Sacred Reimagination: When Faith Evolves with You: Erin Hicks Moon

Jen Hatmaker:
Erin, good morning, welcome to the show.

Erin Moon:
So happy to be here. Thank you.

Jen Hatmaker:
Welcome. It’s been fun watching you like launch your book. You know, we just have 100 of the best friends like all in common, like all the, all my favorites are all of our favorites. And so, um, and Sarah wrote your forward, which is, I mean, she’s like, I guess the best person I know.

Erin Moon:
Listen, the generosity of this woman is overwhelming. I just, can’t even begin to talk about it. She’s so wonderful.

Jen Hatmaker:
I know she’s so wonderful and just tell us this before we drill in, cause we got to, do we have questions? What’s it been like having this book out in the world for, I mean, it’s only been out, when did it release?

Erin Moon:
Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s new in the world and it’s a lightning rod for angst. If that’s fair thing to say.

Erin Moon:
Yes, I think so. Yes. It’s been, you know, it’s been so interesting to hear people who have finished and have said, I feel like I finally have language around the things that I’ve been really struggling with and I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how to verbalize it. And so that’s been, that’s been so, so cool to see. And I’m, grateful that a book with, you know, lot of Backstreet Boy references can be a spiritual help to people.

Jen Hatmaker:
Sure, in a good way. Yeah, yeah, in a good way. And I noticed that your publisher let you sneak in a small handful of curses.

Erin Moon:
You know, what a delight. We were pretty upfront about that at the beginning, and they gave me two, and then they actually expanded it to four. So yes. And then I snuck an Anne Lamott quote in that had it in there, so it was really five. Exactly.

Jen Hatmaker:
It gave you two. boy. Tricky. well, if you’re someone else, that’s what my, used to tell my kids when I needed them to, they would say something to me and they’re like, but it has a bad word, but they’re saying something they heard. like, when you’re quoting, you could just say it to me I’m not going to freak out.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, when you’re quoting, yes, it’s absolutely fine.

Jen Hatmaker:
Okay. so before we get into it, Amy and I were just doing a segment where this is we’ve nestled this episode in a Midlife Renaissance series because for us and for our community at large one of the pieces one of the big pieces frankly up for sort of transformation and new beginnings new imagining new constructs different way to think about it is obviously faith that that is one of the pillars of the Midlife Renaissance, that we are re-imagining along with body image, along with like relational capacity, along with gender limitations, like what piece of the faith come and go.

So this conversation is so appropriate for the conversation we’re hosting, but we were just talking about some of our favorite midlife glow up elements. Much is said about, she and I are in our early 50s. And so, you know, there’s a lot of people going, these are all the terrible things about turning midlife. Here’s where everything breaks down. And some of that is true.

But we’re also finding that this is a wonderful time to be alive. And so we were talking about things that we have embraced in a new way or that we have considered for the first time or that we love about getting older. So we’d like to hear like your answer for a midlife. You’re behind us. You’re not really quite to it, but it’s next.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, I do feel like I’ve lost a couple years over the past few months, but yeah, just a slightly behind y’all, just slightly behind.

Jen Hatmaker:
Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, well as you are steering your car into this season of life, what would you say is something new that you’ve been exploring lately that is bringing you a lot of delight or a lot of joy or a lot of freedom or pick a thing?

Erin Moon:
You know, I don’t know that this is particularly spiritual, but I am super into smut now, just really into it. It’s really great just kind of throwing off some of those purity culture shackles and getting into some, you know, just a little bit of spiciness. It’s been a good time.

Jen Hatmaker:
I like it. Give us an example. What are you liking? What are you reading?

Erin Moon:
Um, let’s see. I’m reading a lot of like heaving bosom, Regents historical. turgid stuff. That type of a thing. Yes, that I am loving a historical regency romance. What a delight. What a joy. I know Bridgerton got me really into it. And then I just I just started started that journey. It’s been it’s been a joy.

Jen Hatmaker:
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, throbbing member.

Jen Hatmaker:
I mean, who wouldn’t love that? You know I’m saying? Who?

Jen Hatmaker:
I love this. You got radicalized by Bridgerton. Who among us didn’t?

Erin Moon:
And who among us has not been radicalized by Jonathan Bailey? I don’t know anyone.

Jen Hatmaker:
I don’t know anyone, so I think that’s fantastic. I’ve bought my sister a whole thing that says, I love Smut, because she does. It’s just a declaration of honesty.

Erin Moon:
And it has genuinely kind of changed the way I view sex and the way I view my body. I I joke about it, but it is also very transformative for me personally.

Jen Hatmaker:
Say less. I mean, we were all handed a sexual construct that was literally rigid. so having a new imagination around sexuality and bodies and possibility and curiosity is a delightful byproduct of getting older and going, I’m gonna release some of this stuff.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, I just I feel more comfortable in my like in my body who I am. I don’t know. I like getting older. It has been a joy truly.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah. How old are you?

Erin Moon:
So I’m 41.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah. my gosh. It just gets even better. Doesn’t it? Yep. I’m telling you, the people are not lying. And that’s why when women ahead of us go, wait till you turn 60. You’ll love it here. I’m like, I believe you. I honestly believe you. I think you’re telling me the truth. Cause I used to feel like 50 was the cutoff. I don’t know why that number was. And so I thought 50 was like, that’s the tipping point. That’s when you, you’re basically done. let’s just like the plane at that point. Um, and I’m 50 right now and I’m like everything love it all. I mean, the knees are problematic. There’s some breakdowns. Okay. That’s fine. And that’s all we ever heard of. And the hot flashes… I used to joke that I just didn’t ever want to get to that point where when I got together with my friends, the first thing we always said was, my hips.  And honestly, sometimes that is a topic of conversation, but there’s so much more. There’s so much more. It’s so true. getting older is not a tragedy.

Erin Moon:
But sometimes the hips are important.

Jen Hatmaker:
No. And it’s a fun time to be coming of middle age, if you will, in our generation because we just have conversations and freedoms available to us that I don’t think our moms had access to. Or maybe they did, but we were just not in the right circle. I’m not really sure. Behind closed doors.

I’m kicking this over to you. okay. Let’s get into your book. Let’s do this real quick before we ask you about the book, can you just tell like our listening community in general, this is the arc of the book. This is the thing. This is what I’ve written. And then we’re going to nestle all these questions underneath that.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, yeah. So the book is called I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out With God. And it is essentially a loose framework for walking through what it means to have questions, doubts, grief, anger in your faith, this process that has been colloquially known as deconstruction in our time and place. And also reconstruction, what does that look like? And I have had hundreds of conversations with people online and offline that are like, I gestures wildly to the general state of the world and the church and what’s happening and just really overwhelmed with the heaviness and how things aren’t adding up the way that we were told that they were going to add up. And so it’s just it’s just kind of a meditation on that and what it looks like to walk through that that process.

Jen Hatmaker:
Easy, light reading. So as you embarked on this, what are some actual spiritual practices like in your own life that have helped you rebuild and sustain your faith? Because you’ve come out the other side with such a strong faith, but what are the things you did each day that helped you do that?

Erin Moon:
You know, I grew up Southern Baptist, super evangelical, and I think there was this kind of checklist culture that we had that was like, hey, every day you need to pray for 20 minutes, you need to use the ax model, you need to make sure you do my utmost for his highest teen version, and you need to have all of these things that you’ve done every day. And my spiritual practice was releasing myself from that and saying, hey, you can take a break from these things.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t love God or you don’t have spirituality or faith. I started doing what I call anger voice memos in my phone, which is just me recording my phone while I scream about things to God, at God.

Jen Hatmaker:
Mmm, I like that.

Erin Moon:
And then I immediately delete them. It’s very freeing. It is such a good way for me. And it wasn’t always anger. Sometimes it was grief or frustration or apathy. There were so many things that I felt like I could not be honest with God about. And moving away from that, had to kind of open the floodgates and say, I’m gonna be honest with you about everything. And then, you know, my spiritual practice is a CBD drink on the back deck with my friends talking about life I just I think we over complicate so much about — we do spiritual practices to feel connected to God, to be connected to God. And I think we over complicate that a lot with rigid checklists.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah. man. boy. The way I used to do the checklists.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, that was how you knew if you were a good Christian or not.

Jen Hatmaker:
Totally and it was all baked in with fear and guilt. Those were the engines that drove the train and And then, consequently, didn’t ever really ever make me feel connected to God, it just made me afraid of God and for missing the checklist.

Let’s let’s back it up like 10,000 miles. Let’s talk about the beginning of this process because it starts somewhere for all of us. You don’t just you arrive at an evolved understanding of God or a faith or of church or any of the categories, the spiritual categories. But let’s talk about the beginning of the process for you, for anybody listening who is just going, I’m sitting in some cognitive dissonance. I don’t know what to do. There’s a lot of people still in a very inhospitable environment to ask questions. They’re surrounded by certainty. They’re surrounded by pretty baked-in theology. So let’s talk about the beginning of this process, all of it. what the start of it looks like.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, I think I think the beginning is one kind of looking at your origin story. Where did you come from? How did you get to this place? Who were the people who laid the foundations of how you understand God, how you understand faith, things like scripture, prayer, that type of a thing, if that’s your bag. And I think when we know where we come from, we can seek a little more clearly where we are going and where we are now.

Erin Moon:
And then I also think that owning your grief, owning your anger, lamenting is such, and listen, I would rather just throw a casserole at sadness. Let’s just do that. But really working through the grief and the sadness and the anger that accompanies watching your faith be weaponized or coming from a church that has split over something really difficult or something personal in your life, something on a world stage. I think we have to be honest in that grief. And that is a really difficult thing when we’re surrounded by toxic positivity in the church. Hey, you know, everything’s going to be okay. Well, sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes it really sucks. And we have to be honest about that.

Jen Hatmaker:
Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah. So for someone listening who feels like they have started this process, they’ve outgrown their faith community, but don’t know where to turn. What advice would you give them?

Erin Moon:
I think, you know, Sister Sarah Bessey, that we mentioned earlier, she talks about how there are a lot of people out in the wilderness and it’s just a matter of finding them. And I think when you have that experience of, don’t quite fit in this faith community anymore. And I did. That’s terrifying because it’s isolating and to to bring something up and risk getting pushed out because it doesn’t line up with everyone else’s viewpoint. That it gets really lonely. And yes, there are people out there, but there may be a time when you are going to walk through some of this alone because at the end of the day, your relationship with God is between you and God. Yes, collective spirituality is deeply important, but there is also the aspect of individual spirituality.

I think, know, Eugene Peterson calls faith the long obedience in the same direction. And I think sometimes you look up when you’re on that road and you see that maybe the people that you’re with, they don’t have the same goals that you do. They don’t have the same, they don’t have the same motivations that you do in faith. but I do think, in the same way, if you look around while you’re on that path, there are others that do. It just might be a little more difficult to find them because they’re not carefully sorted into denominations or whatever. But it’s a process. It’s 100% a process. And we feel like we don’t have time or everything’s so urgent, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Jen Hatmaker:
That’s right.

I have a question for your personal story because I grew up almost identically. It’s so interesting how the Southern Baptist Church for a certain generation was, I guess, the exact same everywhere. My Southern Baptist Church was in Kansas, but it sounded just like yours in Texas. All the same things. Just literally all the same things.

Erin Moon:
Copy/paste.

Jen Hatmaker:
And so I’m curious if you had either a moment or a particular doctrine or memory or season even in which you started a different story. Like did something happen? Did you go, boy, I’m really stumbling on this one thing, and then that sort of evolved into an entire journey. But I’m curious about that for you.

Erin Moon:
So I don’t know that there was one thing and the way that I’m sort of understanding an active faith now, what I’m seeing is like people who have active faiths or even in my own life is that this, you go kind of perpetually through these periods of questioning and doubting. That’s just something that happens if you are a person who’s paying attention and living in the world. And I think we’ve like, want our faith to be like perfect and stagnant and like a statue on, you know, in a museum, but that’s not what it is. But for me, some of those periods were, you know, you mentioned the SBC, I think as I got into college and I saw that they essentially see women as second class believers, I was like, well that doesn’t feel like Jesus, that’s weird.

And then, you know, and I’ll be honest, Jen, when you came out as affirming, that was, I remember where I was. I got like a news alert about it. was, I was sitting in a fast food restaurant with my kids and I remember going, okay, I wanna figure this out. Like I wanna see what this is about. You know, the 2016 election, anything. And I don’t think it necessarily has to be like a big global thing, diagnosis or a broken relationship or you know those sorts of things. I think anything can bring about this.

There was I mean like a chapter in Beth Allison Barr‘s The Making of Biblical Womanhood like completely rocked my world just a few years ago. So I just I think that we’re just always in this process and and there are times that it’s quieter. There are times when I think those questions get louder and that’s just that’s just the life the life cycle of faith.

Jen Hatmaker:
How do you begin to let go of rigid or outdated beliefs without feeling like you’re losing your faith entirely? It feels bananas.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, it really does. But I think some of that is that we’ve conflated having a belief system with loving God and being loved by God. Yeah, we’ve kind of, you know, it’s good. I’m not saying it’s not good to know what we believe. I’m not. That’s those the catechisms, the creeds, like those aren’t bad things, but those are that’s not the full picture. Like in my relationship with my kids, you know, I’ve known them since they were born.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah, I like that distinction. Yes.

Erin Moon:
I’ve known them in every iteration of themselves, but they’ve also changed since, you know, since they were little, since they were babies. And while I have new understandings of them all the time, and I’m learning new things about them as they grow and as they change, I’ve had to see them in new light and new perceptions. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped having a relationship with them or I’ve stopped loving them or they’ve stopped loving me or being close to them or wanting to have a connection with them. I think, I think we can look at our beliefs and we can still have a relationship with God. We can still have faith, but it doesn’t have to look the way everyone else thinks it should look.

Jen Hatmaker:
Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. I love that.

Kind of along that same line, you, you talk about faith being a dynamic, which is kind of what you were just describing. And so in broad terms, I guess, as you know it now, because you will not be the same 10 years from today, but like, as you know it today for you, what is a, what’s the din, what’s the faith dynamic that you are experiencing right now that perhaps feels more inclusive or that it has evolved into a new place. Like how would you describe your personal, your spiritual dynamic right now?

Erin Moon:
I think for a really long time, I wanted to be correct and I wanted to be right. And I wanted to be, I wanted to have all of my checkpoints organized. But I think the older I get, the more I realize that I’m probably wrong about at least 50 % of this. And we all are, right? Like we’re all fumbling around in the dark, as Paul sort of says, I think if if God wanted us to have correct beliefs, maybe Jesus would have come out of Mary with a systematic theology textbook. And that’s just not like Jesus was a person who had relationships and lived in the world and had an economic status and, you know, was a refugee. Like all of these things, it’s more human than that. It’s more relational than that. You’re not going to get it out of three years of seminary.

And I think part of this is that we’ve decided that Ephesians says something like, but because of our perfect and correct understanding of theology, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. But that’s not what it says. It says because of his great love for us. And we have, I think it’s that, I hesitate to say like humility and like, look how humble I am, but this like, just knowing that you do not have this figured out.

The way that you view faith and God and Jesus, the Holy Spirit, none of that. You do not have it right. You are guessing as best you can. And that has, for me, made me more, maybe inclusive is the word, maybe just softer around it. It’s just not as rigid as it can’t be because we just don’t know.

Jen Hatmaker:
Yeah. What’s one question about your faith that you’re still really wrestling with?

Erin Moon:
Holy Spirit. Like how is Holy Spirit, like my Holy Spirit telling me one thing and then over here at, you know, whatever rally is going on, we’ve got people saying Holy Spirit is telling them this. What’s that about? I would really love some answers about that.

Jen Hatmaker:
Hmm. That is a conundrum. And I think a big part of the whiplash that a lot of us are feeling currently as some as faith people, whatever we are, is that sense of such, such opposing ways of understanding God, Jesus, what God’s up to, what he wants for this world and, we see it in such dark ways and just go, how are we believing in the same God? Like it is a mind bender. I’d love to hear your thoughts on, cause you’ve put out a book about spiritual evolution and deconstructing and reconstructing and you know, people love those words.

How are you reckoning with the two kind of faiths that exist in America? Let’s just put it in our little weird context over here, our Western context, and how disorienting that feels.

Erin Moon:
There are a lot of CBD gummies in my drawer. So that’s one way. But I think it is saying out loud and verbalizing and honoring the fact that there are two different Christianities in America. And I am not going to be so, you know, whatever to say that I have the right one. But what I do know is that what I’m trying to do in my life, the people I’m surrounding myself with, what’s important to those people are walking through life in ways that pay attention to the Sermon on the Mount, like blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, those types of things, and paying attention, like is the thing that I’m doing, is the reason I hold this belief, not because I’m a conservative or a liberal or a Republican or a Democrat, but because it is moving me towards the fruits of the spirit. What are those things? And so I think it’s we have this idea now that Christianity is, you know, Jesus in an Uncle Sam hat, jacked and telling you to, you know, make America great again. That’s that is a version that you can go with. My friend, Savannah Locke, she did this this essay the other day on her Substack and the title of it was To Worship Jesus is to Worship a Guy You Could Beat Up. And I loved that because we have made meekness and peacemaking and love and joy and empathy weak. And we’ve made it we’ve made it wrong and bad. And I will not let somebody walk out the door with something that I love that much, weaponizing it like that. I just, can’t. And I understand, I understand people who say, I’m out on this, like, I can’t even look at this anymore. I have no, I have no problem with that because I get that. But for me, I just, cannot, I cannot let that be the only version of God that people see.

Jen Hatmaker:
Same. Yeah. And it’s not the only version. It’s just the loudest version right now. I’m shocked when I actually have conversations with people who I really did not know grew up in the church, like don’t know their background. And it turns out we have so many of the same beliefs and our faith is evolving like on parallel tracks.

Erin Moon:
It’s just the loudest one. Yes, exactly.

Jen Hatmaker:
So many people just choose not to identify that way right now. Yeah, which we can understand. Yeah. Yeah. If you could leave our listeners with one piece of advice as they navigate this, as they ask the questions, as they wrestle, what would it be?

Erin Moon:
I think if you grew up in the church like we did, you have rapture trauma, which means that you feel like you don’t have time for anything. There’s not enough time. I wish we’d all been taught, you know, the whole thing. But we do have time. We have time to sit with things. We don’t have to be rushed. And I also think my friend, Pastor Trey, which if you don’t follow Pastor Trey, please go do that right now. He said something in a conversation that we had on my podcast that really like I immediately pulled a post it out and I wrote it down and it is still on my computer right now. I’m looking at it right now. And he said, the question was, what do I do when someone that I love or that loves me says that the reason I’m going through a deconstruction or, you know, an evolution is because I’m a heretic or a backslider. I want to sin. You know, that’s a that’s a popular one. And he said, get comfortable being called a heretic. And that was so profound for me because I’m a people pleaser from way back. And what I want is for everyone to be OK with where I am. Do you like I want to be understood? I want to be perceived correctly but that’s not always going to be possible. And you are going to come up against the idea that you are doing this out of selfish reasons. I have never met one person who has gone through deconstruction and or reconstruction because they wanted to send more. The overwhelming pattern is that they want to figure this out. And at the end of the process, they end up with a faith that they say is stronger than what they began with. So, there are going to be bad actors in this process that their intention is to control you. Their intention is to shame you into falling in line. Don’t give them that. Don’t let that propel you towards something richer and something more vibrant than what you’re in right now.

Jen Hatmaker:
That’s right.

Erin Moon:
I think questions are, if I’m in a relationship with someone and a friendship or my marriage or whatever, if that person has done something to hurt me or that made me mad or grieved me or I felt misunderstood or they misunderstood me, I have two options. I don’t love in binary, but I have two options. I can either be honest and say, hey, can we talk about this? Can we have this conversation? I really feel like something’s amiss here, or I can not. And I can kind of devolve our relationship into something that’s superficial and shallow because it doesn’t have any depth if I’m not willing to be honest with people. And so I think the same is true in our relationship with God. It’s worth it to be honest with yourself and God in your questions because most of the time what I see is a faith that ends up with more vibrancy and joy and peace than anyone began with.

Jen Hatmaker:
Hmm. That’s my experience too. And I found the landing spot far more welcoming and hospitable than I had hoped for. You know, it’s a bit of a blind leap when you are leaving one space that is very structured and very certain and there’s a safety to that and a security to it. So it’s a blindfolded leap to be honest, but it does.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, yeah, I agree. It is, it takes a lot of bravery, takes a lot of courage.

Jen Hatmaker:
It does, but there’s so many like amazing seekers out just wandering around the streets, like asking the same questions and wrestling for the same reasons. And I have found that to be such a source of strength for, what started out as some pretty lonely space.

Erin Moon:
Yeah, yeah, think sometimes it has to get worse maybe a little bit before it gets better. And that sucks.

Jen Hatmaker:
I agree. Yeah, it does. But the upside of that is it does get better. And that is 100% my experience. I remember reading something that Dallas Willard said. Somebody asked him the question, how would you describe Jesus? And this is a Bible scholar. This is a brilliant theologian. And he’s like, relaxed. And I remember thinking, what the, like not a person in my life ever presented Jesus God, faith or church as relaxed. I mean, it was the opposite of that. And I thought, I like that. I like that. I want to pin that to the board. that I think that is something worth searching for and discovering and leaning into and ultimately living inside. not that everybody likes that.

Erin Moon:
Yes. Yes.

I think that’s what that’s what he was talking about with my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I do think we put so much….I I talk to people all the time that are like, I’m a mom and I have three kids and I’m going back to school and I have a part time job and like, when am I supposed to spend time with God? And I just want to go, hey, you can you can you don’t you don’t have to do that. Like you can take a break. You can find God in the minutia of your life, you don’t have to sit down and read something every day. You can be more relaxed about it.

Jen Hatmaker:
Can you, you really absolutely dig into a lot of the actual questions, the actual spaces, the actual process of what it looks like to kind of wrestle your face to the ground in your book. We’ve barely touched on it. So can you just tell our listeners, this is a great place to not just find your book, but find you, and follow you and listen to what you’re saying, the conversations that you’re hosting?

Erin Moon:
Yeah, I’m on the internet at ErinHMoon, pretty much in every iteration, Substack, Instagram, website. I have a podcast, Faith Adjacent, with Jamie Golden, Knox McCoy, and Evan Dodson. And we are frequently talking about things like this. We are slightly heretical. We definitely asked NT Wright if he thought Paul was hot. So that’s the vibe.

Jen Hatmaker:
Great, great, great, great, great. Yeah, yeah.

Erin Moon:
And then you can get, I’ve got questions anywhere you buy fine reading materials. And if you’re not in a position to buy it right now, requesting it from your library is always a great place to support.

Jen Hatmaker:
Absolutely. Good. Okay. I’m so happy that you’re here today. Thanks for having this conversation with us.

Erin Moon:
Thank you so much. It was such a delightful conversation with the two of you. Thank you.

Jen Hatmaker:
100 % we’re proud of you and just rowing our little boats right alongside of you and grateful that you have decided to put your hand to this particular plow and it just serves so many other people who need the language, who need the space and even the permission to do it and so it matters. It’s good work.

Erin Moon:
Well, I appreciate that and the good work that you have done also has been really meaningful to me in my life. So thank you for that.

Jen Hatmaker:
Right on, okay, Erin. Until next time. Thank you.

Erin Moon:
Until next time, thanks.

 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God by Erin Hicks Moon

I’ve Got Questions Guided Journal: Prompts and Practices for Rewilding Your Faith by Erin Hicks Moon 

Sarah Bessey

Anne Lamott

Bridgerton

Eugene Peterson

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

Pastor Trey

Dallas Willard