Joe Rogan Reveals He’s Been Attending Church for Several Years
“I go to church. I’ve been doing it for the last three or four years.”
Joe Rogan has revealed that he has been attending church for the past three or four years, speaking candidly about his fascination with the teachings of Jesus during a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Rogan made the comments while interviewing author and journalist Michael Shellenberger, founder of Civilization Works and the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin.
During the discussion, Rogan spoke enthusiastically about the moral vision presented in the life and teachings of Jesus.
“I’m absolutely fascinated by the story of Jesus Christ,” Rogan said. “If you wanted to come up with a way that people would live that would be far more beneficial than just going on natural instincts and tribal behaviour, you would follow Jesus’ teachings. I can’t find a flaw in the way he tells you to live life.”
Rogan contrasted Christianity with other religious traditions that, in his view, have historically justified violence against non-believers.
“There’s a lot of religions that involve torturing non-believers and raping infidels and being able to do terrible things to people that don’t believe your religion,” he said. “There’s none of that in Christianity. It’s all forgiveness. It’s all treating your brother and your neighbour as if they’re you. It’s a beautiful way to live life.”
At one point in the interview, Shellenberger asked Rogan directly whether he considers himself a Christian.
“Well, I go to church,” Rogan replied. “I’ve been doing it for the last three or four years.”
Shellenberger noted that attending church does not necessarily answer the question. Rogan acknowledged the hesitation.
“Well, because I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s very interesting, and I do believe that if you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you will live a better life. I really do believe that.”
Rogan also reflected on his personal experience among churchgoers.
“The people that I go to church with are the most polite people I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “They’re so kind and so nice… everybody lets you out of the parking lot. Everybody’s like, ‘You go.’ It works.”
Yet Rogan stopped short of affirming the supernatural claims recorded in Scripture, suggesting that the miraculous events in the Bible may be the result of stories passed down over generations.
“Does that mean I believe people came back from the dead? Does that mean I believe Moses parted the Red Sea? Eh, not really,” Rogan said. “It seems like that’s most likely a story where people are telling it generation after generation. But there’s probably something happening. There’s probably some truth to it.”
But as the Christian writer C. S. Lewis famously argued in Mere Christianity, admiration for Jesus as merely a moral teacher ultimately fails to account for the claims Jesus made about Himself.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him,” Lewis wrote. “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.”
Lewis argued that if Jesus’ claims recorded in the Gospels are taken seriously, only three possibilities remain: Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or truly Lord.
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher,” Lewis concluded. “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
“You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
For now, Rogan appears to be at a crossroads. He’s drawn to the teachings of Christ while still wrestling with the question of who Jesus truly is. Let’s hope and pray he comes to the same conclusion as Lewis, who said:
“Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
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