I, can I say something real quick to like you? You just, just beautifully described what is. I affirm your experience.

What is the, the dominant narrative, the most common story. Right. Is exactly what you laid out.

Where people are re evaluate their thinking on a particular matter because they are met with someone in relationship that sort of forces them to rethink that. What I want to say about that is I have found in my work that, that sometimes can get minimized or dismissed by non affirming Christians.

And what they'll say is, oh, you only became affirming because your child came out. And so they're like dismissing that as their path. And what I want to say to them oftentimes is, yeah, what did you want them to do?

Like, and obviously I know what they wanted them to do, which was to shame their child.

And sort of of try to, you know, obviously we know what that looks like, but the fact that people's experience when that is what they do gets dismissed as though they should have done something different for me is, Is such a, such a tragedy, like for those out there who, who. Their response to their child or their brother or their sister or their aunt or their co.

Or whatever was to be like, oh, this person whom I know and I know they're a. A gracious, kind, beautiful human, right?

When you read sometimes Romans, chapter one, and which is often seen as one of Paul's opinions about homosexuality, and it's not, but when you read that, you read about people who have turned their back on God and God's given them over to the due penalty of their heir, and people who have worshiped the created instead of the Creator, and you just read about these humans who. The description is appalling. And you're like, but that doesn't def. That doesn't fit my neighbor Deb. Like, I know Deb, and that's not Deb.

And just because Deb told me she's a lesbian, like, you know, you know what I mean? So people, this is what we want people to do, is we want people to be changed when they are met with other people's stories.

So it's a, It's a beautiful move of empathy and understanding and compassion.

So I just wanted to say to anyone, if they've ever had their story dismissed or, or cast aside because someone says, will you only change your mind because of. It's like, yeah, that's exactly what you would want a parent to do in that situation.

Okay, so your question to me was like, I guess I would answer by this similar to how I said that I was well mapped for being a kind of pastor, and I was well mapped for being a good student. And, you know, if this is what, what good Christian does in the world of purity culture, then that's what I'll do.

For me, ultimately, when I look at what caused me to reevaluate my position on the clobber passages, it was rooted from the same place, which is if I'm going to say that I believe a thing, I damn well better know what I actually believe about a thing. So for me to, to audit and to examine the Bible and homosexuality was me seeking theological integrity.

Because this was a topic that prior to when I started to study it, I had never given it much thought. I just always started taking the party line. Or I sort of read through 1 Corinthians 6:9. Or read through 1. Romans 1:26, 27. Like, oh, yeah, okay.

I guess homosexuality is a sin and it's not God's design. Okay, moving on. Right. Just never given it much of a thought. And then I can remember shortly after college, I was working at a church, and I was.

I was trying to get licensed in the denomination so that I could be an official pastor to marry and bury people. And. And the final step in that process was to go through an interview with, like, a panel of seasoned ministers.

And during my lunch break one afternoon, I'm walking through the church lobby and I'm studying the. The policies and procedures manual for those denomination. Just absolutely riveting reading, if anybody out there is interested. And so I.

I'll never forget this, Sam. I'm reading this Policies and procedures, and I get to this line that says, practicing homosexuals cannot be members of the church.

And I remember thinking, practicing, but what if they're, like, really good at it? Okay, that's not what I thought. But practicing homosexuals. I remember thinking, okay, I get it insofar as the theology and the doctrine.

So my head understood, yeah, being gay is a sin, et cetera, et cetera. But suddenly I noticed that my heart was not in the same place that my head was. Meaning, I could not comprehend that.

Like, that was the natural outcome of that kind of theology. Like, sure, sure, they're being gay is a sin, but that's how we treat them. They can't be members of a church. Wait a minute.

And then I kept reading about how they couldn't be elders, they couldn't be pastors, they couldn't work in children's ministry. And I just got this growing sense of disconnect between my head and my heart is how I talk about it in unclobber.

And that was the first time that I noticed that. That there was a disconnect. And so that. That. That sense of my head and my heart being out of alignment, it hung with me for the next couple years.

It wasn't something like, I wish I could say. And then immediately after my lunch break, I went to my office and started studying the clobber passages. No, it wasn't.

You know, it's just not how it went. It was. It wasn't until a couple years later, and to this day, I can't really remember what ultimately pushed me to, like, revisit the topic.

omething that happened around: 2009

I didn't know I was open to the possibility that my head would remain convinced in the historical position. And then I'd be like, sorry, Hart, I know, I know it sucks, but you got to find a way to get on board.

Which I do think, and I'd be curious from actually your thoughts on this, that move of keeping the head here and then forcing the heart to kind of get in line with it. I think that's often what is behind the, the saying love the sinner, hate the sin, which is super problematic in its own right.

But I think what that's, what that's articulating is people who, they know there's not, there's not an alignment there that doesn't, doesn't feel good for them to live out this really crappy belief. But they're, they're committed to the crappy belief so they find a way to like force my heart into it.

So I didn't know if that's where it was going to go or. Spoiler alert for those who haven't read on clobber. It turned out that my, that, that when I put these.

And if people don't know, by the way, the term clobber passage is a, is a term that was given to the six verses in the Bible that historically have been misused, I say misused to justify discrimination against primarily gay and lesbian people. Been used to clobber them in the past. Right. That's where that comes from. And so I put all of my training in, into the study of these. Right.

Which is to say put them in their historical context, their literary context, their cultural context, try to understand the original language and the original intent of the author and how the original audience would have understood all the tools of my trade. I put into these.

And after a pretty exhaustive and extensive time of pouring myself into the subject, I came out on the other side being, well, we've got this wrong. The church has gotten this topic wrong. The Bible does not say what we've always been told that it says.

So fortunately my heart was the one that got to remain fixed on my head. It was the one that moved.

Sam: 00:49:33

Yeah, I, I imagine you sort of said spoiler for those who haven't read the book.

But I am imagining that unless they're a first time listener, I can't imagine that they're going to think that as a queer host and person, I'm going to have a non affirming surprise all.

Colby: 00:49:49

Of a sudden, 40 minutes into the episode and now this is why you are a sinner. Let us begin.

Sam: 00:49:57

But I guess, I mean, as you're sort of talking about that head and heart situation, I'm sort of just going like, that's just like cognitive dissonance. Right. It's like something is not lining up here. Like I feel this and I'm feeling this.

And you know, cognitive dissonance is not exclusive to queer people. Obviously. We experience it quite like there is always like a head and heart separation even in that process as well.

Particularly if you grow up in that space where you are told that the cobber passages are, you know, the right way to live.

And so I guess the reason that I asked that is because anytime somebody tries to find alignment where there is cognitive dissonance, that likely comes with a cost.

And typically in the situation where I sort of mentioned if there is a family member or a loved one or something like that, it's easy for those people to go. It's worth the cost that it might, in terms of what I might lose as a result of, of having this stance.

And I know because I have read unclobber, it did cost you as well. And so I guess I want to know why it was worth the cost for you as somebody who didn't really have a stake in the game.

Colby: 00:51:21

Yeah.

And, and the cost that Sam is referring to is that within a couple months after internally coming to the conclusion that we'd gotten this topic wrong and so becoming personally an affirming Christian within a couple months after that, maybe a year.

,: 2011

If you're going to, if you're going to make any sort of opinion, go to Facebook to do it.

Sam: 00:52:10

I mean, to be fair, as I read it, I was like, oh, that's not going to go well, Colby. Why?

Colby: 00:52:15

Listen, I, there, there's again, hindsight is, is you have, you have really acute vision. You can see things real clearly in hindsight. But at the time it was, it was a little bit, well, I was a lot naive. I don't know.

There's a lot of things going on There. Right.

So in the moment I, there was a part of me, and I don't know how big this part was, but the part that led me to post on Facebook, which I did, I posted on Facebook that night just a link to an article announcing the repeal. And I put six words, I put, I'm glad this day finally came.

So there's a part of me that thought that that would be a shared sentiment within the larger Christian community, certainly within the church that I was working at.

Now, where the naivete is, or maybe just straight up ignorance, is that I was working in a very conservative city, at a very conservative evangelical maker, a church that clearly stood on the side of non affirming. Not that the church ever talked about it. The church really practiced don't ask, don't tell.

Like there was no policy about how, how I'm sure now they force their pastors and staff to sign statements of affirming traditional views on marriage and whatnot. But back then that did not exist at all.

But it was just sort of assumed and implied like most evangelicals back in that day, like, yeah, of course you're against homosexuality and same sex marriage, but also our church was really committed to this idea that within the kingdom of God there's no room for discrimination. Now again, it's not that I would have thought that, that we would have included gay people into that, but just this for me, don't ask, don't tell.

And this goes back to my kind of ignorance on what the policy was and what it stood for and how much it represented. I just kind of thought, oh, that's a discriminatory practice. That's about as far as I thought about it. It. Yeah.

And so my celebration of it ending was just like, this is cool. This thing that used to like be discrimination is no longer existing. And that's great.

What I was sort of naive about was how it was like a dog whistle to the church that, wow, something's up with Pastor Colby. Like clearly that was me tipping my hat to that. I felt differently now about the topic of queer people.

But I also do think as I look back on it years now with, with some reflection I can, I'm. I'm open to the possibility that there was an internal part of me that was kind of like sabotaging.

Like again, I'd found myself out of alignment once again. Right.

So you have the 17 year old Colby, who was a fraud, pretending to be a Christian, but he wasn't, and that that cracked his spirit and made him weep on a bed There was the lack of alignment with my head and my heart on this topic.

And then once I got that lined up, but now I was in a new state of not alignment, which was my internal convictions and my external reality were not in alignment.

And I, and I do think that it's possible that there was a part of me, there was a part of like this internal soul that was like, bro, we can't keep, keep going like this, you know, so like we're gonna, we're gonna maybe help move this story along a little bit. I don't know, it certainly wasn't conscious.

But I'm open to the, I'm open to the Freudian suggestion that the unconscious was maybe working the keyboard that night a little more than I was aware of as far.

And so what happened then is that led to an emergency board meeting a couple days after that Facebook post where I came out of the theological closet to the elders of the church, and then two days later they handed me my letter of termination, effective immediately. And so that was the cost that you referenced a few moments ago is that lost my job, lost our home, lost our community, lost.

You know, I haven't dug out of the financial hole in 12 years that, since that happened or however long ago it's been. So it's not that I was unaware of the cost.

I was very certain that going into that meeting, if I told those guys the truth, that I would, it would, it would cost me my job.

This is when I go back to though, like that, that call from God, to the seventeen year old version of me, to, to, to put out in front of me as my North Star, living for something greater. Truth, goodness, beauty, peace, joy, hope. Like, I take that seriously and I take Jesus's teaching seriously.

And when he says things like what does it profit a person to gain the world but forfeit their soul like that, that means something to me. What good would it have done to me, Sam, to, to kind of soft pedal or even lie my way through that meeting just to keep my job.

Like my soul would have, would have withered. And that is not a lot. That's not a life I want. It's not a life I don't think anybody should want.

This is part of why I do the work I do now is because there's so many queer people out there that are having to make similar kinds of calculations.

And, and it's, it's tragic how many people have to continue to live in a state of shame or being in the closet and their souls are just withering and why I also can be so scathing towards pastors who I know themselves are affirming, and yet they keep chasing that paycheck and they keep chasing that larger church. But for me, just. I couldn't. I did not want to live that lie. Like, I take.

I don't know, I take it seriously to be a person of integrity and live out my values. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to say it other than that. Like, I just. I. For me, it really wasn't an option. I could not.

I could not imagine a version of me going into that meeting saying anything other than the full truth.

Sam: 00:58:34

You sort of alluded to it a little earlier, which is, what impact did it have on your family and your relationships with. With, like, your immediate family, but also extended family, parents and. And things like that?

Colby: 00:58:48

Yeah. A few years prior to changing my mind on the topic of inclusion is when I really started auditing a lot of my evangelical heritage.

And so by time I reached the topic of queer inclusion, I'd already kind of rethought a lot of my thoughts on things like the inerrancy of scripture or hell as an eternal conscious torment for people who didn't have that magic ticket to heaven. So there's other things that I already kind of worked through and along that journey had.

Had stirred up a lot of fear within some of my family members as I was distancing myself, certainly from the Baptist world and even more so from the evangelical world. So by time I. I became affirming, though there were some family members that had. Had come along with or had. Had traveled a similar journey.

Whether or not I played a part of that, I don't know. They'd have to tell you that on their own time.

affirming of queer people in: 2011

But in their mind, they're like. But also, yeah, that's. Of course you got fired for that because you're a false prophet. And some of that still exists within my larger family.

But, yeah, even with those kind of. Since my divorce, I don't know, I've just drifted farther and farther from a lot of my family, which is sad. I say it while I'm laughing.

It's not funny. But this is how I deal with the discomfort as I laugh through it. So, yeah, I don't know.

I think for some of my family, I'm still kind of the black sheep. I went from the golden child to the black sheep. And yeah, I'm, I'm okay with that.

Sam: 01:00:59

I mean, I've got to ask, because I was thinking it while I was reading the book, which is, why stay a pastor.

Colby: 01:01:07

Yeah, you're not wrong. That's a completely reasonable question to ask.

Yeah, I've been given multiple off ramps over the years to like, get out of the game and, and compelling reasons why. Like, no, seriously, see, there is a Starbucks at this exit and you've had to pee for 37 minutes. Like, take the exit, bro.

But yes, lots of off ramps have been given to me for getting out of this game.

But I don't know, Sam, I go back to that and there were certainly times where I thought, I, I remember when I did get fired thinking, oh, maybe I was wrong at that. That as a 17 year old, maybe I, maybe I misunderstood God. Because at that time I couldn't see how I could be a pastor.

And affirming, like, I hadn't yet my world hadn't expanded enough to know that there were traditions and denominations and, and communities out there that could hold both of these things in tandem. And certainly now I do know, and I've been doing that for the last 12 years. But at that time I was like, oh, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe this isn't what God called me to. But at the end of the day, why am I still a pastor? I can't escape this sense that being a human is really freaking hard. Existing is really hard.

It's full of suffering and loneliness and pain and chaos and confusion. And yet there are some ways to approach life that seem to provide a kind of resilience, stability, security, peace.

I can even quote Paul a piece that, like, doesn't make sense. It surpasses understanding.

Like, in the midst of this constantly changing, full of disappointment existence that we call life, there is a way to go through it where we can be grounded in a deeper truth that we are okay. That we are actually more than okay. We are loved. We are love.

And for me, one of the consistent paths that I've found to that kind of way of, of being a human is through the life and the teachings of Jesus.

And so because that has been such a powerful, stabilizing, transformative component of my own life, I choose to continue to throw myself in that direction and believe that there is value and meaning and purpose and goodness in Helping in whatever way I can. Others also find a kind of stability and security and grounding and meaning and purpose in their life.

So you know, to the extent that I can be used to help remove shame and replace it with love for people, I just keep saying here I am like, I can't think of a higher. I can't think of a better way to spend this one life that I got.

Sam: 01:04:25

Yeah, I'm gonna ask a double barreled question which I've realized over time is kind of my thing, but as long.

Colby: 01:04:33

As it's not a super duper question, I can't handle that. But just a regular double barrel.

Sam: 01:04:38

Yes, but.

And I don't actually remember whether you talked about this towards the end of the book or not, but I know or I'm sort of assuming in some way that simultaneously you have probably met queer people who are both. Both on one hand terrified of you because you in you are like I guess the manifestation of people who have significantly harmed them.

But also there might be another group of people where you are the first queer affirming, potentially safer pastor that they have come across. And what is it like for you to be both of those things for people?

Colby: 01:05:22

Well, to be the latter is. Is a gift that I do not take for granted ever.

Like it is just is the, the deepest joy of my life to be able to, to be, to fill that space which we'll talk more about in a second to the former. What's it like to be that? Totally understandable.

And I think I can say this with full honesty that there's zero part of me that would ever want to convince anyone that no, no, no, I'm one of the good ones, like, it's okay, let down your guard for me. You can trust me. Like, no.

If someone wants nothing to do with me or my work or anything that I have to offer because I represent and, and look like and reflect and remind them or trigger them of all. Yeah, totally get it. It. Great. Let me. Well I was gonna say let me.

Let me offer you multiple other resources might be helpful, but they might not even take that, which again is fine. Like. Yeah, I don't begrudge that is my point. You know what I mean? Like I just say that makes sense. Totally cool.

But to go back to then what it's like to the other. This is. And I didn't, I didn't say anything about this in On Clobber because the first edition because I hadn't experienced it yet.

But if anybody has the second edition, there's an afterword where I have a section about what it's like reflecting on now, the book having been out for like, eight years at that point or whatever. And that was when I got the, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't expect. Or I'll say it like this.

What I'm about to tell you as, like, the most common feedback that I get from the book is not at all what I thought. I didn't even expect it at all, let alone it being like, number one, top of the Family Feud board list.

Like, the thing that, that I hear more than anything else, which is precisely what you just said. A queer person who says to me some version of the following. They say, colby, I need to tell you that your, your book has.

The reason why it's meant so much to me is because you are a straight male pastor. And they'll say, I have. I've read so many other books by, by gay and lesbian authors, and they're great, is what they say. They're. They're great.

But I can't help, as I'm reading them get it out of the back of my mind that, like, yeah, but you're just saying this to sort of justify yourself or whatever. And they say, but your work, because it comes at it with this, having no dog in the fight. Like, it, it, what it does, Sam, is it as.

What I've discovered is that people tell me is that it lands differently for them in their heart and their mind and their body, that it allows these things to land in a different way. And I think, and you can certainly speak to this better than I can.

But part of why talk therapy works when it works for people is when you're sharing with your therapist some of your. The past trauma that you've been through.

And as you're telling the stories, you're reactivating your nervous system, you're putting your body back in that sort of activated space. But ideally, your therapist reflects back to you. Compassion, non judgment, loving kindness.

And so the brain actually gets to wire new pathways to connect a new emotional experience to these stories. So that, that's kind of how the healing from our past trauma begins to happen.

And I think there's something about hearing the same kind of person, straight white dude, who sort of put the harm in the hearts of queer people. Having that same person, like, replace it with love and compassion has been really powerful. Not for everybody. Again, not for everybody.

There are those for whom that's absolutely not there, not their experience. But I have been overwhelmed with how often I I hear that from people and I just.

What a gift, what an absolute gift to be able to, to, to be that and do that for people.

Sam: 01:09:40

Yeah.

And I think also for, you know, for people who are listening, particularly for queer people who are listening who have not read your book for a various number of reasons because it might trigger them in any way that can also like give that permission to evolve over time.

Because like I said, I only just read Unclub Art this year because it, you know, it was not a book that I was fair touching with a ten foot pole, honestly.

Only because I was like, I'm not listening to another straight white male for like, for guidance and for support and for like knowledge, despite the fact that my own therapist as a straight white male. But like, that's beside the point.

But it was like, I guess I say that to sort of say like give yourself permission for that to evolve as well over time. And it is. Yeah, I mean the book is full of like biblical language. Obviously it is not the type of book that I thought it was going into it.

And so I think I would also stress that. And there's a lot of humanness in what is a theological book as well.

And I think that's what I appreciated about Unclobber is that, yeah, you didn't have a stake in the game and yet you did it anyway and it cost you.

And it probably cost you in ways that you don't share publicly and that you don't write in the book, I imagine, because that's my therapist brain going online. But, but you could have just been like every other pastor, which is why I asked the cost, the what, why was it worth it Type of question.

Because you could have been like, you know, a significant number of other pastors and not done the work or just continued to keep it quiet and, and not share that. But you didn't. And you know, the thing about allyship is that we need it and we don't want to put it all on queer people to do that advocacy.

I am curious about the extended edition and why it was important for you to acknowledge.

Because as I was reading on Clover, I was like, there's something missing here which is that the harm that these passages, whilst not, you know, exclusively can still do to trans, non binary and gender diverse folk and why it was important for you years later to go, oh, this needs to go in, this needs to be acknowledged.

Colby: 01:12:12

k in, well, certainly back in: 2011

Or: 2010

A critical mass tipping point yet. It just wasn't. It was. It was in the water. Right. But it really wasn't something that was certainly compared to what it is today. Right. So there was so.

And, and so that's. One response is it just really wasn't on as many people's radars, myself included. 2. I did want to keep the scope very narrow.

And that was a decision that me and the editor made, which was. Which is why I don't talk about Adam and Eve. I don't talk about, you know, Genesis and Fall of Creation.

Like there's a lot of things I don't talk about. Which fun fact that'll be in book number three coming out next year. And so didn't.

So I really kept the scope very narrow, which is Bible and homosexuality. Like just the clobber passages. What are the things that have been used just that seem to talk about same sex sex acts? Like I.

So I had to have a narrow scope. Right. So there, there just wasn't. We had to be to pick and choose what to address with that.

But by time the second edition came out, we had as a culture like moved. We had broadened the conversation to include far more aspects of the LGBTQ panoply. Right. So, so non binary and intersex and transgender.

And so that's certainly. Even though the, The. Even though the scope of the book remains unchanged because it wasn't a rewrite of the book. It was just.

It was a minor edits and changes and, and study guide. And then afterward it still felt like, okay, I. I do want to name and acknowledge that if someone goes in because I think today now they would.

And maybe this is what your experience was is you would go into that being like, cool. This author is about LGBTQ inclusion. Therefore I would assume there would be stuff in here about the T of the lgbtq. And largely there isn't. Right.

p in mind that was written in: 200515

But what I did want to make sure that I do between the first edition and the second edition and this happened and I tell this Story in the afterword is there was a. A gentleman that came to our church for a while, and he was an intersex transgender man.

And he came up to me after a sermon one Sunday, and he said, hey, Colby, can I talk to you? Which is a pastor is always loved when people want to talk to them right after church on Sunday. It's just the best time. But this.

But I like this guy, and I always valued his feedback. And he's made the observation.

He said, you often say in your prayers or when you're preaching, you talk about brothers and sisters or sons and daughters of God. And he said, I just want you to know that I don't really hear myself in that.

And I just want to offer you a pretty simple, simple switch if you wanted to say children of God instead of sons and daughters of God, or siblings instead of brothers and sisters. And as soon as he said that, I was like, oh, oh, that. That makes a lot of sense. Totally easy, like.

And from that point on, whenever I wrote, and it took me a while to kind of change how I speak, and I think for the most part, the change has been complete.

But so then when it came for the second edition, I went and I found all of the instances in the manuscript where I said sons and daughters, and I swapped it out for children, and I found brothers and sisters, and I swapped it out for siblings, because, yeah, I was like, okay, time to update that and. And be more inclusive even in how we talk about those things.

Sam: 01:16:24

Anytime I have someone on this podcast, there is always elements of pain and grief and loss, and throughout, typically, their story of. Of, you know, navigating all of the scope of life. But what has healing looked like for you?

Because there has been loss, there has been pain, there has been, you know, some harm done. What has healing looked like for you?

Colby: 01:16:52

I think the way that I'll answer that right now, healing has looked like, I'm going to say a beginning of. Because I'm by no means there, but a beginning of. Of the. Probably the rest of my lifelong project of trusting that I'm okay.

Healing has looked for me like trying to. Noticing the language I use, because I can't say that I believe it yet, but I'm actively trying to believe that I am worthy of love. I spent so many.

I spent much of my life not just being told from a religious perspective that I wasn't worthy, but then from my own way that I was raised, from my. From my parents and sort of treated by my parental units who were doing the best that they could, but still had some pretty nasty effects on me.

You know, just was ended up believing that I wasn't really worthy of love. And, And, and, and so healing for me has looked like, no, I. I am okay. Meaning, like, with God, with the universe, with self, like, I'm okay.

Nothing I can do to change that. I just. I am okay because of course I'm okay, because I've always been okay. All right? That's my mantra.

And then secondly, and related to that is believing that I actually am worthy of love. And that's a, That's a. That's an okay thing to say out loud. That's what healing continues to look like for me.

Sam: 01:18:26

Before I get to what is my final question in every episode, Being a person of faith. And again, the straight white male and an American, how are you doing over there?

Because it's a bit of a shitstorm in the US at the moment, and we are looking at that and we're going like, like, how are you. How are you dealing with that? Not just on, like a.

Like, how are you dealing with that as a pastor, but how are you dealing with that as just a human who sees value in people?

Colby: 01:19:01

Yeah. It's an embarrassing time to be an American. There's no doubt about it. I still.

head around the fact that in: 2016

That's the exact representation of everything that you told us not to be, like, growing up.

Sam: 01:19:35

Yeah.

Colby: 01:19:36

How in the world did you just suddenly let go of all that? So there's certainly that. And then absolutely, as it relates to our LGBTQ siblings over here, like, it's a scary time. I mean, I've got.

I've got dear, dear friends who are trans who are, like, actively pursuing how to move to a different country. Because it's just, it's. It's. And that's not just like posting on Instagram, like, oh, moving to Canada. This is like. No.

Flying to that country, visiting, scoping out cities to raise their family and sort of thing. Yeah. The number of legislation efforts right now that are. Are seeking to undo gains that have been hard fought is not great. It's not great.

How am I doing?

pecifically the day after our: 2020

I remember my nervous system, for the first time in four years, just feeling a little more chill. Like, wait a minute. Just not having that person flood every single channel of our media.

Like, oh, man, there's a sense of, like, it felt like normalcy was restored. Now that's not. Whatever, I'll just leave it there.

And so what I've tried to practice over the subsequent four years is I realized, oh, my deep involvement in engagement and awareness and this. Sometimes we buy into this narrative that we have to be informed, formed. Do you? Do we? I don't know. We certainly are not creatures that have evolved.

We are maladapted to our environment. This is 100 true. We are, Matt. We. We. Our.

Our ancestors evolved over the course of millions and then hundreds of thousands of years to essentially be able to exist within a community of maybe 200 people. Like, that's about as many relationships as we can handle and stories that we could know. And now we. We know far too many things.

Our bodies and brains and systems are just not built to hold this much. We're just not. We're so maladapted to our current society. It is. It is. It'd be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

So I had to completely reorient during the last. During the four Biden years, my relationship to. To news and what I was consuming.

And I have brought a lot of those practices with me into the second Trump administration, which is, I'm gonna put my head down and do my work, do my ministry, focus on the people that I love and I know and I care about, focus on what I'm doing. And to the extent that I can really just not open up the floodgates to the madness and the chaos, because that is never ending. It is never ending.

And it. It seems to only people.

I'm not sure I totally believe in what I'm about to say, but I think sometimes people convince themselves that they have to be informed because that's what activates them to move for change. I'm like, I don't know if that's true. I feel like.

I feel like you can be motivated from a place of wanting to bring change into the world without also, like, opening up the spigot to the constant crap that comes out of literally every orifice of media these days.

So part of how I'm doing is I'M like, I, I let myself be not informed all the time, and I focus on my, my work and my ministry and the people that I, that I love and care about.

Sam: 01:23:37

I think also, no matter, no matter how much information we have, if you don't have values that align with advocacy and justice, then the information is just information. Unless you have something within you that drives you to do something with that information.

Colby: 01:23:55

You just said it better. Yep, I agree. Cosine.

Sam: 01:24:01

Okay. I like to finish these episodes with some encouragement for people.

And I think that you are probably in one of the most other than probably other therapists that I've had on the podcast.

You are probably in a unique position in that you actually probably come across a lot of people who are very fresh in unpacking or fresh in deconstructing or anything in that scope. And so what would you say to that person who is just listening to their. This episode and they are knee deep in, in the thick of it at the moment?

Colby: 01:24:36

Be kind to yourself. Truly, truly, truly. Be kind to yourself. And that can look like a number of ways.

One of the ways I can look like is if you, if you feel like you need to not pick up a Bible, not go to church, don't like. It's. It's okay. You have all the permission in the world, like, none of you to go back to my.

What I said a few minutes ago about what my healing has looked like to know that I'm okay. That's not just unique to Colby.

That is like you, listener, the person who, who currently is experiencing the sound waves of my voice rattling off the interior of your eardrum, you, too, are also okay. And you will always be okay like you are. You are a beloved child of God simply by the fact that you exist. Right? There's.

There's nothing you can do to earn that good news, and there's nothing you can do to lose that even better news. And even if hearing that you're like, yeah, but there's no God by which I can be a beloved child of, that's fine, too. I don't even. That's fine.

You can, you can ign. You can ignore that too, and you don't have to believe me at all.

But to the extent that, to the extent that there might be something in these words of me saying that you're okay, that you are loved, that you can take all the break. Don't even frame it as a break because that assumes you're going to come back, I.

I literally have zero vested interest in you being Christian or no, no, no, being a Christian, because I'm trying to do a lot of work right now to separate the identity of being a Christian versus being Christian. I actually really like when people are Christian, which means they live their life with values of mercy and kindness and forgiveness and peace.

And whether they call it Christian or not, I don't really care. But like, I think people like being Christian matters to me a lot, which is just to say, be a person of love and peace and kindness.

But yeah, you can take all the break that you need. Don't even think of it as a break. You can just have full permission to take space from the things that have brought you pain.

Like, of course, of course you would. Why wouldn't you? And then if you ever, if you ever feel like you want to start re.

Integrating with those parts of yourself, or if you ever feel like you want to re explore, just know that there, there does exist ways to think about God, to think about Jesus, to think about the Bible, to think about the religion of Christianity.

There are ways to think about these things that are very compatible and I would argue with, they may be even mapped on really well to a path for human flourishing and wholeness that, that those paths do exist. And I know that for many people those seem divergent paths because of course they would think that way.

But a lot of us have found and discovered and are discovering that there is a way to walk this path of being Christian and that does actually lead to healing and wholeness and abundance.

And if and when people are ready to explore that, there are more and more resources out there that are, that are helpful, that are helping people find that.

Sam: 01:27:50

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for joining me. It has been, like I said earlier on in the episode, I was a little anxious for this episode for a variety of reasons.

But in the same way that you sort of said about the moment that your nervous system relaxed, there was a moment for me where I was like, oh, he's not like the rest of them. That is good. Even though I had read the book, it's one thing to go from text to real life.

And so I appreciate your time and I appreciate you joining me, but I, I more so appreciate what you are doing. For people who want to retain their faith and not feel like they need to carve a core part of their identity out of theirselves.

And so what your role is for queer people of faith extends far beyond that.

And so I appreciate that despite the fact that I might not be that anymore, it, once upon a time was something that I did want to be in at the time, I didn't think it was possible. So I love that there are people telling others that it is possible, and so I appreciate that.

Colby: 01:29:08

Thank you. Sam, it's been great to meet you and to share this space with you.

Sam: 01:29:12

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.

If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others who might benefit from these stories. Stay connected with us on social media for updates and more content. I love connecting with all of you.

Remember, no matter where you are on your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep moving forward. Take care.