Derek Thompson

Now, no one religion has a monopoly in any of those principles.

You see themes throughout.

But I thought no matter what your religious background or whether you have no religious background,

This is how we can start to adopt these practices and have that prayer in our life that gives us all these psychological benefits, whether or not we are holding ourselves to some kind of adherence to a supernatural power.

Yes, control is really important.

You know, that's what I expected.

I expected to get pushback from these religious leaders and they would tell me, how dare you, right?

How could you possibly not have complete and utter faith in my version of the divine?

Derek, that is not what happened.

They welcomed me with open arms.

And I think what was happening is that I had a belief that in order to participate, I had to have faith that was equal to what is written in their holy texts.

I had to have blind faith.

but that's not what I felt at all.

Every single faith I visited, every religious leader was incredibly welcoming.

I had limited myself.

I had this limiting belief that I'm not welcome unless I can declare utter faith in everything.

And I think that is causing this crisis, in America in particular, of people leaving religion despite its myriad benefits.

that I think there are two parties here, that I think for us, for people who have trouble buying a faith with blind faith, that buying everything, every miracle that we have to, you know, it really defies logic, but we have to believe without even questioning, that's too high of a bar.

And so what we need is what I call constructive interpretation.

That when I hear something, when I go into a religious institution, I hear something that, ah, that's really hard for me to square, that that miracle really had to happen exactly as it's written.