This week, we try to understand an experience that 74% of Americans routinely report having. The first of many conversations (perhaps?). This one, an interview with Zvika Krieger. Comment on the episode Support the show! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
Hello, everyone. This is our final rebroadcast of a classic episode before we return in August with some new ones for you. This episode is not like the other classics we've aired. It's more of a conversation episode. I really, really love this one. It's one of the episodes we have gotten the most listener emails about.
And not just volume, like some of the most deep, interesting reflections in our inbox from anything we publish. Which is crazy because we almost did not make this episode. I was worried the question was honestly too big, but we put it to the test that we sometimes put our questions to, which is just, is this a real, deeply held question? And for me, it really was.
And I learned a lot from the person we asked it to and from the stories that the question elicited. After these ads, what's it like to believe in God? When I was a kid, I believed in God, the Christian big guy in the sky God. My family wasn't hardcore about it, but we went to church on Sundays. When we kids resisted, we were bribed with donuts. I found Sunday school to be mainly confusing.
I understood the concepts of God and Jesus, but I remember having a lot of questions about the Holy Ghost, this character whose backstory the teachers never seemed to want to fill in. But I believed in God. I prayed every night. I prayed for a long list of everyone I hoped God would protect. Really, everyone I knew. My family, my friends, relatives, the souls of pets who had died.
I couldn't fall asleep until I had prayed. Always the same prayer, every night, until I turned 15. When I was 15, something terrible happened to someone I loved. After that, I only prayed that this one person would be safe. A month later, the same terrible thing happened to them again. And after that, I mostly stopped praying. At first, I think I was pretty angry, but the anger went away.
And then when it was gone, it just felt easier for me to live in a world where everything didn't happen for a reason. A world where when someone I knew got hurt, I didn't have to look for a lesson in it or imagine it as part of a plan. I kept getting older. I didn't think about God very much. But a couple years ago, I had a funny experience.
I was in the desert with a friend, and I had this feeling I'd never had before. It lasted for about a minute, just this sense, like a physical sense, that the world might just be a shadow of a different world, a place that was more real or more true. It lasted for about one full minute, and then it passed. I did not rush off to start a new religion or join an old one.
I took what had happened with a grain of salt, but I also didn't discard it. It just left me with new questions. I know I'm not allowed to do a podcast called Is God Real? But I did want to try to understand what faith feels like to the people who have it. That question has really been sticking with me. I think I'll probably ask it a lot in the future to different people of different faiths.
But recently, I found one person who would let me pester them about it. Do you want headphones or no headphones? I don't think I need headphones. I might do no headphones too, Shruti. Is that okay with you?
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