I wrote in June that I’d done an interview with Justin Brierley for his documentary-style podcast, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. There is a book by the same name which I discussed here. Well, the podcast episode ‘dropped’ (as the cool kids say) yesterday and (okay one more) it is a ‘banger’. I can feel my kids cringing with embarrassment at my attempts to use dope slang, so I’ll stop. Here is the link to the episode:

EPISODE 26 – Psychedelics and the Search for God: Ashley Lande’s surprising journey to faith

What a privilege to be featured in this series – I honestly don’t know how it happened. Justin reached out on Twitter so I guess he saw my original article at Mere Orthodoxy and he just happened to be planning to deal with this topic. I found the episode informative and moving as it incorporated the testimony of Ashley Lande, who was formerly heavily into psychedelics. I hope you’ll check it out if you’re not already familiar with the series. The content and production quality are really top notch.

One of the themes that I touched on in my responses to Justin’s questions was the organized effort by various individuals and organizations to synthesize psychedelic use with mainstream religion, including Christianity. This evidently fell outside the scope of the episode’s focus, so all of that was edited out (which is totally fine). But it’s one of the things that most struck me and worried me as I researched the topic. On the more moderate and progressive side of mainline Protestantism and evangelicalism, I already see activists advocating for the spiritual benefits of psychedelics for Christians.

And one more comment before moving on from this topic. I do wish I had been a bit more clear and blunt in my conclusion of the dangers of psychedelics. So lest there be any confusion, I’ll do it now: Yes, some of the entities people encounter and engage with while on psychedelics are definitely demonic. And no, they don’t present themselves that way. I believe that using psychedelics puts you in great spiritual danger regardless of the other benefits that may be had. Thankfully not everyone who uses them encounters dark spiritual entities, and not everyone who encounters a demonic being while tripping finds themselves harassed and afflicted by that being subsequently, but these things most definitely happen. So, as encouraged as I am when I see a significant number of people being redeemed by Christ out of psychedelics use, I have no illusions about the scope of spiritual danger represented by widespread psychedelics use in our culture.

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Staying on the theme of podcasts, I had the opportunity to join Jeremy Pryor and some other guests for a couple of Family Teams Podcast episodes. These were not about psychedelics. Rather, we discussed fatherhood, masculinity, family vision, the LGBT revolution, identity formation, Jordan Peterson, and Elon Musk. It was a good time, even though I was not able to be home in my office at recording time, so my audio quality is not great. You can find those here: