 Famous YouTubers Rhett and Link recently shared that they used to be Christian missionaries, but ended up leaving the faith. I'm a Christian, and let's talk about that. So if you don't know who Rhett and Link are, Rhett and Link are from one of the Carolinas, I can't remember at this point. But they ended up making YouTube videos. When YouTube began, one of the OG YouTubers, they moved to Los Angeles, where they continue to make YouTube videos, accumulating millions and millions and millions of followers, subscribers. I'm on YouTube, I should know this, subscribers. And yeah, so they just make this YouTube show, actually it's the most viewed, most viewed daily YouTube show, Good Mythical Morning, which I'm currently subscribed to and watch frequently. These guys are YouTube famous. They've written a number of New York Times bestselling books. They have multiple YouTube premium series. Now to bring in some of my story here, I began watching them when my brother first introduced me to them. I think when I was like 12 or 13, maybe even younger than that, but he brought one of their comedy YouTube music videos to me and he showed it to me and I was like, oh my goodness, these guys are so funny. And so I just continue to watch them for over 10 years, like until now. And throughout watching them, not so much in the comedy music videos that they used to do early on, but now in the Daily Show, Good Mythical Morning, I could tell that there was some, I don't know, they used Christian language, like Christian ease every once in a while. Stuff, they bring up stuff or say stuff that usually a regular person wouldn't really know about. You'd have to be connected to Christianity in some way to know. So that got me thinking. I guess I kind of assumed they were born in the Carolinas. Okay, it's the Bible Belt, maybe they grew up in church, but ended up kind of pushing it away early on. Well, something crazy happened. Just a month ago, I saw something pop up in my podcast feed and I subscribed to their podcast, Ear Biscuits. And the title was something like The Lost Year. So I clicked on it and I began to listen. And it was basically telling the story of them growing up in church, how they ultimately signed on to become missionaries for crew, like a Christian university, like organization at a university. And they were sharing the gospel with people. And this was a really fundamental part of their lives, even through adulthood. In that first podcast, one of the guys, Rhett, explained what he meant by evangelical Christians, because that's what they called themselves back then. That's what they were. They would identify as back then. And so he explained the gospel. And at some points, I'm like, okay, this guy is explaining the gospel really, really well. Usually you hear people that leave the faith, that have a misunderstanding about what the gospel is all about. But on the surface, yo, these guys really understand what the Christian message is. To us, being an evangelical Christian meant that we believe that the Bible was the word of God. Meaning the creator of the universe chose to communicate the breath of his wisdom through a book that he inspired people to write. It's called the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And in the Bible, you learn about Jesus, who is the Son of God. And he is the only way that you can have a right relationship with God. And then one day end up being in heaven. And what that essentially means is that if you don't go to Jesus, if you don't believe in Jesus, if Jesus has not forgiven you of your sins, then you basically face judgment of your sins. And when you die, you're going to face God's judgment. That's called hell. There was one episode, I think it was episode three. It was called Rhett's Spiritual Deconstruction. And he shared a lot about his search for truth. It was always about the truth for him. So even when he was, you know, he would consider himself a Christian, it was, okay, you know, what's true here in the Bible? I gotta dig out this truth, learn from this and continue to move on. He was one of those guys that I would really call a thinker. But ultimately he came to the conclusion that evolution was true. And he began to, you know, integrate that into the Bible, into his Christian belief structure. Ultimately, he found that the Bible and evolution were irreconcilable. So he had to follow what he believed was the truth in order to say true to his heart and his and what he thought was right. He shared a lot of examples of why the different evolutionary beliefs or perspectives of why evolution is true. I'm not gonna get into all that. You can go to Answers in Genesis. And as he even said this, because he's familiar with these different resources, they have a lot more on that. But I was just interested in this truth because I think we all as humans, we're born with this innate sense that we need to find the truth. What is true? What is right? What is wrong? What is true? What is false? But then I began to just really think a little bit more about his world view, this idea that we're all evolved from primordial ooze. We're all stardust in a sense. And we weren't created with innate worth or meaning or purpose. No, we're just evolved animals. So my question is, is if we're all evolved animals, right? We're all just stardusts. We're all just primordial ooze. We're all just like a chemical reaction. Then what is our foundation for truth, reason, logic? I like the way Douglas Wilson puts it. If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true, then the difference between your thoughts and mind correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically, and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true, but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth or falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right or wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. The sad thing to me is that even though Rhett has left the faith, he still lives like a Christian in the sense that he's still looking for truth. He's still trying to find out what is true, what is false, what is right, and what is wrong. He's still looking for that, but in his worldview, those things don't have any foundational basis. If we're just stardust or primordial ooze or evolved animals, there's no truth in that worldview. There's no objective standard that we can even look at. No, it's all subjective and it's all just based on opinion. Now, in part four, Link, the other guy, he mentioned his struggles with moving to LA as somewhat of a Christian. He was still having doubts and still bringing up some of the things that Rhett did about evolution and trying to reconcile that with the Bible because he was having doubts about the Bible. But even as he moved to LA, he began to interact with people from what I'm going to call the LGBTQ, however many things they got now, the community, right? That community. And so he began interacting with them and he was working with them and he loved them and they were his friends. But yet he understood in the Bible that it says, oh, homosexuality is a sin. And so these people are engaging in a sinful lifestyle. And how can I reconcile that with my love for them? Like, I love these people, I work with these people. How can I believe something? The Bible that says these people are doing something wrong. And Rhett echoed this as well because it's this tension. What do we believe? Do we believe the Bible and what it says about these deeds and acts and behaviors? Or do we side with just completely accepting the behaviors of our co-workers and friends and that kind of thing? And so this kind of got me thinking too because this is not an unusual situation, right? Like in your life maybe you have friends that are, you know, they would say they're part of LGBTQ community or maybe, you know, you have a friend that's sleeping with his girlfriend or whatever. Just whatever it is when you have loved ones in your life that are living counter to the Bible, you have a decision to make. And a lot of that decision is based on where your foundation lies. Because if you're just ready to dispose of what the Bible says, you already huck it out the window and just kind of go onto your own, you know, worldview, what you think about the world, then it might be easy. Then you probably most likely are going to side with just accepting whatever your friends are doing or dependent like regardless of the behavior because you don't want to have conflict and you just want to accept them. But if our foundation is grounded in God's Word because of God's, you know, transformation of us from the inside out because we love God and we want to honor him, our worldview is different. Our worldview sees these people like we are broken people who need to be loved but also need ultimate forgiveness and reconciliation to God. And that is our motive and that doesn't mean we hate those people. Doesn't mean we're not friends with those people. No, it means that we have a different perspective of their life. We see them as the broken people that we are too. But they need that forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption, that justification that can only come through Christ. You know, as I said, I've been watching these guys forever and I'm going to continue to watch them. I think they're hilarious. You know, they feel like close friends. I don't think I've watched any YouTuber as long as I've watched them. And so honestly, at this point, I'm just kind of sad. Like I relate to at the end of episode four, Rhett was talking about how a Christian listening to this might feel. And he was like, well, if I were in their shoes, I would feel sad. And he's right on the money. I do feel sad. You know, the message I guess I want to get across and something that I was thinking about as I was watching this podcast was it's not about information, it's about transformation, right? Because we can have all the information in the world. Like these guys were able to say the gospel and share the gospel on their podcast in a very like correct way, correct theological way. Like they were very solid theologically in terms of what their perspective was, at least on the outside. But you can have all the information in the world about the gospel, about Jesus. And yet if there's no transformation that happens by the power of the Holy Spirit in your lives, you remain unchanged. I'm sure these guys try to be good people on the outside, but if there's no inner transformation by the Holy Spirit, look all the information in the world, all the facts, all the like all the arguments, it's not going to change you. You know, something that I related to deeply was when Link talked about when as he was growing up, he always and onto like being an adult as well, he talked about how he felt this deep, you know, like God was disappointed in him, the shame, this guilt that he wasn't able to shake every time he prayed to God. He just felt like, God, you know, I'm sorry. Like I'm not closer to you. Like I want to be, you know, good, but I can't. And if he was feeling the shame, this guilt, because he wasn't where he thought he should be in terms of his relationship with God. And what kind of broke my heart is when he talked about leaving the faith. He talked about this freedom that came over him, this idea that, oh, look, I'm kind of autonomous now that I don't have to feel this guilt or shame or try to measure up to this, this standard. And as I was thinking about this, you know, as I said, I relate to this deeply. I was thinking about my own walk and from a Christian's point of view and what I've read and what I'm learning is that true freedom is not about just like, yeah, you feel this guilt, you feel the shame, you feel like God's disappointed in you. It's not about just breaking free from all of that, casting God aside, denying God and just going your own way to not feel that bondage anymore. No, true freedom comes as a result of God's grace and rest within us. You see, even as Christians, right, we are forgiven. We are forgiven. So we don't need to have that guilt or shame anymore. God's not disappoint us anymore as Christians, right? Because Jesus took all that shame and guilt on himself. But as Christians, and I relate to Lincoln this way that, look, we still feel that guilt and shame because we're not where we think we should be. But what are we supposed to fall back on? What are we supposed to dwell in? We're supposed to dwell in God's grace for us. God has said, I've forgiven you. I've called you my own. You're my child. I love you. You can rest. God has called us into this eternal rest, not just in heaven. Now, now, and it comes as a result of his grace, we don't need to continue to strive or feel guilt or shame because we're not where we should be. Because that's not what we're striving for. We're striving to glorify God, love God, enjoy God, and serve others. And obviously, we're not going to measure up to where we want to or get anywhere near perfection, right? But it's about living within that eternal grace and rest that God has called us into as a result of his love for us, his sacrifice for us, our justification. And now, we're moving into this realm of sanctification. The sanctification is when we move closer. We're moving closer to be more like Christ every day. This bondage that you feel, you're keeping yourself in this prison. This is not a prison that God wants you to be in. This is a prison that he wants to free you from. This guilt, the shame, the sense that he's disappointed in us. No, once we're Christians, man, we're free. It's not as a result of just becoming autonomous, casting God aside and going our own way. No, that's not freedom at all because we're bondage. We're in bondage to our own sin. That's slavery. That's slavery when we're just going away from God. We're rebelling against him and we're going towards our own destruction because we follow our nature. And the Bible says that our nature is sinful. We have the sinful nature. But God, when he saves us, he transforms us into a new creation. We have a new nature. And it just brings me back to that idea of it's not about information. It's about transformation. And look, Brent and Link, if you guys are still watching this video, if you're watching it all, I don't know if I've said this already, but I love you guys. I really do. And you inspire me with everything you do, your creativity, just your comedy. I think it's awesome. And I think your work, a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it, is a reflection of God. Is a reflection of who God is and the way God laughs at comedy and the way that God loves creativity. I think you guys show that, but I think you need to come. I don't think you were Christians, but you know the stuff. My prayer is that not that you'd get more information, but that you'd begin a transformation and that you'd use all those skills that you have, that you're already showing the creativity of God and the comedy of God in a lot of what you do, but that you would now intentionally reflect him in your lives. And you would pivot that towards sharing him with others. That's my prayer. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, got something from it, you can give it a like, subscribe to the channel because I'm making new videos every single week. You can follow me on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube obviously, because you're here. We got a Facebook as well. And like I said, if you want to support us on Patreon, head on over to patreon.com slash daily underscore disciple for one time gifts. I have a PayPal down below that you can check out daily disciple slash partner. Thanks so much for watching guys, and I'll see you next time. God bless.