I feel like so many, even Bible-believing, you know, what I would think of as mature Christians, in their imagination of what God is like, they're really imagining Zeus, this very fickle, faraway, volatile, lightning bolt-wielding God who's just waiting for them to mess up.

And, and it drives them and, and many of us Christians, I think that kind of fear drives us much more than we realize.

So the, the, the idea of the book was, in a sense, to present this is what God is like by showing what he's not like.

[upbeat music] The Sean Tabitt Show, where faith meets the supernatural.

My special guest today is Ryan Loxmo, and we're gonna be talking about his new book, Accidental Pagans: Untangling the Roots of Our Fears About God and Discovering Who He Really Is.

Ryan, it is truly an honor, sir.

Like is there a healthy balance there with prayer, maybe bringing some of those different ways of doing it together?

Yeah.

is keeping people stuck in whatever they're really, really certain of? And then maybe like, what would it take to, and you just said, you know, prayer and maybe some self-awareness, but what would it take to be able to then go, okay, I'm going to lean into a God that maybe disagrees with me?

I think a couple things, places to start would be to go to the places in scripture where God explicitly describes himself.

Because you know, those of us who read the Bible regularly and try to engage in both, both the old and new Testament, we, we make an opinion and appraisal.

We have an overall feeling about what God is like, but sometimes that, that feeling and appraisal isn't really well-rounded.

We've kind of, like I said, we sort of gravitated to parts of God's nature that we go, yes.

And the parts we're unsure of are like, yeah, I'll just kind of sweep that under the rug.

And if you go to the places where God describes himself and, there's kind of an accountability in that.

How do we know if we're being earnest in our approach, like in our spiritual practices, or if we're accidentally trying to manipulate God into doing what we want?