JOURNEY HOME - 2024-03-04 - JEREMY McLELLAN

[Music] well good evening and welcome back to the journey home program I'm your host John Mark groi and once again we have this great privilege here on EWTN to share a story with you tonight we're joined by Jeremy mlen he's a former Presbyterian and now he works in comedy that's right and great to have you here tonight thank you so much for having me it's great to be here yeah we share a background the Presbyterian that's right the PCA yeah yeah my father brought brought us into the church when

I was young um so yeah excited to hear a bit of your story tonight of course yeah let's go way back to the beginning where does it all begin okay well so it starts I guess it starts before I was born um in a way my my parents met at a PCA church um my dad was the sun like the adult Sunday school teacher yeah and not this like children Sunday school teacher with the adult Sunday school teacher that's how I met my mom and um they got married and I was brought up in that church and so I'm the third

of of three boys and uh so raise PCA you know I I J PCA for a while had your family been PCA not my grandparents or anything like that but both my parents um I think grew up uh grew like my like my dad grew up Methodist my mom grew up um sort of Baptist sort of so that's something they'd come to yeah yeah they came to the PCA and um in Charleston South Carolina which is where I'm from and currently live and uh yeah they they um just sort of Dove head in um and uh very well educated people very

theologically minded grew up with like all these books and I mean one thing about being Presbyterian it's lots of books lots of knowledge you know the sermons are like 45 minutes long and like by the time you're 13 you have like a masters in like Protestant theology very much more so than I think other denominations there's a very intellectual component to it which I've always really appreciated and um definitely more of an appreci for history um than a lot of other Protestant denominations wher

e there's there's a real uh concern to see at least from where I was how I was raised you know my like my pastors and elders and everything a real concern for seeing themselves in uh the in the story of the church and in the story of the Gospel rather than just sort of like this Bible fell and now we're going to interpret it there was an interest in seeing themselves in continuity and so continuity was prized yes and um but yeah grew up uh in in in the PCA calvinist background and um I I I loved

it I loved reading and and and it wasn't just calvinist you know authors that I read I read uh you know I I I read the Suma and I read um uh like athenus and uh all the people because again there was there was a a uh a desire to see their theology um as being sort of in in continuity with all of that so right so yeah raised and you know grew up going to PCA school um went to PCA College I went to Covenant College in uh in Tennessee which is a PCA College I majored in history and um yeah had had

the whole program down past so so you had the strong intellectual life and you really identified with the faith that talk about again on the other side your heart had you did you have a relationship with God you know I did I did um it was not you know mediated through as many things as in Catholicism obviously but but yes um I again it was more intellectual um faith for me was sort of getting it right um getting it right intellectually and at the same time growing up uh in my church and everyth

ing there was a lot of abuse and a lot of uh pain and when you combine those two things you know I I knew a lot of people people who are who are calvinist you know when you get the when you get the total depravity and the sort of um things being kind of uh Fallen to their core all of reality being Fallen along with violence uh you end up with which is what I grew up with of a sense of the world and myself that was sort of fundamentally wrong fundamentally rotten to to the core um not in the sens

e of having fallen from a place of Glory to sort of a normal place but sort of like rotten to the you know to to to like deeply and irredeemably almost um and then but then because of Jesus or whatever you can have healing from that but that never really happened so growing up there was this Obsession that I had um sort of away from the heart and a way from uh almost like that I could somehow uh fix myself and fix by by getting it right by by somehow getting the theology right getting um the uh

the idea is right and once you do that then maybe maybe I'll be fixed or something so um yeah that was that was I think a big part of of growing up was this love of the church love of History love of theology love of philosophy but behind it there was this desire to be whole to be to to be healed somehow to sort of be finally become a human being you know almost um so I think I think psychologically that is a lot of baggage that I had uh growing up and going through um and sort of trying to find

theologically my place in the world right and you mentioned the the long u sermons what was worship what did worship look like in so worship was a seminar in a ways you you go in there you sing hymns you pray um and you don't know what the you don't know what's going to happen in the service until you get the bulletin right and then once you get the bulletin you can't plan ahead right and um you we don't know what the reading is going to be what the you know sermon is going to be and the sermon

was this very like educated uh ex of Jesus of scripture um tying it into history or some sort of you I mean the history is always of the Reformation you know these arguments this this interpretation of the Bible that came about during the Reformation so the people quoted were very much like the reformers um at the same time though there was not a lot of hostility I felt towards the Catholic Church um a lot of the people in my church were very involved in the pro-life movement and so they were t

hey were among Catholics in that in in that respect um also I I was there's different sort of flavors of of Calvinism and the like the Dutch flavor of Calvinism uh Kyper and doir and baving and all these people who um came from the more Dutch uh tradition they had Fairly fairly friendly relationships with Catholics in in the Netherlands and um so there was not a lot of hostility there was much more hostility towards liberalism secularism things like that um rather thanin sort of fighting old bat

tles about you know transubstantiation or something like that so um in in in that respect I'm very I'm very thankful for that there was not a lot of uh anti-catholic but again you know you you like you grow up reading Calvin you go up reading um but like but not so much Luther so some of the pain of like the original reformers was not there um growing up so I was always sort of open to it and again there was a a concern for having continuity um and so but again the continuity was a little strain

ed like there there were these giant gaps and as as interested as I was in church history you know I wasn't content with the idea that like Augustine and aquinus were the only Christians between Paul and Luther right um and that always made me a little suspicious you know you got some of the Catholic writings when you were trying to figure figure out NAA with the like with the Trinity the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation how did those come about and so you got some of those writings

but then after NAIA that's the last Council that was really appreciated and so after that it's kind of like okay uh what happened between that and Luther and so there's this there's this view that it kind of uh fell away there's this Gap there and um which you know looking at the long history of the church you just can't you can't do I mean you can't you can't hold that so gotta so you went to the what was the school that you Covenant College Covenant College it's a liberal arts college it's act

ually on top of Lookout Mountain Georgia um but you have to go to Chattanooga first and then drive up the mountain and then you cross into Georgia at some point and so we always just said went to school in Tennessee or or Chattanooga but really is Lookout Mountain Georgia and great school I loved it majored in history my my brother went there um and one thing I didn't mention was that all the all my life growing up since I was like 12 um I worked with people with intellectual disabilities uh bot

h my brothers were we we were all in Boy Scouts and we all grew up um going to Boy Scout camp and also at the camp at that campsite um was a camp for mentally disabled adults that because we worked at Boy Scout camp we would stay two weeks after it was done and we would work with people with disabilities and so my brother went into special education and so I did that for you know like basically from the age of 12 until the the age of 30 working with people with disabilities and I was very intere

sted in you know I had this very intellectual upbringing that prized Faith as sort of a series of propositions right at the same time I had a deep love and relationship with people for whom propositional belief is not primary for whom like the sort of intellectual Ascent to uh these kind of you know they're not smart like like that's just kind of how it is and um so what what does it mean you know you know like the ageel question well how do they get into heaven you know for Protestants that's a

real question if if someone can't intellectually Ascend to the faith and it's always soon like oh well they get sort of a discount right where they get uh God just lets them in the back door or something and that's how people disabilities get into heaven and um whereas for us it's the sort of beliefs about the Trinity or the ncing Creed or whatever right and I was always very dissatisfied with that with the idea that people with intellectual disabilities were sort of a different category than t

han us because they weren't smart because after all children are like that too and so are old people who are Who start losing their their intellectual capacity to actually understand like the intricacies of the faith and so what does it mean then uh not not just to be a Christian but to be a person like because that's like the core at what you get to and that tied in with like what did it mean for me to be a person like am I good am I like or am I just this hopelessly Fallen corrupt person um wh

o uh has to sort of fix myself with faith and so when it came to people with disabilities that was my primary Obsession um for a lot of my life was like not just like I love them and I love spending time with them and that's what I want to do but also like the questions that are raised by friendship with people with disabilities what does that have to do with my faith and is it kind of an add-on to theology or is it actually like the core like does it actually get to the core of Theology and so

one of the things that I was obsessed with at covenant at at the college I majored in history but my main concern and all the stuff that I wrote and and studied was the history of disability um in the United States like Disability Policy in the United States but also the history of what it meant to be a person and what it meant for um people with uh you know how how do we theologically think of the Fall how do we think of the image of God yeah um how do we think of um uh the relationship between

intellect and love and all these things like it gets you know people with disabilities just spending time with them raises these kinds of questions and if you if you don't if you aren't thoughtful about it you will end up in some really weird and very dark places um which I think we're you know seeing in a lot of you know in the United States and also in Canada um in terms of what does it mean what does suffering mean is suffering something to be eliminated at all costs including the eliminatio

n of those who suffer um and so like that's that's what I was obsessed with so in college history of disability the human person which always in the background was about me was about like what does it mean for me to be a person is it just my intellect which I've always been impressed with myself you know I've always liked being smart I've always liked being clever being able to trick people I think that comes a lot into comedy um where I like being smarter I like being the smartest guy in the ro

om and um but even more than like being seen as smart I wanted I I I i' I've always been very obsessed with getting it right where even if I look stupid I I want to get it right I don't want to end up in some crazy place and um so uh yeah and so what I what what I found in college was this um you know through through all of my research was that our view of what a human person is um under liberalism especially is the ability is intellect um and especially the ability to produce wealth the ability

to uh do things of value for other people to be independent um to not be a burden on other people and that's our view of what it meant to be a person and when I when you look at the history of Disability Policy in the Americans was Disabilities Act and the supposed progress that we see people with disabilities having in America it it's it's actually has nothing to do with our value of people with disabilities it's because of changes in the economy and now people with physical disabilities can p

roduce wealth as long as they're smart enough and um because our our you know someone who uses a wheelchair there's nothing preventing them uh from uh you know participating in the economy now because everything is remote everything is you know on the internet and it's very knowledge driven sector what does that mean for are people with intellectual disabilities Well it's worse because being having an able body but not being very smart is is you're nowhere now and so we have not changed I don't

think our view of what it means to be a human person um we're still just as eugenicist as we were before if not more so because now we have the technology supposedly to eliminate human suffering um often through death uh but also just like we've made great progress in that regard and but in terms of people with intellectual disabilities what are they for right why do we why are they amongst us um and uh in a lot of places and a lot of places in Europe um they aren't right they've been sort of el

iminated uh by through abortion and through um like Gene Gene technology is next where like that's the goal and so all of that is tied into viewing the human person fundamentally as this independent intellectual uh but of course it's not just a class of people it's also us that will one day be like that we were born that way and uh we will be that way again and so what does that mean when we get old enough and we have to we are no longer independent when we are so all of this and all of this was

very it wasn't just in the realm of ideas it was about who I am as a human being and am I rotten am I what what does it mean to be a person is the world good it's one thing people who grow up with abuse come to believe regardless of of Calvinism or not is that the world is rotten that there's something deeply disturbing about the world and so um yeah am I rotten and also uh what about the people that I love what about these people with intellectual disabilities um what does it mean to love them

and uh what does it mean for them to continue to exist even when they can't remember who they are you know a lot of people with Down Syndrome that I took care of people don't know this most people with Down Syndrome will get Alzheimer's when they reach the end of their their lives which is often around 40 you know 50 years old and um so what does it mean for me to uh for them to continue to be my friend even though they don't remember me yeah and this is true I'm sure a lot of people uh can can

relate to this with their parents and grandparents what does it mean to have an identity uh that continues even after you've sort of forgotten things so uh so that was my concern at the same time like because of those concerns I was reading Catholic writers I was reading even sort of Quasi Catholic writers like Stanley howw I loved Stanley howw and because he wrote about because well first of all he's kind of a jerk he's kind of a he curses a lot and like I me he's a great Theologian I I love h

im but like he uh he's he's a cantankerous Texan guy he's funny um which I loved and uh and he would write he was a theologian who wrote a lot about people with intellectual disabilities and the challenge that like loving them has towards our our sort of system of Theology and what it means to sort of be Christians and what does it mean to have a liturgy that doesn't require you to understand things um that's a big thing that sort of I started wondering about where my liturgy that I grew up with

in the Presbyterian Church you had to know what was going on right and you had to really pay attention to know what was going on yeah whereas more High Church Traditions uh you can just go and even if you don't understand what's going on uh it'll still happen the Liturgy will still happen without you right or I mean but it's not actually without you you're there yeah um but it it's like the sacrifice happens and uh like you receive Jesus even if you don't exactly know exactly everything was lik

e this going on whereas in more Protestant Traditions or at least growing up Presbyterian um reform Presbyterian uh it's like if you if you didn't if you weren't paying attention or if uh you didn't know exactly what was going on it just didn't work yeah it's almost like you had to sort of produce the result of the Liturgy it's I I've always found it ironic that we we have again this this caricature of Catholicism that Catholicism is Works righteousness yes you have to do a bunch of stuff to be

saved but if you actually look at the the the theology as it unpacks and gets into practice you end up with the opposite often times between Catholicism and and various Protestant denominations sure you you end up with a very like you need to yeah your intellect you know your your work your participation whereas again with the Catholic liturgy we would say that those are those are good those are helpful right but but it's not primarily you it is primarily God and His grace and we're just showing

up yeah and and like so much of it and this is true I think of converts yeah both to Catholicism or away from Catholicism is that you you have this baggage that you that you hold and then when you convert to anything really you feel like it's been lifted you feel like oh well now everything makes sense and um it's very easy to project that onto everyone so it's very easy for me um to project um my uh pain growing up onto Calvinism in general right and but I know plenty of Calvinists who do not

have that attitude towards life and it that that like the presence of violence definitely changed the nature of the of the theological formation and I think you can you can get away with a lot of uh you know theological issues and whatever and but when you add the presence of violence or violation to it it really does like corrupt everything in the theology now everything seems twisted and then it's very easy to sort of like project that onto the theology in general so I I I I do want to be fair

to Calvinists right you know and um but at the same time that was my experience sure and um but you know when you start talking about um it's it's easy when you uh like you know comparing the two I was always told growing up that um that you know once saved always saved that and then um but but whereas whereas Catholics were full of anxiety because they didn't know if they were going to heaven or not they didn't know if they were saved and I found it to be the opposite because one thing I remem

ber asking my pastor I was like okay so once saved always saved sure let's say that's true um how do we know if we're one of the ones that are saved and the answer boils down to like well you die a Christian like you end you you make it to the end that's the only way you really know and I'm like okay so then what's the difference between that and a Catholic who just like a Protestant repents when they sin and confesses their sins and then dies in like having not like apostatized what's the diffe

rence he's like well I don't know and this is like a very educated right it's honest answer and it's like okay well so and it reminds me a lot of like you know like like believing in soulmates like people who believe in soulmates and it's like well okay let's say soulmates are true how do you know your your wife is your soulmate well you know when you die like when one of you dies first at an old age or something right then you know that's your soulmate but like people who are like you know my w

ife's my soulmate well well they get divorced a year later it's like oh well it just turns out they weren't that wasn't the soulmate just like like when Judas like betrayed Jesus oh well it just turns out he wasn't one of the elect or whatever you know um or when someone like leaves the faith after being you know a pastor for 30 years oh well it just turns out they weren't actually one of the elect even though like they felt that way their whole life like so logically there's really I don't see

much difference and for me at least I knew that even if even if I like uh wasn't like you know emotionally lined up with everything I knew going into confession that if I confessed my sins I'd be forgiven MH and that you know sins are this is Richard John new house always talked about because I read first things in college and I was like really interested in that and like so I I loved reading his thing about like sins objectively confessed and objectively forgiven and you know that even if even

if you weren't that sorry for it right you go to confession and you um I mean you should be sorry for it but even even if you uh even if you were only doing it to stay away from hell right that it's still forgiven and you don't have to think about it that much anymore you don't have to like Ru about it you don't have to go back to Old sins and like you know like obsess over them or anything you just it's done and it's boring right confession should be boring it's not interesting because your sin

s are not interesting um and so that's one thing that I loved about about uh coming to to to to Catholicism away from the um uh the like um PR Presbyterian church but one thing I noticed is that when I did that um my anxiety didn't go away my anxiety was still there which meant it wasn't about theology right which meant it wasn't something that like theological issues could fix there was something deep in there that was not just about getting it right um so so when I was in college yeah um I bas

ically read my way into the church like a lot of people very intellectual um but I didn't know any Catholics and um I I was still treating Catholicism as a set of I mean I was still treating Christianity as a set of propositions to be believed in and so I became convinced uh in college that Catholicism was true that this that that that the proposition of beliefs uh of of the Catholic church was true right but I didn't convert I didn't become Catholic because why do you need to why do you need to

become Catholic you can just believe this stuff right and at the same time you can go to whatever Church you want to um and so uh but after College I moved to Chicago where I moved into a lar lar is a uh network of um communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live together and I knew I wanted to do that I found out about lsh by reading Stanley howah and so I I I I moved into a large and I was like well this is it right this is the community and and it's not just the co

mmunity that I can put my heart into it's also the community that's going to fix me and the founder Jean Vier talks about that a lot and uh there's one there's now it turns out there's a reason he talks about that a lot because it turns out Jean vaner was sexual predator and uh this was a huge like Crisis in the church oh dear and yeah it was horrible and um that that like this this type of community will heal your Brokenness will uh like will fix that that whole in your heart and people with di

sabilities relationships with them will can heal you you know Etc and um I thought it was beautiful and I was I was ready to Rush In And when I got there this like these Catholic communities I I got there what I witnessed was a lot of abuse there was abuse there led by one of the people and um I did what I was supposed to do I I reported it I reported the abused at large and um the community the Catholic Community around large uh launched in defense of the person that I had reported and so so an

d and this is this is before or at least it's separate from the larger abuse Scandal right um which I was not really aware of at the time um just vaguely aware of and but I had my own little sort of microcosm of just collapse in because I was like ready to convert like I was in a Catholic Community now in Chicago I I knew Catholics we went to Catholic Mass with the clients and everybody else um and I I was ready to do it and I I told hold on this woman who was abusive to the clients and they all

rallied around her and against me and for some some weird reason I stayed and the investigation happened and I was Vindicated uh as no I was right and um uh and like she was wrong and she ended up having to leave and but it was still it was very traumatic for me um to uh not just sort of relive uh the abuse that I had growing up but also the to be betrayed and to see um the the church um or not the church but you know Catholics sort of Co try and cover it up try to do it and so um even though I

was all ready to convert I didn't okay so this is my second almost conversion and I decide not to um and so uh throughout my time at lar I I I fell into very deep depression um because like partly because of this experience um but also uh because just um it wasn't fixing me there wasn't this uh I wasn't um being cured of whatever I thought was wrong with me you know um so I left lar I moved back to Charleston which is where I'm from born and raised and um uh I I got a job working um at the disa

bilities Board of Charleston County where I was teaching clients or I was teaching caregivers I was in charge of training caregivers on how to investigate abuse how to relate to people with disabilities and um at the same time I started working or I started uh going to a bar that uh called the tin roof which I loveed and still love and um they had an open mic night for comedy and so I started doing standup and doing standup at that point this is 2012 2013 was so cathartic for me because now it w

as just I mean it wasn't just an opportunity to prove I was smarter than everybody in the audience which I love it was also um a way of processing everything that happened to me yeah and everything that what happened to me on on a daily basis through the lens of humor and one of the things that trauma does to you is it makes you feel like your inner experience is not relatable to other people that uh that whatever happened to you is is not going to to to connect with other people um and so you s

houldn't even tell anyone whatever and um but as I started sort of narrating my own inner life and you know what I thought was funny when it connects with the audience when it makes them laugh you know that you've made a connection yeah and and that is just such a beautiful thing um so I'm doing standup I'm doing go ahead yeah well actually let's take a break there sure um I don't want to get too far into the the second half of the hour but we'll come back and and you this is this is going to br

ing you to ultimately to your present sure vocation your present uh project so we'll be back in just a couple minutes to hear the rest of Jeremy's story see you [Music] [Music] then welcome back to the journey home program we're entering the second half of our hour tonight uh hearing Jeremy mullen's uh conversion story his testimony he's a former Presbyterian he now does comedy and when we left off we were just sort of getting to that part of the story where that enters in into the story so yeah

yeah so I was in Charleston and uh started going to open mics for standup and uh if you don't know what open mic is basically you have five minutes to do whatever you want and it's never that gr that good but you try and build on it we know which jokes work you you know you become friends I became friends with other Comedians and we would like write together we would try to like you know figure out and there was something really beautiful about it because like like when you're writing comedy it

's it's silly sure and there's an element where where it you know it's play where you're playing with words and it's play in a very rich sense of leisure and like this is what you're supposed to do with your life you know um and uh when you when you give uh when you are able to then connect that to another person in a way that makes the laugh you've made a very deep connection that isn't just oh you agree on something um like agreeing on something is a very superficial um uh connection because y

ou know like you think about it um but like finding something that's funny or finding out what what someone else thinks is funny um learning what makes someone else laugh and then somehow doing that like that's a very deep knowledge of the other person because going back to my abuse and sort of healing from that um that's how you know the first time you ever laugh as a child is when your mother plays peekaboo with you and peekaboo is such a just beautiful thing because if you think about it it's

so dark it's such a dark experience for the child to have the mother who's the ground of their existence just disappear and there's something very like deeply terrifying about that and then suddenly they're there again and all is right with the world and you learn growing up that like all is right with the world and um so but I I didn't have that experience I grew up thinking that like I was totally different from other people that I was rotten and and that like what I experienced could not be

connected with others and comedy sort of taught me otherwise and another thing I was doing when I was doing standup was I was talking about experiences that I had had with people with intellectual disabilities and um some of them stories are just wild and really funny and but so some of the experiences that I had were being a caregiver to people who were Pakistani Muslim and the experience that I had being a Christian but being a caregiver for Muslims was where it's like my job to help them be g

ood Muslims which is a weird relationship to have with people you know and so I was telling stories about that and this was right around the time that Trump first ran for office and so I was going viral being a pretty Conservative Christian talking knowledgeably about Muslims about my experience with Muslims um not talking about like the difference in the theologies or whatever but just like the you know and I was exhibiting knowledge of Islam and Pakistan um like a cultural knowledge of that um

and I it went super viral in the Muslim Community and the Pakistan community and I I got all these requests to come and speak to come and do comedy to come and do stand up at these Muslim events and there was no other Christian in the world who was being uh and as far as I know still not um whose like main uh fan base and you know doing comedy was like for like there's no Christian who's going around performing in mosques basically except for me and again I like okay I'll toot my own horn about

that like no one's no one else is doing this it's great and um and I and I and I still do that and so so um this put me into dialogue um in the presence of of Muslims um I had Muslim friends but they they were not the kind of Muslim friends who would try to convert you who try to argue with you meanwhile I'm getting booked at these like mosques all over the world um where people would and where I was meeting like top Scholars like like yaser kadi who felt that it was their mission to try and co

nvert me to Islam um because I was already very popular and um there's something like Muslims tend to love like white converts to Islam because like well if they're white and they believe Islam it's definitely true you know um and but like also they loved me and when you love someone you want to share your faith with them and you want to um expose them to that and I was still sort of wrestling with like what do I believe and one thing that that like that Muslims are very uh laser focused on is t

he idea that there is this huge gap um between now for them the Gap is uh well Jesus this is this is like what Muslims think that um that Jesus was a prophet and then his followers um like corrupted the story right and so there's this big gap the Protestant story is that um uh Jesus and the disciples were right and then the followers corrupted the story so there is this still Gap and I was confronted with this and at the same time I was also confronted um with um the fact that Islam at least the

people that I was I was exposed to that I became friends with and loved that for them religion was not a list of propositions yeah about their faith it was an entire way of life it was a dean it was a you know a holistic view of of Harmony of the universe and um I was really wondering why that was not the case for me why my belief in uh Christianity was this series of propositions and um but at the same time it's not that my life was a series of propositions your life has to come from somewhere

people still have a way of life and you either get it from uh you know a a baptized view of the world or you get it from the larger culture and so I think over time Christianity you know we have seen Christianity since the Reformation sort of become this uh this either a spiritual sense or a list of beliefs and the the but having it impact your view of Economics right your view of like the human person your view of science your view of uh like War um you know like does theology have anything to

say about war like that is something that like oh well and it turns out like we've outsourced I Ed the term Outsourcing we've outsourced so much of our faith to the larger culture culture so that all that's left is sort of a sense that we have a relationship with God or a relationship with something um that's the sort of more new Agy thing or on the right a list of intellectual beliefs about um about the Trinity or whatever um but if that was the case then why did God not just send down a pamph

let explaining the Trinity yeah um why do you need the story of redemption why do you need the Incarnation uh if if if the Trinity can just be explained with a drawing of three knots and stuff and then like why was it why are we have why do we have a church why do we have uh why do Jesus not come back yet like what's this like what's all this extra stuff doing in Christianity if it's not just a like a like the shorter Westminister catechism and so being confronted with Islam which is a very attr

active I do find Islam to be a very compelling uh Faith um maybe not the Islam you see on the news but the ones that I know right uh it is very compelling and very lovely and and and beautiful um and so why am I not a Muslim right that there there was that and I I was never tempted by Islam in any sort of deep sense but I was challenged by it because like what in the world like form of Christianity can compete with that right you know and and I don't mean competition in some sort of like dark se

nse I mean just like you know what makes our story more beautiful than than theirs yeah well and where do you find I think one of the attractive things about Islam is that again those who practice it it like you said there's no neutral territory in their lives it's it's it affects everything yes you know and the idea that you'd have a theology that sort of stays in its box and only can tell you about certain parts of your life but doesn't really have much to say about the rest right it doesn't m

ake any sense like we know that in our hearts it doesn't make sense right and and what's interesting is that a lot of people um see the only way to sort of neuter Islam politically is to encourage that kind of Separation that that Islamic Reformation supposedly um where if we can just get Muslims to believe that Islam is just this one thing and then Outsource the rest then we'll have peace or something um and uh which is not going to Happ but it's it's interesting that like the state department

sees that as a goal and but if that's a process that neuters of religion then what happened to ours um has ours been you know in that in that sense um maybe not by the state department but by you know other other for other forces and so um what I found I I found Islam to be beautiful but in a way that Drew me to um what I wanted which was a form of Christianity that um actually spoke to my entire life and I knew from all my previous conversion experiences that that was the Catholic church and so

I remember having arguments with Muslims and then being in a hotel room room in Chicago right and I was I was in pain from the doubt and uncertainty of my arguments with like with Muslims but also the like depression and anxiety and uh like the you know memories of childhood and stuff like that and I I had this sort of like ineffable I say ineffable experience of of the Virgin Mary where I felt mothered and I felt uh the presence of of Mary who I assume was on a layover as well in like holiday

and at the at the Chicago airport right um and uh when I came home from that trip I I told my wife um that uh I wanted to become Catholic and just to back up for a second my wife um who I met while I was starting to do comedy which is a great time to meet your wife yeah when you start doing comedy um you don't you don't want to meet someone uh before you start doing comedy because then you end up like you have a job and you tell your wife you want to be a comic that's like telling your wife you

want to be a rapper you know it's just a huge red flag you you also don't want to be established comedian and then try and like date fans or something so uh she like I wasn't good yet but she had faith in me and she she knew that I could you know that I could do it and so that was beautiful my wife uh is a cradle Catholic um and she had lapsed at this point and um we we got married um it was a Protestant of wedding on a beach like on a thing and um we uh um then she became pregnant uh with um ou

r our our daughter juel and she ended up um well and so when I came back and I was like I want to become Catholic it was it was not like for for her having lapsed it was also like a o like it wasn't ex it wasn't like oh finally Jeremy's home in the Catholic church it was also like well what do I believe and is it enough that I believe and so me coming back brought her back and even though like she was not like she was a lapsed Catholic and I was like a new Catholic and um uh so I met with a prie

st and um I already knew everything about like Catholic church or at least what I thought was everything like you know um what converts think is everything which is the intellectual stuff but but I didn't know any of the culture any of the ritual any of the practices burying Joseph upside down in your yard to sell your house kind of stuff I didn't know any of that my wife is the expert on all of that comes from a long line of Polish Catholics and um but I didn't know any of that but I know I hav

e strong opinions on on whether like Meister ehart should have been tried for heresy by the Inquisition and like this you know back in the day and I have strong opinions on that but I couldn't tell you what the like the different like bows and stuff are in the Catholic church or even like even what's what like what's going to happen next in Mass yeah so um that that was a challenge for me because I think there's a tendency for people who convert from um presentism to Catholicism because they're

searching for stability and for me it was it was it was doctrinal it was theological but it was also about lifestyle and it was also because the like the intellectual work had been done back in college right right 10 years before I I was convinced that like no this is what Christians have always believed in some form or another and um like but converting to Catholicism it was not just changing beliefs it was about converting to a world um and one thing that really struck with me was this quote b

y St Thomas where he says that propositions do not terminate in propositions they terminate in the reality that they describe and that's sort of complicated but like we have a doctrine of transubstantiation and but we do not worship the doct of transubstantiation um and we worship Jesus yeah and um we do not so growing up I always thought the difference between Catholics and Protestants was that Protestants believed that um uh or that that that Catholic Catholics believed in transubstantiation a

nd Protestants uh didn't right um but that's actually not the difference the difference is that transubstantiation happens in Catholic churches and it doesn't happen in Protestant churches um so it's not a difference of belief about the Eucharist it's the Eucharist and um the same is true of um no baptism is the same but the same is true of like all these other things where like no this is where Christ like is fully like uh this is where the kingdom of God fully subsists this is the kingdom of G

od on Earth and so once you realize that then it becomes necessary to convert whereas before I could always just have these sort of beliefs whatever um and so uh yeah so converting to that and entering the church um that way um on on Easter Vigil uh after a show I got home like the you know 10 minutes before um I had to hurry home um and but one thing that that sort of I had to get over was translating trying to sort of because one thing that I that I've noticed Protestants is um treat uh like t

radition like solar scriptura MH and so because they want stability they want certainty and so their idea is just like well just replace the Bible's certainty with like the church and that's not how it works either Sol doc doc or whatever find something that a church father said one time and then then and then that's like you know as if the Quran as if the Bible was the Quran that fell from the sky or the or or the church was right um you know um but and another thing that I had to get uh that I

had to sort of get past was I still had this deep uh desire to be fixed and so um that didn't go away when I became Catholic it just got mutated into scrupulosity where instead I thought well if I just say the rosary enough right then it'll be fixed and or if I just you know say these prayers go to go to confession enough times for every little tiny thing um then I'll be fixed and that's not how it works either and so even after I converted to Catholicism there was this continual conversion of

like no like I'm good like there was this realization that I've had and one thing I love um Hans erson Bazar Theologian he has this great thing where he talks about this is related to peekaboo I talked about earlier was that Jesus learned that the world was good however Jesus learned things yeah Jesus learned that the world was good in the face of Mary MH and that it was grow being a baby and seeing the face of Mary and knowing that the world was good and that it was worth it was worth dying for

and that just like killed me because I was like like realizing that and realizing through my devotions and through education and but also just being a part of the Catholic Church realizing that like the the world is sound the world is good yeah it's not hopelessly corrupt I'm not hopelessly corrupt um there's there's like that's not what the fall is the fall does not make everything rotten to the core um and like realizing that and seeing that dovetailed into comedy because comedy only works if

we're talking about a reality that is good yeah because that's what makes people laugh is being I think that at its core comedy is being surprised by something good right horror is when you're surprised by something bad but like comedy you you have to be surprised first of all you have to not see the punch line coming and it has to be good in in order for you to laugh right and that process I think just reiterates the the fundamental conviction that um that this world is loved by God and it's g

ood and so that that's where I came today you you mentioned earlier leisure in connection to that right because that that's that's this I'm not sure if you were explicitly refer man but we're we we have this backwards it's funny this the relationship the work and the Sabbath yes it's this it it connects to this theme that goes up and down through theology psychology our development it's just this question of do do I do I do stuff and then I'm good and God loves me yes or does God love me first a

nd then out of that identity than that I do good right and when someone tells a joke during a eulogy for someone yeah um and everybody laughs that's not um a break from reality that is the reality that and and that's more real than the death that's there yes um and so um and you know every comedian that I know thinks I'm overthinking this but but but but I but I really think it's true that um that the that comedy and humor um you know people who have a hard day at work right and they come home a

nd they watch Comedy on on on television they will they they they will talk about it like they need a break from from reality you know but I'm like no no no that's that's the good stuff right that humor that you have with your spouse with whatever that's not a break that is that is like the kingdom of God that's you demonstrating the kingdom it's not making an argument hold on a second you're not making an argument like sort of apologetics people think that comedy is sort of part of apologetics

where you're trying to be funny about stuff and you slip in the truth you know but it's it's not a a way of like sort of sweetening up these Arguments for the faith right it's just demonstrating the reality that you're inviting people to mhm so like you know I'm inviting people to be a part of this to be a part of the the joy and the The Comedy of the Divine Comedy right of of of reality that's like actually true um I don't have any like good arguments that are that people haven't really heard b

efore um for especially like to Muslims like when I perform for Muslims I'm talking about religion I'm talking about other stuff I'm not I don't have these arguments about like why you should convert to Islam Etc but it's it is this uh this demonstration of the Kingdom then that that I am in a way inviting people to yeah yeah that that ultimately that's going to be that is the ultimate apologetic argument is whether or not you live out the implications of that true theology which is that again f

irst and foremost I'm loved by God you know and out of that yes I I obey and I go to church and I do all the things and I receive and I serve but it comes from God's prior action it's his it's it's grace alone starts starts Grace yeah um mean we have about four minutes left but you know reconnecting this back to some of the themes earlier in the story I mean this this anthropology this view of of human nature and Grace you know and then where our work fits into it and all that um I mean that rea

lly that gives that answer to those questions you had about what about what about the the the disabled what about me when I'm a baby what about me when I'm too old to understand this Stu anymore you know that's that view of human nature fits our experience yes absolutely yeah yeah we're we're loved first um and we we're fundamentally loved by God chosen cherish and then out of that we you know we we love and we're we're loved and in in a way you know we're loved by our mother even before the mot

her knows we exist there is this weird moment between the time of conception and the time the mother finds out she's pregnant where she's a mother and she doesn't know it and I've always loved that that thing where like and the father's a father without knowing it yet either but they are so like that that relationship precedes this uh this like knowledge of that and um I think we we've become uh used to seeing the only responsibilities we have the only relationships we really have are ones that

we have freely agreed to right the ones that we have fully consented to um and that comes from economics the market whatever the only the only King you have is that you voted for ETC liberalism and the big philosopical so everything is based on uh on consent just raw consent not consent plus anything about the human person or flourishing it's just consent and um uh so yeah I mean I forgot where I was going with that but but yeah like the the um uh oh so it turns out that like when we when we com

e online first of all we come online through language um through which we're able to understand our ourselves language that we did not invent right all of our thoughts are in a language that we did not invent so we have inherited all of this first we have inherited these relationships first we already find ourselves in a web of obligations um and that's how we become people that's how we uh understand ourselves so we are already in debt almost when you come online and it's true we are loved not

just by God first in sort of a Grace formula but by everyone that we know know all of our ancestors all of our everyone in our community we are already loved by them when we like before we even realize it yeah that's a great gift of family I think chest points this out in in um I think the book Heretics whatever but he's talking about how the gift of family is that you're you're born you know it's not your choice you're born into a family you know they didn't choose you you didn't choose them yo

u're given to each other and before you enter out into the world where it is you know consent and relationships and contracts you born into a family where no one chose each other right you're just given to each other yeah well about a minute left if there's somebody again from a similar background to you kind of the reform background really broadly speaking this this very intellectual background but something's missing give them a word of encouragement on their Journey forward well I think just

any any any way you can find a a way to incorporate all of um all you know see see Redemption yeah as Cosmic as something that is about every part of your life and you know look up resources for integrating your uh your faith with every aspect of your life and I think that the best way to do that is uh through the Catholic tradition obviously I'm Catholic but um but I think that anytime you can uh you can like search your way into making uh your your religion not just a list of propositions but

about your entire way of life your entire person you know don't leave any part of you unaffected by by Christ yeah um and you know I think that that road leads to Rome but um hopefully it it at least leads to Heaven yeah one step at a time yeah all right thank you so much thank you so much sharing your story and and actually you can reach out to Jeremy uh for booking inquiries if you uh we'll have the email address up on the screen jeremy. melen gmail.com uh so you can reach out to him there to

to book one of his shows so thanks again Jeremy thank you for being us with us on this episode of the journey home program I pray that Jeremy's story is inspiration to you remember that you're loved you're loved even before you pray even before you speak even before you act even before you figure out which is the right church God loves you and just take the next step in that Journey with him today God bless you we'll see you again next [Music] week [Music] h