Have you ever felt like an outsider in your own faith? Join John and Eric as they navigate the messy, beautiful process of deconstructing and rebuilding faith in real-time. We believe the real Jesus was defined by radical, boundary-breaking inclusivity, and we’re trying our best to follow that lead. From 90s "Purity Culture" hangovers to the complexities of the modern Church, we’re here to remind you that questions aren't the enemy. We are trading narrow certainty for a community where you belong.
Oh, You Too
Claim This Podcastby Eric Carpenter and John Bethell
5.0(4 reviews)
12 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Have you ever felt like an outsider in your own faith? Join John and Eric as they navigate the messy, beautiful process of deconstructing and rebuilding faith in real-time. We believe the real Jesus was defined by radical, boundary-breaking inclusivity, and we’re trying our best to follow that lead. From 90s "Purity Culture" hangovers to the complexities of the modern Church, we’re here to remind you that questions aren't the enemy. We are trading narrow certainty for a community where you belong.
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Publishing Since
4/24/2026
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Recent Episodes
June 30, 2026
Reconstruction: Living in the "Aftermath"
<p>Grab your hard hats, because it is officially time for the season finale! In this final episode of our first season, Eric and Johnny skip the usual current events segment to dedicate the entire hour to the daunting, beautiful, and deeply personal work of reconstruction.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>Big Flag Energy & Square States:</strong> The guys kick off the final episode with some fantastic trivia as John reveals he is a massive "flag guy". He drops some incredible knowledge about the Greek national motto Elephtia Othanatos ("freedom or death") and how its nine syllables match the nine stripes on the Greek flag. This leads to a hilarious tangent about Nepal having the only non-rectangular flag and Colorado being the only truly square state.</li><li><strong>The Full Circle Drop:</strong> Eric points out a beautiful coincidence: today is the exact day they are recording the final installment of their first grouping of episodes, and it also happens to be the exact day that episode 1 officially dropped for the public. Eric shares the wonderful, overwhelmingly positive feedback they’ve been receiving from old church circles, family, and camp friends, which has naturally "kicked up some dust" and resurfaced a lot of old stories.</li><li><strong>Deconstruction vs. Demolition:</strong> Shifting into the heart of the finale, John shares that if we are people of "Resurrection," we have to fundamentally believe that things must die before they can be built back up. Eric reflects on John's life, noting that while many go through deconstruction, John’s journey looked more like a complete structural demolition across five distinct full careers.</li><li><strong>The Subversive Library Find:</strong> John tracks his gradual road to reconstruction back to a pivotal moment during his Bible college days. Sneaking away to the local public library like a "stupid freaking nerd," he stumbled upon an out-of-print, highly subversive book titled Paul the Mythmaker, which completely blew open his understanding of historical context and faith.</li><li> <strong>Gigi, Yugoslavia, and a Second-Grade Reality Check:</strong> In a deeply personal revelation, John opens up about his maternal family heritage, explaining that his grandmother and grandfather were Muslim immigrants from Yugoslavia. He shares the beautiful meaning behind his mother’s name, and how he has affectionately called her "Gigi" since he was a toddler. John recounts a core childhood memory from the second grade when his grandmother told him, "Johnny, we all have the same God and the same stories." This profound piece of childhood wisdom stayed with him, heavily clashing against the rigid evangelical camp environments where leaders aggressively told him his family was going straight to hell.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Thank you so much for walking through this first season with us! If today’s raw conversation sparked something in your own journey, we would love for you to stay a part of our growing community. Hit follow on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you're ready when the next season drops, and find us on TikTok and Instagram to stay connected during the break!</p>
June 25, 2026
[BONUS EPISODE] Christian Nationalism vs. The Kingdom of God: Part 2
<p>This is a special, unplanned bonus episode. The hosts realized there was simply too much to talk about on the subject of Christian Nationalism to fit into a single regular episode, forcing them to drop this extra conversation after waiting for John's "raging bile duct" to calm down from the overwhelming influx of daily political news.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>The Albanian Exit Strategy:</strong> Eric opens the episode by catching John off guard as he clicks record while putting away paperwork for his final stages of securing dual Albanian citizenship. Having lived there for most of 2024, John explains his long-game strategy: tracing his grandfather's 1904 Ottoman-era birth records from Shkodër and his 10-year stint as a political prisoner under the communist regime. John explains that holding a second passport serves as a personal "exit strategy" that ironically helps him stay in America longer without getting antsy.</li><li><strong>Authoritarian Creep & Highway Nazis:</strong> Leaning directly into why this country feels less welcoming, John and Eric track the visible gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the immediate, aggressive redistricting pushing back Southern elections. Meanwhile, John describes how Christian Nationalism and extremism are actively creeping up into northern New England.</li><li><strong>The Activist Priest Temptation:</strong> John and Eric revisit the geographic disparity of modern politics, comparing conservative Texas to the ultra-progressive Bay Area. John confesses that while it would be incredibly easy to use his structural authority to put his thumb on the scale as an "activist priest," he chooses to keep politics entirely out of his weekly sermons. He believes his primary pastoral duty is to give people one hour a week to simply tend to their souls.</li><li><strong>The Humility of "The Way":</strong> Unpacking the upcoming Sunday gospel text from John 14 ("I am the way, the truth, and the life"), John challenges the weaponization of the verse. He argues that the "way" of Christ is exclusively a path of deep humility and radical, reckless love for the outsider—not a tool for institutional exclusion, White House tongue-speaking spectacles, or creating government offices to handle imagined Christian persecution.</li><li><strong>Defining the Wild Illusion:</strong> The guys explicitly define Nationalism as the wild theological claim that one specific nation is uniquely favored or chosen by God. Eric highlights how this entirely contradicts the New Testament—citing Galatians 3:28's declaration of no Jew or Gentile—and points out the ultimate flaw of American Christianity: believing that God possesses a political party or somehow strictly "needs" America.</li><li><strong>Reading Other People's Mail:</strong> John completely dismantles the framework of Christian Zionism, calling out the evangelical obsession with taking Old Testament promises meant for historical Israel and copying-and-pasting them onto modern America. He drops a blunt reality check: there are zero white people and zero mentions of America in the entire Bible, meaning modern nationalistic Christians are essentially "reading other people's mail" and pretending it belongs to them.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>If today’s raw conversation sparked something in your own journey, we would love for you to join our growing community. Hit follow on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you never miss a weekly drop, and follow us on TikTok and Instagram to keep the conversation going!</p>
June 23, 2026
Christian Nationalism vs. The Kingdom of God
<p>In this heavy hitting and deeply transparent episode, Eric and Johnny step right into the crosshairs of modern religious politics to unpack the anxiety, history, and internal contradictions defining Christian Nationalism in America.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>The Best Day of the Year:</strong> Eric kicks off the show with a beautiful celebration of the "best day of the year"—his wife Rebecca's birthday. This leads the guys to reflect on the "No Kings" democratic overreach protests that recently took place. Eric shares a moving account of attending a local gathering in Conroe with Rebecca, describing how overwhelmingly moved they were to see elderly citizens standing arm-in-arm with young people across all walks of life. John ties the day to the feast of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, dropping a powerful truth about waiting for people to organically turn toward grace rather than forcing conversions.</li><li><strong>Fluffing the Tangled Skein:</strong> Transitioning to the core of the episode, Eric confesses to navigating intense personal anxiety surrounding the current political landscape and the state of the union. John compares tackling Christian Nationalism to trying to untangle a knotted ball of yarn—a process of slowly "fluffing the tangled skein" to look at its separate parts. They dissect "American Zionism," the flawed theological idea that America is the literal fulfillment of Old Testament promises.</li><li><strong>Capitalism and Idolatry:</strong> As a biracial man, Eric openly challenges the exclusionary, protective demographic nature of Christian Nationalistic language. The hosts question how a movement can claim Christ while practicing unbridled capitalism. While both hosts identify as business-minded capitalists, John shares a profound rabbinic story about a rabbi whose focus on studying the law made him deaf to his own crying child. John notes that money becomes an idol the exact moment it makes someone deaf to the cries of human suffering. </li><li><strong>Fences, Flight, and the Canaanite Woman:</strong> Addressing immigration and political borders, John uses a brilliant analogy: humans spend all their time building backyard fences, but God is the bird flying high above them, completely paying no attention to the lines we draw. John walks through a difficult passage in Matthew 15 involving Jesus and a Canaanite woman, arguing that Jesus temporarily mirrored the disciples' own cultural prejudices back to them to brilliantly expose the foolishness of their exclusion.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>If today’s raw conversation sparked something in your own journey, we would love for you to join our growing community. Hit follow on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so you never miss a weekly drop, and follow us on TikTok and Instagram to keep the conversation going!</p>
12 total episodes available
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